AI image used to illustrate this story by Frank Rocco Satullo
I befriended a tour guide on the ferry from the Italian mainland to the island of Capri. The conversation was fluid despite the teenagers taking turns to beg for smokes once our guide Nicolo lit up. He seemed used to it. Every handout was done non-verbally on his part and with hardly a conscious effort.
The boys were milking it. Once the first kid returned to his friends, smiling, inhaling the carcinogens like he owned the boat, chattering away in Italian, another boy came forward. This cycle played out a few times over.
Then, without warning, the gravy train stopped.
Nicolo made eye contact with the boys for the first time. He didn’t look at the kid standing before him. Instead, he looked through him at the others. He merely shook his head, deliberately, to the left and then back once. With that, the boys disappeared into the crowd. Nicolo never broke sentence, speaking to me the whole time.
Upon landing at the port in the harbor, our tour group sifted through the sea of people and boarded an awaiting bus. It was small, windows open, sending a much-welcome breeze through my hair as we shimmied uphill to a villa and stopped.
Whap!
The bus driver and Nicolo babbled away in Italian as we suddenly sped away. And I mean, we sped with reckless abandon all the way to the next villa. Although it was hot outside, Nicolo seemed to be sweating a lot more than before.
The fella he smacked with the opening bus door was the hottest of all. He, no doubt, was shouting obscenities and threats for all to hear as we sped away.
Leaning out my open window for fresh air, I saw what happened. But I didn’t understand the fear-induced panic that ensued. Several well-dressed middle-aged men were chatting curbside when we rolled up. Nicolo, meanwhile, was chatting to us over a microphone system.
Funny, Nicolo’s voice amplified even louder without the microphone after the door smacked one of the fellas at the curb.
Some on the tour periodically asked Nicolo about the incident throughout the day. He shrugged it off each time by giving non-answers or his simple signature, one shake of the head left and right. And that’s if he didn’t outright ignore the person asking by walking away or ad-libbing an impromptu tour guide narrative.
The tour continued without interruption.
It was dark when we settled on the last ferry leaving the island.
Tired, we sat in silence, mostly. Nicolo seemed to relax finally. A new group of boys scored a few smokes off of him before being cut off with that half shake of his head.
Then I half-laughed, asking, “Is it often you hit pedestrians with bus doors?”
“It’s the first time I hit Mafioso.”
By Frank Rocco Satullo, The OhioTraveler, Your Tour Guide to Fun!
