The Story of X: An Erotic Tale (9 page)

Yet in my mind I can hear his voice.

“Per favore, ricordati di me.”

Why say that?

Forget it, Alexandra. Forget him, and the frescoes, and the Mysteries; forget it all.
The dark-haired men in the little cafes with their overpriced Pepsis smile at me as
I run down the hill toward the station for Villa dei Misteri and the Circumvesuviana
train for Napoli.

Please remember me
?

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

“I
T WAS ACTUALLY
a pretty clever thing to say.”

“Why?”

Jessica pouts at the sun, lies back, and pushes her Ray-Bans up her elegant nose.

“Think about it, babe.”

We’re lying on the beach at Posillipo, the municipal beach that costs five euros a
day and has too many kids screaming and splashing and booting soccer balls, watched
over by their big, fat Neapolitan mommas smoking Mild Seven cigarettes, which they
stain with vermillion lipstick. Italian women wear more makeup on the beach than I
do on the street. I am not sure of my opinion about this.

But it’s the first
really
hot Sunday of the summer and everyone is happy and smiling and looking forward to
a long Neapolitan lunch of Tufo white wine and big tranches of cassata, except for
me. I am brooding and pensive.

Remember me
?

Why was that a clever thing to say?

“Okay, I give up, why was that a clever thing to say?”

“Because it’s got you wondering, X. And if he wants you to come back to him, which
I am sure he does, the best thing is to keep you wondering, unsure, puzzled.”

“Sorry?”

“What he said can be interpreted in
so many ways
. Does he mean: ‘Remember me because you are never going to see me again’? Or it could
be: ‘Remember me because I am the sexiest man you will ever meet so you
have
to remember me’?”

“Thanks.”

“Or it could be remember him in a wistful, tragic way, like he knows he is gonna be
slotted by the ’Ndrangheta next week on the road to La Sanita, so the next time you’ll
see Lord R is when he’s a corpse on the front cover of
Il Mattino
.”

She smiles and lifts her sunglasses and winks at me. Then she adjusts her bikini strap.
The sun is
hot
. Her bikini is new and chic and emerald green, and maybe Ferragamo? Or at least a
very clever rip-off of Ferragamo, made in some Camorra-owned factory in Casal di Principe.

My bikini isn’t any of these things, not new, not chic, not a rich emerald green that
looks unexpectedly good against a deep Campanian suntan. My bikini is a delicate pink
and looked nice in Cali. Not here.
God.
I have a sincere yearning for new clothes. I have no money. I am bored of budgeting.

And then, of course, the deep, sexy voice floats into my head. Him. In bed. With me.
Taking me royally, and saying,
I will buy you a hundred fucking dresses
.

No! I sit up suddenly from my beach towel as if I am scalded. What is wrong with me?
How could I even begin to think this way? If one of my reasons for desiring Marc is
partly, even fractionally, because he’s rich, what does that make me? Some mercenary
bitch? Virtually a hooker? That is not me!

“Are you okay?”

Jess stretches and puts a hand on my arm.

“Yes. No,” I snap. “It’s nothing.”

“Huh?”

“Okay, I just remembered I dumped a billionaire.”

Jess chuckles.

“Well, yes, I guess that’s gotta hurt.”

She lets go of my arm and reaches for her Marlboro Lights and her lighter with the
picture of Balotelli on it. Some soccer player. Black and handsome and Italian.

“Run it past me again, Beckmann: why
did
you dump him?”

I sip my cold mineral water and frown and pout, and answer, “Because he’s into that
weird cult. The Mystery Religions.”

“And what are they, when they’re at home?”

“Some creepy ancient religious Greco-Roman
thing.
Where they whip women.”

Jess looks up from her beach towel and nods.

“Yeah? What’s the problem? Still better than wearing deck shoes.”

“Jess.”

I chuck a little of my cold water on her hot, suntan-oiled stomach and she shrieks
and laughs.

“Beach Nazi.”

And now we laugh together like old friends, and it is good. And for a moment the clouds
disperse and my brooding and moody thoughts are gone and my mind is as clear as the
sky over the Bay of Naples this morning, the sea that stretches to the glimmering
sawtooths of Capri. One day soon I am going to Capri.

“Seriously,” says Jess. “These Mystery dudes, these blokes in togas, they like to
hit women, why and how?”

“Not hit, so much. Flagellate. Ritually
whip
. It is an erotic ritual of submission.”

“So it’s like a BDSM thing, yes?”

“I guess . . .” I drink the last of the San Pellegrino and screw the cap back on.
“Marc emphasized that it was all voluntary, and consensual.”

Her face is suddenly serious. She sits up.

“You know, X, there are worse things in the world than a bit of slap and tickle. I
had a boyfriend who was into
skateboarding
. He was thirty-bloody-two years old, and I had to watch him jump over three-inch-high
barriers and pretend I was impressed. Now
that
was harrowing.”

“Flagellation, though? It’s perverse.”

“Yeah, maybe. Which means Marc is a bit kinky, so what? X, they are
all
kinky, deep down. And if you ask me, all
women
are a bit kinky, too; it’s just we’ve been repressed by the patriarchy.” She stubs
her cigarette out in the sand, a slovenly, and rather Neapolitan, gesture. I resist
the urge to wince. She goes on.

“You know what they say: no woman ever got turned on by a man dressed as a liberal.”
I chuckle at the line, but she continues, “Aren’t you even a little bit intrigued,
X? Why not give it a whirl, vanilla girl? It’s time you explored your libido. You
do have one, don’t you?”

“I told you.”

“Ah yes, the best fuck of your life. Yes. You told me all about that, babe. He ripped
off your clothes and you liked it, didn’t you?”

“Yes, a bit . . . Okay, a lot.”

“So maybe you’ll like some other things. Threesomes. Foursomes. Lesbian costume play.
Driving naked in Ferraris with wildly sexy billionaires, poor you.”

I put the empty water bottle back in my bag like a tidy and sensible girl. Jess is
making sense, maybe. But suburban X is still resisting, very strongly. There were
just too many things
wrong
with Marc, quite apart from the Mysteries. The slight but definite menace. The hint
of restrained violence. The police interest in his palazzo. The enigma of his departed
wife.

Jess is now leaning on an elbow, smoking another cigarette, and openly ogling some
Italian guy in his swimwear. I stare beyond her pretty profile at the strange building
at the end of the beach. It is an enormous villa, a grand and historic palazzo.

It looks maybe fifteenth century and it is entirely in ruins. The windows are dark
and foreboding, the roof is sprouting palm trees. Why? Why is it empty? It has a sublime
position, perched above Posillipo beach, gazing out over the Bay of Naples—staring
at Vesuvius and the regal sea. If it was done up it might be worth ten million dollars.

Yet it rots?

“It’s called the Villa Donn’Anna,” Jess says vacantly, following my stare. “They say
it’s haunted . . . all three hundred rooms. And it was used for orgies.”

I gaze at the building. The city still confuses me so much. I need to know more. To
learn. To understand. I am not ever going back to Marc Roscarrick, but I want to know
why he is the way he is, and why Naples is so broken. And yet so irresistible.

And this is what I do. As soon as I get back to the apartment, a little drunk from
too much cut-price midday rosé, I open my laptop, to research. But before I can google
“Mystery Religions,” I see a notification. I have an e-mail. From Mom. And the subject
is:
Coming to see you!!

What?

Somewhat startled, I open the e-mail.

Hi, Alex . . .

The e-mail is typical Mom, breathless and loving and badly punctuated. But the meaning
is clear: Mom’s best friend, Margo—who is much richer—is going to Amalfi for a holiday
with friends, and Mom is joining her. My mother is using up some of her precious savings
to fly all the way to Italy so she can see her darling daughter and have a nice holiday.
She will be here in three days’ time.

I know you don’t want your mom cramping your style so don’t worry, I won’t linger,
hon! But we can have a few days together in Naples. I so want to eat the
delizioso
ice cream!

I close the e-mail. My dear, sheltered, suburban American mother. What will she think
of Naples? I have a feeling it won’t match her gilded and romanticized dream of Italy.
But I am glad she is coming. I miss her; I miss all my family. She and I used to be
very close. She was a great mom when I was a kid; it wasn’t her fault I got bored
of San Jose and In-N-Out.

What on earth do I tell her about Marc? Anything?

I decide to file the problem away for another day. Instead, I search “Mystery Religions”
and read.

The Mystery Religions flourished across the Greco-Roman world from the fifth century
BC
to the end of the Roman Empire, in about
AD
400. The principal and overriding characteristic of a Mystery Religion is the secrecy
associated with the rituals of initiation, which lead the celebrant to a spiritual
revelation. The most celebrated mysteries of Greco-Roman antiquity were the Eleusinian
Mysteries, but the Orphic, Dionysian, and Mithraic Mysteries were also famous.

So which Mystery is Marc involved in? Two minutes’ research tells me it is probably
the Mysteries of Dionysus, or some variant, or mixture.

Dionysia, or the Dionysiac Mysteries, were established throughout the Greek world.
Dionysus (Diæνυsov) was the Greek god of wine, but also the god of fertility, and
of vegetation.

Male and female initiates into Dionysia followed different paths. The women followers
were known as the Maenads or “frenzied women” or Bacchants (or Bacchae), “women of
Bacchus.” The female initiation commonly involved drinking and singing and sometimes
frenzied dancing (or even howling like wild animals). It is generally believed that
part of the initiation into the cult involved intense sexual activity, from flagellation
to orgies, and beyond . . .

Beyond?

For the next three hours I am immersed in the bizarre world of Orpheus and the god
of ecstasy. Yet my research concludes with my tired, stupid, and rather wandering
mind helplessly typing in the words “Marc Roscarrick.” Why? Why torment myself? I
just want to know. Though I’m not entirely sure
what
I want to know.

A news item tops the page. Yawning from the afternoon alcohol, I click on it. It is
a celebrity website. In Italian. Its prose is as breathless as my mother’s.

I read on, laboriously translating the words.

The website tells me the
molto bello e scapolo
(the “very handsome and eligible”) Lord Roscarrick has been sighted in London, for
some festival of Italian films.

There is a small photo accompanying the piece, which I enlarge with a click. It shows
him leaving a fashionable restaurant in “
il West End di Londra,
” smiling that distant, sad, glittering smile at the paparazzo’s camera. I can see
there are several young women in his party, caught in the flash of the popping camera;
all of them beautiful, of course. Marc stares at the camera; I stare at the women
alongside him. Long-legged, like colts, like a millionaire’s polo ponies. Gorgeous,
expensive women. Fashionable English and Italian girls. Are they initiates, too?

I only know this: that I could have been there. In that photo. If I’d wanted. But
I didn’t.

I close the website with a fierce pang of jealousy and melancholy, and a sense of
deep relief that it is over.

Ciao, bello.

T
HREE DAYS LATER,
my mother arrives from San Francisco.

She is happy and excited and jet-lagged and she almost runs out of the airport as
Jessica and I struggle along behind, half laughing, half grimacing, with her bags.
In the taxi to Santa Lucia she chatters about nothing and everything. Mom is booked
into a cheapish hotel near my apartment. We drop her in the dusty lobby, presuming
she’ll want a few hours to rest and relax, but ten minutes later, her gray hair still
damp from a shower, she is buzzing my bell and in my apartment and grabbing my arm
and saying, “Darling! Take me to the Caffè Gambrinus! I hear it’s The Place—it’s in
all the guidebooks!”

I might, ordinarily, be wary of this, for fear of running into Marc. But I know he
is out of the country. Mom and I can go anywhere.

Letting my mom take my arm, we step out onto Via Santa Lucia in the early evening
sun. My mom is still chit-chattering about Dad’s golf and his retirement and my brothers.

We walk. She talks. We walk and she talks and then I stare. My heart is somewhere
near my throat as I gaze ahead. We are crossing the wide empty pavements of Piazza
del Plebiscito, with the sun setting pinkly over Anacapri.

And Marc Roscarrick is walking directly toward us.

He hasn’t seen me. He is immersed in a phone call and gazing to the left.

“Quick, Mom—this way.”

“What?” She is startled. “But I can see the Gambrinus, darling. It’s over there.”

I tug her.

“Mom, this way!”

“What’s wrong?”

My mother is actually a little distressed. Oh God. Too late.

We are three meters apart. He is walking right into us. He looks up and sees me.

We cannot avoid each other.