COLOMBANO HANDS THE menu to the waiter and turns to stare at his wristwatch. Jessica waits patiently for his eyes to rise from his wrist and focus on her. That’s all she wants. Words, beautiful or otherwise, aren’t always necessary. Jessica has been alone for years and she learned long ago that the less you expect from people, the easier life is. Colombano’s eyes rise from his watch and circle across to the couple sitting at the neighboring table. Some tiny sign, some signal of warmth, isn’t too much to ask on a beautiful day like today, is it? Jessica feels a lump in her chest.
For a few nights in a row now, Jessica has been getting the strong sense that Colombano wants to be alone, that he needs room to breathe, to do things without her. The recent weeks have been incredibly intense, and that’s the way Jessica wants their shared life to continue, despite the inevitable but gradual fade of the infatuation and the first flush, the blindness to the other’s flaws.
Little things that just days ago elicited a grunt of amusement from Colombano—Jessica’s clumsy Italian grammar, her continuous snapping of photographs, her habit of staring at her food while she eats it—are now the targets of barbs cloaked as humor. Jessica feels that over no more than a couple of days, she has been transferred from one category to another, from adult back to child. Initially she felt mature for her age in Colombano’s company, imagined he saw not only her beauty, but an interesting and intellectually challenging conversationalist. Now, however, he glares at her as if they are being forced to spend time staring at each other in a vacuum with no other stimuli.
But Jessica also knows erratic behavior doesn’t mean Colombano doesn’t love her. Mom was the same way, and she loved Jessica with all her heart.
“Is everything OK?” Jessica finally asks, and glances down at the décolletage of her dark red dress. Luckily the cigar ash that fell on it from an old man walking past came off without a trace.
Colombano still doesn’t look at her. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know.” Jessica gives him an uncertain smile. Uncertainty is poison for a relationship; Jessica knows this from experience: the more the boys sniveled after her in high school, the less interested she was. She bites her lip and lets her fingers wander over to Colombano’s hard knuckles.
“Listen, Jessica, my love,” he says, and his pupils slowly turn toward her. “As you know, on Tuesday we’ll start working on a totally new repertoire. . . . There’s a violin duet I need to spend a lot of time practicing.”
“Of course,” Jessica says as the waiter places two glasses of wine onto the table, uncorks a bottle, and pours Colombano a taste. Colombano studies the color of the wine, sticks his formidable nose deep into the tall-rimmed glass, swirls the contents to release the aromas, carefully regards the legs the wine leaves on the sides of the glass, and then drains it. The wine clearly doesn’t make much of an impression: Colombano swallows and lets it be understood that it is swill barely worth pouring.
“You have no idea how badly I want to spend time with my princess, but I have to master the pieces perfectly,” he continues after a moment, and raises his glass, which the waiter has now filled. The way he pronounces the word “princess” is anything but flattering.
“I’m sure it will go well,” Jessica says. Their glasses clink. The wine tastes perfectly acceptable. A big German shepherd trots past the restaurant with no owner in sight.
“Is there anything you want to ask me?”
Colombano’s question is like a bolt out of the blue. His eyes are now nailed to Jessica’s.
“What?”
“I know you want to ask me something.” There’s a slight maliciousness to Colombano’s smile, perhaps a dash of schadenfreude.
“I don’t have anything—”
“Let’s put an end to this playacting. Be honest, would you? I’ve seen you sneaking around the apartment, scouring frantically for crumbs of information. About who I am. And what this—this here, us—could be. What it could become.” Colombano presses his finger to the center of the tabletop. Despite their frankness, the words are not aggressive. They lack the necessary insolence. This makes Colombano sound indifferent. And that’s even worse.
“Sneaking?”
“Yes. You sneak. And that’s fine. It’s fine to be curious. This is important to you. Because here you still are, even though you had planned on leaving weeks ago.”
“I’m serious. I—”
But now Colombano slams his palm to the table so hard, it sets the wine dancing in its glasses. “I’m serious. I’m serious. Stop being so damn agreeable, would you?”
Jessica feels herself freeze; she doesn’t know how to react. She looks at Colombano, whose face is determined, grim, and yet serene. “The world is a bad place,” he continues. “The world is cold. You have to have the courage to get to the bottom of things you want to get to the bottom of. You can’t go squeaking around like a little mouse.”
Jessica fingers the stem of her wineglass. The gaze she craved so badly a moment ago has turned condescending and oppressive. For the first time, their age difference seems to be turning against her, creating a setup in which only one of them has anything to learn from the other. Jessica feels stupid, and not simply because she knows Colombano is at least partially right. But also because she harbored such high expectations for the evening. She bought herself a new dress from Marina Rinaldi, did her hair in a way she thought Colombano would like, and misted her throat with new perfume.
“How do you like the wine?” Colombano asks, and the head-spinning change of topic makes Jessica feel both relieved and disappointed.
“It’s good.”
Colombano laughs. “Of course.”
Jessica feels a pang in her gut. Colombano has turned his gaze elsewhere again, to the diners sitting on the terrace.
“We’re practicing at my place tomorrow,” he finally says, lowering his empty glass to the table. “So if you want to rent a car and explore the mainland . . . tomorrow would be a good day.”