ORIGINAL SHORT FICTION by Clive Stunning, PillartoPost.org's Travel Writer and occasional coffee aficionado--In 1979, I arrived at the Villa Contarini in Arquà Petrarca carrying the usual equipment of the travel writer: two notebooks, three pens, a dinner jacket I did not entirely trust, and enough clean shirts to suggest I had planned the trip more carefully than I had.
The Villa was part of the CAIO hotel group then, a name that meant something in Italy. CAIO hotels did not merely give you a room. They received you. Even the laundry came back looking as though it had been educated abroad.
The young junior night manager apologized profusely when I arrived. The hotel had been overbooked, he explained, and he had been forced to place me in an elegant room without windows. I later learned at dinner that it was known among the staff as the “mistress room.” It had apparently been selected for me because I was single and the youngest member of the small cadre of travel writers touring Italy.
Because I was a nonpaying guest. How in the hell could I complain? The room was comfortable and beautifully furnished, although it offered no view worth mentioning. No hills. No cypress trees. No distant church dome floating over the Veneto.
The Villa Contarini had once been the private home of Giuseppe Volta (of scooter fame), who founded the magnificent CAIO hotel chain in 1921. If one had to be hidden away in a windowless room, this was the place to do it.
That evening, the Villa hosted a dinner for our group of American travel writers. We were seated at a long table with hotel executives, local officials and several Italians whose titles I never fully understood but whose suits fit perfectly. The young man beside me was one of the junior assistant managers who had assigned me the mistress room.
He was considerably younger than the general manager and possessed the effortless charm that Italian hotel men once seemed to acquire at birth. He was handsome without appearing vain, attentive without being servile and amused by nearly everything I said.
We took to each other at once.
His English was excellent. The woman reporter seated on his other side melted under his charm and announced that this was the best meal she had eaten in Italy. I was pleased when a fellow companion distracted her long enough for me to practice my Italian with Gian, which was previously limited to food, wine, apologies and directions to the nearest bar. The gap did not seem to matter.
Switching back to English, we chatted about newspapers, baseball, San Francisco, Venice and especially American women—the sort who appeared in Playboy magazine. We also discussed the peculiar demands of travel writers, who expected to be treated like royalty while pretending to be incorruptible observers. At some point, I casually mentioned that during a fashion assignment in Hollywood I had met a model who earlier in her career had posed for the magazine and had gone on to become its Playmate of the Year. The finest wine in all of Italy suddenly appeared all around the table.
Somewhere between the risotto, the second bottle of wine and the unexpected cognac, the assistant manager touched the cuff of my blue oxford-cloth shirt. “Brooks Brothers?” he asked.
“Of course,” I smiled (hidden stains and all).
He laughed. It was a small moment, but in those days the blue Brooks Brothers oxford was a kind of uniform. Reporters wore it. Editors wore it. Men who wished to appear respectable after an evening of doubtful decisions wore it. My new friend admired the shirt with such sincerity that the compliment stayed with me after dinner.
Back in my room, I looked at the shirt hanging over a chair. I had other shirts in my suitcase. I had several, in fact. But that was not the point. They were not Brooks Bros. made.
Impulsively, I called room service.
A man answered.
“I need this shirt washed and ironed,” I said.
“Yes, sir. Tomorrow morning.”
“No. Tonight.”
There was a silence then a troubled: “Tonight, sir?”
“As soon as humanly possible.” I explained that the shirt was needed urgently. I did not explain that I had no intention of wearing it again.
The attendant, who I talked to on the phone, arrived, took the shirt and regarded me with the grave discretion of a man who had seen stranger requests from Americans. I did drop the name of the assistant manager. Nothing registered. I realized that was rude the minute the name Giancarlo Guzmani flew out of my mouth.
However, what seemed like a remarkably short time later, there was another knock. The shirt had returned, freshly laundered, perfectly pressed and folded with architectural precision. Around it was a paper band bearing the name of CAIO Hotels.
It looked magnificent.
I took out one of my newspaper business cards and slipped it into the breast pocket. Then I handed the shirt back to the room-service man. “Please deliver this to the assistant manager,” I said. I gave him Giancarlo’s name.
The attendant looked at the shirt, then at me. “A gift,” I explained.
His expression changed.
He understood immediately.
Italians understand gifts. I gave him another tip. This time twenty dollars, which in 1979 was not a tip so much as an economic policy.
“Tonight,” I said.
“Tonight,” he assured me. I closed the door and congratulated myself. It had been a good gesture. Spontaneous, stylish and slightly extravagant. The kind of thing a travel writer might later improve in the telling. I also meant it sincerely because I truly enjoyed the dinner and the conversation.
I poured myself a glass from the bottle of 1964 Castello San Vittorio Brunello di Montalcino Riserva that had been awaiting me since check in and I began making notes about the dinner. Bon mots flowed about the young assistant manager. The wine. The dining room. Life in general at the moment. The strange pleasure of giving away my best shirt simply because another man had admired it.
Not more than an hour passed before someone knocked on my door. I assumed it was the room-service man returning with a message.
Instead, a young woman stood in the hallway. She was beautiful, perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three, with dark hair and the self-possession of someone accustomed to being noticed. She wore high heels and a tan trench coat buttoned at the waist.
“Is it raining?” I asked.
She smiled politely.
She did not understand English. She knew coy. I tried Italian. What little I knew abandoned me at once. She stepped into the room and closed the door. For a moment, we simply looked at one another. Then she reached into the pocket of the trench coat and handed me a business card.
It was mine.
On the back, in careful English, someone had written: Thank you. I can never thank you enough for your kindness--Gian.
I read it twice.
The young woman watched my face to see whether I understood.
I began to understand, but couldn't believe what I was thinking.
Who she was, I never learned.
Perhaps she was a friend of my dinner companion. Perhaps she was someone the hotel knew could be relied upon to express gratitude when gratitude exceeded the ordinary vocabulary of hospitality.
Or, for a young single man in a foreign country proof that God did exist.
It seemed impolite to ask.
She placed her hands at the belt of the trench coat. Soon, the heavy coat fell in a puddle around her Chuck Jourdan high heels.
The room that didn’t have a window suddenly had a breathtaking view I would savor until breakfast and remember for the rest of my life.
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