“I went to see the agency about four months ago. We would have to wait years for a baby. And these older children who need special love and care, they spend their lives bouncing from foster home to foster home.”
“So if we ask for a baby, we really won’t be helping.”
“Oh, Jake.” She squeezed his hand. “That’s precisely it. I’ve met Amy Carol about five times, and she needs a family. And we can be that family for her.”
“Tell me about her.”
Callie began with a physical description. They rounded the corner of the castle and picked their way through the parking lot, past the entrance to the Galleria Umberto, and around the scaffolding on the front of the opera house. Jake noticed several prostitutes standing on the steps to the Galleria, but Callie was describing the little girl’s emotional problems and paid no attention.
A hundred feet further on he saw a tall, willowy woman in spike heels and a black dress standing under the light on the corner across the street. Her low-cut, strapless dress clung to her figure like cellophane and only came down to midthigh. She was busy adjusting her bosom. Callie was reciting Amy Carol’s family history.
Callie stopped dead on the sidewalk, in midsentence, and Jake jerked his head from the far corner. Directly in front of them on the sidewalk a woman with exposed breasts stood talking to a man leaning from a car. She wore high heels and some type of black lingerie, but her breasts were completely bare. A transparent robe was draped around her shoulders.
“Keep walking,” Jake urged.
Callie looked the woman up and down and gave the man in the car a piercing glance, which he ignored.
Ten paces further on three motor scooters drew to the curb. The young male drivers each had a teenage girl behind him. They chatted excitedly, looking back at the working hooker. Jake and Callie kept walking. The boys eased the scooters into motion and made a U-turn. Jake looked back over his shoulder. The scooters made another U-turn and swung into the curb where the car had been. The woman surveyed the teenagers with disdain and the Italian came loud and fast, audible even above the traffic.
“Stop gawking, Grafton,” Callie ordered. “She’s a 36 C-cup and needs dental work.”
She’s lying about the teeth, Jake told himself. Not even Callie had been looking at her mouth. “I wonder where we could get you an outfit like that?”
“Oooh, you men! You like that, huh?” She began to sashay along, rolling her shoulders and hips.
“Just admiring the local color.” Callie was still doing it. Pedestrians were staring. “Stop that!”
“Twenty thousand lire.”
“What?” If she kept on, she was going to need a chiropractor.
“Twenty thousand lire, sailor, and I no givva da kisses.”
“How much for kisses too?”
“More than you gotta, sailor boy. Only da real men get da kisses.”
A loafer on the grass whistled at her and she dropped the charade, grasping Jake’s arm tightly and laughing.
“Amy Carol’s gonna have a real fireball for a mom,” Jake said, and led her toward the promenade around the Castel Nuovo.
They stood against the rail of the moat and watched the vendors roasting food in makeshift barbecues on the sidewalk. Working-class families out for the evening sat on the grass and ate roasted ears of corn and pieces of chicken. Dogs with noses to the ground charged through the crowd searching for abandoned delicacies. Jake counted five young couples, three on the promenade and two on the grass, locked in passionate embraces. In front of Jake and Callie three small boys were kicking a ball. With every other boot, the ball bounced off lovers and picnickers, startled the dogs, or caromed ominously toward the busy avenue. Someone always rescued it and kicked it back to the boys. The tinny beeping cacophony of motor scooter and car horns was the perfect accompaniment. Napkins and food wrappers were swept away by the rising wind.
“Saturday night in Naples.”
“You enjoy Naples, don’t you?” Callie asked, and brushed back the blowing hair from her face.
Jake grinned broadly and led her on. They crossed the boulevard that led down to fleet landing and strolled down the Via Depretis, which paralleled the Via Medina, a block to the west. Sailor bars and pizza shops lined the east side of the street. Jake and Callie dropped into an empty table at a sidewalk bar and sipped wine as pairs, threesomes, and foursomes of American sailors in civilian clothes wandered by, noisy tourists in search of “action.”
The Graftons were walking hand in hand when a young man shot out of an alley, collided with Jake, and went sprawling. Jake almost fell, but Callie steadied him.
“Sorry.” The man scrambled to his feet.
“What’s the rush?” Jake demanded.
The man was four steps down the street when he pulled up and turned to stare at Jake. “CAG? Captain Grafton?”
“That’s me.”
“Jesus, sir.” He came rushing back. “Sorry I about flattened ya. But our cat captain is in there,” he gestured up the alley, “and he’s loaded and there’s gonna be a fight.”
“Who are you?”
“Airman Gardner, sir. Cat Four.”
“Kowalski your cat captain?”
“Yessir, and he’s one drunk motherfucker…. Excuse me, ma’am.” The sailor nodded at Callie and flushed. “He’s pretty drunk, sir, and I can’t get him outta there and the barkeep is callin’ the shore patrol and I was goin’ for help.” Gardner didn’t look a day over eighteen.
“Callie, you go back to the hotel. I’ll see you there after a while.”
She pecked him on the cheek. “Okay.” She winked and began walking back toward the piazza. Jake watched her go, her skirt swirling.
“Com’on, sir,” Gardner urged. “Them shore patrollers will be along any minute.” He tugged at Jake’s sleeve.
The bar was a red-light dive that catered to sailors. Several dozen were there when Jake walked through the door. Kowalski was in one corner with his legs splayed out and his shirt ripped, a bar stool in his hands. If he were left alone, gravity would soon conquer his fireplug body. “Alright, you cocksuckers, who’s gonna be first?”
Another man wearing a red-and-yellow shirt stood facing Ski and wagging his finger at the cat captain’s face. He looked almost as drunk as Kowalski. Behind the bar an Italian in a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up was screaming, “Out out out. They are coming. No fighting, no fighting. Out out out!”
“Excuse me,” Jake said to the drunk facing Kowalski, and stepped by him. Jake stood up straight. “Ski, do you recognize me?”
Kowalski stared. The bartender was roaring, “Out out out out …”
Ski shook his head.
“I’m Captain Grafton.” Jake grasped the stool and pried it gently from Kowalski’s grasp. He set it on the floor, then shook Ski’s right hand and held it while he grasped his elbow and began to move him toward the door. “I want you to come with me.”
“Yessir,” the petty officer mumbled, and shuffled in the direction he was pointed.
“So long, you windbag motherfucker,” the man with the red-and-yellow shirt jeered.
Kowalski roared and tried to turn. Gardner punched him squarely in the jaw and his knees buckled.
“Ooowww,” Gardner moaned, and shook his hand.
“I like your style, son,” Grafton said, “but that’s a good way to break your hand. Now help me get this tub of lard outta here.” Gardner grabbed Ski’s other arm and they dragged him out the door.
In the alley Gardner said, “I think I busted it.”
“They never do in the movies, do they? Come on, Ski, start walking, goddammit, or we’ll leave you for the shore patrol.”
The petty officer’s feet began to move. Jake steadied him on one side while Gardner held him up on the other, his forearm jammed under Ski’s armpit with his injured hand sticking out.