At the bar, I’m told that Ivo is at home. I head down the street in the direction the man in the bar waved. Two men approach me. Both wear dusty, too-tight sweaters. They seem to be brothers and know who I am. Feeling curiously threatened, I ask, "Dov’ la casa di Ivo?" The brother with the thin face and stringy hair gives me a rooms-for-rent business card, printed crooked with the faded blue ink of a tired rubber stamp. He stutters, "When you write the book, speak very well from us."  Assuring him I’d visit later, I repeat my question. He looks up and says in a soft, matter-of-fact voice, "Ivo."

Ivo, wearing a red cape and halfway through a haircut, pops his head out a window. I introduce myself and, like the gatekeeper of the Emerald City, he welcomes me upstairs.

Ivo greets me like an old friend from the Bay Area. He says, "So, finally I meet Rick Steves, the man who sends America to the Cinque Terre. Everybody with your book seems to know you." Returning to his stool, repositioning his Soviet flag cape, he introduces me to his friend Simone. Surrounded by a floor furry with black hair, a newly trimmed Simone digs his hard-working scissors back into Ivo’s hair. This trading of haircuts is a four-times-a-year ritual excuse for a lazy afternoon together.

In the corner, bent over his guitar, is Graham, from Arizona. When I plop into a chair near him, his head rises like an up beat on a conductor’s baton as if to say hello and then drops like a down beat back into his own musical world.

Ivo’s flat is evidence of how the Cinque Terre destroys a traveler’s momentum. Not moving his head, but motioning with his eyes, Ivo directs me to a small pile of postcards from American friends. They litter the top of a bookcase under a poster of Jim Morrison-testimonies of tourists who became travelers in the Cinque Terre.

As I read through cards, Ivo and Simone reminisce happily, as if the sight of each card brings their friends back to Vernazza. "Oh, that’s Chef John from Austin. He come here, he goes away. He come here, he goes away. He come here again, he goes way."

"Yes, Catherine and Colleen. They’re from Portland, stayed for eight days." After a few minutes, Graham steps out of his music as if stepping out of a car. Impressed by the song, I ask, "You wrote that?"

Graham says, "It’s called ‘More than You Know.’ Lying on a rock, looking up at the sun, guitar on my belly, it came to me. I’ve been writing a lot here. New environment, people, the sea. And the rocks."

Abandoning Ivo momentarily, Simone pours me a cup of spumante. Setting it in the unfinished zone of a jigsaw puzzle of a nude woman, he returns to his scissors.

Graham explains, "’More than You Know’ has no words yet. It’s about how important a girl I met at the hostel is to me right now. The words will come. I hum and strum. First some false words, and before you know it, the right words find their way into the melody."

I ask him to play more, and he does. Simone stows the scissors and a trimmed Ivo puts on a leather jacket, tucks a football helmet under his arm, and strikes a James Dean pose. Simone snaps a photo as Ivo explains, "For my sister in San Francisco."

My
conversation with Ivo wanders from cheap beds and good pesto to linguine and linguistics.  "From Genoa to Levanto it is one dialect," he says. "Then each of the Cinque Terre towns has a distinct dialect."

"Each village has its own slang," Simone claims. "You speak five words and I know where you live. ‘All of us’ in Vernazza is see-ah moo tutti nooee. In Monterosso-only six kilometers away-you’ll hear say moh tutti deh nooahtre. If you say say moo tutti nooee in Monterosso, that means we "we are all naked."

Plopping onto his couch, Ivo adds, "Everywhere in Italy this is a sofa. But here it is ottomana. Maybe because of the pirates. They came from the Ottoman Empire. Here, everybody loves a legend."

Head buried in his guitar, dancing alone atop his flexible stool, Graham sings, "Crossing a bridge I passed in a dream, ain’t it funny life always shows you which way to go. It’s a leap of faith."

As I leave, Graham gives me a farewell down beat with his head and Ivo warns me about the brothers in the sweaters. "All this year they make a plan to get into your book."

The wind is back. Knowing that waves crashing over the breakwater bring out the town, I head for the foam. Antonio Sorriso, supervisor of the peeling paint, hollers "mistral" as if heralding good news.

Vittorio, posted outside his restaurant, waves a quick hello. I know Monica is up at the Castello earnestly serving satisfied customers. Here at the harbor, old men pace the rough concrete breakwater, kids bop a soccer ball, and tongues of tourists chase gelato drips down sugar cones. As for me, I’ve got an appointment with a train for Switzerland. But I can’t get Graham’s tune out of my head. I love this scene "more than you know." In the spray of a wave that sends the crowd dashing up main street, a young couple hails me: "Mr. Steves!" They’re from Edmonton and on their honeymoon. "Just like you say in your book, Mr. Steves, the children in Riomaggiore helped us peel a cactus fruit. And we found the old man in Corniglia. He invited us into his cellar. We drank wine from his keg with a straw. Thank you so much!"