Blood Orange

by Drusilla Campbell

  She sat up. “Do you have something I can wear back to the hotel? I need a nap.”

  “Sleep here,” he said. “Later we can go out again. Nothing starts in Florence until after ten anyway. On the other side of town there’s a jazz club. You’ll like it.”

  “You don’t have to babysit me, Micah. You have a life-“

  “Is that how you see me? As a babysitter?”

  “What about clothes?”

  “Give me your key. I’ll go back to the hotel while you sleep.”

  His back was to the window; the falling sun outlined him like gold encircling a medieval icon. She held her breath. He turned, and they looked into each other’s eyes. He held out his hand, then led her to his bed.

  She knew exactly what she was doing. She was in a threehundred-year-old palazzo owned by an Italian princess. She had been transported to a fairy-tale world, and she did not once think of David and Bailey or stop to ask if this was the way normal people behaved. In the Kingdom of Florence none of the old rules applied. Later, she recalled what Lexy had once said about life being full of crossroad moments, opportunities taken or lost forever.

  Late that night, after jazz and slow dancing, he leaned her against a crumbling garden wall draped in wisteria, unzipped her Levi’s, and entered her with his fingers. She cried in the dark from the thrill of it. Night and the city sounds, a few feet away the voices of men and women coming out of the club where they had been moments before. And Dana impaled on her lover’s hand, crying because she had never had an orgasm like that, never knew it was possible.

  She inhabited a small world that week. In the mornings Micah brought her hot chocolate and a croissant from the coffee bar at the corner. They made love amid the crumbs and might not eat again until dinner; but she felt full all the time. In mirrors and shop windows she saw the difference in herself, a look of slightly blurred and puffed fatigue, a languor in her arms and legs. Her hair was heavier, thicker, and darker than it had ever been; and she wore it loose, not tied as usual at the nape like a convent girl.

  They went back to the Uffizi three times so Dana could study paintings rich in visual subtext. Da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi transfixed her. In the faces of the crowd-suspicious, venal, goodnatured, Mary’s sly and gossipy attendants-she saw the emotions of living people. She walked through rooms full of two-dimensional medieval virgins holding infant saviors with the wizened features of old men, but in paintings of the Renaissance she saw faces as modern as those in the cafes and shops of Florence. This was the great breakthrough of Renaissance art. It brought mortals into art where before there had been only saints and gods.

  One morning as she put her hairbrush down on the table in the bathroom she knocked a vial of pills to the floor. She picked it up and tried to read the label written in Italian, but the only word she recognized was depression. Hard to believe, easy to dismiss. During the short time she’d known him Micah had been ebullient and lighthearted. No one who was depressed could have so much energy. She thought about mentioning the pills but told herself it was none of her business. Besides, these days doctors prescribed mood-altering chemicals to almost anyone who wanted them.

  In the afternoon they bicycled out of town to the Villa Reale di Castello, a sixteenth-century garden laid out with checkerboard formality. Descendants of plants gathered centuries before from countries as distant as China filled the garden with the scents and colors of spring.

  They sat beside a fountain and ate a lunch of fruit and bread and cheese; and afterward they found a secluded spot and fell asleep until an ill-tempered guard rousted them and they hurried off, giggling like teenagers. Micah seemed so happy; she could not help asking him if he still got depressed.

  “You know about that?”

  “Lexy told me.”

  “Thank you, sister dear.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Did I say it was?”

  “Look, it’s none of my business-“

  “Hey, I’m glad you brought it up.” He did not sound glad at all. “What else do you want to know? Do I hate my mother? Am I constipated?”

  She backed away from him, hands flattened in a “stop” gesture. “I asked a simple-“

  “Yeah, well maybe it’s not so simple; maybe it’s so fucked up no one can figure it out anymore.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about now.

  “Come on, Micah, I’m getting hungry. Let’s get some of that hot chocolate at the bar… .” She held her hand against his cheek. “I’m sorry I pried. I never want to make you angry.”

  “I’m not angry. Do I look angry?” He smiled, and she didn’t know what he was thinking. “I used to take pills for depression, but I don’t need them anymore. You make me happy, Dana. You make me happier than I’ve ever been.”

  Another day they wandered through the Boboli Gardens in the rain giving names to the feral cats, getting soaked, playing chase and sliding on the wet grass. She remembered Lexy saying her brother was not a laugher. How amazing it was that now Dana knew him better than his own sister.

  And every day, when they were not in galleries and churches and gardens and restaurants, they were in bed. Her vagina ached, and walking from one gilt-framed painting to another, she felt her clitoris as if it had permanently grown.

  They made plans to visit Venice and Rome, Siena and Milan, where Dana had to see, must see, Bellini’s The Preaching of St. Mark in Alexandria.

  “There are camels,” Micah told her, almost bouncing with delight. “And a giraffe and all these guys in fancy hats, and you hardly notice Saint Mark at all.”

  With his knowledge of Italian art, and his increasing under standing of what she was looking for, he plotted a trip that would take them as far south as Palermo, where he told her about a beautiful little museum and an extraordinary painting, loaded with subtext, called The Triumph of Death. She had to see it.

  “Tell him about me,” Micah said.

  Not yet.

  “Waiting won’t make it easier on him.”

  It was Saturday. Her flight home was on Monday morning.

  “It’s not one of those things I can just say.”

  “What can’t you say? That you love me?” He held her face in his hands. His palms were hot and dry, and she imagined she felt his lifeline mark her cheeks, making her his forever. “You do love me. You know you do. Say, `I love you, Micah.”’

  She whispered it.

  “Tell him.”

  “Let me do it my own way.”

  “You want to leave me? You want to go back to that?”

  That.

  She would starve without Micah, dry up and blow away like sculptor’s dust.

  She thought of a painting she had seen yesterday or the day before. Her days streamed together like watercolors. Or maybe it was a story she had read, or maybe she was making it up right now to explain how she felt, because only metaphor could make her emotions comprehensible. A maiden wandered into a dark and beautiful wood. She danced with a satyr and fell into a swoon. When he bent over her and asked for her will, she gave it to him.

  Before they fell asleep that night Micah said, “Say it.”

  “I love you.”

  “Louder.”

  She laughed.

  “I mean it. I want to hear you yell it out.”

  “I’ll wake up the princess.”

  “Get up and go over to the window. Stand there and yell it across the river.”

  She sat up and stared at him.

  “Do it and I won’t ask you again.”

  She was tired, too tired to argue. She got out of bed and fumbled for her nightgown that had fallen off the end of the bed.

  “Go like you are. Don’t put anything on.” He folded his arms beneath his head. “There’s moonlight.”

  “What if someone sees me?”

  “You have a beautiful body. Don’t be ashamed of it.”

  “Micah, I’m not ashamed. I just don’t like to make a public-“ />
  “I’d like to put you on display in the piazza.”

  The gooseflesh rose on her arms.

  “The women would envy you and the men would all want to fuck you. They’d offer me money.”

  She got back into bed. Pulling the blanket around her shoulders, she said, “I don’t want to do this.”

  “Do what?” He bit her earlobe gently. “What don’t you want to do?”

  “Stand in the window.”

  He poked her gently in the ribs. “I was only kidding.”

  For years Micah had sold his drawings in the Piazza del Duomo marketplace on Sundays. These drawings were much less fine than those for sale in shops around the Old City but still better than most. If the weather was good he might make several hundred Euros selling his pictures. While he was doing that Dana would have the palazzo to herself. She could not talk to David with Micah in the room listening, feeding her lines, fluttering his tongue up her inner thigh.

  She thought of the house in Mission Hills, the rooms she had lovingly painted and decorated, the hardwood floors she had stripped and sanded and buffed. She allowed herself to feel a pinch of regret for what she was abandoning.

  She had not used that word before.

  “Mommymommymommy.”

  The impulse to hang up was like a hand jerking her out the door and down the stairs.

  Mommymommymommy.

  She did not know what to say to Bailey. She had planned the words for David, scripted their conversation like a phone volunteer asking for campaign money. She had no spiel laid down for Bailey. “I love you” was all she could think to say that wasn’t a lie she would choke on.

  “Talk, Mommy.”

  She tried to swallow, but something had been added to her anatomy. At the base of her tongue there was a growth the size of a walnut.

  “Dana.” David at last. “Why didn’t you call? I’ve been worried. Did you get my messages?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I called the hotel, but you were never there. Even in the middle of the night.”

  “I’ve been exhausted.”

  “Have you been sick? What’s wrong with your voice?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine.”

  “It’s been an incredible week.”

  “You weren’t even there early in the morning.”

  “Don’t be silly, of course I was there.”

  She had anticipated this line of questioning.

  “It’s a crazy place, David. The desk clerks are technological idiots. They probably rang an empty room.”

  “I thought it was a good hotel. Didn’t you tell me it cost threefifty a night?”

  She had forgotten that digging out the truth was what David did best.

  “It is a good hotel. Great breakfasts every day.” She was winging it now. “But there was a mixup with the rooms when I got there. The clerks never did get it straight in their heads.”

  “I was worried.” He sounded petulant. He wanted her to tell him he had been a good husband to whom apologies were owed. He had stayed home with a difficult child while she had a good time.

  Fun.

  “Dana?”

  “I’ve been frantic to see everything. A week isn’t long. In Florence it’s no time at all.”

  “You sound like you’ve got a sore throat.”

  “Yeah. A little one.”

  The line buzzed in her ear.

  “So,” David said, “you’ve had a good time?”

  “Better than I dreamed.”

  He laughed. “Gracie said I should watch out, you’d fall in love with Italy. Little old San Diego’s gonna seem pretty boring.”

  “There’s so much here, David.” She wanted him to understand. “History and art. Just taking a walk, there’s so much … beauty. You can be in a seemingly wretched neighborhood and there’ll be an arrangement of pots or some tile or a wisteria vine …” Her thoughts spun forward through all she might tell him; but the effort seemed pointless. David would try to understand, but to him a picture was a picture and not much else.

  She heard Bailey’s voice in the background.

  “How’s she been?” She was far off her script now.

  “Every day she asks me if this is the day we go to the airport to get you.”

  Bailey did not understand the concept of anywhere that was too far away to drive to. David had brought home a travel video of Tuscany. “That was a mistake. She got hysterical. I guess before then she thought you were staying at the airport for some reason. I didn’t know what to do, so I called Miss Judy. She was great. The next day she taught a lesson about vacations. She’s a bloody genius, that woman, and I think Bay gets it now, that you’re not living at Lindberg Field.”

  “I explained. I thought she understood.”

  “The house is lonely without you. Next time you want to take a trip, I’m going too.”

  She had prepared herself for guilt, but not for the sudden desire to see her husband and wrap her arms around his solid football player’s body.

  She had to get back to her script.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk about.” She heard the silence on the line and the sound of David’s breath. “There’s so much to see, all the little towns around have fabulous art, not to mention Venice and Rome…. It feels kind of wasteful to fly over here, spend all that money, and not see more.”

  In the background, “Mommymommymommy.”

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” The lawyer was back in his voice. The trained interrogator.

  She thought of the things she could say.

  I love Micah Neuhaus and I’m never coming home.

  Never that, never those words. They would hurt him too much; and no matter how much she loved Micah, she loved David too. And Bailey.

  Dana, the smartest girl in her class, the girl who had always known where she was going and what she wanted: she knew her script and had learned her lines.

  “Mommymommymommy.”

  But when she tried to say something, she was interrupted by her own small voice, weeping into the musty pillow in Imogene’s spare room. For weeks she had worn shorts and a T-shirt to bed so she would be ready when her mother’s lugging Chrysler turned into the driveway.

  “Are you saying you want to stay longer? How much longer? Another week?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t get this, Dana. What’s going on? Is there something I should be worried about?”

  “I don’t want to leave, that’s all. But I’m fine, really. I just love it here, that’s all. You’re right, I fell in love. With Florence and Italy. David, I don’t ever want to leave. I belong here. It’s part of me now.

  “Dana, sweetheart, it’s a town, a city.” He laughed fondly. “There’ll be another time. One of these days I’m gonna get a big case, and when I do I’ll take you back to Florence. I promise.”

  The open piazza was bright and bitter-cold and crowded with student groups. Hordes of boys and girls in signature black, mobs of young crows cawing Spanish, German, French, and guttural languages Dana could not identify, lined up to enter the Romanesque cathedral. To the right of the cathedral, Micah was one of a dozen artists who had set up tables and easels. Dana stood apart, so embarrassingly American in the yellow wool coat she would still be paying for this time next year. Bright as a target, she thought, aware that the crowds of young Europeans vaguely frightened her. Two days earlier she had ignored them and seen only the cathedral’s pink and green and white marble facade like an elaborately decorated cake.

  Micah wore his struggling-artist costume on Sundays. Black turtleneck, ragged at the cuff and throat, a Greek fisherman’s cap, torn Levi’s, and sandals. He hadn’t shaved that morning and looked dissolute and pallid. As he spoke to a browser, Micah’s gold earring flashed in the sunlight and a chill ran up Dana’s legs. She wrapped her arms around herself, grateful for wool the color of midsummer lemons.

  As she watched, he sold two watercolor-
and-ink cityscapes to a pair of Japanese tourists. He could produce one of these in a couple of hours. He bragged that he had the Ponte Vecchio down to ninety minutes flat.

  Micah looked in her direction. A wide smile opened his face, and he lifted his arm, gesturing her to him. She felt something move in her, move and stretch and snap.

  She was too old, too married, too American.

  And he was too young. Not in years but in the way he lived, thinking only of his pleasure, content to sell mediocre drawings in a piazza while other men erected bridges, negotiated treaties, and raised families.

  Micah’s hand cupped the air more urgently. “Turn around, let me see the back.” He twirled a finger in the air. “That coat!”

  Two men, passing with easels shoved under their arms, said something in rapid Italian, and Micah responded, and all three laughed.

  “What?” Dana asked.

  “They wanted to know if you were my American mistress. One called you Mistress Sunbeam.”

  “I’m going back to the apartment,” she said. “I’m cold.”

  “You can’t go. I won’t let you. You have to stay.” He motioned to a stool. “I’m sorry I teased you, honestly. It’s a beautiful coat. Here. Sit down. You watch the store and I’ll get you a coffee. Are you hungry?”

  “My feet are frozen.”

  “What’s the matter? What happened? Did you call him?”

  Another group of Japanese tourists stopped at Micah’s table. He turned his attention to them, though occasionally, as he smiled and laughed and cajoled and took their money, he glanced sideways at Dana. When they left he showed her the pile of hundred-Euro notes.

  “Not bad, huh? Give me another hour and I’ll shut down.”

  She covered her face with her hands.

  “What did he say?” Micah waited for her answer. When she said nothing, he pulled her hands away from her face and peered into her eyes. “Okay. Go home. I’ll close up here.”

  “You don’t have to-“