Every Boy's Got One

PDA of Cal Langdon

PDA of Cal Langdon

I am an international fugitive from justice. At any moment I expect our car to be overtaken by Interpol, and for Jane and me to be yanked out, slammed to the asphalt, and slapped into cuffs. I suspect Black Hawk helicopters are hovering over us at this very moment. Undoubtedly, we’ll be thrown into an Italian prison, and no one will ever hear from us again.

And Rhonda, ultimately, will have the last laugh.

We did it. We perjured ourselves. Committed fraud. Forged our friends’ names on government documents.

And they never suspected a thing.

Jane was right. It was a cinch. The guy behind the bulletproof glass barely even glanced at us or our passports. He just asked us where we were staying, made a laconic comment when he found out it was Le Marche, slid the form through the slot for us to sign, then gave us back our documents with the form stamped appropriately. All that waiting—we didn’t get back on the road until almost five-thirty—and we were done in five minutes.

I thought Jane was going to have an embolism, she was so delirious with joy. She kept clutching my shirt—not an unpleasant sensation, by the way—and hissing, “It worked! We did it! It worked!” as we rode down the elevator.

Then she seemed to sober up and asked, “What did that man say about Le Marche?”

So I told her he’d said, with a grunt, when he heard where we—I mean, Mark and Holly—were planning on being wed: “Better a corpse in the house than a man from Le Marche.”

This filled Jane with righteous anger—”What did he mean by that? What’s wrong with Le Marche? I think it’s beautiful. Just because it’s not overrun with American tourists like Rhonda, that means there’s something wrong with it? That pig,” etc.

This struck me as highly amusing, considering her sentiments on Le Marche after coming out of the bathroom at the restaurant where we dined just last evening.

Still, it’s true that Le Marche is beginning to have a certain charm. I’m actually eager to get back there.

I haven’t been eager to get anywhere since… well, ever. I wonder what that’s about. It seems as if places have always been just that to me… places. I can’t imagine what’s happened to make Le Marche seem less like a place and more like… well. Home.

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To: Jane Harris

Fr: Malcolm Weatherly

Re: Ciao!

Hey, babe! How’s it going? Haven’t heard from you in a while. What happened? You run off with some Italian stallion or what?

Drop me a line, will ya? I miss your face.

And I really need to know if you’ve seen my lucky hat.

M.