He caught a glimpse of Lia in profile as she engaged in an animated discussion with Serafina. She was laughing and, as she pushed ringlets of hair away from her right eye, Nick saw her full lips curling upward with such joy that it nearly made him cry. He wanted to stop time and circle round her, taking this moment in from every angle and then restarting the clock so he could make her smile like that again and again.
Just then, the sky began crackling and Lia walked over and laced an arm around his waist. As she craned her neck to see the fireworks erupting over the Adige, he kissed her cheek and saw a bouquet of aerial fire reflected in her eyes. It was the red of passion, matching the color of their fast-beating hearts.
Chapter Sixty-eight
The festival’s biggest night eventually wound to a close. After Saturday’s performances at Casa di Giulietta, it would all be over for another year. Even before that, Nick would be on the road back to Nice. But as they walked through the old city, he realized he hadn’t yet figured out his sleeping situation.
“Would you like to go back to your place?” he asked Lia.
She shook her head. “My father is a little old-fashioned for that.”
“He knows we’ve spent the night together.”
“True,” she said. “But there is a difference between knowing it and seeing it.”
“It would be uncomfortable for both of you,” Nick agreed.
“I am glad you understand. I will be happy to go back to your room, though.”
“About that,” he said, and explained the situation to her.
“Well, I certainly will not spend the night with a horny Australian,” Lia said with a chuckle.
“Maybe they’ll have a room for me by now.” But Nick knew the odds were even worse on a weekend night during festival week. “Or we could go back to Casa di Giulietta,” he added hopefully.
“We’d best leave that alone,” Lia said. “I would hate to spoil such a perfect memory.”
They were on her street now. Nick stopped and she looked up at him. “What do you suggest, then?” he asked.
Lia took his shoulders and brought his head down for a lingering kiss. “Maybe it is better this way,” she whispered. “For now.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You are leaving in the morning. It’s a long drive. You must get some sleep. You almost killed us three or four times on the way back from Venice.”
“I thought you were sleeping,” he said with a chuckle.
“Believe me, I tried.”
Nick didn’t want to leave her here. He didn’t want to leave her anywhere. But she was right. “I should kill thee with much cherishing,” he said finally.
“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow,” she replied. After one last embrace, she wiped the tears from her eyes and added, “Call me as soon as you land.”
He nodded, kissed her again, and started walking away.
“And do not forget to come back,” she called after him. “Mi sono innamorato di te.”
He had fallen in love with her, too.
Chapter Sixty-nine
As predicted, there was still no room at the inn. But Nick soon found Brian in the bar, and the Aussie was happy to extend their deal one more night. “No worries, mate,” he said. “With any luck, I’ll find myself a new Sheila to take me home.”
But Brian did finally stumble back to the room after three in the morning, and his drunken snoring made it difficult for Nick to get back to sleep. Jamming a pillow around his ears, he said a silent thank you to the young woman who’d taken this party animal in the night before.
Several restless hours later, Nick attempted to rally himself for the road. But here it was 10 a.m. and he was still lingering over breakfast in the hotel dining room, toggling through pictures of Lia on his laptop. Maybe he would surprise her with one last visit before he left.
“Nick, thank God!” Salvatore exclaimed. “The desk clerk said you had checked out three days ago, but I did not know where else to look. I’m glad you have not gone.”
“What is it?” Nick asked, struck with terror. “Has something happened to Lia?”
The old man placed a calming hand on Nick’s shoulder. “No, nothing like that,” Salvatore said. “Sorry to give you a fright. But the festival is having a small crisis.”
“What happened?”
“Fortunata left a message on the club answering machine last night. She has gone off to America with that shit head Antonio. I did not find out until this morning.”
Nick shook his head in disbelief. What was she thinking, running off with that jerk? There was no love lost between him and Fortunata, but he still didn’t wish Antonio on her. And what kind of scam was Lia’s ex pulling? The whole thing was ridiculous.
“Can I see that?” Salvatore asked, pointing at the screen. It was the last shot Nick had taken of Lia in front of the bench on the Adige.
“Where did you get that?” the old man asked, stunned.
“I took it a few days ago,” Nick replied. “Why?”
“I am sorry. It’s just, the way she is standing, the look on her face. I must be going crazy, Nick, but I would swear that was Viola.”
They looked at the photo together, Salvatore lost in his memories and Nick wondering if he’d inadvertently captured a ghost that day on the river bank.
“What are you going to do about this morning’s performance?” he asked the old man finally.
“What? Oh, yes,” Salvatore said, snapping out of his reverie. “That is what I came to tell you. In twenty minutes, Lia will be performing the role of Giulietta.”
Nick had the laptop closed before it finished powering off.
“I thought you might be interested in the news,” the old man said with a laugh.
Chapter Seventy
Fortunata had left her ridiculous wig hanging on a bedpost alongside the Giulietta costume, Lia noted as she sized up the makeshift dressing room next to the bed where she and Nick had so recently consummated their love.
“You won’t need that monstrosity,” Serafina said. “Not with your beautiful locks.”
“You’ll fill out the top nicely,” Simone commented wryly as she held up the dress that had been tailored for their vanished star. “But it looks like we’ll need to pin it up in back.”
Young Maria greeted the catty remark with her trademark snort. Only bookish Anna retained a serious expression as she offered a script to Lia.
“You can’t be expected to come in cold and know all the lines,” Anna said. “But take a few minutes to refresh yourself on the overall beats. It’s act two, scene two, of course.”
Lia smiled as Serafina adjusted the straps on the gown while Serafina and Maria went to work behind her with the pins. “I learned English reading this play,” she said. “My father used to read it to me as a bedtime story. He even named me after you know who. Don’t worry, I know how the scene progresses.”
“Even so,” Anna said, pushing the script into Lia’s hands, “I’ll be standing just out of sight ready to feed the lines as needed. With any luck, the audience will never know that you’re a…”
“Savior,” Serafina interjected. “You’re our savior, Lia.”
Maria emerged from behind the flowing skirt with a bottle of champagne. “I raided the club refrigerator on the way over,” she said as she worked the cork loose. “A toast to the real Giulietta!”
She took a quick swig out of the overflowing bottle, wiped the mouth with her sleeve and handed it to Lia, who repeated the process and passed the bubbly down the line. After three trips around the room, the women had polished the bottle off.
Just then, the local college student playing Romeo came bounding up the stairs. “Any left for me?” he asked when he spotted the bubbly. Maria shook the empty bottle over his head while he ducked the expected shower.
He stood back up slowly, as if from a bow, when he saw Lia. “Is this my new leading lady?” he asked.<
br />
She extended her hand, and he dropped to one knee to kiss it. “Aren’t you sweet?” Lia asked.
“I’m just so grateful that hateful wench has flown the coop,” the young Romeo said with a grin. “I hear you’re much nicer.”
“We’ll all vouch for that,” Serafina said.
“But don’t take advantage of her,” added Simone, ever lascivious. “No tongue when you kiss her!”
The student blushed. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.
“I think we’ll get along fine,” Lia said. She couldn’t believe how light and carefree she felt. It was probably because she hadn’t had time to panic. That, and the fact she was gliding on the wings of new love. If only Nick could be here to see this, she thought. Maybe someone would give her a video she could show him when he returned.
“Arrivaderci, ladies,” young Romeo said. “Time for me to hit my spot. Curtain’s in five minutes.”
As he left, Lia couldn’t help sneaking a peek out the balcony window. The crowd was rowdy, immense. She ducked her head back inside, plastered herself against the wall and began furiously flipping through the script. She hoped she could keep the champagne down long enough to pull this off.
Chapter Seventy-one
“Brutta!” Fortunata hissed when she caught a glimpse of Lia in the balcony window. “Porca puttana!” She had made Antonio come with her to see what kind of train wreck the club would manage to put on in her absence—if they were foolish enough not to cancel the performance.
But now, standing at the back of the crowd, her head covered with a knitted shawl, Fortunata seethed. First Lia had stolen her hunky meal ticket and now this! She was glad she’d persuaded Antonio to delay their departure by a day.
“What is it?” Antonio asked as he sidled up beside her with two beers, one already half gone.
“It’s Lia!” Fortunata grabbed one of the bottles out of his hand and hurled it to the ground, spraying several irritated revelers with foam and brown glass. “Per l’amore di Dio, do something!” she screamed.
Antonio regarded her coldly. “Don’t worry,” he said, slugging down the rest of his beer. “I’ll take care of everything.”
Chapter Seventy-two
As the applause built to a crescendo, Lia inhaled deeply and smiled as Serafina offered a reassuring wink. After receiving a curt nod from Anna, who stood in the wings, script at the ready, the newest in a never-ending line of Juliets strode onto the balcony with a flourish.
When Romeo entered the plaza below, the cheers grew louder still. But Lia was too busy thinking through her opening lines to glance down at him—until she heard an all-too-familiar voice leering, “But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”
Lia confirmed with her eyes the bad news her ears had delivered. There, wearing the young Romeo’s hat to go with his usual leather jacket, t-shirt and jeans, was that snake Antonio Valerio, a copy of the play in one hand and a fresh beer in the other.
“She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that?” he asked her. And then, raising the beer-clenching fist, he added, “O, that I were a glove upon that hand. That I might touch that cheek!”
“Ay me!” Lia replied, in one of the most authentic readings of that line ever delivered. Just then, she spotted Fortunata, head thrown back in a horse laugh.
“Ay me!” she repeated.
“Only once,” Anna hissed from the wings.
“She speaks,” Antonio continued, clearly relishing his malicious star turn. “O, speak again, bright angel!” He stood directly beneath her and waved the bottle back and forth as she found herself freezing stiff to the balcony.
A commotion in the crowd snapped her back into the moment. What now? Lia wondered as a man ran up to Antonio and smashed him on the shoulders with a small suitcase of some sort.
As Antonio tried to rise, the man kicked him right in the teeth. The crowd let out a collective gasp as her wretched ex writhed on the ground. Dabbing at his bleeding mouth, he scuttled several meters away, and then raised himself up onto wobbly feet. But after one brief feint at his attacker, Antonio turned and ran like the coward he’d always been.
That’s when Lia’s rescuer finally looked up, and her heart leapt into her throat.
“O Romeo, Romeo!” she exclaimed, tears rolling down her face as she leaned over the balcony to be as close to him as possible.
Grinning, Nick picked up Antonio’s abandoned script and stashed his laptop case inside the doorway. “With love’s light wings did I o’er-perch these walls,” he said, stepping back into the square.
“He’s skipping lines,” Anna hissed.
“Shhh!” Lia said before turning back to her beloved.
“For stony limits cannot hold love out,” Nick continued, gaining confidence as the confused audience began to follow the scene again. “And what love can do that dares love attempt; therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.”
“If they do see thee, they will murder thee,” Lia said.
His reply was drowned out by a banshee wail as Fortunata jumped on Nick’s back and began pounding him with her fists as she rode him around the courtyard.
“I don’t remember this scene,” a middle-aged woman declared in a flat New Jersey accent as Nick stumbled back toward the doorway, knees buckling. He tried to free himself by slamming her against the rough stone wall, but she dug her legs into his sides and raked at his eyes with her long fingernails.
Just as Lia was hiking up her skirt to jump over the balcony and help him, the show’s original Romeo emerged from the house, costume torn where Antonio apparently had tried to rip it off. But other than a black eye, he seemed none the worse for wear.
“Unhand him, you harpy!” he shouted as he pulled Fortunata off of Nick. The persecuted young actor had a look of sweet revenge in his eyes as he flung her to the ground. The crowd hooted at the spectacle as the angry Romeo chased his week-long tormenter out of the square.
“I think we should try a different scene,” Nick shouted as he received a boost from a helpful tourist, and then took Lia’s outstretched hands to climb onto the marble balcony.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked as he hopped over the railing to join her.
When he flipped through the script and pointed out a scene at the end of act one, she grinned.
They turned back toward the audience and stood side by side, hands entwined, until the hullabaloo subsided and an expectant hush fell over the square. Then Nick took three steps to his left and they faced each other again. As he gazed into her eyes, he began to speak his lines with a clarity and passion that shook her to her soul.
ROMEO
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Dropping her script to the balcony floor, Lia addressed her Romeo in kind.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
They moved toward each other ever so slowly, immersed in their parts.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
With that, Nick took Lia into his arms and kissed her to a hearty round of applause. Reluctantly, they continued with the scene.
JULIET
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO
Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
This time Lia took the lead, drawing Nick in for a long embrace and then pushing him away in mock disgust.
JULIET
You kiss by the book.
As the audience laughed, Lia caught sight of Anna in the wings, brushing joyful tears from her eyes. Behind Anna stood Salvatore. The old man was beaming.
When Lia turned back to Nick, he was pointing out another scene. She nodded and they again faced each other and gave themselves over to the play.
ROMEO
Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy
Be heap’d like mine and that thy skill be more
To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath
This neighbour air, and let rich music’s tongue
Unfold the imagined happiness that both
Receive in either by this dear encounter.
JULIET
Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament:
They are but beggars that can count their worth;
But my true love is grown to such excess
I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.
They paused to look into the wings. Soon, with a little push from Serafina, Salvatore joined them on the balcony and ended the scene with a perfect cameo.
Finding Juliet Page 19