Tom’s Harley Home Through France

Tom glanced at her in the mirror. Her face was pale beneath the passing lights, her hair pulled back against the night. He had spent days following scraps of information toward her, crossing half of Italy with her photograph in his wallet. Now that she was beside him, every answer seemed to bring another question.

“I signed something,” he said. “The customs office let me cross only if I returned for inspection.”

“You signed it before you went to Bari?”

“Yes.”

“And you still have the motorcycle because they trusted you.”

“They trusted the promise.”

Sofia looked past him toward the harbor cranes. “Then we go.”

The agreement came too quickly. Tom had expected an argument, perhaps even a demand that he choose between her and a piece of stamped paper. Instead, she accepted the detour as if she had been waiting for it.

He turned the Panhead toward the inland road.

The harbor fell behind them by degrees. Warehouses gave way to shuttered workshops and narrow apartment fronts. A man with broom pushed rainwater from a doorway into the gutter. Two boys stood beneath an awning, watching the motorcycle pass. One raised a hand. Tom lifted his fingers from the grip in reply, then missed the next turn.

“Left,” Sofia said.

“I saw it.”

“You passed it.”

“I saw it after I passed it.”

She gave a short breath that was not quite a laugh. “The great northern escape.”

Tom found a side road and swung the Panhead around. The rear tire slipped on the painted line, and Sofia’s arms locked around him. He steadied the machine before it went down.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

Rain tapped against his helmet. Somewhere behind the warehouses, a train clattered toward the port.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Your knee?”

“It is fine.”

Tom believed neither answer completely. He waited until the motorcycle stood straight, then pulled away more carefully.

At the edge of the city, traffic thickened. Trucks rolled from the docks, their tires throwing dirty water across the road. A truck driver leaned out of his cab and shouted when Tom hesitated at a roundabout. Tom caught only the anger in the voice, not the words.

“Keep right,” Sofia said.

“I am keeping right.”

“Not enough.”

A horn blasted behind them. Tom moved closer to the curb, his boot striking a shallow pothole. The Panhead lurched. Sofia caught the side rail, and the map inside Tom’s jacket crinkled against his chest.

He wanted to stop and look at her. He wanted to ask where she had gone, why she had let him chase her from Venice to Ravenna, from San Marino to Bari, from the southern coast to Rome. But the road allowed no space for those questions. Headlights crowded his mirrors. The engine’s vibration ran through his wrists.

At a petrol station beyond the last warehouses, Tom pulled beneath the canopy. The station was closed except for a small office lit by a yellow bulb. A woman in blue coat stood near the payphone, holding a folded newspaper. She looked at Sofia, then at Tom, as though recognizing a story without knowing its ending.

Tom removed his helmet.

“We should check the fuel,” he said.

Sofia climbed off. Her boots touched the concrete, and for a second she swayed. Tom reached for her elbow. She pulled free, not sharply, but firmly.

“I can stand.”

“I did not say you could not.”

“You were thinking it.”

He crouched beside the Panhead. The metal was warm beneath his fingers. He ran a cloth around the seal and found a dark shine on it.

“Damn.”

“How bad?”

“Not running. Just wet.”

“That is not the same as safe.”

“It held from Rome.”

“It held until it did not.”

Tom straightened. The woman in blue coat had moved closer to the office window. The light caught the newspaper in her hands.

“I can tighten it,” he said.

“And then?”

“And then we ride.”

“Back to San Marino.”

“Yes.”

“Then north.”

“If the customs office is open.”

Sofia stared at him. “It is night.”

“I know.”

“If it is closed, we lose the road and a day.”

“I know.”

“And if the seal fails on the way?”

Tom looked at the dark road leading inland. “Then we stop.”

Sofia folded her arms. “You say that as if stopping has never cost us anything.”

The words struck harder than the truck driver’s horn. Tom lowered his eyes to the Panhead. He had left Genoa alone with a photograph and a promise to himself that he would find her. Now she stood beside him, alive and angry, and the space between them felt more dangerous than the wet road.

He took the wrench from the tool roll.

“Hold the lamp,” he said.

She did not move.

“Sofia.”

“Where did you expect to take me?”

“North.”

“That is a direction, Tom.”

“Oxford.”

Her expression changed, though he could not tell whether it was fear or disbelief.

“You have a plan now?”

“I have a road.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No,” he said. “It is what I have.”

The woman in blue coat watched them through the glass. From somewhere near the office came the click of a telephone receiver being replaced. Tom bent over the fuel line and tightened the fitting. His fingers slipped on the oily thread. Sofia finally took the lamp from the seat and held it over his hands.

The beam shook once.

“Do not move,” he said.

“I am not moving.”

“You are shaking.”

“So are you.”

He tightened until the wrench groaned. When he wiped the seal again, the cloth came away clean.

A car pulled into the station, its headlights washing over them. The older man driving it lowered his window and called something toward the office. Tom caught one word.

“San Marino?”

He stood and pointed down the road. “Yes. San Marino.”

The older man shook his head, then gestured toward the dark hills and made a closing motion with both hands.

“Closed?” Sofia asked.

The man nodded. “Chiuso.”

Tom understood enough. Closed.

The car moved on, taillights shrinking into the rain.

Sofia lowered the lamp. “We cannot reach them tonight.”

“We can reach the road.”

“And sleep beside it?”

“Find a room.”

“With what money?”

Tom touched his wallet. It was thinner than it had been in Genoa. The journey south had taken more than fuel and meals. It had taken time, cash, and the easy certainty that the next door would open.

Sofia looked toward the road north. “We could continue. Milan first. Deal with San Marino later.”

Tom felt the weight of the customs form against his ribs.

“No.”

Her eyes hardened. “You want to throw away the only chance we have to leave Italy together because of a form?”

“It is not only a form.”

“It is a promise to men who may not remember you.”

“I remember.”

The answer left them in silence.

Tom put the wrench away and checked the fuel tap. The Panhead started on the second kick, its exhaust rolling beneath the canopy in blue-white clouds. The sound steadied him. Reliable machine, unreliable road. He had trusted the Harley through every failure and every wrong turn. He could not break faith with the one thing that had carried him this far.

Sofia climbed back onto the pillion.

“Where?” she asked.

“Southwest first. We find a place before the mountain roads.”

“Then San Marino in the morning?”

“If the office opens.”

“And after that?”

Tom put on his helmet. “North.”

She settled behind him, but this time her hands did not immediately close around his waist.

He guided the Panhead out of the station. At the junction, the sign toward the inland road stood crooked in the rain. Tom turned beneath it, following the black ribbon toward the hills.

For several miles, the road climbed gently through sleeping suburbs. The harbor lights faded behind them. Ahead, clouds pressed low against the mountains, hiding the route to San Marino and the morning they had just chosen.

Sofia leaned forward at last.

“Tom.”

“Yes?”

“If they ask why you came back, what will you tell them?”

He watched the pale line of the road emerge in the headlamp.

“That I gave my word.”

“And if they ask about me?”

Tom felt her forehead touch his shoulder blade.

“I will tell them you are coming with me.”

The Panhead climbed into the darkness, carrying them away from Genoa and, for the second time that night, toward San Marino. Behind them lay the road to France. Ahead lay a closed office, a leaking seal, and a promise that had become impossible to leave behind.

End of chapter one. 7 more chapters in the full book.