When in Rome (10 page)

As we eat cake, Erika suddenly seems to remember that she has a sister. She pretends to buzz around me—buzzing around Luca, actually—her body quivering with excitement. Luca brushes her off and holds my hand, but he still pays attention to her, which is all she needs to feel victorious.

I hate them. I hate this little game. I hate thinking about the pity I’ll get from my aunts. Suddenly I’m too tired, too fed up, and too mortified. I’m getting out of here. I grab my coat and purse and ditch the party.

My mom’s house, the house I grew up in, isn’t far from here. I walk the road as the snow dances around me. It’s late, it’s cold, and I feel sad. The formula of Luca plus Erika is almost chemical in nature, and inevitable: they will end up sleeping together. I don’t know if I should feel relieved—at least he’s not thinking about the unknown woman he was so sweet with—or angry—because he’s with someone who isn’t me and who happens to be my sister. Now that I don’t have to worry about running into a compassionate aunt, I let my mascara run freely.

Teresa, my mother’s distant cousin who tends the house in exchange for room and board, opens the door. She hugs me, surprised that I’m already here. I learn that some other distant cousins are sleeping here tonight, and the rooms are ready.

My mother has changed everything about my childhood home. Now my room is a guest room with a gigantic fireplace—Mom wanted fireplaces in every room—that illuminates the bed and ceiling. The room seems very chic, like a cabin in Aspen. I put my coat and purse on the bed and crouch down in front of the fire that Teresa started. Meanwhile, she gives me some pajamas, since I cleverly left my overnight bag at Beatrice’s. Outside the window, the snow dances, its choreography driven by the wind. Tomorrow morning it will probably have melted, but tonight, it seems endless.

Suddenly, I hear a racket downstairs—the clan has arrived. I hear my mother asking about me. I go out onto the landing and peek out, like a little girl. I start in surprise—Luca’s there. Erika’s there, too. She must have managed to get a last-minute room from our dear mother. Knowing their vocal abilities, I’m not getting any sleep tonight. Or maybe I still have time to call a taxi? The phone’s in my mother’s room. I head in that direction, but then the guests start to climb the stairs. I shut myself in my room, foolishly intimidated. When Luca enters, I stare at him like he’s a stranger.

“What’s the matter? Have you seen a ghost?” he asks. His smile fades to a tender look. “Carlotta, you’re so pale . . . Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine. What do you want?”

“What do I want?” He shakes his head and sits down on the bed. “We’re engaged, aren’t we? Strip down, my love!” He says this last part loud enough to be heard outside. He smiles at me, pecks me on the cheek, lies down on his back, and chuckles softly, his hands on his abdomen.

“Quit the bullshit!” I say softly. “Anyone can see that you’re into my sister. No one will buy our story.”

He gets up, still cheerful, takes off his jacket, and throws it at me. “Your sister’s a knockout, but that’s not why I’m here. I had much more fun duping your family.”

He grabs me and throws me on the bed. A fire ignites within me as Luca climbs over me, laughing, and starts jumping on the bed. The springs groan faintly and the headboard knocks against the wall. I stare at him, as shocked as if he’d just called forth lightning from the ceiling. Suddenly, something presses into my neck. I reach underneath me and Killer Barbie rolls out of my purse. Luca stops jumping.

“You’re nuts!” he exclaims. “Most girls keep makeup or condoms in their purses, but you carry a psychopathic doll?”

“I thought she would be the most suitable escort.”

“She’s perfect for the situation. But since I’m your escort now”—he puts the Barbie doll on the floor—“and since everyone’s in the hallway eavesdropping, how about if we give the people what they want?”

“They’re probably making bets. They’ve set the odds at slim to none that we’ll—”

“So let them all lose. Let’s do it.” He hits me with that smile. “Just pretending, of course.”

“Of course, of course,” I say resignedly.

“We’ll start off small,” he says softly, brushing his lips against me. I’m already flushed and breathless. “Soft kisses on your mouth, your throat, on every inch of your skin. I taste your tongue. I kiss you until you’re completely breathless, and—” Suddenly he stops, shattering the entire scene. “Come on, Carlotta, you have to make some noise every now and then. Otherwise they’ll think I’m having sex with a corpse.”

I gasp, still paralyzed by his words, but obey him. My heart pounds as he whispers his smut, softly telling me all about an act that I haven’t partaken of in so long, that I’ve maybe never taken seriously. Now and then he raises his voice, moaning and breathing heavily, for the benefit of the audience in the hall. It seems so real that I’m afraid I’ll lose it just listening to him.

“Carlotta, doll, if you want it to be credible, you’re going to have to breathe.”

“But how—”

He laughs—a howl to the spies outside—winks, and tickles my hips, knowing that I’m quite ticklish there. I cry out, half a laugh, half a scream, to defend myself. Suddenly we’re in an all-out tickle fight, rolling around and grabbing pillows as the bed rocks in place. I decide to play the game, too, even though it’s passionless and I’m embarrassed to fake a sexual encounter that still seems all too real to me, given my past. But I’m happy with the racket we’re making. Pleasure is pain. When it’s over, Luca lies down next to me.

“You were fantastic, baby,” he says, still loudly. “That was better than that one time in the bathroom of the plane during that turbulence.”

He’s so handsome and messy; he looks like we really did just make love. He reaches out and strokes my wrist with his thumb. I can’t even bear it. I shake him off.

“Carlotta, what’s wrong?” he asks, playing with my curls.

I stick my tongue out at him. He smiles and kisses the tip of my nose. But there’s something strange and lost in his eyes. He stares at me as if something is bothering him. I hope he can’t see the desire behind my discomfort. I hate to imagine what he’d think of me. We’re just friends. Our only sex is pretend sex.

He closes his eyes, his hand still tight around my wrist. The fire crackles and spits in the fireplace. It’s the only light in the room as the snow whirls around outside. Luca falls asleep quickly, and soon I can watch him without getting caught. I wish I had my sketchbook and a pencil so I could capture the true beauty of his soul that shows through his relaxed face.

Maybe it would be better if he were out of my life completely. It may be all fun and games to him, but to me, this is no joke.

EIGHT

Tony has called me again, for the umpteenth time. I listen to his message and I wonder if I’m willing to tolerate his tongue again.

“What does the house painter want now?” Luca asks, looking contemptuous. I’m curious—recently, his bad mood only seems to be worsening. He’s often nervous and sullen, and whenever I bring up Tony, his response is always cutting.

“He’s not a house painter. He’s an artist. He’s showing at an exhibition, and he doesn’t have enough work to put up. He wants to draw my portrait.”

Luca laughs sardonically. “He wants to immortalize your vagina,” he says.

My mouth hangs open. “What the . . . ?”

“He obviously wants to fuck you.”

“There’s no need to be so explicit!” I exclaim. “And besides, why do you care? Maybe I’d like that. Tony’s an interesting guy.”

“You’re being a little bitchy.”

“Excuse me? What do you mean by that?”

“Just what I said. All you talk about lately is the painter guy and the other guy, the blond German one you work with. Just sleep with them and be done with it.”

“Maybe I will. I don’t need your advice,” I say, furious.

So, nearly a month after the vomiting episode, I decide to call Tony back. We agree to meet for coffee in a cafe near the theater.

I arrive late, sweaty and out of breath from the battle I just won with a vintage toy salesman who wanted an exorbitant sum for a 1965 Astronaut Barbie. Tony is already waiting for me at the cafe. We chat over our espressos, and he tells me about his upcoming exhibition, then asks me about my work.

“At the moment, I’m hunting down these.” I show him the pretty space traveler with almost maternal pride.

He casts a rude look at the Barbie. “I suppose little girls like them. But if I were a father, I wouldn’t buy that for my daughter.”

“Oh . . . Why not?”

“Why give her a false image of womanhood? It would humiliate her. Barbie dolls are tall and beautiful, too goddess-like. Women just aren’t like that. Real women look like you.”

“So that makes me . . . what? Chopped liver?” I ask, swallowing the last sip of my coffee and feeling like a cat whose tail was just rudely trampled.

He raises his hands in surrender and shakes his head. “I didn’t mean that. I think you’re very beautiful, you know.”

I suppose I deserve it after the whole vomit incident, so I accept his apology. But although I don’t mind the veiled insult, I do mind the way he spoke of the Barbie doll. It reminds me of Lara’s intransigent attitude toward men. “There’s nothing different between these dolls and the princesses in the fairy tales that we’ve read for generations. They were the most beautiful women in the land, right?”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Tony says, “but I just don’t like the emphasis on their plastic appearance. My paintings are interior portraits. Although your beauty is not only interior, mind you. You’re beautiful all the way to the tips of your hair.”

My hair has always been my soft spot. Compliment these crazy locks, and I’ll melt like a Popsicle in the sun. What harm could there be in granting him the privilege of portraying these features? So I agree to pose for him. After all, it’s not like I have to ask anyone else’s permission.

A few nights later, as I’m getting ready to go to Tony’s studio, Luca passes by me. He takes a drag from his cigar, then blows the smoke at me, making me cough. His eyes are very green and cold as diamonds.

“Are you on the pill?” he asks suddenly.

“Huh?”

“Are you going to use some method of birth control?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Here,” he says, slipping something into my purse.

A condom.

I look at it as if it were a bloody severed hand.

“Do you know how to use it? Or do I have to explain? That fool might not know how.”

“Luca!” I shout, flushed with anger and discomfort. “I know how to use it, and anyway, just stop! You know, once you get going, you can really get nasty as hell.”

“I don’t know anything about this guy. I just want to save your ass and keep you from getting pregnant.”

I have no intention of sleeping with Tony, but I don’t need him to know that. “I don’t need your advice.”

I leave the house without looking back, reining in my wild desire to kick him where it hurts.

The studio is in Testaccio, a hipster neighborhood by the river. Tony lets me in. In his paint-spattered sweater, he actually looks like a painter. In fact, he looks like a painting himself. He’s not wearing his glasses, and his hair is unkempt.

Inside, I take in the surroundings. The studio is a loft on the top floor of an old building. Its walls are exposed brick, its windows curtainless. Dozens of canvases are stacked everywhere, covered with red-stained sheets. And oh boy . . . There’s a giant bed in the center of the room. I must not jump to conclusions. I’m sure he only intends to be hospitable. If he wants to keep his bed in the middle of his work space, then by all means, he should. And if, by chance, the bed is where he makes me sit while he paints my portrait, then I must not mistake this for lustful intent.

While he sketches me, though, he barely peeks out from behind his canvas except to adjust my posture and shower me with compliments. And he doesn’t ask for anything more than my beautiful face for his sketches. It’s two hours before he lets me move again. My neck feels rusty, like a piston without oil.

“Hey,” he realizes. “Did I make you stand still for too long?”

“Art involves some sacrifice, right?”

“Come here, forgive me . . .” He looks like a wolf as he comes closer. He kneels on the bed behind me and starts to massage my neck, even though his hands are slightly dirty from painting. It’s a relief—he’s also an artist at giving neck rubs. His hands move masterfully from my shoulders to my neck to my hair. And he talks and he talks and he talks . . . He talks way too much. Tony might have some great qualities, but knowing when to shut up is not one of them.

After his fingertips work their magic, he asks me if I’m hungry. Fortunately there’s no innuendo in the question—he orders Chinese food over the phone, and half an hour later it arrives. We eat sitting on the bed, and Tony continues to talk as he uses his chopsticks expertly. He sucks noodles between his lips like a snake, and devours steamed dumplings with a pleasure that is almost carnal. When he asks me if I want the cookie, it startles me. Am I so depraved that I distort even the most innocent allusion to a fortune cookie?

I break it open and read the message: it tells me to be careful because when it rains, it pours. Tony’s fortune urges him to eat when he’s hungry. The way I’ve been interpreting everything since I got here, the two fortunes are clearly double entendres. But I prefer to believe that rain is rain and hunger is hunger.

After dinner, he throws away the containers and clears the bed. I sit near him, and he continues to blather on about his exhibition and how great my portrait will look in it. Then, suddenly, there’s the first warning sign: silence. An unusual development.

He smiles. “You’re so beautiful,” he says again (he’s actually said this so many times that I feel like Venus incarnate). Then he puts a hand on my cheek and kisses me. What a brave man to try once more to dive into a sea that I once banned him from entering so ungracefully. Again, his tongue dances inside my mouth, tasting like fortune cookie and steamed rice. It’s so hectic and sloppy that I think I’m going to be sick all over again. But this time, I repress the gag reflex. I think about ice cream, hot chocolate, and toffee, but above all . . . Luca. It doesn’t do anything to help me relax, but at least I can pretend to respond to his advances with enthusiasm, as if all the pleasures of the universe were concentrated in his bustling tongue.

At the same time, Tony attempts to insert two fingers under my sweater. My hand is quicker, and I cut him off. He grumbles something and tries again. After three unsuccessful attempts, he embarks on a more ambitious mission. He grabs my wrist and slaps my hand on the flap of his pants. He seems to have a .22 semiautomatic hidden in his jeans. Oh my God—now it’s not in his jeans anymore. When did he pull it out? Is there a sliding door in his pants that reads his mind?

Tony mumbles something I can’t understand. I haven’t touched a man in this region in months, and now I’m discovering that I’d actually rather keep it that way. I feel dirty and lonely, and I really want to leave. I keep firmly rejecting Tony, but he’s either pretending not to understand, or interpreting my reluctance as some kind of provocative game. Finally, he looks me in the eye, a mixture of anger and disgust written on his face.

“Are you not enjoying this?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

“What do you think?” I want to say. “I’ve been wiggling like an eel for ten minutes. I’m playing hide and seek with your hand. You’re chasing me all over the bed. Don’t even get me started on your kissing, which I initially tolerated for educational purposes and decided to give a second chance after I made a fool of myself last time . . . Have you not noticed that you’re paralyzing me? Back off, okay?”

But of course, I just say, “Tony, it’s a bit too soon. I don’t really know you that well . . .”

Even if I’d known him for three generations and our grandparents had made polenta together, I still wouldn’t want him. But I need him to believe I’m merely a woman of archaic principles—and that maybe in a century and a half, he’ll be able to get to second base.

“Okay . . . ,” he whispers, clearly disappointed. He lets out a whistle. “Carlotta, I’m as turned on as a bison.”

I don’t know much about bison, so I don’t say anything, but I’d say he’s more like an anteater, at least his tongue. He rearranges his soldier, still at attention, and zips up his pants. We get up from the bed. I get the impression that he’s eager to get rid of me, but I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t want to see me again—he keeps telling me that he’ll call me, that we have to go out again, that we have to get to know each other better. I think he just wants to be alone.

On the bus ride home, I commit an act of incivility. I chuck the condom out the window. I just want to get home, take a shower, and, above all, brush my teeth. So happy to be back, away from Tony and his wandering hands, I climb the stairs at last and go inside. But providence is not forgiving. Although the time is a bit unusual—it’s just past midnight—the moans I can hear are anything but. Luca’s already got a girl in his room. His door is ajar, so the sounds are amplified. I can hear vowels, syllables, even words.

I know that voice.

Suddenly I’m cold, as if a flurry of snow just burst in through the window. I know I’ll suffer, I know I should just go to my room and turn a blind eye, but I can’t help it. I approach the door. A halo of light filters through the crack. The lampshade on the bedside table dims the light in the room, but the scene is all too clear. There’s Luca, naked on his back. And on top of him is Erika, her hair swishing as usual, her spine twisting like a snake. I stand motionless in the middle of the hallway, my fists clenched and my jaw so tight that I’d need a crowbar to pry it open. Pain courses through me in a shock wave extending from my feet to my ears. By chance, Luca opens his eyes. It’s a coincidence, as I haven’t made any noise. He sees me. At first, he looks surprised. But then his gaze immediately turns wicked. He moves faster as he stares at me, lowering his eyelids.

I run away.

It’s raining outside, a dirty, black rain that seems to ooze. The streets are empty except for a few passersby. I walk quickly. I don’t know where I’m headed. I just want to get lost under the beating rain. I walk for a long time, without feeling the weight of passing time. I ache. No, scratch that. I’m dying. With each step, I age a century. The only word I can think of, the only word in the midst of the tumult, is
why
.

Why, Luca?

Why, Erika?

Just for a few minutes of pelvic thrusting, after which you’ll both feel like strangers? Does it not matter that the same blood runs through our veins? Despite the way things are now, I have never been able to forget the two girls who played together and dreamed of futures as princesses, astronauts, ballerinas. Something—but what?—has left us on opposite banks of an impassable river. But was it not enough to despise each other from afar? I never thought she’d really go so far as to try to drown me.

And Luca . . . I thought he was my friend, but he’s no more than a dirty bastard. My mind wanders to my mother’s triumph and my aunts’ hypocritical commiseration. I must look like a psychopath, chasing ghosts through a stormy night. I’m ready to die now. I’m going to die now. I’m dying now.

But I don’t die. Instead, I walk for miles.

A few hours before dawn, I finally summon the strength to go back home. I’m tired and soaking wet. I get inside, and Luca is in the kitchen, smoking a cigar and drinking coffee. He looks like he spent a sleepless night. I just hope that Erika had the decency to leave. I don’t even look at him. I don’t even say hi. I go right to my room and sit down on the bed, dripping on the blanket. I don’t have time to unzip my boots before Luca comes in.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. I know he’s trying to provoke me. He’s well aware of what sparked my reaction.

“Nothing. I just want you to get out of my room.” All my anger disappeared while I was walking. Now I’m only left with disappointment and pain.

“Well, too bad. I’m not leaving. Damn it, Carlotta, you’re acting ridiculous! Why did you come into my room? Were you spying on me? And don’t pull that ‘I demand an explanation’ bullshit with me. You know I hate to feel controlled.”

“I’m not trying to control you!” I shout, exasperated. “When have I ever said anything like that? I have to listen to your noises every night. There are always random women pissing in my toilet, rummaging through my fridge, stealing my things, and I’ve never said a thing! But please, I’m dying to know . . . Of all the women in the world, why did you feel the need to sleep with my sister? Did you really have to go on the Ride of the Valkyries with Erika?”

“For your information, she came here and ripped my pants off!”