Breathing Room

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Someone bumped against her, and she jumped. The crowds had thinned out, and the New Yorker inside her no longer felt safe, so she headed down the Via dei Calzaiuoli to the Piazza della Signoria. As she walked, she told herself she’d made the right decision. Only a clean break from the familiar could clear her mind enough so that she could stop feeling as though all she wanted to do was cry. Finally she’d be able to move ahead.

  She had a definite plan for how she would begin the process of reinventing her life. Solitude. Rest. Contemplation. Action. Four parts, just like the Four Cornerstones.

  “Can’t you ever be impulsive?” Michael had once said. “Do you have to plan everything?”

  A little over three months had passed since Michael had left her for another woman, but his voice poked into her consciousness so frequently she could hardly think anymore. Last month she’d caught a glimpse of him in Central Park with his arm around a badly dressed pregnant woman, and even from fifty feet away Isabel could hear the sound of their laughter, a little giddy, silly almost. In all their time together, he and Isabel had never once been silly. Isabel was afraid she’d forgotten how.

  The Piazza della Signoria was as crowded as the rest of Florence. Tourists milled around the statues, while a pair of musicians strummed their guitars near Neptune’s Fountain. The forbidding Palazzo Vecchio, with its crenellated clock tower and medieval banners, loomed over the nighttime bustle just as it had been doing since the fourteenth century.

  The leather pumps she’d paid three hundred dollars for last year were killing her, but going back to the hotel was too depressing. She spotted the beige and brown awnings of Rivoire, a café that had been mentioned in her guidebook, and made her way through a group of German tourists to find an outside table.

  “Buona sera, signora. . . .” The waiter was at least sixty, but that didn’t stop him from flirting with her as he took her wine order. She would have loved a risotto, but the prices were even higher than the calorie count. How many years had it been since she’d had to worry over menu prices?

  When the waiter left, she centered the salt and pepper shakers on the tablecloth, then moved the ashtray to the edge. Michael had looked so happy with his new wife.

  “You’re too much,” he’d said. “Too much of everything.” So why did she feel as if she were too little?

  She drank the first glass of wine more quickly than she should have and ordered another. Her parents’ long-term love affair with personal excess had made her wary of alcohol, but she was in a strange country, and the emptiness that had been growing inside her for months had become unbearable.

  “It’s not my problem, Isabel. It’s yours . . .”

  She’d promised herself she wouldn’t brood about this again tonight, but she couldn’t seem to get past it.

  “You need to control everything. Maybe that’s why you don’t like sex that much.”

  That was so unfair. She liked sex. She’d even started toying with the idea of taking a lover to prove it, but she recoiled from the idea of sex outside a committed relationship. It was another legacy from watching her parents’ mistakes.

  She wiped away the smear her lipstick left on her wineglass. Sex was a partnership, but Michael seemed to have forgotten that. If he hadn’t been satisfied, he should have discussed it with her.

  Her thoughts were making her even more unhappy than she’d been when she entered the piazza, so she finished her second glass of wine and ordered another. One night of excess would hardly turn her into an alcoholic.

  At the next table two women smoked, gestured, and rolled their eyes over the absurdity of life. A group of American students just behind them gorged on pizza and gelato, while an older couple gazed at each other over thimble-size aperitifs.

  “I want passion,” Michael had said.

  The implication was too painful to contemplate, so she studied the statues on the other side of the piazza, copies of The Rape of the Sabines, Cellini’s Perseus, Michelangelo’s David. Then her eyes settled on the most amazing man she’d ever seen. . . .

  He sat three tables away, a portrait of Italian decadence in a rumpled black silk shirt with dark stubble on his jaw, long hair, and La Dolce Vita eyes. Two elegantly tapered fingers curled around the stem of the wineglass that dangled indolently from his hand. He looked rich, spoiled, bored—Marcello Mastroianni stripped of his clown face and chiseled into perfect male beauty for an avaricious new millennium.

  There was something vaguely familiar about him, although she knew they’d never met. His face could have been painted by one of the masters—Michelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael. That must be why she felt as if she’d seen him before.

  She studied him more closely, only to realize he was studying her in return. . . .

  3

  Ren had been watching her ever since she arrived. She’d rejected two tables before she found one that pleased her, then rearranged the condiments as soon as she was seated. A discriminating woman. She wore the stamp of intelligence as visibly as her Italian shoes, and even from here she radiated a seriousness of purpose that he found as sexy as those overly lavish lips.

  She looked to be in her early thirties, with understated makeup and the simple but expensive clothes favored by sophisticated European women. Her face was more intriguing than beautiful. She wasn’t Hollywood emaciated, but he liked her body—breasts in proportion to her hips, tapered waist, the promise of great legs underneath her black slacks. Her blond hair had highlights she hadn’t been born with, but he’d bet that was the only thing fake about her. No artificial fingernails or false eyelashes. And if those breasts were stuffed with silicone, she’d be showing them off instead of keeping them tucked away underneath that tidy black sweater.

  He watched her finish one glass of wine and start on another. She took a nibble on her thumbnail. The gesture seemed out of character for such an earnest woman, which made it weirdly erotic.

  He studied the other women in the café, but his eyes kept returning to her. He sipped his wine and thought it over. Women found him—he never went after them. But it had been a long time, and there was something about this one.

  What the hell . . .

  He leaned back in his chair and gave her his patented smoldering gaze.

  Isabel felt his eyes on her. The man oozed sex. Her third glass of wine had lifted the leading edge of her dismal mood, and his attention lifted it a bit higher. Here was a person who knew something about passion.

  He shifted his weight slightly and raised one dark, angular eyebrow. She wasn’t used to such a blatant come-on. Gorgeous men wanted counseling from Dr. Isabel Favor, not sex. She was too intimidating.

  She moved the silverware half an inch to the right. He didn’t look American, and she had no international following, so he wouldn’t have recognized her. No, this man wasn’t interested in Dr. Favor’s wisdom. He just wanted sex.

  “It’s not my problem, Isabel. It’s yours.”

  She looked up, and his lips curved. Her bruised heart, numbed by the wine, feasted on that slight smile.

  This man doesn’t think I’m schizo, Michael. This man recognizes a powerfully sexual woman when he sees one.

  He locked his eyes with hers and deliberately touched the corner of his mouth with his knuckle. Something warm unfolded inside her, like a layer of puff pastry plumping in an oven. She watched, fascinated, as his knuckle drifted toward the slight indentation in his bottom lip. The gesture was so blatantly sexual she should have been offended. Instead, she took another sip and waited to see what he’d do next.

  He rose, picked up his glass, and walked slowly toward her. The two Italian women at the next tabfile:///C:/HC-epub/input/9780061795183/52394_chledge.jpgle stopped their conversation to watch. One uncrossed her legs. The other shifted in her chair. They were young and beautiful, but this fallen Renaissance angel zeroed in on her.

  “Signora?” He gestured toward the chair across from her. “Posso farti compagnia?”

  She felt herself nod, e
ven as her brain ordered her to turn him away. He slid into the chair, as seductive as a black satin sheet.

  Up close he was no less devastating, but his eyes were a little bloodshot, and the stubble on his jaw seemed more a product of fatigue than a fashion statement. Perversely, his ragged edges intensified his sexuality.

  She was only mildly startled to hear herself address him in French. “Je ne parle pas l’italien, monsieur.”

  Whoa . . . One part of her brain ordered her to get up and walk away right now. The other part told her not to be in such a hurry. She did a quick survey to see if anything obvious would give her away as an American, but Europe was filled with blondes, including ones like her who’d had light streaks added to perk up their spirits. She was dressed in black, as he was—slim trousers and a cropped, sleeveless cotton sweater with a funnel neck. Her uncomfortable shoes were Italian. The only jewelry she wore was a thin gold bangle with the single word BREATHE inscribed inside, to remind her to stay centered. She hadn’t eaten, so he couldn’t have witnessed that telling transfer of fork from left hand to right that Americans made when they cut their meat.

  What does it matter? Why are you doing this?

  Because the world as she knew it had collapsed around her. Because Michael didn’t love her, and she’d had too much wine, and she was tired of being frightened, and she wanted to feel like a woman instead of a failed institution.

  “È un peccato.” He shrugged in that wonderful Italian way. “Non parlo francesca.”

  “Parlez-vous anglais?”

  He shook his head and brushed his chest. “Mi chiamo Dante.”

  His name was Dante. How appropriate in this city that had once been the home of the poet Dante Alighieri.

  She tapped her own chest. “Je suis . . . Annette.”

  “Annette. Molta bella.” He lifted his glass in a sexy, silent toast.

  Dante . . . The name warmed her belly like hot syrup, and the night air turned to musk.

  His hand touched hers. She gazed down at it but didn’t draw away. Instead, she took another sip of wine.

  He began toying with the tips of her fingers, letting her know this was more than a casual flirtation. This was a seduction, and the fact that it was calculated bothered her for only a moment. She was too demoralized for subtlety.

  “Hold your body precious,” the Spiritual Dedication Cornerstone advised. “You’re a treasure, God’s greatest creation. . . .” She absolutely believed that, but Michael had bruised her soul, and this fallen angel named Dante promised a dark kind of redemption, so she smiled at him and didn’t move her hand away.

  He leaned farther back in his chair, at ease with his body in a way few men were. She envied his physical arrogance.

  Together they watched the American students grow more boisterous. He ordered a fourth glass of wine for her. She shocked herself by flirting a little with her eyes. See, Michael, I know how to do this. And do you know why? Because I’m a lot more sexual than you think I am.

  She was glad the language barrier made conversation impossible. Her life had been filled with words: lectures, books, interviews. PBS played her videos whenever they had a fund drive. She’d talked, talked, talked. And look what it had gotten her.

  His finger slipped beneath her hand and stroked the cradle of her palm in a gesture that was purely carnal. Savonarola, that

  fifteenth-century enemy of everything sensual, had been burned at the stake in this very piazza. Would she burn?

  She was burning now, and her head was spinning. Still, she wasn’t so drunk that she didn’t notice that his smile never made it to his eyes. He’d done this a hundred times before. This was about sex, not sincerity.

  That’s when it struck her. He was a gigolo.

  She started to snatch away her hand. But why? This simply spelled everything out in black and white, something she usually appreciated. She lifted her wineglass to her lips with her free hand. She’d come to Italy to reinvent her life, but how could she do that without erasing the ugly tape of Michael’s accusation that kept playing in her head? The tape that made her feel shriveled and lacking. She fought back her despair.

  Maybe Michael was responsible for their sexual problems. Hadn’t Dante the gigolo shown her more about lust in a few minutes than Michael had shown her in four years? Maybe a pro could accomplish what an amateur hadn’t been able to. At least a pro could be trusted to push the proper buttons.

  The fact that she was even thinking about this should shock her, but the past six months had numbed her to shock. As a psychologist, she knew for certain that no one created a new life by ignoring old problems. They simply came back to bite again.

  She knew she shouldn’t make a decision about something this important when she wasn’t sober. On the other hand, if she were sober, she’d never consider it, and that suddenly seemed like the worst mistake she could make. What better use could she find for the little money she had left than to put the past to rest so she could move ahead? This was the missing piece of her plan to reinvent herself.

  Solitude, Rest, Contemplation, and Sexual Healing—four steps all leading to a fifth, Action. And all, more or less, in keeping with the Four Cornerstones.

  He took his time finishing his wine, stroking her palm, sliding his finger beneath her gold bangle and over the pulse at her wrist. Abruptly he grew bored with the game and flung a handful of bills on the table. He rose and slowly extended his hand.

  Now was the time to decide. All she had to do was keep her hand on the table and shake her head. A dozen other women sat within breathing distance, and he wouldn’t make a fuss.

  “Sex will not fix what’s broken inside you,” Dr. Isabel said when she lectured. “Sex without a deep and abiding love will only leave you feeling sad and small. So fix yourself first. Fix yourself! Then you can think about sex. Because if you don’t—if you try to use sex to hide your addictions, to hurt the people who’ve abused you, to heal your insecurities so you can feel whole—you’ll only make what’s broken inside you hurt that much worse. . . .”

  But Dr. Favor was a bankrupt failure, and the blonde in the Florentine café didn’t have to listen to her. Isabel rose and took his hand.

  Her knees felt wobbly from the wine as he led her out of the piazza into the narrow streets. She wondered how much a gigolo charged, and hoped she had enough. If not, she’d use her overextended credit card. They walked in the direction of the river. Once again she experienced that nagging sense of familiarity. Which of the Old Masters had captured his face? But her brain was too fuzzy to remember.

  He pointed to a Medici shield on the side of a building, then gestured toward a tiny courtyard where white flowers grew around a fountain. Tour guide and gigolo in one erotic package. The universe provided. And tonight it had provided the missing link in her plan to create a new life.

  She didn’t like men towering over her, and he was a head taller than she, but he’d be horizontal soon, so that wouldn’t be a problem. She suppressed a flicker of panic. He could be married, but he barely seemed civilized, let alone domesticated. He could be a mass murderer, but despite the Mafia, Italian criminals tended to prefer theft to slaughter.

  He smelled expensive—clean, exotic, and enticing—but the scent seemed to come from his pores instead of a bottle. She had a vision of him pressing her against one of the ancient stone buildings, lifting her skirt, and pushing into her, except that would get it over with too quickly, and getting it over with wasn’t the point. The point was being able to silence Michael’s voice so she could move forward with her life.

  The wine had made her clumsy, and she tripped on nothing. Oh, she was a smoothie, all right. He steadied her, then gestured toward the door of a small, expensive hotel.

  “Vuoi venire con me al’albergo.”

  She didn’t understand the words, but the invitation was clear.

  “I want passion!” Michael had said.

  Well, guess what, Michael Sheridan? So do I.

  She pushed pa
st Dante and marched into the tiny lobby. Its exquisite appointments were reassuring—velvet drapes, gilded chairs, terrazzo floor. At least she’d be having her sordid sex on clean sheets. And this wasn’t the kind of place a lunatic would choose to murder a naïve, undersexed female tourist.

  The desk clerk handed him a key, so he was already registered. A high-class gigolo. Their shoulders brushed in the tiny elevator, and she knew that the heat in the pit of her stomach came from more than wine and unhappiness.

  They stepped out into a dimly lit hallway. As she gazed at him, a bizarre image flashed through her mind of a black-garbed man firing an assault weapon.

  Where had that come from? Although she didn’t feel entirely safe with him, neither did she feel as though she were in physical danger. If he’d planned to murder her, he’d have done it in one of the alleys they’d passed, not with an assault weapon in a five-star hotel.

  He led her to the end of the corridor. His hand on her arm was firm, a silent signal, perhaps, that he was now in charge.

  Oh, God . . . What was she doing?

  “Good sex, great sex, needs to be just as much about our brains as it is about bodies.”

  Dr. Isabel was right. But this wasn’t about great sex. This was about raunchy, forbidden, dangerous sex in a strange city with a man she’d never see again. Sex to clear her mind and wash away her fear. Sex to reassure her that she was still a woman. Sex to mend the broken places so she could move ahead.

  He opened the door and flipped on a light switch. His women paid him well. This was no simple hotel room but an elegant suite, although a bit untidy, with his clothes tumbling from an open suitcase and his shoes lying in the middle of the floor.

  “Vuoi un poco di vino?”

  She recognized the word “vino” and meant to say yes, but she got confused and shook her head instead. The motion was too fast, and she nearly lost her balance.