We were sound asleep under a mosquito net canopy in Caroline’s hut, with the windows wide open, and the summer air floating through, but at quarter to six, we were up to throw ourselves back into the world and travel home. By six thirty that same morning I had already had a silent fight with a man at the bar in Terontola over who was first in the coffee line, and I don’t know why I was even drinking coffee that early in the morning, except to to distract myself from the plain truth that I was leaving.
I was starving by the time I got to the airport, but eating at Ciampino is like eating food resurected from an American school cafeteria and squeezed into a pizza. Maybe one of the old cooks from when I was a kid at Hartford High, retired and fell in love with the guy who got the contract for the fast food at cheap airports, and so he gave her the job.
For lunch we had as much toast as we could eat, with mugs of milky tea at my mother in law’s in England.
By this evening we will be back in New York. I am always afraid of starting my life again each time I do, but here we go.