Somewhere in the City

by Toby Neal

  I look like a flashlight.

  My job is to stand on a dais during the PR party and periodically unzip the dress, which fastens down the front, and stroll in my La Dolce Vita panties through the party, smiling and handing out elastic garters inscribed with the company’s logo.

  Everyone ogles and comments in Italian. To each other, not to me. They pet and touch me, which would never fly in the United States. I can’t even be offended because I know I’m honored to be chosen as the new Face and Body of La Dolce Vita, and from what I can tell, they mean well by it.

  On my dais, the dress temporarily zipped back up, holding the tray piled with garters, I spot a familiar face across the room.

  Brandon Forbes.

  I see him scanning the room, looking for me, but he hasn’t recognized me in my get-up.

  “Brandon!” I call, waving, and hop down from the dais to hurry through the crowd, turning heads along the way. “What are you doing here?” My face is wreathed in a huge smile.

  “Came to see how the gig is going,” he says, smiling back.

  I put one arm around his neck and kiss him. “Thanks for coming,” I whisper in his ear.

  “Attenzione,” says my shoot director, a skinny brunette named Odile. “No kissing the guests.”

  “Oh, pardon,” I say, backing off. “I’m sorry.”

  “Do another turn around the room with the garters,” she barks.

  I stiffen, humiliated that Brandon is going to see this part of my job duties, but there’s no help for it. I head back to the dais, where I unzip the dress, hang it on the silver mannequin they set up, and pick up my garter tray.

  Brandon is white-faced with anger as he watches me forge into the crowd, smiling stiffly in my lingerie, looking for anyone not already sporting one of the lacy garters.

  Odile is trying to talk to him, and I can tell she’s one of the ‘Forbes-ifiers.’ That’s what I call the models, agency employees and connections who seem to kiss up to Brandon or his mother.

  I make another loop around the room and then climb back on the dais and into the flashlight dress. At least I get to cover up sometimes.

  Brandon brings me a glass of champagne. “It’s Italy. You’re legal drinking age here,” he says.

  I think of the program and that I’m not supposed to drink. But I don’t go to the program for drinking, I go for drugs, and surely this situation counts as one for which I should be anesthetized.

  “Bottoms up.” I clink glasses with him. “Thanks for coming.” I swig the champagne as fast as I can and look for more.

  “Melissa wanted me to check on you.”

  “I doubt it,” I say, twinkling at him over the rim of my refilled glass.

  “Okay.” He frowns. “I wanted to check on you. I had no idea this party was such a meat market, with you as the main course.”

  “I’m the new Face and Body.” I shrug. I’m actually getting used to not really being me. It’s gotten easier to become the idea of me. “I get to cover up part of the time. Last year the girl was done up as an ice sculpture and she wore nothing but body paint all night. Odile made sure to tell me that right away so I wouldn’t get an attitude. Apparently the Italians think Americans are prudes.”

  “Yeah. I wanted to warn you that the Europeans have different standards but I didn’t get to talk to you before you left.”

  “It was a whirlwind. I said yes to the campaign, there was some contract dickering, and the next thing I knew I was on a plane for Italy. I’m supposed to be here for two weeks, at least. They’re working me hard.” I describe the shoots so far. “It’s a fantasy theme, so they’re dressing and making me up as all these amazing creatures. Yesterday I was a mermaid.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  “Not really. I work all day and fall into bed too tired to see the sights even a little bit. Can you pull some strings and get me out tomorrow? I haven’t seen hardly anything yet.”

  “Done.” He looks down at me with that warm browny-gold gaze. “You look a little like a flashlight in this outfit.”

  “I know.” We laugh.

  Brandon gets me off work the next day early, at a mere four p.m., but the light is already going. I sponge off the fantastical makeup I wore for today’s shoot riding the public carousel. I was dressed as a fairy in wisps of green lace, my hair stiffened with wires and wound with flowers and tiny lighted stars. The team really is creative, and I’m figuring out how to communicate, even if it is mostly with gestures and pointing.

  Still, it’s a relief to get into my basic black, my face clean, and skip down the steps of the studio where we do our costuming to hook my arm into Brandon’s. As usual, he makes me feel safe, and the glow of attraction warms me too.

  It really has been a long time since I’ve been with anybody. I can’t help the way his arms around me heat up everything inside.

  “What do you want to see first?” he asks, dropping a kiss onto my hair, still stiff with glitter. “Phew. What is this stuff?” he wipes his mouth, but the glitter is still on his lips. I smile as I brush them off, and they feel firm and supple under my fingertips.

  “Fairy dust,” I say. “I want to ride a gondola, and get something to eat. I haven’t had anything but espressos all day.”

  Brandon tells the boatman something in Italian and he nods and replies, choosing our route. I settle close beside Brandon and he pulls up a fur-lined blanket over us. The gondola is as magical as they look, poling down the watery avenues between the buildings at a stately pace.

  Moon and lanterns gleam on the still water. The boatman, astonishingly, begins to sing and though I can’t understand the words, my eyes prickle with tears at the heartfelt sound of his voice.

  “I’m a long way from home,” I say, and tuck my head against Brandon’s shoulder.

  “Where is home?”

  “Saint Thomas will always feel the most like home.” I hadn’t realized it until this moment as the words come out of my mouth. “But I don’t think I’ll go back there any time soon.”

  “It’s only a plane ride away, and the Melissa Agency books bikini shoots there more often than you’d believe.”

  “Really?” I look up, and he kisses me.

  It feels good. Warm, and thorough, and sweet too.

  I think of Magnus with a pang. I didn’t tell him goodbye either, though I left a message on his machine.

  And here I am, kissing Brandon.

  But Magnus doesn’t want me.

  I try to get back into the feel of Brandon’s arms around me. I’m in a gondola, floating down a canal, being kissed by a lovely man, and the boatman is singing. It’s the stuff of dreams. My life has changed so much since that day Ruby came and dragged me out of the Carvers’ house.

  We eat osso bucco at a restaurant where there are no menus, only the family dinner special, which is delicious. Afterward I’m yawning, exhausted.

  “I have to get back to my pensione. They’re getting me up at five a.m. tomorrow.”

  “Slave drivers.” Brandon snuggles with me in the boat all the way back to my pensione, a picturesque building close to the major landmark, Saint Mark’s Square or Piazza San Marco, as the locals call it.

  At the door of the stone building, Brandon tips my chin up and kisses me deeply. Insistently. Telling me something, asking for more in the way he holds me. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t move and quicken me. I feel deeply conflicted as I finally detach myself, getting a little distance but clasping his hands in mine.

  “Watch out or you’ll get invited up, and I’m pretty sure that’s against my contract rules,” I murmur against his mouth.

  “It’s not. I did my homework and checked before I came,” he murmurs back, his hand sliding up my waist to circle my hardening nipple. It feels fabulous and my knees weaken.

  I put my hand on his, detach it from my breast. “Then I have to tell you, I’m just not ready. We have to talk about this, and I’m too tired to tackle that tonight.” I kiss him again, feeling bad about th
e disappointment I see in his changeable eyes. Right now they’re amber in the streetlamp’s glow. “Thanks for coming to Venice. Really.”

  I go inside. As I climb the narrow wooden steps, my hand sliding up a thick wooden rail that looks like it’s been there a hundred years, I wonder what my problem is. I can’t explain it to Brandon until I know, and all I know right now is that I don’t feel right about having sex with him. That I’m worried about what will happen with Melissa if something goes wrong between us. It’s a handy excuse, but there’s more to it than that. I almost want to call Ruby and tell her, talk it over, but I’m afraid to get her worried so far away—and there are the long distance charges.

  I fall on top of the narrow bed with its feather-filled mattress and silky cotton sheets. The shutters that look out over a small side canal are battened down for the night. I feel alone, and not in a good way. My body is still tingling from how Brandon woke it up. I feel a hungry longing for something...for someone to be with.

  And the truth is, it’s Magnus.

  As soon as I think of him, I feel a pulse of heat between my legs. I take off all my clothing and slide between the silky sheets, naked. I’ve never had to touch myself before. I’d always had someone do it for me, but I know I won’t sleep without some sort of release.

  What is it about Magnus? Brandon’s just as handsome, and better boyfriend material than my dark, brooding, mysterious, gun-toting, Harley-riding friend.

  But it doesn’t matter. Magnus has called to me ever since I spotted his long muscled legs wearing those split-kneed jeans and battered boots.

  My breath quickens as I imagine Magnus’s big, calloused hands on me, sliding up and down the curves of my hips to my breasts, circling around my ass cheeks like he knew just how to do, a sensation that heats my core instantly. His mouth was a point of heat in the cold, radiating warmth all through me. His kiss felt like it was bringing me to life. The sensation of the heavy, hard shape of his erection pressed against me, promising pleasure, is unforgettable.

  I want Magnus. That’s the problem.

  And apparently I’m not as much of a slut as I thought I was, because I know I will break Brandon’s sweet, kind, protective heart if I sleep with him just because he wants me to. And I can’t do that. I won’t do that, even if I’m lonely and tempted.

  I cry and feel sorry for myself. I eventually find release in my lonely bed, but it’s unsatisfying and I fall asleep with tears drying on my cheeks.

  Chapter 17

  Pounding on the door wakes me the next morning.

  “Bon giorno!” Odious Odile sticks her immaculately-coiffed head into my room and shrieks at the sight of me. “Dio non voglia! What have you done?”

  “Crying.” I pull the covers up over my head.

  “I don’t believe it. You’ve been screwing the Forbes boy!” she exclaims, and unbelievably, she yanks the covers back and exposes my nakedness as if expecting me to be hiding him underneath me.

  “Hey!” I’m done with her bullying. I bound out of bed, breasts bouncing. “I sent Brandon back to his hotel last night, not that it’s any of your damn business. I’m here to do a job and you have nothing to say to me beyond that. Now get the hell out of my room!”

  Odile flinches as I tower over her, close to six feet of pissed-off Amazonian woman.

  “Screwing isn’t in the contract!” she dares to yell at me once the door is closed.

  “It is, too; he checked. But there was no screwing!” My voice rises to a howl of frustration.

  “You have five minutes, then we start docking your pay,” Odile yells back.

  I kick the door and hear her scuttling down the stairs.

  The nerve of these people! I’m being treated like an indentured servant, maybe even a slave! Who knew modeling was such a shit detail?

  Getting mad was the best possible thing to get my blood going. I jump into the closet-like shower and wash my hair. It’s given me energy; energy I badly need.

  They’re going to have to blow dry my hair out now, and that will give my swollen eyes more time to go down. Hopefully we’re doing more distance shots today and the puffiness won’t matter too much.

  I need to talk to Brandon. And come to some sort of decision. Maybe what I need to do, I think, rubbing my scalp under the thin stream of warm water, is take a break from men entirely and work my 12 step program and my therapy when I get back to the States. Ruby told me she got into a real situation with several guys she was dating before she and Rafe got engaged, and the only way out was to swear off men altogether.

  That might be a good solution. I could buy time. Time I obviously need, to work on my new, crazy career, to really get into my clean lifestyle, which still feels far from solid, and time to figure out how to seduce Magnus.

  I smile, under the flow of water. Because that’s my real agenda, no doubt about it. What Pearl Michaels wants, she always eventually gets. And Pearl Michaels wants Magnus.

  After the difficult start to the morning, the cameraman takes one look at my puffy eyes and, after a voluble stream of Italian with Odile, they decide to do the distance shots. So today I ride in the prow of a gondola, hang my hair out of a stone window in the dank and grim Bridge of Sighs, and feed the pigeons in Piazza San Marco.

  It’s a productive day and by the end I’ve still got energy to meet Brandon, who suggests we start our evening’s activities with hot chocolate at a coffee bar.

  “Hot chocolate? Why not coffee?”

  “You’ve never had anything like Italian hot chocolate,” Brandon says.

  I can’t help remembering the hot chocolate Magnus made me with a pang. But this hot chocolate is entirely different. It’s so thick and dark, it looks like a mug of tar. I stir and it’s almost the consistency of pudding. I use a spoon to sip it.

  “Oh my God.” The chocolate is like pure melted candy bars, so thick and rich it makes me shiver. I shut my eyes in bliss, savoring every drop. I know I can’t have this whole cup. Two more spoonfuls, I tell myself. That’s all I get. I’m supposed to be losing another ten pounds, but who can do that in Italy? Still, I have to try.

  I open my eyes, and Brandon’s watching my face, grinning.

  “Oh, God,” I breathe. And I see the exact moment that the way I say that turns him on. His hazel eyes darken. He leans in and kisses me.

  He tastes like chocolate. The kiss is so sweet, so good, it makes me moan a little and lean toward him on the bar stool. All around us we hear laughing and teasing comments in Italian, but everyone’s used to public displays of affection in Venice. You can’t turn a corner without encountering some couple plastered against each other in a doorway or kissing in a gondola.

  I eventually remember I was going to take a time out from men. I realize, uncomfortably, that it’s not going to be easy.

  I tear myself away and pick up my spoon again, looking around the bar. It’s open to the street on one side, with a few little tables, but mostly the bar is a bar, a gleaming wood-and-brass expanse filled with customers leaning on elbows and sipping espressos, tapping cigarettes on the edges of ashtrays, and generally blowing off steam in the way of an American bar—but without the alcohol.

  I love it.

  I let myself have two more mouthfuls of the chocolate and push the mug back to Brandon. “I can’t afford the calories,” I say regretfully. “I get why girls in this business stick their fingers down their throats, though.”

  He frowns. “You aren’t doing that, are you?”

  “No. But I’ve been tempted.” I shake my head. My hair, straightened today and still filled with silver glitter, catches the light and shimmers like tinfoil. “We have to talk.”

  “Not now.” He sets the mug down, pushes it away, throws a handful of lire on the bar. “Let’s go to Murano. We can still catch the sunset.”

  “Murano?” I slide down and let him tug me by the hand out the door of the bar.

  “The glassblowing island. This whole country is organized around community specialtie
s. Murano is a ferry boat ride away. It’s a whole island where everyone has something to do with the glassblowing trade that put Venice on the map a few hundred years ago.”

  Brandon leads me unerringly to a dock where it’s only a few minutes until a motor launch with a cowling roof arrives. Inside is lined with plastic-covered, padded benches. A few lire for the boatman, and we are motoring down the canal to the great expanse of the Grand Canal, a huge waterway lined with high-end palaces and elegant waterfront hotels.

  We pass by a replica of the great Lion of Venice, and as I admire the landmark, Brandon fills me in on the story. “The original bronze statue is in Saint Mark’s Square, and has been a part of the city since the twelve hundreds. Over time it became the symbol of the city.”

  “Seems like you’re really familiar with Venice. How many times have you been here?” I ask, tucking my trailing tin-foil locks into my hood. We are still getting a lot of looks, but no sense attracting too much attention.

  “Maybe a dozen times,” Brandon says with a shrug. “Melissa does a lot of business over here, and this is one of her favorite cities.”

  “So...you never mention your dad.” The boat hits a wave, and a wind-tossed wavelet blows spray over us. Brandon uses his sleeve to wipe my face, and the gesture is so tender I feel bad all over again.

  Dammit. I don’t want to hurt this man, all for a guy who’s already told me how it is for him.

  The certainty I felt last night wavers.

  “My dad died when I was ten.”

  “Oh no. I’m so sorry. My dad died... recently.”

  It’s been seven months. I know to the day and time when my father died. I see his face going white then red, his mouth opening and closing, the way his eyes rolled back.