Imperfect Delight

by Andrea de Carlo

  The rapping of knuckles on glass keeps coming from the store’s door, increasingly insistent: it simply won’t stop.

  “What do we do?” Guadalupe now looks almost frightened; she clearly perceives Milena Migliari’s agitation.

  “Go see who it is, tell them we’re closed. There is a sign and everything, for goodness’ sake.” Milena Migliari hates the idea of being so shaken, but she’s simply unable to calm down. Maybe the idea of everything that has to happen on Monday has destabilized her even more than she imagined, it’s throwing her completely out of whack. Yesterday she had constant mood swings, and now she has this irregular heartbeat, this shallow breathing.

  Guadalupe goes into the shop but doesn’t follow instructions; she opens the door. A voice says, “Were you planning to leave me outside?”

  And it’s certainly not the voice of Nick Cruickshank: it’s the voice of Viviane. A moment later she appears at the lab door, all smiling and gushing. “Hey, ma poulette! How’s it going?”

  “Good.” Milena Migliari is shocked, because she would have placed Viviane at work in her studio in Draguignan at least an hour ago, because they’re not in the habit of surprising each other like this, and because she feels a kind of absurd and unjustified disappointment.

  “I wanted to show you something!” Viviane waves a hand back and forth in front of her, continues smiling, excited in a totally atypical way.

  “What?” Milena Migliari steps back a couple of inches, defensively, because she’s almost positive that the something has to do with their appointment on Monday at the Centre Plamondon, and everything that will follow.

  “Look at this! This! It’s right in front of your face!” Viviane slows the movement of her hand, thrusts her left wrist forward: on the inside of it, in the same place where she has hers, is an identical tattoo, the two inverted As formed by a snake that’s slithering wave-like over a transversal line. A real tattoo, not drawn on with a pen as a joke, and freshly done, with the soothing cream on it to protect the skin made hypersensitive by the needle.

  Milena Migliari is lost for words: it’s the last thing in the world she would have expected from Viviane, after all she’s heard her say about the ugliness of tattoos and the stupidity of the reasons for getting them. They’ve even argued about it several times, when she was defending hers, together with the idea that it can be nice to leave a permanent sign on your body that reveals a side of your character or a glimpse of your dreams.

  “Arte and Amore, no?” Viviane continues showing off her left wrist, doesn’t stop smiling. She’s trying to pass it off as a caprice, but her eyes are watering behind her lenses; it’s not often that she gets this emotional.

  Milena Migliari makes as if to say something, but the thought that out of love for her Viviane could have done something so contrary to her own nature pours over her like a bucketful of ice water. It’s a small tattoo, and on a part of the body that isn’t very visible, but what’s overwhelming is the degree of dedication it reveals. Milena Migliari’s eyes fill with tears; she bursts out crying, uncontrollably.

  “Hey!” Viviane comes over to hug her, holds her tight. “If I’d known it was going to have this effect on you, I’d have thought twice about it!”

  Milena Migliari shakes her head, sobs, struggles to catch her breath; she knows full well that Viviane must have thought about it not twice but a thousand times before overcoming the resistance of her well-rooted convictions and making up her mind to do it. She leans her head on her shoulder, her facing sinking between coat and sweater, still crying. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “But I was happy to!” Viviane pushes her back to look at her: some tears slide down her face as well; with two fingers she wipes them away from under her glasses. “I thought it was something nice. Right now, no? I went to that patient of mine who has the tattoo parlor in Callian. I showed him the picture of your wrist I had on my phone!”

  Milena Migliari would like to stop crying, but she can’t; the more she thinks about it the more she cries.

  “It’s identical to yours, no?” Viviane grabs her left wrist to compare it with her own, puts them side by side.

  “Yes.” Milena Migliari nods, sniffles. The two tattoos really are almost identical, though hers is slightly discolored with time and Viviane’s seems a little smaller, with the As a bit narrower, maybe because her wrist is a little wider.

  “So, I have to run, otherwise my clients will kill me!” Viviane lets go of her wrist, gives her a kiss, shakes off the emotion. She nods to Guadalupe, standing by the refrigerator, observing in silence; in a few steps Viviane is out of the lab, out of the shop.

  Milena Migliari takes a piece of tissue paper out of a box, dries her eyes, her cheeks, blows her nose.

  Guadalupe looks at her, her eyes a bit teary as well. “I would never have imagined Viviane getting a tattoo.”

  “Me neither.” Milena Migliari blows her nose again, looks up at the ceiling to stop the tears. Is her reaction excessive? Has she been overwhelmed more by her own feelings of guilt than by the emotion, because of how she is not equally willing to overcome her own natural resistance in the name of a joint project? Is her resistance really even natural at all, or is it just fear, or excuses dictated by egotism?

  “Anyway, it was such a romantic gesture. Really.” Guadalupe fans herself with her hand, as if to dissolve the emotion.

  “Yes, really.” The strangest thing is that as soon as she says it, the possibility dawns on her that Viviane’s gesture might not have been a romantic outpouring at all, but an act of seizure. These consecutive thoughts are so radically different that they throw her completely, nearly make her drop the ladle.

  “Everything all right?” Guadalupe looks at her, apprehensive.

  “Can you lock the door to the shop, please? Before anyone else comes in?” Milena Migliari tries to refocus on the batter, but she can’t. The surge of emotion comes back to her, she nearly starts crying again, and a moment later the tenderness once again gives way to confusion, the confusion to anger. For a few minutes it seems like she can interpret Viviane’s gesture both positively and negatively, like those hologram postcards whose image changes depending on how you hold it. But the more she thinks about it, the more the second interpretation begins to gain ground. She turns over her wrist, looks at it: these two mirror-image As belong to her life before gelato, before France, before meeting Viviane during that torrid summer, vibrant with cicadas. They’re traces of a part of her that in Viviane arouses incomprehension, sometimes hostility, maybe because she has never really wanted to share it. The truth is that Viviane has always hated this tattoo, claiming she hated tattoos in general; and rightfully so, moreover, because the part of her this tattoo represents is the part Viviane will never be able to possess. She would certainly have preferred to have her get it removed, instead of having to copy it: a couple of times she even suggested it, talking in a falsely casual tone about her client who has a workshop in Nice where they do tattoo erasure with the Q-switched lasers, without leaving any marks.

  Milena Migliari grinds more kernels of cardamom, more white pepper into the chestnut gelato mix. The more she thinks about it, the more her ideas become muddled. One moment it seems like Viviane’s gesture is emotional blackmail at the very least; the next it seems once more like an act of extraordinary generosity. One moment she feels like the victim of an act of cannibalism; the next like an ungrateful monster. She sways from one interpretation to the other, breathless, unsure.

  “Aren’t you adding too much pepper?” Guadalupe looks increasingly concerned.

  “I don’t know.” Milena Migliari sticks a teaspoon into the mix, brings it to her mouth, tastes. Yes, of course: there’s too much pepper, too much cardamom, too much salt; the chestnut flavor is ruined. Even trying to consider it as an unconventional interpretation, it doesn’t work, it’s not pleasurable, it’s awful. She takes the mixing bowl, dumps the mix into the sink, turns on the faucet, washes it all down the drain.


  Guadalupe watches her in dismay, like she’s just witnessed an act of pure lunacy.

  Milena Migliari turns defiant in her own defense, but she’s demoralized to the depths of her soul. “We all make mistakes, okay?! And we’ll go on making them!”

  Guadalupe nods; she probably thinks her employer is pretty unstable.

  TWENTY-TWO

  NICK CRUICKSHANK LOOKS out, from behind the slightly pulled-back curtain of one of the windows in his studio: the lawn in front of the house has turned into a frenetic construction site, with workers, gardeners, and electricians setting up gazebos, pavilions, small arches, floral galleries, tables, bars, a small stage, heat lamps, lighting, projectors, speakers. Aileen is going back and forth from one point to another, indicating, explaining, gathering small groups of people, dispersing them, conspiring with her holistic consultant named Fiona, her architect friend just in from Antibes, with the head of catering who has arrived from Nice, with Tom Harlan, with the Star Life team, with Nishanath Kapoor, who came out with a thousand requests concerning his role tomorrow before his feet even hit the ground. Farther in the distance Aldino, with his long strides, is sweeping the perimeters of the lawn, the woods, and the olive grove along with his colleague from Monte Carlo; it’s understandable that Aldino won’t start to relax until all the reinforcements arrive, because already the situation seems difficult to control.

  Nick Cruickshank realizes he’s torn between his admiration at the thought of Aileen’s ability to handle so many details with so much commitment, and his distress for the exact same reason. How can these two sentiments be practically equal in strength, the former not easily prevail over the latter? And why find suddenly distressing traits of Aileen that he’s always valued, like her amazing persistence, her ability never to lose sight of a single goal she sets herself? What did he expect, that she have an on/off button in her head, to switch from the multifunctional frenzy of when she’s out and about in the world to an absorbed and even slightly absentminded tranquillity when she’s at home with him? Is it the most isolationist part of him that feels besieged, the one that repeatedly holes up somewhere and cuts ties with the rest of the world, with the excuse of creative needs?

  How is Aileen supposed to be in order to satisfy him 100 percent instead of 50? More devoted to him? But she’s extremely devoted: she’s able to solve any practical problem he runs into in the blink of an eye, put to rest any of his artistic doubts with a few words. Calmer? But Aileen being calm is simply an oxymoron: if he saw her lounging poolside on a chaise longue his first reaction would be to call her doctor, or at the very least her holistic consultant. Should she at least now and then be able to set aside her super-organizer vocation? But no one is really capable of changing; he of all people should know. He even wrote one of his best songs about it: “Stop Looking for a Stripeless Zebra (You’ll Only Get a Donkey).”

  But how come he accepted without argument the idea of the posh party here at Les Vieux Oliviers? With a few initial misgivings, but nothing more? With lots of initial misgivings, fine, but all retracted in the face of Aileen’s stubbornness? So as not to disappoint her? For the sake of domestic harmony? How come he didn’t counter with a proposal of a simple and secret ceremony, perhaps on a tiny Greek island? Because he knew that she would have taken it as an insult, a reduction in status compared to his previous two wives (who certainly didn’t go into hiding for their weddings)? Could he have unconsciously gone along with it solely to bring the situation to a head? One thing’s for sure: on a small Greek island Aileen would not have been able to give free rein to the inexhaustible enterprising spirit she’s currently putting on display, out there on the lawn. And Star Life wouldn’t be there sponsoring and making public every detail, there wouldn’t be the famous guests (at least not the ones he loathes), there wouldn’t be all the chatter there’s going to be about the two of them, her, Anti-leather. But Aileen is certainly no opportunist, certainly no social climber: her family background is more than solid, she was worldly wise long before getting together with him, she’s now a very successful entrepreneur. She certainly doesn’t need an occasion like this to garner herself more publicity. Does she?

  Nick Cruickshank is suddenly reminded of the circle of huggers from last night: the smooth, disconcerting innocence of their faces, the lack of ulterior motives in their expressions, the total absence of poses or airs. All right, they were all in their twenties, almost certainly still living with their families, still free of the working world, the pressing responsibilities, the wear and tear of all that’s tiring and ugly about real life. It would be nice to see those huggers again in five or ten years; many of them probably won’t be so picturesque anymore, unless they’ve become vagabonds or saints. A couple of them might be genuine and not temporary idealists who never develop the craving for material goods or social recognition; but idealists are boring. They show off their moral superiority, always have something to teach you; in the long run they become unbearable. Like Milton Jernigan, who in the 1970s wrote two or three beautiful sad songs and about twenty mediocre sad songs and succeeded in becoming a cult figure because, after a certain point, he refused to collect his royalties and lived like a bum, before hanging himself from that tree in Kinver Forest.

  And Milena the Italian gelato girl? She isn’t a twentysomething leeching off her family, and neither does she seem like an idealist with a head full of moral, political, and artistic clichés. Yet last night she seemed just as uncontaminated as the others in that circle; she didn’t seem to be asking for or proposing any type of barter either. Ditto when he went to visit her at the gelateria to tell her he had never tasted such delicious gelato in his entire life. She smiled, sure, but not smugly; she rushed to change the subject, talk about something else. But what does he really know about her? He’s seen her three times: the first they barely said hello, the second they spoke for a couple of minutes, the third they didn’t say a word. Is he attributing imaginary characteristics to a total stranger just because she doesn’t easily fall into any of the human categories he knows? Just because at the moment he feels like he’s drowning?

  It wouldn’t be the first time he’s invested unfounded expectations in a woman with whom he barely exchanged a few words (or none at all), merely on the basis of her features or her way of moving, a look, a gesture, even an unconventional piece of clothing. Maybe without even having seen her up close, letting himself get carried away by what he thought he glimpsed from a distance. How many damn times has he been sure he saw something? How often has he come up empty-handed? It’s a childish attitude, no doubt about it, and it’s been the cause of numerous embarrassing situations, and others decidedly regrettable. He remembers all too well the dizzying falls upon waking up to reality, the mutual disappointment; the endless confusion, the feeling of being the biggest idiot imaginable.

  And anyway, this Milena might very well have a bizarre relationship with her work and maybe with the world, but when he kissed her on the forehead in her gelateria he clearly felt her stiffen. Last night, too, when purely by chance they hugged each other in the market square in Fayence and then opened their eyes and discovered each other’s identity, she didn’t seem content in the slightest. You only have to encroach on her safe distance, and there’s resistance in her looks and gestures; it’s there. Maybe in a different moment he would have seen her as a challenge to try to overcome, but not now. He’s long since ceased to be the sentimental pirate who seeks out difficult women and uses them and then forgets them the day after without worrying about the consequences, if he ever was. Why has she popped back into his head now? And before? Because of the strange coincidence that he ended up hugging her, of all the people in that circle? But her gelateria is a few steps from the market square; there’s nothing that strange about her passing by after closing up. And there were nineteen people in the circle, him included: the chances of hugging her weren’t really that small. Does it depend on the fact that the other day when she brought the gelato with her van and h
e saw her next to Aileen they seemed like women with opposite physiques, characters, mannerisms, clothes, everything? That between these two feminine opposites it seemed, if only for a moment, that all his approval went to her, instead of to Aileen? That it ran to her in a way that wasn’t thought out at all, but purely instinctive? What was it, another manifestation of his ridiculous idea that there might be some sort of miraculous encounter awaiting him, somewhere, sooner or later? It’s another symptom of that drowning syndrome, no doubt about it.

  Nick Cruickshank sneaks out of his studio, goes down the hallway as quietly as he can, careful not to be seen by the guests who are chatting and chuckling and guzzling in the living room, hoping to find refuge in the kitchen, in the protected and comforting kingdom of Madame Jeanne.

  But of course the guests see him, just when he thinks he’s managed to slip away unscathed: Wally points an annoying finger at him. “Hey, Nick! Where the fuck are you sneaking off to?”

  “I have to go check on something,” Nick Cruickshank forces himself to respond politely, when he’d really like to tell him to mind his own goddamn business, to keep right on swigging that eighteen-year-old Jameson of his and leave him the hell alone.

  Wally sneers; he’s always been the most invasive and insistent person he knows. It isn’t simply stubbornness mixed with a lack of tact: when Wally wants something he starts hammering away and hammering away and doesn’t quit until he gets it, and to hell with any other considerations. It’s what’s made him the bassist he is, with that unrelenting, incessant, obsessive style that earned him the nickname “The Wall.” And that’s how he’s gone about attaining everything he has today: joining the Bebonkers even though the others didn’t like him, forcing his musical ideas into their arrangements even when the others weren’t sure about them, investing his money in surprisingly profitable mutual funds even when his financial consultant didn’t agree, bedding hundreds or maybe thousands of poor groupies who would have preferred anyone else in the band, marrying nearly identical women three times in a row, all of whom at least at first found him revolting. His uncommon invasiveness and insistence have produced such impressive results, and for so long, that he doesn’t have a reason in the world to abandon them: not a one. “That horseback ride you promised us? When the fuck are we doing it?”