“There’s something wrong here,” he said, not letting go of my hand, “Something you’re not telling me. And I mean more than a tough lecture.”
“I hate how you do that.”
“What?”
“See right through me. Read me like an open book. Whatever.”
“I love that you’re an open book, that you don’t try and hide what and who you are.” His thumb traced gently over my knuckles. It felt nice, so nice.
“That’s nice… Look, I don’t want to talk about it right now, okay?”
“Okay. I’ll be there when you’re ready,” he said.
I knew he had to be at least partially right about me. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been so hard to repress the urge to tell him that I’d seen him today at Fratelli’s, to tell him what Abigail had said to me.
Because I knew if I did he would disagree. And that he’d have good reasons. Probably good enough to sway me away from the conclusion that I’d arrived at as soon as he came in with that doggie bag of delicious pasta and that bottle of red wine that tasted better than any wine I’d ever had before.
“You’re too good for me,” I said.
He squeezed my hand lightly. “Don’t say that. Never say that. If anyone should say something like that, it’s me.”
I couldn’t look at him anymore. “This is really good. I mean it. But… do you think that…”
“I could go?”
“It’s just that if I want to fix this mess with school I really need to concentrate on it for now. Thank you for visiting. It was really sweet of you.”
For a second, I thought he might press the issue, thinking of how he’d wanted to “thank” me for delaying that second meeting. And I wanted him to try. Not only because I knew I would give in like my body demanded, but that I could also use it to justify to myself that he only wanted me for said body and its demands.
But of course he was too good for that. I should have known. I did know, somewhere.
“I understand,” he said, “I know you’ll figure this out.”
Then he lifted his wine glass and my heart sank. There was still a mouthful of wine sloshing at the bottom of it. “To you, Emma, and to digging yourself out of this mess.”
I picked up my glass. There was still a little wine in it, too. He clinked them together lightly, the vessels making a sharp, sweet sound that contrasted with the slightly bitter aftertaste of the wine they contained.
He had his hand on the latch when I jumped up from the chair. I couldn’t let him go, not without one final kiss to impress on my memory.
He caught me up in his arms, squeezing so hard I could barely breathe. It started sweet, our lips grazing so that I tingled. Then our lips parted and I could taste the wine again. I could feel his stubble tickling at my cheeks and chin.
It was almost as good as that first kiss. It may well have been better, if I hadn’t known it was a farewell kiss.
He didn’t know that, of course. Not yet. But from the intensity of it I wondered if he picked up on some inkling of it from me.
He held me to him like he’d never let me go, and I wanted so desperately for that to be true.
I’d gone up on my tiptoes to get my mouth closer to his, and my calves and the soles of my feet ached from holding me when he loosened his grip and I sank back down to the floor.
“I don’t think I could ever get enough of kissing you,” he said.
“We all have our crosses to bear,” I replied, meaning it as a joke. Still the sentiment left me with a warmth inside my stomach that I couldn’t blame entirely on the wine.
He knew that I was upset. But he also knew that I didn’t want to talk about it yet. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Pick you up here? And if you could tell Mrs. Rosselini to not brandish that rolling pin every time I come by, that would be nice.”
“Okay, I will.”
He opened the door and slipped out, taking the stairs slowly so that he could keep tossing glances back at me over his shoulder.
At the bottom of the staircase, he started rounding the corner but leaned back in, showing the top half of his body only. He waved at me. I waved back.
When I closed the door I leaned against it. The world was a still and empty place for me. By rote, my brain pretty much shut off, I tossed the remains of our dinner into the small bin by the door and then tied the bag shut.
I really should have taken it down to the bin in the alley, but I didn’t want to. What if Liam had gotten a call and was just sitting in his car out there? He’d see me and I couldn’t take that.
There was still the wine, though. The 2007 Vespolina that had brought out the richness of the pasta sauce so nicely. I picked it up and the dark liquid within filled it up about a third of the way.
I tipped it over and let it slosh lazily into my glass, the wine making a glug-glug noise as it pulsed through the neck of the bottle.
I took a good swallow of it, letting it make a warm ball in my belly, before I sat down and swung my laptop open.
Then I typed. It wasn’t a long letter. But I’d always found that there is rarely a correlation between length and difficulty. Sometimes long essays came out of my head fully formed and complete.
Other times, like this one, even getting just those few sentences out made me feel like Sisyphus, hauling that heavy rock up the hill only to have it tumble back down again, my mind conjuring the painting by Titian that displayed this eternal ordeal.
I deleted all the lines wholesale at least half a dozen times before it felt as though they approached saying what I had in my head.
There was a flight back to the States out of Da Vinci-LIRF that l intended on being on tomorrow afternoon. I would have preferred sooner, but now that tourist season was over there weren’t as many to choose from.
And then there was only the delivery left.
***
“Perfect,” I said, grabbing my mail from the stoop where Mrs. Rosselini always left it for me. There were a couple of rolls wrapped up in a napkin on top of them.
The letter that drew my comment was an official one from Sapienza University. I opened it, expecting Italian but finding English.
It told me pretty much what Dr. Aretino had said. My grades were no longer satisfactory. I was now on academic probation. Without improvement my tenure at the school would be terminated along with my student visa. Yada-yada.
It bolstered my decision that this was the right thing to do. Dr. Aretino had me. If there was a way out of this, I couldn’t see it. At least leaving this way I wouldn’t have to see him again.
And Liam would understand. Especially with what I’d said in the letter (which I had in an unsealed envelope secreted in my messenger bag).
I wanted to go down and tell Mrs. Rosselini in person, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I decided I’d leave a note on the door when I came back here to pick up my bags on my way to the airport.
Then I went over to Liam’s hotel. All the way over, the sky, a uniform and unbroken grey, drizzled. The rain was sharp and cold. It seemed fitting.
The doorman looked me up and down and at first I thought he wouldn’t let me in, but he did, hauling the door open and looking down at his booted feet.
The lobby of the Forum hotel was grand, with Corinthian columns, copies of famous frescoes on the walls, and a starburst on the floor like the one Liam and I had seen.
With it being off season, only a few of the lounges were occupied, a tuxedo-clad waiter moving between the vast spaces bearing a tray with some champagne flutes on it.
I went up to the auditor, a tall, thin man who parted his hair in the middle and wore a well-oiled pencil mustache on his upper lip. That upper lip twitched when he saw me approach.
“Yes?” he said, taking my blonde hair (now almost brunette with the rain dampening it) and my hesitant steps as indicators that I was neither a guest nor an employee.
It wasn’t, “May I help you, miss?” No, just a curt single syllable. We both knew that I didn’t belong here.
Not with my $30 Payless shoes, my cheap Target messenger bag, and my lack of any fine jewelry.
There were probably coasters there in the lobby worth more than everything I had on me.
“Can I leave a message here for one of your guests?” That’s how they always did it in the old movies, picking up and leaving messages with the concierge. It used to seem terribly romantic and nostalgic to me, leaving messages. Like sending a telegram. Now it seemed like my only option.
“Perhaps,” he said, “Which guest?”
I’d already begun reaching into the messenger bag, my fingers brushing against the corner of the envelope.
I wanted to go up and slip the note under Liam’s door, but as soon as I’d come in I’d known they wouldn’t let me get to the elevator or the door to the staircase without asking to see my room key.
So I pulled out the envelope and started handing it to him. He reached out, but then I pulled it back. He frowned.
There was no way I was handing this oily man my unsealed farewell note. He might read it. And I could tell by the way he eyed it that he would do just that. So I wet the glue strip with a few quick licks and then pressed it shut.
Only then did I hand it over. He looked somewhat annoyed. “And who is this for, miss?”
“Liam Montgomery.”
This wasn’t the sort of place where you needed to cite a room number. The management probably insisted that the front desk know the name of every single person staying there.
He slipped it beneath the lip of the desk where I couldn’t see it anymore. My throat tightened, suppressing my impulse to tell him to give it back, that I’d changed my mind.
“Don’t worry, it will be safe here,” the concierge said, interpreting my expression as concern over whether or not I could trust the hotel with my note. An idea that he clearly found more than a little amusing.
“Okay,” I said.
“Is there something else I can assist you with? Perhaps I can call a taxicab for you?”
Ah yes, I’ve completed my business here and now I should get out. This place isn’t for people like me.
“No, thanks. By the way, you should really get someone who knows what they’re doing to fix that copy of the Mona Lisa,” I said, pointing towards the facsimile hanging on the wall behind him, “In the real one her right hand is over her left. In yours she has her left over her right.”
“What?” he said, looking back at it even as his neck and cheeks flushed red.
It was nitpicking, and most people would probably have never noticed the error. Then again, most people hadn’t written a paper in their sophomore year of college discussing the layering technique Da Vinci had used in creating that particular masterwork.
It also gave me a sense of satisfaction and superiority as I walked away from the concierge desk, leaving him flustered as he examined the facsimile.
It was a short-lived victory with an even more ephemeral sense of triumph as I walked back out into that drizzle.
When would Liam receive the letter? Had it been a mistake to get that jab in on the concierge? He could retaliate easily by “forgetting” about the letter, “accidentally” putting it through the shredder. Or something along those lines.
Besides, I didn’t know when Liam would even get it. I checked my phone, shielding the touch screen from the rain by leaning over it. It was coming up to 10 in the morning and he hadn’t texted or called yet to confirm our date for the day.
So I went back to the flat (I no longer considered it my flat) to pack and to leave a letter for Mrs. Rosselini.
I had a plane to catch. And a class this afternoon to miss. I wondered what Dr. Aretino would think of my absence.
Mostly, though, I wondered about how Liam would react to my letter and to my leaving.
Chapter 14
I hadn’t submitted my withdrawal forms to Sapienza. I figured I’d leave that until I’d touched down on good, solid American soil.
It took a full hour to get through all the traffic on the A91 to the airport. Leonardo Da Vinci-LIRF International Airport was in the Fiumicino district of Rome, and was pretty much right on the water. As the taxi crested one large hill I got a view of the Mediterranean stretching away into a haze.
A 747 roared by over us, seemingly so close that I thought I could reach out and touch the un-retracted landing gear if I wanted to.
“She is beautiful, no?” the driver said.
I didn’t know whether he meant the shiny metal underbelly of the jet or the ribbon of the ocean in front of us, but I answered “Yes,” anyway.
A numb sensation had started at the base of my spine as soon as I’d climbed into the cab, and throughout the ride it had progressed through the rest of me.
I kept telling myself that this was the right thing. Not only for me but for Liam. I thought that if I just kept repeating that, I could make myself believe it and be okay with it.
The driver took the exit to the airport, and soon its tall concrete terminals came into view. A small private jet screamed down its runway and launched into the air, one of its larger Boeing cousins lumbering down a spur to taxi into its position.
I could still remember the takeoff and landing involved with my trip to Rome. The takeoff, a sudden dislocation from the earth that left your stomach several feet below your seat. The landing, a jerk that rattled the whole plane and the concurrent screech of the wheels as they scrambled for purchase on the tarmac.
Nothing at all like the gentle floating of the hot air balloon.
“Which terminal?”
“Sorry?” I said, coming back to reality and seeing that the driver had slowed the cab to a crawl as we passed the first terminal.
“The terminal. Which airline?”
“Oh. Alitalia, please.”
The driver pulled up beneath the green and white logo of the airline in question and he helped me pull my luggage out of the cab’s trunk.
Then I was alone among all the other travelers, waiting my turn as the velvet ropes corralled us through the line.
The place smelled of the sharp disinfectant used to clean all the surfaces everyone touched, with a hint of sweat below that. Everything had been polished to a high shine, it seemed: the handrails, the scaffolding holding all the light fixtures in the vaulted ceiling.
And there was glass everywhere. Massive windows that let you look out onto the tarmac and the gangways.
I bought the ticket, wincing at the cost and wondering if my Visa would clear the charge. It did, and the smiling woman handed back my passport along with my ticket and credit card.
“Terminal 13,” she said, leaning over the desk a little so that she could point down one of the mammoth halls.
One of the wheels of my rolling luggage kept squeaking, the sharpness of it cutting through the din of the announcer on the PA and the conversations around me.
I passed a long row of flat screen TVs, each displaying a different channel, stock quotes and quick infobytes scrolling by beneath the talking heads.
I had to hurry to get over to my terminal. That taxi ride had cost me a lot of time. I thought I had barely enough time to clear security and board.
I shuffled into the line to pass through the metal detector, putting my keys and wallet and phone and shoes and luggage into the provided bin.
The security guard had just grabbed my bin to pass it through the X-Ray machine when my phone started ringing.
My heart leapt. It had to be Liam.
I got cold feet then. I mean they were literally cold, my thin socks letting all my body heat out through my souls into the thin rubber mat beneath me. But also metaphoric cold feet about leaving.
I’d known he’d try to call. However, I’d thought I could deal with it. Except I’d forgotten to put the phone on silent so that I could ignore it.
And it wouldn’t be ignored. It blared and blared, even while the guard picked through my belongings and then passed them through the machine.
“Miss, step forward, please,�
�� the guard on the other side of the metal detector said. He had a wand in one gloved hand. The other waved me through.
I didn’t move, though. It felt like as soon as I stepped through that freestanding doorway, I’d be well and truly done with my trip to Rome and on my way home.
“Miss,” he said more insistently, his hand waving becoming more vigorous. I’d begun to attract the attention of a few other guards who’d been watching the lines. The people behind me began to grumble about being held up in a multitude of languages.
My phone quieted, but only momentarily. It started blaring again.
“Come through or go back,” the guard said, “But you can’t stand here.” He gave another look to the guard who’d looked at my stuff, and he shook his head to indicate that I hadn’t been trying to slip anything by them.
Then I happened to glance over to one of those big bay windows, my attention dragged there by the unmistakable roar of jet engines. The big airliner took wing as I watched.
The bottom of my stomach fell out. This is wrong, I thought. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be doing this.
The thing was, I didn’t know what else I could possibly do.
However, I also knew that I didn’t want to be locked in a tiny, windowless room at the airport, detained for suspicious behavior.
“I’d like my things back, please,” I said.
The guards conferred for a while. Long enough that I thought that I’d definitely be asked to accompany them to answer a few questions.
One of them even looked at me while he tugged the radio handset on his shoulder closer to his mouth and spoke into it. I imagined that all the cameras in the area had turned on me, that someone in a back room filled with computer monitors was going over my travel records, checking my passport.
They could have been calling my mom to ask about my fifth grade report cards for all I knew.
“Come with me, please,” the guard who’d been conferring on the radio said. I stepped out of line and he handed me my things over the barricade.
I’d just started wheeling my way back towards the terminal entrance when the announcer came on. “Alitalia Flight 713 to St. Louis final boarding call.”
Italian Kisses: A Billionaire Love Story Page 15
