Bad Dog on a Leash

WHEN THEY ARRIVED AT the snail festival, Clare realized she could have found her way to the little piazza at the top of the town blindfolded. She’d retraced the route so many times in her head, first her failed search for the saint’s basilica, then the looping loony descent through tangled streets after driving down that set of stairs on the far side of the square. The details were transfixed, familiar, despite the lanterns in the trees, the crowded banquet tables. She was right back in that day, and straining like a bad dog on a leash to sniff out the trail again to where it had led that day.

Luke kept a tight hold of her hand. They made their way to a table where a familiar group was assembling. Federica kissed Clare absently. The Contessa swished up, wearing a wide-winged hat over a wig with a fat braid that hung to her ankles and a very low-necked tunic.

Applause from Carl. He stood.

“But Anders and I have decided to enter into the costume contest too.”

He pulled Anders to his feet to show off their Etruscan warrior outfits, chainmail vests made of linked-together key rings, pleated battle skirts, plastic wine bottles strapped to their shins as greaves.

“We are armed to the teeth, and ready to take on a whole battalion of snails!”

“This is very clever my darlings,” Luisa said. Even her husband smiled. He gave no hint that he’d seen Clare in Tarquinia.

When Nikki and William arrived, Clare overheard Luisa whispering that she expected William to behave. Nikki smiled brightly at Luisa, and Luisa smiled back, their two smiles arching over William like ceremonial swords.

Nikki was wearing a sarong made out of a paisley shawl, and what Clare at first glance thought were wrist-length black gloves. “Are we beyond the fringe or what?” Nikki said, fingering the crystals on Clare’s shawl. “Ooops!” They both looked down at the little handful of sparkly beads in Nikki’s hand. “I don’t know how that happened. You’ll have to come over, and I’ll thread them back!”

She tucked the beads into the embroidered pouch that hung around her neck. That was when Clare saw that Nikki’s hands were completely gloved in black ink, with a little scroll added at the wrist.

Nikki laughed, self-consciously. “I’ve been getting into my work. I had a little accident, but decided to turn it to good account.”

When the Contessa came to stand beside Luke, Clare thought he was rising in a gesture of politeness, but he increased his grip on Clare’s hand and propelled her over to a gravelly spot in front of a band, oblivious to the fact that no one was dancing. With a stance very stiff, hair afloat and whipping, he spun her through a sort of tango, then marched her back, resumed his seat.

The lanterns, the starlight, the romantic music, the rustling leaves; it was going to be terrible. But she would do her best. She would.

Carl and Anders were making helmets out of their paper napkins. Anders set his at a fetching angle and turned to see if William Sands was taking note. Nikki’s smile flashed like a scimitar.

Platters of crostini arrived. “But these are made with chicken livers!” Anders cried in mock distress. “I thought every course was snail.”

“Liebling, they are snail livers,” Carl rumbled. “You are merely taken in by the fact that every food that creeps upon the ground has the taste of fowl.”

This led to welcome laughter and a discussion of the eating of reptiles and insects around the world. “In Brazil, I discovered that fried worms can be delicious,” Clare said. “But eating spaghetti among the Yanomami?” She held her fork up, miming a wriggling load. “A bit of a surprise!” When the pasta came, it also lacked snails. Clare caught Anders’s eye and together, almost as if on signal, they turned to Carl and said, “Vass is dass?” But when snails finally did arrive — shells glistening in a red and spicy sauce, along with toothpicks, napkins, bread for sopping — the little creatures hunched on Clare’s plate like the thoughts she was clenching.

She got up, walked among the tables to the far side of the square, towards the phone booth, the playground, a stone bench. She sat down and let the festa flow around her: the talk, the laughter, the cavorting children, the babies held aloft or passed around to be admired. All these good people gathered in this starlit piazza in their little town to celebrate the goodness of a lovely night in June, these people who knew innately how to celebrate. It flowed by on the far side of a thick pane of glass.

“Hello, Clare.”

HOW HE LOOKED. AND everything ripping open in front of her, lights, sounds, smells, all coming at her, not painted on the far side of glass. It swam around him. He looked so good. Ridiculous and patently untrue, but he looked uncomplicated, simple, good.

Dusky perfume drifted from the lime trees rustling overhead, a canopy of heart-shaped leaves, silvery on one side, glossy on the other. The clusters of small white blossoms.

She said, “I was in a tomb that had a ceiling like this. It had a painted canopy all sprigged with little flowers.”

“You were in Tarquinia.”

“Yes.”

“I came by to see you.”

“Oh!”

When? she wondered. What if she’d hadn’t been so stubborn, hadn’t insisted on going to Tarquinia with Luke!

He said, “I hope you have been all right?”

“Have you?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I have been eaten by my own stupidity and pride — and then realizing that when I left you, you were not well.”

She kicked a pebble at her feet. There would be grass in a park like this back home, not gravel. She said, “I felt badly, too. That was kind of a mess-up, that morning.”

He knocked a fist to his forehead, “Shamefully, it was not until several days later that the dogs of my pride let go.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “Are they very fierce, these dogs of your pride?”

“I did not think so. But with you, yes it seems.”

She saw Luke across the piazza glancing around for her with a haughty, desperate look. Luke doesn’t deserve this, she thought. The lanterns made the shadows lengthen, shorten, sway.

She started to get up. “There have been some changes since then.”

He caught her hand. She sat down, and ducked her head, as if Luke’s glance would wing above her.

He said, “Clare Livingston, I have been a fool.”

Oh, me too, she realized.

Another long pause, while she contemplated her folly and kept her head down so she didn’t have to meet Luke’s stare. She imagined reaching up, kissing Gianni just on the cheek to say goodbye, how instead they would rise up together through the trees, up through the powdering of stars, leaving behind the tables strewn with snails and bread and wine, and all the gaping people.

She said, “I am involved with someone else, now.”

“The one you are with tonight is important?”

“I have to say ...”

“You have to.”

“No, damn it. I don’t have to. He is.”

Gianni rose to his feet. “Come. Walk with me. Please.”

He was looking down at her with the same expression as when he’d lectured her about her painting, as if her hesitation was a disappointment not just to him, but to the entire universe. His face so jagged with intensity, the ridiculous imperial profile, the hint of weakness in the turned-up chin. How did he dare?

“Cut it out.” She stood up, too. “You’ve already messed up my ability to work, with all your peering and prying!” “What? To do your art?”

It was monstrous to pin that on him, a weasel of an excuse, but someone had to pay for the way she still wanted him so much it hurt.

She said, “So stop trying to ruin my life. We had a tiny fun thing going, but you can hardly pretend it was unique. You know what they say in this town: all the pretty ladies get to know Gianpaulo sooner or later. If you laid them end to end they’d reach to Timbuktu.”

She saw his look of shock. She heard the echo of her ugly words.

He said, “Then I will walk you back to your table.”

“Don’t bother. That is a truly bad idea.”

“Regrettably, I must go there anyway. I have a message for my sister, from our mother.”

“Of course. Forgive me. Do come over. Come and sit down and have a snail. Shall I lend you my toothpick? I’d forgotten. It’s all in the family, after all.”

“Ah.” He made a mock bow. “I am sorry to have troubled you so much.”

He turned and walked off in the other direction, away from the table, through the crowd.