WANTED: Love of my Life

19. Him and me and the questions

I turned and looked up at him

“Giacomo,” was all I said in reply. Desperately, I tried to see his eyes, but it was dark in the alley. I could see nothing of his face but vague shapes and shadows.

“Come.” He let go of my arm and motioned for me to follow him. “This is still too public. We've got to go somewhere where no one can see or hear us.”

My heart still pounding, I followed him deeper into the darkness. I'd never known that there was such a maze of small, shadowy streets and empty back yards in San Francisco. The farther we got, the fewer people we saw, and the more rubbish heaps got in our way.

“How are we going to find our way back?” I whispered. Somehow, it didn't seem appropriate to talk at normal volume in such a place.

“I can find the way back easily enough,” he said. “Believe me, I've found my way through cities much more complicated than this one.”

“How does it get any more complicated?”

“When the streets aren't all laid out in a gridiron pattern, and are only half as wide, and people are everywhere, and there are makeshift bridges crisscrossing over your head connecting the upper stories, from which somebody might dump waste on you at any moment.”

“Well, yes... I can see how that might be slightly more complicated. What place are we talking of, exactly?”

His voice, which had been light and teasing just a moment ago, turned distant.

“Oh, just some place I've been to.”

“I see.”

And I did. He didn't want to tell me. Again. We were deep in the dark maze of alleys now. I'd lived in this city my whole life, but had no idea where we were. Suddenly, he whirled around. His eyes were full of sadness as he stared down at me. I stopped in front of him.

“Angela?”

I gulped. “Yes?”

“Do you know why I came today?”

I shook my head. After all, I didn't know. I hoped, and feared, but I didn't know.

“To tell you that this thing with us... it's not going to work.”

My world swayed. I tried to open my mouth to speak, but he stepped forward, holding out both hands. “Let me finish! That's what I came here to tell you. That's what I should tell you. But... I can't.”

With the help of the wall of the house beside me, I managed to steady myself.

“W-what do you mean?”

“Angela...” The sadness in his eyes became unimaginable. “Do you know how long I have traveled across America?”

I shook my head.

“Then I'll tell you. 6 months. 6 months hiding in the darkness, sleeping in barns and under bridges. I don't know whether you can understand... perhaps it'll mean something if I tell you that after all that, St. Christopher’s felt like a Garden of Eden to me. I couldn't do anything there but sit, alone, the only words that came out of my mouth occasionally being 'thank you' when someone I didn't know passed me the salt – if there was some, that is. A dark limbo, and this felt like Paradise! These past six months...” he shuddered. “And before that, it was another 5 months, tramping all across Europe, through dirt, cold, and tough weather. Then I crossed the Atlantic – not on an airplane, but as a stowaway on a stinking cargo ship. And then I found my way here, and then... as I said, I just sat in the shadows, waiting...”

“Waiting for what?” I wanted to know. My eyes were moist again, but not with despair this time, but agony for what he must have gone through.

“Perhaps for fate to catch up with me?” He said, his lips twitching. “But it didn't come. Instead, you did.”