One Summer Day in Rome

by Mark Lamprell

  Alice decided she liked this guy. They could be friends. Men and women could be friends. She had other male friends. Just because he was a man didn’t mean it had to be sexual, proclaimed New Alice. What harm could happen in two hours with a fun stranger in a magical city? She felt herself letting go.

  He could feel it too. She smiled at him.

  “Oh, really? Great!” he said.

  They walked along in silence, oblivious to the bustle of tourists, pleased with their new resolution, smiling uncertainly. Eventually, they stopped below the ruins of the temple of Venus and Roma at the Forum.

  “So what do we do now?” she asked.

  “I have absolutely no clue,” he answered.

  Alice laughed a long, musical laugh, up and down the scale. If he did one thing before he died, August decided, he wanted to hear those notes again.

  Alice settled in the happy haze of her after-laugh. She could not remember laughing so freely since she was quite small; she vaguely remembered someone tickling her—her father, perhaps?—and giggling until she was limp. She had felt safe and happy in the most uncomplicated way. In a flash the memory faded.

  THIRTEEN

  Arco di Santa Margherita

  THE SOUL BECOMES DYED WITH THE COLOR OF ITS THOUGHTS.

  —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

  Italo drove the taxi down the Via del Pellegrino, watching the Americans in his rearview mirror. The Americano kept to the side of the narrow street while the Americana strode straight down the middle of the cobblestones, daring someone to run her over. He was kindly disposed to the couple, as they had just given him a twenty-euro tip, but he did not hold much hope for them.

  Meg had been given fairly precise instructions from the tile maker on how to find his shop, but she had left the printout at the hotel. She had tried to find the tile maker’s e-mail on her phone, but it had vanished. Alec said that e-mails didn’t disappear—that it must have been somewhere—so they had another spat about that. All she could remember was that his shop was in a small street off the Via del Pellegrino, opposite a door with a sign that said The Conspiracy Club.

  They decided to solve the problem scientifically, walking the length of the Via del Pellegrino, banking that Meg would recognize the name of the street when they came across it. Passing a hardware store, a tomato-red wheelbarrow attracted Alec’s attention. It was solidly made with thick pneumatic tires, precisely the kind of barrow he had been wanting for his vegetable patch at Silver Lake. Its hardwood handles were leaning against the wall of the store, below a worn marble plaque inscribed in Latin. The two opening words immediately stopped Alec in his tracks: I, Claudius …

  Alec studied the plaque, mustering enough of his schoolboy Latin to work out that it said something along the lines of I, Claudius, declare this to be the outermost limit of the city of Rome. He could not dredge enough of his ancient history class to recall exactly when Claudius was emperor, but he knew he was reading something that had been there for about two thousand years. A shiver ran up his spine.

  Meg strode on without noticing he had stopped. Alec was about to call out to her to share the small thrill of his discovery but changed his mind, choosing to protect the moment by keeping it to himself. He trotted to catch up with her until he was a few paces behind his wife. Meg marched ahead, broadcasting over her shoulder; Like a loud American, he thought. Alec wished that he was carrying a sign saying, Actually she’s Australian. Meg, oblivious, resurrected a conversation that he thought they had killed off ten minutes ago in the taxi.

  “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of this,” she said. “It’s never been smooth sailing for us. It’s always a battle. That’s how we relate.”

  Alec decided not to engage with her.

  Receiving no reply, Meg assumed that he had not heard her and began to repeat herself. “I said—”

  “I heard you,” he interrupted.

  They walked along in silence for a while.

  “Well, then,” she said, “what is your reply?”

  Alec studied the new Mephisto walking shoes that he had not broken in yet. They were hurting. “I’m tired of being at war,” he said quietly.

  “I’m tired of being at war,” she mocked over her shoulder.

  It occurred to Alec that he could kill her, dispose of her body, and be back in California before anyone had even noticed she was missing.

  Meg was sure she could feel waves of hatred emanating toward her back. She stopped and turned to her husband without looking directly at him. “Okay, let’s call a truce,” she said and added, genuinely meaning it, “I’m sorry.”

  Alec remained unmoved by his wife’s sudden and sincere declaration of repentance because he knew it was unlikely to be supported by any change in her behavior. “I don’t want a truce,” he said. “I don’t want to make happy families. I don’t want to pretend.”

  The thing Meg disliked most about her husband was the way he cast himself as the perpetual victim of her capricious whimsy. He was such a boy. “Oh, grow up,” she said, sidestepping an oncoming motorino. She pointed to a girl clinging precariously to the motorino’s driver. “That girl is pretending she’s not scared to death.” The motorino swerved around a thick-middled man patting the yapping poodle of a girl in a floral miniskirt. “That man is pretending to like that dog.” The girl in the miniskirt teetered on her striped fluorescent stilettos. “That girl is pretending those shoes go with that dress,” said Meg, pointing directly at the girl without a moment’s concern that she may be able to understand English. “That’s how we operate as adults in the world without killing each other. We pretend!”

  She swiveled on her heel and marched boldly forth.

  “You are scary,” Alec called after her.

  “So?” she said. “Nothing’s changed. I haven’t changed.”

  Meg almost missed it. But swirling back to look in his general direction, she noticed an archway with a street sign inset on a crumbling render and brick wall. The sign had a slash of bloodred graffiti across it, which made it hard to read, but on closer inspection she could see it said Arco degli Agetari or Acetari. That was it! Arco degli Acetari.

  Meg passed through the archway into an enchanted medieval courtyard. Here and there, external staircases clambered up the outside of buildings accompanied by the thick trunks of old vines. A rich terra-cotta dominated render colors ranging from dusty yellow to plum purple. Some of the render had disintegrated and fallen in places, exposing the brickwork underneath, but the effect, far from being chaotic, created visual unity among the eclectic styles. Alec absorbed the harmony in wonder.

  Meg knew she had arrived. She spotted a battered door with a small glass window and a security camera mounted on it. A very small sign read The Conspiracy Club. She remembered now what she must do. Turning around, she walked twenty paces across the courtyard to a set of unmarked double doors that were flaking and bubbling with a myriad of colors layered down over the centuries. She knocked, and the door fell open.

  Alec joined her, and they looked in, not daring to enter without an invitation. Vaulted brick ceilings crouched over a vast storage room brimming with pallets that were piled high with tiles. There was no sign of any life or movement.

  “Hello,” Meg called out.

  “Buongiorno,” Alec called out.

  Meg threw a barbed look in Alec’s direction.

  “What?” he said.

  “Like he’s not going to answer because I say hello in English,” she said.

  Alec sucked his teeth and held his tongue.

  They waited. Craning her neck, Meg could see doorways beyond the dim cellar. She glimpsed what might have been a kiln through one and possibly a staircase through another. She called out again, but there was no answer. Then she recalled that the tile maker had e-mailed her times that he would or would not be there. She decided not to share this fresh recollection with her husband, lest he use it against her. Besides, if the shop was open, the tile maker could not b
e far away.

  Standing at the threshold, waiting in silence, Alec began to feel an enormous irritation once again for this silly project. What did she call it? A mission. They could be exploring the Pantheon or having an espresso in the Piazza Navona. What a ridiculous waste of time this was.

  “I don’t want to fight anymore,” he said, resurrecting their discussion. “I don’t think it’s cute. I don’t enjoy it.”

  So let me get this straight, thought Meg, he doesn’t want to fight, and he doesn’t want to pretend. “Isn’t fighting a way of not pretending there are differences between us?” she said. “Isn’t fighting a way of working things out?”

  At that moment, a man appeared, not from the shop but in the cobblestoned courtyard behind them. “You are looking for the tile maker?” he said in heavily accented English.

  They both turned to find a cross-eyed man with one blue eye and one brown eye, standing behind them. He was wearing a thick, greasy green coat at odds with the heat of the day. His dark hair and skin appeared to be unwashed, and he smelled strongly of cologne.

  “Yes,” said Alec. “We are looking for the tile maker.”

  The man nodded, almost to himself, and said nothing.

  “Do you know where he is?” asked Alec. “We have an appointment.”

  Strictly speaking, they did not have an appointment. The tile maker had simply said that he would be in the shop at certain times. Meg knew this, but Alec did not. The cross-eyed man studied them, evidently assessing whether they were worthy of assistance. Meg flashed what she hoped was an endearing smile.

  “He is not far from here,” the man said. “I can take you to him if it pleasures you.”

  “Si, grazie,” said Alec.

  The man turned and headed across the cobblestones. Meg and Alec watched him vanish in the shadow of the archway and reappear in the bright light of the Via del Pellegrino. He turned and motioned toward them, and they hurried after him.

  * * *

  A block away, in the Via dei Cappellari, named for the cappellari, hatmakers whose shops once lined the narrow lane, Lizzie and Constance each clasped a handle of the Harrods bag, sharing the load of the Henry box. They were trying to find the tiny church of Santa Barbara dei Librai. Constance knew that it was in a small square near the bustling food markets of Campo de’ Fiori but was not aware that they were, unfortunately, headed diametrically in the wrong direction.

  The taxi had dropped the pair in Piazza Farnese outside the symmetrical monolith of a Renaissance palazzo designed by some of the most prominent architects of the sixteenth century, including Michelangelo. An enormous blue, white, and red flag hung in the hot air above the massive central entry, indicating its current function as the French embassy. It was an architectural and geographical marker that Constance had been using for the last fifty years to negotiate her way around this quarter of the city.

  Constance had led Lizzie to a corner of the Campo de’ Fiori, hoping to avoid the madness of the marketplace teeming with humanity. They had peeled into the laneway next to the famous Forno that smelled deliciously of freshly baked bread and walked on for a while, but the small square with the church failed to appear.

  “We’re lost, aren’t we?” said Lizzie. She was wearing sensible walking shoes, as was Constance, but the cobblestones were murder on her feet.

  “No, it’s just up here,” said Constance, trying to sound convincing.

  “The taxi driver said right at the Campo.”

  “He was wrong.”

  “Yes, what would a Roman know about getting around Rome?”

  “I lived and worked here,” said Constance.

  “Yes, fifty-three years ago,” said Lizzie. “You must know these streets like the back of your liver-spotted hand,” she added.

  Constance stopped and laughed a loud and hearty pirate laugh. It felt good. It was also good to be reminded of their long and deep friendship, based on the capacity of one to shock the other, just enough. Once or twice over the years their exchanges had toppled into nastiness and feelings had been hurt. But silences were soon broken and bridges quickly mended.

  “Nasty old lady,” Constance said to Lizzie.

  They put down the Harrods bag to rest. Lizzie flexed her palm, which was red and indented from the strap. Constance looked back down the lane from whence they had come and inwardly conceded defeat. They were going the wrong way.

  Suddenly Henry appeared before her. As a man, not a box of ashes. “Giordano Bruno,” he said. “It’s over his right shoulder.”

  Constance looked around. Lizzie had not noticed. But her husband had been standing there in front of her. She knew he was not, of course, that she had imagined him, but he was so real. More than half a century before, she had complained to Henry once about losing her way to Santa Barbara. He had told her that if she got lost, she should go back to the markets and stand in front of the statue. The road to Santa Barbara was behind it, to the right.

  “Come,” said Constance. She picked up the Harrods bag and headed back toward the Campo. Lizzie caught up with her and after a small squabble wrested back her share of the Henry load.

  “Do you think we should ask directions?” said Lizzie.

  “What fun would that be?” said Constance, deciding to keep the strange apparition to herself.

  This time, they braved the cut and thrust of the markets and consulted the great bronze statue of Giordano Bruno, which stood in the center of the Campo de’ Fiori where he’d been burned at the stake four hundred years before. Giordano had been a Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and poet. I never met him, but he was well known for his radical ideas, among them the notion that the sun was just one of many scattered across the universe and that these other suns had life-sustaining planets revolving around them. The prevailing theology of the day held that God had placed the earth at the center of the universe and appointed man the boss of everything (still cracks me up, that one). When Giordano refused to recant his outlandish ideas, he was executed.

  Had Constance and Lizzie not consulted Giordano Bruno and remained on their path down the Via dei Cappellari, they would have encountered an American couple following a cross-eyed man in a greasy green coat. There would have been an astonished recognition and some what-are-you-doing-heres. This would have been genuine coincidence and not a meeting of my design. There was no need for them to meet. Indeed, a meeting may have altered their trajectories. So they did not meet.

  * * *

  The American man was beginning to feel apprehensive. It’s never easy to keep one’s bearings in the laneways of Rome, but he had a sense that he and his wife were doubling back on themselves, following the cross-eyed man in a large circle.

  “I thought he said it was close by,” said Alec quietly.

  “Maybe this is the Roman version of close by,” whispered Meg, adding, “Let’s go back to the shop.”

  “I hope you left a trail of bread crumbs, Gretel,” said Alec, “because I have no idea how to get back there.”

  “I’ve got a very strange feeling something bad is about to happen,” said Meg.

  Just then a door opened. Wrangling the stethoscope that was unfurling from her bag, Dr. Stephanie stepped into the Via dei Cappellari and literally bumped into Alec. She got such a surprise that she stumbled backward, and Alec had to put both his arms around her to stop her from falling.

  “Alec!” said Stephanie and, immediately clocking his wife, added, “and…”

  Nothing.

  She had drawn a blank on Meg’s name. Meg could see she had genuinely forgotten, which somehow made it more annoying; because it meant that she was genuinely forgettable, she supposed.

  “Meg,” said Meg.

  “Meg, yes, sorry,” said Stephanie.

  Alec let Stephanie go, and she smiled her gratitude to him. “What on earth are you doing here?” she said.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” said Meg very quickly before her husband could answer.

  “Me?
Oh, I run a free clinic for the gypsy children,” said Stephanie, tossing away her good work as if it were the least consequential thing in the world. “I was just going to—”

  “A free clinic?” Alec interrupted.

  “Yes,” said Stephanie. “I was just going to grab a pasta if you’d like to—”

  “Yes, we’d love to,” said Meg, sounding completely thrilled. “Only that gentleman up there,” she added, pointing to the cross-eyed man who was waiting about ten paces ahead of them, “is taking us to see a tile maker, and we mustn’t keep him waiting. But great to see you again!”

  Stephanie looked past them to the cross-eyed man. She frowned slightly and said something very quickly to him in Italian. He said something quickly in return. Meg took Alec’s arm, and they hurried up the road, saying their good-byes over their shoulders. Stephanie watched them go for a while and then headed around the corner for some fresh pasta.

  Alec and Meg followed the man through an archway into an alley. Alec noted the name of the alley, just in case. Arco di S. Margherita. He presumed the S stood for Santa, meaning “Saint.” They passed an abandoned wooden cart, moving into an area where every inch of the brick-and-render walls were covered with brightly colored graffiti. The place was pungent with the stink of rotting vegetables. Wall-mounted gas meters were attached to each other via a complex arrangement of external lead piping. Mysteriously, the word “fish” was handwritten in black marker on each meter. Along both sides of the alley, large openings about the size of a single garage were sealed shut with old metal roller doors or ancient wooden ones, each brightly painted and then oversprayed with vulgar lettering and obscene motifs.

  The cross-eyed man bent and lifted one of the roller doors. It clattered and complained, revealing a yawning darkness. He gestured for them to enter. Meg shot Alec a worried glance, but Alec shrugged. They had come this far …

  As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Meg and Alec could see a door at the far end of the space. It was partly ajar, revealing a dimly lit room. The figure of a man appeared and said, “Buongiorno.”