Two From Isaac's House

by Normandie Fischer

And didn’t that just make her heart do a little happy dance?

  Acie’s voice interrupted her thoughts’ downhill slide. “Speaking of long and tall, my brother-in-law’s last name is Gambacorta. You know what that means? Short leg. Good thing my sister’s only five-six, because can you imagine if it had been you or me with a handle like that?” She barely missed a beat as she changed tangents. “Aren’t you just having a grand time here? All these interesting people. Have you met many at the school? And where are you staying?” The words piled on top of each other, slowing only when the waiter brought their coffees.

  Rina tore open a sugar packet and stirred, not sure which question to answer first, or if she really needed to answer any.

  “I like Italians,” Acie said after sugaring her own cappuccino. “Even the young boys like that waiter make a girl feel attractive.”

  “Do you think so?” Rina glanced at his back as he bent to take someone else’s order. “I guess I’m not good at playing the game even though I know they flirt with anything female. I just end up feeling awkward, and I’m sure to trip over my feet and make a fool of myself.”

  “But look how small those feet are compared to mine. They don’t look like they’d ever catch you up.”

  “My father used to say I was so clumsy, I could trip over a cordless phone.”

  Acie’s eyes danced. “A cordless phone? Either your daddy had a great sense of humor, or he wasn’t very nice.”

  She didn’t answer because she didn’t want sympathy. Besides, a person wasn’t supposed to speak ill of the dead.

  “You’re much too hard on yourself,” Acie said. “You’re lovely and just the right height. Plus, your skin is flawless. Do you have to wear contacts, or are your eyes perfect, too?”

  “No contacts.”

  “See? A model’s figure, great eyes, perfect brows, great hair.”

  “Brown.”

  “Not at all, not with those bronze highlights and your—”

  “Fine, thanks, I appreciate the compliments.”

  “Now I’ve embarrassed you. But look.” Acie nodded to the side. “Obviously, those two agree with me. That one has been staring since you sat down, and check out the one strutting this way.”

  Rina’s gaze followed the nod to find the blue-eyed mammoth watching with a disarming intensity. That newspaper must have hidden him from view when she’d arrived, but now he nodded. She nodded back, hoping no one noticed the red chasing the white right off her face.

  Acie cleared her throat. “And lookee there.”

  An Adonis had stopped less than a table width away. Goodness, but she’d never seen anything like this one’s perfectly molded features, perfectly brown eyes, perfectly open shirt, displaying perfect little dark hairs and three gold chains. She had to clamp her jaw shut so it wouldn’t drop open.

  “Signorine.” He used the plural while pointedly directing his words at her. Flustered, Rina listened with her bits of French and the practice she’d managed with shopkeepers, but she still couldn’t translate many of his words beyond beautiful and evening and aperitif.

  “Did he just offer to buy us a drink?” she asked Acie.

  “Yep. Though I’m not sure he actually included me in the offer.”

  “Rudeness rankles. I hate it.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Maybe Acie did, and maybe she didn’t. In Rina’s experience, being snubbed hurt. She was about to turn away when the Adonis waved his hand at the empty chairs in a gesture she couldn’t mistake. His seductive smile with its come-hither expression was so reminiscent of the cover models on the romance novels Auntie Luze collected that she had to bite her lip to keep from grinning.

  Acie leaned back in her chair. “Okay, I think he just asked if you were waiting for someone. Unless he made that plural, too. It sounded plural. Or formal. I’m still trying to get the hang of this language.”

  “He used the word aspettare. That means to wait, doesn’t it?”

  Acie nodded. “But I’d ignore him. I mean, really.”

  She tried to, only, he was so very pretty, classical-statue pretty.

  “That time he was definitely offering to buy you a drink and included me as an afterthought,” Acie said, flicking her wrist at him. “My life’s story.”

  Rina couldn’t resist answering him in English. “It’s kind of you to say I’m beautiful, or it would be if I thought you meant it, but you get a big, fat zero in the manners department. Which means you’d better work on your seduction technique.”

  Acie’s glare turned to a giggle. “You know a lot about seductions?”

  “I read.”

  “Non ho capito. Non parla italiano? You do not speak Italian?”

  “Parlo un po’,” she said, using words from her limited vocabulary. “Grazie, no. We would rather be alone this evening.”

  “You tell him, girlfriend.” That bit of home and Acie’s little air jab resurrected her grin, which elongated at the man’s scowl. He really was eye candy.

  “Ma, signorina, you perhaps have mistaken,” he said, switching to partial English. “I am the student of the medicine. I am a serious person.”

  Rina turned back to the other woman. “You think?”

  Acie snorted. “Look at the plumage.”

  “Scusi?” He actually arched two elegant eyebrows.

  The perfect description surfaced, and Rina couldn’t remember if she’d read it or had begun to think in romantic form: ‘His coal black orbs glared maliciously from beneath crested brows.’ She really ought to dig out her notebook. Auntie Luze would swoon.

  His smooth voice, which matched the rest of him, continued. “I, myself, am a student at the university—”

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  “I show to you the Perugia,” he said, as if she’d been nodding instead of sarcastic. “Mio cugino, he is a… how do you say it? A… a chef. He will prepare such a feast for you. Ti faccio vedere la città…” He waved his arms outward and then kissed his fingertips to lips. “Incredibile. I show you una serata beautiful. You must say yes.”

  He seemed so convinced she would agree once she properly understood his circumstances, and he was so incredibly gorgeous that she had to pause to let her scruples reassert themselves.

  “Not having second thoughts, are you?” Acie asked.

  “No. Only, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone with a face quite like that, at least not outside the movies, and I’ve certainly never been propositioned by one before. I need to savor the moment.”

  “And if you say no, there goes the dinner his cousin would fix.”

  “And the view.” She sighed and looked up at her expectant suitor. “You are very kind, but I cannot accept your invitation.”

  His expressive face slid into an exaggerated disappointment. “Un’altra volta, allora?”

  “Another time? No, thank you, but I think not.”

  With a shrug, he tucked his fingers in the pockets of his tight jeans and sauntered away.

  Acie turned first from staring. “Mmm…”

  “Exactly.”

  “But bad news. And probably empty-headed in spite of the university studies, Lord love him.”

  “Prejudiced against a pretty face?”

  “Not usually,” Acie said, with what looked like a wistful expression. “I’ve pictures of my mama from her modeling days—magazines, catalogs, that sort of thing, you know?—from before she married Daddy, and there’s not a thing wrong with her brain.” She stared out at the street before continuing. “They seem such a funny pair, he as plain as they come, like me, all red and spotted, and she a natural blond with perfect features. He still jokes about having snared the beauty queen. They’re madly in love, always showing it in front of us, though Mama giggles and blushes whenever he does crazy things like twirling her around to some imaginary music. He adores her, in spite of her changing figure. Makes me have hope.”

  “What? To have someone dance with you?”

  “Well, it’s me looking
like him and all. He got her, so I figure maybe I’ve got a chance, you know? Then again, maybe it doesn’t work so well if the woman’s the plain one.”

  “You’re not plain at all.” She studied Acie’s features and the mouth that overshadowed them all with a smile so infectious, it made Rina want to grin right back. Acie could certainly work that one to her advantage.

  “Did you know,” Rina said, shifting topics, “I saw you on the train. You were in the corridor, talking to an English woman.”

  “Were you there, too? It was so awful. Poor Natalie.”

  “What do you mean, awful? What happened to her?”

  “Nothing to her. It was her friend, the one she was looking for when I met her. I’ve had nightmares thinking how something like that could have happened without any of us knowing. And in broad daylight.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The man. The one pushed off the train—”

  “Pushed? Someone was pushed off the train?” Rina’s voice hit a squeaky high as the reality of those noises from the corridor flashed her back to that moment when she’d thought the outside door had opened.

  “The whole thing was written up in the papers. She, Natalie, seemed really jumpy. You know, looking over her shoulder? They discovered his body near the tracks.” Acie reached for her cup, found it empty, and raised her hand to get the waiter’s attention before abruptly lowering it. “You all right?”

  Rina lowered her voice. “I think I heard it.”

  “Heard it? Heard what?”

  She couldn’t answer.

  “You mean the murder?”

  Murder. She’d heard murder.

  “Why didn’t you report it?”

  “I… I was in the bathroom. I heard something slide down the door. Then I’m sure the main door to the outside opened—from the way the sounds changed, you know? And there was some kind of bumping noise. It spooked me, I can tell you. I didn’t come out right away, and when I did, everything seemed so normal, I thought maybe I’d imagined the whole thing, heard noises from the doors between the cars, maybe just someone waiting for the bathroom, then giving up. One doesn’t automatically suspect murder.”

  “Lord, have mercy.” Acie clamped her hands together, her eyes alight. “This is crazy. First, I meet the woman who was the dead man’s friend, then I meet the one who heard him die. Things like this don’t happen every day.”

  “If that isn’t—”

  “I know, shallow, callous. But true. Right?” Acie grinned.

  “Did they ever find out who pushed him?”

  “Not according to the papers. I even had my brother-in-law check through his connections. Not a word.”

  “And this Natalie?” Rina tore at her napkin and dropped it in small, ragged squares on the table, because at least that kept her fingers busy. And it kept her from hightailing it out of there.

  “I didn’t keep in touch with her, not after trying to help on the train. I wish I’d not left her on her own at the end. She kept saying he must have got himself stuck in some loo—that’s what they call the bathroom—so she went off to her compartment to wait. She didn’t leave the train in Perugia, and, to tell the truth, by then I’d forgotten her because of the twins. Maybe I’ll see her when she visits her Arab boyfriend.”

  Arab? “I was sitting in the same compartment with an Arab. At least, I think he was Arab. Or an Iranian.” The napkin bits fell into two neat piles. She wouldn’t look up or think about that man, that day. “He’s what had driven me to the bathroom—”

  Acie reached over. “I don’t mean to interrupt,” she said without bothering to whisper, “but speaking of Arabs, he’s doing it again.”

  “Who is? What?”

  “That fellow who was staring at you earlier, the one with those eyes.”

  “Could you lower your voice, please? We’ve drawn enough attention.”

  His stare, of course, compelled hers, and she felt her face change hue. Again. She seemed to blush for blushing, which was so unattractive.

  She nodded another hello before whispering, “Why do you call him an Arab? He’s an American. He helped me with my suitcase, and he goes to the language school.”

  Acie’s own non-whisper could probably be heard across three tables. “He speaks Arabic. I heard him chatting with a couple of them before you came. In case you haven’t noticed, the place is crawling with them, even one with greenish eyes whose great-great must have been a crusader. That one?” She nodded toward the American. “He may be bigger than the Italian, but, honey, he doesn’t come close in the looks department.”

  Rina only half listened. Disconcerting, the way he stared now instead of coming over to speak and did so with an intensity that held none of his earlier nodding friendliness.

  How strange to be swamped with all this attention. Until today, she’d spent the evenings watching the parade: the dressed-up women, the giggling girls, the boys who followed in groups. Some had tried to follow her, but she hadn’t needed her bag against any bottom pinchers, and she’d learned to turn her back on the cajolers until they went after easier prey.

  And now? What was so different?

  Odd that he was an Arab—or merely spoke Arabic—this stranger who’d been looming into her thoughts. At least he didn’t wear a holster like the man on the train. Unless his was tucked up at his ankle.

  She’d just ignore him.

  “Odd, isn’t it? I mean, does this always happen, men staring?” Acie asked in an echo of her thoughts.

  Rina snorted. “Hardly.” Her gaze wandered from Acie to the table to her hands on the table to her cup and finally back to Acie. She wouldn’t look at him. She wouldn’t.

  And when she did, she regretted it. His stare caught her, the pull of those eyes, so strangely blue against the bronzed skin. His nose was aquiline, his mouth asymmetrical. He still wasn’t smiling, but he did nod. She turned away again.

  Acie’s voice broke the spell. “By the way, you want me to call you Rina or Rina Lynne?”

  “Just Rina.”

  “Good name. So how do you spell it?”

  “R-I-N-A. I’m named after my mama.”

  “Unusual. How about another cappuccino? Something else?”

  “No, thank you. I think I’d better be going.”

  “Maybe we can get together for lunch some day? Compare Atlantic Beach stories?”

  “That would be fun.” Right now, all she wanted to do was escape.

  “Here’s my sister’s phone number. Her husband has that restaurant behind the fountain. It’s a great place to eat. Maybe I can get away some day this week. And you’re staying at…?”

  “The Convent Pensione Maria Augustina.”

  Over the street noises, Rina heard a newspaper rustle, or maybe she only saw him fold the sheets, take money from his pocket, and leave it on the table. Maybe only her eyes were aware of him pushing back his chair and walking off without a glance in her direction, to be lost among the milling people. Barely noticing Acie’s words bouncing in the air, she picked up the scribbled note, paid her bill, and mumbled a thank you and a quick goodnight.

  Dusk descended gently in the Piazza 4 Novembre as she headed back to the pensione. The Fontana Maggiore no longer splashed prisms, but its spray lured a few laughing children. Some gathered around the pigeon feeder sitting on the cathedral steps in his fancy black suit and his felt hat, tossing seeds at the birds. She paused to watch, reluctant to return to her empty room. Perhaps she should have stayed longer with Acie, been more open, more willing for the quick intimacy her new friend seemed to want.

  Leaving the piazza, she stopped to buy airmail stamps for her letters home and then picked up two thick slices of spinach and sausage pizza. She tucked away the wrapped one and carried the other to eat as she ambled down the Via Bontempi. Wasn’t it fun to know how to order, the words to say when asked what she wanted? She bit into the cheese-laden deliciousness.

  The few rays of sun barely penetrated the narrow reaches of
this small street and couldn’t dispel the growing shadows. The fruit vendor stood at his open doorway, waiting for a last customer or two, while his wife swept the floor. “Buona sera, signorina. Sarà una bella notte.”

  “Sì.” She wiped oil from her lips and smiled, loving that she could understand his words. It would be a lovely night. The moon, pale still, promised fullness, promised mystery. She should return to the town center to savor it.

  She’d lost her chance to do that with Acie, and she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it had been the American’s unsmiling stare or her own lack of practice at friend-making. She had certainly let her world constrict. If only.

  If only.

  She quickened her pace, hoping that exercise would clear her brain and body of a longing she couldn’t fix, but as she turned the corner, two large hands reached out and grabbed her arms to stop her from walking straight into him. “Good evening.”

  “You.” She shook off his hands and backed away so she wouldn’t have to stare at lips that once again grinned. Why now? Why not back at Santino’s?

  “You were expecting someone else?”

  “Why are you following me? Why were you watching me that way?”

  He bowed. “May I introduce myself? I am Anton Rasad, at your service.” His eyes held an impish quality at odds with his size. “And you are Rina Lynne, if I heard correctly.”

  She ignored the glint.

  “Of course,” he said, as if she’d answered, “you may call me Tony. All my friends do. And I hate to contradict a lady, but I’m afraid you’re mistaken on one point: I didn’t follow you. You’ll recall, you ran into me.”

  She zipped her lips. She would not answer.

  “I did leave the café first.” He smiled with both his lips and those eyes that almost compelled her to stare into them. “But I take this as a gift from a beneficent Providence. As for staring at you, I apologize. I was rude. But then, we keep having these encounters, don’t we? As if it’s meant.”

  “What do you mean, meant? I don’t think anything’s meant between us.”

  “Don’t you? Perhaps our other not-quite-meetings have merely been a prelude. And this time, Rina Lynne, you were worth watching.”