Then the woman noticed that one of her silk stockings had run and she wailed and said oh no and that it was “Cattivo!” All the men crowded around to see the run and they shook their heads and groaned right along with her that this could happen to her and at how she was right to be worried about what she could wear now because all her clothes were at home in Genoa and she was here to visit her grandmother this afternoon and her grandmother was very particular and already thought her skirts were too short and by the way did the men think her skirt was too short? And they said no it was perfect, but the run went pretty high up so maybe she should take her stockings off. It would be fine because her legs were so nice and brown.

So she started to take off one stocking by lifting her skirt to unfasten the garter and all the men were looking very helpful. But the man she came into the bar with took her by the arm and led her toward the door marked “Gabinetto”and pushed her inside and told her to take off her stockings in there. When he turned around, the other men all groaned and swore at the man because now they couldn’t see the pretty girl. He didn’t smile back at them and went back to the bar and picked up her shoes and paid for the drink, and when she came out of the toilet with her stockings in her hand and smiling all around at everyone, he snatched them away from her and stuffed them in his jacket pocket and pulled her by the wrist out of the bar onto the dock.

The men at one end of the bar went back to playing cards, and the other men at the table finished their drinks, stubbed out their Gauloise cigarettes, put on their yellow slickers, and went back to work fixing a broken boat winch now that the wind had died down.

I heard the bell tolling on the other side of the square from the other church in Portofino. Not the one getting soaked above the harbor but the one up by the road that the tourists never visited. I stepped out of the bar and waited until the next spray hit the flagstones, then I ran out to the square until I got past the big puddles that showed where the spray could get to. I walked to the church as the bell tolled for a noonday mass.