The Story of X: An Erotic Tale (3 page)

He looks puzzled. Not expecting visitors. Maybe this is the wrong door.

“Sì?”

Oh God. Now I have to use my Italian. My pathetic schoolgirl Italian.

“Uh,
buon
. . . uh . . .
giorno. Parla
—”

“Please. I speak English,” the man replies, without a trace of an Italian accent.
Maybe he is British. “How can I help you?”

“Uh, I want to see, the . . . um . . . Mr. Roscarrick, I mean the Lord. I mean . . .”
This is feeble. I am flushing. I shouldn’t have come. “I am an, uh . . . an American
student. Well, researcher. I am researching . . . the Camorra . . . No, I mean . . .”
What can I say?

The servant, if that’s what he is, seems to soften at my panic. The trace of a pitying
smile brightens his forty-something face.

“My Lord Roscarrick. You wish to see him?”

“Yes.”

“Who shall I say is calling?”

Go on, Alex: go on.
Go for it
.

“Tell him the girl from the Caffè Gambrinus is here.”

His eyebrows arch for a delicate moment, and then he beckons me in, through the grandiose
door. I am now inside The Palazzo Roscarrick.
The
Palazzo Roscarrick, not any old Palazzo Roscarrick.

I gaze about: it is dark and smells sweet—of beeswax polish, and orchids, or lilies.
The ceiling is arched. Beyond is a shady courtyard open to the sky, where the sun
slants down, illuminating the sparkling water of a fountain.

The servant reemerges.

“Lord Roscarrick will see you now.”

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

I
FOLLOW THE
butler—or valet; I’m still not sure what to call him—as we thread through the halls
and corridors of this enormous building.

As we walk, I gawp.
The
Palazzo Roscarrick is just as I imagined it, only more so. Large and sober portraits
of eighteenth-century grandees line the long corridor. Huge rooms lead off—I glimpse
halls and ballrooms where the windows are high, though many are shuttered. The wallpaper
in the corridor is an exquisite, swirling, pale jade green—Chinese, maybe—and surely
old.

“This way—please.” How big is this house? How rich is the owner?

I want to linger, and look. And admire. The furniture is a mixture of heavy walnut
Spanish and lighter Georgian English, with some starkly modern pieces. Likewise, the
dark and venerable oil paintings are interspersed with abstractions—swathes of violent,
exciting, and very twentieth-century color. A taste has been imposed here, a young
and living aesthetic. This is no museum. I notice one wall is decorated with antique
guns. At least, I think they are antique.

The servant beckons me around one final corner, through some large wooden doors, and
into another open courtyard, and my admiration becomes astonishment. I am staring
at a mighty wall of twinned stone stairs, ascending vertically a full five stories,
like the ribs from a spine; it is dazzling architecture, and rather disturbing in
its theatricality.

“The hawk-wing stairs; typical of the Neapolitan Baroque. Designed by Ferdinando Sanfelice
for my ancestor the ninth Lord Roscarrick.”

The voice is very English, soft and firm and deep. I know it is
him,
standing behind me. Has he been following me as I walked, leering like a dumb tourist,
through his ridiculously beautiful house? Has he been watching me?

He talks on: “The stairs are so grandiose because they are designed for horses. When
cavaliers returned to the palazzo, they could ride through the great south doors,
directly into the courtyard—then ascend the stairs on horseback, without needing to
dismount. The horses were trained to move back down the other staircase and trot into
the stables by themselves. Quite insane, isn’t it?”

My neck burns at the nape; I can feel myself flushing. I don’t want to turn and look
at him, this man with his staircase for horses. My sandals are ridiculous and cheap.
I should have worn a ball gown. I shouldn’t have come.

“So. The girl from the Caffè Gambrinus . . .” His voice softens to an almost-laugh.
“It sounds like a novel.”

I turn, at last. He is standing there. Half smiling.

“As do you,” I say.

“What?”

“
You
sound like a novel.”

“Sorry?”

“Marcus Xavier Roscarrick, Lord Roscarrick. I mean— I mean— Ah . . .”

What on earth am I saying? What the hell am I doing? This is virtually an insult.
But my mind is torn. He stares at me. I stare back. The servant waits.

He is wearing jeans: soft, worn denim jeans, exquisite brown English shoes, and a
faintly Byronic white cotton shirt, half unbuttoned. There is a button missing. The
cotton of his dazzling white shirt is visibly frayed. Expensively bespoke and old.
The fine leather of the shoes matches his tan, or his natural skin tone. His teeth
are white.

The pale blue eyes are not entirely cold. His smile is friendly, if a little detached.
At least he’s not in black tie and tails, or a vampirish cape. My sandals aren’t so
stupid, maybe. I wish he were two degrees less handsome. One ounce less handsome.
It is too much.

“You want to talk to me about the Camorra?”

“Yes.”

“You do realize that is somewhat forthright?” He smiles, glitteringly. “Even a little
dangerous
?”

“Yes . . . I guess it is.”

It feels so dumb now. And, of course, very rude.
Somewhat forthright.
But it is also too late. I’m here; I might as well continue.

Lord Roscarrick nods, and turns to his servant, and speaks in rapid, eloquent Italian.

I stare again. Taking him in; no,
drinking
him in.

Roscarrick’s effortlessly faded jeans have one rip above the knee, a casually yet
expertly positioned flaw. I can see the dark skin of his thigh through the rip. A
hint of the animal beneath. My mouth is dry again.

Come on, X, sort it out. Get ahold of yourself. This is just some handsome, enigmatic,
thirty-year-old billionaire aristocrat. In Naples. You meet them all the time.

Roscarrick runs a hand through his flowing dark hair as he turns back to me—and that
is
the
first faintly false gesture I have seen, the first hint of vanity, maybe. Good! Now
I don’t have to desire him so much. He is vain. Yes! But the hair is so dark, so curled
and coiling, and dark.

“So . . . where were we . . . ? I’m being rude. You must call me Marc. Marc Roscarrick.
But what shall I call you . . . Miss . . . ?”

“Beckmann.”

His eyes are still wide, still questioning. Naturally he wants my whole name. I give
it. Stammering.

“Alexandra. Beckmann. Call me Alex. Or X. People call me X.”

“X? Really?”

“Yes. X.”

“So not a novel. More a spy thriller.”

“Who’s the villain, then?”

He pauses. And then he laughs that soft, quickening laugh. Marc’s laugh is infectious.
Those flashing sharp white teeth, those flashing sharp blue eyes. He is high spirited,
a mettlesome animal, a predator, a hawk that cannot be caged. The chilly blue eyes
are slanted, just a fraction. There is a nervous and menacing energy in there, as
well; maybe he isn’t vain, just animated and taut. I start to yield again. The shirt
isn’t properly tucked into his jeans, it is lazily buttoned; I glimpse at least an
inch of his hard stomach, tan and muscled.

“
Per favore
. . .” He is talking brisk Italian with his servant. I try to look away, to look
at the flying stone staircase, the hawk-wing staircase with its lunettes and volutes
and Baroque curlicues.

But I cannot concentrate. I am too distracted, and agitated.

“Okay, X.” He says the name sarcastically, but not unkindly. “We can have some coffee
in the Long Room, and you can interrogate me, and find out if I am a
Camorrista
.”

He leads the way, and the servant disappears. The walk is short: we take a left and
a right and not for the first time since I arrived here, my eyes widen in admiration.

The Long Room is exactly that: a vast and elongated wood-paneled gallery, with fine,
high windows that flood the place with Neapolitan light, and more of those modern
abstract paintings rhythmically interrupted by Old Masters. I glimpse a creamy-white
naked woman in one painting, coyly covering her loins with scarlet silk; her voluptuous
curves are distinctive.

“Yes, it’s Titian,” he says, following my gaze, and pulling up a chair for me to use.
“We also have a couple of Mantegnas. Lots of Watteau. And Boucher. Too much Boucher.
The more erotic the better, all that French nudity. My ancestors. Such reprobates.”
He laughs. “But then, if they hadn’t been so sexually rapacious, I wouldn’t exist.”

“Sorry?”

I sit down, fumbling for a notebook in my bag. I can at least pretend that I am here
to do my research, rather than to ogle and stammer.

“Sorry?”

Marc is also sitting, his legs lazily crossed—ankle over knee. I grip my pen. A low
marble table divides us. The light slants through the endless windows; lace curtains
drift on a warm Campanian breeze. I am a little hot. My top is sticking to my arms.

“My family, on my father’s side, are English. We have a seat in Northumberland, but
in the eighteenth century the ninth lord, mad George Roscarrick, did the Grand Tour
and fell in love with Italy—and when he tired of all the
drizzle
in England he came to live in Naples, in this palazzo.” He gestures freely. “However,
as Goethe said: See Naples and die. Just a few years after moving here, the ninth
lord caught syphillis, went insane, tried to bite a harpsichord player in the Bourbon
court—and expired in a fit.”

I am scribbling this down. Roscarrick’s speech is quick and articulate.

“But the taste for Neapolitan life, and Neapolitan women, became part of our DNA.
The Roscarricks have intermarried with local nobility ever since.”

A faint and very different expression crosses his face—a flash of violent anguish.
Then it is gone, like a single cloud on a summer’s day, and his suave and agreeable
smile is restored. He talks some more about his ancestors—the art collection, the
palazzo, the duels and the drinking, amusing anecdotes. I tell him a little bit about
me—my interest in history, poetry, politics—and he laughs and smiles in the right
places.

But even though this is entertaining, I am thinking something else. I saw it.
I saw that pain
, that flash of tragic anger. What is it? Why doesn’t someone make it better? Why
doesn’t he find someone to salve this wound? Perhaps he scares them away, as he slightly
scares me.

I can smell the bodywash he is wearing, some delicate cologne maybe, nothing overt;
it is darkly alluring, yet subtle. Clean but different. I realize that is what is
so intoxicating: he smells deliciously clean, but
different
from me. He is so different from me. Eight inches taller, six foot one to my five
foot five. He is stronger. Richer. A little older. Stubbled and proud, and yet there
is a pain that needs healing.

I watch as the manservant walks in and places a silver tray of coffees on the little
marble table. I drink my delicious, faintly mocha’d dark coffee, trying to clear my
head. But I can’t. My senses are ordering me about, slapping me. I am dizzy. Quizzed
by secret police. I have the lunatic intimation that I could have met my
soul mate
. The way we laugh together; it fits. The bits of me that are missing, is he them?
Or is he too forbidding?

X. Calm down
.

“Why did you pay for our drinks?”

He nods. As if it is a very fair question.

“I saw your friend, she was appalled by the bill. I wanted to help. I have money,
I like to help.”

“And . . .”

“And let’s be honest. There is another reason . . . Why shouldn’t I buy a Veneziano
for a beautiful young woman?”

My heart quickens, my defenses rise. This is too fast, too blunt, too cheap. He is
trying to seduce me. Okay, I want to be seduced, but I don’t want to be
seduced
. Not crudely, not like this. I bridle. I sit back. He looks at me. And smiles.

“Your friend
is
very beautiful.”

“What?”

“She is very lovely. I couldn’t help myself. Sorry.”

“Oh.”

“What is her name?”

I am angry now, stupidly angry. Alex, you fool.

“Jessica.”

“Ah. Is she American as well?”

“No, British.”

“Thought so. She certainly liked to drink.” He laughs politely. “I apologize for my
candor. I hope I haven’t offended. So, do you want to ask me about the Camorra?”

My face is rigid with frustration. I sip the coffee and fume. He didn’t desire
me
. He wasn’t trying to seduce
me
. He thought I was Jessica. How intensely annoying. I am annoyed with myself, all
those stupid, stupid feelings; it was Jessica all along.
The girl from the Caffè Gambrinus
. He agreed to see me because he thought I was Jessica; now he is being polite, and
letting me down gently.

Stupid. So stupid. I am such an idiot.

The interview concludes. The coffee is drunk. He tells me that he is involved with
import and export—and that is how he has turned the family millions into billions.
He adds, with decorous modesty, that he likes to help charities—especially those that
help victims of crime. It is obscure, and I don’t care. I pretend to take notes. I
wonder if he is lying, if he really is just a handsome gangster covering his tracks.
Who the hell cares? I am an absurd person. He tells me he loves California, the deserts
of the southwest: the true America, the “frontierness.” He uses the word
frontierness
. I dislike this.

He obviously senses my discomfort. Abruptly he rises and says good-bye, and he gives
me a card, inviting me to call him if I need any more information. I offer a terse
thank-you, feeling like I should curtsey, or scream at my own crassness, but instead
I say my own good-bye and refuse the offer of assistance and flee down the vast cold
marble steps, and make my own way to the door. I can remember the route, left and
right, left and right, down this hall, down this corridor—past this suit of stupid
overwrought armor. Just get out, get out,
get out
.

The sun is burning when I step into the busy street. I look at my foolish notebook,
and hurl it into the big pile of garbage.

Then I notice the policemen, hurriedly taking photos. Of me.