Page 12 of The Honeymoon Heist

Amena saw the aggravation building at the lack of service and cut in, saying, “You should just relax. It isn’t like you’re getting shot at. Yet.”

I laughed and said, “Yeah, that’s my point. I’m paying for this. How is it that I can get seated and then sit here for ten minutes without even a glass of water?”

She looked at me, then Jennifer, and said, “When I was in Syria, we never even had fresh water. I’m willing to sit here for a menu.”

And that brought home my “first world” problems. Chagrined, I looked at her, then Jennifer, who was looking back at me with her death-dealing teacher glare. I held up my hands and said, “Okay. It’s a beautiful night. Let’s just watch the sun set.”

We were in a restaurant called La Sponda, which was supposedly one of the finest dining establishments in Positano—an experience that would solidify the reason you’d chosen to come to this part of the Italian coast. While the atmosphere was otherworldly, with a view of the coast and four hundred candles lighting the deck, the pergola above us looking like royal ornamentation from Roman times, the service left much to be desired. If they’d worked at Chik-fil-A, they’d have all been fired.

I knew I was projecting a little bit because of the way we’d been treated earlier by the official representatives of the UNESCO heritage site.

We’d left our hotel around 10a.m., with a meeting set for 11:30, once again slogging our way down the enormously long staircase to the coast, which wasn’t bad, unless you knew you’d have to return the same way.

We’d done some shopping along the route, and I’d actually enjoyed the trip, because the first time we’d raced down those steps, it was due to being late to our boat rental. This time I got to see the history, and I appreciated it as much as Jennifer and Amena did.

We’d bounced down the stairs like a group of vagabonds, doing nothing more than enjoying being alive, and I felt full. We’d reached the bottom and saw we had some time to kill. Jennifer had suggested we go to some art galleries, and I knew she’d planned this, but didn’t really mind. If she wanted to see some art, I was all about that. As long as she didn’t want to buy it.

Amena thought I’d get mad at the suggestion and had immediately set about telling me that art galleries weren’t going to take my manhood and that I shouldn’t get mad at the suggestion. Jennifer glanced at me, and without her saying a word, I realized that I was failing as a father.

I stopped outside the T-shirt shop we were next to and said, “Amena, I don’t care if we go to an art gallery. If that’s what you want to do, that’s what I want to do.”

She looked at me like I was lying. I said, “I mean it. If that’s what you want to do, that’s what we’ll do.”

She said, “Okay. I don’t want to do it, but all I’m saying is it wouldn’t hurt to get you to like art.”

Jennifer laughed and tousled her hair. I said, “Go find an art gallery, genius.”

She grinned and we kept going, stopping at every gallery on the walk—and there were a lot. Eventually we had left the lower area and wound around a stone walkway created before our country even existed, and found a gallery that had a little bit of a fanfare surrounding it. Some exhibition of a famous Italian painter called Caravaggio. It had a crowd filing in, and I said, “Who’s that guy?”

Jennifer said, “He’s someone after your own heart. A painter that spent most of his time kicking someone’s ass.”

“Huh?”

“He’s an artist who was a master painter, but instead of making money off of his paintings, he spent his time beating people to death who he thought had offended him.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No, I’m not. He literally spent most of his life in one brawl or another. He was chased throughout Europe for his escapades, and was also chartered by royalty for his artistic skill.”

I glanced at Amena and said, “Well, then, this sounds like the gallery we should see.”

We went inside, walking amongst the velvet ropes, and were almost to the end, when Amena exclaimed, “Pike! That’s the painting in the cave!”

I looked where she was pointing and saw a dark canvas calledThe Taking of Christ. I said, “Are you sure?”

She pulled out her phone and showed me the picture she’d taken. The harsh light of her phone inside the cave did no credit to the work, but it appeared to be the same painting. I pulled the phone up to eye level, comparing, and it was most definitely the same one.

Jennifer said, “What are you guys doing?”

I said, “Remember when we told you we saw a painting last night? In the cave? This is it.”

She looked at the phone, then the painting. She leaned forward to the plaque in front of the painting and read it. Something I should have done. She said, “I hate to tell you this, but there are at least twelve such paintings in existence, and this one is a copy. The only reason it’s here is because it’s a copy from the seventeenth century. You probably saw a copy that was from the twentieth.”

We’d laughed about the coincidence, then were approached by some pompous guy who wanted to talk about the exhibit. I, of course, did not. I thanked him midsentence, then pulled Amena away. Jennifer glared at my rudeness, then glanced at her watch, saying, “We’re about to be late.”

The sole reason we were here—well, besides getting a cool honeymoon—was to check out some Roman ruins being excavated underneath the Church of Santa Maria Assunta, an old structure that was built on an even older structure. The people doing the excavation were pros, and we’d asked not to help, but to see how they worked for our own business. Of course, that was all a load of doublespeak to me, but Jennifer was genuinely interested, and they’d kindly agreed to let us enter areas where no tourist was allowed. Which meant I could write this whole trip off as a tax deduction.

We wandered back down to the central area where the church overlooked a plaza, meeting some type of Italian park ranger. Jennifer talked to him for a few minutes, giving our bona fides, and he said we could tour the area at nine in the morning the following day, before the excavation opened for the tourists, which aggravated me. I stepped in, waving my hands and saying we’d set up today’s meeting to tour the facility, but it did no good.

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