THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I THOUGHT I LOVED MY FIRST WIFE MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF. BUT NOW I HATE HER GUTS. I DO. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THAT? WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT LOVE?
—Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Alec stood at the large window of their Rococo-meets-Swedish-Modern room in the Hotel San Marco, overlooking a stretch of twinkling lights on the Roman horizon. A jubilant pop tune blasted from Meg’s phone on the orange-and-pink silk bedspread. He had showered and shaved and was solemnly dredging a bottle of birra, when Meg danced out of the dressing room in a little black dress and presented its gaping back for him to zip.
“I ordered some champagne,” she said, oblivious to his somber mood. “I know it should have been prosecco, this being Roma and all, but champers just feels more celebratory somehow.”
Alec zipped her dress.
“I can’t believe we did it,” she continued. “We did it! I said we’d do it in a day, and we did.” She swept a pair of diamond hoop earrings from the crystal coffee table and began to insert them in her ears.
“So if Horatio can give us the tiles by the end of the month, I guess that means they should be installed—what?—two weeks after that?”
Alec made no attempt to reply.
“I don’t think we should use a local company to deliver them,” she said. “You know how hopeless the Italians are at moving things from A to B.” She inspected her earrings in the mirror. “Do American couriers come here? Of course they do. I’m so thrilled.” She slipped her left foot into a black stiletto and her right foot into a red pump, turning left and right to decide on the best shoe for the dress.
“Megan,” said Alec, still looking out the window.
She swiveled toward him. “Don’t call me that,” she said. “I always feel like I’m in trouble when you call me that.”
Alec turned to look at her.
“I am in trouble,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I can…” He paused, trying to find a way to say what he had decided to say. “I’m not going to…”
“What?”
“I’m not coming home.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m staying in Rome.”
Meg kicked off her shoes, stormed into the Versailles Hall-of-Mirrors bathroom, and slammed the door. Alec walked to the bathroom and tried to open the door, but it was locked. He knocked. “Open the door,” he said. He waited for a while, but when Meg did not appear he sat on the bed.
Suddenly the bathroom door flew open, and Meg barreled out. “It’s that slut doctor,” she said, “isn’t it?”
Alec looked up at Meg.
“Oh. My. God. Are you in love with her?”
He did not answer.
“You can’t fall in love with someone in a day!” she spluttered.
“I fell in love with you in a day,” he said.
Meg lashed out to strike him, but he grabbed her wrist.
“This isn’t about Stephanie,” he said, trying to sound calm.
Meg pulled her hand away. “So you’re not in love with her?”
“I’m not in love with you anymore. I’m sorry.”
He watched a childlike look of shock and hurt move across her face.
“How can you say that?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I am telling you now,” he said.
Meg looked around, hoping to discover that she had somehow stepped into the wrong room.
“What about the kids?”
“Frankly, I think they’ll be relieved,” he said.
Why was he doing this? She could not understand why he was doing this. She slapped herself hard across the face. She slapped herself again, bringing release, an instant exorcism. She went to slap herself a third time, but Alec stood and grabbed her wrist again. She had self-harmed in the past, mostly clawing her thighs or pinching her wrists, but only after arguments with her father, with whom she had a particularly combative relationship. Alec had never seen her hit herself before.
“Stop it,” he said gently. “Please stop it.”
Suddenly realizing that he was restraining her, she wrenched herself from his grip and began to pace up and down in a kind of panic. “So that’s it!” she said. “Just like that. No, no, I don’t accept it! I do not accept it.”
Meg threw her arms around Alec and buried her face in his chest. “Please don’t leave me,” she said. “I know I’m nuts, but I can change. Please give me another chance. Please, please just say yes.”
“Meg. Look at me,” he said. “Look at me.”
But she would not look. Slowly she melted away from him.
“What a giant cliché you turned out to be,” she said. “Successful guy with too much time and money on his hands hits a bump in the road with this wife so bails out with a more exotic model. How predictable!”
“I’m not leaving you for Stephanie,” he said. “I’m just leaving.”
“Bullshit!” she screeched. “Have the guts to admit what you’re doing!”
In the mulatto of her Australo-American accent, the word “guts” spewed at him with a peculiarly Australian ferocity. He remembered meeting her father and brother for the first time on their vast outback cattle station. Direct and uncompromising, they were a breed not to be messed with.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, trying to be direct and uncompromising himself. “I don’t have a clean, strong purpose. I’m not in love with Stephanie, but I do have feelings for her. Which makes me realize I no longer have feelings for—”
“Get out!” screamed Meg.
“If you insist on steamrolling over the top of me,” he said, “what hope is there of—”
Once again she screamed, “Get out! Now! Go on. I can’t bear to be with you a moment longer!” A fury of spittle sprayed into the air with her words. Alec felt some of it settle on his face. He reached out for his wife, but she recoiled.
“Go!” she shouted.
Alec walked to the door. He turned to say something, but there was nothing he could say that could excuse any of this as far as she was concerned.
“Leave me alone!” she shouted, her voice hoarse with effort and anger.
He opened the door to see the retreating figure of a room service waiter, trotting as fast as he could without actually running. It would have been funny if things weren’t so damn sad. At Alec’s feet, there was a platinum tray and ice bucket with a bottle of Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises Blanc de Noirs and two crystal flutes.
Alec pushed the tinkling tray into the room with his foot and walked down the hall toward the elevators. He was reaching for the down button when a meticulously engineered hermetic whoosh and click announced that the door to their room had closed behind him.
Meg lay on the bed. She sat up. She lay down. She sat up. She lay down. The infinite number of things that could happen next began to occur to her in little flash-frame scenarios. There was nothing to do but kill herself. No, she would remarry; a handsome European with a title. No, she would do good works and become famous, and he would come crawling back, and she would make him grovel. She sat up and looked at the very expensive champagne she had ordered less than half an hour ago when she lived in a different universe.
She imagined smashing one of the crystal champagne flutes and carving it up her thigh. She pulled her black dress up her pale legs and conjured the release. She could see the beautiful red blood flowing forth and pooling on the carpet. She could feel blobs of liquid falling on her thighs. It wasn’t blood. The liquid was clear; she was crying. Why am I crying? she wondered. She fell back on the bed as her diaphragm contracted and she shocked herself with a sob. She sobbed for so long and so loudly that the people in the next room thought she was having a prolonged orgasm and called reception to complain.
Alec burst into the night air and walked toward the Spanish Steps. It had been raining, but the rain had stopped, leaving the air fresh and the city glittering with reflected light. The streets were brimming with tourists on their way home from dinner and Romans on their way to dinner. Half of them were pounding the pavement in sensible nylon-and-spandex-blend travel pants and the other half were teetering in haute couture.
Alec slipped into a noisy bar without noting its name and ordered a double vodka. He sat in a dark corner, filled with the momentousness of what he had just done. Surrounded by jovial chatter, he could hardly think, but this was just as well; he did not want to think. He took a long swig of his vodka, enjoying the burning sensation in his throat. Returning the glass to its cardboard coaster, Alec could feel the muscles of his neck and upper back relax. He was free, free at last.
Alec noticed a blond woman across the bar, watching him. He lifted the vodka to his mouth, using the tilted glass as camouflage, while he examined her. She was older than he was but in good shape, with raccoon mascara eyes and at least one bottle of prosecco sloshing around inside her. He put his glass down and looked directly at her. She wasn’t just looking back. She was eye-fucking him. Suddenly he was peeling her red-lace underwear down her thighs. After a little trouble extricating them from her shiny stilettos, her vulva lay exposed before him. “What a cliché you turned out to be,” the vulva said to him in his wife’s distinctive voice.
Alec chugged the rest of his vodka and jostled his way out of the busy bar. As he passed the raccoon blonde, she was greeting someone else and did not notice him leaving. Nevertheless, he paced quickly down the Via del Babuino in case she followed. His head buzzed with adrenaline and vodka, and he kept seeing flashes of the hurt on Meg’s face. Not just the hurt, the hurt little girl. That’s what made it worse. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he could not live with the lie any longer. She would see that, too, that they were both living a lie. She would thank him one day for calling it.
He reached the Piazza del Popolo and sat on a bench, watching a gaggle of rambunctious teenagers gathered around the central obelisk. They would be friends again, too, he thought, if for no other reason than the kids. They would do a good job of raising their children together, even though they would be living separate lives. Meg could be enormously practical when she needed to be. She would see sense and help him make this work. Eventually.
He decided to find another bar. Trouble was, they were all brimming with exuberance. Instead, he bought a bottle of Peroni from a mercato and wandered up the Via del Corso, drinking discreetly. He was not going to be one of those assholes who was mean with money, either. He fully acknowledged that Meg had contributed to the success of Lighting Schack as much as he had. It had been her drive, her vision, her creativity as much as his. She had emboldened him to take risks. Risks that had paid off big-time. And she would be compensated accordingly. He drained his Peroni and bought another.
Alec decided to stop thinking about Meg and think about his future without Meg. He thought he would like to have a lot of sex. He might move down to Santa Monica, near the beach. The kids would like that, too. He entertained the idea of buying a convertible Bentley but decided that was too predictable. After some apparently aimless wandering Alec found himself back in the Via Margutta, outside the palazzo with the lanterns of purple wisteria and the tiny coach-house built into its garden wall. Alec had imbibed just enough alcohol not to confront himself with the fact that he had been headed here all along.
He clambered over a metal gate, climbed a flight of stone steps, and knocked on the purple door. Dr. Stephanie Cope answered wearing a long T-shirt and nothing else. She looked pleased to see him and not really that surprised.
“Alec!” she said. “What a lovely surprise.”
Alec did not answer. He stood, swaying slightly, looking at her.
“What’s wrong?” she said, suddenly subdued.
Alec stepped inside and wrapped his arms around Stephanie’s waist. He put his mouth on hers. He kissed her. She kissed him. He slid his leg between hers. He could feel the hardness of her pubic bone on his thigh. He pushed into her. She pushed back.
* * *
Meg had sobbed herself to sleep in the enormous bed and was now overheating under the covers. Her arms swept over the sheets, searching for a cool spot. Her right hand slid under the pillow where Alec’s head should have been resting and found something cold and hard. Meg opened her red swollen eyes and blinked; the lights were blaring. She felt the object under the pillow. It was square and thin. She removed it and squinted at it, remembering now that she had placed her beautiful blue tile there earlier. She put it back under the pillow and rolled over, deciding she was too tired to deal with the lights. She drifted for a moment and then her eyes snapped open.
Meg took the tile out from under the pillow again. She ran her fingers over the blue glaze, feeling some strange sensation. Starting in her fingertips, the sensation moved up her arm and into her whole body. She would never admit this to another living soul, but she felt as if the tile was telling her something. And then she remembered. She remembered exactly where she had gotten this tile and how she had come to get it. She had not collected it when she was gathering samples for her renovation. She had, in fact, been carrying it around with her for a very long time.