“Maybe you should go to Verona and find out who’s doing such a good job playing Ms. Capulet,” Ricks said. “She might still be looking for her Montague. At least give her your home address.”
Nick waved away the suggestion. “I doubt I’ll even write her again, much less try to meet her.” He was embarrassed by how sad it made him to say those words.
Ricks gave him a serious look, and then turned to cross the street as Buster started pulling him toward the park. “Nick,” he called out over his shoulder, “you can make all the right choices in life and still wake up every morning longing for the girl you kissed in the fifth grade. Think about it!”
As he started jogging home, Nick couldn’t help thinking, With love’s light wings did I o’er-perch these walls; For stony limits cannot hold love out.
In the five minutes it took him to get back to his dreary digs, Nick realized it was a ludicrous notion. How could he justify flying to Italy to meet a woman he’d been charmed by on the basis of one wonderful note and the still-unread letter in his pocket?
He washed the ice cream and dog drool off his hands, grabbed a beer from his disaster of a fridge, and sank into the easy chair with the letter. He’d forget all about trying to make this Juliet his Juliet unless the scented page contained some kind of sign, he decided.
He opened the tri-folded page and read:
Dearest Nick,
How pleased I am to hear my meager words have helped reawaken your heart to love. Would that I still walked Verona’s cobbled lanes, I should introduce you to its pleasures, from gentle river to watchful battlements. Alas, it is not to be. But if you once again truly are attuned to love’s call, and refuse to utter imprecations against it, I fear you would be disappointed in my spectral tutelage. Openness to love is my only lesson.
Busy scrivener that I am, I normally must decline invitations to engage in further kind correspondence. But I should be pleased to hear from you again when you find the love you deserve, as you assuredly will. Sometimes we must forget our own rules and embrace the possibility of the moment.
Forever yours,
Giulietta
Nick rolled his neck, took a long drink of his beer and read the letter again. Maybe Ricks was right. He had the money. He had the time. He definitely had the inclination And now he had Juliet’s encouraging words. In the worst case, he’d enjoy a head-clearing vacation anyone would envy, maybe drop by Juliet’s Club to see who was who without tipping his hand. In the best case, he’d meet someone who would make him forget all about Allison.
Crazy as it seemed, taking the trip actually made sense. Only one question remained: Was Nick Moore now the kind of guy who would, as his ex had put it, burn the other ticket? Embracing the possibility of the moment, he fired up his computer and drafted another letter to Juliet.
Chapter Eighteen
“We can’t keep him from coming,” Serafina said over the morning buzz filling the Club di Giulietta meeting room. “It’s still a free country,” the psychologist added. While the other members paced around the room, Salvatore sat, head in hands, staring at the printout of the previous night’s e-mail from Nick Moore, American romantic:
Dearest Juliet,
Finding myself lately at loose ends, and pockets brimming with an unexpected windfall, I propose that you forget just one more of your rules and take that magical Verona stroll with me, not as spectral tutor but as well-made friend.
Fear not my intentions, for they are purely honorable and honorably pure. But I find myself drawn irresistibly to the luminous voice behind Juliet’s mask. I wish only to hear it in person and explore the possibility of a harmonious duet.
I await your reply with suggested timing for this grand adventure, if your heart lies as open to affection as you preach it to be in others.
Forever yours,
Nick
Young Maria, as usual, offered the most dramatic take on the situation. “He’s obviously some kind of stalker,” she said, apparently somewhat thrilled at the prospect.
Salvatore waved her off. “He is a sweet young man, I think. But how humiliated will he be when he finds out he’s smitten with… me?”
“There’s your answer,” said Anna, keeper of the literary flame. “Reveal the truth now and he’ll cancel the trip out of embarrassment.”
Serafina and Salvatore exchanged somber looks. “Normally that wouldn’t be a bad idea,” the therapist said. “But in the first note, Nick mentioned killing himself. I didn’t take it too seriously, but I’d hate to see a humiliating rejection push him over the edge.”
“Besides,” Salvatore added, “intentional cruelty goes against everything the club stands for. Oh, why did I have to lead him on?”
“You were just trying to let him down gently,” said the sensuous Simone as she kneaded Salvatore’s shoulders. “It’s not your fault the guy can’t take a hint.”
Fortunata turned from the espresso machine in the corner, her expression even more animated than usual. But then, she had been in a great mood all summer as she anticipated her star turn as Juliet at the festival. “Simone, what did you just say?” she asked.
Simone shrugged. “That Nick is clueless?”
“Before that,” Fortunata insisted.
“About letting him down easy?”
“Exactly! Why don’t we just let the poor kid down easy?”
Serafina broke into a rare grin. “I think I see what you’re getting at. We welcome him to Verona…”
“And show him a nice, innocent time,” Fortunata continued. “At the end of his vacation, we send him home happy for the adventure but understanding he’ll have to find his true love elsewhere.”
“No matter where he finds out that I wrote those letters, it’s going to be humiliating,” Salvatore said. “I don’t see what’s better about inviting him here.”
Anna shook her head at the old man’s cluelessness. “Think of it as a Shakespearean farce,” the beautiful scholar said.
“One of us will pose as his Juliet!” exclaimed Maria as she picked up the thread. Salvatore was right behind her.
“You would do that for me?” he asked. They humbled him with their generosity.
“For you, and for love,” Anna said. “Always for love.”
“But who?” Salvatore scanned the lovely faces of his young compatriots. Who could pull off the act?
“I’ll do it,” Fortunata volunteered.
As she so often did, Maria scrunched up her face like she’d caught the scent of bad cheese. “Why you?” she asked, her tone suggesting she might enjoy taking a crack at this exotic stalker.
“I’m merely trying to be helpful,” Fortunata began. Salvatore could see the gears turning, just as they had when she’d secured the festival’s starring role, but this time, it made him a bit nervous. “Besides, it makes perfect sense. Let’s invite Nick to come during the celebration. It will be fun for him, but also distracting. And since I’ll be busy playing Juliet, I won’t have much time to spend with him.”
Serafina nodded. “Festival week provides an excuse for lots of group gatherings,” she said. “With any luck, you’d never have to be alone with Nick.”
“But what if he’s gorgeous?” Simone interjected, a sly smile playing across her pale round face. “Maybe Fortunata is hoping to cast her festival Romeo.”
They all enjoyed a chuckle at that, driving any remaining tension from the room. Salvatore stood and gave Fortunata a chaste thank-you kiss. But before he could escape, she pulled him into a tight embrace.
“Everyone knows who my Romeo is,” she said, running her fingers through Salvatore’s thinning grey hair. “No American boy could hope to take his place.”
As the old man gamely freed himself from Fortunata’s arms, Anna intoned, “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.”
Eyes twinkling, Salvatore answered, “If love be rough with you, be rough with love.” With that, he delivered a little swat to Fortun
ata’s retreating rump. If not for the club’s thick brick walls, the resulting shrieks of laughter undoubtedly would have summoned the polizia.
Chapter Nineteen
When Allison showed up disheveled on his doorstep, Nick was busy tagging all but his most precious belongings for a blow-out yard sale. In the weeks since he’d sent word of his impending trip to his mysterious Juliet, she had finally dropped her insistence on corresponding only via letter. The ensuing e-mail exchanges included more gentle resistance to his visit, yes, but they also touched on topics ranging from philosophy and literature to the sad fact of cultural imperialism and the true meaning of friendship.
This meeting of hearts and minds played out like a Times Square ticker of budding romance, full of warm greetings, introspective discursions and witty asides. Nick realized that the ultimate reality of the relationship might not match up to this online version, but it had opened his eyes to the importance of expanding his horizons. Wherever he ended up after Verona, one thing was certain: Ashland would remain forever in his rearview mirror.
“Trying to sneak off without saying goodbye?” Allison sniffed after he grudgingly opened the door.
“In the market for a toaster?” he asked, holding up the last item he’d tagged. “It’s a steal for anyone who likes charred bread even on the lowest setting.”
“I remember when we bought that,” she whispered, fresh tears rolling down her perfectly tanned cheeks. His attempt to lighten the mood while changing the subject had clearly failed.
Moving to plan B, he guided her by the elbow to the least-stained spot on his wreck of a couch. It was the first time he could remember her following his lead.
“Trevor?” he asked.
She nodded without looking up, and then began to sob quietly. Nick sat next to her, maintaining a respectable distance, and couldn’t help notice she’d taken half the length off her blonde hair. Now shoulder-length, mussed and streaked into rocker-chick perfection, it helped make her a vision of studied bohemian beauty. He counted the silver rings half-circling her left ear while she pulled herself together.
“He was cheating on me, of course,” Allison said. “Don’t start,” she added, raising her head just high enough to peek at him.
They exchanged rueful smiles. She was a beauty, but no longer his beauty.
There was so much organic chemistry and history between them that it seemed impossible not to take her in his arms, pull her tight, and feel her short breaths against his neck as he stroked her hair hard against the back of her head in an expression of support, longing and anger that could too easily be mistaken for passion.
As they moved in tighter against each other, neither of them speaking as time waited on the sidelines, Nick tried to remind himself of all the things he’d come to hate about Allison.
He remembered joking to Ben that she’d been the kind of girlfriend you’d loan a CD to only to have her return another, lesser CD by the same artist, with the bargain-bin price tag intact.
She could be impossibly snooty and self-centered. Like the time at a rock show when she’d remained seated, bored expression on her face, through an incredible funk set while everyone grooved around her. When he later asked her why, she said, “I don’t stand for the opening band.” He’d laughed, said it would make a great t-shirt slogan. But Nick couldn’t stand that hipster snobbery. When he enjoyed a concert, he got up and danced. Who cared what anyone might think about it?
And she was stingy with her affection. He’d never heard “I love you” from her without a “too” at the end. When they’d had it out for the last time, after he’d walked in on her with Trevor, she’d turned to ice. “I don’t need you,” she’d said. “But all you do is need me.” Those words brought him back to reality whenever he found himself mourning the mirage of their relationship. But now, as she began nuzzling him in that familiar way, her tears drying against his cheek, it all seemed more forgivable somehow.
“So, what was this?” Nick asked the next morning as they lay staring at the ceiling from the unmade bed he planned to sell for $25.
“A mistake,” Allison replied, “but a fun one.” She nudged him with her shoulder.
Nick nudged back, but he didn’t feel playful so much as stupid. Their reunion had been weird, strangely detached, as if they were both watching from a middle distance. He doubted it had been more fulfilling for her, but it was nice of her to say otherwise.
He started to turn away when she got up and gathered her clothes, but then he looked back at her, taking in her body for the last time in as nonchalant a manner as he could muster. She caught him anyway.
“Enjoy,” she said, dropping the blouse she’d been about to shrug on. Allison stood before him unashamed, enjoying the attention. Arms at her sides, she cocked her right leg outward and bent a little at the knee, giving him a breathtaking view. And then she turned in a slow pirouette. When she fully faced him again, he was grinning.
With a short running jump, she was pressed up against him, reaching between his legs to gauge the effect of her impromptu show, and then giving him a kiss that was as achingly hard as she found him.
“Let’s do it up right this time,” she said as she moved to straddle him.
Chapter Twenty
Fortunata read through the copies of Salvatore’s correspondence with Nick while she applied brilliant ruby polish to her long fingernails. The old man was right: He did seem like a sweet guy. It would be a bonus if he turned out to be handsome, of course, but not necessary.
Waving the nails on her right hand in the stultifying August heat, she flipped through a fashion magazine with her left. She had been disappointed to hear that Nick lived in Oregon, but a quick check of an online map indicated it was on the same coast as Hollywood, really just a few centimeters away.
Not a day had gone by since just before her 14th birthday that she hadn’t cursed her deadbeat father for uprooting the family from Calabria. Exciting construction opportunities in the Veronese suburbs, he’d told them. Gambling debts to a Mafioso with blood in his eye, her mother had intimated in a tearful confession to a friend. Fortunata had overheard this when she’d come home from school early one day in the weeks before Papa had taken them all into exile.
Why couldn’t he have just left the women behind? Her mother was still young, attractive and resourceful at that point. Their relatives were close by, and she and Fortunata both were blessed with many friends. But something—pride, fear, weakness, stupidity—made the man drag wife and daughter down with him.
And while Fortunata was being ridiculed and ostracized in her new school, her mother almost inevitably started drinking to excess. Her father, still without work, disappeared after a year up north, too late to do them any good. And then her mother had been killed in a single-car accident three months before Fortunata turned 18. No one said the word “suicide,” but she was smart enough to understand the somber, embarrassed looks of the adults who informed her and then more or less left her to make her own way in the world. She could have gone back to Calabria, but why? She did not want to chance ending up with someone like her father, nor did she relish listening to the whispers, the male lingue, of her family. She would be no one’s object of pity.
And now, finally, she could see a way out. Fortunata felt confident in her ability to woo the lonely romantic into taking her back home with him. She just hoped his talk of windfalls wasn’t a hollow boast. She’d pursue her modeling and acting career dead broke if she had to—she’d lived through worse—but it would be so much nicer to have a sweet young sugar daddy to rely on in America.
Chapter Twenty-one
The rest of the day with Allison felt like the end of a reunion weekend full of old friends, when everyone else has gone except for one close pal whose flight leaves in the evening, and you sit there among the empty wine bottles and full ashtrays, exhausted but happy, relieved of all pressure to “have fun.” So you kick back in comfortable chairs and bask in the warm, mellow vibe until it’s ti
me to say goodbye.
It was, Nick thought, as if they’d watched the couple they used to be walk out the door carrying every bit of relationship baggage with them. Stripped to their core personalities, they fell back into the essential compatibility that had brought them together so many years ago. The catch was, knowing this was the end of the party was essential to recapturing that intimacy. They didn’t talk about it, but he had no doubt she understood that as well as he did.
Things hadn’t been this easy between them for a long time before Allison’s affair, probably dating back to Seattle. He’d forgotten how much he’d missed the days when they just wanted to be together. As he massaged her feet on the couch, Nick wondered if you passed through that stage in any relationship. Maybe it was inevitable: You grew, you changed, you drifted apart, and then one of you noticed and pulled the plug. Was it even possible to grow together, to fall more deeply in love through the decades? It was a good enough question, he decided to ask her.
“I don’t know,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows. “Maybe we overthink it. It’s like my mom’s parents, they’re still cuddly after 45 years. When I was in high school, just starting to notice that other people had lives, I asked my grandpa the secret of their happiness.”
“What’d he say?”
“‘She likes to be early and I like to drive fast.’”
He laughed. “That’s it, huh?”
“Apparently. Of course, there may be something more to the relationship than that. I mean, you’d hardly expect him to tell his seventeen-year-old granddaughter, ‘Your grandma’s a tiger in the sack.’”
Finding Juliet Page 6