You're (Not) the One Alexandra Potter

by Alexandra Potter

  It’s like finding you’ve got the winning lottery ticket. If it’s genuine, it will be worth millions. I mean, just imagine. It will be the answer to all Magda’s prayers. It will change everything!

  With all the excitement at the gallery, I lose track of time and it’s only at the last minute I remember that the play Robyn gave me the tickets for is tonight. I’d almost forgotten. Reminded, I leave work and head to the theater.

  Despite everything, I’m actually quite looking forward to it. I managed to sell the spare ticket yesterday for a whopping $150, as it’s supposed to be a really good play and all the tickets are sold out, so it will be a good distraction from everything. It will be nice to lose myself for a couple of hours in a totally different world.

  One that doesn’t involve Nathaniel Kennedy, I muse, glancing at my phone and toying with the idea of giving it one more try. I check my watch. I’ve got a few minutes before the play starts. It’s worth a shot. Dialing his number, I wait for it to connect. He probably won’t pick up, I tell myself, listening to it ringing. He’s probably screening his calls.

  “If this is to ask me to go to Venice again, the answer is still no,” barks Nate, picking up.

  We dispensed with the hellos and the how are yous quite some time ago.

  “Nate, please, just listen—” I try persuading him, but he cuts me off.

  “Lucy, how many more times?”

  I heave a sigh, struggling to remain calm. “Look, I know you think this is a bad idea.”

  “I think it’s probably the worst idea you’ve ever had,” he huffs into the phone, “and that’s saying something.”

  I feel a twinge of annoyance crank up a notch. “I really think you should think about it,” I reason.

  “I have thought about it and the answer is no.”

  I check my watch. Damn, the play’s about to start; I need to go in.

  “Hang on,” I hiss into my phone, and hiding it under my jacket, I give my ticket to the usher and walk into the theater. I’m momentarily taken aback. Wow, it’s impressive. I feel a buzz. A real Broadway play. How exciting. “Sorry, where was I?” I say, retrieving my phone.

  “You were hanging up,” deadpans Nate.

  “And that’s it? You’re not going to change your mind?” I begin walking down the aisle, checking the letters on each row.

  “What part of ‘I’m not going to Venice’ do you not understand?”

  Finding my row, I start shuffling down it toward my seat number. I’ve got to get him to change his mind, but how? How?

  “Anyway, I’ve got to go,” he snaps.

  “No, wait. What about the cab the other day?” Excusing myself to the people already sitting down, I head toward the middle, where I can see two empty seats.

  “What about it?”

  “We’ve got to make it stop, once and for all, otherwise you and Beth—”

  “Lucy, stop this. You’ve got to get a grip.”

  “I have got a grip,” I retort, peering at the numbers on the back of the seats. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four . . .

  It’s silent on the other end of the phone. “Nate, are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  Gosh, how weird. For a moment his voice sounded like it wasn’t coming from my phone, but right next to me. Bingo. There’s my seat. I glance up and come face-to-face with someone who’s been working his way down the row from the opposite direction. “Nate!” I stare at him in shock. “What are you doing here?”

  You’d think by now I would have got past the surprised bit, wouldn’t you? But no, here I am, staring at him, openmouthed.

  “What?” Still on the phone, he looks up at me in bewilderment. “I came to see the play. That’s my seat.” He points to the empty seat next to mine.

  I glance at it in astonishment, then back at him, as suddenly it registers. “You were the person who bought my spare ticket on eBay?”

  “It was your spare ticket?” He looks at me aghast.

  There’s a pause as we stare at each other, frozen, until the lights go down and we’re forced to take our seats. The audience falls silent, waiting for the curtain to rise and the play to begin.

  It’s then that I hear a whisper in my ear.

  “So when do we leave for Venice?”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Venice, Italy, 2009

  Nothing has changed. The summer heat creates a shimmering haze, through which Venice appears like a Canaletto brought to life. The dome of Saint Mark’s Cathedral rises above the pastel-colored buildings, with their peeling paint and time-weary elegance. Vaporetti buzz. Tourists throng. Among the crowds, children run in the square scattering pigeons; men in sharp suits and designer shades sit smoking cigarettes; a guide with his umbrella talks history to a group of German tourists.

  And down a maze of alleyways, tucked away in a tiny old pensione, in a room with a pink frilly bedspread and a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary, are two people: a stressed-out American in a suit mopping his brow, and an English girl trying to stay calm.

  That’s me and Nate. Back in Venice, ten years later. And this time around, everything has changed.

  “OK, so what’s the plan?” Nate is saying briskly. Having put down his suitcase and hung his jacket over the rickety wooden chair, he turns to me. Sweat and stress are oozing from his pores. He might as well have I don’t want to be here written across his forehead in thick black marker.

  “Um, that’s the thing. . . .” I walk over to the window and open the shutters. Light floods in, sending dust particles swirling, and I pause to lean out and survey the tiny slice of Venetian life in the narrow alleyway below.

  It’s also quite a good delaying tactic. Because, you see, the thing is, I’m not quite sure how to break this to Nate, but I haven’t finished formulating my plan yet. It’s nearly there. It’s just . . .

  Oh, who am I kidding? There is no plan. The truth is, I haven’t a clue what on earth to do next.

  “Lucy?”

  I turn round to find Nate is still looking at me, only now his face has set harder, rather like when food starts to go cold and congeals on a plate.

  “Please tell me you have a plan.” His voice is steely and impatient, but I can detect a twinge of worry.

  “Well, not exactly a plan as such.” I stumble through my excuses while Nate’s eyes are boring into me like lasers. “OK, I don’t have a plan,” I confess.

  “You don’t have a plan?” repeats Nate calmly. As in eerily calm. As in the kind of foreboding calm you get as you’re opening your credit-card statement, slowly unfolding it, before the inevitable “Oh my God, how much?” hits you like a ten-ton truck.

  It’s that kind of calm.

  “Yet,” I add, forcing a positive tone. “I don’t have a plan yet.”

  Nate erupts in fury. “What the fuck?” he cries angrily, throwing his arms in the air. “You got me all the way here, to Venice, Italy, and you don’t have a plan?”

  “OK, OK, I think we both get it. I don’t have a plan!” I snap impatiently. “What are you going to do? Shoot me?”

  Heaving a sigh, Nate sits down on the edge of the pink frilly bedspread and presses his temples. “Well, that would be a plan, at least,” he mutters under his breath.

  I shoot him a furious look. Death in Venice is not what I had in mind. “Look.” Taking a deep breath, I try to focus. What was it Robyn said? Ah, yes, something about the scene of the crime. “Just meet me at the Bridge of Sighs at sunset,” I say on a whim.

  “And then what?”

  “Wait and see,” I say, with as much confidence as I can muster. “I’ll come up with something.”

  Rolling up his sleeves, Nate dabs his forehead with a handkerchief. “You better, ’cause I’m going to be on the first plane out of here tomorrow morning.”

  I grab my sunglasses and throw my bag over my shoulder. “Don’t worry.” I reach for the door. “I’ve got it all under control.”

  Except, of course, I ha
ven’t.

  I stumble outside into the bright Italian sunshine, my heart hammering in my chest. My mind is racing. Fuck. Bloody fuck. What on earth am I supposed to do now? I haven’t the faintest clue. Anxiety grabs at my stomach like a pickpocket snatching at my purse. Under control, indeed. What am I talking about? Everything is completely out of control. My life is spinning off its axis. I’m falling off gym machines and nearly breaking my ankle, performing magic spells and getting arrested, nearly killing myself in a car crash and doing karaoke.

  And now I’m here, in Venice, with Nate.

  And I’m still going to be with him in a hundred years’ time if I don’t think of something, and fast! A bolt of fear zips right through me, as I set off through the cobbled backstreets. I’m going to be tied to my ex-boyfriend for eternity. I’m going to die a shriveled-up old maid who on her deathbed will still be trying to lose her ex. A sudden vision of me croaking, “You’re chucked!” and Nate as a wizened old bachelor with no teeth, bald as a coot, in novelty boxer shorts, croaking back, “No, you’re chucked!” flashes through my brain.

  Shuddering, I try blocking it out. I mean, at this rate he’s going to sabotage my life forever, I think with panic. A memory of Adam’s face pops into my mind—how excited he looked that night in the cinema, rapidly followed by how hurt he looked later, in my kitchen, when Nate stormed in.

  I’m going to sabotage Nate’s life too. I sigh, thinking back to my phone call with Beth, his ex-wife. Nate’s never going to be able to try again, because she’s never going to take him back.

  Because I’ll still have him.

  A chill grips my heart. We’re going to be locked together like conjoined twins. I won’t be able to go anywhere without him. He won’t be able to do anything without me. “You complete me” will stop being the most romantic line in a movie and will become the most sinister. We’ll be like those couples you read about who have been together for sixty years and have never spent a night apart and make you go, “Aw, what an amazing love story.”

  Yet no one will know the truth. That it’s not a love story; it’s a horror story.

  Maybe it’s the same for those other couples too, I think with alarm. Maybe those couples we all read about have spent the past sixty years desperately trying to spend a night apart and dreaming of one day having the duvet to themselves. Maybe those couples kissed under a bridge in Venice and have been trying to lose each other for their entire lives.

  OK, now stop, Lucy. You’re getting paranoid.

  Turning a corner, I find myself plunged into a mass of tourists. Abruptly I realize I’m in Saint Mark’s Square. I pause to glance around, my mind suddenly emptying of everything but the sheer beauty and majesty that is Venice: the way the sunlight is bouncing off the cobblestones; a gap in the crowd revealing glittering water; the rich scents of espresso, aftershave, and cigarette smoke; the passionate scramble of Italian that always sounds to my non-Italian-speaking ears like someone playing scales on a piano.

  God, I love Venice. I forgot how much because it’s been so long. Like an old photograph, faded by time, my memories of the city have dulled. Over the years it’s become simply a backdrop, against which the more important story of me and Nate and how we first met was set. The moment we left, it was as if Venice stopped, ceased to exist. As if it was just there for us, until we went back to college, when it folded itself back up and was packed away.

  I smile fondly at my foolish arrogance. In my teenage mind I was the first person to discover Venice, and Nate and I were the only two people to have ever fallen in love among its canals, intertwined piazzas, and maze of backstreets. No one had ever felt like us, nor could they ever.

  How wrong I was, I realize, walking across the square. Venice has a life of its own, a sense of history that overshadows anything that Nate and I created, a magic that draws lovers to it, I muse, watching the dozens of couples strolling by, hand in hand, no doubt feeling exactly the same way Nate and I once did. Like the only two people in the whole world. That’s the magic of Venice—it makes everyone feel special.

  Turning another corner, I head into the labyrinth of alleyways. This is the first time I’ve been back in ten years, and although I’ve changed, the city hasn’t. I start wandering in no particular direction, enjoying the sensation of rediscovering the maze of canals, shadowy piazzas, and sounds and smells that are Venice.

  I’ve been so focused on Nate, on getting him here, on getting both of us here, that I’ve never stopped to think about actually being back here. In my head it was simply the scene of the crime, the baddie, the cause of this whole mess, but now I can’t help falling in love all over again.

  Only this time it’s not with Nate; it’s with Venice itself, I muse, glancing up at yet another beautiful building. I don’t know the name of it, but a whole bunch of paparazzi are crowded outside. It’s the film festival and everywhere the banners are flying, posters are advertising films, tourists have their cameras at the ready, hoping to spot a movie star. Apparently Penélope Cruz was spotted earlier on the Rialto Bridge, and the man checking us in at the pensione swore blind Tom and Katie were staying in room three.

  Though somehow I doubt it. All the celebrities are staying at the magnificent Gritti Palace. We passed it earlier, coming from the airport on the vaporetto, and there was a big stretch of red carpet running all the way up from the jetty to the terrace bar right on the canal. There was a ton of activity, and dozens of black-and-white-uniformed waiters, like an army of penguins, flitting around getting everything ready for the big film premiere party that’s happening tonight. Though I haven’t a clue which film it’s for.

  Adam would know, pipes up a voice in my head.

  I feel a familiar lurch in my stomach. I’ve been trying not to think about him, but now his face pops into my consciousness and my mind spools back to that first time I saw him on the street, with a camera and a furry microphone; to the time in the MoMA, talking animatedly about his love of films; to the night we met in the art-house cinema and how excited he was to be sharing his favorite movie with me. He’d love it here, I reflect, glancing around, feeling the buzz of the festival.

  For a split second I think about calling him, telling him where I am. But of course there’s no point, is there? I doubt he’d even pick up the phone. Even if he did, how would I explain what I’m doing here? Oh, hi, I’m here at the Venice Film Festival with Nate, trying to break an ancient legend. Wish you were here!

  Yeah, right, Lucy. Great move.

  I keep walking. I ache with sadness and try cajoling myself. Perhaps once this is all over we could start where we left off. But I know that’s not going to happen. He’ll never trust me again, and why should he? Anyway, let’s face it, it was over before it even began. What was it? A couple of kisses, two dates, that’s it. He’ll move on; so will I. It’s no big deal.

  Only it felt like a big deal. It wasn’t just about a couple of dates; it was about more than that. It was about listening to him talking and thinking he reminded me of someone and realizing it was me. It was the feeling I got when he walked into the police station that night and I discovered there was no one I’d rather see than him. It was seeing him sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor, looking excitedly through my sketchbooks and telling me to follow my dream. Small, simple, fleeting things, and yet they made a huge impression on me. At the time I didn’t realize it, but now . . .

  Now it’s too late. Whatever happens with Nate, Adam and I are over. This time there are no second chances.

  I keep walking, hands stuck deep into the pockets of my shorts. Everywhere around me are the sounds of laughter and excitement, but they only serve to throw into stark contrast my own mood.

  After a few moments I slip into a shadowy backstreet. It’s quiet here—no fancy galleries, gelato stalls, or souvenir shops to tempt the tourists, just the odd cat sitting on a doorstep and a washing line strung high above. It reminds me of Artsy and his washing line of art. I think about his upcoming exhibition. It
’s definitely going to go ahead now. I spoke to Magda from JFK, just as we were boarding, and sure enough the painting had been verified and it’s a Titian.

  “Which of course I knew all along!” she declared. “I said to Daniel, ‘I knew Aunt Irena would not leave me penniless; I knew!’”

  Which isn’t the exact truth, but who cares? She was so happy, and I’m happy for her. The painting’s going to be put up for auction and with the proceeds Magda will no doubt be able to pay off her debts and save the gallery. Moreover, she’ll most likely be able to keep herself in genuine designer goods for the rest of her life. Everything, it seems, has worked out for her.

  Reaching a small piazza, I pause. In the middle there’s a fountain with an elaborately carved fish spouting water, and a wooden bench in a patch of sunlight. It looks tempting. I’m tired and my sandals are starting to rub in the heat. Despite being the beginning of September, it still feels like summer. Gratefully, I sit down. Gosh, this is much better. Slipping off my sandals, I wiggle my toes and close my eyes for a moment, relishing the peace and quiet, with only the sound of the trickling fountain.

  “Scusi.” And a voice.

  Snapping open my eyes, I look up to see a man peering over me. He’s blocking the sunlight and his face is in shadow, so I can’t distinguish his features, but I can make out the outline of his hat, a white fedora.

  Deep within a memory stirs and I feel a tingle run down my spine. There’s something about him; he’s familiar. I know him, but how?

  He motions to me, as if to say, Do you mind if I sit down? and I gesture back as if to say, No, of course not. As he eases himself down beside me, his face turns to the light.

  And suddenly I place him.

  “It’s you!” I say, more to myself than to him.

  He looks at me quizzically.