Читать книгу Burning The Map - Laura Caldwell, Leslie S. Klinger - Страница 11

“I will pick you up at 9:00,” Francesco says, “and we will have a special dinner, as I told you.”

I push down the flicker of excitement that rises in me, trying not to notice how odd it is, how long it’s been since I’d felt that particular rush. “What about Alesandro and Massimo?”

“They will not be joining us,” he says, without explanation.

“Where? I mean, what kind of place are we going? What should I wear?” Something similar to terror replaces my excitement as I realize that this sounds more and more like a date. I know I should protest, explain that I have a boyfriend, and traipse off to Trastevere with my friends, but I can’t. I just can’t get those words out of my mouth.

“Wear whatever you like,” Francesco says in his liquid-honey voice. “It does not matter.”

Easy for him to say.

I immediately begin trying on every article of clothing packed by myself, Kat or Lindsey. They both attempt to offer advice, neither commenting on my obvious anxiety, but their pearls of fashion wisdom do little to calm me. To make matters worse, because of the weight I’ve put on this summer, I can’t wear the majority of their clothes for fear that the seams will explode and take out everyone within a mile radius. This leaves me alone with my meager wardrobe. I can think of fifty outfits in my closet back home that would be perfect for tonight, while I cringe at everything I packed.

I finally decide on my most slimming skirt and a sleeveless white top with a loose, semi-sheer black shirt over it.

“Are you nuts?” Kat says. “You can’t wear that black thing. It’s one hundred fucking degrees out.” She gives me a disgusted look while she fastens the diamond studs into her ears.

I glance at Sin, still on the bed, who notices the same thing and scowls at Kat. Those diamond earrings again.

“I’m trying to hide my arms,” I say, mumbling as I climb on a spindly wooden chair, where I attempt, unsuccessfully, to get a full-length glimpse of myself in the foot-long mirror above the dresser.

“Oh, please,” Sin says. “Your arms look fine. What’s gotten into you?”

“About ten pounds,” I say.

She sighs. “I remember at Michigan when we used to have to beg you to wear a coat over your little outfits, even in the dead of winter.”

This is true. I dressed like a slut in college, most of my clothes more suited for a provocative music video. I always groan and roll my eyes when I look back on pictures of myself in those getups, but the sad thing is that I was happy and completely confident in them.

“Oh God,” Kat says, brushing out her long chestnut hair, a grin taking over her face. “Remember that blue dress that was up to your crotch and showed every bit of your tits except the nipples?”

Lindsey gives a shout of laughter. “And what about that silver bustier she used to wear with the black pants?”

“Times change,” I say, smiling despite myself. This, I like. This reminiscing about how we used to be, even if it is at my expense.

“So,” Sin says, and I can hear the shift in her voice from lighthearted to something more serious. “Did you call John yet?”

“Not yet.” I get down from my chair, having decided to go for beauty over comfort and stick with the outfit. I don’t mention that my plan is to not call anyone for at least a week or two. Not John, not Gordon Baker Brickton, Jr., my newly assigned partner and boss at the firm, and certainly not my mother. This trip is intended to be an escape. Avoiding phone calls with anyone from my real life is a means to that much-needed end.

“Why not?” Sin says, refusing to give up.

“I think he’s out of town this weekend.” This is a total lie. He’s in Chicago, and I know exactly what he’s doing right now. He’s in his apartment, puttering around the kitchen, making chicken Alfredo. He’ll work on a file while he eats at the kitchen table, and then he’ll head to Stanley’s to meet his buddies for one or two beers—at the most. He’ll be missing me by now. I’m sure of that. Despite his crazy schedule lately, he turned all moony and sad when he realized I was leaving for three weeks.

“The place won’t be the same without you,” he’d said a few nights ago as we stood in his living room, his pale green eyes big and turned down at the corners.

I get a sick flash of guilt, but I’m not sure if it’s caused by my memory of John that night or the way I’m now trying to push it out of my head.

“Signorina, Francesco…here…for you,” the hotel concierge says in halting English, with a heavy Italian accent.

“Yes…sì…grazie,” I mumble into the phone, knocking over the bottle of my Fendi perfume in my nervous state.

“You smell fine,” Lindsey says from the bed, where she has patiently counseled me through the difficult decision of whether to apply more perfume. I love her for this and for dropping the topic of John. “You look fine, too.”

I fuss with my hair in the mirror. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. Do you have MILK?”

I check my purse—Money, ID, Lipstick, Keys. “Yep.”

“So, go already.” She rises from the bed and, collecting her purse, yells, “Kat, let’s go!” in the direction of the bathroom.

“Two minutes,” Kat says, and Lindsey sits back down. We both know that Kat’s two minutes are more like twenty.

I inhale deeply, as I’d been taught to do in one of my self-help books. I imagine that these inhalations bring the desired calming effect. “Here I go.”

I take only three steps before it hits me.

“What am I doing?” I ask Lindsey. “What am I doing to John?”

She gives me a very long, very pointed look, during which I regret the question and fear she’s going to set me straight. So straight that I won’t be able to live with myself if I go out with Francesco. A moment goes by, then another.

Finally, she says, “You’re not doing anything to John. You’re going out for a drink with a nice Italian boy, which was what you wanted to do so desperately an hour ago.”

Neither of us acknowledges the cutting side to her supposedly light remark. Another silence. The phone rings again. Saved, I think, snatching it.

“Francesco…here…for you,” the concierge repeats.

“I’ll be right there.” I enunciate the words for fear Francesco will leave, yet I don’t move for the door.

“Go,” Lindsey says, and she actually gives me a wink.

The tiny elevator, which usually takes an eternity to run from the third floor to the first, brings me to the lobby in record time. I’m trying to catch a glimpse of my hair in the reflection of the metal doors when they open. Francesco, dressed in tan pants and a silky white shirt that probably came from his fashionable sisters in Milan, is conversing with the concierge in what appears to be rapid, raucous Italian. They gesticulate, shrug and nod all at once, as only Italians can do. Their conversation comes to an abrupt halt as I approach the desk with what I hope is a nonchalant, I-do-this-all-the-time look on my face.

Francesco turns to me. His hair is still wet, the black waves shiny, lying close to his head. “You look beautiful,” he says, drawing out the last word so that it sounds like “bee-yootee-ful.”

“Thank you. Grazie,” I say, surprised to hear my own voice coming out demure, even more surprised to find myself dipping my head in sort of a bow. I’m not usually a demure woman. This is some redheaded-stepchild part of myself I have yet to meet. It makes me wonder if she has other relatives that are usually kept in the basement, away from the guests.

If Francesco drove his scooter in a meandering way yesterday, tonight he’s in a full-steam-ahead race. I clutch him around his middle as we speed along the cobblestone streets of Rome. Charming enough to stroll down, but hell on the ass if you’re the second person on a one-man moped. I’d tried not to touch him. I tried to simply place my palms on some Switzerland-like neutral area of his body, but the dangerous speed and the bumpy effect of the cobblestones made this full-body grip from behind a requirement. So now, my breasts lie on his back, my hands hold tight to his waist. He feels so different from John who is softer and certainly not as reckless.

As the scooter hugs a particularly curved street, both of us leaning to one side, I’m sure we’re about to crash. One part of me wants to yell at Francesco to slow down, and either take it easy or take me back to the hotel and forget he ever met me. At the same time, I’m exhilarated to the point of wanting to throw my head back, like some sappy character in a romantic comedy.

I can feel Francesco’s taut, lean stomach muscles under my fingers. I clasp my hands together, one over the other, to stop the sudden, random urge to let them migrate lower. The scooter jostles over a pothole and the side of my hand nicks Francesco’s belt buckle.

“Okay?” Francesco shouts over his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Fine. Bene,” I yell into the wind.

We speed down the Corso, past grand hotels and designer boutiques. The city isn’t as crowded as it normally is because some of its residents have left on holiday already. Still, the sidewalks are relatively packed with couples, families out for a stroll, and bunches of tourists.

Francesco stops for a light. “You see there? You see this bank?” he says, pointing to a solid, stone building with an ATM machine outside. “This is where Mussolini was hung.”

“Oh.” I’m imagining Mussolini dangling from a rope, his bald head at a sharp angle, when Francesco guns the bike. I seize him around the waist again.

After a minute, we putter to a stop at a neighborhood grocer. “Un momento,” Francesco says, untangling himself from my limbs.

He disappears into the shop. I attempt to lean against the parked scooter in a feminine James Dean kind of slouch, but the damn thing starts to tip over. I scramble to upright it, grabbing the handlebars and pulling with all my strength, which, admittedly, isn’t what it used to be. I finally succeed in straightening the thing, and I’m searching for the kickstand when Francesco returns, brown bag in hand, a bottle of wine peeking out.

“Trouble?” he asks, dark eyes laughing.

He relieves me of the handlebars and adjusts the kickstand without looking down.

“You are perspiring,” he says in a matter-of-fact voice.

Mortification makes me mute. Of course I’m perspiring. Between the ninety-degree heat, the damned black shirt, Francesco’s proximity and my grapple with the bike, I’m a sweating mess.

“I will be back.” He places the bag on the street and returns to the store.

I stand by the scooter, mopping my forehead with my hand. Breathe, I tell myself. Breathe.

Francesco returns with a fistful of napkins.

“Let us see what we can do.” He says this in a low voice as he gently starts dabbing at my cheeks, temples and collarbone with the napkins. I am paralyzed with embarrassment, my arms hanging limp at my sides. I feel my face become a deeper shade of fuchsia, and my heart beats like a rabbit’s, making me sweat all the more. Francesco doesn’t seem to notice. He keeps dabbing me with a light touch, like an artist sponge painting.

“Now,” he says after a minute. “You have to remove this. It is too warm.” With slow hands he slips my camouflage shirt from my shoulders.

Francesco’s face is only inches from mine, and when I look, he’s staring directly into my eyes. I return his gaze, unable to turn away.

I am undeniably cooler without the shirt, but I feel bare in more ways than one. John and I don’t really baby each other, at least not lately. We take care of ourselves—we go to school or work, we pay our own rents, buy our own groceries and clothes—and when it’s all done, we spend time together. Being pampered like this leaves me exposed, my nerve endings jangling.

Francesco takes a step back and looks me up and down with a quick, appraising glance. “Now,” he says with a nod, “you are better.”

And he’s right.

Francesco and I are on the road again, and this stretch seems more comfortable. I feel lighter now that my black shirt is tied around my waist. My mind seems lighter, too, though I still have my arms wrapped around Francesco, anticipating a possible collision. I’m all too aware of my breasts pushing against his back as the scooter stops briefly at a corner.

I turn my head to the side, and without letting myself think about it, I rest it against his shoulder. The scooter starts to fly again, and Rome whizzes by—myriad fountains, marble statues, larger-than-life doors with gigantic handles, streets that look like alleys. Neon lights blaze from the trattorias and bars, illuminating the history of the place.

The rigidity that has settled in my bones and head over the last year seems to thaw a bit. Yet with the thaw comes an army of questions from some unused corner of my brain. What about John? Will you tell him about this little excursion, this man you are hugging? What happens when you get back, when you have to start work, when you can no longer escape the world? I lift my head and let the wind snarl my hair around my face, trying to forget these questions, the ones with rifles in hand that are waiting to fire holes in my flimsy curtain of contentment.

It pisses me off that my good feelings are so fleeting, so damned hard to hold on to. Like so many of the other uncontrollable parts of my life, I have little mastery over my emotions. Lately, it’s been even worse than usual. I’ll find myself in a situation where I should be ecstatically happy—my law school graduation, for example—and yet, inexplicably, I can’t match my mood to the circumstances.

My parents threw a party for me after the ceremony at the apartment of one of their friends, a place with a rooftop deck and a view of Wrigley Field. My family was there—my little brother, Danny, who as a college sophomore is not so little anymore, and a handful of cousins and aunts and uncles. Kat and Sin were there for a while, too, spending most of their time fending off Danny and one of his friends, both of whom had made too many visits to the beer cooler. I was touched that my girlfriends had made it, especially Kat, who normally worked Sundays.

The sun was out. There was a game at Wrigley, so we could hear occasional surges in the noise of the crowd. It was hypothetically perfect, but the tension between my parents was thick as they circled the party like planets at opposite ends of the solar system. John hadn’t shown up yet. He’d already missed the graduation ceremony because of some technology merger he was working on, yet he’d assured me over the phone that he’d be there for the party. “Right there at your side,” was how he put it. But he wasn’t. As the party swirled around me, I felt incredibly alone. I drank more champagne, but couldn’t get a buzz. I tried listening to my uncle’s advice about office politics, but it just depressed me further. I wanted nothing more than to flee. Instead, I resigned myself to sitting at a table piled with gifts and plates of food.

“We are almost there,” Francesco says now, as he slows for a stop sign. He throws me a smile over his shoulder, and I notice how white his teeth are against the improbable pink of his lips.

“Great,” I say, pushing away all the memories and squeezing him tighter because I’ve suddenly discovered a day, or at least a night, that I want to stick around for.

I feel a flash of wariness as we slow down again and pull into the circular drive surrounding the Colosseum. The actual Colosseum. This massive, ancient auditorium, a popular tourist destination by day, is now completely deserted and locked up for the night.

Gravel crunches as Francesco maneuvers around the back of the place. He stops, and an eerie quiet descends as the chugging of the bike dies. The only sounds I hear are the revs of the spitfire Italian cars hundreds of yards away. Francesco busies himself, gathering random items from the basket on the front of his scooter. I see a blanket, the wine and bread he recently purchased, another bag.

“Come,” he says, gesturing.

“Come where?” A nervous giggle escapes my mouth.

“Come,” he repeats with a grin. He turns away, walking with his arms full.

“Francesco,” I call after him. “What are we doing?”

He gives me an exasperated look. “We are having a picnic,” he says, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

“Um…okay, but where? It’s almost ten o’clock at night.”

“Inside.”

He turns again and keeps moving until he reaches an arched entrance protected by medieval-looking prison-style bars that are driven into the ground.

I follow with tentative steps, feeling as if I should tiptoe. Is this legal?

Francesco drops to his knees, the blanket and bags at his side. He grasps two of the bars, shakes and jiggles them with practiced movements of his arms, and miraculously slides them upward. He stands, holding the bars up about four feet.

“This way.” He gestures with his head toward the opening he’s created.

I do as he says, and duck under the bars. Francesco kicks the blanket and the two bags in after me, then scoots inside with one graceful movement. The bars make a violent clang as he lets them fall.

I jump. “Will we be able to get out?”

“Of course.” He gathers the bags, hands me the sack with the wine and takes my elbow. “It is okay.”

I glance around. We’re in some sort of anteroom, a dank place with a trodden dirt floor. Across the way, a long, dark hallway stretches into the building. I look back at Francesco, ready to ask him exactly where we’re going to have this picnic, but he leans in and kisses me. Not on the lips or even on my cheek, but on my forehead. The gesture is simple, tender. I close my eyes and breathe in his scent from the crook of his neck, a woodsy, chocolatey smell.

He takes my hand, leading me down the hallway in silence.

The hall opens up, and as we keep walking, the sky seems to open above us. I realize we’re at the edge of a round pit, the very center of the Colosseum. Francesco stops, drops my hand and spreads the blanket on the ground. He kneels on it and starts to lift things out of the sacks—wine, bread, a tomato, a chunk of hard white cheese and two squat glasses—the kind that Americans use to rinse their mouths after brushing and Italians use for wine. He uncorks the bottle and pours a dark maroon wine into the glasses. Out of his pocket, he withdraws a small knife and cuts off neat triangles of cheese, using one of the brown paper bags as a plate.

He sets the knife down and raises both of the half-full glasses, holding one of them out to me. “Salute,” he says, the customary Italian toast. “To tonight.”

I sink to my knees and, taking the glass, I touch it to his, making a pleasant clink. I take a sip and feel the wine warming my insides, loosening me again. He offers a piece of cheese, and I take it because although I’m not hungry, I want something else to do with my hands.

“How did you know how to get in here?” I ask.

Francesco shrugs. He keeps cutting the cheese and tomato, breaking off chunks of bread, offering them to me.

I rest one hand behind me on the blanket, sipping the warm, spicy wine. The only light in the place is from the stars and the streetlights peeking through the stone arches. As I look around, it strikes me that thousands of people have died here. Thousands more have enjoyed themselves, watching the festivities, reveling in the prime of their lives. And they’re all long gone.

I suppose that this is the prime of my own life, although until tonight it hasn’t felt like the prime of anything. The days and months have raced by me like a high-speed train, making everything vague and fuzzy.

Until tonight.

Francesco moves behind me. I can sense him coming closer, and I lose the air in my lungs.

He spreads his legs around me, sheltering me, and I feel the gentle weight of his breath as he speaks into my ear. “Lean back.”

I allow my rigid back to decline like a beach chair a few degrees, but I land in an awkward position, my head against his chest, my legs too far forward. He touches my hips, urging me back until I fold into him, nearly cheek to cheek now, with the back of my head resting on his shoulder. He keeps his hands on my hips. I feel my blood pulsing there.

Francesco’s earlier reluctance to tell me how he knows the way in here makes me suspect that this scene is from a well-worn bag of tricks, and I wonder what’s next. I remind myself that this is probably where he takes all the foreign girls he picks up, but my warning does no good. I’m still enthralled with this place, with his breath in my ear.

We sit like that awhile, Francesco doing nothing except supporting my body. My lungs start working again. I relax, but I’m intensely conscious of his arms around me, his chin grazing my ear.

Then he tightens his arms and I think, here it is, the come-on from Francesco I’ve been expecting since last night. His breath grows even heavier in my ear. I can’t decide whether to run or return the gesture, lost somewhere in the purgatory between sheer panic and complete acceptance.

I don’t consciously decide to do anything, but then I’m turning my head toward Francesco’s so my ear pushes against his mouth. I hear him whisper Italian phrases I can’t understand.

I feel my own breath catching in my throat, and then I feel a kind of melting. My uptight, button-up, worry-about-everything persona that I’ve been wearing like a cloak dissolves, and for a moment, I feel like someone I barely recall, someone I desperately want back.

Francesco nuzzles my cheek, my ears, my neck. My awareness has grown so acute now that I imagine I can feel my lashes resting on the soft skin under my eyes. My mouth opens in an O. I arch back into his hips, his mouth. I haven’t felt like this in so, so, so long. When was the last time? I hazily search my memory in that small cabinet of my mind where this feeling was filed away years ago. Did I ever feel this way with John? John is like a comfortable old flannel shirt that you love to put on in the winter. But this—this is a black silk shawl, clinging to my bare shoulders.

I hear a moan escape my lips, and it startles me. Some force flows out of me, turning my body over, pushing Francesco’s shoulders until he lies flat on the ground. Our tongues and lips clash, soft groans from both of us, low gasps of Italian words from him, hands searching. Our bodies roll on the thin blanket that covers the hard ground.

I lose my sense of time, and it’s bliss. Sharp and clear, as if everything in my life has stopped and focused on this instant.

After what may have been twenty minutes, or two hours, our faces separate, our eyes lock.

“Thank you,” I say, because even if this was part of Francesco’s frequently utilized seduction repertoire, he’s given me a momentary peace, a sliver of life.

“Bella, bella,” Francesco says, holding my eyes. “You are beautiful, but you do not know.” He laughs. “And you make me tired.”

He falls back on the blanket. I lean over him, turning my head and placing my temple on his chest where his shirt has become unbuttoned. The tawny, tanned skin of his stomach rises and falls, trying to catch up.

I fall asleep with his shirt clenched in my fist.