Follow That Blonde

by Joan Smith

“He planned to attempt some blackmail. I expect he would have made Boisvert hand over the two Frageaus he had, or he'd threaten to call the police and reveal everything he knew—with you in person to substantiate it. He wouldn't have done it, of course, but it was a good threat. I imagine they would have killed you, if Boisvert had knuckled under to the threat. Boisvert would have made that his term of acceptance. While you were alive, he was in imminent danger of being exposed for the vile vermin he is. You shouldn't have gone barging in there alone. You might better have confided in me."

  “I wasn't sure you were quite innocent either, Rosa."

  “Touché. It was fortunate you called me, in any case. You didn't know my reputation, then? I was afraid, when you called, that my doing the odd job for Interpol had become public knowledge,” she explained.

  “I suspected you might be with Interpol,” he said.

  “I would appreciate it if you not bruit it about town. I'm presently involved in a rather important case—some ancient Egyptian artifacts that have been smuggled to Roma. You'll be required to give evidence in the Frageau case, but there's no reason my name must surface. I'll see that you recover all the money from Boisvert, if he hasn't spent it, or got it smuggled into a Swiss account. In any case, this sort of notoriety will do your reputation any amount of good."

  “Notoriety!” Nick exclaimed in high dudgeon.

  Her hand found its way to his arm and gave a reassuring squeeze. “Those of us who matter will know the truth, Niccolò. There is no denying the general public will misunderstand and believe you are a crook. They like that sort of thing in America. You'll find, I suspect, that your Frageaus are in higher demand than your real art."

  Bert's eyes wore a conniving expression. I foresaw him urging Nick to paint more Frageaus. But when he spoke, it was about something else. “Who disabled Nick's car at the Forum last night, Contessa, and why?"

  “That was Claude. Since he and Réné were in Rome, I used them to keep an eye on you and Boisvert, to give them something to fill their reports. It is all tapisserie in France, you know—red tape. Claude was watching your house, and followed you to the Forum. He phoned me to learn where Boisvert was. We had some little fear Boisvert might succeed in killing you, Niccolò. But I knew from Réné that Boisvert was with Luigi Mineo at the time. Claude wasn't supposed to let you know you were being followed. I told him to come here, planning to give him a good lecture. I also told him to fix your car so you couldn't follow him here. As Claude and Réné had revealed themselves to you, that would only alert you that I was Interpol. I wasn't sure I wanted you to know that."

  We soon left, before she could foist any more espresso on us, and went out to the Alfa-Romeo. It had a ticket stuck under the broken windshield wiper. Nick removed it and put it under the wiper of the car behind him.

  Bert leaned over Nick's seat and said, “We're sitting on a gold mine here, my man. You did that Frageau in four hours. Four hours—and God only knows what price it'll fetch now that you're notorious."

  “I am not notorious! I'm a respectable artist."

  “Respectable artist—a contradiction in terms, Nick. Like a virgin whore. The worse your reputation is, the better they'll like you Look at Van Gogh—slicing off his ear for some hooker."

  “For Gauguin,” Nick corrected.

  “You're kidding! You mean he was a perv?"

  “No; it wasn't like that."

  “Wouldn't surprise me. Goya was a regular sleaze. And I'm pretty sure old Michelangelo liked the ladies—or maybe it was the men. They're all perverts. Man, you'll make the cover of People magazine."

  “My father will kill me,” Nick said weakly, and put his head on the wheel of the car. Then he lifted it and smiled. “But Mama will be happy. She likes scandal."

  Rome was reawakening from its interminable coma, which they jokingly call the lunch hour, when we coasted down the hill, into the lethal traffic of the inner city.

  “Tonight we celebrate!” Nick decided.

  But “tonight” was a few hours away, and first we celebrated at an open café, drinking the Castelli white wine that rushed to the head, inducing a delightful giddiness.

  Giddily, we discussed the past few days, and attempted to clarify any little confusion that lingered.

  “She thought I was a crook,” Nick kept saying, shaking his head sadly. “She,” of course, was the Contessa.

  “Nothing personal. Mistrusting people's her business,” Bert explained. “She liked you. Better than Maria liked me. I'm the one that was used. I hope they lock Conan up tight for a couple of decades."

  “And Boisvert,” Nick added. “I trusted that man. He was like a father to me. He called all his artists his sons, unless they're women, of course. Then he called them 'cherie.’”

  The voices became whispers on the wind, breezing past my ears. Across the street, old and crumbling medieval buildings hunkered together, as if guarding some ancient secret. Disinterested pedestrians jostled along, ignoring the lost waif tourists. I felt the cooling benediction of the ponentino against my brow, the westerly wind from the distant sea that rescues you just when you think you can take no more heat. Traffic wheeled by. More pedestrians, obviously Romans, launched unconcernedly into its perilous flow. Horns blared. Fists rose and shook in mock anger. Rome was a mock city, half show, half museum. That was its secret. Its inhabitants were all actors, enjoying the role of Roman citizens. I smiled bemusedly at this insight.

  When we left the café and Nick cut into a line of fast-moving traffic, my knuckles did not turn white. No knot hardened in my stomach. I had become acclimatized to Rome. I turned a dismissing, Roman blank-eyed look on the performing traffic policeman in his white helmet and gloves.

  We took our siesta late, but we took it. Nancy and I went up to our room at the villa.

  “Has Bert said anything about going back to the States?” I asked. She knew what I meant: Has he proposed?

  “He said he often thinks about it.” She was answering the question asked, not the one meant. “He'd like to go back, but he says he can't. He has his work here—Nick's beginning to make it big. Bert's approaching thirty. He thinks he'll be behind all the gang he went to school with if he goes home. You know, starting out somewhere like a kid fresh out of high school, probably working for someone younger than he is. He only has a high school education."

  “He has a lot of foreign travel experience,” I said. “He speaks some Italian and French."

  She just looked. We both knew how limited the demand was for foreign tongues in Troy. “He'd never get a decent job at home. And what could I do in Rome?” she asked in a perfectly rhetorical manner.

  “I love Rome. I wish I could stay."

  “Did Nick say anything?"

  “He said he couldn't stand our winters."

  “Hmph. Maybe if you changed your hair...".

  As this conversation was only depressing the hell out of us, we lay down and closed our eyes and pretended we were resting. At seven-thirty we got up and dressed for the celebration dinner. I didn't feel a single wince when we left the room in an utter shambles. What had happened to me?

  Dinner wasn't till nine, and probably wouldn't end till midnight. In an effort to make the evening enjoyable for us, Nick and Bert chose a restaurant designed for tourists. It was neither theater nor museum, but an international, high-priced place in the Trastevere, where the waiters spoke English. Oh, they acted Italian for the customers, with their beaming smiles and balletic hands and pirouetting feet, but they didn't fool me. This wasn't the real Rome. The service was too good. The waiters were too polite. I felt gypped.

  The fettuccini was fresh, the clam sauce was fine, and the wine was better than average, served in earthenware amphorae. Other pseudo Italian touches abounded—plaster busts of emperors on plaster columns, imitation fresco murals in the style of Raphael, and lots of antipasti. We all tried very hard to be high-spirited, but it was about as enjoyable as a baby's funeral. A pall hung over our table, punctuated by o
ccasional efforts at gaiety on the part of whoever had the ambition to tell a joke, mostly Bert.

  I looked at the other customers, tourists like me and Nancy, except that they thought this was the real Rome. Even the music was tourist style. They played “Isle of Capri” and “That's Amore,” and a black-haired young man sang one verse in Italian to lend a foreign air to it. When they struck up “Arrivederci, Roma,” I couldn't stand it any longer. Unshed tears burned the back of my dry eyes. Nick hadn't said a word about the future.

  We left before eleven. “We'll catch that eleven-fifteen bus to Salerno tomorrow morning,” I said to Nancy, loud enough for everyone to hear. Nancy didn't answer.

  Silence reigned in the backseat, except for a few soft murmurings and the rustle of Bert's jacket as he got his arms around Nancy. My heart felt like a boulder, weighing me down. I refused to look out the windows at the lights of Rome. I just looked straight ahead through the windshield, watching the red lights of the car ahead of us, while the wind whistled through the bullet holes. I had no idea where we were going, but when Nick turned into a parking area beside the Tiber, I knew this wasn't the route to his house.

  Bert came to life in the backseat. “A sentimental journey, you old sentimental son of a gun,” he laughed. “This is where Nick hauled me out of the river—right at this piling, wasn't it, Nick?"

  “This, or one like it,” Nick said.

  “I've got to see this!” Nancy said, and we all got out.

  Below, the writhing bodies of an amorous twosome were sprawled over the bridge pier, ignoring the Tiber's roar a few feet away. The place was a lovers’ lane, which made me wonder whether Bert had fallen out of a boat or been pushed in the drink by his girlfriend. I also wondered what Nick had been doing there. Bert took Nancy below to show her where Nick fished him out of the drink.

  “You'd have to be Tarzan to get down there!” Nancy objected. She was wearing high heels.

  “No Tarzan. Me Dante, you Beatrice,” I heard Bert croon.

  If she married him after that, she deserved him.

  “Shall we walk along the river bank?” Nick suggested.

  We walked, hand in hand, looking at the dark roll of water. “Father Tiber, to whom the Romans pray,” Nick quoted.

  “Is that Shakespeare?"

  “No, Macaulay, from the Lays of Ancient Rome."

  I suppressed the bad pun that immediately came to mind. “Pagans, praying to a river."

  “Shall we say a prayer? Make our petition to Father Tiber?"

  “I've already wasted my change in the Fountain of Trevi."

  “Did you make a wish to come back to Rome one day?"

  “1 think that one's free. I wished for—” I had wished for an exciting, romantic holiday. They say you should be careful what you pray for. Your prayer might be granted. I should have included a note that I wanted the romance to outlive the holiday. I didn't know the Gods of the Fountains were so literal-minded.

  His hand slid up my arm, and thence around my waist. Our hips jostled companionably as we strolled along in the moonlight. At least, I think there was moonlight, up above the lights of the city. “What did you wish for?” We stopped walking, and he gazed pensively at me, waiting for my answer.

  “Money."

  “A thoroughly modern, American wish. I wished for success."

  “A thoroughly modern, universal wish."

  “And love,” he smiled softly.

  “One out of two ain't bad."

  “Oh, I plan to be successful yet.” His dazzling smile hovered above me, insinuating, possessive, wary.

  “You are successful!"

  “Then I'm twice blessed. In love, and successful.” A wary gleam shot from his eyes as he risked lowering his head for a kiss that let off fireworks inside me. But love is a weasel word. What it meant to him might be different from what it meant to me.

  “That wasn't so bad, was it?” he asked gently, and laughed.

  I laughed, too, nervously, and pulled away to continue our stroll. “You're like a porcupine!” he complained. “I'm trying to ask you to marry me, Lana."

  To my infinite relief, I did not exclaim “Marry!” aloud, though the word reverberated like thunder in my head. I said, “Oh,” rather vaguely. “And what about the winters?"

  “They're much warmer here."

  “I teach during the winter."

  “It seems redundant, teaching English to people who speak English. In Italy, you could teach English to Italians. Much more sensible. We could live in America for three-quarters of the year. The way you like, in an old brick house. With two children, and a dog. I'd like that. A man needs roots. I shouldn't be pointing out the advantages to myself!” he exclaimed guiltily. “Bert said you're old-fashioned. You'd never marry a foreigner. But I'm only partly Roman."

  I felt I was partly Roman, too. “Maybe half the year in the States,” I said. “But could you paint there?"

  “I can paint anywhere. America's beautiful. But I'd like to paint people now. I'd like to paint you, with your fierce school teacher's scowl, and your lovely Renaissance eyes. I've noticed short-sighted women have those sort of eyes."

  I slid off my glasses, the better to reveal my lovely eyes. “And I want to be near Bert at first, to see he doesn't display me in McDonald's,” Nick continued. “He mentioned it last night. If Nancy marries him, she'll tone him down,” he added. “He's my friend. I can't drop him now that my career is becoming worth his while. Has she said anything?"

  “She'll say yes,” I said.

  "Eccellente." His words were a sibilant seduction in my ear. “I'll give them the new Frageau for a wedding gift. And you? Do you say yes, Lana?"

  “What was the question again?"

  He replied in Italian, with both hands, both lips—in fact the whole body, the way Italians speak. Being half Roman myself, I replied in the same vein. The Gods of the Fountains had understood after all. Rome had claimed a part of me for her own, and I had won the noblest Roman of them all, or at least the one I wanted.

  * * *

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