Near the end of their hour-long circuit, they found themselves outside Palazzo Maffei, a baroque stunner bedecked with statues of Roman gods situated on Piazza delle Erbe. Torrei dei Lamberti rose nearby, its striped base of red and white bricks turning it into an architectural confection nearly 300 years in the baking from its 1172 start to the completion of its belfry in 1464. Taking it in, Nick felt as if the Renaissance had come to call from across the centuries. An artistic life force seemed to course through these ancient corners.
“Can we go inside?” Nick asked.
“If you want to climb a tower, it’s the best one I can think of,” Lia said.
He followed her across the square, marveling at the pride she took in her city. “Just so you know, you don’t need to impress me any further,” he said as they neared the entrance. “I’ll stipulate that Will Shakespeare knew what he was doing when it came to setting his plays.”
“O la Madonna!” Lia said playfully. “Was there ever any doubt?”
If there had been, it was forever banished by what Nick saw inside the Torrei dei Lamberti: a staircase that nearly filled the tower, hugging tightly to its walls and spiraling to the top like a nautilus shell, undersides stained the rich, earthy red of the full-bodied Amarone wines produced in the northern Veneto. In a region with a religious shrine around every corner, this was as close to a spiritual experience as he’d had here. The view from the top, taking in everything from the statue of Dante in a nearby square to the imposing Castelvechhio along the Adige, did not disappoint. But it was that first glimpse of stairway, the unexpected beauty inside, that would make the most lasting impression.
After dropping Lia off for her shift, and grabbing a soppressata panino for the road, Nick checked out more of Verona’s sights—the hillside amphitheatre, a couple of art museums, and the ancient cathedral behind which hid several giant opera props.
He would have to leave the city no later than Saturday morning if he hoped to get back to Nice in time for his return flight. But return to what, exactly? The situation back home was even more unsettled and nebulous than it was here, where he had no place to live, no work visa and not even a rudimentary grasp of the language.
At least here he had Lia, he thought as he downed his fourth espresso of the day at a street-side café. But in what sense did he really have her? He was in love with her, that much he was sure of. She seemed to be warming up to him nicely, too. But would she be willing to jump into a relationship? He could always change his flight and find out. Or perhaps he could invite her back to the States, show her where he’d come from, see if she liked it.
And then what? he wondered. It was all so transitory and unformed. Say they ended up together. Would they live here or back home—or maybe someplace entirely new to both of them? And what about Salvatore? Would the old man come with them? If they stayed here, would they live in the apartment with him? He was getting to the age where he might soon need significant care. Nick couldn’t see Lia leaving him behind the way he’d walked away from his mother, the way his father had walked away from him. Would he be able to commit to Lia and her family when he hadn’t been able to stay close to his own folks? He thought he might; he wanted to think so, anyway. But he didn’t know.
And if he somehow managed to stay in Verona, what would he do? He might be able to teach English, either as a tutor or as an instructor at a local school. But that would hardly pay well enough to support them. Lia would have to keep cooking. That was fine with him, but did she have dreams of staying home and raising a family? So many questions, so many conversations they still hadn’t had, so many assumptions he probably shouldn’t be making.
He rolled up his empty sugar packet into a little paper pill and flicked it into the street with the tip of his right index finger. Other than the fact that he cared for this woman with a fierceness he had never before found in himself, Nick was certain about one other thing: He had a date with her tonight to see his first Fellini movie, and he wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Lia had a late-afternoon snack at the Adige bench, some Nutella and warm bread—along with a notebook. The waitress was right: It was time for her to get to know Nick better and open herself up to him as well.
Sitting on the warm riverbank, Lia couldn’t help thinking of her mother. She’d had an English uncle who was close to the family. His stories had helped her mother learn to speak his language fluently as a child. She’d enjoyed speaking it as an adult, so she had worked with Lia on her English at an early age, well before scientists confirmed that children were wired to acquire multiple languages.
So by the age of six, Lia was herself a fluent speaker. School lessons got her started on writing, but when she was twelve, her mother had supplemented those by having her read and copy passages from her father’s Shakespeare collection.
Lia remembered her saying that Romeo and Juliet was a much better story than Cinderella, because it showed the man and woman as equals. It also illustrated the dangers of assuming too much in a relationship and failing to make things clear with each other.
The reason Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy, her mother insisted, was because their story didn’t have to end that way. But too many people never learned that lesson, she’d added. The world was full of unhappy endings.
Lia wished she had recalled that advice when she’d been with Antonio—or, better yet, before they’d married.
She wiped a bit of Nutella from the corner of her mouth, took a deep breath, and began writing.
Dearest Nick,
In the midst of this whirlwind, I still do not know much about you—except that you are, of course, a handsome charmer. We will leave aside the part about the romantic fool who chases fairy tales for now, and the fact that your Italian is nonexistent.
So, what inspires you when you are back home in Oregon? What are the days like for you? Are you close to your family? Do you want one of your own one day?
It is only fair, since I am asking, for me to answer some of these questions for you. You may have others. If you ask nicely, I may even answer those, too.
But I will start with my last questions first. As you know, I am very close to my father. My mother’s death and my impending divorce have drawn us more tightly together than ever. I could never leave him.
I do not mean I have to live in his apartment forever. In fact, I long for a place of my own. But leaving Verona is impossible for me.
As for a family of my own, I do want one, and I want to get started before too many more years go by. I have—in the case of my mother, had—older parents. That has its advantages. They were comfortable financially, well established, and they raised me wisely.
But I want to be a younger mother so I can play hard with my little ones while I have my sense of adventure intact.
What are the days like for me now, and what inspires me? After marrying young and badly, I am finally following my true passions in life and realizing certain truths about myself. I crave a relationship that will sustain me through the hardest hours, nurture my soul, and give me simple pleasures and unexpected joys. Money is of no import to me, nor are other outward measures of success.
I want to find someone who finds it easy to be kind and devoted to me, and welcomes my kindness and devotion in return. I want always to keep in mind that person’s dreams and desires, safe in the knowledge that he is safeguarding mine—and that together we will realize as many of them as we can.
So although my hours in the restaurant are long, and losing my marriage still stings, the days are exhilarating as I throw off everyone’s expectations of me and follow a path that is as true as possible to who I am.
How about you, Nick?
Lia paused, wondering why she was letting her guard down so much.
And then she realized one big reason was that this was a low-risk romantic exercise. After all, Nick soon would return to America. If things went well, they would enjoy each other’s company more before he left, and maybe they would keep in touch via e
-mail or an occasional call.
But realistically, in the end, Nick was likely a safe confidante, no more, no less. Opening her soul to him was much cheaper than therapy, after all, and potentially a lot of fun. And if it turned out to be more…
Smiling to herself, she folded the paper, wrote Nick’s name on an envelope, and set out to drop the letter off at his hotel before heading back to the ristorante to finish her shift.
Chapter Fifty-eight
Nick arrived at the park as dusk settled over the city. He’d re-read Lia’s letter dozens of times as he’d wandered the city, thinking of how he would respond. But visions of her lovely face kept crowding out his other thoughts. He’d have to see her again to figure out what to say.
Just as Lia had promised, the park was strewn with all manner of blankets, atop which sat all manner of couples, along with a few families whose babies were drifting off to sleep. At the head of the soccer field a large movie screen had been set up about where one of the goals normally would have been.
Nick and Lia sat off to the left of the crowd, their backs against an olive tree that marked the start of the park’s small grove. He had swept a spot clean of olives for their blanket, and now she picked one of the fallen fruits from the pile and tossed it at him.
“Didn’t they tell you at the restaurant that it’s not polite to play with your food?” he asked as he caught the shiny black orb and tossed it back, thus starting an all-out olive war.
“Stop!” she said after they had both unleashed several squishy barrages. “They are getting caught in my hair.”
“Allow me,” Nick said, moving across the blanket toward her. “I’ll groom you like a monkey.”
“How romantic,” she replied.
After picking out a couple of stray olives, he stroked her hair and kissed her. He couldn’t remember why they ever stopped doing this. What else in life was so enjoyable? Well, one thing occurred to him, but the park was a bit crowded for anything more exciting.
“Hey,” she whispered, “the movie is starting.”
And so it was. There was Marcello Mastroianni in beautiful black and white, clawing his way out of a smoke-filled car in a traffic jam only to float above the road and into the sky. Soon, he was pulled to earth by two men who turned out to be his producer and press agent.
There were no English subtitles, but Lia kept him up to speed on the plot, such as it was. Mastroianni was Guido Anselmi, a director trying to figure out how to shoot his latest film. He was clearly having serious woman trouble as well, juggling a mistress and a wife, the latter played by the coolly sexy Anouk Aimee, all while dreaming of a creative muse played by Claudia Cardinale, a bombshell Nick remembered from the Westerns he used to watch with his father.
From the opening surreal scene, Nick found himself entranced by the images. Fellini was clearly a directorial genius, but he also had the guts to dump out the messy contents of his psyche for all to see. As his cinematic stand-in, Mastroianni was charming, a bemused, befuddled bad boy who engaged life with an impish raised eyebrow, a pensive finger to the lips, a rakish cock of the head.
Constantly surrounded by the rough cacophony of life, Guido no longer could find the quiet, introspective moments he needed to tap into the creative process. It was a hell in part of his own making—he imagined himself juggling an entire harem in one hilarious set piece—but he was also a prisoner of his earlier successes, which came with all sorts of baggage, from hounding reporters to haranguing producers and critics.
As Lia translated key scenes in her soft, lyrical voice, Nick found some of the lines particularly affecting. “Who told you we come into the world to be happy?” a cardinal asks Guido at one point. At another, a neurotic, aging actress confides, “I feel like I made all the wrong decisions in my life and in my work.” But it was the director’s pleading speech to Cardinale late in the film that really got to him:
“Could you leave everything behind and start from zero again? Pick one thing, and one only, and be absolutely devoted to it? Make it the reason for your existence, the thing that contains everything, that becomes everything, because your dedication to it makes it last forever? Could you? ... No, this guy here, he couldn’t. He wants to grab everything, can’t give up a single thing. He changes his mind every day, because he’s afraid he might miss the right path. And he’s slowly bleeding to death.”
“Wow,” Nick said when Lia finished sharing the words with him.
“Exactly,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. “You were right. Seeing Fellini with you is like experiencing him again for the first time.”
But Nick barely heard her. He was too busy running through it again in his mind: Pick one thing and be absolutely devoted to it. He freed his hand and stroked Lia’s back as she relaxed against him and craned her head back to catch his eye for a moment. Make it the reason for your existence, he thought, leaning down to kiss her hair and forehead.
Make it last forever.
Chapter Fifty-nine
“Asa, nisi, masa,” Nick said as they walked back into the city center. It was the chant Guido had repeated as a child to get a portrait’s eyes to shift, and the one the director sent out to a party mentalist in middle age when he’d begun to doubt his ability to continue making pictures move. It rolled pleasingly off the tongue, and soon Lia joined in repeating it.
“Asa, nisi, masa, asa, nisi, masa,” they intoned. Suddenly, she started running up the block and he found himself chasing her.
“What are we chanting for?” she asked after he caught her and spun her around into an embrace on the lamp-lit cobblestones.
“It’s fun?” he ventured.
“That’s all?” She pressed her hands against his chest. “For such a powerful chant? Should we not be trying to make something special happen?”
He smiled down at her, and his heart caught as he saw the vulnerability and nervousness lurking behind the carefree expression.
“I think it’s already happening,” he said.
“I think so, too,” she whispered.
They had kissed so many times in the past few days that Nick had lost count, but this one was different. It felt like an emotional dam burst, an absolute crumbling of all defenses.
“Come with me,” he said as they looked at each other in blissful surprise. “I know a place.”
If the square had been full of like-minded couples, if the side door had not been so easy to open, if a cleaning crew or stray club member had still been on the premises, Nick’s impetuous plan would have been foiled. But here they were, all alone in Juliet’s bedroom, sitting on the ornately carved platform bed.
“It is a bit cold,” Lia whispered.
Nick patted the thick comforter. “We’ll be fine.”
She nodded, and then smiled to herself. They had no more need of words tonight.
He watched her stand, breasts swelling like apples inside her caramel-colored sweater. She reached down and took his hand, pulling him up. They first explored each other with their hands, but not urgently. They slow-danced around the bed, discovering their rhythm as they went, a belt tugged halfway from its loop here, a button pushed through cashmere there. They reveled in layers of tactile sensations as each garment became a playground for fingers and mouths and exposed skin puckered with gooseflesh in the late-summer chill before warming hands rubbed it smooth again.
As his hands slid up and down her exposed sides, he took a long minute just to drink in the scent of her, all the scents of her, breath hot with oak-tinged red wine, hair laced with vanilla, skin still bearing the faintest hint of the morning’s oatmeal soap, salty beads of sweat popping up in the hollow behind her knees, and then the sweet musk of her barely concealed by black silk panties which he rolled down her thighs as if he was gently sculpting her out of soft, fresh clay.
She shuddered then and he moved away for a moment to turn down the bed. Leading her to it, he flicked her right earlobe with his tongue and she surprised him by reaching down and giving a him a long
, slow tug between the legs as she slid under the comforter.
He picked up the tempo a bit, eager to join her, but she placed a hand on his as he peeled off his shirt. “Take your time,” she said, moving her other hand between her legs. “I like to watch.”
He obeyed as well as he could, teasing her by pulling his belt all the way off before shedding his pants, and then giving her a playful hip thrust before slipping out of his socks and dark cotton boxers. As he stood, she reached out and cupped him. He didn’t think he could get any harder, but then she looked up at him and gave his head one wet, swirling slurp.
She scooted over to make room for him on the bed and he obligingly slid under the covers. But before letting them drop, he took another look at her, curly ringlets splayed across the white pillow and her tan shoulders. Even darker hair covered her nether region like a velvet pelt, ripe for stroking. Her breasts nestled against each other as she shifted onto her side. As one nipple puckered and swelled, he again felt himself swelling as well. The comforter fell upon them and he snuggled against her, easing his left arm under her to complete the embrace.
As they basked in the shared body heat, he kissed the fine, lovely wrinkles on her eyelids and kneaded her shoulders. She stroked his back and pulled him tighter against her. He recalled the scene in 8½ where the mentalist picks up the thoughts of the party guests. Now scratch my back, Nick thought. He grinned as he felt her nails gently rake his skin. She smiled back, eyes hooded. As they kissed, he tried to tune into her thoughts and desires as well.
Finding Juliet Page 15