Three Button Trick and Other Stories

by Nicola Barker

  Where was Ralph? Why had he done that? Should she have intervened? Should she have stopped him? He was hateful. She imagined him, still laughing and grinning, relentless, in his own hotel, south of Termini. She wouldn’t see him again.

  Tina kept touching her lip, which felt, repeatedly, as if a cobweb was dangling from it, a silky strand, a tiny feather, tickling her, irritating her. She hoped she wasn’t getting a cold sore.

  She felt lonely. That was stupid. She touched her lip.

  ‘I must stop doing that.’ She felt heavy. ‘Stop this. You’re being silly’

  She clambered on to her bed, fully dressed, lay down flat and closed her eyes. ‘Thank God,’ she muttered resolutely. ‘Thank God I’m not a Catholic. Thank God I’m just a buyer at Fenwicks, New Bond Street, London.’ She turned over and sighed.

  Tina dreamed. Tina dreamed she was doing Rome on a budget. Her companion was horrible. He was called Ralph. She met him accidentally and he stuck to her like a burr, like a leech, until he grew bored of her. Then he let go, just as suddenly.

  And when Ralph let go—this was the good part—Tina met Paolo. In the botanical gardens. Paolo was half-American, half-Italian, a doctor and an amateur botanist. He was dreamy.

  The day after the dust, the bones, the dirt and the death of the Piazza Barberini, Tina consulted her guidebook over an espresso and then picked her way slowly and cautiously through the via della Lungara to the botanical gardens in Trastevere.

  You see, Tina knew that Rome held something special, just for her—a fresco, a figurine, a shady walkway, an orange tree—and that if she searched for it she would find it.

  The weather was temperate. Plants were growing. Everything looked glorious in the Italian sunshine. The trees and the specimens were extremely well labelled. Tina wandered around the botanical gardens, smiling to herself, trying to expel all thoughts of candle-wax and hessian and dark bark from her mind. And Ralph. Him especially.

  Inside one of the greenhouses a smart group of horticultural Italians—smelling of starch, scent and shoe leather—were inspecting the finalists in an orchid exhibition. Tina slipped in to take a look.

  The orchids seemed alien, like sophisticated intergalactic creatures. They didn’t look real. Tina squatted down in front of one, closed her eyes and inhaled. The air was warm and smelled only of soil. Soil. She shuddered.

  ‘You know, that orchid is a colour you see nowhere else on this earth apart from in one other place. It is a purple-brown the colour of the human kidney, sì?’

  Tina looked up.

  ‘I’m Paolo. Hi. I could see you were not with the others. I guessed you were English from your shoes. Am I correct in so guessing?’

  ‘Oh.’ Tina looked down at her suede moccasins and then back up at Paolo again. ‘Uh … The flowers were so lovely …’

  ‘Orchids.’

  ‘Yes. They almost look … plastic.’

  ‘I suppose you could say that. God is a master technician, huh? I should know, I’m a doctor. I studied in America for several years, in Boston.’

  ‘Your English is excellent.’

  ‘Thank you. I enjoy the chance to, ah, take it out for a test drive every so often.’

  Paolo shrugged his strong, square shoulders. Tina smiled.

  ‘Your hair is in such a pretty style,’ Paolo said. ‘The English are so original.’

  Tina put a hand to her pale brown bob. Paolo’s beautiful dark eyes clouded over, momentarily.

  ‘You must think me so presumptuous. You have not even had the chance to introduce yourself.’ Paolo took hold of Tina’s hand. ‘Your name?’

  ‘Tina.’

  ‘Forgive me, Tina.’ He kissed her fingers, so softly that she barely felt his lips, just his breath, which later, she discovered, was sweet and nutty and flavoured with pistachios.

  Was this the thing? Was this the thing Rome held just for her? Not a fountain or a figurine, but Paolo? He took her for coffee and then invited her to collect wild mushrooms with him that afternoon in the Parco Oppio. Tina floated back to her hotel clutching a moist amaretto biscuit in one hand and something that felt suspiciously like the key to Paolo’s heart in the other.

  The haughty Italian matron who presided over the front desk in Tina’s hotel obligingly changed some of Tina’s pounds into lire and then announced, in her clipped English: ‘A man came for you earlier. He left no name but he was wearing something full of … fluff, on his head, a hat,’ she grimaced, ‘and shoes made of plastic. He is … uh …’ Unable to find the right word, the woman twirled her finger in a circle and raised her eyes skywards.

  ‘Mad?’ Tina tried.

  ‘No.’

  ‘English?’

  She shrugged. ‘Sì.’

  ‘Did he leave a message?’

  ‘Sì.’ The woman offered Tina a folded piece of paper. Tina opened it up. In badly formed letters was written:

  Tina I’ve gotta see you It’s urgent

  love ralph

  Tina turned the note over, picked up a stray, yellow Bic pen from the desk and wrote:

  Ralph, At last I think I’ve found what I was looking for in this magical city of Rome. I won’t waste your time or mine by describing what it is, but I am quite certain of what it isn’t. It isn’t a short Englishman in stack heels with a bad haircut and dirty teeth. I know that now. What you did in that church yesterday appalled me. I’ve decided I don’t want to see you any more. You disgust me. Goodbye.

  Tina

  Tina handed the notelet back to the woman. ‘If he comes by again,’ she said sweetly, ‘will you make sure that he gets this?’ Then she slipped the Bic pen, without so much as a second thought, into her jacket pocket.

  Paolo pushed aside a bush and whistled to himself. ‘Do you see what I see, Tina?’

  Tina recoiled. There was something about this fungus, something that made her palms dampen. Paolo put out his hands and gently plucked the mushrooms. ‘With strips of pasta, some garlic, hard cheese … a touch of single cream.’ He kissed the air and then plopped the mushrooms into the basket he was holding.

  ‘They look a little like … uh … bones,’ Tina said. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘They taste like flesh,’ Paolo said, standing up and striding off. ‘Very rich, very strong, very gamey.’

  Tina followed a short distance behind him. She caught up at the next bush. ‘This is a nice park. Are we close to the Colosseum?’

  Paolo pushed aside the bush but there were no mushrooms underneath, only a used soft drink can and the plastic segment of a syringe. He stood to attention. ‘You don’t want to come here at night. Homeless people haunt this place. That is why I hunt here for mushrooms, because others don’t have the audacity to look in such a venue. So you have to be observant,’ Paolo added. ‘Especially a woman on her own. That makes you extremely vulnerable.’

  He stalked off again. Tina followed. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’ve found Rome very hospitable. I mean …’

  ‘A woman came into my surgery yesterday,’ Paolo said. ‘She had been mugged while walking through the Jewish Ghetto. They wanted her watch. She resisted. They sliced into her arm with a blade, through the tendons, down to the bone. The blade was rusty. I knew even then it would go septic, get infected, start to swell and rot like garbage in the stinking heat of an Italian summer.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘You must be wary. To you this is simply a holiday, but to the casual vagabond and thief, you are a perfect financial opportunity.’

  Tina, from the corner of her eye, noticed what she thought might be a cluster of wild mushrooms, but they were sprouting alongside something that bore a startling resemblance to a clump of dog shit and she couldn’t bear the idea of drawing Paolo’s attention to them, not even for the thrill of earning his approbation.

  ‘Have you noticed what I’ve noticed?’ Paolo stood still, like a bloodhound, his nose flaring, his fists tightening. Tina’s heart sank. He’d seen the mushrooms. Before she could respond, ho
wever, Paolo whispered, quite urgently, ‘As I was saying, this place is new to you and so the sights and the pleasures of the senses are here to be enjoyed for the very first time, but I … I am more familiar with this environment so can take in the larger view, the periphery. Someone is following us. Did you see him? When I bought you your gelato he stood a little distance away. Later he bought one for himself.’

  Paolo pointed. Tina followed the line of his finger. She failed to detect anything unusual.

  ‘See?’ Paolo asked. ‘In the scruffy clothing, with his long face, his dirty arms. He has a pronounced limp. He’s ducking behind that yellow flowering bush. He knows I’m on to him. A junkie. Probably a thief.’

  Tina looked again. A man with a child and a suitcase. A young woman sitting under a tree reading a magazine. Two teenagers playing with a frisbee. And then she saw him. Ralph!

  She nearly swore, but she stopped herself. ‘Paolo!’ she exclaimed. ‘Over there! See? Some mushrooms.’

  Paolo looked where she’d indicated, strode over, crouched down and plucked them from the soil. ‘Such a meal I will make you!’ he exclaimed. ‘Such a feast!’

  By the time he’d straightened up again, Ralph had made himself scarce. Tina blinked and wondered if she’d dreamed him.

  She went home to change for dinner. Ralph was loitering outside her hotel. He was holding an open copy of La Moda in front of him but he wasn’t reading it.

  ‘What do you want, Ralph? Didn’t you get my note?’

  His face was pale and moist. He seemed distracted.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and to be honest …’

  ‘I don’t like being followed around,’ Tina said, emphatically.

  ‘So who the hell is that guy?’ Ralph interjected indignantly. ‘Christ, you’re a fast worker. Yesterday it was me, today it’s some fat Italian with hair sprouting out from his cuffs and his collar.’

  ‘It was never you, Ralph,’ Tina said haughtily as she pushed past him and stepped into the hotel’s revolving doors. Ralph was nimble though, quick on his feet, and he stuck to her, entering the same little segment of the doors. He was crushed up against the back of her as she pushed and walked. He smelled of Dettol. Then he stopped and the door jammed. Tina tried to keep moving but Ralph was too strong. The glass held fast.

  ‘Stop pressing against me! Let me out of here.’

  ‘Tina,’ Ralph said, ‘I regret what I did yesterday. And I want to give you that money I owe you from the Vatican Museum.’

  ‘Keep it. I don’t want it.’

  Ralph put his hand into his pocket and drew out an old tissue, a bus ticket, a couple of lire and a cheese straw. Tina blinked and focused. It wasn’t a cheese straw. It was a bone.

  ‘My God! What is that? Did you steal it?’

  ‘Uh …?’ Ralph looked down. ‘It’s a cheese straw.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tina felt claustrophobic and slightly dizzy. ‘I thought it was the bone. I mean, I thought you had the bone.’

  Ralph guffawed. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’ He adjusted his position. Tina squinted at him, somewhat perplexed. Close up, she found his white skin, his dead eyes, particularly distasteful.

  ‘My friend thought you were a drug addict,’ she said, sharply. ‘You look a mess.’

  ‘Fine,’ Ralph responded. ‘So I’m sorry about the way things turned out yesterday. But that note you left … See,’ he bared his teeth, ‘my mouth is spotless.’

  ‘But your shirt,’ Tina smiled back, tight-lipped, jabbing at his chest with her middle finger, ‘isn’t Lacoste. It’s a second-rate impersonation. Which, to be brutally honest, Ralph, seems entirely appropriate.’

  While Ralph paused to digest this information, Tina took her chance and gave the door a violent shove, pushed it forward and snapped out of the restrictive glass bubble into the foyer. Ralph was disoriented for a moment but then quickly followed. He didn’t let up. He trailed her to the front desk.

  ‘Go away, Ralph.’

  ‘It’s only …’

  She spun around. ‘What?!’

  He was still holding the bus ticket and the cheese straw in his right hand.

  ‘It’s only, I mean …’ he said, shiftily. ‘Couldn’t we talk this over in private?’

  ‘Get lost, Ralph.’

  Ralph didn’t budge. Tina asked for her key and then pressed for the lift. ‘By the way,’ she said sharply, ‘Paolo said Sophia Loren never lived in the Piazza Barberini. She never even lived in Rome. It’s just a myth. My guidebook says the same thing.’

  Ralph opened his mouth to say something, but before he’d uttered a single syllable, Tina had swept off, up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  The lift arrived. The doors opened. People got out. The doors closed. Ralph remained where he was. He grimaced, looked around him, cleared his throat and then gently, neatly, carefully, he folded up his copy of La Moda.

  ‘It looks fantastic, Paolo,’ Tina murmured. She was sitting in his spotless flat and staring down at a steaming plateful of pasta and mushrooms.

  ‘Tuck in,’ Paolo said, turning this little smidgen of colloquial English over on his tongue like an exquisite truffle. Tina picked up her fork. She ate a small strand of the pasta and then smiled. ‘It’s delicious.’

  Paolo beamed at her.

  She speared a mushroom. She inhaled deeply and lifted the mushroom up towards her lips. She could smell it. It didn’t smell like a mushroom at all. It smelled of old bone. Rotten bone. She paused.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Tina closed her eyes for a moment. Don’t blow it, Tina, she thought frantically. This man is a dream. You’ve arrived, girl. You’ve arrived! But her brain took no account of these thoughts and projected the unpalatable image of a dog’s anus on to the inside of her eyelids. Her gorge rose.

  ‘Tina?’

  She opened her eyes. ‘Paolo?’

  ‘Is something wrong? Is it the evening light? Is it too bright?’

  ‘The light?’ Tina blinked. ‘Oh. Yes, it is bright.’

  ‘Easily remedied.’

  Paolo sprang up and over to the window to adjust the blinds. While he was distracted, Tina grabbed her handbag from the floor, yanked it open and tipped the mushrooms from her plate straight into it. This whole manoeuvre took a total of four or five seconds.

  She snapped the bag shut.

  ‘Tina!’ Paolo expostulated. Tina squeaked and looked up guiltily. But Paolo was not staring at her. He was staring out of the window. ‘Tina, come here for a moment.’

  She did as he asked. Paolo pointed. ‘It’s him, huh? You see him?’

  Tina craned her neck and followed the line of Paolo’s index finger.

  ‘You see him? The same one as earlier. Next to the street lamp. Smoking.’

  Ralph. Next to the lamp-post; bad shoes, bad hair, puffing on a cigarette. Something was wrong, though. It was his hat. It wasn’t on his head, perched jauntily, as one might have expected; it was hanging from his belt buckle like a furry codpiece.

  ‘I have reason to believe that man is stalking you,’ Paolo said. ‘I have every reason to believe it.’ Without another word he strode swiftly from the room.

  ‘Hang on a second … Paolo?’

  The door slammed. Tina returned to the window. After a short time, Paolo appeared in the street. Ralph gave a start, grabbed hold of his hat, turned on his heel and ran. Paolo followed, but didn’t venture beyond the end of the road. Tina went back to the table, sat down and picked up her fork.

  Of course he insisted on escorting her home. He told her how one of his uncles had been glassed in the Palazzo Nuovo for his cufflinks. ‘People see you, Tina, and straight away they can tell you are green. You are green like a dollar sign. A big, green dollar sign walking down the road.’

  He frog-marched her into the hotel foyer, watched as she picked up her keys, called the lift. While they waited for it he arranged to meet her early the following morning for breakfast. He kissed her ear as the lift doors opened. ‘Do
n’t leave the sanctuary of the building until I am here to meet you, OK?’

  Tina smiled and nodded. Paolo was so protective. It gave her goosebumps.

  ‘You are so desirable,’ he muttered, ‘so damn vulnerable. You are an accident, Tina, just waiting to happen.’

  Tina had a shower, wrapped a towel around her midriff and then strolled into her bedroom.

  ‘My God!’

  Paolo was sitting, bold as brass, on the end of her bed.

  Tina clutched at her towel. ‘Paolo! What on earth are you doing here?’

  Paolo clucked his tongue and shook his head. ‘The window. You left it wide open. I was checking the rear of the building. I came up by the fire escape. You must be more cautious, Tina. I could have been anybody.’ He stood up. ‘I’m sorry to have to scare you like that. It’s just that we can’t be too careful, huh?’

  Tina nodded.

  Paolo returned to the window, swung his leg over the ledge and jumped out on to the escape. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow. Breakfast.’

  Tina nodded again.

  ‘The window. Close it tight, sì?’

  ‘I will. Straight away.’

  She closed it. She sat down on her bed.

  ‘Is that guy some kind of a fucking psychopath or what?’

  Tina froze and then she yelled.

  ‘Aiuto!’

  In the short silence that followed an accent that was distinctly English and distinctly Ralph’s said, ‘And what the fuck does that mean?’

  Tina squatted down. A loafer was visible, protruding from the end of the bed.

  ‘What the hell are you doing under there?’

  Ralph was silent for a moment and then he said gently, ‘I think I’m dying.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘Dying. I climbed in. You were in the shower. I needed to talk to you. Then I heard someone else climbing up the escape, so I scrambled under here. Then he sat down on the bed and now I’m stuck.’

  ‘Stuck? How?’

  Ralph cleared his throat. ‘To put it bluntly, I have an erection and it’s stuck inside the mesh on the underside of the mattress. It’s like chicken wire or something.’