Читать книгу The Rome Affair - Laura Caldwell, Leslie S. Klinger - Страница 9

“Ciao,” I called to the sleepy guy at the bell desk, as if I always left my hotel by myself in the wee hours to meet a man who was not my husband.

I stepped out into the inky night. The kiosk across from the hotel, which sold water and pizza, was closed, the apartments surrounding the hotel dark. It was not nearly morning, as the man had said, and daylight seemed far away, as if I might never see the sun again. I liked that thought.

My body felt light, made of air. I moved down the street like a patch of fog. He had told me to meet him halfway up the Spanish Steps. As I took the first white marble stair, I halted. The Spanish Steps are hundreds of feet wide and sky-high, so what exactly did “halfway” mean? The first landing? The second? Ignoring the questions, ignoring common sense, I climbed.

My shoes went tap, tap, tap as I padded upward, and in my chest, behind my ribs, a drumbeat of anticipation began.

I glanced up for a moment and saw the moon—a small, yellow globe—and the dark sky behind it. The steps were nearly empty of their usual crowd, but somewhere on them, young Italian men were singing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few pairs of lovers. No single man in a linen shirt. My eyes climbed the huge stairway for him. Maybe he wouldn’t come? Relief. Disappointment.

At the second landing, I turned and stared down toward the fountain. A few stragglers were gathered around it. Maybe he was one of them? Had I walked right past him? But he’d said “halfway.” I remembered that for sure. Maybe “halfway” was some Italian lingo. The confusion nearly pulled me from my dreamlike state. I started to process what I was doing, or at least how I hadn’t a clue of what I was doing.

But when I turned back to look up the steps, he was there.

“Ciao,” he said.

“Ciao.”

He came to me and took one of my hands. I felt a flutter through my belly and my limbs. “I don’t know your name,” he said.

“Rachel.”

“And I am Roberto.”

The singers broke into a slow, haunting song. The strum of their guitar wafted and lilted until it surrounded the two of us, as if the song was being played for us.

“Rachele, Roberto,” he said, gesturing to me and back to himself. “This is meant to happen.”

I clasped his hand tighter.

Roberto and I sat on the steps for an hour or so, talking softly, about Rome, about art. When the singers were chased away by the polizia, he stood and took my hand again. He led me away from the steps and began to guide me over the cobbled streets.

His apartment was only a few blocks away on Via Sistina. The short distance meant I didn’t feel scared or pulled too far. Inside, his floors were pine-planked. His artwork—canvases done in red—hung from the walls.

He stood behind me as I surveyed the place.

I noticed a small canvas on an easel, and I walked over to it. The painting was a series of thick, wine-red slashes, with small remnants of black beneath them. And in the center, amid the chaotic red, was a lighter area. On closer inspection, it was the profile of a woman, her face downcast.

Roberto came to my side. “It is you.”

I laughed. “Oh, you painted this tonight, after you met me?”

“No, I painted this ten, maybe eleven years ago. I did not know this woman I painted. She was here.” He tapped his forehead. “Then I see you in the ristorante tonight, and I know. It is you.”

“Come on.” I laughed again. “How many women have you told that story to?”

“Only you,” he said simply. He nodded at the painting. “It is you.”

On closer inspection, the woman’s hair was shoulder-length, like mine, her eyes small but lashes long, also like mine. And there was something about the high curve of the cheekbone that made me feel, if only for a sliver of a second, as if I was looking in a mirror.

“It is beautiful,” I said. “Bellisimo.”

He moved behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders, then lightly drew them up my neck, into my hair, lifting it. “No. You are beautiful.”

He leaned down, his breath in my ear. “Bellisima,” he said. “Bella.”

He repeated it over and over—Bella. Bella. Bella. His hands curled in my hair. His lips, warm and so soft, touched my neck. Bella. Bella.

It became a mantra he spoke as he led me to an old-fashioned brocade day-bed, right below one particularly vivid canvas. Slowly, gently, he unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it from my body, unwrapping me the way he might a precious painting.

When he lowered himself over me, Nick was in that room somehow. When I felt the full weight of Roberto’s body, I was punishing Nick—and myself. But I loved it. I craved it. I needed it.

In the morning, I let myself quietly into the hotel room. I had felt dreamy and languid tiptoeing through Roberto’s apartment door, but now the bright light of morning—God’s flashlight, my mother used to call it—made me feel exposed and slightly seedy.

I expected the room to be dark, Kit still with her man from the French embassy or else buried deep in her covers. Kit was a notoriously late sleeper, always the last to get up in the morning, but the room was filled with light, and there was Kit. She sat at a round table in front of the opened French windows, coffee and a basket of rolls in front of her. Outside, Rome was starting to awaken, the sun growing more gold over the domes of a thousand churches.

“Morning,” Kit said. She was wearing one of the hotel robes, and her hair was wet and combed back. She looked clean and fresh.

“Hi.” I stood uncertainly, then stepped inside and let the door fall closed behind me.

I wanted, suddenly, to throw my bag on the bed and rush into a telling of my night, the way I used to when we were younger. I wanted to tell her what it was like with Roberto on that daybed, how we’d moved to the floor, a couch and finally his bed. I wanted to laugh, to say, “I’ve had two hours of sleep!”

But I stalled. I couldn’t jump into a story of my infidelity, and how I’d quickly joined Nick’s ranks, when I’d been so shocked at his actions. Also, it felt somehow wrong to give any of the sexual details. Marriage had sealed my tongue to those kinds of conversations. And finally, I realized right then that the years of geographical distance between Kit and me had created some emotional distance, too.

“How was it?” Kit said.

I took a few steps inside. “What?” I turned my back to her, setting my purse carefully on a dresser top.

“Rachel, it’s me.”

I turned. Her violet-blue eyes looked concerned, and I noticed lines around those eyes that didn’t used to be there years ago. But then, I had such lines, too. Somehow the fact that we were both growing older made what I had just done seem embarrassing, unseemly.

“What do you mean?” My voice sounded false to my ears.

She pushed aside a cup of espresso. “Where did you meet him? Someone from your meeting?” Her voice was full of kindness, and I felt relief at the friendship I heard there.

I shook my head.

“Someone you met at dinner?”

I hesitated once more. An overwhelming desire to sleep covered me like a wave. I was too tired to figure out a way to lie to Kit.

I nodded. I searched her face for disappointment, but there was none.

“So how was it?” she asked again.

“Unbelievable. Amazing.” The words were out of my mouth before I’d had a chance to consider them.

“Well, you got back at Nick,” she said quietly.

“It wasn’t like that.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be harsh. It’s just that he deserves it.”

Silence trickled into the room. Outside, on the Spanish Steps, the sound of a woman’s laugh rang out.

“Sorry,” Kit said again.

“No, it’s all right.” In truth, I liked that Kit was protective of me. “It’s really not about getting back at him, though.”

But of course it was. Because I thought he was probably doing it again. Right now, possibly. I thought about telling Kit my suspicions, but my shame stopped me. Before I’d come to Rome, I had been sick of being the one who was right for so long, the one who sat on the moral high ground of our marriage. With regret seeping in, I now wished to return to that spot.

Kit studied me. I sat on the bed, feeling the satiny-smooth cotton sheets beneath my legs. I thought of Roberto’s hands on those legs, on my thighs, parting them.

“How was your night?” I said.

Kit smiled. “Wonderful. I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you got back.”

“It’s okay. I was gone all day.”

“Wait until you meet this guy.”

“What’s he like?”

“Gorgeous. Sweet. Perfect.” She chuckled. “But you’ll have to judge for yourself.”

“You’re seeing him again?”

She gave me a beseeching look. “If it’s okay with you. I mean, I told him no, but he’s called three times.”

“Wow. That’s great.”

“Yeah. He’s a doll. I mean, I really feel like he could be someone special.” Her eyes were bright with hope.

“Well, of course, then. You should see him.” Kit was always looking for the man who could make her happy, the way her family never had.

“Join us,” Kit said. “We’re going to some emperor’s house. Nero, I think. I guess it’s really interesting. It’ll be great.”

“No, thanks. I’m just going to sleep.”

“No, come with us!”

We went back and forth, the exhaustion crawling over me, until Kit finally relented.

We sat silently for a few moments, the sun surging through the windows and filling our room.

“Are you okay, Rachel?” Kit said at last.

I felt something trembling inside me. “It’s ironic, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know. Nick with that woman and now…” I raised a hand, as if I was in a classroom, identifying myself. I felt a strange, mortifying pride at what I’d done, but more than anything I felt twisted with guilt.

“I guess so,” Kit said simply.

“Did Nick call?”

Kit shook her head.

But he did.

The bleat, bleat of the phone startled me out of sleep like a smack to the head. It took me a few long moments—the persistent bleat still sounding—for me to remember Rome. And Roberto. I thought he was calling me again. And, in that instant, I was happy. Schoolgirl, pulse-skidding happy.

I rolled over with a little grin, and I lifted the phone.

“There she is!” Nick said, as if he’d been calling me over and over instead of the other way around.

I froze.

“You there?” he said.

I pushed myself to a sitting position, leaning against the tufted headboard. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“How’s Italy?”

Why did he sound so cheerful? I could only think of one reason.

“Where were you yesterday?” I asked, my voice steely.

“When?”

“Yesterday. All day. I called you at the office, and they said you were golfing. I called you at home and on your cell a million times.”

“You left one message,” Nick said.

“One message on your cell, and one at home.”

“Right. And by the time I got them, it was the middle of the night over there. I just woke up, and I called you first thing.”

I glanced at the nightstand clock. Two in the afternoon, which meant it was six in the morning at home. “What were you doing all day that you didn’t have your phone on?”

“I…I was working.”

“You weren’t working. I told you I called your office.”

“Yeah, well, I was working on something here.”

“What?”

He sighed.

“Nick, where were you?”

Another silence. “I don’t want to tell you.”

I laughed, harsh and bitter. “I bet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know.”

“Rach, c’mon.”

“No, you c’mon. Again, Nick? Again? I’m gone a couple goddamned days, and you’re at it again? Who was she? Why don’t you just make us a grand cliché and tell me it was your nurse?”

The silence now was eerie. Do not speak first, I told myself, aware, vaguely, of how childish this was but not caring.

I heard him breathe out, hard. “Rachel,” he said in his practiced, doctor’s voice—composed despite disaster, “I can’t tell you what I was doing. It’s a surprise.”

“What do you mean?” I tried to untwist my legs from the sheets.

“I took the day off work. I put my pager on in case the office called, and I turned off the other phones because I was doing something for my wife.”

My wife, my wife.

There was too much sun in my room. Too damned hot. I stood, intending to close the drapes, but my brain seemed to slosh about in my head. I nearly lost my balance, as if I were standing on a boat in rough seas. And then there was my husband. Talking still, saying something, far away. He sounded calm, but angry and disappointed. I could tell. It was the way I’d sounded for much of the past year.

“Rachel?” he said. “Are you there?”

I sank onto the floor right next to the bed. I noticed the black satin sandals I’d worn the night before. They lay where they’d been kicked off. Carelessly. Wantonly.

To believe or not to believe.

“Why don’t you have some faith in me?” Nick asked on the phone.

I retorted something about losing my faith in Napa. I said I thought I’d left it at a restaurant.

Neither of us said anything for a long time. I kept glancing at the sandals—glittering black on the thick cream carpet. I chucked them across the room, out of sight.

I heard the distant beep of Nick’s pager. “Shit,” he said. “I’ve got to get to the O.R. Rachel, listen. Enjoy your last day over there, and we’ll talk about this when you get home. I’ll show you then.”

“You’ll show me?”

“I’ll show you my surprise.” He paused. “And I’ll show you how much I love you.”

I took a breath. Had I been breathing since the phone rang? It didn’t seem so.

“I do love you,” he said.

I rolled that around in my mind. It seemed true from my side as well, despite everything. “I love you, too,” I said grudgingly.

As I hung up, there was a rap at the door. “Uno momento,” I called, pulling on a robe.

The front desk clerk, Bettina, stood outside the door. “For you, Rachel.” She held aloft a foot-tall square wrapped in brown paper. “Delivery.”

“Grazie.” I wondered if this was somehow the surprise from Nick. “And have you seen my friend? Kit?”

Bettina grinned. “She is with Frenchman, I think.”

“Okay, grazie.” If Kit was here, she could help me decide. To believe or not to believe.

I took the package to the table near one of the windows. Outside, it was another sunny Roman day, the Spanish Steps loaded with backpacking tourists holding cameras. Today was windy, though, and people held on to hats, as well, the women’s hair flapping in the wind.

There were no markings on the package except for my name and Il Palazzetto written in black marker in a hand I didn’t recognize. I turned it over. Masking tape held the paper together and it easily came undone. Inside was the small painting from Roberto’s apartment. The one of the woman he’d said was me.

I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Why had he sent this? I turned over the canvas and saw a note taped to the back. It was a small rectangle of heavy ivory paper, folded in half.

Mia Rachele,

You have only a small time in Roma. I would like to spend that time with you. But if you cannot, then I want you to have this. Please take it to Chicago and remember me. I will remember you.

Roberto

If I chose to disbelieve my husband’s words, I should pick up the phone now. I should call Roberto, and not only thank him for the painting but tell him to meet me.

I set the painting on the table. I opened the windows and leaned out, hoping to catch a little sun on my face, and with it, a decision about Nick. Another one. Hadn’t I leaped over enough moral and mental hurdles to get to this point? Deciding to forgive him. Deciding to trust him again. Now he was asking the same. And I was no longer the innocent.

I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured the gallery where I’d met Nick during a spring art festival in Bucktown, the same gallery where we had our wedding reception three years later, when Nick’s brother and our parents and our friends gathered together in that high-ceilinged room filled with jazz and champagne and sun and art.

I thought of the way Nick always looked at me, especially when I entered a room or a conversation. Nick had a way of furrowing his brows when he listened to someone speak. He was, I’d always said, one of the best listeners I’d ever met. He truly wanted to hear what someone was saying. He wanted to learn, to understand. When I spoke though, the corners of his mouth turned up in a small grin. His brown eyes softened and filled with pride.

And then I thought of Nick’s eyes and the way he’d looked at me that night in our kitchen. The night he’d told me. After his confession, he’d held me lightly by the shoulders, as if I was a balloon that might float away. He’d bent down until our eyes were even. I made a mistake, he’d said. The most awful, most cruel mistake. But I will never do that to you again. I promise. I could see the anguish in his eyes, the paleness of his skin making his few freckles stand out in sharp contrast. I promise, Rachel. I promise.

To believe or not to believe.

I crossed the room and found Roberto’s note. I fingered it. I remembered his fingers on my body. I thought of Nick’s words—I was planning a surprise for you…My wife.

I thought of our bungalow on Bloomingdale Avenue. I thought of the family we planned on having.

I took the note to the window. Outside the wind was still buffeting the people on the steps. I held my fist outside. I unclenched my hand. I watched the scrap of white float into the Roman air.