Italian Fever (24 page)

She pulled the covers up around her chin and stretched out languorously, noting with pleasure and very little surprise the soreness in her hip sockets and across her shoulders. “I’ve been rearranged,” she said dreamily.

On their return from the restaurant, Massimo had pressed his palm to her cheek and forehead. She had a fever, he maintained; it was the result of walking about in the rain. She had made herself ill again. Lucy laughed, shaking off his hands;
she felt fine, full of energy. She was hot, it was true, but this was no ordinary fever. She told him a few stories of saints who evidenced unnaturally high temperatures: of one who, when she drank water, was reported to emit a sound like sizzling coals while steam issued from her mouth and nostrils, and another, an Italian, whose temperature could not be recorded because he routinely burst thermometers. “It’s called,” she said, throwing her sweater over a chair and following it with her blouse,
“ ‘incendium amoris.’ ”

“You are making me anxious, Lucy,” he said. “I am afraid I will be burned.”

“You’re perfectly safe,” she assured him.

“But I am not a god.” He unbuttoned his shirt, slipped it off, and sat next to her on the edge of the bed. She kissed his cheek, bit his ear, wrapped her arms around his bare shoulders.

“That’s okay,” she said. “Because I am not a saint.”

Later, she had the thought that she had been right: He was safe, but she was in mortal danger. By then, she was far too excited to care. As the hours slipped by, Massimo was always willing, never tired; he did not, as she did, burst out in a sweat or pause to gulp down whole glasses of water. His eyes did not roll back beneath the lids; he was not even breathless. He was with her every moment, encouraging her, occasionally expressing admiration for her stamina or complimenting her on some adroit maneuver. He seemed blissfully unaware that she was up to something, that his self-possession drove her on and she would not give in until she broke through it somehow and left him gasping, as she was, somewhere outside the world he knew so well.

At last she did give up, though it was her body and not her desire that failed her. She was forced to take the measure of the
challenge she had set herself. Massimo was not, perhaps, a god, but he was a fortress, and she did not constitute a serious threat to his defenses. She was like some absurd swashbuckling mouse flailing away at the great iron gates with her toothpick sword. This image accosted her as she was on top of Massimo, holding him down by the shoulders, her arms rigid, ramming herself maniacally against him, and it struck her as so ridiculous that she collapsed against his chest in helpless laughter.

He held her, bemused and interested. “What is it?” he said. “Lucy, what is funny?”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m just knocking myself out here.”

“You are,” he said. “This is true. You will be worn out completely.”

“But I don’t care,” she said. Then her amusement turned to chagrin and bitterness, because it was a cruel fate to be a brave mouse with no hope of success.

Massimo sensed the change in her mood and drew her face up to his, kissing her so tenderly that, for a moment, she thought he was touched by her. “My poor Lucy,” he said. “You do care for me.” Then he rolled her smoothly beneath him and, while with her last remaining strength she held on tight, he brought the matter to a tumultuous close.

He had turned the shower off now. She could hear him moving around in the narrow bathroom. The door opened and he stood before her, wrapped in a nonabsorbent hotel towel, his hair still dripping onto his shoulders.

“Good morning,” she said.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

He came to sit beside her on the bed and laid his hand upon her forehead. “No. You do not have a fever,” he said.

“I’m fine,” she repeated. “I sweated it all out last night, whatever it was.”

“You didn’t get much rest, Lucy.”

“I didn’t come here to rest,” she said.

He flinched at this indelicate remark and she felt the withdrawal of his approval. “What will you do while I am gone this morning?” he asked. He got up and busied himself over his suitcase, giving half his attention to her answer, the other half to the correct choice of socks.

Lucy stretched and yawned. A great weariness came over her; she was not, she realized, up for the battering racket of the streets outside. “I think I’m just going to stay in this bed,” she said.

“This is a wise decision,” he said. “Shall I have them bring you some coffee?”

“No. I’ll go out later and get breakfast at a bar.”

He pulled on his shirt and shorts. “I will come back at eleven-thirty,” he said. “We will have lunch at a
fattoria
outside the city, a beautiful place. I think you will like it.”

“Great,” she said. And that will be it, she thought. The arrangements were all made. He would leave her in Ugolino; tomorrow the mail service would pick up DV’s boxes and Antonio Cini would take her to Sansepolcro to return the car. The next day, a new driver would come down from Milan to drive her to the airport.

Massimo had finished dressing. He was bent over his suitcase, making sure everything was folded properly, that he had left nothing behind. Lucy turned away from him, toward the heavily curtained window, where a slender thread of light escaped in a thin white line across the carpet. She closed her eyes as she heard the double snap of the suitcase lock.

Be very strong about this, she told herself, or you will regret
it. No tears. He clearly isn’t going to be shedding any, so why should you?

But at the order—no tears—as if in protest, hot, bitter tears gathered in her eyes, overflowed, and rushed down her face into her hair. She lay there helplessly, trying to blink them away. Massimo came to the bed and leaned over her, kissed her cheek, her neck, her shoulder. She stayed still, though her impulse was to reach out and drag him back into the bed. “Why are you weeping, Lucy?” he said. “You should not be so sad.”

“I shouldn’t have come to Rome,” she said; then her voice broke. So much for being strong, she thought. But what was the point? Strong people never got to say what they really thought.

“What are you saying, Lucy? Why should you not have come here? Has it been so disagreeable to you?” This last question had an edge of impatience to it. Could she be so ungrateful as to complain of his treatment of her?

“No. It’s just that I don’t want to know all the things I know now.”

He sat down on the bed beside her and rested his hand against her cheek, for all the world, she thought, like a mother comforting an unhappy, fretting child. “What things, Lucy?” he asked.

She turned onto her side, facing away from him, sniffing and rubbing her eyes. “I need a handkerchief,” she said. He produced a clean one from his coat pocket, which she snatched greedily without looking at him. As she pressed it to her nose, she thought, I’m keeping this handkerchief. I am not giving it back.

“What things?” Massimo said again.

“Oh, everything,” she whined, dabbing at her eyes. “I don’t
want to know that Catherine left DV for Antonio, and I don’t want to know that DV fell into a septic tank.…”

“A septic tank?” Massimo said. “What is this? What are you talking about?”

“Antonio told me,” she said, turning onto her other side to face him, her tears allayed by the pleasurable urgency of giving information. “It wasn’t a well; it was a septic tank. A
pozzo nero
, you say.”

Massimo’s brow furrowed in deep lines of disbelief. “A
pozzo nero
?” he said. “How is this possible?”

“Some neighbor had opened it because the tank was cracked.”

“Please,” Massimo said. “This is too unpleasant.”

“It is,” Lucy agreed. “It’s too unpleasant. It’s all too unpleasant.”

“You must not think about such things, Lucy. Especially when you are overtired. You are still not well, you know. You should sleep a little now, and then when you wake up, you will see that everything is not so terrible.”

“Whenever I try to tell you how I feel, you tell me I’m sick,” she complained.

“Please, Lucy,” he said.

“I think you like me better when I’m sick.”

His eyes made a quick survey of the distance to the door and back again. “Let us not have a stupid quarrel,” he entreated. “We have so little time left. Why should we argue pointlessly?”

“Why not?” she replied sharply. She succumbed to an urge to recklessness she recognized as both dangerous and irresistible. “We’ve nothing to lose.”

He shrugged. It was a game he didn’t much care for, but if she insisted, he would play. “Perhaps it is more true to say you
like
me
better when you are sick, Lucy,” he said. “I am always the same. It is you who changes.”

This stopped her momentarily. Was it true? “That’s another thing I don’t want to know,” she replied, turning away from him again.

He said nothing, only stroked her arm and patted her shoulder gently. He
is
trying to help me through this, she thought as another flood of tears blurred her vision and she pulled her knees up to her chest, weeping as quietly as she could into the handkerchief.

“My poor Lucy,” he said.

“I
am
changed,” she sobbed. “And it’s all your fault. Do you think I ever spent a night like last night in my life? And what do you think the odds are that I’ll ever have another, Massimo? Well, I’ll tell you, the same odds as that Jesus Christ is about to knock on that door.”

His hand rested on her shoulder and he looked momentarily at the door. “You are saying that you will not enjoy lovemaking so much with someone else.”

Lucy rolled onto her back and looked up at him mournfully. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying.”

He took her hand in his own, smiling ruefully. “How can I wish that you will?” he said.

“This is not a compliment, Massimo,” she said. “It’s an accusation.”

“Who would not be flattered to be accused of such a crime?”

“It is a crime,” she observed.

“What do you want to say, Lucy? That you wish you never met me? That I have harmed you in some way?”

“No,” she admitted. “I can’t say that.”

“Do you imagine that I am not sad, too, that you are going back to America?”

“Yes,” she said. “That is what I imagine. I think your life is so full, you’ll be relieved to have me out of it.”

“My life is very full, that is true,” he said. “But this time I have spent with you has made me wish sometimes it was not so.”

“Is that really true?”

He gave her his most serious attention. “Yes, Lucy. That is really true.”

The paltriness of this cold comfort amused her. It was the closest to a profession of strong feeling she would ever get, she realized. On cold nights in Brooklyn, she would warm herself with the memory of it; she had made him wish he was not too busy for her. “Okay,” she said. “I believe it. You can go now. But I want to keep the handkerchief.”

He gave a weak laugh of assent and stood up next to the bed, repeating the time of his return. When he looked back at the door, she said, “I’ll be ready.” Then he was gone.

She pulled the pillow under her head and stretched her arms and legs wide apart, taking up as much space as possible. It was one of the feeble pleasures of the single life, this position. There were others, which she toted up, saving the best for last, which was never having to answer to anyone about where you were. “Why does this hurt so much?” she said, for now, on top of physical weariness, came misery, followed by jealousy. It was ridiculous, she knew, to be jealous of a married man, especially as she was not jealous of his wife, but of a woman he had just met and with whom he could not possibly be having an affair. But she didn’t believe his story about Catherine Bultman; at least she didn’t believe he’d gone to see her
because he wanted to help solve a mystery. Lucy was leaving, but Catherine was here, and certainly available and safe, what with her aristocratic lover tucked away in the country and her ready access to his fortune. She wasn’t likely to give that arrangement up, but how often could Antonio be in Rome? Massimo had sniffed out the truth in his own interests; he was, as he had pointed out himself, no fool. Why would he not take advantage of what was clearly a very attractive situation?

Lucy’s only consolation was her conviction that Catherine was more than a match for Massimo. If he could get her attention, it would only be long enough for her to make him suffer.

Lucy disliked knowing what Massimo had discovered about Catherine, though it certainly made sense. It meant Antonio Cini had another face, one she hadn’t even been able to glimpse, and that Catherine herself, as she freely admitted, actually was willing to do anything for her art. Did that make her less or more sincere as an artist? There was no way of knowing. Artists needed money, like everyone else, and patrons were always insistent upon their right to exercise some kind of control. DV had believed in Catherine’s ambitions, had certainly done what he could to enable her to pursue them, but she’d found him oppressive, or so she said. Perhaps she’d only found out how much money was going out in child support every month. He certainly had not been willing to set her up on her own in a city he rarely visited. No, Antonio’s was the better offer.

How devastated DV must have been, for in spite of his bluster, he was never confident. He worked hard, doggedly, because he believed that with diligence and determination he could somehow win the prize. To have Catherine, his goddess, the woman he wanted for his muse, tell him he would be better off gardening, and then leave him for the foreign fop next
door, well, Lucy could understand why he had closed himself up in the farmhouse and applied himself entirely to the steady consumption of alcohol.

But why had Catherine felt the need to destroy DV with ridicule before she left? Had she actually persuaded herself that she was leaving not because she had received a better offer, but because she had discovered he was a mediocre hack? DV was not an artist—that was his tragedy—but did that mean he had no right to love beauty?