His alarm woke him from a deep nothingness.
He swung his legs from under the duvet, noticing the sciatica again in his left hip, and pulled back one curtain. Day was breaking over the mountains, the campanile glowed pale pink. He had showered the night before, laid his gear out on the other bed, ready to go. Breakfast wouldn’t start until seven, and he’d prepaid the room.
He flicked on the kettle, tore a coffee bag out of its sachet and dropped it into a mug. As he dressed, he worked his way through the banana he’d taken from the dining room the day before. He took a mouthful of coffee, grabbed the pills from his jacket and went into the bathroom. In the mirror above the basin, he scanned his face as he brushed his teeth. The greyness under his eyes was darkening. He hadn’t expected it so soon. He spat out the toothpaste and swallowed two tablets with water from his cupped hand: after food, the nurse had said.
Silence in the corridor. He took the stairs, not wanting to wake the guests in the rooms by the lifts.
The bike started on the button. He let it idle while he clipped the pannier back on and set the destination on his phone. He took a last look at the sky above Nozza and pulled on his helmet. A long straight followed by a bend into a tunnel, cold, the noise of the bike’s engine deafening, then out, another straight, a roundabout a bend and another tunnel. Like this for over an hour, the timber-clad alpine houses yielding little by little to ochre render and clay tiles.
The last tunnel was the longest with no daylight visible for several minutes, just the bike alive beneath him and the noise filling his helmet. When he did emerge, the sound dropped, and the sunlight blinded him. The sky formed a great saucer ahead and although the cypresses hid it from view, he knew that beneath it was lake Garda. As he came down into Salo, his jacket felt hot under the arms. The place was far busier and smarter than it had been when they had come here on bicycles rented from the hotel.
He felt the sweat in his armoured jeans and his gloves. A convoy of motorbikes passed him, each rider wearing shorts, each with a pillion, long hair flowing beneath their helmets, a stampede of brown arms and legs. He trailed them into Gardone, remembering the hotel clearly, and crossed the Corso Giuseppe Zanardelli through a gap in the traffic into the courtyard.
The man on reception looked him up and down as he came through the revolving doors, his motorcycle boots slapping hard on the marble floor. The man consulted his screen, frowned, then smiled.
“Buongiorno Signore”
“Buongiorno. I have a reservation. A room, and a space in your garage for my motorbike?”
“Certainly. I see your reservation here. One moment please, I’ll check with housekeeping that your accommodation is ready.”
He nodded, wandered to the windows looking out across the terrace to the lake. He searched for the biggest palm tree and found it in an instant. There beneath it was the table where they had sat, exactly thirty-two years ago. He stood inhaling the scent of roses, feeling the warmth of the sun reflected off the water, remembering the same sensations back then.
“Grazie.”
He returned to the desk.
“Your accommodation is prepared: the honeymoon suite. I will call my colleague to take your bags and show you up.”
“No need to bother your colleague, I know my way up.”
“Ah ha! In that case, welcome back to the Grand Hotel, Signore. Your reservation here says for two weeks minimum?”
He smiled, “That’s right. Not sure how long I’ll be around.”
Robin de Rosario is a mixed-race neurodivergent writer living in Sussex. His award-winning poetry and fiction appears in British, North American, Indian and European journals. His novel COYOTE (Lucent Dreaming) unfolds in the early 1800s in the southwest USA. Robin co-authored Sussex Folk Tales for Children (The History Press).
Modern Flash Fiction 