A Roman Rhapsody

by Sara Alexander

  “On the last shoot,” Giulia began, half to Alba across from her, more toward Vittorio seated beside, “Francesco threw the most outrageous wrap party. I’ve seriously never seen so much food. Not even at my cousin’s wedding!”

  Vittorio sniggered at that, flashing one of his winning smiles. He didn’t offer them to many. “I think Alba knows something about overfeeding, no? Sardinians trump the lot of us when it comes to that?”

  Alba felt her eyebrow rise.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Giulia added, before Alba could reply. “The last time I was in Florence I ordered a Fiorentina steak, and it literally could have fed my entire family.”

  “Don’t believe the mock modesty of a Florentine, Giulia,” Alba quipped. “It’s what they call humor.” She shot Vittorio a snigger, which Giulia mirrored. He pulled a face.

  Giulia wiped her mouth for the second time. Alba found her to often feel more comfortable discussing timetables and pickups than casual conversation. Did Signora Elias spy the same in her at a young age? She recalled the way she would offer gentle advice about loosening up every now and then, which Alba ignored, of course.

  “So,” Giulia began, swerving the conversation back to business, “Francesco is going to move setup back to the villa now, neither of you will be needed till early evening. He’ll be taking a look at the rushes later too before the night shots, he’d love you to watch with him?”

  “Rushes?” Alba asked.

  Giulia flashed her a smile. “Sorry, the rough cuts, from the other week. The first shots from the villa. We view them in case we need to retake, you know, before they’re developed and graded and so forth. I saw a few the other day. You are absolutely wonderful, Maestra.”

  “You don’t have to stroke my ego. I think I should be doing more of that to you. Do you have any idea what an amazing job you’re doing?”

  She watched Giulia’s cheeks turn a darker pink.

  “Have you always been drawn to this business?”

  “Since I can remember. But my first passion was music. I studied at the conservatorio and then when I finished my ten exams, I went to university instead. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer.”

  “Everyone wants their kids to be a lawyer rather than work in the arts, no? That’s the contradiction of our society. We prize ourselves as the birthplace of all the belle arti, but when a young adult expresses a professional interest it’s as if they’re from another planet, imbeciles even. We Italians are marvelous at hypocrisy.”

  “Says the speaker of the people who just ate like a queen—at someone else’s expense.”

  Seeing her expression, Vittorio flashed Giulia a smile to reassure her he was joking.

  “Here’s some unsolicited advice—”

  “More?” Vittorio interjected before Alba could finish. “The poor girl’s back at work in a minute!”

  “Only listen to the father when he talks sense,” Alba overlapped without giving Vittorio another moment’s attention. “The rest of the time, just follow your gut.”

  “Yes, Giulia, do listen to Signora Alba. Didn’t you just watch her follow her gut through lunch?” Vittorio teased.

  Giulia stood up and pushed her chair in. Alba felt the uncomfortable sensation that somehow the young woman had intuited something more about her nights with Vittorio than she cared to acknowledge. After all, she did seem to know what was happening to everyone at all times, why would they be any different? The rest of the table began to rouse to professional life once again. “I’ll call your drivers?” she asked, once again her usual breeze.

  “No need,” Vittorio interrupted, standing up too. “I’ve made some arrangements for the afternoon, if that’s alright with you? We’ll get to the set for our call time tonight.”

  Giulia nodded, her cheeks flush with good food and wine. Vittorio let her take a step out of earshot before squeezing next to Alba as the crowd began to file out, hooking his arm in hers. “Taking Alba for some fresh air, Maestro!” he hollered back to Francesco, catching his questioning look. “The feast was beyond description—now I need to walk it off!” Alba joined in his laughter and let him lead her outside.

  “What is going on, sir?” she asked, letting her hand reach up toward his bicep.

  “I’m escaping small talk. God, I thought I was going to fall asleep over lunch. She’s a sweet girl and does her job well but there is only so much I can listen to when all I want is to run a finger along your delicious thigh.”

  His arm wrapped around her waist and their pace sped up.

  “Are we late for something, Vittorio?”

  “Etna is a bit of a drive away, but if I’ve calculated correctly, we’ll be back just in time.”

  Alba drew to a stop. “Excuse me? You’re taking me to a live volcano?”

  “You’re keeping up, well done.”

  “Have you told Giulia? She’ll be in trouble if they find out. It’s her job to know where we are, you know.”

  “That’s why I’ve hired my own car. No one will know a thing, unless you’ve cultivated a habit for gossip?”

  He gestured toward the two-seater Alfa Romeo Spider parked before them, its top rolled back. Alba shook her head with a laugh. “Is this your finest performance of my Italian lover? We must be more middle-aged than we’d like to admit.”

  “Cynic.”

  “Learned from the best.”

  He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her before she could stop him. What did it matter if anyone saw? The gesture caught her off guard. She would have liked to relax into it more, but the idea of making such a public statement didn’t sit with her. Not yet.

  She pulled away. “I don’t think I need anyone to know, Vittorio.”

  “That’s a shame,” he replied, opening the door for her. “I want to yell it from the rooftops.”

  Alba shot him a look.

  “Sorry, too overtly Italian for you, Ms. Control?”

  “Get in and drive.”

  Together, they left Noto, heading north for the foothills of Etna. When they arrived a few hours later and started to hike, Vittorio didn’t stop until they reached the first expanse of blackened hills, undulating granules of dried lava stretching out toward cloudless blue, tufts of fuchsia flowers sprouting at unexpected intervals, clumps of trees creating shade, reaching up out of the fertile rock beneath. He reached for her hand. Their feet scuffed along the black dust, giving way to it as it fell downhill off their steps, tiny rubble tumbling. Patches of green gave way now to a horizon curved with black dunes.

  “It’s like another planet,” Alba murmured, her tone hushed in the formidable surroundings.

  “I wanted to share it with you. It reminds me of us.”

  Alba turned to him. “Destructive?”

  “A force beyond our control.”

  She looked at his face, lit with the golden rays of the afternoon. “I like the poetry in your music better.”

  He pulled his sunglasses up onto his head. His fingers now a gentle cradle around her face. He kissed her eyelid. His lips lingered there. “This,” he whispered, “this intimate space, Alba. I’ve never shared it with anyone like I can with you.”

  “I’ve never heard a volcano described as intimate.”

  He pulled away and planted a full kiss on her cheek now. “Alright, glib it off, Alba, come on,” he said, reaching for her hand, leading her back down toward the roadside where he had parked. They crossed it, walking toward a small bed and breakfast opposite. An elaborate plan was unfolding before her and she was caught between the thrill of him having organized their interlude and feeling like she’d rather have had a say in the matter.

  He stepped into the lobby and checked them in. Perhaps there was no harm succumbing to the adolescent excitement of whatever he had in mind after all? What was the harm in posing as Mr. and Mrs. del Piero for an afternoon anyway? Inside their small room Vittorio opened the shutters to let the view of Etna’s hillside into their space. Alba watched him undress her. She let him revisit the
first time he’d tasted her. This time she didn’t flee. This time she welcomed her pleasure without confusion, nor guilt, but with the outspread wings of a woman who chose to open. This time they were equals. Each touch was like a conversation, a piano piece for four hands composed in real time; no longer a semitone away from the truth.

  They lay beside each other, the blackness of Etna beyond their naked bodies.

  “I wanted to make some space for us, Alba, rather than sneaking into each other’s rooms like naughty children, scared Giulia would discover one of us in the other’s place.”

  Alba turned her face toward his. He was beautiful against the crisp white of the pillow, his black hair a stark frame for the face she could stare into for longer than she was ready to say.

  “Can we have space? In the end, this is blissful make-believe, no?” she murmured.

  “I don’t think I’m ready to share you.”

  They looked at each other for a moment.

  “Perhaps you have to be. I’m sharing you,” she said.

  “I’m not going to mess with this. Not again. It’s too precious.”

  She let her lips reach his. Her hips rose over his now. He slipped inside her.

  She stopped moving. “So let’s not mess with it,” she said, feeling the sting of vulnerability and leaning in to it. His hips rose, pressing himself deeper inside.

  “Take all of me, Alba,” he said, his abdomen tensing as he rose higher still, his hands reaching around for her back, pulling her mouth down onto his.

  Their foreheads pressed together. Their hips moved with tender strokes.

  The afternoon eased into early evening before they made their excuses at reception and drove back to set, his hand in hers, like the promise they’d always wished to gift one another.

  * * *

  Giulia greeted them as they pulled into the driveway of the villa and parked beside the makeup truck. “Did you have a lovely afternoon, Signori?” she asked, fresh with the glow Alba had come to expect of her first thing in the morning, rather than this late at night. She was indefatigable, and it made Alba want to remind her to not let anyone sap her of it.

  “Wonderful,” they answered in unison.

  “How sweet, Alba,” Vittorio added, with a sardonic slur, “we’ve even started to speak as one.” Giulia led them through to a trailer where Francesco was waiting for them.

  “Ah yes!” he exclaimed, as they opened the door to the darkened room. “Come in, my darlings, I’m looking through some rushes, I want you to see the gorgeous work for yourselves. I thought it might put you at ease somewhat, Maestra.” He turned to Giulia and nodded for her to close the door. Gianfranco, the cinematographer, clicked a switch on the projector at the back of the space. A beam stretched over their heads. Alba’s face now filled almost the entirety of the back wall. Her eyes were half closed in concentration, her body swaying to the music. Then the frame juddered to a different section. “Yes, let’s cut to the two shot, Gianfra’,” Francesco called back.

  Here was Vittorio now, beside her at the piano. She watched him lean into her projected self. She caught her expression as she looked up to his gaze. Within the frame he returned it. Alba felt naked. There they were, overtaking the darkened space inside the play of light. Their connection captured on celluloid and splayed for all to see. There was no mistaking the inexplicable energy that filled the space between them. Alba’s body tightened in her seat with the revelation lighting up the room. She looked over at Vittorio beside her, watching the light dance over his face, the shadows of their screen selves flitting across his skin. He sensed her gaze and turned to meet it. His expression was unflinching. There lay no defense, no mask, no arched silent comment. Francesco had spied their relationship and committed it to film. Now they witnessed the replay, knowing that this snatched moment in time had been captured for posterity. The feeling was the open-ended resonance of a perfect fifth, longing for the reassuring return to the tonic, the root note, the final chord of a symphony, ringing out with the inevitable resolution to home, one they were both ready for, at last. One neither could deny. It was plastered across the walls for all to see, and soon, across the world. Alba could have hovered in that dark quiet for a beat longer, looking into the man who knew her and searched her like a well-loved book, pages creased with rereading.

  The beam snapped off. The lights switched on. With mechanical punctuation their love affair disappeared off the wall.

  Francesco turned toward the two of them. “Quite the pair,” he said, with the smile Alba had come to love but which now intimated he knew what they had been avoiding for too long. “Thank you, Maestros. You are making me appear far more brilliant than I ever will be.”

  He reached over for their hands and squeezed them in his. Then he jumped up with a flourish and the room rose alongside the gesture, bursting into work, filing out of the trailer and back toward the set for the night shoot.

  Vittorio was swallowed into the crowd.

  31

  Col pugno

  with the fist; i.e., bang the piano with the fist

  Three weeks later the final day of the shoot loomed. The set sizzled with a mixture of excitement and delirium; night shoots had taken their toll on even the indefatigable crew, who no longer punctuated the stops between takes with their prolific stories about food. The team primed itself for the biggest shoot of the schedule. In two days’ time Vittorio’s finale would culminate in the recording of a live performance at Taormina’s magnificent Greek amphitheater, Alba surrounded by a full orchestra, and onstage, brand-new choreography with a fifty-strong team of dancers, both classical and modern, in what was set to be the area’s most ambitious performance of the season, if not ever. There had been a second unit in charge of preparing the space with a new lighting rig. It would illuminate over the course of the evening as the setting sun dipped into the sea framing the cliffside monument.

  Alba had visited with Francesco and Vittorio a few days before and they had slipped into an awestruck quiet. She’d never seen an amphitheater so intact, so preserved, as if the players had headed to their dressing rooms for a brief respite thousands of years ago and forgot to return. Its magic all the brighter for sharing it with the two people raising her toward the pinnacle of her career to date, giving her the chance to perform the most beautiful contemporary music of the time in a form she had never explored but which she grew to adore more each day. On the daily review of the rushes, Alba had grown used to seeing her face. She no longer scrutinized the minutiae, cringing at her image. Now she had come to love the way the camera seemed to capture something unspoken. It drew out the most private thoughts, with a fleeting glance of the subject, the eyes revealing every flit of emotion. She felt ripped open. By Francesco and his probing lens, and by Vittorio’s unswerving attentions.

  She floated now on a delicious bubble of wonder and the liberation of letting others in where once she’d built defiant, fearful walls. She would be foolish not to admit that the constant care of Marianna and Luigi did not also add to it. The initial bombardment of unwanted touch was now a balm, a constant hug. If she didn’t have a tactile mother, she was making up for it now, and it soothed a hidden need. Besides the makeup duo, the crew adored her readiness to socialize with them, and they danced on her every word, comfortable in her presence at last.

  It was the family she had craved for so long.

  Giulia stepped into the trailer and stood behind Alba. Her reflection was tense.

  “Giulia tesoro, whatever is the matter?” Alba asked looking at her in the glass. “Have they run out of the coffee again?”

  Giulia shook her head.

  “Darling, just say whatever’s troubling you,” Alba cooed, as Marianna warmed her hands with a hand lotion loaded with essential oils renowned, she had preached, for their healing, anti-inflammatory properties, a ritual at the start of the day now, ahead of shots of Alba’s playing.

  “Your agent, Dante, called, Maestra, he says you’re to call him back r
ight away. You can use the office phone.”

  Alba turned to Marianna. “I won’t be a moment, angel. It must be urgent, he knows not to interrupt me on set. Grazie.”

  She kissed her on each cheek, another new habit she’d grown fond of, and followed Giulia to the office.

  Dante’s voice was taut. He apologized for disturbing her. She gushed about her newfound tribe on set, described too many details of her day-to-day activities, apologized for not keeping in touch the past few weeks.

  “It’s Raffaele,” Dante said, his voice a wisp. “I’m so sorry, Alba. I knew you’d want me to let you know. They tried your pager but weren’t sure if you’d received the messages.”

  Alba’s mind flitted back to her trailer where she’d left the gadget switched off for several days. She was absorbed into this world now, and didn’t want anything or anyone to pull her away from it. Besides, as was now evident, when anything urgent would happen there was always a way to reach her. Her pager was for work commitments and she and Dante had agreed, after the shoot, not to take anything else on till the New Year.

  “When?” she asked, her voice a rasp.

  “Last night. The funeral is tomorrow.”

  “Oh God.”

  “I thought about waiting to tell you, but I didn’t think you’d forgive me that. I’ll speak with Francesco. He’ll understand. That man can move mountains if he puts his mind to it. Got you to agree to do a film, for heaven’s sake, I’m sure rescheduling some shots won’t be difficult.”

  “Dante, it’s not a few shots,” she began, her tone spiking, “I’m playing the finale tomorrow night. Are you actually asking me to walk away from the biggest scene of the film, fly away like a diva leaving hundreds of people cheated out of the performance the island has been waiting for months? The theater is sold out, hundreds of people have been preparing for this for ages!”