Sea Lovers (21 page)

This was true, Edith admitted. All the Americans who had accepted the lodgings arranged by the conference were jealous. They were stuck in an ugly modern building in an uglier suburb, an hour from the university by a crowded and unreliable bus. Isabel had taken one look at the address on the conference brochure, pronounced it impossible, and gotten on the phone to her various Italian connections, some of whom, Edith knew, were former lovers. The apartment belonged to the sister of a man Isabel had seduced when she was in school, many years ago, as she pointed out, and now safely married to a Milanese. He visited Rome only a few weeks a year; there was no possibility that she would even see him. They had the place for a month, staying on two weeks after the conference ended. It was in a six-story art deco building near the Vatican, complete with marble floors, tall windows, and surprisingly modern plumbing. It even had a sunny study, which opened onto the courtyard, where Edith sat with her espresso each morning drawing pictures of flowers in the margin of her blank page.

“The apartment is great,” Edith agreed. “Though I couldn't live with the street racket for much more than a month.”

Isabel rolled her eyes up to show her impatience, then spoke to the waiter who had arrived with a platter of fried vegetables. He was a cherubic young man, all curls and chubbiness, with an expression of solicitous serenity that Edith envied. He listened to Isabel's chatter, nodding agreement while his eyes wandered over the table, checking the levels of the wine and water bottles, then settling on Edith's face. He knew that she was an American, that she didn't speak Italian. At the start of the meal, he had enjoyed a brief exchange with Isabel in which she had told him they were from New York. It was easier, Isabel explained when he had gone; no Roman had heard of Connecticut. Now, as Edith allowed herself to be examined by the mild-eyed young man, Isabel asked, “Do you want grilled fish?”

“No,” she said. “I want pasta.”

“La pasta,” the waiter exclaimed, evidently pleased. He ran down the list of offerings, most of which Edith understood: with peas, with shrimp, with salmon, with tomatoes and garlic, with porcini mushrooms.

“Funghi porcini,” Edith said, and Isabel too looked gratified.

When the waiter left them, Isabel reached out and patted her hand. “Isn't this a great restaurant? I haven't been here in twelve years, but nothing has changed.”

“It's very nice,” Edith agreed. She knew this was an inadequate response, but she felt oppressed by Isabel's hard-sell campaign to make her agree that everything in Rome was superior to everything in America. It was an interesting place to visit, certainly, but there was much that Edith found horrific: the packs of thieving children who would take the shirt off one's back if they could get it; the kiosks displaying walls of the vilest pornography; the embarrassing television shows where even the news announcers wore low-cut tops with push-up bras and seemed intent on seducing their audience; the ceaseless roar of the traffic; the young men on motor scooters cruising through even the narrowest streets, so that one had to be prepared to press against the wall at every moment; the ubiquitous cell phones, often two or three at a restaurant table, with the diners all shouting into them; the monuments to tyranny and superstition every twenty feet or so.

And then there was the strain of watching Isabel, who was practicing denial with the terrified concentration of a fiddler in a burning building. She was glancing appreciatively around the room; it was cavelike but bright, because the walls were white. There were racks of wine bottles cleverly stored in various alcoves. “It's lovely,” Isabel said, soaking in the agreeable atmosphere. “And the food is excellent. I could eat here every night.”

But you can't, Edith thought. And when you can't, what happens then?

Isabel and Edith had lived together for ten years, sometimes harmoniously, but sometimes not. They met at a party given by one of Edith's colleagues at the college where they were employed, a painter who flattered herself that her wide range of acquaintance made her parties newsworthy events, though in fact she invited only people from the college who were connected to the arts and had some small professional standing as well as endless opinions with which they had long ago succeeded in boring one another past rage. Edith had just won a prize for her second collection of poems,
Sullen Vixens
, and she was being congratulated by a Victorian scholar whose insincerity was a marvel to see, as Edith knew he had tried mightily to block her tenure. As she accepted his fake enthusiasm, she saw Isabel smiling up at her from a wicker couch in the sunroom. Isabel in the sunroom! She was wearing something diaphanous, a dark blood-red, billowy in the skirt but fitted in tight folds across the bodice, leaving her shoulders and neck exposed. She had one arm stretched across the back of the couch, and she was leaning forward to fish a few nuts from the bowl on the coffee table. There were a lot of big plants ranged around the room and several of the painter's brightly colored canvases on the walls, so Isabel appeared to be sitting in a tropical jungle. She had her dark hair pulled back tightly; her lipstick was blood-red, like her dress. Edith thought of a Frida Kahlo self-portrait she had seen once, but this picture of a woman she did not yet know was free of the heavy neurosis of that portrait: It was as if Frida had taken a look at herself and been actually delighted by what she saw.

Later Edith asked her hostess who the woman in red was. The painter raised her eyebrows as high as she could get them and pressed her lips together in a bizarre grimace, which she evidently thought proved she knew Edith well and understood the erotic significance of her question. “Wouldn't you like to know,” she announced joyfully. “Well, I will tell you. She is the new instructor in the Dance Department, Isabel Perez. She's from Costa Rica originally, I think, or maybe Paraguay. I can't remember. Come along and I'll introduce you.”

And so they met. The painter introduced Edith as “our wonderful poet who has just won a very important prize. We are so proud of her.” Edith, made miserable by the idiotic falsity of this introduction, could only nod and stretch out her hand, which Isabel took gingerly, saying that unfortunately, she knew nothing about poetry. There was just a trace of an accent, not much more than the odd incorrect stress. Edith could think of no response to this observation, so she smiled and nodded her head, hating the painter from the bottom of her heart. As soon as she could, she slipped away to the drinks table and poured out a full glass of bourbon.

When she looked back into the other room, she saw that Isabel had gotten up from the couch and was talking animatedly to a tall black man in a white suit, Mabu Adu of the French Department. She could tell by the way Isabel was working her mouth that they were speaking in French.

Edith shivered. She had not hoped to meet anyone even mildly interesting at this party; she had certainly not expected to fall in love. She found it difficult to stop looking at Isabel. Michael Mellon, her fellow poet, a nonentity from nowhere, rushed up to her and confessed that he had been thrilled by the news of her prize because it was so rare these days for work one actually admired to receive any recognition at all. He felt positively vindicated. “In fact,” he said, “Ellen told me to calm down. She said I was acting as if I'd won the prize myself!”

Edith accepted her colleague's praise at face value. The poor man had been instrumental in bringing her to the college, taught her book in his classes, and, as she knew from various sources, had made an impassioned speech at her tenure review meeting, calling her one of the best poets of her generation. She did not doubt that he was the only person in the department who had not actually writhed in pain at the news of her selection. “What a generous man you are, Michael,” she said. “Your friendship is as good as a prize to me.” He blushed, and glanced about to see who was witnessing this acknowledgment of his worth. Edith followed his look and saw Isabel very near, her head tilted to listen to some pleasantry from Mabu, her eyes resting on Edith, the slyest of smiles lifting the corners of her mouth. I wonder what she looks like having an orgasm, Edith shocked herself by thinking. She returned her attention sharply to her well-wisher, who was asking her a question about a promising student whose honors thesis he was directing.

They talked a few minutes more; then, when Michael spotted his wife arriving—she had dropped the children off at the soccer clinic—he excused himself and hurried away. Edith took a swallow of her bourbon and watched in amazement as Isabel disengaged herself from Mabu and made straight for her side. When she got there, she said in a silky voice just above a whisper, “What thought were you having about me just now?”

Had Edith heard correctly? Isabel's perfume, spicy and warm, wrapped around her like a sensual embrace, and Edith held her glass still only with an effort. “I was thinking,” she said, “that I would like to take you to lunch.”

Isabel frowned. “But where? Everything in this town is so dull.”

“We could drive to the city.”

“Yes,” Isabel agreed. “I know some wonderful places there.”

Much later, in very different circumstances, it occurred to Edith that this brief and magical exchange only proved how absurdly easy Isabel was.

Edith stood glowering at the books on the English bookshop table. How was it possible? Two collections by her archenemies, Lulu and Mark Zinnia; one by her former girlfriend Lydia, whose poetry was always described as lyrical, though Lydia actually had the sensitivity to language of a baseball bat; and one by Malva Plume, a mawkish sentimentalist who “celebrated the body.” There was also a small stack of
The Monk's
Alarm Clock
, the surrealist J. P. Green's newest, which Edith had read and liked. That was it for contemporary American poetry. On the fiction table nearby, Edith spotted the Marilyn Monroe book and the new one in which Mussolini visits New York. She picked up Lulu's book and opened it to the picture on the back flap, taken, of course, by Mark. Lulu was sitting on what looked like a swing; there was a heavy chain next to her face. Her slightly protruding eyes were focused entirely on the camera. Beneath it was a list of the prizes she had won. Edith opened to a poem at random and scanned a few lines. Lulu was anxious about Mark's bad cold. Edith laughed and snapped the book closed.