by Anna Premoli
“Amalia, please, go and take this goddamn shower without another word. Is that too much to ask?” he snapped, pointing towards the bathroom again. He certainly made no secret of the fact that he wanted to be free of her as soon as possible.
“Ok, I’m going, I’m going…” she said, taking the towel. “And what am I supposed to do afterwards? Come out naked? I can’t very well put these clothes back on…”
It was evident that the image of her naked body was something Ryan wanted to banish from his thoughts at all costs. But which, judging by the size of his pupils, he couldn’t quite manage to do.
She wiggled conspicuously until she had completely disappeared behind the bathroom door, which clicked shut. “And don’t forget the clothes!” she shouted, feeling rather amused.
Perhaps she had gone over the top a bit – but he’d asked for it.
The jet from the shower meticulously washed away all remnants of that disgusting drink which Amalia had the misfortune of encountering, and she found some shower gel with a distinctive strong musky smell. She suspected that wearing Ryan’s fragrance might drive her completely out of her mind. Her skin was destined to have the same smell. It wasn’t so bad, she tried to reassure herself. But then she made the mistake of inhaling deeply again. What terrible lack of judgment: a knot formed in her stomach immediately.
So she got out of the shower and began to rub her wet body with the towel.
“Come on, Amalia, don’t lose your head right now. You managed alright years ago, you can do it again,” she said aloud, pointing at the image staring back at her from the mirror. “You just have to find a way to get out of it gracefully – maybe by turning it into a joke.”
Her little monologue, however, was interrupted by an impatient knock at the door. She would have bet on the fact that Ryan was in a hurry. Amalia opened the door slightly, knowing full well that she was wrapped in a giant towel.
“Here’s a shirt and a sweater, but I swear that I don’t know which pants you could wear. Mine would be too big for you and no belt could ever hold them up,” he said nervously, handing her the clothes. Stubbornly he refused to look at her, staring instead an imaginary point behind her.
“Never mind, I’ll wash my jeans and try to get them dried off somehow.” She took the mound that was offered to her, pressing it to her chest and he muttered something in a sign of acknowledgement then disappeared at full speed around the other side of the door. He really seemed to be in a great hurry, she thought with a chuckle. All that remained for her to do now was to slip on the white shirt and the sweater. It took her a moment, as she tried not to dwell too much on the strange sensation she felt about wearing Ryan’s clothes. Her reflection in the mirror was nothing short of comical: the sweater was huge and covered a good part of her legs, as if it were a kind of dress. A very wide blue dress with a v-neck. Touching it again, she realized it was cashmere, and for a moment she was puzzled by this discovery – he could quite easily have foisted some smelly old woollen sweater on her. It wasn’t entirely clear whether he had taken the first thing that he’d come across or whether the choice had been intentional. The latter idea was a little unsettling, because a kind gesture on Ryan’s part towards her was rarer than water in the desert.
Steeling herself, she tried to focus on a much more pressing problem, namely that of her jeans. She washed away every single stain with determination, rubbing thoroughly with the soap she found next to the sink. The only problem was that now she had clean jeans, but they were soaking wet – putting them on was totally out of the question. She draped them over the radiator in the bathroom and with tremendous effort decided to leave the room. In the past she had worn dresses a lot shorter than the jumper she was wearing now, so all she had to do was to imagine that she was wearing one of those now. If she didn’t give much thought to her clothing, Ryan wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
“Where the hell have you left your jeans?” he bellowed as soon as he saw her.
Maybe she had been a bit naive to expect that everything would go smoothly. His reaction was still a tad over that top, though – he actually leapt from the couch when he saw her enter! Did she look so unseemly?
“They’re on the radiator in the bathroom. Where do you think I put them? When I said that I would try to wash them, I meant exactly that: soap and water, you heard of those?” she replied quietly, walking in his direction. She sat on the couch not too far away from him, crossing her legs with deliberate malice. Ryan had made her angry and she wanted to make him pay for it. By showing as much skin as possible.
She didn’t have to wait long for his reaction and in fact a whining groan escaped from him moments later.
“You okay?” Amalia asked, pretending as if nothing was happening.
Ryan stared at her icily, raising an eyebrow as if to say ‘what do you think’?
“So now what do we do, just sit here all night waiting for your jeans to dry?”
“We’ll just wait for the heat to get rid of a bit of the damp then my body will do the rest.”
Ryan snorted again, staring at the ceiling. It seemed as if his weak and precarious patience was all but exhausted.
“We could chat to pass the time,” suggested Amalia, after two minutes of enforced silence.
It was evident that the apartment’s owner wasn’t particularly thrilled by that idea. “What about?” he cried, turning to stare at her. But at least she had been able to force him to look at her.
“I don’t know – tell me about what you did in Chicago,” she suggested, “and about how you like being back in New York…”
He remained seated, edging away from her in a rather conspicuous fashion. A little further and he would actually be sitting on the armrest.
“What do you think I did in Chicago? I worked from morning till night. At first I was just a trainee and I had to roll up my sleeves and work hard to get noticed by the district attorney. I spent endless weekends slaving away on all different kinds of cases. I would have earned a place as assistant district attorney there sooner or later, but in New York there was that mess with Height, so I found myself in the uncomfortable position of not being able to refuse: who can say ‘no’ to the Big Apple?”
“Yes – without mentioning that this is your home town too,” she added.
“That isn’t really an advantage…” Ryan said.
Amalia looked at him in surprise.
“From what I understood I thought you had a very close family. That’s a really nice thing, isn’t it?”
“I have an interfering family. Loveable, but always breathing down my neck, and I’m not the type who likes always explaining myself. I’ve been independent for so long that I’m not used to it any more. So at the end of the day, nobody’s happy: they would like to see more of me and I don’t want to have to share my diary with my mother. She’s a wonderful woman, but we generally get on better when we are further apart.”
Amalia smiled.
“If you want we can swap: I’ll take your mother, who’s so very present all the time, and you can have mine. I can assure you that you would be very satisfied: she never calls, and if you see her it’s almost always by accident, usually at some event, where, however, there are always other people she has to talk to, so you end up barely having said a word to her even on those occasions. What do you say?” she asked, well aware that her facade had finally cracked. It was just meant to be a joke to make him think, and instead she had made the usual mistake. Never talk about yourself, she should have remembered that.
Her statement, in fact, didn’t go unnoticed. He turned round again to look at her, with a gentle expression on his face. Ryan pitying her was really the last thing she needed.
“So you’re not really very close to your parents then?” he asked, watching her face.
She almost laughed. But in reality it was all her fault – she was the one who had moved the conversation onto personal issues.
“No, the relationship is very cold,” she said sincerely
. Then she crossed her legs again very slowly, hoping to distract him and shift his attention onto something else.
The gesture hit home. Ryan stiffened instantly and, against his will, his gaze came to rest on those toned, freshly tanned legs.
“I use a spray tan every now and then,” he heard her say, before he could ask a question.
“Excuse me?” Ryan asked, forcing himself to look away from that wonderful sight and raise his gaze to meet hers. But there was something dangerous and mischievous even about her eyes.
“I said that I sometimes resort to using a spray on tan. That’s why my legs look like this,” she repeated, as though it were a perfectly normal thing to say.
“Ah…” was all he said.
“So did you leave anyone behind in Chicago?” she asked immediately afterwards, point blank.
“Who would I have left?” was his gruff reply.
“I don’t know. A dog, a cat, a girlfriend…” she said.
Ryan smiled. “Sure – I’d imagine, that for you, humans and animals have the same kind of importance.”
He had decided to take it the wrong way and so she refused to even respond. As far as she was concerned, Ryan came after all living things on earth – after mice, lizards and even insects.
“Oh, quit trying to be clever. I’m a lawyer too, in case you’d forgotten, so stop twisting things around to suit yourself.”
Ryan raised his eyes up towards the ceiling in search of consolation.
“Believe me, I wouldn’t be able to forget our profession even if I wanted to.” He sounded annoyed and edgy. “I know full well that nothing you say is said by chance. I always have to remember that I have someone like me in front of me. Not a good combination.”
“For every answer you refuse to give me I’m going to move six inches closer,” Amalia warned him, realizing how important it was for him to keep this physical distance between them and to change the subject.
He shrugged as if nothing had happened. “Go ahead.”
In all probability, looking alarmed would have meant revealing weakness, so Ryan had opted for his usual response, but Amalia had absolutely no intention of throwing in the towel so easily. As promised, she lifted herself off the sofa for just long enough to move a few inches in his direction. Ryan noticed, but said nothing.
“Okay, since you don’t want to tell me whether you left someone back in Chicago or not, we can move on to the next question. Were you living with anyone in Chicago?” she asked him bluntly.
Ryan at least had the decency to look annoyed. “That’s the same damn question as before!” he objected, giving the first signs of a slow but inexorable collapse of his patience. Just as she hoped.
“Often it is simply the way in which it is phrased that makes a question inadmissible,” she said.
“Hey, does this look like a courtroom to you? In here, form and substance are the same thing, my dear,” he said sarcastically, with particular emphasis on the last two words.
In his heart, Ryan suspected that the entire female sex had decided to give up on semantics and logic a long time ago. But woe to whoever pointed that out.
Amalia, though, was not the type of woman who would give in so easily…
“Then I’ll have to assume that you’re refusing to answer this question as well…” she said, not in the slightest bit convinced by his argument. She moved nearer to him smiling slyly. “Another six inches closer.”
She was really enjoying having the opportunity to torture him like this, and made no secret of the fact.
“You’re playing with fire, Amalia,” rumbled Ryan, warningly.
“Who, me?” she asked with the utmost innocence, batting those long eyelashes her mascara made jet black.
“You’re courting disaster and you know it. Use that big brain of yours for once and get back over there where you were,” he said looking very serious and staring at her with particular intensity.
The threat seemed to have been effective, because for a moment Amalia couldn’t move, undecided whether to continue or not. “I’m joking,” she said, trying to calm things down a bit.
But he didn’t seem to fall for it.
“You are about to start something you really don’t intend to. I’m warning you – move away.”
Backwards or forwards? It seemed that Amalia wasn’t really able to make that decision. She quickly tried to remember how she had ended up in that absurd situation and what she actually wanted, but her mind seemed empty. Did she really want to continue with this stupid game?
“Well, you could always just decide to give me an answer…” she said. “Then I can go back to my corner of the sofa.”
“I never change my mind, “Ryan replied without taking his eyes off her. “And I never go back on what I’ve said. Just to clarify things.”
“So it’s actually you who’s courting this famous disaster,” she pointed out. “It wouldn’t take much to send me far away, over there…”
“Come on, be serious – even sending you off to the Sahara desert wouldn’t be enough to consider you ‘far away’, never mind the other end of the couch…”
“We can start with the other end of the couch and then we can think of all the remotest and least hospitable places in the world,” she suggested, leaning in his direction.
At that point, however, the look in Ryan’s eyes changed and he suddenly seemed more determined. He leaned towards Amalia, helping to close the distance between them.
“You are a damn stubborn woman. I warned you to keep a safe distance,” he said, touching her cheek with one hand. It was boiling hot.
“I’ve never been very good at listening. My nannies had plenty to complain about over the years, I’m sorry to say,” she babbled, trying to defuse the electricity which had filled the room with the simple touch of his hand.
“Your poor nannies…” replied Ryan, his hand now stroking her cheek and moving down towards her neck. And there he paused for a moment to think about how to proceed. Amalia gulped as she watched him scrutinizing her, sensing doubt and indecision in his face. Not really balm to a woman’s ego, especially when she was sitting half naked on a couch next to a man who wouldn’t have invited her in if he’d had any choice in the matter. Her pride couldn’t have awoken at a less appropriate moment. Or maybe it was the most appropriate moment. Who could say. In any case, in an instant Amalia found herself making a decision and with a sudden gesture, moved Ryan’s hand away from her neck and stood up from the couch.
“Well, I think we’ve had more than enough fun here. I’m going to see what state my jeans are in. Worst comes to worst, I can always finish drying them off with a hair dryer. You do have a hairdryer, right?” she asked, turning to face him. Poor thing, he had the most confused and incomprehensible expression on his face that a man could ever have. All he was able to do was nod at her, unable to utter a word.
“In the bathroom?” she asked. Ryan nodded again. “Great.”
And so saying Amalia disappeared from view.
11
On their way back to the old people’s home they were even quieter than when they had left, if that was possible. For three long blocks, although they were walking quickly, neither of them uttered a word. Not even by accident. And they were careful to keep a safe distance from each other.
Amalia breathed a sigh of relief on returning to Steffany and Lydia, although by now the party was winding down and the guests were retreating to their rooms.
“Amalia! What a pleasure to see you again… you’re not pink any more!” the birthday girl greeted her with a smile. “Even though the color did suit you.”
“I have to say, pink isn’t really one of my favorite colors,” she confessed.
“Remember that pink always looks good on us girls, whatever our ages and hair color. But of course, this blue sweater really brings out your eyes too, so I would say that this young man here nailed the shade pretty perfectly.”
Amalia felt her cheeks burning.
&n
bsp; “I think Ryan just grabbed the first sweater that came to hand.”
But Lydia was a tough cookie.
“Oh, I doubt that very much. Isn’t that so young man?” she said catching Ryan’s attention as he was beginning to put used plastic plates into a big garbage bag. He looked up and stared at them.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked Lydia, attentively.
She immediately gave him one of her best smiles. “I was just saying to Amalia that this color really suits her. Very nice choice, congratulations. Exactly the same color as her eyes.”
Ryan stood immobile for a moment, lost for words. “Well, yes it is a beautiful sweater,” he said.
Not the sort of comment that would please Lydia.
“I think you meant to say that they’re beautiful eyes, young man…” she corrected him, determined not to give up.
“Yes, of course,” he agreed. And without further ado, he returned to his work.
“Damn! He’s such hard work!” said Lydia. “But even that type of guy always ends up melting like snow in the sun in the end. Don’t lose heart, my girl – you just keep hammering away at that snooty armor of his and you’ll see – he’ll melt, right enough!”
Just the idea made Amalia laugh. “There’s no need. To melt him, that is. I am quite happy to leave him covered in snow forever.”
Lydia immediately became thoughtful.
“But it is such a shame. I can see the potential, you see. You two would have beautiful children together.”
Amalia, who had picked up a glass of water and was taking a drink, nearly found herself drenched for the second time that day.
“Er, yeah, well, I’d say it’s time to start cleaning up in here. You go ahead and get ready for dinner and we’ll take care of everything,” she said, trying to dismiss her once she had stopped coughing.
“Thank you, you’ve been angels,” said Lydia. But before leaving them she paused at the door. “You never know in life, what about giving me your business cards?”
Amalia and Ryan looked at her in amazement, but complied with her request. “Be careful, Amalia is a very expensive lawyer,” Ryan warned her as he handed her his card.
