Imperfect Delight

by Andrea de Carlo

  “No.” Yes, yes: she’s getting real pleasure from this exchange, she wishes it would never end. “It would be more or less like eating from a cup, only bigger.”

  “Well?” He looks at her, as if he absolutely must have an answer.

  She feels her heart rate quicken, from the electric pleasure of teasing him and being able to surprise him. She takes a paper bag from the table, opens it. “Well, there’s the waffle basket! The best of both worlds!”

  He seems shaken, as if by a revelation: he comes closer to observe the flared and truncated cone she holds between her fingers, he looks at her. “You really are full of surprises, aren’t you!”

  She smiles; of course she’s pleased to hear him say something like that, but it’s the tone of his voice that accentuates her thrill. “And then there are also the waffle cups, the wafers, and the cannoli.”

  He watches her hands from very close up, seems bewitched by her gestures.

  She takes her coat off, to be freer in her movements, and also because she’s starting to feel hot. She thinks for an instant that her green cardigan is a bit discolored after so many washes, and stretched out at the neck; then she thinks that she couldn’t care less. She peels off the wax paper protecting the gelato in the container: the white and orange of the fior di latte and persimmon are vivid, gorgeous. She holds the waffle basket delicately in her left hand, sinks the spatula into the fior di latte: even the consistency is exactly the way it should be. She forms a little scoop of fior di latte and on top one of persimmon, adjusts them with two or three touch-ups to give them the final shape she likes the most, roundish but neither puffed up like a mushroom cloud nor flattened. She hands him the little basket, hands him a small bamboo spoon.

  He observes it from a distance with his arm outstretched, observes it up close; he half closes his eyes, sticks his tongue out into the persimmon gelato.

  Milena Migliari monitors his expressions and realizes that some rational thoughts are beginning to sneak back into her mind, finding their way through the bizarre exhilaration that’s been occupying it up to now. Again she wonders whether she hasn’t built the whole thing up too much, hasn’t made disappointment practically inevitable for both of them.

  Nick Cruickshank opens his eyes again, twirling the little basket of gelato around in his fingers; he digs the spoon in, brings it to his mouth. He looks pensive, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at her. He goes over to a window, pulling the spoon out from between his lips, extremely slowly.

  Milena Migliari thinks that the first taste has almost certainly disappointed him, and the following ones will continue to do so: that his enthusiastic impressions from the other day have already been deflated by this mediocre result, accompanied, furthermore, by an excess of theorizing and philosophizing. Maybe the fault lies with the tired old grass that Didier’s cows are eating, or the overly fresh hay; or with her state of mind, her inability to be a true professional and not let her work be influenced by events in her personal life.

  Nick Cruickshank partly licks the gelato and partly eats it with the spoon, without saying anything and without looking at her, his back turned. He’s probably searching for the nicest way to tell her that neither the fior di latte nor the persimmon are anything special, and that the waffle basket is just a stupid compromise between a cone and a cup. He’ll feel that he was way off when he thought he had tasted the best gelato in the world. Maybe that’s what happened, due to his having the munchies after smoking a joint: the smell of marijuana when he came into the lab yesterday was unmistakable, despite being mixed with patchouli. He’ll feel stupid for paying her so many groundless compliments; to compensate, he might be just as ferociously sincere now, like in that song of his that was playing on the radio yesterday.

  Milena Migliari wonders what the heck got into her to put herself in such a mortifying position. Was it necessary, really? What type of stupid gratification was she after? Did she want to hear him say that they both belong to a world of extraordinary artistic creativity? Maybe Viviane is right about this, too, when she says that gelato is either good or bad, period, and that there’s no point in trying to turn it into something it isn’t.

  It’s difficult to know how much time has passed; all perception in this room seems filtered, like the frenetic noises around the house that are barely audible when they reach them through the woods, covered by the crackling and hissing of the stove.

  Milena Migliari smooths the wax paper back over the gelato left in the container, puts the cover back on, places the container back in the cooler, along with the spatula and the boxes with cones, cups, and spoons. She thinks that at this point it might be better to say good-bye to him and leave, or leave without even saying good-bye; keep the embarrassment to a minimum, keep the damage to a minimum.

  Nick Cruickshank is now crunching on the waffle basket, maybe as a demonstration, underlining the fact that he was at least able to finish it. He turns around, comes toward her, with an expression that she’s never seen on him; he sets the bamboo spoon down on the table.

  “Listen, you don’t have to say anything, okay?” Milena Migliari picks the cooler up off the table, looks toward the door. She should be able to find the path through the woods even by herself, despite the awful turmoil she’s feeling inside.

  Nick Cruickshank slowly shakes his head; there’s still no trace of theatricality in his movements, which only increases the sadness of the moment.

  Milena Migliari looks once more at the door. She feels a bit cowardly running away like this, without even asking him to explain why he didn’t like the gelato. She feels angry, but not so much at him: at the world in general, at all the faulty reasoning that inflated her expectations, only to deflate them like poorly whipped cream. “It wasn’t good?”

  Nick Cruickshank shakes his head again.

  Milena Migliari now feels the impact of disappointment, though she was convinced she’d already borne the brunt of it and partly gotten past it. Her face is burning, but her blood is cold, her stomach aches. She grips the handle of the cooler, turns around: her legs are already counting the steps to get to the door, to cross back through the holm oak wood, to reach the van, to get off this darn property.

  Suddenly Nick Cruickshank grabs her arm, turns her around to face him; in his eyes is a frightening urgency. “You’ve captured everything in that fior di latte and persimmon. The outside and the inside, rediscovery and loss, the miraculous joy of a moment that melts away. Like in a beautiful poem. Like in a beautiful song.”

  She’s so caught off guard that she’s left breathless; her fingers clamp down even tighter around the handle of the cooler. She tries to create a barrier between the words he just pronounced and the wave of emotions they arouse in her, but the barrier immediately cracks, falls to pieces: her heart slows down, her eyes tear up.

  He gazes at her from very close, and a moment later he pulls her toward him with two hands, presses his lips still cold from the gelato against hers.

  She shuts her mouth as tightly as she can, but almost immediately reopens it, at the taste of the fior di latte, the growing warmth; their tongues slip over one another with uncontrollable impatience, generating inner waves that spread to every corner of her body. The cooler slips from her grasp, falling to the floor: she registers the sound as if it comes from a dimension beyond the one in which she’s currently abandoning herself with increasing speed. Or at least the most familiar version of herself, the years full of tender embraces with Viviane. Familiarity slides off her on all sides and reconstitutes itself as her body and mind absorb the form and consistency and breath of him, so different and at the same time so familiar.

  He holds her tight, looks at her with that dark warm light in his eyes, concentrated on her, absorbed. He continues kissing her, his lips so much softer than she imagined, and just as she expected. He passes his hand over her forehead, her eyebrows, her temples, her hair, her forehead again; the continually renewed contact generates torrents of impulses that sweep
away all questions or attempts at definition. She makes his identical movements, like in a game in front of a mirror: she traces the contours of his face with her fingertips, slowly. They repeat and repeat each gesture, slowly and precisely as if under a spell, they gaze at each other only an inch apart, too close to bring each other into focus. They read each other’s faces with their hands, more than with their eyes; they probe, taste; they press against each other and come apart, they smile: the flow goes on and on, unstoppable.

  They continue like this for a space of time that, once again, she’d be unable to measure, even if she wanted to try. He caresses her in ever-broadening circles, like radar whose range gets progressively wider: one pass after another reaches her shoulders, her hips, her waist, her buttocks, her thighs, then narrows its range once more and concentrates back on her face, her ears, her forehead, her eyebrows.

  She’s completely immersed in these semicircular movements and the sensations they generate, and then just like that her thoughts come back online as quickly as they vanished, dragging her back toward the version of herself from before this embrace began. It suddenly feels like she’s standing on the edge of an abyss; the sense of vertigo makes her stagger. “Hey!” She retreats suddenly, her back banging into the wall.

  Nick Cruickshank moves back too, in that agile and slightly disconnected way of his. He looks at her: intent, almost scared.

  Milena Migliari would like to be able to identify exactly when what was happening between them became wrong. Was it the insistence in his hands, the direction they seemed destined to take, sooner or later? Or has the wrongness been with them from the beginning, ever since they crossed through the woods together and came in here?

  Nick Cruickshank makes a gesture that seems to encompass the room and all that has happened inside the room, back to the gelato tasting; back to when he opened the door for her.

  Milena Migliari wipes her mouth with her hand, sniffles. She thinks that what happened is unforgivable, but it was both of their faults in equal measure; she certainly can’t play the victim, though it would be much more convenient.

  Nick Cruickshank has an air of dejection about him; he gestures toward the main house, the preparatory confusion surrounding it. “Tomorrow I’m getting married.”

  Milena Migliari feels the strangest blend of relief and disappointment well up inside her: it reaches her head with such intensity that she staggers again. She gropes, looking for an answer, and one rises to her lips entirely on its own. “On Monday I’m starting the procedures to have a baby.”

  “Ah.” Nick Cruickshank tries to smile, but it doesn’t come off too well; he looks like someone who just got punched in the stomach.

  “Yes, with my female partner.” Milena Migliari thinks that she could even enjoy seeing the effect of her words if she herself weren’t so incredibly shaken.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  NICK CRUICKSHANK STUDIES the expressions of Milena the gelato girl, and it’s clear she isn’t joking around: she has this direct way of looking at him, with that gleam in her eyes. He searches for something extremely cool to say, but it doesn’t come. “Ah, well.”

  “Well what?” Milena has an attitude of defiance, or it could be strenuous defense; she does not look away.

  “I meant, good.” Nick Cruickshank realizes he’s been caught off guard, and it doesn’t happen to him often.

  “Good what?” Milena is planted firmly in front of him: cheeks red, chin slightly raised.

  “Good for you, right?” Nick Cruickshank is still slipping into and out of the sensations of two minutes ago. What was that kiss? An attempted escape? An attempted invasion? An act of desperation? There was something so unexpected, though: it was like he recognized her from an unknown point in space and time, and that he recognized himself, or a part of himself that he’d lost, or given up looking for. Which probably speaks volumes about the state he’s in at present.

  Milena continues staring at him, a stare that’s less defiant or defensive than it is extremely attentive, scanning him and not liking what it sees. “Which means?”

  “If I were a woman I’d prefer to be with a woman too.” Nick Cruickshank thinks he could have articulated the idea better, but that’s how it comes out.

  “Ah, sure.” Milena moves her head, snorts. “The typical man, playing the game of imagining himself as a woman for two seconds. A nice little erotic trip, eh?”

  “Not at all, no, no.” Nick Cruickshank can’t believe he’s incapable of putting together even the shortest sequence of words to accurately convey his thoughts.

  “Then tell me why.” Milena continues scrutinizing him: inflamed, almost furious now.

  “Because men are so awful.” Nick Cruickshank tries to channel as much truth as he can into his tone, seeing as his verbal tools are disabled. It’s as if a hapless sound technician has turned off his microphone in the middle of a song, and he still has to try desperately to make himself heard, over the protests of the crowd.

  “Why?” Milena keeps the pressure on, doesn’t let him wriggle free.

  “Because of how limited they are.” Now Nick Cruickshank is answering without even reflecting anymore. “How predictable they are. Because of how mean they are, too.”

  Milena makes a visible effort to remain serious, but she can’t; she starts laughing.

  Nick Cruickshank feels an unexpected relief; he laughs too. “Being in a rock band for a few decades is a good way to get to know the worst sides of men.”

  “So is being a woman for a few decades, I can assure you.” Milena has this nice way of laughing, of looking at him; there’s something independent about her, restless.

  “I can imagine.” Nick Cruickshank thinks that yes, the situation is absurd if he thinks about it with a minimum of perspective; but if, on the other hand, he stays inside it, it’s so natural that it doesn’t even seem like a situation.

  Milena shakes her head. “So you hate even yourself, given that you’re a man?”

  “Yes, it happens to me quite often.” Nick Cruickshank focuses on her features, watching to see if she finds the idea amusing or tragic.

  Milena has turned serious again as well, but there’s still a sparkle of amusement in her eyes. “All right, then we have something in common.”

  “That’s not all.” Nick Cruickshank realizes that his sensations are turning into words without first becoming thoughts: they’re skipping that step completely.

  “No?” Milena tilts her head to the side, studying him.

  He feels a tickle in the vicinity of his heart. The space dividing them vibrates with a magnetic tension that he doesn’t think he’s ever felt before, except maybe when he was thirteen; although he was able to describe it pretty well in a couple of songs.

  “What else do you think we have in common?” She looks away, glances at the cooler sitting on the wooden planks of the floor.

  “We’re just all wrong, the both of us.” Once again he doesn’t think before speaking: the thoughts arrive after the words, chasing after them like tired old dogs, with no hope of reaching them in time.

  She turns back to look at him, and there’s an almost frightened look in her eyes now, her pupils are dilated. “All wrong how?”

  “That we don’t belong anywhere.” He makes a semicircular gesture: unconsciously, this too. “That we’ve never quite fit in, despite everything.”

  She clamps her eyelids down tight, as if to be sure what he really means.

  He feels his heartbeat quicken. It’s ridiculous; he thought he was immune to these feelings, permanently. “Wherever we are, whomever we’re with, whatever we do, even if things work out. Even if they work out really well.”

  “Define wrong.” In her expression and in her words is a mix of curiosity and diffidence, a need for raw, unadulterated answers.

  “Our roots are never long enough, in any place or situation. Even if from the outside the opposite might seem true.” It’s another sensation he’s described in a couple of songs; but his son
gs limit themselves to alluding; they certainly don’t explain anything. They might come very close to a precise meaning, then wander off in other directions.

  She nods, nearly the same way he does. “I see myself almost as a sort of intruder.”

  He’s excited by how well attuned they are, and frightened at how she continues to catch him by surprise. “Me too.”

  “Come on, you even invented your own style.” She doesn’t trust words, and she’s right not to. “I even read on the Internet that they call it ‘Cruickshank cool.’ ”

  “Ah, right.” He shakes his head; it seems like such a stupid definition, and he certainly wasn’t the one who invented it. He takes off his jacket, as if he could also shrug off the definition, and the attitudes that go with the definition. “You know what Cruickshank means, in medieval Scottish?”

  “No.” She shakes her head.

  “Crooked leg.” He laughs; points to his legs, which luckily are pretty straight. In truth he discovered that his name probably derives from the River Cruick, in the old county of Kincardine; but the first interpretation has always seemed more appropriate, metaphorically speaking.

  She smiles; she has this total honesty in her features, in her eyes. Like last night, when they were in the circle of huggers; like when, after the hug, they looked at each other without saying anything. “It almost seems like I’m playing the part of someone else. And I’m afraid of being found out, sooner or later.”

  He realizes he’s hanging on her every word, on the snapshot images they create; the idea inebriates and terrorizes him to the same degree. “But not when you’re making your gelato?”

  She wipes her forehead with her hand: she has these strong and delicate fingers, these fingernails cut short, not painted, like a woman who works with her hands. “Not while I’m making it, no. But all I have to do is move from the lab to the shop counter, and I already feel like an impostor.”

  “But you shouldn’t!” His voice comes out with almost desperate emphasis, because it’s as if they’re talking about the songs he’d still like to write, the reasons for his frustration and unhappiness and inspiration and passion.