covered at the Glynco training center.
Raylan tiptoed around town hoping to run into Harry, find him buying The New York Times or having his breakfast somewhere. No luck. So now he'd have to walk along the Via Vittorio Veneto, the postcard part of town, where everybody was parading around or having their Sunday-morning coffee, sitting at sidewalk tables with their coats on. It was chilly, only partly sunny, somewhere in the high fifties, no one in swimming and only a few hardy souls on the beach.
He came to a garden, a bed of red salvia set off by a pair of black cannons and a couple of park benches. A plaque said it was the Ezra Pound Garden and it gave Raylan another boost of confidence, knowing Harry was around here, remembering Harry talking about Ezra Pound that time in Atlanta, part of his story. Part of the reason Harry was here; Raylan convinced of it. He got a book of Ezra Pound's poetry from the library after being with Harry that time and tried reading it, tried hard, but couldn't make sense of what the poet was trying to say. Cantos, with different numbers. He wondered to this day if Harry understood them.
He came to another plaque, this over the entrance to the Alle Rustico, a passageway through the building where, the plaque said:
HERE LIVED EZRA POUND AMERICAN POET in English and in Italian, here from 1924 to 1945 and with a stanza, it looked like, from one of his poems. Something about "To confess wrong without losing lightness" and some more that made even less sense. Raylan thinking, I don't know; maybe it's me.
He felt himself out in the open, easily spotted. Harry could see him first and hide, good at ducking out. But if he was going to be where people were, check what looked like the popular cafes, he'd have to risk it. He looked in at Vesuvio's then ahead to the next place, the Gran Caffe Rapallo, Raylan in the shade of the postcard buildings now and wishing he'd worn his raincoat over his suit, his light-tan one. A wind came up off the bay that felt moist and Raylan paused, turned his head, and set his Stetson down closer on his eyes. It was when he looked up again, ready to continue on, he saw Joyce Patton sitting at a table, a number of rows back, well underneath the awning. It was darker in there, but it was Joyce all right. She was watching the cars creeping by. Now she turned her head this way and Raylan saw her looking at him. Moments went by and she kept staring. Almost as though he had a light on her and she sat there fixed to the seat, not able to move.
That Sunday morning Robert Gee told Harry if he was going to live up here on top of the world the one thing he needed besides food was a telephone. Harry said, "If nobody knows where I am, they can't call me anyway. And anybody I want to call I can do it in town."
"Except you go down this time to phone," Robert Gee said, "you may as well go to the hotel and see her." He waited while Harry thought it over before he said, "Or, you sure you want to do it, take the chance, I'll bring your lady friend up here."
They were in the library of Harry's villa, three walls of books in Italian, the front wall French doors that opened on the garden: a view of privet hedges and plants in decorative clay pots, a few young orange trees, nothing but sky beyond a concrete railing. Harry, wearing a raincoat today, was pacing.
"You said nobody followed you."
"I said I didn't see nobody follow me. There were cars behind us all the way here from Milan. To put your mind at ease you say, well, that's what they do on the autostrada, they come here from there, nobody following anybody."
Harry moved in his pacing, hands in the raincoat pockets, to the open French doors, Robert Gee watching him.
"I should get you a cellular phone. You can stay up here and call anybody you want in the world. In the meantime," Robert Gee said, "do I pick up Joyce or not?"
Harry stood looking out at his garden now and the sky full of white clouds, waiting to catch a glimpse of the
Raylan tiptoed around town hoping to run into Harry, find him buying The New York Times or having his breakfast somewhere. No luck. So now he'd have to walk along the Via Vittorio Veneto, the postcard part of town, where everybody was parading around or having their Sunday-morning coffee, sitting at sidewalk tables with their coats on. It was chilly, only partly sunny, somewhere in the high fifties, no one in swimming and only a few hardy souls on the beach.
He came to a garden, a bed of red salvia set off by a pair of black cannons and a couple of park benches. A plaque said it was the Ezra Pound Garden and it gave Raylan another boost of confidence, knowing Harry was around here, remembering Harry talking about Ezra Pound that time in Atlanta, part of his story. Part of the reason Harry was here; Raylan convinced of it. He got a book of Ezra Pound's poetry from the library after being with Harry that time and tried reading it, tried hard, but couldn't make sense of what the poet was trying to say. Cantos, with different numbers. He wondered to this day if Harry understood them.
He came to another plaque, this over the entrance to the Alle Rustico, a passageway through the building where, the plaque said:
HERE LIVED EZRA POUND AMERICAN POET in English and in Italian, here from 1924 to 1945 and with a stanza, it looked like, from one of his poems. Something about "To confess wrong without losing lightness" and some more that made even less sense. Raylan thinking, I don't know; maybe it's me.
He felt himself out in the open, easily spotted. Harry could see him first and hide, good at ducking out. But if he was going to be where people were, check what looked like the popular cafes, he'd have to risk it. He looked in at Vesuvio's then ahead to the next place, the Gran Caffe Rapallo, Raylan in the shade of the postcard buildings now and wishing he'd worn his raincoat over his suit, his light-tan one. A wind came up off the bay that felt moist and Raylan paused, turned his head, and set his Stetson down closer on his eyes. It was when he looked up again, ready to continue on, he saw Joyce Patton sitting at a table, a number of rows back, well underneath the awning. It was darker in there, but it was Joyce all right. She was watching the cars creeping by. Now she turned her head this way and Raylan saw her looking at him. Moments went by and she kept staring. Almost as though he had a light on her and she sat there fixed to the seat, not able to move.
That Sunday morning Robert Gee told Harry if he was going to live up here on top of the world the one thing he needed besides food was a telephone. Harry said, "If nobody knows where I am, they can't call me anyway. And anybody I want to call I can do it in town."
"Except you go down this time to phone," Robert Gee said, "you may as well go to the hotel and see her." He waited while Harry thought it over before he said, "Or, you sure you want to do it, take the chance, I'll bring your lady friend up here."
They were in the library of Harry's villa, three walls of books in Italian, the front wall French doors that opened on the garden: a view of privet hedges and plants in decorative clay pots, a few young orange trees, nothing but sky beyond a concrete railing. Harry, wearing a raincoat today, was pacing.
"You said nobody followed you."
"I said I didn't see nobody follow me. There were cars behind us all the way here from Milan. To put your mind at ease you say, well, that's what they do on the autostrada, they come here from there, nobody following anybody."
Harry moved in his pacing, hands in the raincoat pockets, to the open French doors, Robert Gee watching him.
"I should get you a cellular phone. You can stay up here and call anybody you want in the world. In the meantime," Robert Gee said, "do I pick up Joyce or not?"
Harry stood looking out at his garden now and the sky full of white clouds, waiting to catch a glimpse of the
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