Hotel of the Saints (6 page)

The pigeons' cooing was monotonous, seductive. When they landed on me, I wanted to shake them off, their wings, their beaks, their claws—they felt disgusting, tender where they rasped against my arms, my hair, my shoulders—yet I stood still for his camera. Five years earlier, I had stood in this same piazza with my parents, laughing and tossing maize to the pigeons. “Why don't we ever see pigeons out at night?” I had asked my mother, and she'd told me the old women took the pigeons home in their black shawls at dusk.

I told that story to Herr Hilger when we ate our lunch of
scaloppine di pollo
in the restaurant of an eight-hundred-year-old
palazzo.
Our table was by a window that opened out to a small side canal, where painted boats unloaded crates of fruits and vegetables.

“My mother said the old women let the pigeons loose again in the morning … to lure back the tourists so that the women can sell their maize.”

“That means the pigeons keep the old women alive,” he said, and smiled at me.

It was the first time I'd seen him smile. It changed his whole face, took away that tired and sad expression. And it was because of something I had said. His green eyes were lighter than usual, and I felt certain he would always be my friend from now on. I'd have two best friends, Elsie and him. I imagined him
leaning toward me … raising one hand to my face, and—

“What is it, Christa?” he asked.

My fantasy had stopped, and I didn't know what was to come next, just as I didn't know that I would never see the Hilgers after that summer.

“Verdi abandoned music,” he said. “Right after his wife and
two children died. For one entire year he did not compose. He was still a young man. Just think—what a loss it would have been…. His most significant works,
Aïda
and
Otello,
came decades later,
Aïda
when he was almost sixty,
Otello
when he was in his mid-seventies and everyone thought he had long since retired.”

While he told me the story of
Aida,
water gushed out intermittently from the sides of the buildings that lined the canal and merged with the gray waters of the canal.
“The length of a good flush”
Elsie would say. I wanted to tell that to Herr Hilger, but I didn't because it would have been childish.

He ordered
zuppa inglese
for me,
biscotti
for himself. “Verdi is the only composer I know of who has my allergy,” he confided when I offered him a taste of my rum-custard cake.

“What kind of allergy?”

“Certain foods make us itch.”

“Really?”

“Anything with milk.”

“Even cheese?”

“Cheese, ice cream … If I even just had one spoonful of your
zuppa inglese,
I'd get itchy all over.”

“You can't have ice cream? Not ever?”

He shook his head. “Sometimes it gets so bad that my neck and arms are chafed from where I've scratched myself. My first piano teacher told me that Verdi's hands were sometimes raw….”

I saw myself
covering his sore hands with clean white gauze … holding them in mine, waiting for them to heal while we listen to Verdi's music.

Though he was silent, I knew by now that there were always
words beneath his silences, and I wasn't surprised when he said them aloud. “An entire island … Do you know there is an entire island for the dead here, Christa? It's called San Michele. There's something really beautiful about that.”

I didn't know what to say.

“An island that belongs to the dead. And close by is another island, Burano, where lace is made. Fine, beautiful lace … much of it for bridal veils.”

“I was there with my parents.”

“Death and love so close together…”

I shivered. “My mother bought a lace tablecloth on Burano. We saw a bride and groom come out of a church. Both had very large noses.”

Once again, Herr Hilger smiled his rare, splendid smile for me.

“I wondered what their children's noses would look like, but my mother said to be kind.”

“You're already one of the kindest people I know, Christa.”

“Really? Sometimes my parents say I'm selfish. And stubborn.”

“That's not how I know you.”

When we took a gondola to the gilded concert hall, oil slicks shimmered on the water and trembled as we passed through them. In the molten gray of the water, they adjusted themselves again, spreading into their original shapes.

“I'm so delighted that Christa appreciated Verdi,” Frau Hilger told my father the next day, as we all headed to the market.

“It was the most perfect day of my life,” I said.

My father raised his eyebrows.

But Frau Hilger patted my arm. “It means the world to Herr Hilger to share his love for music.”

She walked ahead with my father, and the two of them chose
prosciutto
and
salametti,
pimento-stuffed olives, figs, slices of casaba melon, and almond macaroons for the picnic she was planning for us by the lighthouse. When I stopped to look at a necklace, the thin vendor in the red shirt, who'd sold me an enameled mirror for Elsie only a few days before, began his friendly barter, one hand already reaching for my hair.

“Half,” he said, dangling the tiny multicolored glass beads in front of me. “My uncle make on Murano, island of glass. I sell you for half original price. You let me stroke sun in your hair again….”

I laughed and glanced at my father, but he did not shake his head as he usually did. Frau Hilger's face was set into her red-red smile, and the air was hot, dusty. Around me all movement, all sound, had ceased, and I suddenly found it hard to breathe with the vendor's bright beads so close to my eyes. I turned toward Herr Hilger, waiting for him to stop all this, but his eyes were glinting as though he were the one ready to touch me, at last, and knew it was what I wanted too—as I did, as all of us must have known I did, collaborators forever in that one long moment before I gripped the vendor's brown hand and placed it on top of my head, letting his fingers sink into my hair, giving up part of myself to defy the three adults as much as to please them, and I wished I were already years away from what felt so terribly confusing, but then the weight of the necklace fell on my throat. I no longer recall who paid for the necklace and fastened it around my neck—all I know is that I couldn't bear it against my skin, that I slipped it off when we reached a fish seller's stand, and that, when I dropped it into a metal pail filled with slippery scales and heads, the familiar clamor of the market rose around me once more as if someone had flipped up a switch.

My first love
has tripled in size. I didn't recognize him, though I noticed him when he entered the Greek restaurant, because the waiter replaced his armchair with a piano bench before he let him sit down. He was with a woman who wore apple-green silk and was heavy too, though not nearly his weight.

“Vera,” he called out across the restaurant, and hoisted himself from the piano bench. His bulk drifted toward me as if carried by the scent of the exotic spices, surprisingly agile, fleshy hands leading.

I glanced behind me, searching for an escape or some other woman named Vera, though I know it's not a common name. All through school, I was the only Vera in my class.

“Vera, sweetie, it's me—Eddie,” he said as if accustomed to identifying himself to people he hadn't seen in a long time. His suit looked expensive, made to order, and in the amber glow of the fringed ceiling lamps, his hair was blond and curly as ever.

“Eddie,” I said, trying to reconcile this man with the image of the wiry boy I'd followed around the neighborhood at fourteen.
I would wait at the end of his street for hours, heart pounding, just to get a glimpse of him, and when he finally started noticing me, he blotted all the questions and uncertainties I'd felt up to that day about my future. Whenever he helped me with my chores in my grandparents' grocery store, I rewarded him with stolen chocolates that we ate until we both felt as though we were about to explode.

“We will always be together,” we said the afternoon he kissed me. “We will always be together,” we promised each other in our letters for nearly half a year after his family moved to Cleveland.

“You look good, Vera. Real good.” The voice was the same, though the fat had changed his features and stretched his skin so tightly that there wasn't space for a single wrinkle. “How long has it been?”

“Almost thirty years, Eddie.”

“How's the food here?”

I felt ill at the thought of him squeezing anything else into that body. “I sold them the restaurant.”

“It was yours?”

“No, no. I'm selling real estate now. The new owner, Mr. Fariopoulos, gave me a bonus—two hundred dollars' worth of meals.”

“I hear their buffet is famous. All you can eat for twelve ninety-five.”

“I usually just order a vegetarian dish.”

“My first wife died seven years ago.” He said it as if her death had been the result of being a vegetarian. He motioned to his table. “Bonnie over there—we got married the year after.”

“Sorry about your first wife. And congratulations on —”

“I don't like weddings.”

“Okay.”

“But that's what we're in Albany for. Another wedding. My cousin's boy. Come, sit with us.”

I hesitated.

“You're probably waiting for someone.”

“Not really.”

“No argument, then.” One hand on my elbow, the other balancing my plate and wineglass, he led me toward his table like a trophy, his hips brushing dangerously close to other tables.

Certain that everyone was staring at us, I felt ashamed of my embarrassment to be seen with him.

He introduced me to his wife, Bonnie. “This is Vera.” He beamed. “You know, the Vera of my youth.” He made me sound mysterious and glamorous, and I wondered what he'd told his wife about me.

She tucked her handbag under her arm and greeted me with the cautious smile of heavy women who don't trust thin women. Her face had the natural look you can only achieve with skillful makeup.

Eddie sat down, his knees spread to accommodate his enormous thighs. “My cousin says you married a dentist.”

“That was finished a long time ago.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Don't. I was ready.”

“Any kids?”

“A daughter. She's at the University of New Hampshire.”

“Good for you. Bonnie and I, we have our own pharmacy. In a mall. She handles the cosmetics and over-the-counter stuff, I get to count the pills.” He laughed. “Amazing … Remember
how I used to hate math?” He leaned over to his wife, one hand across his tie to keep it from falling into my glass. “Vera let me copy her homework.”

“And you helped me in the store.”

But he didn't hear me. He was frowning at my plate of eggplant and rice. “I think I'll go for the buffet, Bonnie.”

“Me too.”

His enormous backside blocked out half the buffet table as he loaded up his plate. Oh, Eddie, I thought, Eddie, unable to continue my meal as I watched him eat silently, shoveling his food into his mouth at an alarming speed, giving shape to my deepest fears. To think I used to eat like that as a girl. To think I sometimes still longed to eat like that.

“How long are you staying in Albany, Eddie?” I asked, wishing he hadn't come back at all.

“Hold that question, Vera. I'll be right back.” His breath had taken on the rich aroma of the food. Pushing the piano bench back, he headed for the buffet.

Bonnie only kept up with him for three trips, and then she sank into her chair, tiny beads of moisture between her perfect eyebrows; but Eddie kept returning for more, and with each bite he swallowed, I felt my stomach distend, harden.

It was on Eddie's fifth approach to the buffet that the owner of the restaurant, Mr. Fariopoulos stepped into his way. He was nearly a head shorter than Eddie, and he raised one lean hand and held it up in front of Eddie's chest to stop him. Without lowering his voice, he informed Eddie that he had eaten enough. “More than enough,” Mr. Fariopoulos said.

His face purple-red, Eddie stood there like a boy caught stealing chocolates, and I felt his humiliation as though it were
my own. Nearly everyone in the restaurant was watching him, except Bonnie, who was staring at the white tablecloth, her face rigid. Eddie opened his mouth—not to say something, but to breathe easier. He did not move—neither toward the buffet nor toward our table.

I had no idea what I was about to say when I got up and walked toward Eddie and Mr. Fariopoulos. My stomach was aching as if I'd eaten far too much, and my heart was beating as fiercely as all those times I'd waited for Eddie to appear in the door of his house.

I linked my arm through his and gave a nod to Mr. Fariopoulos. “I'm glad you've had a chance to meet my friend, Eddie.”

“Vera—” Mr. Fariopoulos started.

“The menu,” I asked, “what do you have printed next to the word 'buffet? Is it 'all you can eat? Or 'all we let you eat?”

“You and your friends are always welcome here.”

“All we let you eat?”

“All you can eat. You know that. But we can't afford to keep this place open if everyone eats like him.”

“Then I'll be glad to put it back on the market for you.”

“Vera,” Eddie said, “you don't have to—”

“But I do,” I said, and turned to Mr. Fariopoulos. “Tell me”—now I was going—“how many of your customers stop after the first trip to the buffet? Do you give them a discount? A doggie bag?”

It ended up with Mr. Fariopoulos apologizing to Eddie and telling him there would be no bill at all. In the parking lot, Eddie was rather quiet, and his hands felt cold when I grasped them to say goodbye, but Bonnie told me to visit them if I ever
got to Cleveland. What I didn't expect was the dream I had that night, a wonderfully erotic dream about Eddie —not the way he used to look as a boy, when I'd suffered that first, glorious crush on him, but the way he was now. He drew me into his huge embrace, sheltered me against his solid chest. We were lying in the meadow behind my grandparents' store, and spread in front of us were all the pastries and cakes I had ever denied myself. We ate together—passionately, joyfully—letting each other taste the most satisfying delicacies without remorse. Eddie's breath was sweet as he consumed me with his hungry mouth, replenished me with his hungry mouth. My arms were long enough to reach around him. His body felt light as he enveloped me into his soft vastness, so light that he took us all the way up to the sky.