When in Rome (16 page)

“Baby, that guy is not for you. You need to get rid of him, otherwise you’ll be imprisoned forever.”

I don’t doubt that the biker prophet’s advice has two meanings—the second being that he wouldn’t mind taking Luca’s place—but his advice resonates with me all the same. I grab a bus home, my breath reeking of gin and my head spinning. I’ll sleep a little before I make a decision about Luca. But when I get home, I realize that sleep will have to wait.

Luca is home, and he’s not alone. His coat and a woman’s dress are strewn on the floor. I freeze, hearing voices from his room. What the fuck? Is he actually having sex? When I was this close to being the mother of his twin boys? I’m going to kill him. I try to count to ten, but I only get to three.

I fling his bedroom door open. He’s lying on his back and she’s lying on her side. They seem to be talking. He’s granted her the luxury of conversation! My entrance startles both of them. The girl jumps out of bed immediately, stunned, but it takes Luca a moment to register what’s going on, probably because he’s still dulled from the languor of sex. Then he covers himself up—although I don’t know why. Both women here have seen everything there is to see.

I take this moment to exclaim, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m not pregnant.”

I leave the door open on purpose as I leave. Luca springs up, yanks on his boxers, and strides out to intercept me, disheveled and furious in a way that frightens me. The girl comes out, too, even though she’s naked, covering her breasts with her hands.

“Carlotta! What are you talking about? Have you been drinking?” he asks me.

“Maybe, but that’s none of your business. The real question is: Who the fuck is that?”

He gives me a disdainful look. “None of your business, either. I don’t need your permission.”

“Oh yes you do!” I shout. “I’m sick of the women you bring here, and I’m sick of sharing my apartment! You need to leave. Not tomorrow. Now. Get your stuff and your condom collection, and get out of my sight.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice!” He’s shouting, too. “Do you think I enjoy living with a lunatic? You know what? You need a brain scan! One day you’re all, like, ‘sleep with whoever you want, it’s not like we’re dating, we’re adults,’ and now it’s the opposite? What are you, some kind of schizo? Are you expecting a marriage proposal just because we slept together once?”

“Marriage? I’d rather go back to Tony. Do you really think I’ve spent the last few nights thinking only about Luca’s tight little ass? Let me tell you something, my dear. You were nothing memorable!”

He laughs loudly. “Says the woman who’s as frigid as an icicle! I really think that the other night was the first orgasm you’ve ever had.” He’s never been this cruel.

“This conversation is over,” I declare. “Luca, I want you to go.”

“You’re damn right I’m going! I’m sick of you. You know what? You were terrible in bed. You were the worst sex I’ve ever had.”

I think my vocal cords have imploded—I can’t speak. Luca balls up his fists, staring at me. The girl snatches up her dress from the floor and disappears into the bathroom. I don’t add anything else to this deafening, final silence and make my way to my room. My legs feel funny. I have to hug the door to keep from falling.

I lock myself inside and stand there, the doorknob pressing into my back, for what seems like forever. I listen to every single noise outside. Luca gets dressed, violently opens his closet, and throws his stuff into a bag. Then I hear the door slam.

He’s gone. That’s it. Now it’s too late. I lose my balance and slump to the floor like a withered flower. I feel so awful that I can’t even manage to cry.

FIFTEEN

Here I am, as charming as a chipped urinal, with bags under my eyes as dark as ripe eggplants. I’ve been cooped up for a week, and the tears still haven’t dried up. I’ve eaten all the pitted olives and capers in the pantry. I’ve been sleeping in his room. I’ve kept the windows closed to trap his scent in here. Since Luca left, my mind has abandoned me. I don’t even know what day it is. I have been wallowing.

Every time the phone rings, I hope it’s him—but it never is. My mother called to ask if I prefer natural or synthetic diamonds, probably the worst phone call I could get from her right now. Lara called, concerned because she saw the empty pregnancy test box in her bathroom wastebasket. And Franz has called several times to find out how I’m doing and to urge me to come back to work. I’ve invented a thousand excuses to explain my absence. Opening night is approaching and being gone is unforgivable, but I just can’t get up from the couch. A lot of people have called, but Luca is not one of them.

I should feel proud. I should take a shower, shave, and return to my normal life. But I succumb to humiliation. I was the worst sex he’s ever had . . . I crawl to the toilet and vomit. As I’m rinsing my face, I hear the intercom buzz. It’s Giovanna, but I don’t want to see her. I pretend to be my housekeeper—not that I have one—and try to tell her I’m not at home.

But Giovanna laughs. “If you don’t let me up right this second, I’m calling a shrink to come throw you in the loony bin.”

As always, her strength prevails over my weakness. So I open the door. She’s not alone. She’s brought Bear! He jumps into my arms, and I topple over, overwhelmed by a mountain of fur and tongue. Giovanna pulls him away, and I see what Bear was really trying to get at: an empty bag of cheese crunchies stuck to my pants.

“Carlotta, what is going on?” Giovanna says. “You have every right to be upset, but there are ways of coping with it! Letting yourself turn into a heap of manure isn’t doing anybody any good.”

Bear goes wild over a tiny morsel on the floor that escaped my emotional binge-eating.

“How do I cope?” I throw myself down on the couch. “Should I set up a trap to catch him and bring him back? Please tell me how. The way I see it, the only satisfactory solution is to sit here until I shrivel and die like a . . . like a pistachio.”

“Do you realize that you’re on the brink of insanity?” Giovanna smiles at me as she scrutinizes me in all my postbreakup glory. She bends down next to my sprawled body and pats my leg. “I mean, do you even know what you’re talking about? If you don’t want to keep the baby, there’s another way to go about it.”

“Baby? What baby?” My mental state is so jumbled that I can’t follow her argument.

“The baby, Carlotta! Wasn’t that your pregnancy test that Lara found in the bathroom?”

“Oh, yeah, I get it now. The twins . . .” My face falls at the memory of the poor imaginary babies.

“What? Twins?” She sits down on the couch. A bag of potato chips, which I inflated and taped shut after consuming all the contents, pops underneath her. She jumps up, curses, and throws it in the trash before Bear can eat that, too.

“The children aren’t here anymore. Don’t worry.”

“You already had an abortion?” This seems to upset her. Perhaps she was hoping to convince me to keep them.

“I mean that there never were any children. I’m not pregnant. I wasn’t pregnant, and I never will be.”

“I see,” she says tenderly. “Do you know who would have been the father of these twins? Was it Tony? I know you aren’t seeing him anymore, but he didn’t tell me why.”

“Better to respect his privacy,” I whisper. “The almost-father of my children was Luca.”

“What?” Giovanna’s disbelief is truly flattering, really. “You and Luca slept together?”

“Yes.” I don’t want to think about it right now. I’ve replayed it in my head about three thousand six hundred times in the last few days. I’m entitled to a break every now and then. “Are you shocked because you don’t understand how he could have possibly wanted to sleep with me?”

“No, silly. To be honest, I’m shocked that it hadn’t happened before. I knew you would make the mistake of ignoring our advice—I’ve made plenty of mistakes, too, but you’re different from me. You feel every emotion so intensely. I was worried. But now I can tell you what I think. Luca isn’t Prince Charming. You deserve someone who has the courage to stay.”

“We just couldn’t agree on the timing . . .” I mumble. “He wanted once, I wanted forever. I wanted to
make love
forever. For me, it was never just sex. But it doesn’t matter. I’m fine. He left with a girl with a great rack, but I’m fine.”

“I can tell. You stink, your apartment is a mess, and your beautiful curls have turned into a bramble of thorns. And besides . . .” She pauses, clearly mulling something over. I gather from her tone that I’m not going to like it. Well, the time is right for the final blow. Just grab the fucking knife and stab me in the back already. “I didn’t tell you that I saw him out with your sister.”

“What?” I shoot up from the sofa like a bullet. “Erika? When?”

“I happened to see them at the bar where Luca works, and they left together. And once I saw them out on the street in the afternoon. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Hurt me? What? No, I’m thrilled!” I cry out, dancing around the room like a witch around a cauldron. I look down at the debris-littered carpet. Something buzzes inside me, some kind of alarm. Luca and Erika. I believed he was in love with Paola, and then I discovered she was his sister. So who was he talking about that day at the park? Could that unexpected love affair really be with Erika? I suddenly feel cold, and I know I’m about to throw up again.

I run to the bathroom and look in the mirror. I tell myself that I have to stop. I can’t go on living in the dark, breathing the smell of his sheets. I’m not fifteen anymore. I’m not a teenager suffering from her first heartbreak. Well, that’s not entirely true—this is my first heartbreak, but I’m an adult. I have to snap out of it. Life goes on, even without Luca. A man who, while claiming to care about me, treated me like crap. I admit that I couldn’t expect him to love me, but he should have at least respected me. I can’t let him win by letting myself disintegrate like this. I let the water run in the shower while I listen to Giovanna collect the rubble of my week of seclusion. Bear pesters her, trying to snatch residual crumbs. She yells a command at him in German that she learned from obedience school, but Bear must not speak German, because I hear him continue his search. I wash myself and shave. I feel human again.

Once I’m out of the shower, I see two new things in my living room. The first is my apartment itself. It’s not clean, but it’s clear of any remains of my squashed leftover snacks. The second is Franz. He’s chatting with Giovanna as I emerge from the bathroom with my bathrobe untied. Bear sniffs insistently at his shoes. Jesus, she could have warned me! I cover myself up and glare at her, but she just winks.

“I’m leaving before this dog eats anything else,” she says. “You’re in good hands now.”

“How are you?” Franz asks eagerly. She leaves us alone together, and as we sit on the sofa with our knees touching, I unexpectedly end up telling him everything.

Franz is so reassuring. Talking to him feels like a hot stone massage and a paraffin wax bath . . . But I feel nothing romantic. Why couldn’t it be like this with Luca? Why did it feel like a tsunami hit me when I saw him in the doorway that summer day?

As I talk, Franz listens to me attentively. He even tells me some things about himself. “This last year has been painful for me, too,” he says. “I separated from my wife. She went back to Germany and took our daughter with her. I really miss my little Annika.”

We commiserate together. Franz is sweet. His eyes are heavenly, and he hides a tragic love story behind a never-ending smile. Then a noise startles us—the door flying open. It’s my mother. I groan. She’s probably delighted to find me half-naked and entertaining yet another young man. But didn’t she give me back the key? I bet she has a drawer in her house with thirty copies of it. I’m going to have to change the lock.

“My darling!” she exclaims, waddling into the living room on a pair of sky-high stilettos. “I’ve been calling you for days! I thought you were dead. Ugh, what is that smell? Do you have a dead body in the closet? And what did you do to your hair? You look like a porcupine!”

“I’m alive, Mom . . . And didn’t you know that corpse-scented fragrance is the new trend?”

I’m forced to introduce her to Franz. She shakes his hand and sizes him up. Franz, being the compassionate, sensitive person that he is, senses my embarrassment and leaves soon after. My mother doesn’t even give him time to reach the ground floor before she starts.

“I preferred the first guy. Now
he
was a man. This guy’s handsome, but he’s not as macho.”

“Don’t you think that might be a good thing?”

“No! What nonsense,” she exclaims, as if I had said something truly ridiculous. “Who wants to sleep with nice guys? Macho men are better in bed.”

“I’d rather talk about something else. Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

“I came to tell you about your birthday party. I’ve already invited all the relatives, and even that insipid little woman who’s always clinging to your father.”

“Coretta’s nice.”

“What kind of a name is Coretta, anyway?”

“I told you, I don’t want a party,” I say. “After last year’s fiasco with the drunk ukulele player who started tap dancing on the piano, I don’t trust your event-planning abilities. So prepare to have the party without the guest of honor, because I’m not coming. This is the last time I’m going to tell you that.”

“So dramatic! Although I admit, you don’t have all that much to celebrate,” she says, chuckling. “After all, you’re getting older, you don’t have a husband, not to mention children, and your job is so absurd that I don’t know how to explain it to my friends. But letting yourself go is just giving you wrinkles. Have you tried that new snail slime cream? They say it works miracles.”

“You can give it to me at the birthday party that I’d rather die than attend. Now please go.”

“You are ungrateful and rude,” she says. “I’d better leave, otherwise I might get wrinkles.”

“As far as I know, they’re not contagious. But I do appreciate that you’re leaving.”

I’m almost tempted to ask about Erika as she’s leaving, to try to uncover some trace of Luca in her answer, but I refrain. After all, if she knew something, she would overwhelm me with the news.

Once she’s gone, I finally look around and register my defeat. Luca isn’t coming back. I have to live without him. I have to bury him at the bottom of a drawer. I have to turn him into a memory, like Rose did with her Iago. But first, I have to find a way to kill him—figuratively, of course. A crazy idea hits me. I pull out paints and brushes from the closet. I go into Luca’s room and climb onto the bed. The wall behind his headboard is large, smooth, and white. A perfect canvas.

I take off my robe and paint, working for hours in a flurry of brushes, hands, and anger. By the time I finish, it’s almost nighttime, and I’m sweaty, dirty, and cold. It’s as if all the anger has escaped from my heart and converted itself into a frenzy of creativity. I’ve captured my feelings in this wild picture and imprisoned them in the strong colors that saturate the wall. I hope Caravaggio won’t hold it against me, but I’ve made my own version of
Judith Beheading Holofernes
. My Judith has curly hair, blue jeans, and two burning eyes. My Holofernes, a Luca look-alike, has one green eye and one black eye. He’s sprawled on a bed, a sword impaling his chest. I don’t really want him to die, of course. I just want him out of my life. It doesn’t mean that I’m cured, but at least I’m trying.

Finally, I celebrate one last act of revolt. I crumple up his sheets in my arms and take them to the washing machine. Bye-bye, Luca Morli. There you go, in with the foam. I watch through the glass door as he churns and spins around. I think that I’ve just begun a new journey—one that will enable me one day to think of Luca without rancor.