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“I can’t go into it now. Randall wants to talk to me.” Terry Randall was the company’s not-so-pleasant owner. He made Laurence seem like an easygoing beach bum. “You’re sure Cavalli isn’t going to buy?” Laurence asked.
The afternoon flashed before me—the disdainful glances from the white-haired woman, sympathetic ones from Bruno. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Jesus, Blakely, I didn’t need this. I’ll see you when you get back. And have a great time over there.” His voice was thick with sarcasm. “I’m glad somebody’s getting a vacation.” He hung up.
I lay back on the bed and dialed Nick’s work number. It was late morning in Chicago, and it was his day to see patients at the office, but I wanted to hear his voice.
Tina, the receptionist, answered. “Hi, Rachel!” she said cheerily. “How’s Rome?”
I turned my head on the pillow and looked around the room. The windows were open, the breeze making the curtains sway and billow. “Beautiful. Thanks for asking. Hey, is Nick busy?”
“He’s not in today.”
“What do you mean?”
“He took today off. It’s super warm here, like almost eighty degrees. He said something about golf.”
“Oh, all right.”
But Nick didn’t golf anymore, at least not unless he had to. He had played on his high school team in Philadelphia, an intense experience that diminished his love for the game, and so now he played with the other doctors at his office only when he felt forced to do so for appearance’ sake.
“Did anyone else take the day off?” I asked hopefully. “Like Dr. Adler or Dr. Simons?”
“Nope,” Tina said, cheerful as ever.
I got off the phone and dialed our home number, trying to hold my flaring suspicions at bay. Maybe he was just using golf as an excuse, and he was home working on his paper. Maybe he was coming down with a cold. My own voice on the machine answered after four rings, politely asking callers to leave their name and number. I hung up and dialed Nick’s cell phone. It went right to voice mail, as if turned off by someone who very much did not want to be reached.
Something as heavy as lead crept into my chest.
I got up from the bed and went to the French windows. I pushed them farther open, hoping the sight of the Spanish Steps would lift my spirits, but the orange glow of the sun setting somewhere over the city only made me melancholy for company, for my husband, or at least the husband I used to have. The white marble steps seemed covered with couples taking in the coming twilight. As far as my eye could see, people were holding hands, speaking softly into each other’s ears.
Where was he? Why take off work on a Monday, only two days after I’d left? Why hadn’t he mentioned it?
I thought about all the talks we’d had after his affair. Why, why, why? I’d asked over and over. Whydid you do it? Nick shook his head, his eyes anguished and disbelieving, as if he couldn’t quite accept what he’d done. He said it was a product of his boredom, his worries about whether he’d make partner at the office, whether he’d make it onto the board. He needed something new and exciting to distract him, and when she walked into his life in Napa, he felt she would bring him that excitement, if only momentarily. He swore there was nothing wrong with our relationship. He wasn’t bored with me, he kept saying. He wasn’t harboring any kind of resentment toward me.
In some ways, I was relieved by his answers, or lack of them. Because I didn’t want anything to be inherently wrong with us. I wanted Napa to be a colossal, bumbling, impulsive mistake.
But I’d never stopped to think that maybe he couldn’t control such impulses. I didn’t even ask if he wanted to.
I shut the windows and yanked off my robe. I started the shower, turned the heat high and stepped inside, letting the water pound my skin.
He’s at it again. That was all I could think. It wasn’t the goddess from Napa this time, but someone else. Unbelievable. How smug I’d been this week, thinking how much he’d miss me. How sure I’d been of his devotion when I turned my back to him at the airport.
Nick’s career couldn’t handle a divorce right now. Hadn’t he told me that in so many words while we were seeing the therapist? We’d sat side by side on the maroon leather couch in Conan’s office, while Conan himself, a large man with a trim gray beard, sat on a wide leather recliner.
How had Nick put it? “Rach, listen, I know this is unfair, but I have to ask you something. It’s…” His words drifted off, and he gave me a guilty glance.
“Go ahead, Nick,” Conan prompted. “Everyone is entitled to a request here.”
Nick nodded. “I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell so many people about our…our troubles.”
It was our second visit when Nick said this, and I looked at him with disgust. “You slept with another woman. Over and over for a week.” I saw Conan studying me as my voice drove up in volume, so I took a breath and lowered it. “And now you want me to be quiet?”
“I am so sorry, Rachel,” Nick said. He reached out and touched my leg. “Like I said, I realize this isn’t fair. But you know how they are at the office.” In short, the partners at his medical practice looked favorably not only upon exceptional surgical skills and the publishing of papers, but also on charitable work and a clean, traditional private life.
I had assumed Nick wanted our marriage to work because he loved me, because he made that colossal, impulsive mistake, but now I began to wonder if he’d just been patching things up until he was a partner and a member of the board, when he could do anything he wanted with his life.
In the shower, a few frustrated tears slipped from my eyes, but after a minute, I began to hate my own confusion and self-pity.
I got out of the shower and called Nick’s cell phone three more times in quick succession. I started to despise the sound of his cheerful yet soothing physician’s voice—You’ve reached the voice mail of Dr. Nick Blakely. Please leave me a message. If this is a medical emergency…
I called the concierge and asked her to make a reservation at a good restaurant within walking distance. I dried my hair, recklessly directing the hair dryer any which way, never lifting the brush from the counter, so that the natural, erratic waves took over my dark hair. I put on black pants and high-heeled satin sandals. No more feeling sorry for myself. I had no idea what Nick was doing, but I was in Rome, and I was going out for the night.
As I walked to the restaurant, I filled up with the feeling I always got when I was in Rome—satiated though I hadn’t yet eaten, overwhelmed by antiquity even though I hadn’t yet waited in line to see anything. Beauty and history surround you in Rome. They’re inescapable, and their presence buoyed me, if only for a few moments.
The last time I’d been in Rome, Nick and I had strolled hand in hand over cobblestone streets, me gripping his arm when we crossed particularly choppy spots, and we stopped at nearly every os-teria for a glass of wine.
I pushed the thoughts of Nick from my mind as I spied Dal Bolognese, the restaurant where the concierge had booked me. It was tucked next to one of Piazza del Popolo’s twin churches. The place had white tablecloths and umbrellas out front. Soft light and classical music spilled from the white-curtained windows.
I stepped inside and looked around, my eyes immediately landing on a man talking to the maître d’. He wore tan linen slacks and a long-sleeved maroon shirt. His hair was dark brown, his skin tanned, and faint lines ran from his eyes to his full mouth. He had one hand on the maître d’s shoulder.
For some reason, the man turned to me as if expecting me. His expression when his eyes met mine said, Ah, there you are.
For a moment I forgot where I was. I don’t know how long I met his gaze. Surely it was too long, for the maître d’stepped around him, and said, “Madame?”
I stayed mute, still looking at this man, who felt brand-new and at the same time intensely familiar. One side of his maroon shirt collar had fallen aside, and I was drawn to the sight of his tanned skin below his collarbone.
“Madame?” the maître d’ said again.
I dragged my eyes away, but I could still feel him staring at me.
“Prenotazione per uno,” I managed to say. “Blakely.” I felt relieved to have spoken in coherent Italian, even if it was just a few words.
“Si, si,” the maître d’ said, glancing down at the reservation book. “Your table, here.” He gestured toward an umbrellaed table in front of the restaurant. “Please.”
I took a step to follow, but I couldn’t help stopping and turning. The man in the linen shirt was still standing there. He was still watching me.
“Your table,” I heard the maître d’say behind me.
“I should go,” I said to the man. Stupidly, I realized. He was a few feet away from me, and why was I talking to him at all? He hadn’t even spoken.
Feeling foolish, I turned again, followed the maître’ d and gratefully took my seat, hiding my face with a tall, leather wine menu.
I ordered buffalo mozzarella and asparagus to start, then porcini risotto. While I waited for my food, I sipped from a glass of crisp white wine. But I hardly noticed the tart apple flavor as I glanced around the restaurant. Where had he gone? But then, what did it matter? I quickly finished the glass and ordered another.
I ate my mozzarella when it came. The cheese was so fresh, it must have been made that day. Yet I had to struggle to appreciate it, more focused on the fact that the restaurant was full to capacity, and everyone was having a delightful time. With their friends. With their spouses.
I ordered another glass of wine with my risotto, a creamy concoction that somehow turned my stomach. I pushed the rice around on my plate, imagining Nick in the bed of some woman. Then a thought struck me. He might have her—whoever the hell she was—in our bed. I was glad I wasn’t in Chicago then. I could easily become one of those people who chased their straying spouse with a semiautomatic.
The waiter had just handed me my bill when the man I’d seen earlier appeared at my side.
“Ciao,” he said. His voice was low, smooth.
“Ciao,” I answered.
“I will call you then.”
I blinked a few times. “Pardon me?”
“I would like to call you.”
“Look, you don’t know me…”
He smiled. It was a kind smile, one that bore the experience of many years. I thought he must be in his mid-forties. How is it that Italians wear their age so well?
“You are alone in the city?” he said.
“No, no. I’m with a friend.” I realized the ridiculousness of this statement.
“Please,” he said simply. The collar of his shirt, which I could tell up close was made from a soft, and probably very expensive linen, had fallen aside again. He made a gesture to right it. His tanned hands were long and elegant and dotted with splatters of paint. Artist’s hands.
“You don’t know where I’m staying,” I said somewhat coquettishly. I felt a xpleasing blaze in my stomach at my boldness.
“Yes,” the man said. “True.” There were flecks of green in his smiling brown eyes. “Where shall I call you?”
I shook my head and forced out a little laugh. I knew Italian men loved to seduce American women, the thought being that they were—sexually speaking—much easier when on the road, particularly in Europe. I wasn’t one of those women, although clearly this man thought I was.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I can’t do this.” I put some euros on my bill. Feeling silly, I stood. “Excuse me, I have to go.”
The man bowed slightly, then stepped aside. “Of course.”
I moved around him and without looking back, I headed out into the warm Rome night.
When I pushed open the door to our room, I saw that Kit was still gone. I checked for messages. There were none, not from my husband or Kit.
I called Nick’s phone. That grating message again. I called home. No answer.
I slipped between the cool white sheets, and waited for sleep to envelop me. I dozed, my mind working through short bursts of dreams, all of them unintelligible but filled with the color of Rome’s gold. I awoke and kept thinking about the man, although I knew this was illogical. I turned over in bed.
Just as I did, the phone rang—an unfamiliar bleat that reminded me I was far from home. I sat up and stared at the phone. I looked over at Kit’s empty bed, then lifted the receiver.
“Hello?” I said. “Pronto?”
“Giorno.” It wasn’t Nick. It wasn’t Kit. It was him. I just knew. “Giorno,” he said again when I didn’t respond.
“Is it morning?” I said.
“Soon.”
A pause.
“How did you get my number?” I asked.
“My friend who works at the ristorante. He told me where you were staying.”
“Oh.” More than anything, I was surprised at how flattered I felt that he’d searched me out.
“Please do not be angry. It is hard to explain, but I feel I have to see you, to know you.”
“I’m not angry.”
“You will meet me?”
I thought of Nick. Of course I did. And the image of him, which should have stopped me—his round brown eyes, his curly, light brown hair, the constellation of freckles over his cheeks—instead incensed me.
I threw back the sheets and said, “Yes.”
4
“Ciao,” I called to the sleepy guy at the bell desk, as if I always left my hotel by myself in the wee hours to meet a man who was not my husband.
I stepped out into the inky night. The kiosk across from the hotel, which sold water and pizza, was closed, the apartments surrounding the hotel dark. It was not nearly morning, as the man had said, and daylight seemed far away, as if I might never see the sun again. I liked that thought.
My body felt light, made of air. I moved down the street like a patch of fog. He had told me to meet him halfway up the Spanish Steps. As I took the first white marble stair, I halted. The Spanish Steps are hundreds of feet wide and sky-high, so what exactly did “halfway” mean? The first landing? The second? Ignoring the questions, ignoring common sense, I climbed.
My shoes went tap, tap, tap as I padded upward, and in my chest, behind my ribs, a drumbeat of anticipation began.
I glanced up for a moment and saw the moon—a small, yellow globe—and the dark sky behind it. The steps were nearly empty of their usual crowd, but somewhere on them, young Italian men were singing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few pairs of lovers. No single man in a linen shirt. My eyes climbed the huge stairway for him. Maybe he wouldn’t come? Relief. Disappointment.
At the second landing, I turned and stared down toward the fountain. A few stragglers were gathered around it. Maybe he was one of them? Had I walked right past him? But he’d said “halfway.” I remembered that for sure. Maybe “halfway” was some Italian lingo. The confusion nearly pulled me from my dreamlike state. I started to process what I was doing, or at least how I hadn’t a clue of what I was doing.
But when I turned back to look up the steps, he was there.
“Ciao,” he said.
“Ciao.”
He came to me and took one of my hands. I felt a flutter through my belly and my limbs. “I don’t know your name,” he said.
“Rachel.”
“And I am Roberto.”
The singers broke into a slow, haunting song. The strum of their guitar wafted and lilted until it surrounded the two of us, as if the song was being played for us.
“Rachele, Roberto,” he said, gesturing to me and back to himself. “This is meant to happen.”
I clasped his hand tighter.
