Reportage, Week 2

I shy away from Shaunna’s arms just as I have shied from Josh. If I accept their hugs right now, I fear the hot anger roiling under my skin will spill on them, and they don’t deserve my ridiculous temper, least of all now.

The night manager at Camping Zeus Hostel is named Manuele. I wonder when the entire world got so boring with men’s names. In America, I have met and known over thirty Josh’s in my lifetime (I counted once—and those are only the ones I can offhand). In Italy, I have met three Luca’s, three Manuele’s, and countless other variations on those names. The one Alessandro I met was a balmy breeze.

On the way to the one café open at 11:30 on a Friday night in Naples, we pass the train station. It’s the size of my room at home, maybe a little bigger, and a shadow in the light from the doors pricks its ears. The enormous black dog makes me uneasy. I have already ignored my instincts once tonight, so I sidle past making cooing noises, hoping it will stay where it lies.

It doesn’t. Halfway down the hill from Camping Zeus, Megan looks back and emits a little gasp. I jump when I see the dog, reminded of the Grim. He trots to catch up with us, stops, sniffs a bush sprouting from a crevice below a guard rail, then lifts his leg. When he is finished, he bounds to catch up with us and nuzzles my thigh like a cat, crying sweetly.

“Shhh, shh, it’s okay.” I pet him, but he whines still, and I get the impression if he could make conversation, if he could say with his slightly gray muzzle, “Naples isn’t so bad. Sorry about your shit night,” he would. What a cliché.

He leads us to the café and sits outside the door. As Josh buys four Panini with salami and cheese, I shrug at the other shopkeeper, the one with thick dark hair. As if to say, “I don’t know this dog, but I’ll keep him at the threshold of your store.”

The bald shopkeeper nods, disappears into a backdoor, and returns with a plate of shredded meat. “His name Mario; he come every night.” This explains the layer of fat and the marks of age—gray whiskers, gray paw-bottoms. This dog is the hostel’s dog, the café’s dog. Mario scarfs his meat and follows us back to the hostel, still chattering in his sad language. He sees us back to the door and vanishes into the night.