Chris did not argue. There were winding streets, her hand in his, and then the dark cave of a nightclub; American music blasting from a sound system that drowned out voices; brandy; mouths opening but making no sound; bodies streaked by purple and red strobe lights. Terri went with the music, body moving, head thrown back, hair flying. Her forehead was damp, her body loose and sensual; she barely saw Chris in front of her, saw no one else at all. The songs did not matter; only the pulse of the music, the beat of her own heart. Terri was free.
No music suddenly. Harsh lights went on, dissolving the streaks of red and purple. The club was a stale-smelling cubicle filled with tables and half-empty drinks.
Chris took her hand. ‘They’re closing up.’
The night was cold now. ‘Let’s go somewhere,’ Terri said. ‘Please, I don’t want to stop yet.’
‘It won’t help,’ Terri thought she heard him say. She ran away, toward the night.
They were in an empty piazza – shadowy buildings, bare stones, the dark shape of a fountain. Terri’s heels clattered on the stones, gray in moonlight. She kicked off her shoes and hurried toward the fountain. The water was cool on her feet; the hem of her dress clung to her legs. Chris stood watching her, hands in his pockets.
‘It’s nearly three,’ he said. ‘We’re out of places, Zelda. This is the last fountain in Venice.’
It made Terri laugh. She looked down at Chris, slim and beautiful as a statue, and wondered if she could ever look that way to him.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, and got down from the fountain. ‘There’s something I want to do with you.’
She took his hand, stepped into her heels again. Each move felt sure and perfect.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s hurry back.’
They ran through the streets twisting and turning, until the last one opened on the Grand Canal.
When they were inside the hotel room, time stopped.
Terri turned off all the lights. It was so quiet that she could hear herself breathe.
The dark was softened by moonlight, the faint glow of the gaslights on the walk below. Terri could see nothing but his face.
‘Stay there,’ she whispered.
He stood by the bed, perhaps ten feet away. Taking off her earings, Terri placed them on the dresser behind her. His reflection in the mirror was a shadow above her shoulder, so still that it was as if he were captured by her image. Terri turned to him again.
There was no sound. ‘I’ve been wanting to do this,’ she said softly.
Slowly, she began to move for him.
The pulse of the music in her head was slow and sinuous. Her dress as it fell was caught for a moment by the sway of her hips.
She slid her bra down over her shoulders, imagining that he had never seen her like this.
It fell to the floor. Her rhythm was slower yet; Terri wanted him to feel her across the room.
‘Jesus.’
His voice was husky now. Yet as clear as her own.
‘I want to take us away, Chris. From everything.’
When she was naked, Terri asked him to watch her.
Seconds passed. In the silver light, moving as he watched, Terri felt beautiful at last.
When his shadow came toward her, Terri did not stop. Face-to-face with him, she saw how dark his eyes seemed.
‘Right here,’ she said.
They slipped to the floor together. Everything he did was right. Even his silence as he filled her.
The rest was wanting, mutual and desperate, nothing held back. For a long time after, neither spoke.
‘Sleepy?’ Chris asked.
‘No,’ Terri answered quietly. ‘Not sleepy.’
Slowly, his mouth moved across her stomach, and then nothing mattered. In the deep quiet of release that followed, Terri at last forgot Elena.
Chapter 16
When Terri awoke, the morning sun shone with a savage brightness, and the room looked like a bad dream: clothes strewn on the floor; her bra draped over the mirror; the sheets half torn from the bed. The back of her skull throbbed.
Chris handed her a glass of water and three aspirins. She took them without comment, then squinted up at him.
‘How come you’re so chipper?’
‘A cold shower.’ He grinned. ‘Otherwise I’m walking the thin line between civilization and barbarism. Much as we did last night.’
Terri sat up in bed. She was naked; it took her a moment to realize that the rawness on her shoulder blades was rug burn. A flush spread across her face.
‘How much,’ she asked, ‘do you remember?’
Chris sat beside her. ‘Every bit of it. Care for a detailed decription?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve never done that before.’
‘I’m flattered.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘I just wish we’d gotten back a little earlier. Anytime before three-thirty.’
Terri managed a smile. ‘If I’m going to start taking my clothes off like that, I should probably pace myself.’ She looked at him askance. ‘How many times did we make love?’
‘Three. But only twice on the rug.’ Chris pulled a damp cloth out of the ice bucket, wrung it out, and gave it to her. ‘Put this over your eyes for a while. It helped me this morning, and I needed it.’
It was a good idea; everything in the room had sharp edges. Darkness was better, and the cloth soothed the pounding that ran from her neck through her eyes. ‘Speaking of last night,’ she heard Chris ask, ‘you didn’t happen to use a diaphragm, did you?’
‘Are you serious? Did you use a condom?’
‘I was afraid of that,’ Chris said. ‘The amateur hour.’
He slid the cloth from her eyes and kissed her. Terri took his hand, held it to her cheek. ‘Can you pass me the phone?’ she asked.
A shadow crossed his face. And then he turned, reaching, and passed her the telephone.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and dialed Richie’s number.
No one answered.
Holding the telephone, Terri imagined that Elena must feel as if she had lost her mother. As if it were now, Terri remembered the morning when Rosa had gone to the doctor, her face bruised, and Terri had hidden from her father in the bedroom. Looking out the window for her mother, Terri had been frightened that Rosa might tell the truth about what had happened, that they would never let her come home. When at last she did, pausing on the sidewalk until she saw Terri’s face in the window, Terri the child felt relieved for herself, a guilty sorrow for Rosa. Remembering now, Terri understood the power of Elena’s wish that she return to Richie; Terri had no scars that Elena could see.
Watching Chris, Terri dialed again.
No answer, still. All at once, Terri felt the venoms of her hangover – guilt and nausea and self-contempt. ‘God,’ she said bitterly, ‘I wish he were dead.’
The words echoed inside her. But all that Chris said was, ‘I should call Carlo.’
Terri handed him the telephone. Dialing, he turned from her. The moment that Carlo answered, Chris’s voice lightened. After a time, Terri left the room.
When he was finished, she picked up the telephone again. Her head still pounded.
‘Nothing?’ Chris asked.
‘No. And Elena should have been in bed for hours.’
Putting down the phone, Terri drifted to the balcony. The morning was bright; the sidewalks stirred. ‘If I can’t reach Richie by tonight,’ she said, ‘I’m calling the school.’
Chris said nothing.
After a time, they put on sunglasses and went to an outdoor café on the Piazza San Marco, that immense stone retangle, the size of two football fields, lined on three sides by two- and three-story buildings with terraces and ornate columns. Chris and Terri chose a table; ordered croissants and two double espressos; amd surveyed the rest of the piazza. It was, Terri realized, quite wonderful.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said finally. ‘Not just about being so worried. About everything.’ She looked him in the face. ‘I wonder
, sometimes, if you can ever forgive me for what he’s done to you. Even if we could find a way to go on.’
Chris pushed his chair back from the table, stretching his legs in front of him. He stared at the espresso he cupped in both hands. ‘I think that’s more a matter of whether you’ll forgive yourself for staying with him. Enough to stay with me.’
‘You still think I need a shrink, in other words.’
‘Is that a sin too? Like the one in this dream you’ve started having again? Or whatever feelings you’ve never faced about your mother and father?’
Terri turned away. ‘I don’t like thinking of him,’ she finally said. ‘When I do, it scares me. Anyway, a lot of it I hardly remember now.’ Suddenly she felt angry. ‘It’s done, all right? My father’s dead.’
Chris gazed at her over the edge of his cup. ‘How did he die, Terri? You never really say.’
As if by reflex, Terri shut her eyes.
The image was like the shock of a flashbulb, leaving a painful shadow on the retina. Her father’s head at her feet in the first morning sun, a ribbon of dried blood running from his temple. She felt her mind flinch, close down; then there was nothing.
Terri did not answer. Softly, Chris asked. ‘What is it, Terri? That you blame yourself somehow?’
Terri opened her eyes, dispelling the terrible image. But she did not look at Chris. ‘The house felt safer afterward,’ she said at last. ‘Maybe I blamed myself for liking that.’ Her voice grew tired. ‘Sometimes, Chris, I think that’s why I was so determined to become a lawyer. Because there were rules: no one got hit, and everyone had their turn to speak. The law protected even children, I thought.’
Turning to the piazza, Chris fell silent. As Terri had known he would.
Chapter 17
Terri stood in a phone booth near the Doges’ Palace.
No one answered Richie’s telephone. As before, the machine, with its despised cheery message, did not switch on.
Chris paced outside, squinting in the noonday sun. As she dialed again, he turned away.
Terri pushed open the glass door. The breeze felt cool.
Chris shoved his hands in his pockets. For a moment, Terri thought, everything about him looked tight. ‘It’s three a.m. in San Francisco,’ she told him. ‘Richie’s there, Chris – he’s just not answering.’
‘At three a.m., I might not answer, either. For all we know, he’s turned off the ring mechanism as well as the machine.’ Chris’s voice had a slight edge. ‘Who knows – by tonight, he may be weary of tormenting you. There’s only so much fun a man can stand.’
By tonight, Terri thought, she would call the school, she had almost forgotten who she was with.
‘Care for lunch?’ Chris asked.
‘Not yet.’ She took his arm. ‘Do you mind if we just walk for a while?’
Quiet, they strolled along the Grand Canal. The spacious walk was busy but not crowded; the wind was fresh, the sea smell light but pleasant. The people were a mixed bag of Venetians and tourists with cameras, stopping at the curio stands and sidewalk restaurants. Many of the tourists were Italian, reminding Terri that few Americans could travel in the way that Chris was sharing with her. It made her feel grateful and uneasy all at once: thinking of Elena, Terri wondered if she could stay in Italy.
Chris had stopped, gazing at a street artist drawing pen-and-ink portraits of whatever passersby would let him. The man had parlayed a red scarf and a handlebar mustache into a remarkable resemblance to Salvador Dalí: his work, Terri thought wryly, was a bit more mundane. But his execution, complete with brush flourishes and dramatic pauses to gaze narrowly at his subject, a middle-aged German woman with bleached-blond hair, was delivered with the almost comic solemnity of a master. Terri could see that this scene had softened Chris’s mood: he had a warmer sense of people – even their foibles and vanity – then Terri had at first known.
‘He’s wonderful,’ Chris murmured. Terri knew that he did not mean the drawing; Chris found something admirable in the brio and sense of self that impelled this man to get up every morning, wax his mustache, and venture forth with his artist’s kit to become the Dalí of his chosen piece of sidewalk.
With a certain ceremony, he presented his drawing to the German woman. She did not seem pleased. Some haggling over the price ensued; when it was over, the woman went off without a word of thanks. The artist looked glum: left without a subject, he sagged, and his search for fresh customers bore a trace of humiliation.
‘Care to perform a service?’ Chris asked Terri.
Terri did not feel a fitting subject for art. ‘Me?’
‘A keepsake,’ Chris said lightly. ‘I’ve wanted your picture since the first day I saw you.’
The artist had discovered them standing behind him and was eyeing Terri with an air of hope. ‘The thought never occurred to you,’ she told Chris. ‘And I hate my nose. If I volunteer to do this, I pick the closet it hangs in.’
‘It’s going in my bedroom,’ Chris answered, and went over to the artist.
Terri sat for him patiently, purse at her feet, while the artist complimented her and smiled at Chris, a man who could appreciate another’s good fortune. Terri began to enjoy herself, to take pleasure in Chris’s enjoyment.
After a time, another man stopped to watch – a young Italian, by the look of him, curly-haired and slight. He stood behind Chris; his eyes moved from Terri to the painting, as if critically comparing portrait to subject. ‘A fine likeness,’ Chris told the artist. ‘Even better than I’d hoped.’
Squinting at his palette, the artist smiled at this compliment. ‘A pleasure, sir. Your wife is beautiful.’
Chris caught Terri’s eye: given their circumstances, the mistake was so ironic that she could not suppress her mischief. ‘He needs to hear that,’ she told the artist. ‘I go for days without the smallest sign of affection.’
Chris turned to keep from smiling. There was a sudden blur of motion; Terri flinched, startled, and then saw the young Italian snatch the strap of her purse and begin running.
‘Chris . . .’
But Chris had seen him. ‘Wait here,’ he snapped, and started after the thief.
The purse snatcher was ten yards ahead. But he had not counted on a tourist with Chris’s passion for fitness.
Instinctively, Terri ran after them.
The man burst through a clump of tourists, scattering them with open mouths and startled faces. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Chris behind him; the thief’s legs churned faster, carrying him away down the broad sidewalk. Chris followed in a path cleared by the man’s own flight. There was something lethal in his pursuit, a release of anger so intense that Terri could see it in his lengthening strides. Their figures grew smaller.
Terri’s heart pounded. ‘Chris,’ she called out. ‘It’s all right.’
Chris could not hear her. She saw the man glance over his shoulder again, a pantomime of fear. When the thief suddenly swerved through the umbrellas of an outdoor restaurant, knocking dishes to the cement, Chris hardly broke stride.
Terri ran faster.
Bursting past the last umbrella, the thief disappeared between two buildings, down a side street. His only hope, Terri thought, was to lose Chris in the maze of Venice. Part of her hoped he would.
Chris vanished down the side street.
Terri ran along the walk and through the restaurant. An old woman had fallen to the cement, food scattered in her lap. There were shouts and cries; broken plates crunched beneath Terri’s feet.
Entering the side street, she spotted a man running twenty yards ahead – Chris disappearing down an alley to the right. Terri was panting now; as she started running again, her side ached and her head pounded, and the feeling in the pit of her stomach was like morning sickness.
Turning the corner, she entered a Venice that startled her. The alley was a slit of light, a shadowy passage between stone buildings and an inky canal, still and faintly rancid. There was mold on the walls; laundry hun
g like rags from the windows above her head. It was a world so cramped and dank that Terri felt entrapped.
In the iron doorway of a house with boarded windows, Terri saw two profiles.
Chris had his hand on the thief’s neck, shoving his head against the door. Their faces were inches apart.
Terri ran toward them. ‘No,’ she called out.
Chris did not turn. His forehead glistened with sweat; he seemed scarcely to breathe at all. The man stared back at him, angry and frightened. Terri’s purse still dangled from his hand.
Chris gazed into the thief’s face as if he were not human. ‘From his breath,’ Chris said, ‘he’s a smoker. Otherwise I never would have caught him.’
He could have been discussing a dead animal. Terri felt their tension: the rich American, filled with a repressed anger that only Terri could understand; the purse snatcher who must despise him. The thief’s curly hair reminded her of Richie.
He spat in Chris’s face.
Chris’s expression did not change. Just a slight turn of the head, as if interested that the man had understood him.
‘Let him go,’ Terri pleaded softly. ‘Please.’
Chris’s hands seemed to tighten. ‘Check your purse,’ he told her. ‘Make sure you’ve got everything.’
As she took her purse from the thief’s fingers, Chris twisted the collar of his T-shirt. She could see the man’s Adam’s apple work, his spittle on Chris’s face. Chris’s hand still looked swollen.
Terri did not look into the purse. ‘It’s all here,’ she said quickly.
Chris jerked the thief by the neck. Then, as if they were partners in a dance, he turned the man, dragged him a few feet, and bent him backward over the canal – knees flexed, feet on the sidewalk, back and head above the water. The man began struggling, face contorted.
‘If I let you go,’ Chris inquired softly, ‘do you think you can keep your balance?’
Terri froze at something in his voice. Even the thief stopped struggling. Then he gave a belated shrug, pretending that he did not understand.
‘That’s too bad,’ Chris said, ‘because I guess we’ll never know,’ and gently pushed him into the canal.
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