Under the Same Sun (Stone Trilogy) (25 page)

She shrugged. “Yes, but you’re holding up the line. I’m in a hurry.”

He made room for her, even returned to the sidewalk, but waited until she came out, a paper bag in hand. She stopped when she saw him staring.

“Have a great day,” she called; “enjoy Hamburg while you’re here. Your concert last night was great; my friends and I had a very good time. I like that new song about the stones. Bye now!” She walked away without looking back, without even a glance.

Never before in his career had he encountered something like this, and it left him feeling stupid, stumped, and speechless. Slowly, sipping his coffee, he began to walk down the broad sidewalk past the stores, enjoying the vista of the lake on the other side of the road, the sunlight dancing on the water. A couple of small boats were out, their white sails like big birds flitting across the surface, gulls circling around them.

The entrance to the department store was to his right. It was a luxurious place, and it would not have looked out of place anywhere on Fifth Avenue with all the marble and brass, the elegant window displays, and the glass cupola at its center, much admired by Naomi. She had pointed out to him that it showed the constellations that were the zodiac. Puzzled, he had stared at it, his neck craned, and wondered how she knew, who had taught her to recognize the stars, and why she knew in the first place. His admiration for her had soared, and once again he had felt the pride at having won her love, his beloved, a wife to show off. Right away shame had flooded him, and he had moved on, asking if she wanted her computer now.

J
on pushed open the heavy entrance door. A bouquet of scents welcomed him from the cosmetics department on the first floor. He strolled past the colorful counters, glancing at the lipsticks and artful flacons, at the pretty girls in their neat outfits waiting for customers, and made his way toward the escalator. The day before when they had been here, he had noticed a couple of nice sweaters; and now, with nothing better to do, he felt like some shopping.

Going up, his attention was caught by a woman on the escalator going down, and he had to look again. Her face was turned away; she was watching something going on behind her, her hand resting on the rail, purse tucked under her arm. He knew that purse; he knew the shirt she was wearing, every curve and angle of that body, and yet Jon was sure his eyes were playing some cruel prank on him.

“Naomi?” he asked, his voice cracking in disbelief.

She swiveled around, her eyes wide in surprise, and, seeing him, she smiled. “Jon! What are you doing here? You’re not looking for me, are you? I was…”

Relentlessly, she was moving away from him; and, like a kid, Jon was on the point of running down the moving stairs to catch up with her. He caught himself just in time. They met on the ground floor, where she stood, waiting for him, smiling at his impatience.

Jon couldn’t speak. She looked so different, like someone else, and yet she  seemed more like herself than she had in a long time. Her hair, the long braid he had loved so much, was gone. Instead, chin-length curls played around her face. She looked young, like a girl, her eyes even larger and her mouth as fresh as a rose in bloom.

“I’m ready to go to Italy now,” Naomi said. “And I bought some swimming suits too. There will be swimming in Positano. Do you have shorts, Jon? You need shorts. You’ll love the Mediterranean.”

“Last night.” The words refused to form in his head. “Last night you hardly spoke to me. I bawled my heart out on that stage, trying to reach you, and you just sat there and stared at the ceiling as if I wasn’t even there. You didn’t listen to me; you ignored that I was singing just for you. And now you tell me I need shorts?”

Naomi took his arm to pull him back on the escalator going up. “Yes. I was mad as hell at you, Jon. I was so angry because you allowed my father to see Joshua, because I thought it was my choice, my decision. But it isn’t. You’re Josh’s father, and it’s just as much your decision. It took me a while to come to terms with it.” She was standing above him, their eyes on a level for once, her hands on his shoulders. “I trust you more than I trust myself. I felt this hard, bitter kernel in my heart, all the disappointment and hatred; and then I watched you on the stage, doing what your heart tells you to do, and I realized you will always fight for me, fight for my right to do what my heart tells me, even if it breaks yours. And that was when I decided I had to change, do something that would set me free. I’ve been somehow liberated with the braid gone. In a symbolic way.”

Tentatively, she touched her hair. “Do you like it? Did they cut it too short? Because it feels good! I think it looks good too.”

Jon had to swallow a couple of times. “It looks stunning. You look like a fairy; you’re so beautiful, I don’t know what to say. And no, I don’t have swimming trunks.”

H
e let her pick some shorts for him, even bought some polos and those sweaters he had wanted in the first place, and followed her when she drifted back toward the bathing suits, carrying the shopping bags, feeling delightfully foolish.

“Have you ever had this,” he asked while she was holding up a short, thin dress in a lovely midnight blue. “Have you ever had the urge…” There was a chair, and he sank down on it. “The need to be more than you are, see more than the world that is around you, to rip apart the texture of being to see what is behind the reality? Have you ever felt the fear, the desolation of dying without having left your mark on the universe? Of being no more than one of the masses, here only to be gone again, unnoticed, unmarked?”

Naomi gazed at him silently, the dress forgotten.

“Have you ever felt this pain of not doing what you’re meant to do, what you could do?” The moment the words were out of his mouth Jon realized what he had said, and he took a breath to apologize, tell her he was sorry and of course she would know, having lived her small, hidden life when she should have been a star among writers.

She was faster though.

“It has often driven me into melancholy,” Naomi said softly, “and it has made me cry.” Her hand came up to rest on her chest. “Sometimes I have the feeling that I’m seeing a different world around me than other people, as if they can’t see all the layers there are to the fabric of life, and I want to grasp it all. The only outlet for that…” A small shrug. “The only outlet is the writing. And yes, Jon, I want to make a difference. I want it very badly. I want to soar and fly and sing to the stars, and I want to live forever and never be forgotten.”

Jon took the dress from her and dropped it on the counter. “Come along. I’ll buy you breakfast somewhere, and while you eat I’ll stare at you and think of making love to you, the only woman who understands what I feel, what it’s like to live the way we do. I’ll take you to Positano tomorrow, and I’ll give you the honeymoon we never had and to hell with your parents and everything else. All this shit with the shooting and the pain and guilt, it’s going out the window now, Naomi. We’ve come down to this: you see my soul, and I see yours. Here, in a stupid German department store, we finally understand each other.”

chapter 23

S
al trailed after them as Jon and Naomi walked across the hangar to the plane that would take them to Naples, the phone pressed to his ear, trying to hear what Russ was saying over the noise of the engines.

“… we’re ready to move to New York,” he heard. “I’ll go ahead and try to find a house or something. Solveigh wants to live somewhere out in the country, and I have no idea where to look. Any ideas?”

“What will Solveigh do out in the country, on her own, all day long?” He was barely listening, staring at Naomi’s hair. In a strange, unexplained way he resented the short locks, resented them as if they were a show of independence and he the parent it was aimed at. She looked better too, not as wan and pale as she had when she had arrived in London, as if by losing the braid her energy had returned. Even her legs looked tan; her bare feet in sandals, the toenails painted red, were a provocation he could barely ignore.

“I don’t even know what she means,” Russ was saying. “The country? It’s not like there’s anything like Halmar anywhere around New York, not within easy commuting distance.”

“You could always move to New Jersey.”

Jon was carrying a guitar case. He had asked for the ebony to be brought out of the instrument container; he was taking it along to Italy, slung over his back just like he used to when they were young and had just started out. Seeing him like that—in jeans, with the guitar case—sent a wave of melancholy memories over Sal, and he stopped walking. Nothing had changed. They were older, calmer, well used to their success and their wealth; but deep down they were still the same people, still hungry for the music and the songs. And Naomi—the way she stood beside Jon now, waiting to board the jet, laughing at something he had said, her hand on his arm—she was the same girl too.

He remembered going over to Jon’s house a couple of days after they had returned home, back when they had been to Geneva the first time and met her.

She had opened the door, a cup of coffee in her hand, hair loose, wrapped in one of Jon’s bathrobes, barefoot, and smiled softly at him, a little embarrassed at being caught like that; and his heart had turned over. So young, barely more than a teenager, and already Jon’s.

“Are you out of your freaking mind?” Russ’s panicked voice brought him out of his reverie.

“Well, Sean wants to move there,” Sal replied. A cart was bringing their luggage, not a lot, just one suitcase for each of them. They were light travelers, careless souls who acquired whatever they wanted or needed along the way. As easy as birds, they were ready to travel south, follow the sun, leave him behind to handle the chore of taking the tour back to the States. All without a second thought.

“Right.” Russ snorted. “Sean thinks he’s Bruce Springsteen. Oh well, I’ll talk to him. Would be nice if we weren’t too spread out, right? And you? Are you going to find something in Brooklyn, like the Master and his lady?”

The simple question made Sal quake in his shoes. “Oh crap no! I’ll try to find something in Manhattan. You can go and live somewhere in Newark if you feel like it; I’ll stick with the real thing. If I have to leave LA, I might as well get the whole deal.” He hadn’t thought about it yet, had pushed the prospect away to a far corner of his mind. The idea of leaving California for a winter in New York seemed too dire.

Only now did he notice the writing on the side of the plane. It was no more than a single word, tastefully small, the brown matching the cream of the jet; and it made Sal pull back his lips in surprise. “Carlsson,” he read, tasting the sound. Her father had sent the family plane, and she was willing to board it.

The pilot was there to greet his passengers, a flight attendant at his elbow.

Naomi turned and smiled at him, raised her hand to wave, and then she was gone.

Sal wanted to go after her, tell her to be safe and come back, not to fall in love with the Italian summer and get lost on those sunny shores; but he stood and watched as the door was closed and the plane moved out onto the tarmac, and then swiftly away toward the runway. In the blink of an eye it was no more than a glint against the blue backdrop of the sky, and then it was gone.

Suddenly lonely, Sal decided to go to the airport terminal for a cup of coffee. Coming here, he had noticed the restaurant with the terrace where you could see the runway; and he felt like standing there, his nose pressed to the fence, smelling the jet fuel and listening to the roar of the engines before returning to the hotel to check out and travel with the band in the other direction, toward home.

He ordered a glass of wine after a quick glance at his watch, reasoning that he was in Europe and it was not unusual to drink around lunchtime. Anyway, he was quite sure Naomi would be having champagne right now aboard her family’s Gulfstream while it hurtled toward the Alps.

There were a number of people out on the terrace observing the landing and departing planes. A father was holding up a young child so he could see the big 747 parked right beneath them, the blue crane of the German airline shining on its tail. The luggage was being loaded into it even now, and the catering containers.

In the corner, where the fence met the wall, Sal noticed a figure that seemed familiar, and he squinted against the light to get a better look.

It was that reporter, Parker, busy putting his camera into its bag. His blond hair was blowing in the wind, his jacket flapping around his body. He hadn’t seen Sal but kept glancing in the direction of the hangar that Jon and Naomi had left only moments before.

Parker closed the bag and shrugged it onto his shoulder, plucked a boarding card from his pocket, glanced at it, and went back into the terminal.

Slowly Sal followed him all the way to the passport control, where Parker stood in line for a moment and then passed through toward the gates. For an instant Sal felt sorry for Parker and his infatuation.

N
aomi wanted to rent a car and drive down to Positano herself, taking the long way. They were traveling for fun, after all, and weren’t in a hurry.

The corners of her mouth came down at the thought, as she looked out the plane window at the mountains below. “Unless, of course, my mother has alarmed the entire clan, and they come to pick us up. If that’s the case then we won’t have much of a choice.”

“So tell me.” Jon picked up one of the fresh figs from the huge platter of antipasti they had been served. “Tell me more about your mother’s family. I have a feeling there’s another mystery to unravel here, and I can hardly wait. Is it a big family?”

She pulled up her legs and curled into the wide, comfortable leather seat. “All Italian families are big, Jon.” The statement made her smile. “And everybody knows everything about everyone.”