Author: Amory Crane

Miles stared through the sliding glass door of the balcony overlooking the harbour of the Marina Grande. It was still early and he couldn’t sleep. Outside, a vast sheet of inky darkness, yielding gently its ownership of the morning sky, slipped from off the broad shoulders of the surrounding cliffs and, like a discarded négligée, fell, gossamer-like, to the shifting surface of the sea. Down there, among the remaining shadows, the dancing waves appeared like crumpled up patterns of delicate lace. Out from them the dawn then stepped, lucid and calm, denuded of the night’s haze. With it a great swirling mass of colour wheeled brilliantly over the horizon of the mainland: eternity striving to paint itself.

Slumped in the hotel room’s desk chair, Miles’s body — pale, thin, red on the face and neck where he’d caught the sun — was still warm from beneath the cover of the bed clothes. Yet the coolness of the room caused his triceps very slightly to pucker. Naked, he could feel an icy sweat forming over the pale swathe of skin which stretched across the bulb of muscle as it tensed and untensed like an Adam’s apple, like a snake working its feed, and which trickled like condensation between the soft flecks of down on his arms and small of his back. When he reached over for the towel he’d brought from the en-suite a faint stirring then rose from behind him. Beneath crumpled sheets came a release of self-satisfied breath. Leaning back, he gazed over the tangle of limbs and pale linen. No, she wouldn’t be awake for a while yet. Not until the sun was fully up and you could hear the knuckles tapping sharply and staccato against neighbours’ doors, heralding the delivery of their morning coffee. So he ran the soft white towel over the backs of his arms and neck and discarded it at the foot of the bed. Then he sat back down in the chair overlooking the bay, the fabric coarse against the backs of his thighs.

This was their fifth and final day on the island. It marked the end of his and Zara’s first real holiday — that is to say, abroad — and now, in the guilty relish of the silence, with the contours and rhythm of its moods slowly becoming discernible through the immediate haze of newly consummated or disillusioned desires, he was inclined to appraise their time there. 

From the previous Friday, when they had arrived in Naples tired and expectant, and spent the afternoon strolling amid the cool of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, Miles, while pointing out the various architectural and artistic delights of the seventeenth-century church, his wrinkled copy of Douglas’s Siren Land peering from out the yawning flap of his hip pocket, had deferred such misgivings as he had to some future, more judicious time. He noted now more assiduously than he had when stretching to point out the finer details of The Seven Acts of Mercy — the dynamics of movement, chiaroscuro, and dramatic idiom of corporeal grace — how he was obliged to ignore over his shoulder the pale light glaring upon Zara’s face. It was not unlike that cast on the valiant woman’s in the painting, cupping and exposing her breast, and who with an expression of such solemn resolve gave succour to the aged member of the damned. To both sets of features, real and artificial alike, a solidity was granted; and in the low, ethereal gloom of the place Zara’s sharp features appeared to gleam like marble, as if raised in high relief. 

It was when Miles turned more slowly and explicitly to give her notice, and when she quickly lowered to her bosom the phone which she was holding up to her fixated gaze, locking it and curtailing its glow, that she disappeared once again into the surrounding space, as if she were dropping beneath the waterline of a bath. Nodding measuredly with pursed lips she said, ‘I am listening, honey.’

Brief visions of childhood, of his mother’s distracted attention were summoned up before being dispelled by a sharp shake of the head. As he was describing Caravaggio’s life, the murder, the buggery, the divine gift — savouring the disparity, the stark contrast of worldly brutality and artistic light — his words lingered over the contrast with pride in a phrase he had been longing all day to dispense, like a pebble into the untouched pool of her mind. ‘One might say,’ and here he paused a moment, ‘that he displayed a certain. . . chiaroscuro of the soul. The lightness and the dark, the one giving a weight, a fleshiness, to the other.’

He turned as he finished to be met by her lithe back facing toward him. Her long dark hair, pulled into a twirling ponytail like a corkscrew, swished this way and that, disclosing a slight tilt of the head as once again the little glowing rectangle existed, this time pointing over her shoulder at the picture and himself. She asked, ‘Is he very famous?’

‘Who, Caravaggio?’ said Miles, removing himself from shot. ‘Only slightly.’

She giggled at his sardonic, exasperated tone, the subtle shake of the head. ‘You know,’ she said, leaning into his shoulder, her hand curling around his bicep, ‘I do love it when you’re passionate about things.’

Thinking now over the disparity between them, Miles wondered whether his ambivalence to these little disappointments was the result merely of lascivious distractions, libidinal consolations that he stopped himself from weighing too thoroughly as against certain higher patterns of life. She was, after all, only twenty-two — almost a decade younger than himself. Perhaps there were, wrapped up in their relationship, some erotic tensions related to power which, he admitted, he too enjoyed, and which adhered not only to his senior position at the investment bank where they were both employed but to other avenues, other plains. As for the tiresome shaking of his head, even this, he found, had a certain undertow of pleasure. This was his domain; she deferred to it.

Across the way now, where the water was alive with a million little flecks of light stretching away endlessly, like a field of ground glass accosted by the sun, a few boats bobbed along ludicrously as in a child’s drawing. They looked like fallen shards of the moon. Only the day before they had been out there, he and Zara, carving through the cerulean depths from the comfort of a hired speedboat. Wearing a taut white swimsuit, over which she had tied one of his pale striped blue shirts, she read aloud a text sent to her by a girl she worked with. Her voice was terse, bemused, accusatory: explaining to him the ostensible drama which had taken place. Trying to concentrate on the water, he turned to see her jet black hair set alight by the afternoon’s rays, as if hidden in her tresses were innumerable little specs of phosphorescence. She held them back from her narrow face by a large pair of gold coloured sunglasses, the swirling tendrils scattered about her pointed shoulders. All the while, his eyes scanning left and right, he circled the bright blue water in front of the bay. Other boats kept turning into his path. There was an area the man he’d rented the boat from had told him to keep clear of. He was waiting patiently for a clear run.

Spotting a line of smooth, placid water, he pushed up the hard chromium handle of the accelerator. From behind him came an inordinate screech.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Zara asked, beside him now, her hand clutching the driver’s seat. He could still see the long french-tips sunk into the quilted leather as if into flesh. She was gesturing towards her hair, which she then grasped frantically, twisting it like a wet towel. His shirt flapped loosely around her thighs.

‘Sorry,’ he said, bringing the lever down. 

‘Took me ages to get ready this morning. Christ, were you listening?’

She was retying his shirt at her waist with the phone tucked into the breast pocket.

‘Of course,’ he said, apologising again. ‘Only it requires a lot of concentration.’

When they arrived back at the hotel, stepping over the polished granite floor of the foyer, he had noticed no distraction as had visited her among the delights of latin art or the swirling air of the bay. Through long rectangles of white stretching luminously from the tall windows overlooking the quayside, she walked to where the deep chairs were arranged further into the room, her tan legs glistening in their determined strides. They began precipitously from the oversized hem of his jacket, which she had exchanged for his soiled shirt and had strewn over her narrow shoulders, giving it the appearance of a cape. All the while the feminine clack of her heels echoed and punctuated her movements, and the very bottom of her shapely buttocks, which were just visible beneath the swaying seat of his jacket, rose and fell alternately, like the shoulder blades of a stalking jaguar.

Miles placed the soiled shirt on the counter and rang the bell. Waiting for the concierge to return from some errand he was conscious of Zara lingering beside the lifts, perched on the arm of a chair with her head tilted down as if engrossed in her phone. Her large sunglasses were planted firmly over her face. 

No doubt some purchase, demonstrable of contrition but played as if sprung from spontaneous and determined feeling, would now be necessary. Contemplating what would be more appropriate — an article of clothing, jewellery, scent? — both to the aim and his desired expenditure (he was not parsimonious, but resentment would linger in him if he felt as if he had been merely used) he noticed something from the corner of his eye. On a lacquered sideboard beside the desk, an ornate Cupid, holding in outstretched hand a bowl of potpourri, offered up his stale fruits. They smelt very faintly of displaced dust. He wondered now why, of all things, was this, a chubby babe, the chosen image, the acknowledged source of all passion?

‘Good mowhning,’ came a husky voice from behind the desk.

‘Ah, ciao,’ said Miles.

The concierge, a slim young woman, wearing a green linen dress of geometric pattern, looked up at him from a theatre curtain of bright caramel hair, a row of large turquoise beads accentuating her narrow throat. Between very large dark lips her white teeth clacked together with a smile.

‘’Ow may I ‘elp you?’

Miles lifted up the shirt once again. With a slightly apologetic tone he asked if the hotel would launder it for him.

‘Of course,’ said the young woman. ‘Do you need it for a certain reason. . . a, ahh, function?’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Solo per la vita.’ And when the girl laughed he felt very happy with himself.

‘You sure? It, ah, suit you. The colour. You know ‘ow I mean?’ The girl’s large pearlescent teeth shone once again from between her bulbous, almost purple, lips.

Then, from beside him, he heard Zara’s voice. ‘Actually, would you mind getting that sorted by tonight? It’s very urgent.’

The girl’s face, which had before been alive with the disclosed pink of her open mouth, the wetness of her tongue and teeth, became immediately set in a highly courteous if self-conscious pose. She nodded as Zara spoke, made a diligent note in long-hand on a pad somewhere on the lower, obscured part of her desk, and assured Zara it would be done by this evening.

‘Thanks,’ said Zara, grasping Miles’s hand, ‘have it brought up to our room, would you?’ Then she lead Miles over to the lifts.

‘Goodness,’ said Miles, catching his breath, for when they returned to the room she had pounced on him. ‘And here was me thinking I was in the dog house.’

‘You are,’ said Zara, rolling onto her front beside him, her lavish hair pooling between the backs of her shoulder-blades. ‘But nothing turns me on like being angry.’

Miles noted the previous musings on placatory purchases were not, alas, in vain. Perhaps he’d managed to knock down the price. The thought that his own prowess as a lover could be measured in such a way made him smile. Then he frowned.

‘Did you. . . err?’

‘Mmhm.’

She was inspecting her nails, her feet kicked back over the rear of her thighs. Making his peace with this ambiguity, a harsh white glare, reminiscent of the kind used in jeweller’s windows to set the sparkle alive in the eyes of diamonds, rose up and flooded his vision.

‘Are you alright?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, raising his arm to shelter his eyes. ‘Just the sun. I tell you what I’d go in for right about now, though. A cigarette.’

Her eyes slid from her regiment of girlish pink nails with their white tips and met his own. By the tired, slightly shameful tension that lay at the pit of his stomach he could tell he had taken on a supplicant tone.

‘But you’ve given up,’ she said, smiling. Then she kissed him on the lips before rolling deftly off the end of the bed. 

As she did, the sun, caught momentarily in the wedge between her inner thighs, revealed just beneath the paler skin, obfuscated usually by the cut of her swimsuits, the first returning shoots of hair around the meticulously waxed bikini line. Somehow this had reminded him of home. When she’d shut the door behind her he then stared at the ceiling a moment, slowly peering over into the corner of the room where his suitcase stood shelved on a small rack beside the wardrobe. In there, beneath his tattered copy of The Story of Art and a little pocket book of the region’s wines ordered the week before they left, his packet of Marlboro’s lay, though squashed and misshapen, nonetheless thankfully hidden.

Looking over at it this morning, in the thickening light, he felt the same urge, the same stirrings in the throat, the same childish breathiness in his lungs as if incapable of containing within himself some anticipation, and the same mild, curling tension of the bowels. All this welcomed him as it had every morning since he’d promised to quit smoking six months ago.

Desperate, he checked the time on his phone and stood up. Open on the desk beside him, alongside his Dunhill wallet and Mondaine watch, his laptop displayed the capricious fortunes of the Forex markets. Little jagged lines lurched across the screen like the life-support readings of a critical patient. He closed it. His mind, dampened by the early morning stillness, was still lucid from long exposure to the pure quiet. He wanted to protect what was left of it, to evade the harsh eloquence of money’s voice. He wanted, more than anything, a cigarette.

He slid on his bathrobe, now pleasant against the cool goose-pimpled flesh of his arms, and, removing his suitcase from the rack, quietly unzipped it, lowering the open front gently onto the tiled floor. The light, dense now, mimicked him the whole while in grey shapes on the opposite wall, the strenuous delicacy of the exercise expanded to an enormous ape-like display above Zara’s sleeping head. Having then replaced the suitcase he was about to stand when he hovered a moment. Over his shoulder, through the last dregs of gloom, he could see a limb of smooth tan flesh loosed from the bundle of pale linen. His hand, paused on the crumpled packet of cigarettes, was like a child’s caught in some delinquent act. He slid the packet into his gown pocket and went out onto the balcony, closing the glass door behind him.

Ah yes, he thought, lighting the cigarette. Was it not just as rapturous as the other two he had managed that holiday? What joy was that descending lightness, from the top of the cranium to the hinges of the limbs; the weight behind one’s eyes, unnoticed before, suddenly lifting on the first exhale. Both those times he had found means of excusing himself from the pool or the room to arrange bookings (which he had done), and when he had finished walked aimlessly through the nearby streets, finding shade against a block of flats behind the hotel. There he had stood, blowing the smoke directly upwards, watching the pale, bluish curlicues disintegrate in the gelatinous glare of the afternoon sun. And last night, as he stood in the same spot, having left Zara to her evening preparations, he had been wondering whether it would all be the same as he had left it — London, going back to work, back to sharing a taxi to the office and him obliged to hop out a couple of streets away in the same old tiresome rigmarole, so that no one would see them arrive together. The thought of it all had been like the long-ago threat of school on a Sunday evening. It made him wince. 

Then, as he had exhaled slowly into the deepening blue of the sky, a voice stirred him from these unsettling thoughts.

‘Ciao,’ came the same husky voice.

Miles, startled, looked round. The concierge, a battered tote bag slung over her shoulder, a cigarette cocked gracefully in the opposite hand, was smiling at him.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she said. ‘I ‘ave just finished. But I give your shirt to your partner.’

‘Oh, uh, thank you very much.’ He wondered whether she had stressed that final word. ‘It was very good of you to get it done so swiftly.’

‘No problem. I shall leave you to, ah, enjoy your peace. Ciao.’

Now, a third of the cigarette left, and jammed tightly into the little space on the side of the balcony where the wall extended, and where he had strategically closed the curtain a little further that it might obscure him, he wondered whether there wasn’t something knowing, some unacknowledged understanding in the curl of her lips as she said this. Perhaps he ought to have felt a little shame over the exchange. 

He was in the middle of pondering all this when, with the reactions of a flittering deer, he heard the first nano-second of steel rolling over steel, of cool inner air lunging into the warm outside. Immediately he flung the cigarette far out onto the street below. About to turn, he stopped himself, watching as the remains of the sparking nub careered out into the passenger seat of a parked convertible. He sank back from the edge of the balcony, his eyelids scrunched like discarded tissue paper. Lying all of a sudden heavy in his lungs was the sea air, thick with its burden of salt.

‘Morning,’ said Zara.

Turning towards her he found the necessary face: lids lowered, jaw ever so slightly slack, lower lip protruded. ‘Did I wake you?’ came unconsciously the faded voice. ‘I was ill in the night.’

She stepped towards him on her tip-toes. ‘Oh no, are you alright?’

From down on the street the sound of burbling outrage was just beginning to reach him. He put his hands up. ‘No kisses. I was sick, you see. Let me just go swill some mouthwash.’

He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth violently before swirling mouthwash until his gums were on fire. Then he sprayed aftershave over his neck and chest.

‘You were sick?’

‘Mm, yes. Think it helped in the end. You know how it is. You pace and pace and pace, thinking bringing it up will be the worst thing in the world to happen. You lie on the tiles, put your face against the window pane. Then, just as you think you’re going to die, you’re sick and you feel much better.’ He stopped himself, conscious he was speaking too quickly.

‘Poor baby,’ said Zara.

Pushing his hair back from his face he added, ‘funny, really, how the anticipation is always so much more vivid than the reality.’

‘Well I suppose you won’t be wanting any breakfast then?’ 

Her hand lingered on the telephone.

‘Best not,’ he said, patting his stomach. ‘Just coffee. Black. I can’t face milk. In fact, just make it espresso.’ 

The fear of being caught was beginning to wane now. Settling into his role, he was impressed by his ability to think on his feet. But then, getting dressed, he heard Zara ordering down the line: espresso, cappuccino, and an order of Turkish eggs. His stomach grumbled.

‘Sure you don’t want anything to eat?’

Miles shook his head. It was going to be a long morning. Perhaps by lunchtime, he consoled himself, he would be able credibly to handle some lunch. ‘For the best I think.’

Putting on her bathrobe, Zara stepped into the bathroom for a quick shower. Immediately Miles went and replaced the packet of cigarettes behind his copy of Gombrich. He was glad it was the large edition carrying all the reprinted colour illustrations. For once, he thought, art was not entirely divorced from utility. Then, while the hiss of the water was still audible, he took the opportunity to sidle up to the edge of the balcony and peer over. A uniformed policeman, his pale blue shirt fluttering beneath a white sash which from a distance looked like a bandolier, was listening as the outraged owner of the car held up the offending projectile. Every few moments he nodded before looking up at the higher reaches of the hotel. Around them huddled a horseshoe of passersby with hands raised to shelter scanning eyes. All were turned toward the various points of the facade. No one seemed able to identify the source.

The water then stopped. Miles stepped back into the shade and sat upright against the headboard, pretending to read his copy of Douglas. Zara came from the bathroom, dropped her towel, slipped into a sheer yellow thong and matching bra, then took from the wardrobe the freshly pressed striped blue shirt. Atop her head, coiled like a snake, was a towel.

Buttoning the shirt round her waist, the loose double cuffs flopped about her supple wrists. She said, ‘what’s with all the hubbub?’

Miles shrugged.

Standing with her back towards the light he saw only a silhouette, a dark form that was all shape without depth, discernible by a fine-lined, twinkling trim of gold against the ferocious blue of the sea and sky. Swishing in the oversized shirt to the bed, behind where the curtain remained partially closed, she reappeared suddenly, reclining in the wavering shadow beside him. Her skin was solid now, fresh, plump from the cool water of the shower. On the points of her chin, forehead, and cheeks, he noticed white dots of cream which she rubbed away strenuously in little circles with the pads of her fingers. When she went to take her phone from the sideboard he searched her face for signs of incredulity, of burgeoning resentment. He held his book up as shelter from the sun.

A little while later there was a knock.

‘Come in,’ said Zara.

A figure entered, pushing a small tinkering trolley. 

Putting his book down out of politeness, Miles was obliged to lift a hand to his weary eyes. The figure, slim, feminine, slightly hunched over its jittery burden, was standing in the harsh glare of the morning sun. Once again it was as if some void in his vision of the world had opened up, matching exactly the shape and movements of another person. As the figure passed the open door of the balcony, the mild breeze then wafted the scent of spiced tomato sauce and sizzling eggs into the room. Miles’s mouth began to water.

‘Just put it on the table would you?’ said Zara.

Moving to the table, which was behind the closed portion of curtain, the figure emerged from out the light and, just as Zara had, reappeared. It was the girl from the front desk.

‘What’s all that noise outside, by the way?’ asked Zara.

‘Someone threw their cigarette into the street,’ came that low, sultry voice. ‘Landed in a car.’

Zara tutted. ‘See the trouble smoking gets you in,’ she giggled. ‘Bet you’re glad you gave up now, hm?’

The girl bit her bottom lip and looked at him. Miles, conscious he was smiling, recovered himself before looking back at Zara. She had evidently witnessed something of this exchange. A loose tongue of towel flapped about her ear as she flicked her gaze between the two of them, brows furrowed. There was a second’s quiet before Miles said, ‘I suppose it came with some benefits.’

Finished setting the coffee and eggs on the table, the girl turned the trolley around. ‘Is that everything?’

‘No,’ said Zara, pointing at the laid dish. ‘I didn’t order that.’

‘No? I ‘ave here, ah. . .’

‘I don’t care what you “‘ave.” I didn’t order that.’

Sensing a scene developing Miles stood up from the bed. ‘It’s alright,’ he said, suppressing his eagerness. ‘I’ll eat them.’

‘No,’ said Zara. ‘You’re ill.’

‘Well, I can peck at them. No harm done.’

Zara lifted the heavy lids of her eyes. Then, very slowly and deliberately, she said:

‘Why are you trying to defend her?’

It was as if a glass smashed very loudly on the floor. Everything became very quiet and very still. Thinking he was about to speak Miles opened his mouth when the sun, passing briefly behind a cloud, revealed in its absence every outline, every stark and excruciating contrast on the faces of the two women. From the corner of his eye he could see the girl’s expressive mouth close and shrink, and the slight tilt of her head toward the floor. Somehow everything had become more intimate, and it was the more appalling for being so.

‘It is fine,’ the girl said. ‘I take it away.’

Miles tried to catch her face, to impart some unexpressed meaning as they had before, but the long streaks of her burnished hair fell about her brows unevenly, as if something had ruffled it at the roots. She did not look at him.

‘What is your name?’ asked Zara, as the girl placed the eggs back onto the trolley. ‘You know, incase I need to make a complaint.’

She sighed. ‘Laura.’

When the door finally shut Miles turned around and said, 

‘You did order those eggs.’

‘Of course,’ said Zara, looking at her phone. She was parting two entwined eyelashes with the tips of her nails.

‘Then why on earth did you tell her you didn’t?’

‘You have to test staff,’ she said, incredulously. ‘She should have just taken them away. It wasn’t her place to argue. But she did, so I put my foot down. That’s why I’m going to complain.’

‘Yes but—’

‘But what?’

Miles stood silent with his mouth open. Then he sat down, an aching void developing in the centre of his chest.

‘Bollocks to this,’ he said, suddenly. Reaching over for his suitcase he took out the packet of cigarettes.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Zara.

‘I want a bloody cigarette on my holiday,’ he said, slamming the door.

Running downstairs and into the foyer, he hoped to catch sight of her through the flutter of morning crowd before the chance to exchange the word, the simple word lying now like a naked flame on his tongue, would be lost. 

‘I’m sorry Laura,’ he muttered feverishly to himself. ‘Christ, I really am.’

Stepping clumsily into the dining room, through a smattering of other tourists, he was accosted by a young man with an elegant stubble beard. He asked Miles if he wanted a table for breakfast. Miles shook his head and turned around. He felt sick. There was, alas, no sign of her.

Outside he walked to where they’d run into one another the day before, hoping with eyes upturned and appealing to some higher form of justice that she might be there. There were no longer any signs of disturbance. The car had gone, along with the gaggle of onlookers. A different policeman was now exchanging pleasantries with an elderly woman on the corner of the street. Resigned, Miles stopped to light a cigarette, looking up at the morning sky. It was strange to think he had seen it earlier, had almost crept up on it unawares, when it had been so malleable, so protean, so alive. Now it was just a ceaseless block of tedious ultramarine, an inelegant marquee beneath which crowds of tourists like himself came to eat, drink, tan, decompress, and leave, as if this were some sanatorial island for the clinically depressed. Taking another drag from his cigarette, the draughts of smoke blew away in faint powdery puffs, giving him a headache. He felt nauseated again. So he sat down on a bench and waited for his stomach to settle before making his way back to the hotel.

When he got back Zara was still scrolling through her phone, the occasional video playing aloud from her feed. Miles sat down at the foot of the bed. They were silent for some time. 

Then, like a whisper, he heard the soft rustle of duvet behind him. Zara stalked her way across the expanse of bed.

‘I was thinking,’ she said, lying beside him, hips exposed, disclosing the thin yellow line of material transversing where her tan flesh began to narrow at her centre. Her voice was soft and conciliatory. ‘Why don’t we go for lunch at that place we like? You know, near those pretty little shops we passed yesterday. Then you could take me round a church after and show me some paintings. Like that one you took me to in Naples. What was it called again?’

Miles sighed. ‘The Seven Acts of Mercy.’

‘That’s it.’ Her arm was now coiling round his own. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

He nodded.

‘Anything like that around here?’

Through her dark eyelashes, as if through bars, Miles looked down to where the two swirling pools of colour coalesced and sparkled, like little dawns breaking. 

‘No,’ he said. ‘Only sirens.’

Amory Crane is Editor-in-Chief at Decadent Serpent. He covers such topics as Art, Literature, and the more broadly Cultural, reporting straight from the chamber of what Shelley once called the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’. You can follow him @LaughingCav1 on X or on Substack. He also writes fiction.