Italian postcards, lemons and lovers

A postcard falls out of a notebook.

There's the restaurant where I ate clams in linguini, and the bar where he, and they, sized us up and paired themselves up with this week's crop of tourists.

We all had long hair, sundresses and across-the-chest bags. Our bags were filled with cameras, phones, and trinkets we bought along the way. In this town, the trinkets were usually small bottles of limoncello. In my case, a postcard purchased but never sent that became a forgotten bookmark marking a place in a forgotten book. Just in case I came back.

The limoncello was from local groves of large, gnarly lemons that were peeled, pulverized, and revered. The rind is what gives limoncello its pucker. Restaurants give you a shot of it after your meal. You've paid but not left. The limoncello is their version of handing you "a coffee and a coat." Please, please accept our liqueur as our thanks for coming. Translation: Our thanks for leaving.

But on this night, swarmed by local boys, the prosecco ended the evening. This is their way of saying, "Stay, please sit and sip slowly until we've decided, divided, and lured you to quiet corners."

And so we went. My travel companion with one boy down the beach, and me with another, walking slower to let distance stretch between us. And that it did do. Soon, I was kissing this someone I just met and wondering why I don't feel at all how I look, rubbing against someone like we're two sticks hoping for a spark.

My mind started to drift back to those gnarly lemons. I didn't take enough photos of them. I didn't get that one shot, the one that, as I push the button, I know I've got it. At this point, he's mumbling against my neck, telling me I'm bella this and bella that and that I should return to his little Italian town to stay with him when my travels are complete. I gave him an encouraging squeeze because that is what this moment calls for, pretending that I like where this is going, but it's really just a way of deescalating a situation and buying time so I can find my friend and return to the hotel to sift through photos.

That's the fantasy at this early hour of the morning. Yet if I were doing that instead of this, I'd be wishing I were doing this. Finding love, or something like it, on the Italian Mediterranean. This lip dance on the beach is what I was told to want from some book or song or cafeteria table. Yet here I am at the apex of what I thought a successful evening should be for someone my age traveling through Italy, and all I want is that lemon photo I couldn't capture.

And now, I sit at my kitchen island, years and miles from that night, taking photos of lemons from the market. I will zest these lemons, squeeze out their juice, add sugar, butter and eggs to make lemon curd. And this is when I realize that the yellow I craved, that gorgeous bright aureolin yellow of lemon meringue, wasn't so much from the lemons. It was from the egg yolk. All this time I thought I'd get what I needed from an exotic lemon, but in reality what I needed was a simple egg.

The next morning we checked out of our hotel and hopped on a bus that would take us far far away from this stretch of the Italian coast. I spotted him outside a grocery store. He had told me he owned a market. He was inspecting a load of lemons on the back of a small faded blue pickup truck. Back to business.

I sat back in my seat. There it was, the shot of the yellow lemons on the back of a blue truck, but I couldn't stop the bus so the shot was left floating for a moment in the sky before evaporating forever.

A few years later, traveling with other friends, I ended up back in this town. I never expected to see him. Why would I? But on my way up a narrow staircase of that same beach restaurant, he was walking down the stairs.

You think it's nothing. Then you question fate.

I could tell he didn't recognize me. Perhaps there was a faint recollection of events. I suspected at this point that I was merely one in a long line of long haired girls that he took for evening strolls along the beach. He was cordial, as most Italian men are in this tourist town. He immediately asked where I was staying, for how long, and if I was on my own. Back to business.

It was clear that he didn't remember me, but that wasn't so important to him. But I was just passing through, or doubling back. Even I wasn't sure.

What do you do when you run into someone like that? In a way, you want to honour the coincidence, investigate further, probe.

"Here we are. Is there something you need to know, ask or tell me?"

And the biggest question of all: Did he see me as the perfect shot he didn't take?