He signaled for the waiter. They were both silent while he added up the check. David deciphered it and paid him, and then helped Gillian into her coat. The old man with the hanging white mustache had ordered another dish of sherbet.
They went out into the rain. The bell over the door tinkled again. The yellow table tops were still there. Up the street, the cabs were still lined up. Nothing had changed. Everything was still the same.
“Will you walk me to a taxi?” Gillian asked. She thrust her hands into her pockets, and he took her elbow. “Sunny Italy,” she said. They walked silently. As they approached the hack stand, she stopped. “I’m staying at the Excelsior,” she said. “If you want to, you can call me there.”
“Do you want me to call, Gillian?” he asked.
She waited for a long time before answering. Then she said, “I want you to come with me now, David.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered. “I want you. It’s as simple as that.” She hesitated and then said, “Hasn’t it always been as simple as that, David?”
She was a young girl again, trembling with need and anticipation, as innocent as she had been that first time so long ago, trembling on the brink of discovery. He kissed her gently and with infinite tenderness, and her mouth formed to accept his kiss, curving to fit the mold of his lips, pressing his mouth in tentative exploration, softly, gently, lips that were old friends greeting each other anew and with freshness, partially suspicious of the ardor of an earlier time, filled with wonder at the endurance of memory, the persistence of training. She pulled away from him suddenly and looked directly into his face, her eyes meeting his, touching his nose with curious fingers, and his mouth, and his cheekbones, and then back to his mouth again.
“I wanted so much to kiss you in the rain,” she whispered.
“I love you, Gillian,” he whispered.
“Yes, yes, I love you.”
“You’re so beautiful, darling.”
“Yes, call me darling.”
“Darling, darling. Gillian, my darling.”
“Yes, please. You say it with such love. You do love me, David, don’t you? You do love me still?”
“Yes, I do love you still.”
“Yes, and I love you. Would you kiss me, darling? Would you please kiss me again?”
He kissed her, and she suddenly hugged him fiercely. “Oh, it’s so good to be with you again,” she said, holding him tight. “Oh, David, it’s so damn good.”
His hands were upon her again, remembering again with a memory of their own. Her mouth closed upon his, they moved together with the precision of meshing gears, there was, he could hear his watch ticking in the stillness, a breath-holding, clumsy, time-suspended moment when they joined irrevocably, flesh claiming flesh, and suddenly she began sobbing.
She turned her head into the pillow and began sobbing, and he stumbled on the sudden tears, the world stopped dead with her tears, time stopped, she twisted her head, wrenched it from the pillow, looked into his face and his eyes, her own face tear-streaked, and whispered angrily, whispered in confusion and despair and puzzlement, whispered, “Where did we lose it, David? Oh, David, David, where did we lose it?”
He looked at her, startled for a moment, holding her in his arms and staring at the misery on her face, and then he seized her close in fear, held her trembling body close to his because he did not want to let her go now that he had found her again, didn’t she realize they had found each other again? Didn’t she know they hadn’t lost anything? Held her desperately. Clung to her, frightened. Held her, held her, and shook his head, tried to shake the truth from his head, realizing it was the truth, and thinking, Good old Gillian, straight to the point, and then nodding with a weary sort of resignation, nodding, and releasing her, and accepting it as something he had known all along. He had known it on the steps after the first shock of recognition, known it when he took her hand and ran down the street, known it as they sat strangers to each other while the old man spooned sherbet into his mouth. And again when they declared their love feverishly, when they desperately whispered, “I love you, I love you,” they could still say the words, the words were always and ever the same, “I love you, I love you,” but it was done and finished, drowned by time, and now there were only the words and the empty motions, but nothing more.
And nothing more to say, really.
Nothing.
“I’m sorry.” She was sobbing into the pillow. She kept one fist pressed to her mouth and sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Gilly, Gilly.”
“I hate endings. Oh God, I hate things to end. I’m sorry, David. I’m so terribly sorry.”
He kissed her gently, and he cupped her face with his hands and pushed her hair back behind her ears, and she smiled wanly and said, “You know I don’t like that, David.”
He released her hair.
He felt a terrible need to leave quickly. He felt he was suddenly in danger. He could accept the fact that it was over, he could accept the knowledge that their love had changed, that it was gone, that there was really nothing for them any more. But he had the feeling that if he stayed longer he would discover their love had never been. The idea frightened him. He did not think he could bear that knowledge. He had to maintain the belief that they had loved each other once, had loved each other completely and magnificently, had to believe that time could not obliterate memory — it could change people, yes, but it could not destroy what they once had shared.
“I wish you everything, Gilly,” he said. “I wish you everything in the world.”
He kissed her once more, gently, and then dressed and quickly left the room and the stranger on the bed.
The office was in an old Roman building, solid with the dignity of time. He located the lawyer’s name on a brass plaque set into one of the building’s entrance columns and then walked upstairs to the second floor. A blond Italian girl was sitting behind a desk in the small reception room. He told her who he was, and she went into Fabrizzi’s office, returned a moment later, and motioned for David to follow her.
Fabrizzi was standing behind his cluttered desk, a man in his sixties with a full head of shocking black hair, and piercing brown eyes, and a large hooked nose. A thin, angular man, he extended a large hand and pumped David’s hand energetically and said in good English, “Sit down, Mr. Regan. I’m sorry I was away, but the heat...” He shrugged philosophically. “This rain is welcome,” he said. “Rome is only for animals in the summer.”
He smiled as David sat. Watching him, David became suddenly nervous and frightened, nervous because he knew immediately he had been wrong about Fabrizzi, frightened because he knew Fabrizzi would tell him what he wanted to know. He sensed this in the man’s cordial welcome and easy attitude, and he wondered all at once if he really wanted to know at all.
“Do you know why I’m here, Mr. Fabrizzi?” he asked.
“I think so, yes,” Fabrizzi answered, nodding.
“I want to find out about my mother’s will,” David said. He spoke very softly and very slowly.
“That is understandable,” Fabrizzi answered, speaking softly and slowly in return.
He felt suddenly that he knew Fabrizzi very well, felt as if this were an old friend he had come to for advice, a friend with whom he could speak without caution, completely relaxed.
“My mother left half her estate to you in trust, Mr. Fabrizzi,” David said. He hesitated a moment. “The will mentions a separate agreement, an agreement that specifies how the trust is to be handled. Are you familiar with this agreement, Mr. Fabrizzi?”