by D. M. George
In spite of the palace being accessible only by foot, it was heavily protected by the Praetorian Guard.
“Why?” asked Sabina.
“To be sure we’re not murderers in disguise or carrying weapons. Tiberius is afraid of assassination. He made Capri his permanent residence for its safety and isolation.”
The soldiers recognized Lucius and gave his baskets a cursory glance. They ogled Sabina while pretending to inspect her lobsters. One of the guards said to the other, “Look at her skin, so creamy, so pure. I want to touch…”
Lucius prodded the donkeys forward. “We’re leaving now.”
Past the watchtower, Lucius and Sabina cut through the vast gardens surrounding Villa Jovis. Sabina welcomed the cool shade and marveled at how the grottos and groves mimicked a natural landscape. A life-size marble statue set back in the woods caught her eye. It depicted a naked man and woman embracing in an odd way: the woman’s legs were wrapped around the man’s waist.
A soft rustling came from behind the statue. A child’s frightened face peeked around the base. It was a boy around six years old, wearing a fur hat with floppy ears and two nubby horns protruding from the crown. He avoided eye contact and disappeared. Farther up the path, Sabina noticed another odd statue: a satyr playing leapfrog with a goat.
The grand staircase at the palace’s entrance came into view.
“Are we going up there?” Sabina asked.
“No. Vendors go to the left, where the kitchens are.”
The path forked and they followed it along the lower side of the castle wall. Sabina could barely contain her excitement.
Late in the afternoon, Tiberius left his guests in the dining hall. He waddled onto the balcony and sucked in a lungful of refreshing salt air. His indigestion flared; it had been a long day of eating. Most likely the flamingo-tongue canapés were to blame. He belched loudly. Although delectable, they had been overspiced with cumin. The spectacular main course might have also been the culprit though. In spite of the great entertainment value, it hadn’t tasted as good as it looked.
Tiberius made a mental note to reward the palace chef—he’d outdone himself today. The meal had had to be carried into the dining room on a special table by six slaves. The roasted calf was impressive enough, but when it was sliced open to reveal the whole cooked pig inside, his guests were amazed. Their oohs and aahs continued with each layer: the lamb inside the pig, the turkey inside the lamb, the rabbit inside the turkey, and on down to the last surprise, a sparrow. Tiberius had proven, once again, that no one in the empire gave more extravagant feasts than he. As delicious as all the food was though, lobster was still his favorite meal. It would be served later in the evening, after everyone vomited. He couldn’t wait.
The semicircular balcony, with its majestic view over the cliff, was his favorite refuge in the entire palace. He gazed at the sea far below and reflected on his good fortune. The empire didn’t concern him—he’d gladly left its management in the hands of subordinates. Being master of this mountain was all he wanted. He had never been happier since moving from Rome to Capri. He was safe from conspirators and could freely indulge himself and his friends in the most extreme forms of pleasure. His greatest pleasure, ironically, was a simple one: pretending to be the goat god, Pan, and ravishing his flock of little pans and nymphs in the Arcadian paradise he’d built for himself.
Sabina stood by the wall outside the kitchen door and waited for Lucius. He was inside, talking to the kitchen manager’s assistant. The palace kitchen and pantry were colossal. To keep them well stocked in Capri’s hot weather required vendors to supply fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables daily. As a result, the courtyard in front of the kitchen bustled like a marketplace.
Sabina grew bored. Why was Lucius taking so long? No doubt he wanted to watch every single oyster counted.
Faint music wafted from the palace above, enchanting music. It pulled her by the ears, up the staircase connecting the kitchen courtyard to the level above. She hesitated before entering a corridor into the palace… Just one little peek. Lucius would never know. The music sounded so close.
In short order, Sabina was lost. She tried to retrace her steps in the labyrinth of hallways and staircases but became increasingly disoriented. Go upward, something told her. Find an exit before you’re discovered.
She tiptoed up flight after flight of stairs. At last she saw a doorway with sunlight streaming in. She sprinted into a stunning, open-air portico and slid to a stop. The intricate mosaic floor depicted a naked woman riding a dolphin. Fascinated, she followed the scene to more dolphins and romping nudes.
“Hello, little pretty one. Come here and let me touch your hair.” Tiberius leaned against the waist-high balustrade surrounding the balcony. “Cornelius, you sniveling toad, you’ve finally delivered something interesting,” he said to himself and clapped his hands. “Red tresses bring good luck.” He stepped toward Sabina.
Sabina jumped back. “What? Who are you?”
“Tiberius. Your master. Get on your knees.”
Tiberius? Impossible! He wasn’t anything like the huge statue standing in front of the palace. This man was old, fat, and ugly.
“You’re mistaken. I supply your kitchen with lobster and was walking around and got lost. Can you show me the way back?”
Tiberius slapped Sabina across the face, knocking her to her knees. She shrieked as he grabbed a handful of hair and twisted her face toward his crotch. With his other hand, he lifted his toga, pleased with his growing tumescence.
“Open your mouth!” he said, stroking himself.
Icy blades of panic sliced through Sabina. Tiberius pushed her face into his genitals. She gritted her teeth—the stink of smegma and sweaty pubic hair seared her nostrils.
“Do it! I command you!” Tiberius pinched her nose with his free hand.
When Sabina drew back her lips for air, Tiberius tried to shove himself in her mouth. In a swirl of anger, terror, and disgust, Sabina bit down hard. Tiberius jerked away with a scream, stretching his foreskin like a long-necked clam until a piece of the tip tore off. He stood frozen, staring at his bloody member in horror. Sabina jumped up and leaped away. An instant later, she fell facedown on the floor. A guard, alerted by Tiberius’s scream, had tripped her as she ran past.
“Over the edge! Over the edge!” Tiberius shouted, his face twisted with rage and pain.
The huge guard reached down and picked up Sabina by the ankles as if she were a sack of flour, swung her around twice, and heaved her over the balustrade and into the void. Sky, water, rock, sky, water, rock, darkness.
Perla Counsels Luca
Perla hiked down to the trattoria where she’d dined the night of the cats, hungrily thinking about what to order for dinner. Calamari again? She never tired of it. An orange tabby jumped out from behind a pile of fishing nets, startling her. The cat rubbed against her legs, purring affectionately.
“So you want to be my friend now? I’m not buying it, little kitty. Not after you and your hoodlum friends snubbed me.” Perla reached down to stroke its long, soft tail, but before her hand touched its fur, the cat trotted off toward one of the dockside benches. It stopped and looked over its shoulder, inviting her to follow.
A solitary man sat facing the water, strumming a stringed instrument with the ease and mastery of a professional. His sad melody drifted in the briny breeze. People and seagulls paused to listen, but he seemed oblivious, a prisoner of his thoughts. He cradled his antique mandolin. Tears dripped from his unseeing eyes. Luca!
“Luca, it’s Perla. I’m sitting down next to you. What’s the matter?”
Luca stopped playing and faced her voice, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. The cat jumped on the bench to supervise.
“Perla, I’m so happy you’re here.” He smiled weakly and placed the mandolin on the ground between his feet. “Gianna broke up with me yesterday,” he said in a cloudburst of tears. “One of my cousins saw her with another man in a parked car…” He bit h
is lip to keep it from trembling. “When I confronted her, she didn’t deny it.”
Perla handed him a tissue, put her left arm through his, and managed a sympathetic hmmm while punching the air with her right arm, ecstatic the nasty cow had cut him loose.
“I’m blind but not stupid. Why was I so wrong about her?” Luca sniffed.
“It’s your lucky day,” Perla said. “You happen to be speaking to the president of the ‘What was I thinking when I hooked up with that idiot’ club.” She squeezed his arm. “Trust me, it doesn’t matter which of your senses you use, when you fall in love, good judgment runs out the door.”
“But I was so sure she felt the same way…” He sank down on the bench, crossed his arms, and leaned to one side.
“Go easy on yourself. We want what we want and disregard or excuse the red flags. Sometimes we see beauty where it doesn’t exist or pass over it where it does. Having vision doesn’t help.”
Perla cupped her hand and breathed into it. Parthenope’s story had ended abruptly when a jet skier came too close, but by then they’d polished off most of the prosecco. She doubted her lungs were fume-free.
“Have you ever been married?” Luca’s disheveled hair hung in loose waves over his forehead.
“Twice, and I’ll probably never get it right. Disregarding and excusing has been the story of my life. Even when I know I’m doing it, I still do it.” Perla’s mind floated back to the night she met Gordon. “I’ll tell you how I met my second husband and you tell me how dumb I was to marry him, okay?” Perla crossed an ankle over her knee and picked at the frayed edges of her jeans.
“Okay, but I’m sure falling for Gianna was dumber.”
She cracked her knuckles and leaned back on the bench. “Eleven years ago this month, I met Gordon at a mutual friend’s party in Santa Cruz, California—a beach town forty minutes from where I live.”
Her first memory of him twinkled with clarity. He was standing at the backyard bar, leaning against the palapa, drinking a Dos Equis. He watched her as she approached and ordered a margarita, not because he was particularly interested, she assumed, but because she was in his line of sight.
What a dreamboat, she remembered thinking, an aging Ken doll. He had the kind of muscular physique that comes from sports and manual labor rather than hours in the gym. The flickering light of the tiki torches highlighted his sun-bleached hair and accentuated his deep tan. He wore faded dungarees with a hole in the knee and a T-shirt with the Screaming Hand logo—the iconic image of Santa Cruz’s skateboard culture. In the center of his chest, a severed blue hand with clenched fingers flew forward, dripping blood from the stump; in its palm was a wide-open mouth with a protruding red tongue.
“Aren’t you too old for skateboarding?” She grinned.
“Don’t worry, I gave it up at thirteen, but I still surf whenever I can.”
Perla reflected on her lame pickup line which, like many pivotal moments in life, had seemed so inconsequential at the time.
She turned to Luca. “I confess, handsome men make me insecure. I was never beautiful, maybe mildly attractive at best, so I had to say something witty to Gordon. You know, turn on the charm.”
“Not as insecure as I am about being blind,” Luca said. “Accepting a handicap like mine is a lot to ask from a woman. I guess, deep inside, I feel I don’t deserve love and should be grateful for any little scrap I get.”
“Same with me and Gordon. He could have had any woman he wanted, so mousy me had no right to criticize his shortcomings. I felt lucky to get any attention from him at all.” Perla ran her fingers through her hair, resting her eyes on the orange-purple-blue sunset. More old memories tumbled from the box she kept on the upper back shelf of her mind.
He’d introduced himself as Gordon and said he owned a landscaping business. His easygoing humor was delightful, but she soon realized they didn’t have much in common. He had no children and she was a single mom with a twelve-year-old daughter; he did construction and she was a marketing manager at a semiconductor company. On the other hand, his attentiveness flattered her and she found his aura of vitality a refreshing change from her engineer colleagues. By the end of the evening, they’d agreed to meet for lunch the following Saturday.
“He sounds like an all right guy,” Luca interjected.
“Gordon was always an all right guy, just not right for me. It wasn’t long before the red flags started waving, but I ignored them as usual.”
Luca’s presence faded as every detail of her first date with Gordon replayed itself in Technicolor: the bad muffler on his pickup truck announcing his arrival in her driveway; the way he had peeped around both sides of her house before ringing the doorbell, unaware she was watching from the kitchen window; the way his tank top, low-slung board shorts, and O’Neill flip-flops had looked so out of place in San Jose.
“Nice house,” Gordon said.
She welcomed him into her living room and stepped away to grab her sweater and purse. When she returned, he was standing in the kitchen.
“I love these tree-lined Willow Glen neighborhoods.”
She gave him a quick tour, ending up in the backyard patio.
“Where do you live?” Perla followed him as he inspected her garden.
“I share a house with a couple of guys in Santa Cruz. Whoa! What’s this?” Gordon stood agog in front of the back door to the garage, which Karla had left open again.
“It’s a ’67 Chevy Camaro Super Sport. Her name is Irene—a gift from my late father.”
“Awesome!” He rushed in and ran his hand along its lipstick-red fender. He could barely tear his eyes away when they left for lunch.
Fifteen minutes later, Gordon’s truck belched and farted into the parking lot of the Costco on Almaden Boulevard.
“Why are we stopping here?” Perla asked.
He reached over and wrenched open the truck’s squeaky door. “The Costco snack bar. It’s my favorite place to eat. Do you like chicken bakes?”
Perla remembered staring at him a moment, thinking he was joking. Don’t judge him too quickly, she told herself. Take some time to get to know him better. Her disregarding and excusing were right on time.
“Who doesn’t like chicken bakes?” she replied.
They sat opposite each other on one of the white metal picnic tables with the red benches. The outdoor seating area was packed with hungry shoppers. Not exactly a romantic first date, she thought but let it go. They unwrapped their chicken bakes as a family of four crowded in beside them and blocked the aisle with their overflowing shopping cart. Perla watched the father fold his huge pizza slice in half and take a bite while the mother scolded her children for picking off the pepperoni. To Perla’s left, a chubby boy begged his mother for a churro, which she promised as soon as he finished his hot dog.
“I just love these things,” Gordon said, ripping off the crispy end of his chicken bake.
Cheesy chicken juice dripped down his chin. Perla handed him a napkin.
“Do you know you can buy a big box of these for your freezer? I don’t have a membership card though…” He smiled at her expectantly, and she promised to take him inside to use her card as soon as he finished his lunch.
“Cool! Thanks.” Gordon wiggled in his seat. He locked his zircon-blue eyes on hers and said, “You have great legs, you know… So long and sexy. Grrrr!”
Perla sighed and swept those memories back into their box.
“I admit, Luca, flattery is crack to an insecure person. Six months later we were married and living in my house.”
“Gordon was a lucky guy.” Luca clasped his hands behind his neck and stretched his spine.
“And I an unlucky girl. I gave up my 401k and my Camaro in the divorce in order to keep the house. Pretty dumb, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t. You were married a long time. Some of it must have been good. What happened?”
“Times got tough and his true colors revealed themselves. After I lost my job and mon
ey became scarce for the first time in our marriage, a not-so-nice side of him emerged. Our savings dwindled and so did our active lifestyle. I could no longer afford to take him snowboarding in Tahoe, surfing in Hawaii, river rafting on the Colorado—all the things Gordon enjoyed. He became indignant and pressured me to find a new job.”
“But he worked too, right?”
“If you want to call it that. He squeezed in an occasional landscaping job between mountain biking and surfing playdates with his buddies. Except for a pittance he gave me each month toward the mortgage—and his pride, I assume—he spent everything he made on himself and his toys. I didn’t care. I made plenty of money and wanted him to be happy. But when I asked for help with bills, he bristled at the responsibility. He couldn’t handle the pressure, and our relationship chilled.”
“You must have been surprised and disappointed…” Luca rocked slightly as he spoke.
“More than disappointed—devastated. In court I learned that if both spouses pay the mortgage, the house becomes marital property even if one spouse owned it prior to the marriage. He took me to the cleaners.” Perla closed her eyes for a beat. “But was I surprised? No, not really. The reason I had never asked him to contribute to our household expenses was because, deep inside, I feared he’d react exactly as he did. I’d been in denial as usual.” But she couldn’t hate Gordon any more than she could hate an errant piece of dandelion fluff—she hated herself for losing the means to support him.
“Gordon was always a child—a big, beautiful child—and when I could no longer provide the carefree lifestyle he wanted, he went searching for a new mommy. He’d never pretended to be someone he wasn’t, and I was foolish to expect more from him.”
The abrupt way their decade of good times had ended still stung. She liked to remember Gordon as the enthusiastic stepfather who taught Karla tennis and coached her soccer team, not the petulant, critical man he became in the end. As much as her pride balked, she had already forgiven him.
“What about your first husband? Was he your equal?”