Abroad (27 page)

“Of course.” In the last week we had gone over autumn’s precipice, sliding headfirst into Umbria’s months of gray sleet.

“How are you?” Colin asked. He drew closer, placing the jacket on the couch.

“Oh, good. Napping. I don’t know.” I shook my head at my stupidity. Colin smiled slightly. It wasn’t the same with him as with Marcello. With Marcello, everything crackled. I never knew exactly what to say or do, or even if he understood me. Colin was the opposite. With him, even saying nothing was exactly the right thing. He was comfortable in life’s pauses.

“What are you studying?” he asked, nodding at my books.

“Art history. Horses.”

“War?” he asked.

“What? Oh, no. I’m writing about perspective.”

“How dull.” He gazed at me for another long moment, then looked at his watch. “Anyway, I have a meeting.”

“With a professor?”

“No.” I studied his face to get a clue as to whether he was, as Claire feared, sleeping with someone else. But his face was hard and blank as she’d described. “Give her the jacket?”

I nodded. Colin went back outside. I ran to the window, watching him go out the garden gate, then grabbed my own coat and left.

Even now, I can’t clearly pinpoint all my motives for following Colin through the rain that afternoon. Or I can, but don’t want to. I told myself I was doing it for Claire. That if this man was indeed sleeping with another grad student, she should know. I would help her through it, like the friend that I was. I would end it with Marcello, even. Let her have him.

It was easy to follow someone in Grifonia, just as it would be easy to hide. The narrow streets are long and sloped, so as to lend a view of the person at least a hundred yards ahead. And with the constant activity, it was easy to blend in. Colin went up toward the main piazza, then took a left into a smaller square, then another right. He never looked behind him, and certainly didn’t seem nervous or act as if there was anything nefarious at all about his activity.

A ways down the hill, he stopped in front of an old but nicely renovated stone building and went in. It was a narrow town house, same as all the others on the
via
except that there was no laundry hanging from the window. The house was tall, with freshly painted shutters. There was no sign, simply a number on the building. I waited for a few minutes, then tried the door, which was open. I could hear voices upstairs.

I climbed up the stairs slowly and silently, looking behind me every few seconds. The second landing consisted of only a closed door. When I reached the third, I could see a plain white room through an open doorway, lit with fluorescent lights. There was a large circle of plain wooden chairs, all occupied by men—perhaps thirty or so, of all ages. They all held what looked like cheaply printed booklets in their hands and laps. One man was speaking, but then, he wasn’t … it was more of a chant in a language I couldn’t understand.

Latin, I realized after a moment.

Someone sneezed; another man was yawning. I spotted Colin not far away, his back to me, his coat tossed over a chair. The men continued to chant for a few minutes, then stopped. At the far end of the room, another man walked to the podium and opened a sheaf of old parchment. I thought something might happen, but again, he spoke monotonously in Latin. The men picked up their booklets again.

After a few more minutes the enormity of my intrusion overtook me. What if Colin found me spying on his Latin class? I turned and went down the stairs as quietly as I could. When I hit the second landing I began running. I didn’t stop until I was blocks away, my crime safely behind me.

Agnese, 16th century AD

Agnese was twenty-six and unmarried by choice. During her childhood, a bout of plague had struck Grifonia, and after losing a brother and cousins, she was no longer interested in forming an attachment.

With her father’s money, Agnese started an apothecary particularly popular with the ladies. Throughout the day servants were sent to procure tinctures for monthly pains, ointments for aging skin, herbs for fertility. Even, it was said, for cutting pregnancies short.

In 1588, the papacy fueled an Inquisition, already rampant in Siena. In Rome, it was said, a witch had confessed without torture to the murder of thirty children and to sucking their blood. In Florence, fifteen witches had been tried and burned.

The Compagnia had been weakened by the plague. Many members were lost. The charter was now more than a thousand years old, and the mission was in question. Though some mercy killings were performed during the great illness, the practice grew too dangerous, as many of the Brothers contracted the disease themselves, only to be sequestered. The dead were too many in number to provide proper burials. Many of the members were wondering as to the point of the order at all.

Yet now, the witch hunt. Grifonia had a history of distrusting the papacy. The Compagnia, after several meetings, concurred that this hysteria was fueled solely by fools. They were rising again.

Agnese was the first turned over. The Compagnia would not be able to service the nine other girls burned in the next weeks, but Agnese’s father was part of the order. With bribes, they got into her cell. She herself instructed the men in the mixing of the poison.

Agnese Gagliardi, twenty-six years old, 16th century AD

20

Claire’s insistence on a double date continued. So, with some coaxing, an outing with Marcello and me was arranged.

I decided not to tell her about following Colin to his meeting. For one thing, I was embarrassed, and for another, all I had found out was that he was taking some sort of community seminar in Latin. She continued to complain about his odd absences, and I continued to reassure her with a certainty I didn’t explain.

“But you’ll come out?” she said. “You’ll see if he’s acting strange around me?”

“Of course.”

Yet when I brought up the idea with Marcello, my own Italian boyfriend—or whatever I was supposed to call him—was less than enthusiastic.

“Why?” I asked, with somewhat guilty relish. “Don’t you like her?”

We were naked in my bed, hiding from the dripping afternoon weather.

“Claire? Sure. Of course I like Claire.”

“Because she’s beautiful?”

“Devil, don’t be crazy. Pretty, not pretty. It’s all you talk about. We’re all pretty.”

“Well, then—”

“She’s funny, that’s it. Funny.”

In the past weeks, our sex had become rougher. I was fairly sure Marcello still liked me, but in bed he was impersonal. Almost pornographic.

I’d made him milk tea, which he pushed away. Now I gripped the pillow I was holding over my chest.

“What does that mean, funny?”

“Devil, don’t get jealous. She’s a great girl. She comes down, you come down, we’re all friends. You’re funny, too.”

“No I’m not.”

“Oh you are. You don’t know it. But trust me. Trust Marcello.”

I scrunched down beneath the covers.

“I’ve barely even seen you lately.”

“Devil, are we married? I’m busy. I have school. So do you. Anyway, I’ve seen you, out with your girls. Not Claire, the other girls.”

“You did? Where?”

“I don’t know about them. You know they are the drug girls, yes?”

“I’m just friends with them.”

“Careful, Devil. They might be fooling you.”

“They’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“I know them.”

“All right.” He put his arm around me. “Listen to this story, Angel. Okay?”

“Fine.”

“My father. He always wanted to screw girls from America.”

“What?”

“Just listen. I’m telling you a story.”

“This is not starting well.”

“Just listen. My father and his friends, they liked American girls. But the girls who came to Naples, they only wanted rich guys. Imagine it. Blondes from California. They drove my father crazy. He dreamed about their skin. Those girls, they’d taste like Coca-Cola. He knew it, Angel. Like those big lollipops swirled with pink. And they’d only sleep with assholes with money. It wasn’t fair.”

“Marcello…”

“So listen to what they did. Alone, they were poor. But they got together, six of them, and bought a Spider. The Fiat Spider, you know it? They got it used, fixed it up. Painted it. And they would take turns. They would go to the train station, one by one, maybe two at a time. They dressed up, looking rich. I think they even shared the clothes. These were guys who worked at the docks. They had nothing.”

He looked at me. I waited.

“So at the station, they’d find a pretty American girl, or two. They’d go up to them on the platform and grab their bags. They’d say, ‘Hey, don’t take the train. I’ll give you a ride. You and your friend.’”

“Would they now? And the girls said yes?”

“They were American,” he said.

I shook my head.

“So the girls would go. They’d get into the car, with the top down, their hair blowing. And they would think, here I am with a rich Italian. And they would sleep with my father, or his friends. Whoever had the car that night. They all chipped in on hotel rooms, too, I think. And then in the morning, back to the train station. Boom. Goodbye girl. And then it was another boy’s turn.”

“That’s so terrible, I can’t even talk about it.”

“Oh, Devil, don’t be so shocked. Everyone had a good time.”

“What is the point of this story, Marcello?”

“I forget.” He blinked, thinking for a moment. “Oh, yes. I was talking about these girls. These friends of yours. I think they are pretending to be something they’re not.”

“I already know all about that. And I still like them.”

“All right. Fine. Here’s another point of the story: those girls who went with my father, they had a good time. They had a nice night in a hotel room in Italy. They went back to the train and kissed the Italian boy goodbye and thought, I just had a big adventure.”

“But it was all lies.”

“Why was it a lie, if they believed it? They went home to America, had babies, grew old. Told their daughters all about it.”

I was silent for a moment, thinking of those blondes, their hair blowing in the wind from the sea.

“What happened to the car?” I asked.

“Tasmania, who the hell cares about the car?”

He hoisted himself out of bed, looking out the window. There was something decadent about looking at Marcello. His smooth belly, still brown from the sun, hanging above his hips; his penis, still somewhat erect, dangling from the dark sleek hair between his legs. He didn’t crouch the way I did when I was naked. He just stood there, proud as a well-fed nobleman.

“It’s a good story.”

“It is.”

“But, I have to ask. Why don’t you want to go out with Claire and Colin?”

Marcello inspected his nails. “The guy is odd.”

“You know him?”

“I’ve seen him. I know people who know him. His father is from a very old Grifonian family, and he is strange. Everyone knows it.”

“Claire doesn’t seem to.”

“Well,
Claire
.”

“Yes?”

“She likes everyone.” He pulled on his jeans.

“Well, she really wants this, so let’s do it.”

“All right, Tabitha. For you.”

I rested my head on my arm. I liked it when he said my name. And it felt nice, to be wrapped in a white sheet like that, watching my lover leave.

“Marcello, what color was the Spider?” I asked.

My neighbor leaned down and kissed my ear. “You’re the girl in the car now, Devil,” he whispered. “What color do you want it to be?”

*   *   *

Our outing was set for the last Saturday in October. We were to go to a concert. Before, this would have been a night reserved, without question, by Jenny. But now the B4 had all but fallen apart. Jenny was still the center of my social life, but we mostly went out alone. She made references to outings with Luka, yet as far as I knew, she and Anna were no longer speaking. Though going out with Jenny was akin to boarding the lead float of a parade, I missed our foursome. My afternoons, which before had brimmed with invitations and meetings, were now unbearably hollow. And it seemed unnecessary, the break. Jenny never mentioned Samuel, which meant, I assumed, that she had dropped him, too. And with class officially over, Professor Korloff had left town—after awarding me my A.

The day of our outing, Claire dragged me around town to assemble the perfect picnic. Bread from the baker near the university. Salami from the alley across from the cathedral. Two bottles of wine procured from two different
enotecas
, at least a mile away from each other.

“Claire, this is insane,” I grumbled.

“And whiskey,” she said. “I bet he’d like whiskey.”

They were dizzying, her preparations, not to mention costly. When it came time, I helped her load the food into her backpack and walked with her through the winding alleys to the terraced park listed on the flyer she clutched in her hand.

Arriving before the boys, we spread out the blanket and waited. Once the music started, Claire smoked and scanned the park for Colin. He still hadn’t arrived by the time the first song began, nor the second. She checked her phone, frowned, lit another cigarette. Marcello arrived, plopping down between us in his leather jacket, setting down a few beers. Claire gladly took the first one, drinking steadily until Colin finally came, unrepentant, swathed in a cashmere coat.

Claire couldn’t stop touching her lover; she kissed him over and over, she played with his hair. Sometimes Colin winced a bit when she threw her arms around him. He didn’t always respond to her, and once, when we were spreading out the blanket, he lightly shook her off. The expression on her face was so pained I had to look away. If she could have, I think she would have turned to smoke and poured herself into his body.

It was cold for an outdoor concert, but we soldiered on, huddling up under our blankets. I tried to concentrate on the music but my fingers were too frigid. Marcello, who hated silences, began teasing Claire about her Italian and about the bad music. She laughed, and I felt a rush of gratefulness as it was the first time I’d heard her giggle all day. Colin remained silent, watching the band.