Italian Fever (25 page)

So Lucy came through jealousy and self-pity to a state of sympathetic identification with her dead employer, a man she had not known well in life, nor had what she did know inspired her admiration. Their situations were not dissimilar; they had both fallen in love with beauty, and beauty had briefly toyed with them. But beauty was inviolable, like great art; it both excited and resisted the passion for possession. That was why she always had the sensation that she could not break through Massimo’s self-possession, and it was exactly that sense of exclusion that made their lovemaking so constantly tantalizing. Beauty is a cruel mother, Lucy thought sleepily. She draws us in and then rejects us. Irresistible, unobtainable.

Amid these esoteric musings, Lucy slipped into a deep sleep, from which she woke feeling refreshed and cheerful. There would be no further scenes, no protestations of regret, or expressions of anxiety about the future. When Massimo arrived, she greeted him with warm affection. She had slept so long, she confessed, she had failed to have breakfast, and now she was famished. He was surprised by her good humor. Certainly he had no wish for a gloomy parting, but wasn’t it a little insulting, how eager she was to leave the hotel and hurry on to the next meal?

Chapter 21

J
ESUS
,”
LUCY EXCLAIMED
as she rammed both feet down hard on the brake and clutch, narrowly escaping collision with the dented rear fender of Antonio Cini’s car. It was impossible, she thought. Catherine Bultman could not have submitted to the embraces of a man who drove this poorly. Whenever he got up to a decent cruising speed, Antonio seemed to panic and reverted to this spasmodic braking. Fortunately, there was very little traffic on the autostrada.

She both dreaded and welcomed the day ahead, for the plan, as usual, had been changed at the last minute. Antonio had called to say that the shippers would not be coming, as planned, this morning, but early the next afternoon. As this gave Lucy the entire day free, he proposed that after they dropped off DV’s car, he might take her to lunch in Sansepolcro. It would be too bad if she were to leave Italy without seeing something of this ancient town.

She accepted the invitation willingly. At least it meant she wouldn’t have to sit through another dinner at the villa. And she was determined to wring some sort of confession out of Antonio. She wanted to make him drop his pose of indifference on the subject of Catherine and admit the truth, that he had lured her away from DV and that he had an emotional as well as a financial stake in her affairs.

How she would accomplish this, she didn’t know. She had proved so far a very poor detective, and she disliked the sensation of harping on a subject once it was clear the person she addressed wished to change it. She had been a perfect dupe with Catherine, as disarmed by her frankness and beauty as, she felt sure, Catherine had intended she should be. Even Massimo, who had succumbed to Catherine’s spell on sight, had been more observant and certainly more secretive than she had been.

The thought of Massimo stung her, as it was, she knew, only the thought of him she would have from now on. They had parted at the farmhouse without bitterness and without any specific plan for a reunion. Someday perhaps he would travel to America; surely she would return to Italy. She wrote her Brooklyn address and phone number on the back of a postcard she had purchased but never mailed; it was a photograph of a cat sitting on the head of a great stone lion, and he gave her a card with his business address in Milan. She thanked him for saving her life. “It was my pleasure,” he said. “Anytime you are dying, you must call me.”

She looked up from the business card. He was smiling down at her, his habitual, indulgent, patronizing smile, but as her eyes met his, the smile disappeared, replaced by an expression of genuine sadness. “I will miss you, Lucy,” he said. He took her hand, kissed the back of it, then the palm, released her, and strode off to the car.

She stood on the drive, watching him turn the car around. But instead of waving and driving off, he stopped the car, got out, and came back to her with the easy feline grace that had always charmed her. “I want to kiss you once more,” he said. The kiss that followed was so full of heat and longing that she decided to believe it. She pressed her body against his; she clung to his neck. She would never know what his real feelings were, as they were submerged in his bravura performance, but her own condition was crystal clear.

Now Antonio had put on his turn signal, though there was no crossroad in sight. He braked again next to a sunflower field and Lucy had a vision of him plunging into the dense ranks of dark, dry stalks. He crept along for half a mile; then the road he was searching for appeared and he accelerated triumphantly into the oncoming lane.

Lucy followed, the memory of Massimo’s kiss, which it was better not to dwell upon, dislodged by her irritation at Antonio Cini. The new road was rutted and twisty, so he increased his speed. His antique car lurched and shuddered before her in the bright morning sun. As she swerved to avoid a pothole, she saw his rear tire disappearing into the next one. “Where did this man learn to drive?” she said.

In this manner, they traversed several miles of back roads where the only sign of life was the occasional eruption of raucous crows over a field. Then they passed a few low farm buildings, a dirt lot crowded with farm machinery, and another, smaller lot in which several new cars were clustered about a concrete building barely wide enough to accommodate its single window and door. As Lucy followed Antonio into a parking space, she noticed a small sign in the dusty window.
EURAUTO
was stenciled in faded red, white, and green letters.
She turned off the engine and joined Antonio on the pavement. “How did you ever find this place?” she said.

“It is not difficult,” he replied.

“Right,” she said, falling into step behind him. They went into the office, where a nervous young man equipped with a computer he knew nothing about tried for several minutes to generate some vital information about the paid contract Lucy presented. He studied the screen hopefully. “
Niente
,” he said.

Antonio was patient but clearly bored. “These machines make nothing better,” he confided to Lucy. Again the boy’s fingers raced across the keyboard; then he stood blinking nervously at the shiny screen. “
No, niente
,” he said again. He discussed the problem with Antonio, who conveyed their conclusion to Lucy. It had been decided that the clerk would take an imprint of Lucy’s credit card and the charge would be added later, when someone who knew something about the system could figure out what it was.

“But there shouldn’t be any charge,” Lucy complained. “It was all paid in advance. It says so on the contract.”

Antonio looked perplexed. “Then what are we wanting here?”

“A receipt,” she said. “Just ask him to give me a copy of the contract.”

Antonio made this request. Another long conversation ensued. The contract was produced, examined; Lucy pointed to the line that showed it was paid. It was a single sheet, and there was no copy machine in the place. “How was it paid?” she asked Antonio, though she hardly expected him to know. She had found no receipt for it, and DV was careful about such things.

“They do not take credit cards for such a large amount,”
Antonio explained. “Your friend paid in cash. I know this because I took him to the bank to get the money and then I brought him here to take the car.”

“So you know it was paid!” Lucy exclaimed. “So why would I give this guy a blank credit card now? It makes no sense. Can’t you tell him I want only a piece of paper that says it was paid?”

Antonio was losing patience as well, but he endeavored to remain in control. “The credit card is only for the event of small additional charges,” he explained calmly, “or in case the car has been damaged.”

“Damaged!” Lucy felt her blood pressure shooting up. “We can walk outside and look at it and see that it isn’t damaged. Anyway, it’s insured. That’s on the contract, too.”

“Please, Lucia,” Antonio pleaded. He was deeply uncomfortable with the developing scene, Lucy realized. The dull clerk, the boorish American tourist—it was the stuff of his nightmares. He was so miserable, his eyes rolled back under the lids and for a moment Lucy thought he might faint, or simply bolt from the room. But he mastered his emotions and forged on. “This is a stupid boy, but he is not dishonest. It is the way it is done here. I believe if you will consent to give him this credit card, I will persuade him to write out a receipt for you, and that will be the end of the matter. If some charge should appear on your bill, you will please send it to me and I will take care of it, but I assure you, such a thing will not happen.”

“So that’s what people do here?” Lucy said. She opened her purse and dug out the requisite card. “They just hand over huge sums of money and leave blank credit-card vouchers lying around and no one keeps track of anything?”

“I am sure everything is much better in America,” Antonio
murmured. He subjected the clerk, who took the card with alacrity, to a long harangue, complete, Lucy noted, with several references to his own family name. The poor young man was so rattled that, when he handed Lucy the card and the half sheet of paper on which he had written the amount DV had paid, a number so rich in zeros that it ran halfway across the page, he forgot to ask Lucy to sign the credit-card form. The receipt, Lucy noticed, was undated, but the insignia
Eurauto
was printed in the bottom margin. Antonio noticed nothing; he was so eager to be out of the place, he had gone to stand at the door like a dog waiting to be let out. “
Grazie
,” Lucy said to the clerk, who puffed himself up as he replied, “
Prego, signora
.” He had completed the business to his own satisfaction. Lucy stuffed the papers into her purse and followed Antonio out into the parking lot. How long, she wondered, before the poor fellow discovered his mistake?

Antonio started the car and they continued on the dirt road without speaking. There was plenty of noise and excitement, however; the engine creaked and complained, the tires thudded in the holes, and the brakes squeaked. He needs a brake job immediately, Lucy thought, but she knew this was not the time to offer mechanical advice. The road joined up with the smooth two-lane highway to Sansepolcro, and the car settled down to its habitual low whine. “Thank you,” Lucy said, “for helping me with that. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

He smiled without looking at her; the road ahead engaged him. He’s annoyed with me, she thought, because I was annoyed by the clerk, though he thought the clerk was an idiot, too. She resolved to say no more about the business. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him she had not signed the credit-card form. They had entered the ugly strip of warehouse stores, and Lucy looked out the window in gloomy silence.
And she would remain silent all through lunch, she promised herself, before she would offer a new topic of conversation.

“You must tell me, Lucia,” Antonio said, “how did you find Roma?”

“Noisy,” she replied.

“You did not enjoy your visit?”

She relented. She wanted to say a good deal about her visit. “Actually, I enjoyed it very much. I went to the museum in the Villa Borghese and saw
Apollo and Daphne
. That was worth the whole trip.”

“Ah. You are an admirer of Bernini.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

“Of course,” he agreed. “Everyone is. He gives one no choice.”

“I had an odd experience there,” she said. “Shall I tell you about it?”

He nodded again.

“Well, I’ve wanted to see that statue for years. I’d only seen it in pictures, and there it was. And of course, you know, pictures can’t really do it justice.…”

Antonio made a circular motion with one hand, signifying his entire agreement with this opinion. His eyes left the road for a millisecond, taking her in with guarded interest.

“So it was infinitely more wonderful than I’d imagined. At first, I just wanted to look and look at it, and I had the sensation—I think most people feel this in some way—that this statue was speaking somehow to me. To me personally.”

Antonio raised his eyebrows, his eyes still on the road.

“But then I realized what a crass reaction that is. How dull and vain it is to think that I have anything to do with Bernini, or he with me.”

Antonio looked at her again, frankly curious, as if she had
really said something unexpected. “After all,” she continued, “here I am, an American, for God’s sake, I can’t even speak the same language he spoke, and I live in this world”—she gestured out the window at a garden-furniture outlet—“where people build things like that, and nothing lasts.…” She paused. Was this what she had felt? It was difficult to remember, and she wanted to get it right. Antonio was silent, but she could feel the force of his listening. “So I began to think about Bernini, and how hard he worked, and how he did it for himself, not for anyone else, certainly not for me, and how he couldn’t see into the future but that, because of him, I can see a little, just a little, into the past, and I felt grateful to him, just for having lived, and that gratitude was so big, it was so strong, it made me sad. It brought tears to my eyes.”

“You were weeping in the Galleria Borghese?” Antonio asked.

“Well, only a little. No one noticed, I’m sure.”

Antonio drove on without speaking, and Lucy was left to go over her explanation. She had not mentioned, of course, how vulnerable she had been to any and all intrusions of feeling because of her general anxiety about Massimo. But that was a precondition, she thought, of no interest to anyone but her. She looked out the window as Antonio executed a turn onto a wide tree-shaded street lined with double- and triple-parked cars. There were small shops along the pavement and several bars with tables set out in the sun.

“Why is it, Lucia, that people so often believe what you have described, that a work of art has some personal message for them?” Antonio asked.