Siracusa

by Delia Ephron

  She had a view of the centaur’s ass from an attic room small and dismal enough to be in a college dorm. Felt idiotic having sex on a single bed. After sex we could study. Or the roommate would show up.

  Keep her on the string. Do whatever it takes. “When we’re back in New York—I swear, I’ll buy you a ring as soon as we’re back.”

  “Today, Mikey.”

  We’d pretended it had all gone well, that my cock hadn’t failed in the line of duty. Quite perversely it had made it in and then gone limp. My conscience turned out to reside there.

  “Are you sleeping with her too?” she said.

  “No,” I lied.

  Couldn’t get it up earlier with Lizzie either, but she said, “My luck, eat me,” and spread her legs.

  K wiggled naked on the bed, her magnificent breasts lolling this way and that. “Giovanni Di Battista,” she said.

  “Our primo artist”—Dani, K’s collaborator, had told her about him, supplied a glossy brochure. “Artesa Jewels. Inspired by the sea.” Sea horses with diamond scales. Octopus pins with ruby eyes. Gaudy stones. Attention getters. Rings for a Las Vegas moll. That’s who I was—a high roller with a chippie when I strolled into Giovanni’s shop with K hanging off my arm.

  We had left the hotel separately. K had insisted I get the directions. “You’re the man,” she had said, a dubious assertion when she could tell me like a dog to sit. I was thinking about my credit card. Lizzie paid the bill. What did these rings cost? Should I take euros from an ATM? Either way she would notice.

  I was screwed. Obsessing about that distracted me. When K, flattened against a building, popped out into my path, I gasped like a girl.

  “Woo-hoo,” she said.

  Knew where the others were. Taylor with Snow at the Caravaggio. Finn and Lizzie at the market, although who knew where their spirits might take them. Hopefully to bed. Wise to proceed furtively, sneaking for K a turn-on—or as she said, “a fun thing”—now that our days of secrecy were numbered. “I can’t wait till we go public,” she said. She must have learned that expression from the posse that got her here. Making a game of it, she’d peek around a corner, wave back an all-clear. In between she bobbed beside me, a skip in her step. When we paused to appreciate a fountain—“really old,” she called it—she stretched in the sun. “Feel my arms,” she said with happiness. “They’re baking.”

  Siracusa had splendor hidden in the dross. The stunning Piazza Duomo, the lesser but lovely Minerva where we’d dined the first night, and now this pleasant modest square with its really old fountain across from two stories of polished stone, the interior visible only through a porthole window. Artesa Jewels. K peered in. What she saw left her breathless, and she entered in awe, gazing at the mosaic ceiling as into a starry night and then into the welcoming smile of Giovanni. Ready to serve, advise, and personally unveil his treasures.

  “I am Giovanni. How may I help you?” he said, deducing our native language, at which he was probably genius. Or was it obvious?

  K’s grip on my arm tightened, a prompt. “We are shopping for a ring,” I said.

  Everything was more beautiful in Italian, K was more beautiful in Italian, and Giovanni caressed her with the language while gliding her from one display case to another. Beautiful, bellissima. Seducente, enchanting—translating the prosaic English into the language of love. He sees where her eye falls. Before she knows what she wants, he knows.

  Giovanni was younger, more suited to K, slim and sprightly with a mustache that curled at the ends. Considered trying to fashion a match. Betrayals all around, the more the merrier, anything to loosen the choke of obligation and guilt. To divert the storm. To avoid catastrophe. Although the situation was out of my hands, such speculation was conceit; I was a bystander now, flotsam caught in the current. The Sicilian, tanned to a coppery glow with a snarl of long hair (to match), could sing his syllables and be moved by his own art. When the first ring she tried fit, the Italian declared, “You are my woman. Tu sei la mia donna.”

  For us to admire the ring, K held out her hand, plump and soft. “My fingers are fat,” she said apologetically. Of her nails painted purple: “I’ll change the color.”

  “Women do this.” Giovanni confided his woe. “They think they are not beautiful enough for my creations. When is the opposite.”

  “It’s ginormous,” K giggled. The ring dwarfed her finger. “I could punch out your eye. What is it?”

  “Morganite,” he said of the glassy pink rock. He angled a light to catch its sparkle.

  “Morganite?” said K.

  “Cousin to the emerald.”

  Hopefully a distant cousin. A cousin once removed, surely a much cheaper cousin. Had to be cheaper than the gold sea urchin encrusted with diamonds lying to the left. I was about to ask the price when she whispered, “I want something I’ve heard of.”

  “Something?”

  “A stone.”

  “What else do you have?” I asked, but now she was emboldened to make a selection of her own.

  “Could I try that?” She pointed, as did Giovanni to the very same one, and they laughed. From there she tried many until onto her finger he slipped a ring you needed a pickaxe to scale: a pileup of gold wrapped around something smooth, large, bullet-shaped, and red.

  K studied it closely. “Look.” She pointed to the setting. “See all the tendrils.”

  How could I miss them when their tips were diamonds?

  “This ring, speciale,” said Giovanni. “One night I dream I am in a sea bed.” He waved his arms, wiggled his fingers. He was seaweed. He was undulating. “When I wake up I skip the espresso and go to work. For a Sicilian to skip the espresso. A Sicilian man, he opens the window, he say hello to the day, he has espresso, and then . . .”

  “What’s the stone?” I said.

  “Oxblood coral.” Its rarity, its color, its passione—he waxed on, spinning a web of desire.

  “Isn’t the sea horse cute?” said K of the eighteen-karat creature curled around the stone.

  Giovanni knew about sea horses too. So romantic. Così romantico. They mate for life.

  “I love it, Mikey.”

  The jeweler wrote the price on a card and palmed it across the glass. Thirty-five hundred euros.

  Giovanni’s elbows rested on the display case. His hands were clasped, finally still. The deal was a done deal, K rosy with thrill. No other customers. No way to get lost, to escape. To feint, faint? I handed over my American Express.

  “I want to wear it out,” said K.

  Afterward she was too enamored with her ring to engage in drama. As if she had finally had the orgasm of her dreams, she was calm, spent, satisfied, thank God, pliable. “I’m doing the town with Dani tonight,” she said, letting me know she’d be out of my hair. Now she could afford to be generous, while I, at that moment, was too pussy-whipped to care. Frankly. If Lizzie turned up around the next corner, so be it.

  Obliged her request: With her phone I snapped a photo of her hand. “I’ll send it to my parents when I get home,” she said. “A text from here costs too much. Or maybe I’ll wait and change my color so it looks prettier. Dani will know where I can get a mani.”

  We stopped for Prosecco. Sat in plain sight. Toasted the future. “To us.” I was done with elaborate phrases of love and seduction. Something about Giovanni made them seem ridiculous. To us. Good enough.

  She lifted the glass to her mouth and the ring snagged her nostril. “I don’t think I should sleep with it on,” she said.

  The next morning: Lizzie.

  “Oh God, you won’t believe who was at breakfast. Michael, you won’t believe. That woman who works at Tino’s, the hostess, but how weird. I had no idea who she was. And then, when she reminded me, all I could remember was her vision board. Remember, she told us once about her vision board. I said to her, ‘Was this on your vision
board?’ She kind of whooped. You’re looking blank, do you know who I’m talking about?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Her name is Kath. I never knew that. She was on her way to swim. ‘To the rock,’ she said. That’s where they swim here. Lo Scoglio. She spoke Italian with so much excitement. Her entire face contorted. ‘Lo Scoglio.’” Lizzie did an impression. “She was sweet. She said we should go there. Everyone swims there in the day. The bar delivers drinks. It sounds like the place all the locals go, looking to score. What an innocent. She’d never been to Europe and now she’s partying on a Sicilian rock. Are you all right?”

  “The usual. A headache. I drank too much.”

  “You can’t sleep in, darling. Should I pet you? I can cure a headache. I’ve got some time. You have to hang with Finn and Snow today. On the boat. Taylor and I are going shopping. When we get back to New York, you should quit drinking. We should do it together. Like for a month.”

  Buried my face in the pillow, groaning. Had to rope in Finn. Lizzie had to cheat. Not to give me a way out, but for a way to stay. When she found out about Kath, I’d need to even the playing field. Even the playing field? What a ludicrous expression. Who the fuck am I?

  “What time is the boat?” I said.

  Siracusa, Day 3

  Lizzie

  THE DOLANS WERE SILENT, eating at a round corner table when I sailed into the breakfast room and buzzed the buffet. Limp slices of fruit swimming in a sugar sauce. A platter of overlapping squares of ham and white cheese. A bowl of shelled hazelnuts with a teaspoon standing up in it. A basket of hard rolls. A pitcher of orange juice. There were several cakes, half eaten, all one-story and dense, and single-serving plastic containers of yogurt on an aluminum tray.

  In spite of ancient architecture, thick arching and intersecting stone walls, the sub-terra room seemed suited for a bingo game in a senior center. The walls and floors were a bit shiny, as if they’d been disinfected. The chairs with round backs and bottoms upholstered in a tweedy yellow brown were squishy, something depressing about that, and the frames stained walnut. “Of all the stains, walnut is the dreariest,” said Taylor, despairing of her plight. Her skinny shredded clothes with unexpected tucks, surprising necklines, and uneven hems could not have been more out of place. No way to feel sexy in that room or around that food, and yet I did.

  Sexy and unflappably cheerful. Basking in the joy of having Michael back.

  At another table, a sturdy gray-haired couple who looked as if they’d walked their way to Sicily passed a phone back and forth, admiring photos.

  What does it matter? The chairs? Who was there, the buffet, the room? My obtuseness matters. My being observant and clever about the wrong things. My delusional state. My smugness.

  Although suppose you see the corner of a building at sunset and one side is beige and the other flamingo pink when both are in fact the same drab red brick? And a second later the vision is gone because the earth has moved infinitesimally. Was what you saw reality? Is there always more than one?

  “What’s the plan?” I set down my plate.

  Snow locked eyes with her mother.

  “Snow saved that place for Michael,” said Taylor in a dull voice.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Fine,” she said without inflection.

  “Michael’s working this morning. I’m bringing him coffee. He’s had a breakthrough, isn’t that wonderful? On his book. Still, just in case he changes his mind—” I left the chair empty next to Snow.

  They hate me. As soon as I thought that, I banished it. Why would they hate me? Didn’t I make things more fun?

  Finn bounced a roll on the table.

  Taylor poked at a slice of semolina cake, tipping it over. She dug out a few candied cherries and corralled them. No guidebook. No reading aloud. No prepping Snow for the day.

  Not me, I think now. They hated each other.

  As for Snow, looking back, I marvel at how elusive she remained as she gained more and more power. Snow’s passivity was an art form. What a perfect criminal she would make, I remember thinking: someone who could be present and invisible. Given her beauty, that was truly remarkable. What was she doing? Something methodical. Peeling the foil off her yogurt—turning the container as she did to tuck up the edge—examining the yogurt as if peering into a pond, then eating small spoonfuls. Now and then her eyes darted toward the door, checking for Michael.

  When I was back at the buffet, pouring a glass of juice, Finn came up. “Would you go shopping with Tay today?”

  “Do you think Italians invented hard rolls for breakfast to have something to do with their stale rolls?”

  “Ask her, okay?”

  “Aren’t you going to the Greek ruins?”

  “No.” He took my juice and drank it as he went back to the table.

  “Taylor, do you want to go shopping today? Finn just said you’re not going to the Greek amphitheater.”

  “She fired Gina,” said Snow.

  “She wasn’t good,” said Tay.

  “I’m taking Snow on the boat,” said Finn.

  “With Michael. I’ll remind him when I go up. He promised to go too.”

  “That’s why Snowy agreed to hang with her dad, right?” He poked her in the shoulder. “Because she gets to hang with Michael?”

  Snow scraped the bottom of her yogurt and licked her spoon.

  “Ms. Ross?”

  She was barelegged in flip-flops, a man’s blue-and-white-striped shirt dangling to her knees. “I’m the hostess at Tino’s? Kath?”

  I jumped up and hugged her. I had never hugged her at Tino’s, an Italian place we ate at every couple of months, but when you’re away, everyone you bump into from home is family. “I apologize. I didn’t recognize you. Michael has exactly that shirt. You look gorgeous. Are you on vacation? This is so weird. This always happens.”

  “What?” said Finn.

  “This. It happens to me all the time. Once on a subway I sat down next to my piano teacher from when I was ten.”

  Finn moved between us and extended his hand. She shook it, giggling for no reason, the Finn effect.

  I introduced her. She supplied her last name, Bicks, and she sat right down in the seat saved for Michael, treating Snow like a little sister, oblivious to Snow’s cool. She showed Snow paper packets of sugar she’d been collecting since she arrived, scooping a handful out of her bag. She told her about swimming, about the men. “Ooh la la,” she said. “They dive off this big rock and they are always offering to show me around. Lo Scoglio.” She insisted Snow repeat it, and Snow did. The Sicilian men will make mincemeat of her, I thought. “Have you been pickpocketed?” I asked.

  “Does that happen here?” Her blue eyes grew rounder.

  “I’m sure. You should be careful.”

  That morning at breakfast was the only time we spoke. I almost wrote, “as I recall,” but I would have recalled. I tend to speak of that time, particularly about her, as if I’m testifying on the stand.

  She arranged the packets in rows on the table, moving one and another from here to there, an artistic display. “That’s famous.” She pointed to the image on a heart-shaped one. “God reaching out to touch Adam.”

  “Michelangelo,” said Taylor. “Snow knows about that. Thank you for the offer, but I don’t feel like shopping.”

  “Come on, please. It will be fun.”

  “Zoom, zoom.” Kath pressed a finger on a packet and zipped it in Snow’s direction. “They’re all different. This one’s crazy—what’s Italia Zuccheri? Zucchini sugar? Oh, and isn’t this a pretty yellow? Would you like to have one?”

  Snow took the Michelangelo.

  “But that’s Kath’s favorite,” said Taylor.

  “No, it’s fine. Good choice,” said Kath. “Do you want to come swimming with me, Snow? I’ll take the best care
of her, I promise.”

  “She’s going on the tour boat with her dad.”

  “And with Michael,” I said.

  “What tour boat?” she asked.

  “They’re right near the bridge to Ortigia,” said Tay.

  Snow ripped open the sugar packet, severing God from Adam, and dumped the sugar on her plate.

  “Whoa, Snowy,” said Finn.

  “It is sugar,” said Taylor. “You’re supposed to open it.”

  Kath took a second to react. We all waited. She laughed. She seemed a cheery positive type, the sort in high school that one might dupe and then feel guilty because she was so trusting and forgiving. “Where’s Mr. Shapner now?” she asked.

  “In the room. Writing.”

  “Tell him hi.”

  “Where are you from?” said Finn.

  “Indiana. Bloomington. Well, New York City now. Well, not really. I live in New Jersey. Jersey City. But I’m moving to New York soon.” She swept the rest of her sugar packets off the table into her bag. “Nice to meet you all. Snow, you’re going to come swim with me sometime, aren’t you? It’s a date.” She waved with a scrunch of her fingers and left.

  It was a sweltering day. Taylor turned up in a hat with a wide brim that she kept clamped on her head with one hand. We’d never spent much time together alone, and ended up discussing deodorant. As I do when I am stumped for conversation and wondering how in the world to connect, I confessed something inappropriate, that I used clinical strength and sometimes rolled it halfway down my arms. Taylor didn’t like greasy sunblock, she said, and didn’t believe 30 was as effective as 60 even though some doctors say it’s good enough. Finally we were rescued from pseudo intimacy by the shops on shiny and clean Corso Matteotti, a wide street near the entrance to Ortigia before it spidered into a maze.

  Taylor threw herself into shopping the way a camper might seek to prove she was a good sport. She flipped through racks of clothes, pulled out this and that, held it at arm’s length, and then popped it back in again. “What do you think?” she would say, and often not wait for an answer. We both knew these fun, cheap stores were not her thing. She pretended to consider a white shirt with a transparent back. “Better for that woman. The one with the sugar.”