The Boyfriend

by Abigail Barnette

  I thanked the captain, and we entered the lobby, where I skidded to a halt on my heels. I’d never seen anything like the place. A long gallery, one that could easily put Langhurst Court to shame, stretched through the building, lit with enormous crystal chandeliers. I almost expected to see a front desk and guests checking in, but this was an apartment building. This was just where people got their mail and waited for their boats.

  I wondered if they had Uber in Venice.

  “Let’s close the door and leave the cold behind, shall we?” El-Mudad joked, pushing me a few steps in. He reached beneath my chin to close my gaping mouth.

  A blonde woman with neatly pinned back hair and a sleek pinstriped business suit approached us. I thought maybe she would tell us to get the hell out or something, but she smiled wide and said, in a distinctly American accent, “Welcome, Ms. Scaife. Mr. Ati.”

  “Yes. And you are?” El-Mudad’s puzzled frown wasn’t unfriendly. He extended his hand to shake hers, and I did the same.

  “I’m Vivian. Mr. Elwood has hired me to help you during your stay in Venice.” At our blank looks, she continued, “Mr. Elwood doesn’t keep a full-time staff here, but he does keep me on the payroll to hire the cleaners, make sure the maintenance is done properly, all those little things that you can’t let fall by the wayside.”

  “You’re a property manager,” I supplied for her.

  “In a way,” she agreed. “But I also take care of Mr. Elwood’s guests.”

  “How often does he have guests here?” I wondered aloud.

  “Every now and then he lends the apartment out.” She gestured to the rest of the room. “Let me take you to it.”

  Neil had never mentioned allowing other people to stay in Venice, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that would have come up. He didn’t care for the place due to its association with his ex-wife, so it made sense if he wasn’t exactly sentimental about who stayed there. I assumed plenty of Elwood & Stern executives had brought their mistresses along for romantic weekends.

  “While we walk, let me give you some history about the building,” she said, and went on without a breath to allow us to object. Not that we would have. “Originally a palace, the building was constructed in the fifteenth century and once was home to the Giustiniana Wynne—famously a close friend of Giancarlo Casanova.”

  “Casanova was a real person?” I asked in disbelief. I’d only ever seen the Heath Ledger movie and I’d assumed that it was a folk tale.

  “Oh yes, very famous in Venice,” El-Mudad answered.

  “You’ll hear a lot about him on tours,” Vivian explained.

  “And he’s real, and he’s really been in this building, probably?” I guessed, since his friend had lived here and all.

  “Oh, undoubtedly,” she said with a nod. “Most likely in your very apartment.”

  Vivian led us to a surprisingly modern elevator. I would have thought a building old enough to have seen the renaissance would have been a walkup.

  The elevator doors opened onto a small foyer with a mosaic tile floor reminiscent of ancient Rome. Two tall plants in similarly styled urns stood on either side of the double doors into the apartment. She swiftly unlocked them and held them for us to go inside.

  The room we entered was nothing short of intimidating. Directly opposite the doors, a huge, ornate fireplace, flanked by more potted plants, dominated a wall between egresses that led deeper into the apartment. A sleek black grand piano sat in the center of the space, leaving room for “entertaining” around it. Back home, pianos had been upright to fit into my middle-class friends’ homes. This instrument was one of luxury, and would have been far out of reach for someone like me.

  Now that I was rich and unemployed, maybe I should have found time to take it up. I made mental note, which I would probably forget.

  “As I mentioned before, Giustiniana Wynne lived here for quite some time in the eighteenth century. Her husband was an ambassador from Austria, and occasionally they would host lavish parties to showcase the breadth of his culture. Can you guess why your husband keeps a piano in here, Ms. Scaife?”

  I shook my head. I knew practically nothing about European history beyond how Marie Antoinette selected her clothes.

  “They once held a concert by a then-unknown composer. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.” Vivian lifted her chin proudly. “In this very room.”

  “No!” I didn’t know shit about history, but I knew who that was, for sure.

  “It was, in fact, why Mr. Elwood purchased the property,” Vivian went on. “He must be quite the fan of classical music.”

  I had never in my life heard Neil listen to anything other than classic or alternative rock, to my recollection.

  Ah, fuck. Elizabeth probably had loved all that harpsichord bullshit.

  I wasn’t going to hold his sense of romance against him, now that I was the recipient. So, he’d bought Elizabeth a place in Venice. He hadn’t let her keep it. And he’d given me a seaside palace with private sanctuary to specifically celebrate our sex life. It didn’t make sense to envy the women who’d come before.

  The chairs and sofas arranged at one end of the room would have made a handy place to have an audience for a modern-day performance. I wondered if it would be weird to hire Lana Del Rey to serenade me while I draped myself over a couch and sighed dreamily as I contemplated her.

  “The master bedroom is on the mezzanine level,” Vivian began, heading toward one of the doorways beside the fireplace.

  El-Mudad stopped her. “I’m sure we’ll find it. Show us the view.”

  “Of course.” Vivian led us through another sitting room, this one far less intimidating, where a row of amazing, triple arch windows gave us a view of the Grand Canal and the gorgeous, ancient buildings across it. We turned and took a detour through yet another sitting room, then out a windowed door onto a balcony.

  “With the weather as it is, I doubt we’ll spend much time out here,” El-Mudad said with a laugh. “Will we have a nice view for New Year’s Eve?”

  “Most definitely,” Vivian confirmed. “Generally, if you can see the sky, you can see the fireworks. They’re everywhere. But you do plan to immerse yourself in some of the festivities?”

  The thought of falling into a freezing canal while trying to navigate busy sidewalks and bridges made me recoil internally. Still, it did seem silly to come all this way and stay shut up in the apartment the whole time.

  Even if it was a great apartment.

  “Look there,” El-Mudad told me, pointing to a bridge in the distance. “That’s the Ponte di Rialto.”

  “Oh. Is that a big deal?” I asked, feeling less than well-traveled. I should have picked up a guidebook.

  “It’s a must-see for most tourists.” Vivian’s tone indicated that she would agree with my guidebook assessment. “I would be happy to arrange for a private tour around the city for the two of you—“

  “No, thank you,” El-Mudad said with a wave of his hand. He seemed pretty eager to get rid of our overly-solicitous new acquaintance. “You mentioned housekeeping staff?”

  “Yes, one moment.” She flipped open the cover of her tablet and scrolled the screen with one perfectly French-manicured fingertip. “A small cleaning staff will come by in the mornings to tidy up, and your chef will arrive at around dinner time tonight. Unless, you’d prefer to dine out?”

  “Is the chef Italian?” El-Mudad asked. “And is his specialty Italian cuisine?”

  Vivian nodded. “I believe so.”

  “Wonderful. We’d rather eat in, then.” He turned to me. “If that’s all right with you?”

  “Do you have a particular menu in mind?” Vivian asked, whipping out a stylus.

  El-Mudad gave me a questioning look and I raised my hands. “Hey, you’re the expert here. I’ve never even set foot in Italy.”

  He considered a moment. “Sarde in saor, for a starter, I think. And then, whatever he considers his best dish.”

  “Very good.” She jotted
it down. “Would you like me to show the bedrooms or—“

  “No, thank you,” El-Mudad said, clearing his throat. “You’ve been very helpful. If you could leave your number, we’ll contact you if the need arises.”

  “We probably won’t,” I warned her. “We’re pretty low maintenance people.”

  Well, that wasn’t strictly true. But it certainly sounded more polite than, “we’ll probably be too busy having sex to leave the house.”

  We went back inside and El-Mudad walked Vivian to the door while I wandered around the smallest of the sitting rooms that we’d seen. The walls were covered in frescoes that I refused to believe were original because there was no way something so old could survive for centuries. Delicate, antique furniture that probably could have been here when Mozart had his recital surrounded me, all in shades of muted mauve and washed-out green. I was too afraid to sit on anything.

  From the other room, I heard some soft notes played on the piano. I followed them to find El-Mudad seated there, his fingers dancing over the keys as he played an impossibly complicated tune from memory.

  “What is that?” I asked, leaning against the instrument. It was the newest-looking thing I’d seen in the apartment so far. It might end up being the only furniture I touched the whole time we were there. Could I sleep on it?

  “It’s a piano.” El-Mudad glanced up at me and flashed a grin.

  “No, smart-ass. What you’re playing.” I hadn’t even known he could play, but then again, he’d had the money for that kind of education.

  “Piano sonata number three. ‘Andante amoroso’. By Mozart.” He somehow managed to shrug and lean to reach other notes at the same time. “I thought it appropriate.”

  “Why isn’t this place a museum?” I mused. “There’s so much history.”

  “Consider how old Venice is,” he said. “If they turned every building that had history into a museum, there would be nowhere to sleep.”

  “Fair enough.” I went silent for a little while just to listen to him play. When the piece ended, I clapped. “I didn’t realize you could play.”

  “I have many secrets,” he said archly. “Do you have a piano at the house?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Olivia practices on it. Maybe you could give her some pointers.”

  “I’d be happy to. I taught Amal and Rashida how to play when they were very young. They outpaced my ability to teach them, though.” The pride in his voice when he spoke of his daughters filled me with a warmth that was almost unbearable. My father had never spoken of me that way. He’d probably never spoken of me at all.

  Maybe that was why I had gravitated toward Neil and El-Mudad. Because I recognized some spark of goodness in them that I could rely on. They were good fathers, and therefore, to my mind, worthy of trusting with my heart. And maybe that could appear creepy or borderline-incestuous to someone on the outside, but it made perfect sense to me.

  “You could teach me,” I suggested. “I never had the chance to learn.”

  “Neil said that you grew up in very different circumstances than us.” El-Mudad tilted his head. “He said when the two of your visited your mother’s house—“

  “It was awful and gave him claustrophobia?” I said with a self-deprecating laugh.

  But El-Mudad was serious. “He said it was clear how much your family loved you. And how much your mother regretted not being able to give you what you deserved.”

  Neil had said something nice about my mother? “Really? Because usually he just talks about how annoying she is.”

  “Yes, he does talk about that, too,” El-Mudad admitted sheepishly. “But he knows that she has a good heart. And that you take up most of it.”

  My gaze bounced from the high ceilings and evenly spaced crystal chandeliers to the hand-painted silk wall coverings. “I thought it would get easier, eventually. The being rich thing. I thought I would get used to it.”

  “It hasn’t?” he asked, folding the lid carefully over the keys.

  “It’s gotten harder. I look at the way the world is...well, the way my country is. I’m American, we think of ourselves as the world.” Maybe if I changed that about myself, the rest of the world wouldn’t seem like another planet to me. “But I look at what’s happening, and how much people are hurting. And how much I have. I’m starting to hate myself a little.”

  “Why hate yourself? You didn’t cause those people’s problems,” El-Mudad said, spouting the same rationale I’d heard from Neil time and again. Because neither of them had ever been poor, they couldn’t possibly understand the impact their wealth had on the world.

  It’s not just theirs, I reminded myself. You’re a rich a-hole now, too.

  “Maybe not directly,” I protested gently. “But having billions and billions of dollars, money that we’ll never be able to withdraw from a bank, let alone spend...it doesn’t solve any problems, either.”

  “Neil solves problems. He built the foundation and the shelter. And it’s helping people, isn’t it?”

  He had a point there. But it didn’t help everyone. Could anyone actually help everyone?

  “Would it make you happier to start your own charity?” he asked. “Or give to another?”

  “Flint still needs clean water,” I mused, then felt immediately ashamed. That was my home state and I’d sat by and done nothing to help. “People need so much.”

  “People will always be in need,” El-Mudad reminded me. “And unless something really terrible happens and Neil and I both lose our fortunes, you’ll always be in a position to help.”

  “You guys wouldn’t mind if I spent a lot of money on stuff like that?” I chewed my lip. “Because it would be a lot of money.”

  “I can’t speak for Neil, but you’re welcome to spend as much of my money as you’d like,” he promised.

  All I had to do was write a check. But that felt so unsatisfying.

  “Let me think about things,” I said finally. “Let me figure out what I actually want to do. Because money is nice. But maybe I need to do more than that.”

  Maybe I needed to actually get my hands dirty.

  Chapter Eight

  Despite the overwhelming temptation to stay inside and do absolutely nothing but enjoy each other, El-Mudad and I did get out to see Venice. We posed in front of all the sites and texted Neil tons of photos—some of things we hadn’t done in public. He didn’t have great cell reception where he was at, but he did manage to get a few texts through and, finally, a picture of himself, half-submerged in a thermal spring on a glacier.

  “He has no sense of self-preservation,” El-Mudad said, shaking his head as I put my phone away.

  “Tell me about it.” I paused. “I hope he didn’t drop his phone in there.”

  El-Mudad took a final drink from his wine and pushed back from the table. We’d just practically gorged ourselves on yet another fantastic dinner prepared at the hands of our brilliant chef. I’d had no idea what Italian food was actually like. At this meal, there’d been nary a noodle in sight. Still, I’d carbed up good on some incredible bread. I could have laid my head on the table and taken a nap right there.

  “You have tired eyes,” El-Mudad said with a slow smile. “Are you going to make it until midnight?”

  “I have tired eyes because someone has exhausted me on this trip,” I pointed out, lifting my glass. “You’ll have to carry me to bed if you want me there.”

  “Gladly.” He stood and dropped his napkin on his plate. “Did you want to venture out for the celebration?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s so cold out. Let’s stay all snuggly warm and watch from the balcony.”

  “You intend to stay warm on the balcony?” He paced to the windows; the formal dining room had the same tall, pointed arches as the rest of the apartment’s views. It felt like we were in a castle, and El-Mudad certainly made a dashing fairytale prince.

  I got up and went to stand beside him. “We could put on our PJs, get some hot chocolate, wrap up in blankets
and sit outside like that.”

  “You know I don’t wear pajamas, Sophie,” he said with a wicked grin. “Do you plan to freeze me to death?”

  “Well, you can wear comfy clothes, then.” Of course, even El-Mudad’s t-shirts were tailored. He and Neil were perhaps the vainest humans I’d ever met.

  And I lived with me.

  “Comfortable clothes, then. But instead of hot chocolate, how about hot coffee?” he suggested. “Without sugar?”

  I tilted my head and pretended to consider. As annoying as it was to have people around me act like the diabetes police, the truth was, I would probably need a whole pot of coffee to combat the soporific effects of my super full tummy. “Okay. I suppose so. Just this time.”

  “Before we do, though...I have something for you.”

  “It was just Christmas!” I protested. “You have to stop with the gifts.”

  “Never,” he said firmly and took both of my hands to lead me past the absurdly long table and into the main salon. We walked past the piano, and he released me to pull one of the ornate wing chairs across the probably priceless terrazzo floor. I winced at the squeak and surreptitiously checked for a trail of scratches behind it. We were safe.

  “Sit,” he ordered, and I did, folding my hands in my lap and watching him with expectation. He sat at the piano bench and opened the lid.

  “My present is a private concert?” It was certainly better than another diamond or a pile of furs or something.

  “Something like that.” He tested the pedals methodically and played a few scales to warm up. “I wrote a piece for you while we were apart this year.”

  “Y-you...wrote me a song?” I stuttered in disbelief. “Nobody has ever written me a song before.”

  “Not even your high school boyfriend, the one in the band?” El-Mudad asked with a sly sideways glance. “The one with, quote, ‘all the shit in his face’?”

  I covered my face with both hands. “Why does my mother keep bringing that up to everyone?”

  “It was your aunt. And it was in praise of Neil,” he clarified. “But yes, I wrote you a song. Would you like to hear it?”