She had given him the gold ring with the black stone the day before they left for Europe last summer. He had looked at the inside of the ring and said, “From G.V. Is that all?”
“Those are my initials,” she said, “aren’t they?”
“Yes, but shouldn’t it read ‘From G.V. With Love’?”
She shrugged and said, “The love is understood.”
In Paris, there were a great many business people to meet and talk to, and therefore a great many parties — cocktail, dinner, midnight buffet. They had practiced their French assiduously before the trip, speaking nothing else for days before their flight, and in Paris they had ample opportunity for putting the language to use. It became a little more difficult on the road, where the pure French became somewhat bastardized, making it harder to understand and be understood. From the Esso booklet, he memorized the sentence Faites le plein, s’il vous plaît, et vérifiez l’huile et l’eau, impressing no one but himself, and at a total loss when it came to answering automotive questions put to him by garage attendants.
She was wearing a light plaid topcoat the day they discovered the Roman arena in the small French roadside town. It had been raining all morning, and then the rain stopped abruptly, leaving behind it a cold and gloomy day, more like October than August.
“October always makes me sad,” she said.
“This is August,” he said.
“Still,” she answered.
The arena was not marked in any of the guidebooks, nor had they even remotely suspected that the Romans had ever advanced this far into France. The town, in fact, was a combination of incongruous elements. It seemed to be a typical French country town, but there was undeniably a Roman arena in its center; and beyond the arena, its sign clearly visible from the upper rim of the stadium, was an English tearoom. The sign, moreover, was lettered in English, the black letters centered on a field of white, TEA ROOM, SO that for a moment he felt oddly displaced and wondered exactly where the hell he was, France, Italy, or England.
To further confuse the conglomerate geography, as Buddwing stepped down over the tiers of seats and onto the arena’s turf still wet with the morning’s rain, he had the feeling that he was walking into an American football stadium. He looked back and up at Grace, who was standing on one of the stone tiers, her hands in the pockets of the plaid coat. He grinned and chanted, “Give ’em the ax, give ’em the ax, give ’em the ax...”
“Where?” she said automatically, but her mind seemed to be elsewhere; her eyes were preoccupied.
They drove into Milan on a Saturday, and checked into their hotel at noon. The streets were mercilessly hot, and the lobby of the hotel seemed shaded and almost cool by comparison. The desk clerk took their passports and then looked at Grace in surprise and said, “Credevo che fosse italiana.”
“No,” she replied with a strange pleased mysterious smile, “non sono italiana.”
“Tutti in Italia la prendono per italiana,” Buddwing said.
“Certo, che sembra una settentrionale,” the desk clerk answered, and rang for the bellhop. The room was sleek and modern, with a huge double bed, and a mirrored wall, and a marble bathroom with a dozen mysterious knobs and hoses. But the air conditioner was out of order, and the moment they stepped into the room, they were assailed with a contained heat more formidable than that in the streets outside. Buddwing went to the phone immediately and asked for the desk.
“Questa stanza è impossibile,” he said. “L’aria condizionata non funziona.”
“Si, signore,” the desk clerk answered, “ma non è soltanto la sua stanza, signore, è la stessa cosa in ogni stanza nell’albergo. Qualche cosa è successo al sistema centrale.”
“Mi vuol dire che non c’è neanche una stanza fresca in tutto l’albergo?”
“No, signore. Tutte le stanze sono ad aria condizionata. È soltanto che per il momento il sistema centrale non funziona, e così ci sarà un piccolo ritardo per giungere alla temperatura giusta.”
“What do you mean by a short delay?” he asked in English, and then said, “Ma, quanto ci volere... ci vorrà per accomodarlo?”
“Ci stanno lavorando adesso, signore.”
“Quanto tempo ci vuole?”
“Non dovrebbe essere troppo, signore.”
Buddwing covered the mouthpiece with the palm of his hand and turned to Grace. “What do you think?” he asked. “There’s something wrong with the central cooling system. They’re working on it now.”
“I’m exhausted,” Grace said. “We might as well stay.”
“Va bene, grazie,” Buddwing said into the phone, and hung up. He turned to the waiting bellhop. “Va bene, puo lasciare le valige,” he said, and then tipped him. They stripped to their underwear as soon as the bellhop was gone, and began unpacking their bags. He was carrying a small portable typewriter in a metal case, and he put it on a table near the single large sealed window in the room. Grace went into the bathroom to bathe, and he lay on the bed in his undershorts, sweating profusely, and fished into his wallet for the telephone numbers of his business contacts in the city.
There was no answer at the first number he called, and when he dialed the second number, he got a scatterbrained secretary who could not understand his Italian.
“Vorrei parlare con il signor D’Amore,” he said slowly and patiently.
“Ah, si, si, il signor D’Amore. Ma non è qui proprio adesso.”
“Bene. Dove l’aspettiamo?”
“Scusi?”
“Quando arriveremo?”
“Scusi?”
“Look, for...” He paused, regained his patience, and then calmly said, “Dove si trova il signor D’Amore?”
“Ah, ah! E a Como.”
“Quando ritorna?”
“In una quindicina di giorni,” the secretary said.
“Grazie,” Buddwing said, and hung up.
“What is it?” Grace called from the bathroom.
“D’Amore’s at Lake Como. He won’t be back for two weeks.”