A Roman Rhapsody

by Sara Alexander

  “I think Francesco is interested in exploring the relationship between composer and pianist,” Vittorio began as they sat back down.

  Alba shot him a look. His lips lifted in a sideways grin.

  “But we’re still keeping with the culmination of a live performance at the end of it, no?” she asked, straightening with a brusque shift to business.

  “Certainly,” Vittorio agreed, echoing her tone. “The dancers are rehearsing every day with our choreographer, but we will film that at the very end of the shoot. The idea of a live piano concerto with original choreography on film is going to break the mold.”

  They ate in silence for a moment. Vittorio wiped his mouth and his hands, then filled Alba’s glass again.

  “Grazie, go easy,” she said, signaling for him to stop pouring. “I’ve a full day tomorrow.”

  “Francesco can’t believe you’ve actually agreed to all this.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I admire you for jumping into something out of your comfort zone. I’ve been surrounded by people who are engrained in their routines for so long, I’d forgotten what that felt like.”

  “Really? Clare is a comet from what I’ve heard. You both are.”

  “From the outside things always look different, no?”

  “Maybe,” she replied, taking another sip of the rich red wine.

  “The truth is so subjective, right?” The warmth of his tone eased them toward a conversation she wasn’t sure she was ready for.

  “Always,” she agreed, deciding they had both decided to dodge anything anchored in their past.

  “Truth is, my wife yearns for every new tenor she meets. At first it was a bit of a shock. My ego took a bruising.”

  Alba tried to mask her expression and failed.

  “I felt pretty much how you’re looking at me right now.”

  “Egos need checking on a regular basis.”

  Vittorio nodded.

  “Don’t misinterpret that for insensitivity.”

  “It’s honest.”

  Alba wiped her mouth, silencing the thoughts that he was laying a trap for her, twisting the story around to his victimization so she might break down and revisit the pain he’d caused her. She hadn’t come to dinner for that. He would leave dissatisfied if that was his goal. His back lengthened. He seemed quite the opposite all of a sudden, eager to let her in to something it appeared he hadn’t unburdened to anyone else.

  “I’m not grasping for sympathy, Alba. She’s away a lot. She asked for space and I gave it. Didn’t figure on having to deal with this in return. First time it was like my world had crashed around me. Then we found a way to live with what we both needed. In the end, we both realized that if both partners have the freedom they need and the courage to be honest and respectful, then their marriage actually has a chance of survival.”

  “Francesco described her as quite a different woman.”

  “That’s her great game. She likes to make people think she’s the insecure opera star, trailing her man. But the opposite is true. We both keep up the mask. Maybe that makes us both brave, or really stupid. I’m still deciding.”

  Alba prized another clam out of its shell. “You think she’d appreciate you talking about her to me like this?”

  “She adores being talked about. In the beginning, finding this new way to make the marriage work was liberating. I’d learned the hard way, by being an idiot with you, and I didn’t want to gamble her away in the same selfish way. We talked about how it would work, and for a time it brought us both happiness. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  Alba dipped her bread in the garlicky oil, hoping it might mop up some of the tension in her body too.

  “Didn’t mean to hijack the conversation like this, Alba.”

  “So don’t. We could talk about the weather. Or politics? That always brings dinners to abrupt ends.”

  “I’d actually planned on talking about your sublime playing, but I’d imagine you wouldn’t take that too seriously.”

  “Hearing the details of your marriage doesn’t feel appropriate either.”

  Alba watched him soften, grateful his humor tiptoed through. The moment eased away.

  “How do you protect your happiness now?” she asked at last.

  “I thought you didn’t need to hear the gory details.”

  “I’m nosy.”

  “Fine. Details: I pretend I am. That’s the stark truth.”

  He gave his mouth a stiff wipe.

  “Living with our choices is probably the most adult thing people can do, no?” Alba offered.

  “Don’t mistake this for a plea for sympathy.”

  “You’re not getting any. I think we’re both rather spoiled.”

  He smiled. “I’d forgotten how easy it is to talk to you.”

  “I had too.”

  “Talk to yourself a lot?” His smile was unhurried. It made her feel seen, without judgment.

  The waiter cleared their plates and announced that the second course was being prepared. Alba craned to look for Francesco. “Do you think he’s standing us up?”

  “You know how these things go. I sat in on a meeting with Gianfranco and him the other day and it was midnight by the time we ended. He gets on his creative waves and there’s no stopping him.”

  Alba sighed a laugh.

  Linguini arrived suffused with wine and seafood juices beneath a tumble of garlicky crustaceans. They opened a second bottle of wine. Hands sticky and happy, Vittorio launched into a wine-rosy speech. “I’ve watched your every performance, Alba. Thought about leaving a note every time. Some anonymous bouquet perhaps. But it was cheap. I realized it wouldn’t make you hate me less.”

  “It’s not important now, is it? That was another life.”

  “I need you to know. I want to be able to say that without feeling corny or that you’ll feel hemmed in.”

  He straightened and took a sip of wine.

  “Are you admitting you’ve been stalking me or is this a clumsy way of telling me you think I’m fabulous? Either way I don’t think you’ll come out unscathed.”

  She let her fork rest on the side of her plate without a sound. He emptied the last droplet of wine into her glass and caught her gaze. A split second of silence; they returned to the cloistered quiet they once knew, this time as wiser adults, no demands, no regrets, disarming for the compelling sense of liberation within it. In the breath of hush, his honest, unswerving gaze made him look luminous against the blackened sea streaked with watery moonlight.

  He signaled to the waiter for the bill.

  The moment dissolved as quickly as it had snapped to attention.

  They stepped outside. The air was still warm. She looked toward the driver parked at the far end of the jetty.

  “You want to sit out for a bit, Alba?” he asked, in the tone of voice she’d pretended to have forgotten but which sent a faraway familiar song twisting through her bones.

  “I’d like to, yes,” she replied.

  Vittorio walked over to the driver and explained they weren’t quite ready to leave, then reached her and they stepped down onto the beach and crunched across the shingle toward the shore. The cove was lower than the seawall promenade, sheltering it from view. The moon was a huge luminous cream ball hovering above the midnight-blue horizontal. She fell in beside him. “So we’re standing in the light of the archetypal moon,” she began, inviting and shirking the moment. “A little trite, no?”

  “You’re breaking the romance of the moment,” he teased, his wry lilt waving through his voice. They watched the water crawl up over the stones and slink back into the deep.

  “I want to let you into the truth of my marriage because I ended up with the person most opposite from you, clutching to that daydream so I could blot you out.”

  Alba felt her chest burn. They stood in a wave of silence for a moment.

  “I think we’ve drunk too much. We’ll say things we don’t really mean,” she said at last. “How many men
weave tales about their wives? I’m not into the victim thing if that’s where this is headed. Sounds like the life you’ve made suits you both. No life is ever going to feel perfect all the time.”

  He didn’t turn toward her, but let his words trickle out into the shadows. “You and I are only together for the next few weeks,” he began, “and I might be about to screw up whatever budding professional friendship we have going, but a part of me needs you to know that my relationship with Clare is a mask I wear, that we both wear. It suits us. The idea of divorce is a complicated mess. We’ve reached a friendship.” He bent down and picked up a few stones. “She has her life”—he threw one—“I have mine.” They watched the pebble skip moonlit ripples toward the thin onyx line of the horizon. “Together we’re musical royalty. We know that. It’s a carefully constructed sham. Two consenting adults in a charade, performing it masterfully.”

  He looked toward her. Alba refused to reply.

  She didn’t want to urge him on.

  “Why do you need me to know?”

  “It’s a quiet torture,” he said at last.

  “You chose your façade, Vittorio. You both have.”

  “No. The torture is hearing the music I created played by the person it’s about.”

  Alba felt waves of ice and heat trace her skin.

  “I wrote it for years, Alba. It’s us. I know you know. I can hear it when you play.”

  She’d fallen back inside him at the first bar spiraling out from Misha’s room, and now she knew he knew it too. Her mind had shut him out for so long, even after seeing him back at that dinner, all the way until the music met the air. The sound of him, of them, of the space that hummed in the heart of their connection could be expressed in that score alone. She straightened, holding fast to her determination. “This is the conversation that’s going to screw up our professional relationship, Vittorio.”

  “I disagree,” he murmured, reading between her words, sensing the pull between them and not shirking it with sarcasm this time.

  “You’ll make me disappear all over again if we carry on,” she whispered.

  His face softened, his voice smooth, almost a murmur, as if the sea were listening. “I want to breathe so much life into you that your feet won’t touch the ground, Alba.” Gone was the sound of a man trying to prove his point. This wasn’t someone yearning for sympathy. “I want your light to shine so that it eclipses everything else and I can bask in it.”

  Alba stood motionless. “Easy words, Vittorio,” she said at last.

  She watched him draw a breath. He looked into her. “I’ve never stopped being in love with you. Stubborn, powerful, unpredictable you.”

  She didn’t want the tear to streak her cheek, but it left its watery trail, an embossed admission that she might feel as much as he.

  “I’ve been writing this piece since I met you.”

  His fingers wrapped around hers. He lifted her wrist and kissed the inside of it like the first time they’d touched in his studio.

  “We don’t have to act on this feeling, Vittorio.”

  His eyes lifted to hers. “Tell me to stop.”

  Her lips found his. His tongue wove around hers.

  Twenty years of forgetting and remembering flooded her body.

  He pulled away. “I’m scared, Alba.”

  She let him see her. “Tell me to stop,” she answered.

  She reached for his hand and led him toward the rocks that huddled at the far end of the cove, beneath the seawall that rose above. She pressed him against the cool of their stone. He pulled away, bending down to kiss her ankles. His tongue traced her thigh. His mouth stopped a breath away where it met the other. She could feel the heat upon her but not the touch of his lips. He didn’t move. Neither did she. Then his face rose to meet hers.

  Their lips sealed a pact.

  Their breaths filled the shadows, the sole witness to their lovemaking the moon, drowning the memory of their tryst as it disappeared into the black sea.

  30

  Glissando

  a continuous sliding from one pitch to another (a true glissando), or an incidental scale executed while moving from one melodic note to another (an effective glissando)

  The crowd around the camera sprouted as Noto’s market rose to life. Giulia and her assistants worked hard to keep the onlookers at bay. News of Maschiavelli’s shoot had made a fast loop of the island. Alba found herself being photographed when she least expected it, the taste of what film stars might have to endure a sour introduction to a different world and one she longed for no permanent place in. Francesco cooed in her ear, “Giulia and her team will keep the people away, you’re not to worry about them, you understand?”

  “I do, but I’m struggling to understand why the shot of me strolling through the market is so necessary, Francesco?” Marianna gave a third twist to one of her locks toward the back of her hair, spindling it around the thin point of her comb, whilst Luigi passed a second brush of translucent powder over her cheeks. “Isn’t it a little contrived?”

  Francesco shooed the makeup and hair duo away, dipping his voice into the reassuring tone he used to great effect. “What we’re achieving with this shot is a sleek look into the process of making this film as well as the performance aspect. It will give grit. Authenticity. And it will be quick. We’re only here for a few hours and then I’m taking you for lunch to my favorite little spot.”

  Alba didn’t want to be lured by food. She brushed away her impatience in order to get on with the task in hand. Tiredness was seeping through. She and Vittorio had skimmed the night, lifting from their slumber to fill her bed with pictures of the light off the bay skimming his outline, the taste of his mouth, the scent of his skin clinging to her. Francesco gave her a twinkle that reminded her she was in safe creative hands. The quicker this was done, the better.

  He traced what he wished her route to be through the market; past the huge trunks of wood upon which fishmongers slammed their enormous tuna steaks, past the carts festooned with lemons, knobbly unwaxed skins beside towered crates of blood oranges, some spliced open to reveal their ruby crimson fruit inside. On “action” she replicated his route and onward, past tables loaded with nuts and nougat, tiny darkened bakeries snuck beyond squat wooden doorways, the smell of their fresh loaves making her mouth water. At last the First called “Cut!” and Giulia announced lunch.

  The crew, whom Alba had come to love for not just their work ethic but their incessant stream of food descriptions that underpinned the breaks between takes—what they’d eaten that morning, on other shoots, whose grandmother cooked the best sauce—now headed toward the food truck. Large polystyrene boxes were distributed to the line of hungry men. Inside, the usual array of smaller boxes containing fresh pasta, a meat dish, a vegetable side, bread rolls, cheese, and a small glass of wine. Giulia reached Alba as she walked toward the line to join, as usual. “Maestra, we’ll be walking to Francesco’s trattoria, it’s this way.” She signaled for her to follow.

  “It’s a select group of people,” Giulia added, under her breath, “the crew is staying behind.” It was clear Giulia was keen to point out the selection included her too. Alba was glad. The young woman brought a little sunshine wherever she was, and Alba appreciated being able to rely on her to keep her in the loop at all times. She had a fierce, quick intelligence, the ability to build a tight rapport with both the crew and the performers with an effortlessness that Alba knew was no mean skill. Gauging from the balance on set, it was clear, as always, that women had to work twice as hard to gain the respect and acumen of men their equals, or inferior even in skill, within this industry as much as it was in her own.

  Vittorio appeared, crisp white linen shirt open just enough to reveal the taut outline of his clavicle and an edge of muscle on his upper chest. He walked across the street toward Alba and took her elbow in the gentle cradle of his hand, planting a kiss on either cheek. “I didn’t want to wash you off my skin this morning,” he whispered.
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  Giulia walked over to welcome him. He turned away from Alba and greeted her with the same kisses. Alba invested nothing into the stirring of her stomach. This ridiculous spike of possessiveness had no place in whatever had reignited between them that night on the beach, nor the delicate dance they had welcomed each night since. Alba observed her adolescent knee-jerk impulses at a comfortable distance, like weather, watching them pass from afar, listening to the quiet beyond, understanding their connection went far deeper than any mild flirtations at work, which she, more than most, understood was a necessary part of living and working alongside people in close proximity. In this industry the lines between professionalism and a tactile attachment to colleagues were even more blurred than in the music world. Everybody on set kissed one another, even if they were greeting each other again after lunch hour. Colleagues embraced at the simplest remark and laughter was always loud. Francesco was clear to set the bar on that point.

  Francesco led the group down several twists of alleys until they filed into a tiny cave of a trattoria, low ceiling curved above, one single table taking over the space. The owner danced around Francesco, his male entourage fluttering beside him. Wine, homemade, of course, Francesco announced, came pouring out in a chain of carafes from the tiny counter at the back followed by pasta alla Norma, ridged tubes coated with a robust red sauce and fried cubes of eggplant with enough garlic to ward off ills of any kind, supernatural or no. After this, the table was filled with large platters of seared tuna steaks, a finger thick, pink in the middle and doused with nutty olive oil, a squirt of fresh lemon, and a generous crack of pepper. Fresh salad plates were dotted beside, bitter pan-fried cicoria drizzled with chili and oil and bowls heaving with more steamed artichokes than they could eat. The party mopped their plates dry with fresh rolls and when the coffees were passed around a large tray piled with tiny cannoli accompanied it, brought in from the pasticceria next door on Maschiavelli’s insistence, which, he announced, swaying more than usual, cheeks purple with wine and grappa, was famous for these miniature delicacies. When no one could move, the owner insisted everyone have another shot of his family’s limoncello. There was an ignored collective groan, then a toast to his hospitality.