Follow That Blonde

by Joan Smith

  “Am I being unreasonable?” she demanded. “I mean tell me if I'm being unreasonable."

  “You're being unreasonable. Bert didn't know Maria would be there. He went a mile out of his way trying to avoid her."

  “I don't mean that! It's his stupid lies, letting on he never had anything to do with her except to take her to a movie, and that mob scene birthday party at her house."

  “What's that got to do with you? It's ancient history. You haven't been exactly twiddling your thumbs the past few years."

  “You're not listening, Lana. It's the lying. How can anyone establish a relationship if there's no trust? If he'd just come right out and say ‘I had an affair with her,’ that'd be it. I'd understand. The thing is, he's crazy about the girl. That's what's eating him inside. If it weren't for Luigi, he'd be married to her right now, this minute."

  “He tried to avoid her tonight. Do you want the bathroom first?” I asked, hoping to derail her, and already regretting that I'd get stuck with her bathroom mess. Jealousy had had the undesirable effect of making Bert seem more appealing. That much was obvious.

  She ranted on awhile longer about mutual trust and integrity, then said, “And what's with you and Nick? You seemed pretty touchy."

  “He lied, too.” She gave me an interested look, and I told her what Nick had said about wanting to paint my picture nude.

  “What's wrong with that? He's an artist, Lana. They're like doctors where the naked body is concerned. To them it's just an arrangement of planes and curves and angles. You shouldn't take it so personally."

  “Silly me. I feel taking off my clothes for a man is personal. Bert said he uses it as a ploy to get women."

  “Men are bastards."

  “Yes, even the ones with a full set of parents."

  “Are we really leaving in the morning?"

  “Yes. We'll have to send Nick some sort of present before we leave. Flowers or wine or something, to show our appreciation."

  “You can't send flowers to a man. We'll never know what happened—about the Frageaus and everything."

  “Maybe we'll read it in the papers."

  “It'd be more fun to be here."

  “Fun?"

  “More exciting than being at home anyway. I wouldn't mind too much missing Salerno.” Nancy was at the mirror, taking off her jewelry. She peered over her shoulder to see how I took to this idea.

  I busied myself removing my pantyhose and examining my Band-Aids. They had stayed in place remarkably well. “I hope this doesn't turn into a corn. That's all I need."

  “About Salerno ... The thing is, I promised Bert I'd move his car for him tomorrow. Before the fight, I promised. The American student he sublet his apartment to needs the parking space."

  Talk about weak excuses. “How can you move a car with a busted rad?"

  “His friend was supposed to have it fixed by tomorrow at ten."

  “Friend—ha! He probably isn't even a mechanic. Besides, this is Italy. You know perfectly well the car won't be fixed. And anyway, what's the problem? He can park it here, hide it in the garage if he doesn't want Conan to know he's living here."

  “He's afraid Luigi'll be waiting for him at the apartment. The man's an animal."

  “Let Nick move it then."

  “I said I would, and I don't want to break my word. Luigi wouldn't hurt a woman."

  “No, but the traffic would. You must be crazy, offering to drive here."

  “I happen to have a perfect driving record. I've never had an accident in ten years."

  We weren't really arguing about her lame excuse of moving the car, but about staying on at Nick's. I didn't plan to give in on this one and said, “We might have time to move it before the bus leaves. We could park it at the bus terminal. That should confuse Conan."

  “Yeah,” she said, disappointed that I'd managed to find a way for her to keep her promise, and still leave. Now that I'd succeeded, I was none too happy about it myself.

  Sleep was difficult with Nancy sniffling into her pillow, and a heaviness on my own heart. The interlude was over. Our romantic vacation would resume its unromantic tenor of bus, hotel, sightseeing, eating, hotel, bus, sightseeing. It was like putting down a book halfway through. We'd never know who dunnit, as it were. Maybe Nick would call from Boston when he went to visit his father at Christmas. Maybe.

  Eventually we slept, and in the morning I woke early. Nancy was still sawing logs. She must have cried half the night, because she was usually up revoltingly early. Like any normal emotional coward, I waited till she was up and dressed before going downstairs, using the extra time to pack my suitcase. I needn't have bothered waiting. Nick was in his studio, working on the Frageau. Bert was at the table alone, looking down at the mouth.

  “I called the bus and trains,” he said with a quick dart of his eyes at Nancy. “Your best bet's the eleven-fifteen direct to Naples. You don't want to get on the local that stops at every chicken farm and olive tree."

  “Then I'll be able to move your car before I leave,” Nancy replied coolly. “If you'll give me the keys, I'll do it right after I pack. Lana suggested we leave it at the bus terminal."

  “How do we get to the apartment, by taxi?” I asked.

  “Nick'll drive you there,” Bert said.

  “He's had breakfast, has he?"

  “All he could get down was coffee. Poor Nick.” Bert's green eyes slid uncertainly in my direction. “You've been pretty tough on him, Lana. After all, you can't blame a guy for trying.” I felt, however, that you could blame him for trying in such a shabby and unoriginal way. “Reminds me, he said to call him when you gals came down."

  He got up and went to the studio. Nick came back with him, looking subdued and rather continental with a paisley scarf around his neck. Not stuck into the shirt like an ascot, but just tied with the ends out loose. He gazed into my eyes and said, "Buon giorno, signorina."

  It was the first time he'd spoken Italian to me. I'd heard him speaking it to other people, but there was some seduction in hearing the intimate susurrus of the syllables, and seeing the apologetic gleam in his obsidian eyes. I said, “Hi."

  “Any of that coffee left?"

  I poured, and he sat beside me. “Want to see the Frageau? It's about finished. I did it in four hours. They used to take me weeks."

  “Thanks, I'd love to. What are you planning to do with it?"

  “Use it as a catalyst, and see if I can stir up some excitement."

  “How?"

  “I haven't decided yet. I have to do a quick aging job on it. It shouldn't look brand new. The acrylics dry very quickly. There are some Gauloises around here someplace. Smoke helps."

  Over breakfast of fruit, coffee, and croissants, we talked about this safe subject, unwilling to shatter the fragile truce by discussing more meaningful matters. After breakfast, I went to the studio with Nick. The Frageau was on the easel, looking impressive but very new. It was a fairly complex expressionist thing, executed with a lot of verve and enthusiasm. I unwisely used the word Cubism. Nick looked offended.

  “They were so studied! If Pollock slashed instead of dripped, he might have done something like this.” The signature was copied from the “Frageau” in Art World, with a big, bold F in black, and the rest of the letters smaller.

  “I didn't use much white. White looked too new,” he explained, “but I always used some, so I put in these thin lines."

  “You splattered this up in four hours, and some idiot's willing to pay you fifty thousand dollars for it. It just doesn't seem fair."

  “It helps make up for all the hundreds of hours spent on works that didn't bring a penny. The irony is that I wanted money so badly when I was doing this sort of work, and never got it. I just wanted to impress my dad. Money was the only thing that would do it. An artist has to choose between two routes—being part of the establishment, or the loner. With my father's warnings of failure ringing in my ears, I studied the successful artists and decided this was what art patr
ons wanted. Well, they didn't—not then. So I left Paris and just did what I wanted to do. I ignored the art dealers, the galleries, all that. I worked alone, till a friend took one of my paintings to a gallery here in Rome. The dealer loved it, and placed four or five paintings with known collectors, but then he thought if I made my canvases a little darker, a little more in the Renaissance style...” He gave a rueful shake of his bead.

  “You mean—forgeries?"

  “Oh no, just imitations. So I left him, but by that time I had a coterie of admirers. Then Bert came along, and with the intention of thumbing my nose at the establishment, I hired him as my agent. To my surprise and delight, he's a good one.” I must have looked disbelieving, because he added, “We artists are expected to be a little outré, and besides, Bert—” He stopped and shrugged his shoulders.

  I had a fair idea what had happened. He knew perfectly well Bert was scrounging for a living. He felt sorry for him, but didn't want to give charity. Bert had that ability of appealing to soft-hearted people. He was also a good scrounger, and had managed to sell the paintings. “I guess Bert must seem pretty outré to the art world."

  “He adds a breath of fresh air. And of course the fact that he's a foreigner in Italy tends to—” He came to a sudden stop, not wanting to come right out and say that this helped hide Bert's blemishes.

  He hurried on with a longish spiel. “I've gone from anonymity to the edge of making it big. I have a house, money in the bank. Like lots of artists, I've had to sell my watch, or clothes or furniture to buy pigments. It's knowing that one day we might sell for a good price that gives us heart to go on. It applies to all the creative arts, I imagine. Music, writing, etc. It's the lure of major success that goads us on. And of course the impossibility of quitting,” he added matter-of-factly. “Art is a mistress. Difficult, demanding, soul destroying when it goes wrong, but when it goes right, it's better than—” He stopped again. I mentally filled in the three letter S word. “No, Freud is dead,” he said, apparently reading my mind. “It's heaven!"

  “Ah, God has come back to life."

  He turned the soft gleam of his black diamond eyes on me and said gently, “I have to believe in Him, since I've come to know you. What went wrong between us, Lana? Was it jealousy of the Contessa? Rosa's a happily married woman."

  “You achieved a first-name basis, did you?"

  “Yes, and that's all I achieved. I'm not a minuteman, you know. It was strictly business last night. We went to the party to see what we could discover. I discovered she's extremely eager to get a look at my early work. I wasn't trying to make her my mistress."

  He put his arms around my waist and smiled tentatively. “It's you I want to make love with,” he said. His arms tightened. His black silk head lowered, and his warm lips found mine.

  I had often pictured kissing Nick. In my fantasies, it happened at night in some romantic spot with warm Italian zephyrs breathing over us. It must have been his terrace, because in my mind's eyes, that particular view of Rome spread below us. Yet it wasn't exactly his terrace. There was the gurgle of fountains that are so omnipresent in Rome.

  It had never happened in a studio smelling of paints, in broad daylight, with the door open. Truth to tell, in the fantasy, there had been a little more persistence on his part. Now I seized his lips with an unmaidenly eagerness, and thrust my meager feminine allurements against his chest. The seduction of his caresses, especially the endearments murmured in Italian that were breathed into my ear between kisses, caused my innards to turn to warm zabaione. He used words like bella, deliziosa, carissima. And as his artistic fingers reached for my breasts, stupendo, which was a gross exaggeration. I nearly forgot the word “mistress.” It was his using the word letto that brought it to mind. Rather similar to the French word for bed—le lit.

  After a delightful wrestling match I disentangled myself from his clinging arms. “Bert says, the bus leaves at eleven-fifteen."

  “You're not leaving now!” It was a protesting howl of disbelief.

  “No, not till eleven-fifteen. Well, I suppose we should leave by ten-fifteen, that will give us time to move Bert's car and make it to the bus station."

  Astonishment blazed on his handsome face. “I'll take you to the bus station. I'll move the car,” he offered eagerly.

  All this compliance was in the interest of arranging time for letto. As it also saved Nancy and me the hair-raising risk of driving in Italy, however, I accepted graciously. “Would you? Then we'll have time for another cup of coffee before we have to pack.” He couldn't know I already had, and besides, Nancy hadn't. I headed for the door.

  “But—” I heard the frustration in his voice, and kept on walking.

  CHAPTER 10

  While we had more coffee, Bert decided he'd drive downtown with us. Apparently he felt safe in a crowd, safer than being alone at the villa. “You can drop me off at the Quattrocento while you pick up my car and take the girls to the bus depot, Nick. I'll talk to Alberto, see if any of our French friends have shown up."

  Nancy, who is often surprisingly capable of keeping her head while all about her have lost theirs, said, “No, you'll have to take Nick's car when we reach your apartment, Bert, or it will be left behind. The student needs the parking space, doesn't he?"

  “Oh yeah. I forgot."

  “Then you might as well take your own car,” I suggested.

  A confusing conversation ensued, in which the men discussed who would follow whom where, to ensure that neither of them had to walk a step. It was eventually worked out that Bert would pick up his own car and drive it to the Quattrocento while Nick took us to the bus stop. I kept wondering when we were going to find time to send Nick the wine. We'd have to do it from Salerno.

  Nick said, “You stick around the gallery till I get there, Bert, and if Boisvert or his friend show, follow them."

  “Roger."

  In a sad and sentimental mood, Nancy and I wanted to say goodbye to Rome from Nick's terrace. After she had packed, we went out there, around to the side where the tiled roofs gleamed in the sunlight, their serenity punctuated with domes, campaniles, and spires, and the cars streamed down the hill. Nancy was blubbering into a Kleenex. My tears stayed in my throat, like a wet sponge. We didn't speak, but just looked and sighed.

  After we had stored up memories for home, I said, “We'd better go."

  The men were waiting at the bottom of the stairs with our luggage, which had grown into a small mountain. “We have a bit of a problemo, ladies,” Bert pointed out. “We're never going to get all this gear into the Alfa-Romeo with four passengers."

  I felt cheated. I was going to have to say goodbye to Nick here, our last moments together torn from us. “Right, we'd better call a taxi,” I said, in a businesslike way.

  “I could take one of you,” Nick suggested, looking hopefully at me. “The taxi would be crowded, too."

  “Nancy won't want to go alone,” I pointed out.

  Nick looked at me as if I'd struck him. “I'll call the taxi.” He pronounced it tassi, which is the Italian word for it. It was his way of slurring his words that made his speech sound so romantic.

  He called the taxi and we all waited, promising to write. Nick said he'd call me at Christmas from Boston, but he probably wouldn't. Bert said he'd be touching down in the good old U.S. of A. one of these days. Then the taxi came and we left, smiling determinedly till the door was slammed and we were off, smothered in luggage.

  Neither Nancy nor I had much idea where the bus station was, but Nancy had an inkling the man was taking us the wrong way, through heavier traffic than necessary to slow us down, and increase the fare. I had put on my dark glasses to hide the moistness of my eyes, and let her worry about it. She kept looking out the window and complaining out loud. Suddenly she made a convulsive leap and shouted, “Stop! Arretez!"

  “That's French,” I told her.

  “Stop! Didn't you see him?"

  “Who?"

  “Boisvert! That was him
going into that hotel."

  The driver squealed to a stop and poured a tirade of angry Italian over us.

  "Quant'è la corsa?" Nancy asked, and started pulling bills out of her purse.

  The driver told her a price that sounded grossly inordinate. She paid and we got out, pulling our suitcases after us. We stood in the middle of a so-so street, not a slum, but certainly not the Via Condotti.

  “He went in there!” Nancy said, pointing to an old stone hotel. The sign above said Risorgimento, and it looked about that vintage, mid-nineteenth century, which is fairly modern for Italy.

  “We're going to miss the bus to Naples."

  We exchanged a broad grin. “Yeah,” she said, and laughed. “We have to phone Nick. I hope they haven't left the house."

  “They were going to do something about aging the Frageau before they left. I'll watch the hotel for Boisvert. You find a phone and call Nick."

  “We'll check our bags at the Risorgimento,” she said. “Boisvert doesn't know what we look like."

  “They won't let us leave our bags if we don't hire a room."

  Nancy stuck out her boobs and smiled. “Don't be silly.” With her few Italian phrases and her long eyelashes and cantilevered bra, she got our cases stowed safely behind the reception desk, and even had the clerk place the call for us. I listened while she hissed into the receiver, “Nick, it's me, Nancy. That Mr. Greenwood you're interested in ... I found him for you."

  Nick's voice sounded like the bark of a dog. She relayed her message, smiled sweetly at the clerk, and said, "Grazie, signore."

  The clerk glowed with pleasure, and we left. “What'd Nick say?” I asked.

  “He's coming right down."

  “Boisvert will kill him!"

  “He's bringing a gun. There are terrorists in Italy,” she added, when my eyes bulged at the news that Nick owned a gun. “He says we should take a cab back to his place."

  “Is Bert coming with him?"

  “He didn't say."