The Opposite of Chance

by Margaret Hermes

  “No.”

  She stepped in and closed the door behind her and began unbuttoning her blouse.

  “I love my wife,” he said.

  “I know. That’s why you will never tell her about this night.”

  “And what about Gian Marco?”

  “You love him, too. That’s why you will not tell him either.”

  In the morning, when he saw the Ingria brothers slink out of the hotel before breakfast, Signor Alfieri was torn between the urge to bloody Gian Marco’s too handsome face on behalf of his used and discarded daughter and heaving a sigh of relief.

  Relief won.

  Everything Changes Now

  11.

  When Betsy got off the train in Le Havre, she felt like a character in a Dickens novel, much buffeted about by fate and in imminent need of a deus ex machina. Arriving at the harbor after dark, she squeezed past the leering hulk blocking the doorway of the merchant marine hotel and prayed she had landed in Dickens rather than Mickey Spillane. It was too late to leave the wharf area to look for more hospitable lodgings. She hadn’t seen a single taxi in the last half hour anyway.

  Once in her room, with the dubious blanket removed to the dresser and the straight-back chair wedged under the handle of the door, she sniffed the pillow before taking pen to paper to try to convey to her sister the present assault on all her senses and sensibilities. The waft of oil thinned with brine. The moan of a foghorn and slurp of waves lapping against the docks. The featureless warehouses drained of all color, their skins peeled away by recurrent salt mists. The steel wool feel of the stained blanket. The man in the room opposing hers sitting astride a straight-back chair, bare-chested, suspenders hanging, staring out his open door into the hallway. It was the first time in her travels that she wished herself back in Milwaukee, but she would not tell her sister that.

  She also wouldn’t report that the middle-aged Italian hotelkeeper she had written about so condescendingly in her previous letter had cast her out. Even though she could tell both her sister and herself that nothing had happened between them, she felt soiled. And then disposed of. She let the paper and pen slip to the floor.

  That night, as she had searched near the docks for a place to sleep until the ferry’s morning departure for Rosslare, she had seen only men—stevedores, sailors, wharf rats—slouching on and off the piers, smoking against buildings, and later, in varying stages of undress, passing between their grim cells in the merchant marine hotel and the fish-foul water closet at the end of the hall. And then there was the skeletal little man with the scar across his chin who had pocketed her francs and led her up the complaining, ill-lit stairs to a room that lacked both a number and a working lock. When she had held out her hand for the key, he shrugged and retreated down the steps. “Le clef, s’il vous plaît?” she called after him several times, her voice rising in mounting panic until she realized she was only alerting the rest of the floor to her vulnerability.

  Her vulnerability.

  What had happened to her in Cernobbio? And what had almost happened?

  She had kept on the move since she boarded the steamer that took her away from the Albergo Giannino. Now she was not only stationary, she wasn’t sure she’d ever get to leave this place, at least not upright. She would have said she was petrified, but that suggested that her insides had turned to stone instead of to liquid. She was sure she was intended to be the victim of some criminal, if not fatal, act before this night in Le Havre was over. Even as she wrapped her arms around the fear roiling in her midsection, she thought about how it was only men who had ever made her feel this way: pathetic. Greg, Signor Alfieri, the brute across the hall perched on his chair like a vulture.

  She was getting used to thinking of herself as prey.

  And what about the women Greg bedded? Were they his prey? Would that still be an appropriate term if they had been his coconspirators?

  Had he preyed upon her? “Yes,” she whispered into the night. Even though he hadn’t needed to pursue her. He had preyed upon her gullibility. No, she wasn’t being fair to her former self, to Greg’s wife. He had preyed upon her trust in him.

  Another hour trickled past.

  Staring into the streaked mirror above the dresser, Betsy decided that it was not Signor Alfieri who was responsible for her humiliation, no matter what that louse had said or done. It was her willingness to consider him, no matter how briefly—in spite of finding his person unappealing, and his behavior grotesque—that made his dismissal humiliating.

  What had caused her to lose her sense of herself? Had she been made vulnerable by her attachment to the twisted threesome in Florence? By the feeling that, once again, she had been easily duped, a too-willing believer?

  A long-forgotten scene seemed to leap randomly into her consciousness. She could see herself and Greg and their closest friends Marilyn and Alan sitting around the mahogany dining table passing the teardrop-shaped jug of wine and patting their full bellies.

  When the four of them would converge, at some point the men would commandeer the living room, to watch a sporting event or to talk national politics or philosophy department politics, while the women shifted into the kitchen to invent a meal together. “We should patent this one,” Marilyn would say ritually when they had finished eating.

  On the night that was revolving in Betsy‘s brain like a slow-moving zoetrope, Alan was keeping up a stream of patter and sweeping gestures, a mesmerizing stage magician sans cape. “Have you guys ever thought about wife swapping?” he said suddenly, pulling the rabbit out of the hat. He beamed as he emptied the last of the Almaden equally into the four glasses.

  Betsy wrinkled her nose as if Alan had released a foul smell into her dining room. “What’s there to think about?” she had asked with conversation-killing sincerity.

  Alan shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems like more and more people are doing it. Or at least talking about it.” He affected an upper-crust English accent, “Thought it might be jolly for us to talk about it too.”

  “Really?” Betsy studied Alan to make sure he wasn’t setting her up for one of his extended jokes. “What kind of people? Don’t you assume that the people who are into wife swapping are just bored and boring? Not anyone you’d be interested in spending time with. But go ahead. Tell us. What are they like—these people who talk about wife swapping?”

  “I don’t know,” Alan said, pushing away from the table and the conversation. “Not jolly after all, eh what?” Then, in his own voice, “Sorry I brought it up.”

  Marilyn turned the talk to the announcement of President Carter granting unconditional pardons to the Vietnam draft evaders, launching the foursome into an hour of speculation as to which of their friends who had escaped to Canada would remain there and which would be returning to the States.

  Later, as the couple was leaving, Marilyn said to Betsy, “Alan didn’t mean to upset you. You know he loves you. We both do.”

  Surprised that Marilyn could have thought she’d taken Alan seriously, Betsy assured her friend she hadn’t been at all upset. And now here in this cramped, dingy room in Le Havre where she was expecting to be attacked, she wondered if she had been too dense to be upset. Now, as she replayed the scene she slowed the animation down and saw the looks, the nods, and shrugs that passed among the other three, saw the spark of possibility smothered by the wet blanket of their dismissal, saw their resignation.

  As if she had been slapped awake, she was struck by this new comprehension of the depth of Greg’s betrayal. That he had hatched this plot with Marilyn and Alan. That he had not first discussed the idea with her. That it fell to Alan to talk her into it. That her husband had never thought of her as his partner, not even in this.

  Even in retrospect this episode didn’t make her feel like a woman who had kindled desire. It made her feel like a commodity. Something to be traded. Swapped.

  She suppos
ed that was why the memory had surfaced. It had been evoked by the feeling that her role in Florence was transactional. And by the certainty that the hotel owner in Cernobbio regarded her not as a person but as an object.

  And yet she had to admit to herself that, on some level, she’d been seeking reassurance from Alfieri. Did she need him to convince her that she was desirable? To persuade her. To overcome her disbelief in herself. She supposed she wanted something—someone—to save her. Most probably a man. Someone who would obliterate her past—all those lost years with Greg, those squandered days in Florence.

  Did everything come back to Greg’s constant unfaithfulness? Ah, now there was an oxymoron.

  Or had she been looking for a fling she could walk away from? Sex with someone she wouldn’t care about. Someone it would be easy to forget.

  All of the above, she supposed. Betsy shook herself. Men as saviors, men as predators—she was done with that. From this moment. Everything changes now. Suddenly it came to her with a flash, a cleansing fury: They would never call it husband swapping.

  Prey no more, she resolved to stay up to meet any invaders, whatever their national origins (she had no doubt as to their gender), with both blade and corkscrew of her travel-sized Swiss Army Knife extended.

  Surprised to be awakened at first light by bustling and cursing and heavy footsteps along the corridor and none of it pausing at her door, she sat up and stretched. Without shadows, what had appeared menacing by night became merely shabby in the early light. She hadn’t undressed, lying on top of the sheet ready for her assailants, so she smoothed down her clothes, ran a comb through her hair, grabbed her backpack, and bounded down the rickety stairs two at a time.

  She hadn’t expected a dining area or a breakfast or other female hotel guests, but she found them all just the same.

  Two rough-hewn plank tables, their tops worn smooth, stretched almost the length of the narrow room. Several men, including her neighbor from across the corridor, sat singly, scattered around the windowless room. She approached the table where three reassuringly prim, middle-aged women were clustered at one end. Theirs were the only voices to be heard, and hearteningly, they were speaking English.

  “May I join you?” she asked.

  “And wouldn’t we be glad of your company?” said one with a short, tight perm of jet-black curls and a thick brogue.

  “We would indeed,” agreed the second, smiling, showing teeth like two rows of kernels of dried corn. Her hand shot up to shield her mouth from view and she nodded to one side, indicating that Betsy should sit.

  “We’re that glad of a new face!” contributed the third companion, whose protruding eyes put an exclamation point to everything she said.

  “I was afraid this was supposed to be a hotel for men only,” Betsy said gratefully as she dropped to the bench. “And I couldn’t imagine why I was allowed to stay except that they were planning to . . . ” Had she expected robbery, rape, or murder?

  The woman next to her nodded and whispered from behind her hand, “I don’t think any of us caught a wink all night, all those big hardchaws rambling about.” She raised her voice, “You need to tell that chappy who’s headed over would you want your sandwich with or without ham.”

  “Jam-bone,” offered the one with the curls helpfully.

  “S’il vous plat, non jambon,” Betsy instructed the same little man with the scar who had shown her to her room the night before. He slapped two long slabs of bread glued together with butter down onto the surface of the table in front of her. She reconsidered the sandwich. “Pardon, monsieur. Avec jambon, s’il vous plaît.” He whisked the bread away and returned with the same two slabs now plumped with ham as well as butter. Wordlessly he set a steaming bowl of coffee and milk down at her place before disappearing from the room. Betsy waited till he was gone to confide, “There was no lock on my door.”

  “Saints preserve us!” said the first woman, her suspiciously dark curls bobbing as she shuddered.

  “Sure and wouldn’t that frighten the bejaysus out of you!” said the one next to her from behind the hand.

  “It would make you jump up and never come down!” exclaimed the one with the big eyes.

  “I sat up armed with a corkscrew, but I must have fallen asleep. Nothing happened,” she shrugged, “but I’d wedged a chair under the doorknob just in case.”

  “Aren’t you the brave girl!” The eyes grew impossibly wider.

  “But,” said the one with the perm, looking around the room at the other diners and taking inventory, “you aren’t here on your own surely?”

  “I’m traveling alone.” Betsy was surprised to hear the pride in her voice. She realized she was bragging.

  “Well, I never!” said Big Eyes.

  “No,” came from the bouncing hair. “You never did and you never could.” She turned her attention back to Betsy. “We’re after havin’ our first trip abroad, the three of us. To Dijon. Like that mustard. Our cousin Nola.” Her voice dropped, “Nola married a Frenchie.” She stopped and made the sign of the cross upon herself, much as Betsy supposed had been done through the ages at the mention of a witch or a wasting disease.

  “A terrible tragedy,” sniffed her benchmate and Betsy assumed she was referring to the unfortunate foreign marriage.

  “That it was,” said Big Eyes solemnly. “Taken in the bloom of life. Poor Nola.”

  “Oh!” Betsy realized they were on their way home from a funeral. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Too young,” confirmed the black curls.

  “That she was,” clucked Big Eyes. “Not a day over eighty.”

  Betsy stifled a laugh, turning it into a genteel cough, and managed a few more words of condolence.

  “We’ll be getting into the queue out there,” said the one next to her, head turned away. “We’ll hold a place for you, but you’d best get your skates on. Boarding starts any minute.”

  “Mind you put on a jersey,” cautioned the one with the improbable hair as all three stood in concert. “There’s a wind up this morning.”

  “Imagine! And her door without a lock!” floated back to Betsy as the trio made their way out to the docks.

  Betsy worked determinedly at her butter and ham sandwich, having no idea what food might be available on an overnight ferryboat. The only ferry she had ever taken anywhere was the five-hour car ferry from Manitowoc across Lake Michigan. She was eager to get outside and rejoin the women. She enjoyed the lilt of their voices and the sense of being young and adventurous they’d conferred upon her. After Italy, she hadn’t expected to feel young ever again.

  She cursed herself for relegating her sweater to the bottom of her backpack, necessitating that everything be removed and repacked, but she wanted to please them and they might be right about her needing it at least on deck. The whole process, eating and repacking, seemed to take forever. And perhaps it had for, by the time she got herself and her belongings outside, a sea of travelers covered the dock. It was hard to recognize this as the desolate warren of warehouses she had wandered through the night before. The sun had risen white bright and bodies were everywhere, a pulsing assemblage waiting to surge onto the ferry. She stood blinking, as much from the spectacle as from the light. She couldn’t see her new friends or hear their voices. She would have tried calling their names but realized with a start that none of them had gotten around to introducing themselves. Disheartened, she fell in at the back of the throng.

  “Is it a funeral yer headed for?” a male voice inquired in her ear.

  “No,” she snapped. Had he been in the dining room and overheard a snatch of the conversation about Cousin Nola?

  “You’ve got a face on you like a Lurgan spade. Wouldn’t you say, Colin?”

  “What?” She whirled to confront her accuser. Though she had no idea what she was being accused of, she was determined not to project an air of vulnerability.


  He had a full crop of springy red hair and a wide smile.

  “Well, at least I’m not wearing a Ronald McDonald wig.” Betsy couldn’t believe her words. Apparently she couldn’t find the middle ground between coming off as pathetically vulnerable and acting uncommonly offensive. She turned to face forward, wishing she could plead unfamiliarity with the language as her excuse.

  “Fair play! Colin, we’ve got ourselves a Yank! And didn’t she slag me off? Colin, come down off that cloud, will you.” He turned back to Betsy. “He’s mooning after that wan there.”

  When Betsy looked over her shoulder, she could see why. A few yards off stood a pair of raven-haired stunners, the girl with her abundant hair parted severely, the part like a weathervane pointing in the direction of the lovestruck boy. Hard to say which of the two was more striking, Colin with his chiseled chin and sea-green eyes or the nameless “wan” with the bale of hair.

  “Those two met up in Paris, City of Love, City of Light, City of Pommes Frites. Her ladyship”—he nodded over his shoulder—“was traveling by herself alone after breaking up with her shite boyfriend and I might as well have been traveling by myself alone ever since. He’s after wearing the face off her. She’ll be needing the plastic surgeon. Do you believe in love at first sight? Despite the proof before my eyes every day since Paris, I was an agnostic. Until this minute, that is.” He grinned at her. “Ah, it’s grand to finally have another ear to bend—I’ve been talking to myself for the last two hundred kilometers. That self being Brian John David Samuel Beattie from the borough of Lisburn, which you might be knowing better as the ‘Ringfort of Gamblers.’ I’m an Ulsterman. And who might you be when you’re at home?”

  Betsy was eager to make amends for the idiotic Ronald McDonald remark but waited to make sure he would draw breath long enough for her to respond.

  “Elizabeth Jane Baumgartner from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which you might know better as Beer City, Brew City, or Cream City.”

  “Even more appealing than the City of Pommes Frites.” He squinted at her in the sunlight. “It suits you.”