June 4.
It’s a windy morning. A Sirocco wind, the guy at the hotel tells us, that blows across the sea from the Sahara and gets tangled in the bed sheets hanging from the laundry lines. These little towns on the west coast of Sicily are all festooned with bed linens and bath towels; swags of blue jeans and sweat pants and socks that make washday look as festive as a street carnival.
We struggle into Mazara by the mid-afternoon. It’s Sunday, so the place is a ghost town. The empty streets are lined with dreary cement apartment blocks. All the windows are shuttered and the storefronts are locked.
We stop in front of the Hotel Hopps. It’s a rambling place with white stucco walls and light blue shutters. I take a walk across the long expanse of slick marble between the front door and a reception desk in the distance. A very serious man wearing a black tie and a solemn expression watches me as I approach. I ask him about a room. He shakes his head slowly like he’s breaking some very bad news to me. Like the patient didn’t make it.
Back outside, S is talking to a middle-aged guy in bright white trousers and dark sunglasses holding a couple yappy terriers on a leash. He’s speaking Italian, but S catches the gist. He’s offering us a room in the apartment building next door. He tells S he’s got a key and he gestures for us to follow him. I give S a look that I hope communicates how much I hate this idea, but she pretends not to notice.
If the Hotel Hopps is Dorian Gray, then the apartment building next door is the portrait in the attic. The stucco walls are stained and dingy and the blue paint on the shutters is peeling. We follow the man in the white trousers down some steps to the basement.
“Oh, so the room is in the basement?” I ask the guy in English. I think my voice cracks. Anyway, he doesn’t answer.
The most striking feature of the room in the basement is the floor, which is tiled with wavy blue and white stripes that create the illusion that the floor is a wave pool. The second most striking feature is the art on the walls: amateurish paintings of nude women in porno poses and a Renaissance-style Madonna and Child framed above the bed. There are also a couple disreputable looking barcaloungers and a loveseat upholstered with a lurid floral print.
The guy in the pants tells S his name is Pino and if we need anything, we should just walk outside and shout “Pino!” Then he asks us for 60 euros. Cash.
S is pleased she found us a place to stay, so I don’t mention the obvious: that Pino will sneak into the room in the middle of the night, dose us with knockout gas, then bundle us into the hull of a pirate ship heading to Tunisia.
“See, it all worked out,” S beams.
I would have been skeptical too, Bill! haha