Somewhere In Sicily

Chapter One

     Rafael turned away from his laptop and took a sip of his limoncello. It had become one of his guilty pleasures since he arrived to the Italian island. Outside of the window over his desk, he could hear local children playing in the street and the comforting din of lush Italian wafting up to the room. 

      How was he supposed to focus and write about life when so much of the real thing was occurring just outside? 

      He had thought that escaping to the Mediterranean for some focus would prove beneficial to his writing. His publishers back home in Mexico City had requested-no, demanded- that he supply them with the first two hundred pages of a new novel before the year's end, per his contract. It was already May.

     As someone who considered himself an artist, Rafael usually made it a rule not to have his work bogged down by contracts or deadlines. He found that such things got in the way of the real, meaningful work he prided himself on creating. But he was young and eager when he signed with this publishing house, not the tired, uninspired old man he thought himself to be at thirty-nine. And, when push came to shove, producing ideas that satiated his publishers hand-over-fist was harder work than he'd originally thought when he signed.

     He ran his hands through his hair and tried to devote another few minutes to the screen in front of him. The limoncello relaxed him, perhaps too much, and all his efforts to write for the afternoon were in vain. He closed the laptop and sat up from his chair, stretching his sore bones. 

       He grabbed his keys and his bicycle as he headed downstairs, hoping he wasn't too late to miss out on all the fun this spring afternoon. Before he could leave his building, however, his landlord came out of his office. 

     With a stern face and a shirt stained with red sauce, Signore Picaletti waved his finger at Rafael. "And when can I expect this month's rent, Rafa?" 

     "Any day now, Signore!" Rafael exclaimed as he opened the front doors and hopped on his bike. He rode off before he could hear Picaletti's reply, though he was sure it wasn't pleasant. His rent check had been late every month for the last three months, something that grated on his landlord's nerves. Through odd jobs and a couple of columns in local publications, however, he found a way to scrape by. 

      One of those gigs was where he was headed to now, as a matter of fact. Whenever he realized he was running low on funds to pay Picaletti or supplement his newfound arancini (A/N: rice balls) addiction, Rafael picked up a job assisting his friends in the area. That usually meant doing anything from painting to fishing on one of the many boats that speckled Marina di Cusa's harbor. 

      He spotted the tall figure of his friend Umberto in the marketplace. He waved and called out his name as he slowed his bike down beside him. "Ciao Rafael," Umberto greeted. Rafael took in his friend's appearance, eyeing the disheveled and stained clothes. Typically that meant that today's job would be painting walls. 

     "Looking for work?" Umberto teased, knowing his friend only too well by now. Seeing Rafael's nod, he continued. "You're in luck, I was going to head up the hill to see the Widow Bellucci. She has a room she needs painted." 

     Rafael readily agreed to join them, grateful that he hadn't worn anything he would mind getting dirty. As the two walked towards the outskirts of the village and up to what Berto and the other locals referred to as "the hill," Rafael listened as his friend explained and complained about the toils of domestic life. 

     He had found it easier than anticipated to pick up the local vernacular. Growing up speaking Spanish at home and English in his private school, Rafael's mind accepted the vaguely familiar Italian readily. After half a year in Marina di Cusa, he spoke and understood the language without difficulty.