“It’s not Sasha. It’s you and me.”
Jenny knew that what she was about to say sounded like the lyrics of a bad country-and-western song, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I thought we loved each other. What was all that affection? Did I imagine that?”
Carl spoke in a perfectly even tone. “Of course you didn’t imagine it. What we had was real. It’s just that we’re so … different. I mean, we couldn’t have lasted.”
“We couldn’t?” Jenny’s voice had become an embarrassing croak. Princess into frog, the transformation was easier than anyone would have guessed.
“There’s … stuff I can’t get past with you.”
Jenny wondered if he was fed up with her need to keep things clean and orderly. Or maybe he was tired of her ragging on him for being so irresponsible about money. And she had gotten bitchy about Rome. Carl, who was raised Catholic, did not appreciate her riff about the Vatican’s obscene wealth.
“I mean, you’re not bad-looking,” he explained, “but your hair’s always all frizzy, and face it, Jen, you’ve got a weight problem. You’re never gonna lose those ten pounds you always swear you’ll work off.”
Outside, rain coursed down the windshield in cold, slippery streams. Jenny couldn’t imagine why she wasn’t crying. She bit down through her lower lip, welcoming the taste of her own blood.
“I see,” she said when she could keep her voice steady. “And now you’ve got Sasha, who’s—”
“Terribly beautiful,” Carl said quietly.
It was a perfect description. There was something terrible, uncanny, about Sasha’s pale beauty. Jenny thought of the Valkyries again.
“And I’m not terribly beautiful. Obviously. You can’t get past my hair and my weight. So you might as well dump me and take up with Sasha. It’s very efficient, really. Out with the old, in with the new.” She turned to face him. “Have you fucked her yet?”
“That’s not what this is about. Sasha and I have had some very intense talks — about fate and eternity and about how you can be together without end, and—”
“Have you?”
Staring straight ahead, he nodded.
“God, you’re a shit. And I’m so incredibly stupid. A three-year-old would have seen it coming, but not—”
He reached out a hand to touch her.
“Don’t,” she said, the nausea almost overpowering. “Don’t touch me.”
Carl sighed, the sound of the long-suffering, then made one of his remarkable recoveries. “Jen,” he said conversationally, “when was the last time you saw a sign for Florence?”
“Firenze,” she corrected him automatically. She thought a moment. “Not since we left the autostrada.”
“That was hours ago.”
“I guess.” She’d lost track of the time. Earlier that day her watch had died.
“Well, I know you’re mad as hell, and I don’t blame you, but do you think you could check a map and try to figure out where we are?”
Jenny sat unmoving, watching the wipers futilely pushing at the rain.
Carl held out the only temptation left him. “Look, we can get separate rooms in Florence. The quicker we get there, the quicker you’re rid of me.”
“You are such a shithead.”
“I know.”
Jenny reached into her pack for the flashlight she always carried (Carl liked to tease her about being so well-prepared; he swore she’d been a Boy Scout in an earlier life), and opened the map of Toscana. Her head was pounding. The lines of the map swam before her eyes as she struggled to read it. “Do you remember any of the village names on the last sign we saw?”
“Deviazione?”
“That means detour, you idiot. Didn’t you ever look at the phrase book?” The frog again, crude and croaking. Before tonight she never would have called him an idiot.
“Listen,” Carl said, “I got us through Rome just fine. I don’t remember you driving there. And who figured out the train schedule to Sicily, not to mention—”
Jenny tuned out his list of conquests, trying to visualize the names on the last sign she’d seen. There were three towns. San Vittorio, Arezzo, San Martino? Something like that. They were supposed to be heading toward Arezzo and from Arezzo toward Firenze, but just after they’d turned onto the road toward Arezzo they’d hit the deviazione. She studied the snaking lines on the map and found at least four San Martinos, all between San Gimignano and Arezzo. They could be anywhere.
She peered out through the windshield. Rain and darkness. Not even lightning to break the dark. Only the occasional flickering light of a candle at a roadside shrine.
“Well?” Carl said.
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be reading the map? For a navigator, you—”
“I am not your navigator,” Jenny said clearly.
“Well, then what are you besides fucking useless?”
She hadn’t thought he could hurt her any more than he already had. Wrong again.
She jerked forward as Carl suddenly braked hard and the VW stalled out. A sheep stood in the glare of the headlights, sodden and mud-streaked, and showing absolutely no inclination to move.
Jenny felt a wave of relief go through her. She didn’t have to wait until Florence. She grabbed her pack and opened her door.
“Ciao, Carlo,” she said, and stepped out into the storm.
The rain continued to beat down, cold and determined. Jenny figured she’d probably walked three miles since jumping out of the VW. At first she’d been too angry to even notice distance; it hadn’t mattered that it was dark or wet or that she had no idea of where she was. It felt good to pit herself against the Tuscan hills, to walk until her muscles burned and her pulse raced. Some part of her still couldn’t believe that Carl hadn’t come after her. But that was the point, wasn’t it? He was letting her go.
Jenny flicked on her flashlight as something dark and solid loomed in the darkness. She was standing about ten feet away from a tall, stone house. She racked her memory for phrases from the missing phrase book. She needed to say, “Excuse me, is there a pensione nearby?”
Nervously, she approached the house. She stepped beneath the doorway, grabbed the iron knocker and let it fall.
The door opened and a thin, elderly man, wearing brown wool pants, a matching vest, and an ivory linen shirt with a knotted silk cravat, peered out into the rain.
“Buona sera,” Jenny began. Haltingly, she recited what she remembered. “Mi scusi. Puo dirmi qual’e la via per una pensione?”
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“No pensione.”
Thunder began to roll through the night skies, and the rain thickened into a nearly solid wall of water.
“Piove. Vai alla Casa dei Gatti,” the old man said briskly.
Piove, she recognized. He was telling her it was raining. The rest she couldn’t quite make out.
“Vai,” he repeated. “La Casa dei Gatti. Sbrigati!”
The last word meant hurry up. Their landlady in Rome was always urging Carl to propose to Jenny. “Sbrigati!” she’d tell him, as if Carl were capable of hurrying.
Jenny stared longingly into the room beyond the doorway, a high-ceilinged kitchen with brick walls, a long, rough wooden table, and a fire roaring in the hearth. It looked so warm and inviting that she couldn’t quite believe it when the old man gave a crisp Buona sera and shut the door in her face.