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"Pass me the struffoli," I said to Andrew.
He hit his arm on the glass window when he sipped his cioccolata calda. "Is everything smaller on an island?"
He reached over the plate and passed it over to me.
Luca after a while said, "You would be a better director than me for this." He smirked, the little black hairs on his forehead were flickering.
I nodded, "What did you think about it?"
He put his hand on his beard, "I thought it was magnificent. I do not know much about American culture, as much as you, but this therapist character, 'the wounded healer.' Reminds me of Alfredo in Cinema Paradiso, where he uses his regrets to heal Totò," he coughed, "so the boy leaves the village and lives a better life."
"Exactly, when writing the dialogue scene with him on the park bench, I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much, I wanted to channel that feeling."
Luca sipped his coffee, "You are a terrific actor, Ryan. Directing is hard, yes, but all you need is a vision. And this script has a clear vision."
Vision. I can't help but think of the lyrics:
I have loved you for the last time
Visions of Gideon
And I have kissed you for the last time
Visions of Gideon
There was a long moment of silence, and I thought back to the night before. Afterwards, some college students, who all wore nice trousers and shoes, left the auditorium and called their partners—many of them had tears in their eyes. I did not even notice the photographers half-screaming for me to pose, or Andrew whispering something in my ear, or that the majority of people there were looking at me.
They looked at me as if I were some tourist attraction. I had the same look when I looked up at the Sistine Chapel at The Creation of Adam, or when Emma and I went to the New York Times Square Ball Drop and saw people gawking at the buildings—she was so cold that day.
It was as if I was some untouchable, larger-than-life figure and that my name did not mean anything; to them I would always be Elio. I did not mind the feeling; it felt almost intoxicating. I had transcended my being and come to life in their minds, and after I died, I would remain there; there was only one desire that we all shared: to live forever. In some ways, I have achieved that.
Andrew interrupted my thoughts, he chewed and said, "Did you read that article, did we pay him? I mean did you pay him?"
I smiled, "Yes I did, ego-free piece of screen acting, how wrong can someone be?"
Luca stood silent and Andrew nodded his head, "And I am the lucky soul playing your friend in Good Will Hunting, thank you so much ego-free actor." He clasped his hands together and Luca laughed.
His Italian accent was louder but soothing to hear in this deserted café, "Sony Pictures wants to release this movie as fast as possible, more so than me. It is quite unbelievable."
Andrew said, "8-minute applause, did the Pope come in?"
We finished our breakfast and I took a brief look at the glass window. In the corner, I could see the Faraglioni (the famous rocks of Capri); in ancient times, exposed rocks were often lit by fire to help sailors find their way.
It is strange leaving a place you will not likely come back to, so when we went outside—photographers waited outside, but did not shove cameras down our faces—I tried to soak it in as much as I could.
"Ryan, do you believe you'll get nominated for an Academy Award?"
"Ryan, any other Italian director you wish to work with?"
I ignored some of the photographers and answered some and went into the taxi. I pulled up the article from yesterday, that caused quite a stir in the festival and on Twitter:
Genesis published on @RyanStoneDaily: All reviews from the Capri Film Festival have scores of 80 percent above in their newspapers. Critics are calling it 'the best movie of the year' and "that Garfield and Stone have ridiculous chemistry from the get-go."
The post had dozens of comments, one of them: one of the many impressive elements of Stone's beautiful, complex performance is the effortless way he transitions between speaking English, Italian, and French, depending on whom Elio is with at the time…
"A career-defining portrait of raw, adolescent longing," another tweet read, quoting some Roman daily I had never heard of before yesterday. "Stone does not play Elio Perlman; he occupies him until the skin between reality and fiction blurs."
I let out a breath, resting the edge of the phone against my lower lip.
"You're doing that thing again," Andrew said, staring out the window at the steep, stepped lemon groves tumbling toward the sea. He had his jacket zipped up to his chin, his curls mashed flat against the headrest from sleeping weirdly on the hotel pillows.
"What thing?"
"You look too reflective, Capri is too beautiful for that." He turned his head, a wry, sharp little grin cutting across his mouth, he let out a laugh. "God, you must be broke paying those people to write things about you."
Luca sat in the front passenger seat, an old woolen scarf tucked messily inside his dark overcoat. "For my first film, it had decent reviews but it was difficult getting a second movie."
The taxi pulled up beside the ferry docks at Marina Grande. The wind off the water was sharp, biting through our wool coats the second we stepped out onto the damp stones. Handlers in dark trench coats, clutching clipboards with studio logos, descended upon us almost immediately, shielding us from the scattered flashes of a few persistent local photographers who had tracked our departure down from the Piazzetta.
"Signor Stone! Ryan! Un autografo!"
I managed a tight, polite smile, signing a slick festival brochure for an elderly woman wrapped in fur before being ushered up the gangway. Andrew walked beside me, his hands jammed deep into his pockets, nodding to the ferry crew with that effortless grace that always made people comfortable around him.
The hydrofoil roared to life, churning the gray water into white foam as Capri began to shrink into the distance. The Faraglioni became tiny dark teeth jutting out of the mist and looked harmless.
By the time the ferry docked at Naples, the transition from romance to logistics was complete. Black cars whisked us through the gritty outskirts of the city, straight past the tollbooths and onto the tarmac at Capodichino Airport. A sleek Gulfstream jet sat waiting under the overcast sky.
Inside the cabin, the stillness was total. The smell of rich leather, warm nuts, and recycled air replaced the sharp Italian brine.
Luca collapsed into a wide leather seat, pulled his scarf up over his mouth, and was asleep before the plane even lined up on the runway. Andrew sat across the aisle, already clicking through a mountain of digital trade magazines on an iPad, his face illuminated by headlines debating box office projections and Oscar ballot tracking.
"Sony bumped the roll-out," Andrew murmured, not looking up as the jet climbed steeply through the cloud deck toward the Atlantic. "They're pushing us into eight hundred screens this weekend, then twelve hundred by Friday next. We've got the roundtable on Wednesday morning, Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday night, and the DGA screening with the voters on Saturday."
He looked up, meeting my eyes with a knowing smile. "Better give Rebecca a raise, for the next week."
I leaned my head back against the headrest, feeling the hum of the twin engines vibrating through my skull. Below us, Europe was already disappearing beneath a thick, endless blanket of white. I reached into my backpack, pulled out the worn paper draft of my script, and uncapped a black pen.
Capri was gone, but the road to Los Angeles had only just begun.
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