by Karina Halle
I burst out laughing.
“Papà,” Claudio chides him.
“What?” he asks, throwing his hands out. “It is true. Look at you, for example. You could be doing so much more work than you are, but you don’t. You blame it on your muse. How she doesn’t show for you.” He shakes his head and looks away, sounding gruff now, in that way of fatherly disappointment I know too well. “You know, sometimes I think if you just tried a little harder, she might come to you more often.”
“I am trying,” Claudio says, his face darkening. “I have had so many commissions this year.”
“But commissions don’t put art into the store.”
“There is too much art in the store as it is. There is no room.”
His father waves him away and has a sip of his drink, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Bah. You know when I ran that store, we could hardly keep anything in stock.”
“You can’t compare the economy of the eighties to today.”
His father shrugs.
Well, at least we managed to keep Jana from being mentioned, though it seems they have their little difficulties between them.
“Never mind them,” his mother says, appearing with a sparkling red drink in a highball glass. She hands it to me, and I thank her as she sits down. “The two of them are always arguing about the same old things. The damn muse, as if she is the same for everyone.”
I look to Claudio at that, and see him already staring deeply at me.
They don’t know that I am his muse, and the fact that I am the muse, that I have the power to create his inspiration and his art, is a thrill that never leaves me.
That said, I am stumbling over what his father said. That you have to show the muse so much attention or else she’ll leave for good. Is that why Claudio is so attracted to me? Because I promise him creation and success? If I didn’t, would we even be here right now?
As if he can hear my thoughts, Claudio reaches up and taps the side of his head.
He mouths to me, “Stop.”
I suppose my trepidation is on my face, as clear as anything.
The next day Claudio knocks on my door early, telling me to get up and come with him to the beach for a morning swim. Seeing as we went to bed fairly early and in separate rooms, I don’t want to pass it up. I need to be alone with him.
Except when we grab our towels and head down the steps, my flowing cover-up nearly making me trip and fall a bunch of times, we find we aren’t the only people with that idea. There are quite a few people, old ones especially, heading into the water at this hour, the sun only now touching the beach on the other side of the bay.
And once I leave the towel and the caftan on the beach and walk along the smooth pebbles into the water, I realize that his parents have a clear view of us. In fact, when I look up at the cliffside, they’re both sitting on the balcony, waving.
I wave back, grateful that I didn’t do something stupid, like pinch Claudio’s arse. Just friends, indeed.
“Ah,” Claudio says, looking up and over his shoulder. “There they are.” He gives me a look as he wades in. “I hope you weren’t expecting privacy.”
I shrug, following him, the sea cold at first, but warming up as it gets up to my knees, the water impossibly clear. I can even see a few fish darting around. “I’m happy I can just talk to you out of ear range,” I tell him.
He steps forward a few feet, and I watch the bronzed muscles on his back as he pushes off the bottom and dives elegantly into the water with minimal splash.
I, on the other hand, take my time wading in until the water is chest-high and then I’m swimming toward him.
“I have a feeling you were once part fish,” I tell him.
He spits out water and grins, his hair sticking to his forehead. “My mother can vouch for that. Living right there” —he gestures to the house— “meant I could swim before I could walk. I think it was the only thing that kept me sane when growing up. And when we moved to Lucca, we had a pool there too. I was in it more than I was out of it. Before my art took hold … it was the only way I could deal with life.”
I cock my head, wondering what he had to deal with. “You don’t strike me as a person who had a rough childhood. Your parents obviously love you very much.”
“Yes,” he says carefully, dark eyes watching the sun touch the water on the horizon, the sky slowly growing brighter. “They do. But you saw my father last night. I am always measured to him. It was worse when I wasn’t making art. My sisters, they were allowed to do whatever, but I, well, I was expected to carry on the Romano name. The genius.”
He turns around, facing me, slowly swimming backward. “When I was a child, my father did what he could to teach me how to paint like him. I tried. But I just … I am not talented like him in that way. Just as he can’t sculpt. We are both good at our own things. But I was young and I wanted to please him, and he demanded so much of me…” He swallows, eyeing his parents on the cliff for a moment, before meeting my gaze. “I grew up believing I would never be good enough. Perhaps I still carry some of that with me.”
I shake my head. “How could your father even think that? I’m sure he doesn’t. He seems so proud. I mean, look at your work. It’s perfect. It’s like … I get why sculptors were so revered back in the day. They were almost like gods. Wasn’t Michelangelo called The Divine One?”
His brows raise, impressed. “Oh. Someone has been doing some reading.”
“Research is the best part of writing. Also the best way to get to know someone.”
“I’m touched,” he says. “But of course I am no Michelangelo. He could at least paint.” He gives me a warm, patient smile as he treads water. “There’s an old joke that sculpture is the thing you bump into when you back up to get a better look at a painting. If that doesn’t sum up my relationship with my father and I, then I don’t know what does.”
He licks his lips, head tilted. “And even though artists like Michelangelo were revered in the day, can you name me any sculptors now? No. The art isn’t dying but the interest in it is. It’s just not sexy.”
I laugh. “Sexy? I think watching you work is the sexiest thing. Your art is pure sex, the women you sculpt…”
He grins. “You are a bit biased, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. But I mean it.”
He exhales and looks away, the water glinting in his eyes. “I love what I do and I know that is good enough for me. But you know … parents are hard to, how you say, negotiate, sometimes. Sometimes their opinions matter more than they should.” He glances at me. “How about your father?”
My arms move faster to tread water, and I stare down through the clear depths at my wavering feet and the pebbled bottom just below. What about my father? Where to start?
I take in a deep breath, feeling as if I’m about to dive under. “As you know, he left my mom when I was about Vanni’s age. Went to London. Fell in love and started a new family. Forgot all about me.”
His face contorts in sympathy. “I am sure that must have been hard. Are you still in contact with him?”
“Sometimes.” My voice sounds dull, like it always does when I talk about him. When I discuss Robyn, my voice goes all over the place and I get emotional through all the ups and downs. When I talk about my father, when I think about him, I feel nothing. I suppose because I stopped grieving him a long time ago.
What is the point of grieving someone who is still alive?
“He must be proud that his daughter is a famous author, yes?”
“Stop calling me that,” I tell him. “I’m not famous. I’m barely an author. And that was his view on it too. Because I wrote with Robyn, it’s like he attributed all my success to her. If we made a bestseller list, it was because of her. If we traveled for book signings, it was her. The money I made was because of her. He never believed I had any part of it, like he couldn’t imagine that I had enough skill or talent or drive to actually write what I did and do a good job.”
He
watches me carefully for a few moments, then says, “Ah.”
He starts swimming laps around me.
“Ah?”
“Yes. As in, ah, that makes sense.”
“How so?”
An incredulous look comes across his brow, like he’s dealing with an idiot here. “The way you view yourself as an author, your work, it’s the same way your father does. No wonder this book has all this pressure riding on it. You’re not only trying to prove something to your readers, or to Jana, or to yourself, but to your father as well. That kind of pressure will cause any artist to seize up.”
Hmm. He has a point.
“And your mother?” he asks. “How is she?”
How is my mother? I’ve only exchanged a few emails with her since I got to Italy, and mine have been very vague and brief. “She’s good. A bit lonely, I think. She’s still out in Ullapool, and I want her to move so badly. That little town is so beautiful yet so depressing. There are no good men there. She needs to at least get to Fort William.”
“Maybe she should come to Italy.”
“She’s too stubborn, though I think it would do her some good.” I pause, kicking my feet out so I’m floating on my back. “I should probably reach out to her more. It’s hard, you know, when you get so wrapped up in work, or at least in trying to work. It’s why I’ve been a pretty awful daughter, friend, and girlfriend.”
“I think you’re a wonderful girlfriend,” he says.
And he says it so simply, so matter-of-fact, that it takes me a moment to realize what he’s said.
“Girlfriend?” I ask.
He nods. “That is what you are to me. I can be whatever you want me to be to you: Italian lover, sexy artist, cock machine, but to me, you are my girlfriend.” My heart is thudding in my chest, butterflies igniting every inch of my veins. He then frowns. “No. Girlfriend doesn’t sound quite right, does it? How about Dolcezza? Mi sono infatuato. Ho un debole perte. Mi hai cambiato la vita.”
The lyrical, dulcet tone of his accent nearly drowns me and I have to fight to keep my head above water.
“I have no idea what you just said,” I say breathlessly.
“It doesn’t matter. Just know that I mean it.” He starts swimming past me. “Come on, let’s go back. My mother and father are no longer on the balcony, which means breakfast is ready.” He glances at me over his shoulder. “Hope you worked up an appetite.”
I nod and follow.
I worked up something alright.
But it isn’t my appetite.
He called me his girlfriend.
And for once, I don’t want to correct him.
Maybe I still don’t know where we stand publicly, but if this is what we call each other in private, I kind of like it.
As hopeless as it seems.
Eighteen
Grace
After yesterday’s morning swim, we spent the rest of the day lounging on the beach and going up to the house for mealtimes, where his mother would spoil us with copious amounts of wonderful wine, and dishes fresh from the sea, like grilled seabass with fennel (can’t get enough fennel!) and prawns cooked in white wine and sweet cherry tomatoes. We spent a little time exploring the bay around Cavoli Beach, but aside from some restaurants, gelato shops, and souvenir stores, there wasn’t a lot to see.
But for our last day on Elba, Claudio decided we should go for a drive around the western tip, and then take a gondola up to the top of Mount Capanne, which I’m told is the highest peak on Elba. Then we’ll go out with his parents for dinner to a trattoria on an olive farm, which is supposed to be one of the best on the island.
But first, alone time.
Being with Claudio around his parents reminded me a lot of the first days at Villa Rosa. I had to keep my attraction under wraps, be sly with my eye contact, pretend that I wasn’t swooning over the things he said, or the way he looked.
Claudio has been doing the same, though he was a little more transparent. His eyes always sought mine no matter what room we were in, his smile was always overly warm, his focus was always on me. More than a few times I caught his mother shooting his father a look, but I couldn’t read either of their expressions. It was something, though.
Regardless, this was much harder than our pre-coupling time at Villa Rosa, because we both knew how the other felt, and I mean that in both an emotional and physical way. We were used to having frequent (albeit secretive) sex and here it just wasn’t an option. I was going fucking crazy. I couldn’t even look at him without a torch igniting in my chest.
That said, I wasn’t about to hop on him for another round of car sex, not on these roads.
“Oh my lord,” I cry out, covering my eyes as Claudio guns the Ferrari and overtakes a line of cyclists. “How can they even cycle this? Are they crazy?”
“Very,” he says, grinning into the wind, clearly enjoying himself.
I, on the other hand, with my fear of heights, didn’t realize that the road around the western tip was up a precipitous mountainside. I was expecting leisurely winding around sparkling bays, not climbing along a narrow road, with a big drop off to your death on one side.
“You know, the scarf is in the console,” he says cheekily. “Put it on if you don’t want to look.”
“No, thank you.” I don’t want to look but I feel I need to at the same time.
It feels like forever before the road stops being so nerve-wracking and heads more inland. We pull over into a busy gravel parking lot and then walk up to a café where a little old lady sells us tickets to ride the gondola.
Then we walk further up the mountain, the path thankfully shaded by tall trees. Even though it’s morning, it’s stinking hot again.
And that’s when I see it.
I stop dead in my tracks. “What the hell is that?”
“The gondola?”
“No, that!”
I frantically wave my hand at the bright yellow cylindrical cages that are whisked around a vestibule and up the side of the mountain, two people standing in it per cage. There’s no room to sit down, there’s no seat. It’s just people standing in open metal tubes, dangling from a continuous overhead wire.
“That is the gondola,” he says.
“What? How? I thought it was like the Air Line that goes across the River Thames in London. Ten people can fit in it. There are seats. And glass windows. And, you know, safety precautions.”
A bemused smile flits across his lips, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Would you like to walk? I’ve done it a few times. It is no big deal.”
I crane my head to look at the top of the distant craggy peak. “Up there? You want to walk up there? In this heat?”
“It’s that or the gondola.”
“Stop saying gondola. It’s a human-sized birdcage hanging from a wire.”
“Gondola is an Italian word.”
“So gondola means the same thing as deathtrap?” I put my face in my hands for a moment and take a deep breath. I look up. The couple ahead of us are getting in and they’re being whisked away and they look … happy. Or stupid.
Definitely stupid.
“How high does it go above the ground?”
“Not high at all. I promise.”
I sigh. I don’t want to be a wuss. “Okay.”
We walk up to the vestibule, give the man our tickets, and then we’re waiting on the platform for the next birdcage to come around.
“This is shite,” I mutter under my breath as the cage slows beside us, the cage door opening.
“Come on,” Claudio says, grabbing my hand and pulling me inside.
Well, it’s definitely intimate. There’s enough room for both of us to turn around, and I’m sure you could maybe squeeze a child on it, but that’s it.
And while the first few seconds as we get on, the cage door closing, are slow, now that we’re away from the vestibule, we’re moving faster, the wind in our hair.
“Ahhhh,” I cry out, watching the ground drop away, my grip tight
around the bar that rings the cage. I can feel my pulse starting to skyrocket, and I’m getting that pins and needles feeling in my veins, a sign of oncoming vertigo.
“Perhaps it’s best if you look up,” he says. “Don’t look down.”
“You said it doesn’t go that high!”
He shrugs. “Maybe, I don’t know.”
“You jerk!” I say, swatting at him.
He lets me hit him, then grabs my wrists, pinning me in place. “No fighting on the gondola,” he says with a smirk. “It’s dangerous. Against the rules.”
“Fuck the rules.”
A flash of heat comes over his eyes, and he pulls me right up against his chest, kissing me. All it takes is the swift press of his lips against mine to unlock the hunger inside, the fact that we’ve only been able to sneak sweet little kisses here and there.
Now, all thoughts of where we are, hanging thirty feet in the air, don’t seem to matter as much as the feel of him against me.
The kiss is both soft and hard, our lips lost to each other, sinking into the moment, this chance to let loose, to truly be alone. Claudio groans a little when I open my mouth to let him inside, and the sound goes straight to my bones.
I’ve missed this.
He lets go of my wrists, his hands going around to grab hold of my arse, pulling me up against him, his erection stiff against me, while I reach up and weave my fingers through his soft dark hair, holding on tight.
I want to fuck him right now, feel every inch of him inside, devour him until I have nothing left to give.
But this damn cage is too small for it to be comfortable, and the idea of rocking it back and forth makes that vertigo and panic come back.