Gino told me to keep up my drawing at school so I could become an artist like him. Then he laughed and said, “But maybe you no wanna to be likea mia!”

I said, “Of course I’d like to be like you.” And that was true, too. Gino got to stay in Portofino all year except when he went back to Modena to visit his mother and brother.

The bartender at the bar on the dock said, “Senda me a posta card for the bar.” I said I would. I said that every year and I always forgot to send one for him to put under the glass on the bar top along with hundreds of other postcards, some from very famous people. The ones from the famous people he put face down under the glass so you could see the names on them. I guessed the ones that were face up where you saw the pictures were from people who weren’t famous. The bartender stood drying glasses like he did all day and night and said, “Ciao, Calvino, seea you nexta year!” when I left.

I went up to the church but didn’t go in since there was a wedding going on. I looked in the side door across at Mary in her faded blue gown. I nodded to her and wished she would nod back or cry or something like the false pagan superstitious Roman Catholic “simple people who are sadly deluded,” as Dad said, swore they saw her do sometimes.

Then I walked over to Paraggi to say good-bye to the Banini. Jennifer had already gone home to England so I didn’t hurry along the path. I picked an almost ripe fig and ate it on the way and when I got down to the road I decided to swim from the rocks below the road to the beach since this would be my last chance to swim before we got on the bus to the Santa Margherita station at noon.

I left my T-shirt and sandals on the rocks and dove in and swam underwater as far as I could, then turned over and swam on my back almost the whole way to the beach. I stared up at the little clouds in the pale blue August sky and wondered why sky and clouds looked so different from one place to the next. This was an Italian sky for sure. You’d never see the sky looking like this in Switzerland or England.