I sat bolt upright. This was the first day of our vacation. I was allowed to go out early by myself! I slept naked in Italy. No pajamas needed. In fact, I slept under just one sheet. Rachael wore a nightgown because she needed to be modest. Her womanhood was flowering, as Mom put it. But nothing was flowering on me, so I could be naked and cool during the night.

I pulled on my swimming trunks and closed the door behind me. I went down the outside stairs. There were two pine nuts lying on the steps from the tree above. I stopped to pick them up. The black powder on their hard thick shell cases, thicker than the white nut inside, dusted off on my fingers. There was a loose brick sitting in the garden. I always used that same brick each year we came on vacation to crush pine nuts. When I was little I used to smash them too hard; the thick shell would get all mashed up with the squashed nut, and you had to sort of suck the nut off every fragment of shell. You never got a big enough piece to really taste the nut. Now I tapped the nut lightly, just hard enough to crack the shell but not pulverize it. I squatted over the path, cracked my pine nut, looked briefly to see if there were any more after I ate it, then ran across the road to the beach.

The Banini swam out to a rowboat tied to a buoy in the bay, then rowed it over to where the other boats were moored. When he had made a “train” of boats, five in all, he would stand facing forward in the first one and row it to shore, pulling the others. Then he would drag the boats up onto the sandy beach and turn them over, so children would not play in them and get sand in them, and he would stick the oars next to them in the sand. On one oar he hung a hand-lettered cardboard sign, “For Renting. 1 Hours—Lire 250. hours—½ Lire 150 ”

As the sun came up over the hill that fell steeply into the little bay at Paraggi, its hot white light turned our bay from dark green to turquoise. I could hear the creak of the oarlocks under the water as I swam out to meet the Banini. He smiled. A missing lower tooth made him look older than he was. “Youa back een a Paraggi? And youa seesters and mama back too?”