The Wanting Life

by Mark Rader

  He thought of himself and Luca like Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers, victims of circumstance and fate: the limits marked by societies. He thought about the civil rights movement back home, the recent rise of the blacks, small good steps, and he dreamed forward of a time when maybe the same acceptance would apply to himself and Luca. He imagined his mother citing the quotes in the Bible that were always quoted to argue its wrongness, the passages in the catechism. The words that had sent the fear of God into him, made him so cautious. But if he’d learned anything in his studies thus far, it was the importance of understanding the context of things. Understanding that the Bible was a document of its time. Overseen by Providence, his mother would say—but about that now he wasn’t so sure. The more you investigated, the less magical it became.

  Day after day, he sat in his classes and wallowed at his desk. He showered, and Luca bloomed up before him, thin, naked, light in his dark eyes. He did not sleep well, but decided he was on the right path—working past his troubling desire.

  Then, midweek, the monsignor yelled his name, just after suppertime. “Novak! Phone call!” His mother, he’d thought at first. Something’s happened to Britta. Or Dad: a heart attack, dead. But the voice on the line was Luca’s.

  “I hope I’m not bothering you,” he said. “I wasn’t sure when to call.”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m good. And you?”

  “Oh, fine,” Luca said. “But listen. I’ll get right to it.”

  He explained that his roommates were going to be away for the weekend, camping out at some concert, and that he figured why not have some company and have Paul over for dinner.

  Paul blushed, before asking, “What are you making?”

  “Something delicious, I hope. Why? Are there things you don’t eat?”

  “No, I’ll eat anything.”

  “Good. That helps. Right now I’m thinking some scampi in garlic and spaghetti carbonara. That sound okay? You like those things?”

  “Sure,” Paul said. It appeared he wouldn’t even have a moment to mull it over. Luca required immediate action. “When did you say this was?”

  “This Saturday. Say eight? That fit into your busy schedule?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll come.” He was being carried along by a force not under his control, but had no desire to fight it.

  A minute after he pushed the broken buzzer that night, Luca appeared, first feet, then legs, then torso, then smiling face, hair dark and springy as moss, at the bottom of the stairs. He was smiling, his neck shiny. On seeing him, Paul stuck out his hand, and Luca said, “Yes, shaking’s better. I’m sweating like a pig.” Then Paul handed over the gifts he’d brought along: a cheap bottle of Chianti, a little bag of figs, a container of melting vanilla gelato. The treats had cost him a week’s worth of pocket money, but it’d be worth it, he’d thought, to see Luca hold and be pleased by the things he’d given him. And it was. Luca loved figs.

  As he followed his friend up the stairs, Paul couldn’t help but glance above at Luca’s ass as it shifted in his white jeans, and then he could hear the music coming from the apartment. Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, second movement; Norb had the record too. It was dim inside, the same two lamps lit, but without the crowd of partygoers the place seemed enormous. The air smelled faintly of bacon and garlic and incense.

  Luca said to follow him into the kitchen and set Paul’s gifts on the little counter beside a sheath of pasta, a carton of eggs, a wedge of pecorino, and a handkerchief. He motioned to the chair he’d already placed to the side. There was no table, just the chair. Obediently, Paul sat.

  “I love this piece,” he said. “The Berlioz.”

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” replied Luca, as he clicked on the burner under a chipped white pot of water. “I like the Italians too, but for me it’s the French. Ravel, Berlioz, Debussy. My mother could never understand it. For her it was Verdi or death.”

  The horrible woman conjured by their talk in the piazza flickered briefly to life. But now, under the glare of a single lightbulb, Luca was dumping out the figs, quartering them, and squeezing them so the pieces flared open like a fleshy flower. They wouldn’t return to all that. Tonight, their only job was to be happy.

  Paul asked, “Did you know Berlioz almost murdered his fiancée?”

  “Really?” Luca walked over and handed him a fig.

  “She decided to leave him for some other man and he couldn’t stand it. So he planned to dress up as a woman and sneak into her house. He bought a dress and a wig and a gun. But on his way there—it must have been pretty far—he forgot the costume in one of the horse carriages. And by the time he realized he’d forgotten it, he wised up.”

  “That’s what would happen to me. I’d have a big plan to shoot somebody and forget my gun.”

  “Are you forgetful?”

  “I’m getting better. But when I was a kid, my uncle used to say I’d lose my head if it weren’t screwed onto my neck. Now I write things on my hand to remember. See? Like this.”

  He extended a clenched fist, and Paul leaned forward to see.

  Buy chianti, it said in Italian, the letters compressed at first, then unraveling.

  “And did you?” Paul asked.

  Luca backed up to a cupboard and pulled out the same cheap bottle Paul had brought.

  Paul laughed. “Perfect! One for each of us!”

  A bottle each had been a joke, of course, but Luca quite liked the idea and insisted they do it. To show he was serious, he began drinking straight from Paul’s bottle like a wino on the street. Bizarre and sort of crude, but if Luca was going to do it, if this silliness was a test, Paul would do it too. Tonight, he would get drunker than he had at the party: he immediately knew it. He would walk quickly home in that proud, drunk stomping way, a target for thieves. Unless, of course, he was to stay over. For safety’s sake. And then leave early enough to make morning Mass. He could explain to the monsignor if necessary—and would anyone even notice? By the time Luca was stirring the egg and cheese mixture into the spaghetti, Paul saw this all might happen; his friend, eyes glassy, cheeks touched with pink, slightly softened, looked as warm and expectant as he felt.

  After two figs each, they had bread and butter and wine and, finally, the spaghetti, which they carried into the dining room, where there was a proper folding table to eat at. Mostly they spoke in Italian as they usually did, but when Luca was comfortable he tried out his English, which was better than Paul expected. As if to balance out the darkness of their conversation in the piazza, they stuck to what was light: meals their mothers made, their oddest teachers, the crazy relatives who had cameos in their childhood—swinging from vine to vine across the abyss.

  When he was eight, Luca said, he snuck a big glass of his grandpa’s homemade wine during a cousin’s birthday party and fell asleep, snoring loudly, in the middle of the floor, to the amusement of his sisters. Paul told the story about his father’s first hired man, a troubled World War II vet named Harlon, who’d been so drunk one morning he nodded off while milking a cow, one hand still tugging down on a teat. The stories were particular, but the what of it all entered him less than the story of themselves developing at the table: potential being made good. He tried hard to entertain Luca, to perform his best, freest self—and was rewarded with Luca’s raspy laugh. In his dorm room on the other side of the river, waiting for him, were his notes for the approaching exams, two stacks of books on the early Christians, his Smith Corona typewriter, the letter from his mother he hadn’t responded to yet. Monkish silence. It was the place where he had learned things, where the Bible had been opened up to him, where the moving parts of the old gold watch had been removed and oiled and laid out on velvet. A studious and somewhat lonely place—but a good place, because he’d learned so much there. Wiser Paul: that was what he’d hoped for three years ago. That and a vague desire to be made worldlier, maybe, to discover something about himself he hadn�
�t yet—and it was that desire that he was reminded of most now, sitting across from Luca.

  Slightly drunk, feeling younger than usual, on the verge of leaving Rome, ringing with pleasure in his head and heart: this was him too. He had desire in him that wasn’t willing to be shut up; the pleasure and attraction were becoming an adult thing, as the minutes ticked away—something less shirking and guilty and, instead, natural and strong. Always, he admitted to himself, just after Luca disappeared into his room to change the record, it had been thin, dark-featured guys for him: Bobby Darin, Montgomery Clift, lately Alain Delon. Thick brows, but fine features, not hairy—no more than a dusting of hair on their arms and knuckles. Half his life now he’d sought out and savored these physical charms, the whole shameful enterprise below the level of words, felt more than thought—and now they had gathered in the form of the man sitting across from him, accompanied, of course, by unprepared-for touches: the mop of hair, the pinned-back ears, the tiny smudge of a mole on his chin. A real person, who thought he, Paul Novak, was good company and a confidant. At the very least.

  The levels on their bottles sank. Time breathed. There came a point when Luca got up to find the ice cream, which he had neglected to put in the icebox. Unnecessarily, Paul followed him into the kitchen with a vague notion of offering to help and watched as he poured it out, soft lumps and liquid, into two bowls. Ice-cream soup. Luca poured a little Chianti in the ice cream, just to see—then Paul did too. Boys’ silliness, but even as a boy he’d been so serious, hadn’t he? So serious and eager to please—anything to preemptively win the favor of those who might scorn him if they knew what he was. But here he was happy. Good music, a full belly, a light head, laughter. The white windows framed the darkness outside. The occasional car and motorbike Dopplered past. It was a warm spring evening in Rome. He was here and nowhere else.

  As the third movement of the piece began—expectant, then building, then retreating—the cursing of two angry men drifted up from the alley. What they were arguing over wasn’t clear. One yelled, “What’s your proof?” and the other yelled, “Who else knew about it? Huh? Who else did I tell?” Luca cocked his head toward the west wall, a conspiring smirk on his face.

  “You want to see what’s going on?” he asked, nodding to his bedroom.

  “We probably should,” said Paul.

  Both men were old and wore a white T-shirt and brown pants. The short bald man seemed to have just passed by the tall man with an Elvis pompadour, out for a walk. In the Italian way, they jabbed at the air with their hands as they talked, as if brusquely conducting music.

  “I don’t know who else you told! Ask your big mouth!”

  “Big mouth? Me? You! You have the mouth! Now even the grocer knows! I heard them laughing at me! You fucking sneak!”

  “Maybe it was your wife! You ever think that? The biggest mouth there is?”

  “Ah—fuck you. Keep her out of it!”

  Luca smiled and raised his eyebrows, amused.

  “What do you think he told him?” Paul asked.

  “That he’s too old to screw,” said Luca.

  That guess did seem exactly right. “And do you think he’s guilty?” he added.

  “No,” Luca said. “I think it was the wife.”

  Paul agreed. For a while, they watched in silence, as the men continued to purge their anger and indignation. Finally, the accused man began walking away, talking over his shoulder, jerking his arm up in the air. “I know you how many years? Sixty? And you don’t believe me? Then fuck you. Fuck you and your wife.” And then the accuser shook his head and kept walking the other way, shaking his head, until he was out of view, offstage.

  “Well, that was entertaining.”

  “We lucked out,” Paul said. “Dinner and a show.”

  The Ravel was still playing. Ambiguous hours lay ahead. Paul looked at Luca and then, seeing something in his eyes he feared, he glanced around the room. The bunk bed, the photographs, and, just beside them, on top of a little bookshelf, another little pile of coins. Not Italian—the biggest one a Kennedy silver dollar.

  “Are those new?” Paul said.

  “Sort of,” Luca said.

  Paul walked over and took the silver dollar in his hand. Just the presence of American money twisted him up inside, reminded him of who he was supposed to be.

  “Do you want to know where I really get them from?”

  “I thought you just found them.”

  “I take them from the Trevi Fountain.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “I don’t do it much. Only when I really need it. If you go there late at night, there’s no one there to stop you.”

  “I still can’t tell if you’re kidding.” It was true: right now Luca’s face was unreadable.

  “I’m being honest. Other people do this too.”

  A thief then too. And yet, Paul instantly forgave him. “But they’re not yours to take.”

  “Then whose are they? The fountain can’t spend it. And the wishes stop when they hit the water.”

  Paul frowned. “That’s a proven fact? The water ends the wish?”

  “That’s my own theory, I admit.”

  “Doesn’t the city take them? Give them to a charity or something?”

  “Yeah,” Luca said. “The charity of the police chief. I mean, I only take what I need. I’m kind of a charity myself.”

  Paul looked at the coins again and thought of the wishes that might have been attached to them. Mouths and their private whispering.

  “You think I’m bad now, don’t you?” Luca said. “I can see you thinking it.”

  Paul blushed and felt angry. He wanted to feel only good things about Luca, but Luca was making that difficult.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I do things I shouldn’t, but I don’t hurt anybody.”

  “I’m sure you don’t.”

  “Never on purpose at least,” he said.

  He was thinking, Paul thought, about his mother.

  “Anyway,” Luca said, snapping out of it, “I don’t even cash all of them. Most I just keep.”

  Now he walked over to his bed, plunged his arm under his mattress, and pulled out a little purple velvet cognac bag. Stolen, Paul guessed, from the man he’d lived with. Beside Paul, he shook out a palm’s worth. Silver from Bolivia. Gold from Ghana. A well-worn Buffalo nickel.

  They returned to the sofas, and when the Ravel stopped playing Luca disappeared into his room again. For a while Paul was alone. The future rushed into the vacuum. In less than five weeks’ time, he’d be back in America. His exams in early May, a Pan Am flight back—back to life as he’d known it, except now with a new, impressive degree. Rome behind him, tonight would be a cherished memory—but of no real consequence whatsoever. His responsibilities at home would swallow him up, and if anything, he’d write Luca now and again. Maybe that was enough.

  From the other room, a saxophone began playing “My Favorite Things.” Luca emerged with a red leather book in two hands. A giant illustrated Bible? No. A photo album.

  He handed Paul the album and dropped down beside him, arm flat on the top of the sofa. The photos at the front were in black and white, then around Luca’s teenaged years, suddenly color. Luca at his First Communion in a white collared shirt. Luca holding hands with his mother as they walked out of a building. The pictures all revealed the same tentativeness and shynes, with the exception of a Polaroid of Luca, at eight or nine, holding up a drawing of a cross-eyed clown, his own eyes crossed to match. His mother wasn’t as attractive as Paul presumed she’d be—a little chubby, a knobby nose—though she was thin when Luca was very young. The interiors of the house, the one he had been cast out of, were studies in gaudy reds and purples and loud patterned furniture. As Paul flipped the pages, Luca added commentary (“that guy ended up drowned in the Tiber,” “my cousin is a corporal now, just like my dad was”) and Paul nodded, showing interest. Halfway through, Luca moved his hand so it gently gripped Paul’s sho
ulder—and Paul flinched and then let it burn there, a hot, heavy starfish. It was an audacious, awkward move: romantic, not comforting, as his gesture had been at the piazza. Gathering what was happening, Paul’s ears burned, and he opened his mouth to protest—but what was the harm in this? If he tried something more, then he would speak up. But not until then.

  The unmoving hand seemed to push things along, and after a while Paul barely felt it there at all. Many of the color pictures near the end showed Luca and his siblings and mother at the beach. He explained that, every summer, his family would go to the coast for two weeks. The beach at Sperlonga. He hadn’t been, of course, since everything happened. Of his sisters, only Ilana had come to see him after diligently tracking him down through the art school. “But anyway,” he said, “enough of all that.”

  “I’ve only gone to the beaches here twice, if you can believe that,” Paul said.

  “We should go then,” Luca said. “Before you leave.”

  He imagined it: Luca wearing very little, in the one place where this was acceptable. “Maybe we should.”

  Luca turned to him slightly. “You know, I really don’t like that you’re leaving.”

  Paul looked into Luca’s big dark eyes, improbably locked on his. “What is it you like about me?” Paul said. “I don’t think I know. I mean, we’re not really alike, are we?”

  Luca frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” said Paul, but what did he mean? Beyond the obvious differences that didn’t need explaining.

  “You’re good to talk to,” Luca said. “You’re smart. You’re funny. I know I could count on you if I needed to.” He paused. “But mostly I like your eyes.”

  The saxophone played on. Paul’s heart lurched and ached, and he tensed his shoulders so hard they got warm. People would be disgusted. His mother, everybody. He felt disgusted too, for a moment, before receiving what Luca actually had said.