“Are you hungry?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“No? I have prosciutto chingiale. I carried it in my bag. And melon, which I bought here. Like all American fruit it is very large and probably has no flavor.”
“I like that,” I said. “I drink more wine now. It is good.”
I drank a lot of wine. Italy had seemed so far away but now, in Silvano’s apartment, I felt like I was back there, as if apartment 5L was in Florence. As if 5L were the Florentine embassy, a sacred square of concrete somehow beyond the reach of corporate, industrious, disposable, amiable America. How to tell this man that I had left on impulse, gone down the street to buy a can of orange soda and one of those little custard tarts from the Café Mingo, then found myself at Piazza Maria Novella and the trains? Trains going everywhere: Lugano, Rome, Trieste, Belgrade, Amsterdam, Paris, Istanbul. How could I stand there and not take one? How could I go back? I didn’t have enough cash on me to go very far. I’d wanted to go to Venice for the day maybe, but I’d just missed a train. There was another in an hour, which gave me enough time to go outside and have a number of cigarettes before deciding. But I’d left my cigarettes at home. I’d only planned to be gone for ten minutes after all. Then I saw two young men with their map spread over the hood of their car. They were arguing in French. They were both smoking. As I walked over I saw them both lift their eyes from the map, that look of startled interest. Soon I was heading eastward, threading through the mountains at gear-grinding speeds through the brushy pines and ear-popping drops, hairpin curves and cerulean skies. I was heading to heaven and who knew—or cared—what lay on the other side.
Silvano’s eyes narrowed. “You went to buy an Aranciata and somehow, you’re not sure how, ended up in Rimini?”
“I am sorry,” I said. “I go to Rimini and not call. Now I am in New York. I do not tell you. I am bad.”
“What has happened to you?” he asked. Silvano was now sitting on a couch, more comfortable for him. I got up from the table and sat on his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck. He smelled of oily tobacco and lavender soap. His hair was slick with pomade.
“No talking now,” I said. “I have tired. I sleep now.”
Silvano’s breathing was raspy, heavy. He inhaled and exhaled in great drafts and I rose and fell on his chest as if I were floating on a raft at sea. I had a headache, just a small one, that I attributed to last night’s heavy drinking. Soft blue clouds were exploding against the inside of my eyelids and as my breathing slowed, I thought I heard the voices of children calling me, “Katherine, Katherine,” and soon I was in a deep sleep, dreaming that I was on the beach and children were swimming in the waves. Vieni, Vieni. Join us, Katherine. But in the dream I could not swim. I stayed on the shore because I didn’t want to drown.
I’d hitchhiked across Italy with the two French boys—Ludo and Olivier. Ludo had a new Fiat Seiscento, a graduation gift from his parents, and he and Olivier were off to see the world. I remember them sitting in the car drinking a bottle of red wine, arguing in French. They were probably arguing about me. I’d already had enough to drink at that point and had actually hallucinated my mother, who I thought was standing knee-deep in the water in her favorite houndstooth suit.
Then she disappeared.
I went down the beach and into the water. I wasn’t wearing shoes, but my skirt was long and quickly tangled around my legs. I parted the reflecting surfaces, half expecting to see my mother’s pale face peering up, her hair pulled by currents. Instead all I saw were my own wide eyes again and again, mirrored back from every section of the sea. My heart pumped loudly, but as I calmed down I realized that the thumping wasn’t me, but rather some immense pounding machinery involved in the nearby construction.
I came up the beach, exhausted.
“Are you okay,” the French boys asked. “Were you drowning?”
“Je suis ça va,” I said. “And no, I wasn’t drowning.”
“Then why this?” said Ludo and he gestured up and down my body, indicating my suspicious disarray.
I wrung my skirt out and sat down on the sand. The sea was gray, cold, and blank—not beautiful at all. I pushed my hair off my face and said, “I’m not really sure.”
That night I went out with Ludo and Olivier and drank myself into a coma. The bar was not much of a bar, rather the downstairs of the rooming house. The booze was cheap and the beer cold and that’s all I really cared about at the time. There were white Formica tables and fluorescent lights that fizzled, at times lit you up like an X ray. Up the street, they were tearing down an old house and all the construction workers were lodged in the rooms upstairs. This is where Pietro, my handsome construction worker, normally stayed, but he had left that afternoon to visit his wife. And all that was left for me were the Frenchmen: Ludo with his blond hair and annoying laugh, Olivier with his freckles.
I had fallen into a profound misery and was having a hard time explaining this to the Frenchmen. I was having a hard time explaining this to myself.
“Sweet baby,” I remember Olivier saying. “I help you. I help you.” And I remember Ludo’s milky eyes staring at me as he lay with his head rested on the table.
Ludo and Olivier were not very amused when I was still morose the next day. We were ostensibly driving to Paris, because their money had run out and I had nothing better to do. I could see them giving me disapproving looks in the rearview mirror. A hangover was one thing, but American girls were supposed to be fun. Something was making me throw up. Alcohol was a possible cause, but I thought it was food poisoning coupled with fear and a threatening depression, which was hovering around like an opportunistic thundercloud. At any rate, while I was vomiting out behind the Fina, they left me.
20
Throughout the whole plane trip to Portland, I thought of Arthur. A part of me had wanted Arthur to save me, for this to be the one special relationship. He was my angel. But a number of things had happened over the course of the last couple of weeks, a number of things I was going to have to keep from him. The relationship, despite all my optimism, had already failed and Arthur had become a mirror, reflecting all my deviancy back at me. I considered being frank with him, but quickly changed my mind. Arthur would be happier that way. Wasn’t the truth usually the most ugly thing in life? If truth wasn’t inherently ugly, than why was truthfulness so laudable?
I called Arthur from the airport.
“Are you at Newark?” he asked.
“No. Surprise, surprise. I’m in Portland.”
“Great. I can’t wait to see you,” he said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Let me take a cab,” I said. “It’s no big deal. Make sure there’s something to drink in the house.”
Hearing his voice on the phone had a calming effect on me. I missed him, his easy manner, the damaged quality that made him warm and sensitive.
I’d been away for only two weeks, but it felt much longer and also somehow much shorter. The leaves were all gone and the sky an even steel color. I could smell snow in the air. Boris and I had a big fight just as I was leaving. I’d hoped that I would be able to sneak away without a blow-up and all the signs were promising. We’d made it out of the apartment in peace. Boris had whistled “Lily Marlene” all the way down in the elevator. We’d waved to the doorman, who was negotiating some packages for Mrs. Mingus while her Pomeranian was trying to eat his leg. The cab had been waiting right where it was supposed to be and there was no traffic in any direction. The avenue of sky blocked out by the buildings was a lovely blue. Boris kissed the top of my head and put me in the cab.