When in Rome (13 page)

“I’m great,” I whisper. Great because it’s over and now he can leave.

“Me, too,” he says, nestling down beside me.

His little friend touches my leg. Tony reaches out, takes it, and pinches my side, showing no signs of leaving. I should be grateful, right, that he’s lingering? He gives my cheek one of his slobbery kisses and seems ready to doze off. Please, no. I did not sign up for this. Should I tell him?
Hey, Tony, could you please peel yourself off my mattress?
Is there a correct way to banish him from my sight forever without offending him? Considering that he’s already snoring—how is he asleep already?—I don’t know what to do. Do I just push him off the bed? Right now, I’d better just get dressed.

I free myself from his sweaty weight and slip on a shirt. He continues to snore. The condom falls to the floor, looking like a crushed worm. The apartment is silent; Luca must have gone back out again. I go to the bathroom to wash up. I still feel awful. Is this really what young women do? They just let themselves be used, without passion or pleasure, for reasons that are probably more valid than mine? I curl up on the couch. I want to cry.

At that moment, Luca’s door opens, and his face appears in the shadows. He stares at me for a long time without blinking. He must be alone, because he still has his jacket on. I watch him, then make a daring foray into conversation.

“You’re back early.” I try to be strong, but it doesn’t work. Bland statements just don’t hold up to post-sex tears that have nothing to do with happiness.

“What’s wrong?” he asks me seriously.

“Nothing . . . ,” I say as a sob overtakes my voice.

Luca sits down on the couch and looks toward my room. Tony’s snoring is still going strong. “Why are you crying? Did that asshole force you to do something? Because if he did . . .” He jumps to his feet, his fists hard as rocks.

“Absolutely not.”

“How long is he gonna stay here?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Is he going to stay all night?”

“Shh . . . Luca, he’ll hear you.”

“Hey, at least I had the decency to come check on you.”

“I don’t know how to act,” I whisper very quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know how to make him leave without offending him.”

“What the fuck do you care if he gets offended? Tell him to get the hell out, and that’s it! It doesn’t take much, just a few words.”

“I can’t. Not like that,” I say.

“Okay, then write him a poem and sing it to him, but get him out of here. Unless you really do want him to stay.”

“I don’t want him to stay. I want to kick him out without offending him.”

“You’re too sensitive, Carlotta,” he says, his voice sharp. “You worry too much about hurting other people’s feelings. I can tell him for you if you want.”

“No way! I told you, I don’t want to offend him. You’d be mean.”

“You bet I’d be mean. So, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Let me think.”

“Think fast, or I’ll do it myself.”

“Shut up! Listen,” I say, frightened by a sudden noise from the bedroom.

“Wait here,” he orders. He gets up, leaves the apartment, and closes the door. I don’t have time to wonder where he’s gone, as Tony emerges from my room, still naked. He grabs me by the shoulders and sneaks a hand under my shirt.

“Tony . . . Maybe you should . . .”

At that moment, Luca swings open the door as if just returning home from work. He stops and stares at me and then at Tony with wide eyes.

“Whore!” he screams. Tony, startled, quickly covers his junk with one hand. I’m paralyzed with surprise, my mouth stuck in a giant O. “You dirty whore!” Luca yells. “You swore to me you wouldn’t do this again. And you! You filthy, disgusting creep. How dare you touch my woman? You won’t get away with it this time. I’m gonna kill both of you.”

“Hey!” Tony exclaims, genuinely frightened. “Carlotta, I thought you said—”

“Women lie, didn’t you know that?” Luca says. He comes closer, and I realize that Tony actually believes he’s my husband! I have to hold back a laugh even though Luca is so angry that his lips tremble. A vein pulses in his temple like a blue snake. He’s doing such a great job that even I can barely remember it’s just pretend. “If you touch her again, if you even dare to come anywhere near her, I swear I’ll break your legs.” He punctuates this by jabbing a finger in Tony’s chest, and then promptly punches him right in the nose. This is reaching the peak of realism. Luca grabs Tony again and punches him in the jaw. Tony tries to reciprocate but, fearing an attack on Little Tony and the boys, bends over to protect them.

Now the foyer of my apartment is a boxing ring, and I suddenly feel the need to intervene. But in my heroic attempt to dive between them before the clothed man beats the naked one to a pulp, I catch one of Luca’s punches. This error ends the match. Tony quickly gets dressed and runs out without another word.

I feel awful. If this was Luca’s idea of getting him to leave without making me feel guilty, his plan didn’t work. I feel worse than before. In addition to my total lack of self-esteem and the pain between my legs, my head feels like a gong, and I can’t even keep my eye open. At least Luca is upset. He puts ice in a towel and makes me sit down, mumbling something about how stupid he was. I’m tempted to tell him he’s right. But I like that he’s taking care of me, that he cares about how I feel. I’m so close that I can feel his breath. Somehow, I find myself lying on the couch, my cheek resting in his lap and his hands running through my hair.

“Luca,” I say suddenly. “I’m going to become a nun.”

“What did you say?” he snorts.

“I’ve decided. I’m going to lock myself in a convent.”

“It might just be the punch talking, but you’re making less sense than usual.”

“No, the punch enlightened me. I don’t want anything to do with sex. I will dedicate myself to gardening and embroidery, and I will pray for my unfortunate sisters who still allow men to hurt them.”

“I told you I’m sorry. I meant to punch
his
face, not yours.”

“No, I was thinking about everything that happened tonight with Tony. Sex is shit. I don’t need it. I am fine just by myself! What does sex even get you?”

“You’re crazy.” He raises one eyebrow. “What the hell happened to make you arrive at such a drastic conclusion?”

“I let a stranger get inside me. Now I feel like a disgusting, slimy booger, and I’ll be walking funny for the next two months.”

“Carlotta . . .”

Don’t look at me with those eyes, Luca. Don’t let that faint smile play over your lips. Don’t make me weak with your tenderness. Just shut up and let my name hang suspended in the air, like a puff of breeze.

He gets up, and I fear the worst. I stay on the couch, the ice dripping on my face now. He returns a moment later carrying a blanket. He understands that I can’t go back into my room tonight, that I don’t want to offend my nose with the smell of the sex that barely even involved me. It’s not really Tony’s fault. He was simply an instrument of my despair.

As my eyelids grow heavy, Luca goes back to his room, but he leaves the door open. The sound of his breathing close by makes me feel at home.

TWELVE

I clean my room as if I’d hosted an Ebola patient last night. I cleaned myself the same way, with a forty-five-minute shower and an entire bottle of body wash. I know that this is not a normal reaction. After all, Tony did not force himself on me. He’s not a contemptible man; actually, he’s quite pleasant. But I’m still toying with the idea of joining a convent. It would mean I could eliminate the men from my life without being considered a loser. Plus, I wouldn’t have to shave as often.

Above all, I could get away from Luca and the frightening certainty that he’s going to tell me all the sordid details about his new love, Paola. I feel his eyes on me around the apartment. He’s as neurotic as a toy soldier who has been wound too tightly. I think he can tell I’m avoiding him.

He’s going to the bar tonight, and while I’m scrubbing the floor of my room, he suddenly appears in my doorway. He leans against the frame and looks at me.

“I have to tell you something,” he begins after thirty seconds of silence.

Nerves beat in me like a dragonfly’s wings. I don’t answer right away. I stay kneeling on the floor, thinking about a million things in the span of one second. I decide to play tough.

“Do we have to do this right now? As you can see, I’m busy,” I say gruffly.

“Let me know when you’re available, then. You’re harder to get ahold of than Madonna these days.” He sounds annoyed. He drums two fingers on the edge of the door. “I know you’re still pissed at me because of Erika. I can see a thousand-page tome on the flaws of men in your eyes whenever you look at me. And I understand, you have every right to be angry.”

I’m tempted to tell him that a thousand pages is a pretty low estimate, but I decide against it.

“Anyway, I wanted your opinion on whether I should . . . leave . . .”

“What’s up? Are you about to embark on an adventure?” I ask with feigned nonchalance.

“No, you don’t understand. I meant, like, leave the apartment. For good.”

“Wha—” I can’t even finish the word.

“It’s clear that we’re not getting along very well. Something changed. I know that you’re upset. You’ve changed, or at least your attitude toward me has changed. I get it, and I don’t want to force my presence on you.”

As he speaks, I’m thinking that it’s not just me who’s changed. He has, too. He’s different, and that is what bothers me about our strange routine. But his little performance with Erika undoubtedly helped me to close myself off from him, and since I discovered his interest in Paola, my heart has been filled with cracks.

“No,” I say. “It’s not that I don’t want you here. And I’m over what happened with Erika, really. After all, you’re free to be with whoever you want to be with. It’s just that . . . This new version of you scares me a little.”

“What do you mean?”

“This new side of you! You don’t smile anymore. You mope around the apartment like a ghost dragging chains. You don’t bring any more cheerful little conquests home. You’ve changed, and I know why.”

“Oh, you do?”

“Yes, I do!” I speak in bursts, my heart full of pain. “You’re so weird! You’re so distracted. Some nights you don’t even come home. You have all the symptoms of infatuation. But maybe you’re wrong, and it’s not as serious as it seems.” I cling to his own doubt-filled words I overheard in the park. He’s the one who said he wasn’t sure it was love, right? So I can afford to be frank. “In fact, I’m sure you’re wrong. I’m certain of it. This is all just nonsense. This isn’t like you, Luca. And you know what? You were right. You’re too smart to let such a complication mislead you. Have you thought about the consequences? Having to make love to the same person every day . . . Doesn’t that bother you? Change is the spice of life! So you should think about this, Luca. Yes, perhaps it’s new for you. Are you really sure you know what love is?”

He regards me with a piercing stare. “Well, Carlotta,” he finally says, coldly, “you’ve made yourself pretty fucking clear.”

“Of course it’s clear. Why would you leave? There’s no reason to. We’re fine. Come on . . . Where will you find another great friend like me? So I forbid you to leave, I forbid you to be in love, and I strongly encourage you to fill my apartment again with however many tramps you deem appropriate!”

“Well,” he replies glacially, and goes away.

That was wicked of me. He wanted to confide in me and tell me all about his plight, and I wouldn’t let him. But I wasn’t being insincere. I really don’t think he loves that elegant woman. He might like her . . . but doesn’t he like me, too? If attention and tenderness mean love, then I’d say that Luca’s loved me for months! So there’s no way he can be in love with her. Period. Maybe he’s attracted to her sophistication, or maybe he wants to change things up in the bedroom. That must be it. Yes, he’s put me through the wringer, but I don’t want him to leave! If he tries to leave, I’ll bind him to the bed with a pair of handcuffs and only unlock them when he needs to use the restroom. The fear of losing him is stronger than my survival instincts.

I don’t understand how women from centuries ago, who stayed home and didn’t work, who had all the time in the world to think, didn’t drive themselves insane. What did Jane Austen do when she fell in love and couldn’t watch stupid TV shows or gorge herself on snacks? How did she conceive of protagonists that are as witty and wise as Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Elliot; how come they aren’t pissed off and chronically depressed? If I didn’t have my work, between trashy TV and family-size bags of pretzels, I’d be a cross between Lord Byron and American Psycho.

I also have Rocky to distract me. It’s really quite bothersome when he harasses me so much that I’m forced to stop brooding. This morning, for example, Rocky is angry with Romina, the actress who plays Laura. The poor thing has put on a few pounds, which, to Rocky, is equivalent to treason. Instead of threatening to report him to the union, she puts him in his place with some words of her own and condemns him to hell. Iriza and I, already onstage trying to implement a system to make the sets fold in on themselves without damaging them, find ourselves in the middle of the conflict. Franz tries to calm Rocky down, and Iriza watches him with love in her eyes. I’d like to grab Rocky by the balls and throw him right into the foyer. Iriza tries to distract me by asking me how the prop hunt is coming along.

“Great, I’m even staying within the budget,” I say. “I’m meeting some guys in an hour who are going to sell me some other pieces of the collection.”

“Can I come with you? Things are getting uncomfortable here,” Iriza says. “When Rocky digs in his heels, he’s so unbearable. He’ll make Romina cry and force her to go on a diet. I think we’d better get out of here.”

This house does not have flamingos or gnomes. It’s actually a very elegant villa. This is unsurprising, seeing as you can’t collect these kinds of toys if the only place you can afford to live is some shoddy tenement. I just hope the people are normal.

The door opens on a normal-looking mother dressed in jeans and a sweater. She’s young and pretty, with a book in her hand.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
. Cute.

“Jay and his friends are in the garage,” she says. “It’s just around the corner. I hope you brought earplugs.”

“Earplugs?” Iriza and I ask at the same time.

She only smiles and closes the door after pointing us to the garage. Soon we understand what she meant. As we near the garage, we hear music. No, that’s inaccurate, calling it music. It sounds like devil worship. The drums pound, the electric guitars groan, and a male voice sporadically yells a few words over the din.

As the leader of the expedition, I go first and peer cautiously into the garage. The door is up, and I get a whiff of the unmistakable aroma of marijuana. Four young guys are banging on their instruments; I must admit it seems more like the instruments are crying out from suffering than producing music. If I don’t get this taken care of soon, we’ll both be deaf. I march to the middle of the garage, right in front of the drummer, who appears to be a sixteen-year-old delinquent type with eyebrow piercings. But he doesn’t notice me right away. The guitarist nudges the bass player, who kicks the drummer, who throws a stick at the keyboardist, who curses and rubs his head. This all takes a good five minutes. Finally, the racket stops.

“Um, hello.” I greet them with a wave.

Iriza steps forward and simply says, “Hey.”

The guitar player must be the
Hitchhiker
woman’s son. He’s cute, with long blond hair that’s soaked in gel and probably hasn’t been washed since the end of the last millennium.

“What do you want?” he asks, annoyed.

The bass player, a nerdy-looking teenager who you’d expect to be reciting theorems instead of smoking reefer, hurries to extinguish his cigarette. The keyboardist looks at me askew over the can of Sprite and the half-eaten Mars bar on his keyboard. I explain who we are, and the guitar player lights up.

“Oh, we spoke on the phone!” he exclaims. “Massimo, go get the cardboard box behind my sister’s records.”

Massimo rummages behind a stack of dusty LPs and pulls out a box sealed with scotch tape.

“My sister left for college. I don’t know what’s in the mess she left, and I need money. So I’m selling all her shit. She deserves it.”

I join in purely for fun. “Well yeah, you get what’s coming to you. Hey, can I see what all this shit consists of, exactly?”

The boy nods and allows me to open the box. When I see the contents, I’m caught between the urge to shriek with joy and pretend to be unimpressed. Almost everything we’re looking for is in the box, including the Barbie doll dressed as Marilyn Monroe in
The Seven Year Itch
. I wonder how she got these!

“How much do you want for it?” I ask, trying to sound detached.

“I’d give it to you even if it were gold and diamonds,” he says sarcastically. “You’re doing me a favor. If only you knew what she’s like.”

“I’m getting an idea.”

“Let’s do it this way. I’ll give you the whole lot at half price. Two hundred and fifty euro instead of five hundred . . . If you do me a favor.”

I frown, worried that he’s going to ask me to transport a few pounds of cannabis or show him my tits. If so, he’d better ask Iriza. Mine aren’t worth the discount.

“We wrote a rockin’ song. You’ve gotta hear it.”

I’m instantly transported to a rainy winter Sunday long ago, when I was younger and I was forced to listen to Aunt Porzia singing show tunes.

The drummer kicks the snare. The keyboardist finishes off the Mars bar and the Sprite and belches. The bassist recovers his cigarette and stashes it behind one ear. The guitarist grabs a microphone, struggles with some kind of hard rock gesture, raises an arm, and makes a face like he was sniffing cat poop.

“Go!”

The name of the band is printed on the drum:
Fuck & Fuck
. The song is quite different from Aunt Porzia’s show tunes, although the boy’s voice does bear a resemblance to hers at times. The lyrics are very refined—a skillful repetition of the same two words that form the name of the band. And actually, there is art in their ability to differentiate between the various types of fuck yous, assigning different meaning to it every time. What a flattering song. It’s all too much. I want them to stop singing. I want to smoke a joint. I can’t read what Iriza wants to do. She’s about to either be sick or burst into laughter. It’s not every day that you’re told such a thing for three minutes and fifty seconds straight, not including the instrumental solos. These are the kind of experiences that breed food for thought.

“Well?” the singer asks proudly when it’s all over.

“Wonderful,” I say. “You’re destined to break out. Give this to your relatives for Christmas, and you’ll end up rich. Actually, if you have a CD on hand, I’d like to buy it for my sister for her birthday. She’s just like yours.”

He doesn’t have a CD, but he’s very pleased with my comment. Two hundred and fifty euro later, I have the Barbies. We leave hastily before they ask us to stick around for another song. Just before we disappear from view, however, I turn around to the boys and call out.

“By the way . . . Fuck you! Right?”

All four boys give me a thumbs-up in approval.

Once we’re far away, Iriza laughs to the point of convulsing. “Franz was right,” she finally gasps.

“What do you mean?”

“He talks about you a lot. He says you’re a total riot. He called you a phenomenon.”

“From a sideshow, maybe.”

“No, he only has great things to say about you. You’re really funny. Nothing like that has ever happened to me.”

“Prepare yourself, then, for a whole lot of madness.”

“That’s why he likes you. Being around you is . . . hilarious.”

“He . . . likes me?” I ask, incredulous.

“Very much! Although he’s never said anything about it. But I can tell. I see the way he looks at you. As soon as you walk into the room, his face lights up.”

Well, now I’m uncomfortable. Even though she’s smiling, Iriza looks so sad. She has clearly misinterpreted everything. I try to dispel the misunderstanding with a shrug.

“I just happen to always find myself in these ridiculous situations, probably because I already look like a clown. Look at me! I don’t even need the wig or the fake nose. I’m just someone that Franz can laugh at.”

Once I get home, I realize with horror that Luca seems to be moving out anyway. There’s a bag on the floor of the foyer, and he’s in the kitchen writing a note. I nearly trip over the bag, almost spilling the dolls from the box.

“Hey,” he says. “I was just writing you a note. I’m leaving.”

“Where are you going?” I ask, my voice quivering. If I have to, I’ll wrap myself around his leg to keep him from leaving.

“Home. My mom is sick.” He sounds worried. Now my desire to sequester him feels selfish.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“I hope so, too. She’s in the hospital right now. They’re running tests.”

“It’ll be okay.” And I’m being sincere—I hope that the dear woman heals quickly so that the agony can be wiped off Luca’s face.