Читать книгу Burning The Map - Laura Caldwell, Leslie S. Klinger - Страница 12

I feel simmering heat and roll over to escape it. So hard. The bed is so hard.

“John,” I murmur, reaching for his hair, which I always tousle in the morning. But I’m greeted by thick waves, not John’s smooth, thinning locks.

As I sit up, my back screams in pain. Everything is foggy. I awaken a little more, realizing that my contacts are gripping my eyeballs like hubcaps on tires. I blink rapidly to dispel the haze…and it all comes back in a sharp second. Italy, Rome, Francesco, who is still in the throes of sleep, limbs outstretched, face turned to one side, mouth partly open. To me, there’s nothing more adorable than a sleeping man, stripped of all the society-taught, sports-induced toughness.

I study him, comparing Francesco’s posture to the way John sleeps, always on his side in a tight fetal-like ball. John never moves, with the exception of one hand that always seeks me out, no matter where my erratic positioning takes me.

The irony of it hits me then. I’m thinking of John while I’m sitting here, clothes askew, gazing at a near stranger who I spent the night with. I remind myself that I didn’t “spend the night” with him as in a euphemism for sex. There was no intercourse, nothing even close, really. It was more of a combination roll and grope, but my memories of it make me blush.

It’s not that John isn’t tender or considerate. He’s both of those things. He’s even quite well-endowed. It’s just that sex has become, for lack of a better word, routine. It’s like watching a favorite movie over and over. The first few times, you think, Oh! Here comes the good part! I love this part. After a while, though, you know exactly what’s about to happen down to the minute details, and it doesn’t particularly excite you anymore, but you watch anyway because there’s nothing better on. I’m sure that I’m as much to blame as John is. Lately, I just haven’t felt sexual enough to try and break out of it. Yet now I have these feelings from last night. I’d almost forgotten it could be like that.

I stretch and look around me. Sun streams through the eastern arches of the Colosseum and over the raw, broken pieces of the upper rim. Our blanket is twisted beneath us, the cheese congealing, the disks of bread hard.

I glance at my watch. Christ, it’s 5:40 in the morning, and I was supposed to be at the room by midnight. Kat and Sin will be asleep, but still, I need to get back.

I nudge Francesco, clearing my throat to make some sound. What if he’s one of those people who wakes with a start—confused and angry? But no. He brings his hand to his head and groans. His eyes open slowly, like a man with nowhere to be and no commitments.

“Buon giorno, bella,” he says, fixing his lazy, lidded eyes on me with the look of a cat who’s gotten in the bird cage and plans to stay.

He pulls me to him and into another kiss. My instincts are to fight it, because John and I have an agreement to always brush our teeth before an a.m. kiss, but Francesco seems to have no such requirement. His tongue seeks mine again, his hands roam, but I keep seeing John curled in his bed.

“Francesco,” I say, gently pushing his chest with an open hand. “I can’t.”

“Okay. It’s okay.” He moves a strand of hair that’s hiding my eyes. He gazes at me, and I feel myself being drawn, pulled back to him. I want to be all over him, but my thoughts of John are stubborn in the harsh light of day.

I don’t explain this to Francesco. How can I?

“I’ve got to get back,” I say.

A sharp clang comes from our left, followed by muffled Italian. Our heads jerk in the direction of the sound. About three hundred feet away guards in navy-blue are opening the largest gated entrance.

Francesco jumps to a crouch, shoving the corked wine bottle, his knife and the errant bread and cheese in the center of the blanket. He gathers the edges and swings the package over his shoulder like a hobo. I’m frantic, tucking my shirt in, smoothing my hair, retrieving my purse.

Francesco grabs my hand. Bending over like soldiers avoiding an attack, we creep away from the guards and toward the gate we entered the night before. As he rattles and raises the bars for our escape, I take one last glance around, and it dawns on me. I finally have a story for the girls.

I slip onto the back of Francesco’s scooter with much more ease than the night before. I rest my head on his back as he darts through early-morning traffic. The city is quieter now than it was in the night, the antiquity more evident as the new sun spotlights the dirt, the film that covers everything, except those pieces lucky enough to be deemed landmarks and restored. Most of the businesses are still shuttered, but we pass a bakery with an open door, and the scent of baking bread wafts into the street.

I squeeze Francesco around the waist. He strokes my hand with his fingers. At a light, he glances over his shoulder with a quick smile, making my stomach bounce like a tennis ball. We take a sharp turn and he grabs my thigh, as if to hold me on the bike. His touch makes me flush again. I adore this part. The part where everything is new and electric, where every syllable, gesture and glance count.

It was that way once with John, wasn’t it? Our meeting two years ago in a smoky bar, packed to the gills, both of us standing directly in front of a band. They were called Beef Express or something like that. One of those names picked at random from the Yellow Pages or the side of a truck. I was watching the band and, at the same time, keeping an eye on the TV airing a college basketball tournament. It was the one sporting event I got enthusiastic about because my alma mater usually kicked ass. Kat was there, too, but she couldn’t have cared less about the game. She’d already met someone.

“Who’re you rooting for?” John asked with a crooked smile that I would later become intimately familiar with. He was cute in a bookish sort of way—cropped light brown hair, washed-out, greenish eyes, a preppy shirt with every button fastened except the very top.

“Indiana. Have to root for the Big Ten.”

“The Big Ten.” He groaned. “You know they’ll choke. They always do.”

“Fuck off,” I said, but with a light, funny tone and a coy smile. I was a great flirt back then. John and I started talking, going head to head on Big Ten basketball versus other conferences, but after a while there was a pause in the conversation. I acted like I didn’t notice and filled the space with an intent look at the game. The band screeched on about bodies burning in a field.

“I’m John,” I heard him say when the song ended with a cymbal’s crash.

I turned to find him stretching out a hand, his crisp blue, button-down shirt turned up at the cuffs. His arm was tan, which surprised me, the hair there golden.

“Casey,” I said, meeting his hand, trying to make sure my handshake was firm, rather than one of those lame, fingers-only shakes.

“What do you do for a living?”

“Northwestern Law School.”

“You’re a law student, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. He moved closer as a waitress jostled him from behind, and he smelled clean, fresh, as if he’d just showered. “What about you?”

“Lawyer.” He made an embarrassed sort of laugh. “M&A.” And then, as if I might not understand, he added, “Mergers and acquisitions.”

“I know what M&A means,” I said, sounding a little huffy. In reality, I was trying to cover up how daunted I felt to meet someone roughly my age who actually made a living practicing law.

“Sure,” he said, coloring a little. “Sorry.”

“No problem.” I graced him with my best smile. I liked his blushing.

I heard my name being called and turned to see my friend, P.J., another law student, pointing toward the door. “We’re out of here,” he yelled.

“Where’s Kat?”

P.J., who’d been hanging out with Kat and me for a year by then, gave an exaggerated shrug, as if to say, “Who knows? Who cares?”

I glanced at John. “I guess I’m going.”

“Are you sure? Why don’t you stay for the rest of the game?” He smiled at me, his lips slightly parted, and for some reason, I wanted to lean into them. “I’ll take care of you,” he said in a joking tone.

But I sensed he was serious, and I stayed.

Thinking back on that now, that somewhat self-conscious meeting that led to a smooth transition straight into a relationship, makes it seem even more alien for me to roll into my pensione at 6:00 a.m., all hot and bothered and mascara stained. Yet in a strange way, I’m proud of my current state, because this sordidness smells of sex and lust, and I haven’t had that particular scent for as long as I can remember.

Francesco drops me off in front as the early-morning commuters begin to surface. Their presence doesn’t prevent him from snaking an arm around my waist and drawing me into an extended kiss while he still straddles his bike.

When I finally pull myself away, he says, “I want to show you more special places of Roma. I will come back in a few hours.”

“I can’t.” My voice sounds unconvincing. “I’m sightseeing with my friends.”

“Tomorrow then.”

“No,” I say, although right now I want nothing more than to spend my last hours in Rome with him.

His brow furrows as if we’re experiencing a language problem.

“I’m taking a train to the coast tonight,” I say, feeling the need to explain. “To Brindisi. And then a boat to Greece.”

“But then you must spend today with me.” He puts a hand to my cheek, a feather touch, and kisses me again.

When I open my eyes, I find myself shrugging and agreeing. The girls will kill me, but I’ll have to kill myself if I don’t see him one more time.

“Eleven o’clock,” Francesco says. “I will be back.” He kisses me once more before he sputters off into the day.

The concierge, a different one from the night before, raises his eyebrows as I burst into the lobby. I give him a quick half smile, feeling undressed and dirty from his leer. Rather than wait for the elevator under his scrutiny, I take the stairs two at a time.

When I open the door, the room feels dark and cool. Kat is sleeping in a little pink T-shirt on top of her sheets. She seems to be without Guiseppe, but one can never be sure where guys are lurking when Kat’s around. Lindsey, though, is wide-awake. She’s sitting on her bed, headphones stuck in her ears, a Scott Turow novel resting on her knees. She’s studying it with intense concentration, as if she’s reading an ancient scroll depicting the hidden tomb of a pharaoh.

“Hi,” I whisper, waving my arms, trying to catch her attention and avoid waking Kat, although the fact is that Kat could sleep through an avalanche.

“Sin,” I say a little louder. “Sorry I’m late.”

I cross the room and stand right next to her, but she won’t look up from her book. She’s ignoring me. I feel my stomach drop.

I despise fights. I suppose it has something to do with the utter lack of conflict in my family. Even now, in the midst of their problems, my parents rarely duke it out. Instead, they stifle, pout, avoid and cry a lot. I guess I just never learned to do confrontation well, which is one of the reasons why I’m so nervous about practicing law. Litigation is inherently confrontational, a world of egos and bullshit and fighting for fighting’s sake. I didn’t really choose to go into it. Instead, it seemed to choose me during my summer associate position, when the firm kept pairing me with the trial group, telling me that my outgoing personality was perfect for it. Maybe, but I’m not well-suited for clashes with friends.

I nudge Lindsey with my knee, and she finally looks up at me, clicking off her Walkman with a punch of her finger.

“Where were you?” she says, her voice hard and demanding, and it hits me that Sin should be the trial lawyer, not me. She’s much better at intimidation and interrogation.

I try to ignore her tone. “I’m so sorry I’m late, but you won’t believe it. It’s the best story. We—”

“You were supposed to meet us here at midnight,” she says, interrupting me. “Last night.”

“I’m really, really sorry.”

She gives a short, bitter laugh that sounds like gunfire.

“We fell asleep,” I say, wanting to make this better, to tell her all about my night, but she shoots me a look that could wither roses.

All at once, my natural inclination to avoid conflict dissipates. She had reason to be worried when I didn’t come home last night, maybe even to be annoyed, but she’s ruining the first honestly good mood I’ve had in months.

“What?” I say, my voice a fierce whisper. “How come Kat gets to pick up every guy from here to Munich, but when I meet one person, you act like the Gestapo?”

Our voices have roused Kat, who sits up on her cot, watching us in silence. I wonder for a second if she heard my comment and is pissed off, but I dismiss the thought. If there’s anyone who hates confrontation more than me, it’s Kat. Like me, she probably gets this trait from her parents. After they divorced, they both kept a room in each of their homes for her, but they were more interested in dating and their careers than they were in Kat. She’d tried to scream and yell, she’d told me. She’d thrown some fantastic tantrums, but the parent of the moment would simply ship her back to the other like a UPS package. Kat doesn’t scream or yell much anymore.

Now she sits on her bed, biting a thumbnail, and I can almost imagine her as a little kid with her thumb in her pretty mouth.

“Well, for one thing,” Sin says, “you have a boyfriend.”

“I’m well aware of that,” I say in a haughty tone. How dare she remind me?

“And for another thing, Kat always comes home when she says she will. She’s around when you need her. She’s a friend.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just that…” Lindsey stops, pursing her lips as if trying to gather the right words in her mouth. This makes her look like my mother right before she’s about to lay some doozy of a revelation on me, like how she’s started masturbating again after a twenty-year hiatus.

“It’s just that what you did last night,” Sin says, “blowing us off—it’s basically what you’ve been doing for the last two years.”

Her words hit me like a slap. I sense some shred of reality there, but it seems like an overstatement, a gross generalization.

“I’ve never said I’d be somewhere and didn’t show up.”

“No, maybe not like that, but you’ve been avoiding us since you started dating John. You never call. You never have time to go out with us anymore. And when we finally do get together, once in a great while, it’s like you’re not really there. You’re just different. You’re not like you used to be.”

I can’t believe she’s saying this. Maybe I’ve been a little detached lately, but I’ve been studying for a goddamned living. My life hasn’t exactly been a Martha Stewart picnic.

I turn to Kat. “Is that what you think, too?”

“Oh, honey.” She rises to come to me, putting her arm around my shoulders. “It’s just that we wish you were around more. We wish it was like the old days.”

“That’s not fair,” I say, jabbing a finger at Lindsey. “You haven’t been around all that much either, you know.” Lindsey’s been putting in ten-to twelve-hour days and lots of weekends at her ad agency. She wants to make vice president within the next year and be the youngest VP ever.

“That’s true,” she says, “but I’m going to change that. I have to.”

“Well, things will never be exactly like they were in college, and you can’t expect them to be.”

“Maybe it’s not fair, sweetie,” Kat says, “but what Sin’s talking about is true. You’re not the same person we used to know. I mean, I know you’re in there somewhere.” She squeezes my shoulders. “I just haven’t seen you in so long, and when I do get to actually go out with you, it doesn’t seem like you’re having much fun.”

“I had fun last night.” I shake her arms off me.

“It’s okay,” Kat says. “We just miss you.”

I know what she means. I miss me, too, sometimes. I drop my head in my hands.

But as I sit there, some realization dawns. I raise my face. “Wait a minute. You’ve felt like this for two years, and you’ve never said a word?” I’d been a tad mopey for a while, particularly this summer, but they’re talking about two years. The whole time I’ve been dating John.

I leave Kat’s side and walk across the room to the window. Across the way, I see a couple on their terrace reading papers, eating grapefruit.

I turn back to Kat and Sin, sitting side by side. It’s me against them right now, and I hate it.

Kat looks down, then back up at me. Sin shrugs. “We knew you were in love with him.”

“You’re supposed to be my best friends. How can you be pissed off at me for years and not say a word?”

Kat blinks a few times like a stumped contestant on Jeopardy.

“We were just hoping it would go away,” Sin says.

Her words feel like a betrayal. All this time, I keep thinking. All this time they’ve been holding it back. We used to be the kind of friends who said anything and everything to each other, the minute the thought occurred to us.

“Hideous,” Kat would say when I came down the stairs of the sorority house in one of my slutty outfits. “At least take off the fuck-me pumps.”

And Sin didn’t know the meaning of holding back, which was something I’d come to love about her. It was Sin who helped me decide on what law school to attend. I’d narrowed it down to Northwestern or Harvard. I was enamored by the thought of Harvard Law School. I liked simply saying those words, and I imagined the tingle I’d get every time I told someone, “Yes, I attend Harvard. Harvard Law School.” I’d only gotten in because my father’s boss was an alum who happened to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but that didn’t bother me. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to move to Boston.

I was debating the subject one night about a month before our college graduation. Sin listened to my list of pros and cons for about ten seconds before she held up her hand and said, “You’re not the Harvard Law type.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I sat back and crossed my arms.

“C’mon,” she said. “Harvard Law is Birkenstocks and environmental activism and people whose ancestors went there before them. You’re not about that. You’re…” She threw her hands up. “You’re Steve Maddens and aerosol hair spray, and you’re the first person in your family to go to law school.”