COULD A GREATER MIRACLE TAKE PLACE THAN FOR US TO LOOK THROUGH EACH OTHER’S EYES FOR AN INSTANT?
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Meg woke and blinked at the fractured reflection of their room in the chrome domes of the seven-pendant light that hung over her bedside table as an extravagant reading lamp. She was extremely satisfied with the orange flock wallpaper and strange mix of Swedish modern with late Baroque furniture. When it came to decorating she had a natural inclination toward the less-is-more approach, although she had to admit more-is-more was definitely working for this room. But that was the great thing about Rome. Nobody bothered with restraint.
Meg listened to the shower running in the Versailles Hall of Mirrors bathroom and knew that Alec would soon emerge in a regulation white fluffy robe emblazoned with the Hotel San Marco crest, wanting sex. Well, she didn’t mind if he did. She briefly thought of having a shower herself but remembered she had taken one the previous evening before bed and did not wish to spoil the moment.
When Alec appeared wearing his white fluffy robe, he discovered his wife arranged just so on the bed, also wearing a white fluffy robe. He grinned the grin of the soon-to-be-fornicating and slipped on the bed next to her. She shifted slightly as he rolled toward her and her gown fell open. She watched his pupils dilate as he scanned her body. It aroused her to see the primal pleasure she incited in him. He kissed the side of her neck, and his minty breath washed over her.
“My breath,” she said, suddenly realizing that she had not cleaned her teeth.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said hoarsely.
Alec pulled Meg on top of him. He knew she would enjoy it more if she felt she was in control. Each knew precisely how to please the other. She rocked back and forth on top of him, making love with easy and familiar expertise. For a moment, she caught her own reflection in the gilded mirror above the bed. She noted the slightly demented arrangement of her features when she moaned and decided to look beyond herself, through the window and across the rooftops of Rome.
“I’ve got the strangest feeling that funny old hotel is around here somewhere,” she said.
He knew she was thinking of the hotel they had stayed in on their honeymoon. The one with the kissing concierge. He recalled that it was, in fact, miles away, toward the Colosseum, but all he said was, “Can you not talk?”
“What? Oh, sure,” she said. “Sorry.”
Meg focused on a spot on the wall, just to the left of the mirror, and soundlessly rocked on top of him.
“You can make some noise,” he said.
She began to groan, for him at first, but then lost herself in pleasure until she remembered the odd look on her face when she made those noises. As she checked the mirror, her eye caught a brief glimpse of an Agrodiaetus butterfly fluttering past the window. It’s shimmering blue wings reprised the exact blue of the—
Meg stopped and sat rigidly upright. She could not recall whether she had packed the sample tile in their luggage or whether it was in her shoulder bag. The sample tile was the Rosetta stone of the whole project. It was the one perfect tile that they would use as a template to create all the others. Surely she would not have been so cavalier as to assign it to their larger bags where it could get lost or stolen. Their bags that were, indeed, still missing.
“What?” said her husband, alarmed.
Meg leaped off Alec and scrambled from the bed. She seized her shoulder bag and upended its contents on the hot-pink Arne Jacobsen egg chair.
“What are you doing?” said Alec.
“The tile. The sample tile. I think it’s in the luggage.”
“What?”
“The sample tile!” screeched Meg as if it were the answer to all questions that had ever been asked.
“They said the luggage would be here this morning!” yelled Alec.
“Don’t yell at me!” yelled Meg.
Alec wanted to do more than yell at her. He wanted to slam her stupid face into the wall. Meg suddenly seized upon a small package wrapped in tissue paper.
“Oh, thank God!” she exclaimed. “It’s here! I’ve got it,” she said to Alec as if he gave a hoot. She put the package on the crystal-topped coffee table and took a deep breath. Then she turned and looked at her husband, propped up on his elbows, his penis still erect despite the waves of fury emanating from the rest of him. Instantly she was filled with the complete comprehension of what a fool she was. This man puts up with so much crap from me, she thought. Remorse flooded her, but she swept it aside and instead of beating herself up, determined to make good.
Meg smiled seductively at him and unpeeled her dressing gown, letting it drop to the floor. Then, climbing on the bed, she crawled on all fours toward him. Alec swung his feet to the floor and sat upright with his back to her. She put her hands on his shoulders and began to kiss the back of his neck. He picked up the phone, and her hands roamed over his chest to his nipples. Alec shrugged her off and started to dial.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Calling a taxi,” he said, businesslike. “Let’s get this tile business out of the way so we can get on with our lives.”
“Don’t you want to…?” she purred into his ear.
Alec stood up, still on the phone, and faced her. She noted, despondently, that his penis was losing interest. “I did want to,” he said. “I’ve wanted to for the last ten days. But I don’t want to now.”
Meg reached out for the corner of his dressing gown.
“Megan,” he snapped, stepping from her reach. She hated when he called her that. He only ever called her “Megan” when she was in serious trouble. She slumped back on the bed, defeated.
He hung up and started to dial again. “No answer,” he said by way of explanation.
“I’m going to have a shower,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I know I’m obsessing about this renovation thing, but I promise when it’s all over—”
Alec cut her short. He was not going to listen to this drivel. “There’ll be a summerhouse or a theme party for Adelaide’s sixteenth. Something to have us all running around following your orders.”
Meg felt tears welling, but she beat them back. “Why are you doing this?” she said.
“Ah,” he said. “Here we go.”
“Here we go where?”
Alec shook the receiver violently and shouted into it at the top of his lungs. “Oh, for Christ’s sake! Would somebody answer the fucking phone!”
There was a knock at the door. Meg put on her robe, and Alec retreated to the bathroom. A man from the airline had arrived with their luggage.
* * *
The taxi crawled down the street, negotiating tourists in flip-flops and Romans in haute couture. It was ridiculous to attempt such a journey at this time of day, but it would have been even more ridiculous to attempt the Via dei Condotti, as the Americana had requested. The Via dei Condotti was even more crowded because it was home to all the major names of European fashion. The Via della Croce, being the off-Broadway version of Condotti, with lesser-known designers, was slightly less crowded but tricky to navigate nonetheless.
Italo, the taxi driver, had a cousin, Italo (named after an evidently beloved grandfather Italo), who had a small boutique that sold well-made and competitively priced gentlemen’s apparel just up ahead on the left. Italo (the taxi driver) received a 10 percent commission for every customer he sent Italo (the tailor). Occasionally he was even presented with a handsome end-of-season coat.
Indeed, one such coat, with which Italo (the taxi driver) had fallen hopelessly in love, was currently featured in the window. It made a bold statement, this coat, and although it caught the eye of many a passerby, it was, as their grandfather Italo would have said, molto particulare, meaning that a grass-green cashmere three-quarter-length coat, with sky-blue silk trim, was not for everybody.
It was, however, Italo had decided, for him. Which is why he was making a slight detour with the rich Americans in the backseat. The gentleman was clearly one of those types with no real interest in shopping, but his wife was a whole different boccie game. Italo knew that if he could get her inside she would be hurling clothes at her hapless husband and buying up big on his behalf.
Italo let his passengers stare out the window, soaking up the magic of Rome, and waited for the right moment to regale them with stories about his grandfather Italo’s legendary love of quality fabric, which led him to open a boutique, which now his cousin, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Unfortunately, the plan collapsed when the American gentleman turned to his wife and said, “I’m not happy.”
“How many happy people do you know?” she said.
Alec looked out the window.
“We have fun together,” she said.
“Is it fun?” he asked, thinking it was more some kind of routine they did; their own silly sketch show.
Meg sighed. “What would make you happy?”
“I dunno. A move to Rome.”
She nodded, humoring him.
“I mean it,” he said. “Why not?”
They both knew he didn’t mean it, that he had just pulled it unimaginatively out of the air in front of him, but she pretended he was offering a serious suggestion.
“Because we have friends, children,” she said. “Things you just can’t leave behind.”
“You can make it work if you want to.”
She wanted to hit him, but instead she turned the other way and looked out the window. “That’s just some vacation fantasy,” she said. “People the world over go somewhere exotic or exciting or relaxing and think, Oh, if I just stay here, everything will be different. Trouble is, wherever you go, there you are. And sooner or later you’re leading the same old dreary life. Only now you’re in Rome, not California.”
“Jesus, you should listen to yourself,” he said.
She kept looking out the window and told herself to let it go, that she had ruined the morning and this was his way of punishing her for it, that she had, in effect, asked for it, but she heard herself saying, “Don’t lay this shit on me now, okay? Let’s just enjoy being in Rome without turning it into a big production about moving here.”
He turned to her. “You never look at me.”
“What?” she said, not looking at him.
“Even when we’re making love, you never look at me.”
She offered up a silent prayer: Make him shut up shut up shut up.
He saw her body stiffen. She was forever at him to talk to her. Well, now he was talking. “You’re always looking out the window,” he said, “or over my shoulder like we’re at a Hollywood party and you’re hoping someone more interesting will walk through the door.”
“You’re determined to spoil this, aren’t you?”
He knew he had wounded her because now she was picking a fight. Well, he’d said his piece, and he wasn’t going to allow this to disintegrate into an argument. He said no more.
In the front, Italo was kicking himself. He should have taken the bull by the horns as soon as they got in his taxi. Now the train had left the station, the ship had sailed, the horse had bolted, and they had passed his cousin’s boutique. Eighteen years of driving taxis had taught him a thing or two about the kind of silence you could interrupt and the kind you could not. And this new silence in the backseat was definitely the kind you could not.
Meg opened her shoulder bag and unzipped a silk-lined compartment from which she removed the small parcel wrapped in tissue paper. She put her bag back on the seat and placed the little parcel in her lap. With a reverence that irritated her husband enormously, she lovingly unwrapped it layer by layer until they were both staring at a small, shimmering tile, with the kind of illusive blue glaze that recalled an electrical spark, a flash of lightning, or a lost lagoon.
Meg wondered for a moment whether she might dive into it. Alec knew that he should just snatch the wretched thing and toss it out the window. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something about this tile. There was just something about it.