One Step Ahead

by J. J. Kapka

  As he settled into a table after having helped himself at the small buffet, he tried to concentrate on reading the International Herald Tribune. When he finished eating, he tried to recall the stories he’d just read, but his mind was an absolute blank. He’d somehow managed to read the paper without absorbing one iota of information. Restlessly, he went back to his room and settled in for what he imagined would be a long wait for a phone call from Paul.

  Miraculously, though, the phone rang only ten minutes later. “Yes?” Becker breathlessly answered.

  “You’re on, buddy,” Paul announced without preamble.

  “Fantastic,” Becker replied in a grateful rush. “Where? When?”

  Paul hesitated, “Well, that’s the complicated part.”

  “Why?” Becker asked, confused. “If she agreed to meet with me, that’s all that matters. You can’t do anything else.”

  “I don’t have to do anything else, but you have to.” Paul explained about the complication with Maddie’s ticket to Rome.

  Becker was nonplussed. “That’s okay. I’ll check out right now and head straight to the airport. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of flights I can catch.”

  “I like your can-do attitude,” Paul replied. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. And I really do owe you one. See you in New York?”

  “Maddie’s got my number. All you need to do is get Maddie.”

  Becker said goodbye and then rushed around the room throwing his things back into his suitcase. He sprinted down the stairs and impatiently shifted from foot to foot at the reception desk, waiting for another guest to work through some issue that seemed to take forever to resolve. Finally able to settle his bill, he had the desk clerk call him a taxi. Only after he was settled in the backseat did he at last breathe a sigh of relief as they headed off to the airport.

  Checked in and waiting at the gate lounge for boarding an hour later, he congratulated himself on having found a flight. When an announcement came over the speaker in Italian, Becker assumed they were getting ready to board. He was therefore horror-struck when the English version of the message followed. Apparently the baggage handlers had just gone on strike, a not uncommon event in Italy. But the timing couldn’t have been worse.

  Jumping up and rushing over to the attendant to get more information, Becker wondered if Maddie was in the same predicament. He learned the strike had been called just five minutes prior to the announcement, although there’d been warnings since the day before. Nice of them to tell me when I booked my flight, Becker thought in consternation. Now what?

  Chapter 7

  Rome

  Polenta—Cornmeal Mush Done Right

  July 18

  Maddie was exhausted from going to bed so late, getting up so early, and spending the rest of the time since then agonizing over her meeting with Becker. But, tired as she was, she couldn’t shut off the buzzing in her head at the potential meeting, so after she checked into her hotel just off the Via Veneto, she decided to go out and walk till she was even more exhausted.

  Rome had plenty to offer to distract walkers. Maddie proceeded to explore her way past the famous churches and fountains, continuing out to the Coliseum and to the Forum. The exercise was good and the sites distracting. Still, by the time she’d found her way to the Trevi Fountain by late afternoon, Maddie was ready for a rest. She found a little café, bought a ham and cheese panini and an aranciata to wash it down, and sat munching and thinking.

  She needed a game plan. What she didn’t want to do was go into the meeting with Becker and let him take control. Based upon what Paul had told her, it was obvious what Becker was going to say to her. But Maddie just wasn’t comfortable with going back to the status quo. Can we get back together again? Maybe, but by the time she’d finished her lunch, Maddie had decided exactly what her terms would be if she were even to consider it.

  Looking at her watch, Maddie saw it was close to 5:00 p.m. She decided to kill the intervening hours by wandering through the manicured Villa Borghese park, which was conveniently close to the Spanish Steps. To her delight, she found it to be filled with laughing and playing children, dozing old men, and strolling lovers. Madison was envious of the latter’s serenity and obliviousness to the rest of the world. They all seemed so safe and secure in what the future might bring. If only she could guess what her own future held.

  Just before 8:00 p.m., she positioned herself along one of the balustrades midway down the steps. While still being visible from the steps above, she had an encompassing view of the passing crowds below. The situation was similar to Munich and Venice, when Becker had looked for her, but this time, it was Maddie who busily scanned the throngs for Becker’s face. The previous morning in Venice, she had panicked at the sight of Becker. Now that she knew he was coming and she had armed herself with a plan, Maddie was anxious to meet with him and begin talking. Time had seemed to drag on interminably since yesterday morning, and she was anxious to put the butterflies in her stomach to rest.

  But time kept ticking by, and still there was no sign of Becker. Every fifteen minutes, she’d take up a new position along the stairs in an effort to make herself more visible. Yet, he didn’t appear. Maddie’s heart sank. By nine o’clock, she decided to pack it in. Either he couldn’t make it, or even worse, this was all just some ridiculous setup to further humiliate her. With one last scan over the horizon, Maddie began descending the steps with a heavy heart. Her emotions felt like they’d been strung to a yo-yo, and she wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take.

  Crossing the plaza at the base of the steps, she decided to continue straight ahead and follow a line of restaurants full of tourists happily discussing their day’s discoveries. Noticing a couple holding hands and nuzzling over their after-dinner coffees, she felt a pang in her heart. Her mood growing darker by the minute, she resolutely looked away and set a brisker pace away from the rendezvous that wasn’t.

  A sudden commotion broke out at the end of the block ahead. A man came barreling around a corner and nearly knocked down an old lady with a cane. The woman brandished the cane and yelled imprecations at him, but he barely glanced back to yell a hasty apology. As the man turned forward again, Maddie recognized him, and her heart did a double flip. Becker!

  With his gaze locked on the steps ahead of him, Becker didn’t even see Maddie and had already run a few paces past her when Maddie turned around and yelled his name.

  Maddie watched as Becker brought himself to a screeching halt and wildly glanced around to see where her voice was coming from. She waved her arm and started walking toward him as he eased his way back through the other pedestrians, who by now were all warily watching him after his mad dash through their midst.

  “Maddie,” Becker gasped, as he finally came alongside her. “Thank God. I thought I’d missed you for sure.” He was sweaty and panting and seemed to be having a hard time saying anything else.

  Maddie pointed to the square. “Let’s go back there. We can sit down on the steps, and you can catch your breath so we can talk.”

  “No, wait.” Becker reached out and held her back. “Have you eaten yet? I thought maybe we could sit…” He took a deep breath. “…and have dinner and talk.” He exhaled.

  “No, I haven’t eaten yet. Did you want to eat around here?” Maddie asked, looking around. Every table in the immediate vicinity was already occupied.

  Bending down and taking deep gulps of air, Becker managed, “How about some place a little more quiet? Maybe down a side street…too many people here.”

  “All right. Let’s just keep going this way and look down the side streets till we find something promising.”

  “Okay,” Becker replied, his breathing finally starting to slow down a bit. As they walked along, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his sweaty brow and neck. By the time they’d gone another four blocks, they spotted a likely contender on a quiet little street. It didn’t have any outdoor tables, but a few customers had just finished their meal
s inside, and they were shown to a red leather banquette tucked into a corner.

  Maddie ordered the spaghetti bolognaise, not being in a mood to concentrate on anything other than the upcoming conversation.

  Becker chimed in to ask for the same thing.

  Maddie handed her menu to the waiter, sat back in the banquette, and shot Becker a hard glance. “Well?” she began. “I heard from Paul there’s something you want to tell me.”

  Becker reached across to grab one of Maddie’s hands, but she quickly pulled them both onto her lap. Sighing, Becker clasped his hands together and took a deep breath before beginning. “The long and short of it is this: I’ve been an idiot.”

  Maddie raised her brows. Rather than take advantage of the obvious opening, she met Becker’s assertion with stone-cold silence. She’d be damned if she was going to make this any easier for him.

  “I’ve had…well, an interesting time of things since you threw the food on my head in London.” Seeing Maddie’s reaction to what sounded like an accusation, he caught himself. “Of course, given what I said to you in London, I can’t say I didn’t deserve that.”

  At the memory of that incident, Maddie barely suppressed a smile before Becker continued. “To be honest with you, I don’t know what I was thinking when I said all those horrible things in London. I’ve been racking my brain to come up with a decent excuse, but I can’t. Was it the pressure at work? The complications of planning the trip? An early midlife crisis? The fact is, I just don’t know. But what I do know is that I was wrong.”

  “And how exactly did you come to this new conclusion?” Maddie asked between pursed lips.

  Becker shook his head and attempted his explanation. “In hindsight, I guess I can say it was only a matter of time. But what with everything that happened to me, it helped accelerate the process and kicked my mind back into the proper gear—where it should have been all along.”

  Maddie still wasn’t buying. “You keep mentioning what happened. What exactly did happen to give you this great epiphany?”

  Brushing his hair back off his forehead wearily, Becker launched into a blow-by-blow account of how he’d spent his time since they’d parted.

  As Becker went through his experiences city by city, Maddie went through a successive series of emotions, starting with deep satisfaction that her actions had inadvertently caused him to write off London as a total disaster. It seemed to be poetic justice that he wasn’t able to simply walk away and have a fairy-tale beginning to the rest of his life, when he’d just ruined hers.

  Yet Maddie’s heart skipped a few beats when Becker’s story got to Paris, and he mentioned how he had seen her and Thierry together on the boat. The skipping of her heart turned to a tugging when he went on to explain that seeing her with another man had, in turn, inspired him to dip his toe back into the singles scene there in Paris. When she’d been with Thierry in Paris, she’d been so consumed with anger over what had happened that she hadn’t even cared what he might have been doing at that time. But now that he was revealing what his intentions had been, she was pained to feel the green-eyed monster staring her right in the face.

  As Becker humbly revealed how he had struck out in Paris, Maddie found herself oddly relieved. Old habits die hard, I guess. But she was truly dumbfounded when Becker went on to describe his debacle in Amsterdam. Biting back her lip so as not to laugh at the denouement of the episode with the cross-dresser, her secret amusement turned to secret horror when Becker admitted that he’d then caught sight of Maddie and her four Dutch companions and had tailed her and Peter back to her hotel.

  Becker’s face screwed up in anguish as he told her how witnessing her kissing Peter had dealt the deathblow to his ridiculous aspirations of carefree singlehood. Clearly pained, he told her that seeing her wrapped in an embrace with another man was exactly what he’d needed to bring him to his senses. He told her that when he’d considered breaking up with her, it had only been with his own narrow focus at the forefront of his mind. He went on to relate that when he stood there watching her in Amsterdam, all the other repercussions had come crashing through, and he’d realized how shortsighted his thinking had been.

  Watching the emotions playing across Becker’s face as he made his series of confessions nearly made Maddie lose her resolve to stand firm. As he continued his story about how the remainder of his travels had been consumed with searching for her, she was truly amazed—and grateful—that he’d had a change of heart. Yet having been once burned, she was still wary of further damage should she allow him to immediately jump right back into her life as though nothing had happened.

  Across from her, Becker was describing why he’d been so late making their rendezvous tonight. After finding out that the baggage handlers had gone on strike, he had had to make a quick decision. Should he wait them out, hoping they’d go back to work after a short stoppage, or should he seek out alternative transportation? He’d elected to pursue the latter plan. Hurrying back to the central train station in Venice, he caught the best connection he could manage. Still, a lot of time had already been lost, and the train hadn’t even gotten into Rome until 8:15. He’d jammed his baggage into a storage locker and taken a taxi to the street he’d earlier dashed out of.

  “And that’s it in a messy nutshell,” Becker finished. “Which brings me to the heart of the issue: can you forgive me? Can we pick up where we left off? Because…I love you. I always have, and now I know I always will.”

  “Oh, Becker,” Maddie said with a catch in her voice. “God, you don’t know how much I want to believe that and just pretend nothing happened. But having had an inkling from Paul what you were going to say, I spent a good bit of time today asking myself what I was going to do when you got to this part. I know you know how much you’ve hurt me, but it’s more than just the hurt that we need to work around. It’s the lack of trust. Twice now you’ve thrown me a curve ball that I wasn’t expecting. How am I to know this won’t be the last of it?”

  She could see that Becker was about to rush in with reassurances, but she held up her hand to stop him before he even started. “I know, I know, this time it’s for real, and I don’t need to worry anymore. But I have a proposal for you. I can’t let you just so easily walk out of and into my life as though I’m some kind of revolving door. If you really are sincere about wanting to be married to me, then I think it’s only fair for you to prove it by courting me again.”

  Becker furrowed his brow in a puzzled expression. “Courting?”

  “Well, yes, courting. I know it’s kind of an old-fashioned word, but to me what it means is going back to the very beginning of a relationship. Yes, we know each other like the back of our hands, or we thought we did. I’m hoping that if we can take this reconciliation slowly, and start by dating again, we can really concentrate on all the basics that we need in order to do this right the second time. There’s too much water under the bridge for us to pick up where we left off. If we can look at each other again as though we’re just starting out, maybe we can avoid the trap that we fell into before.”

  Becker nodded, lost in thought for a long moment. “So you mean that this would be like a first date,” he ventured, “and you want us to date through the rest of the trip, until we feel it’s right to be married again? Wouldn’t that be kind of hard, given the logistics of traveling?”

  Maddie’s look was a reprimand. “The timing of this wasn’t my choosing,” she said.

  “I know, I know,” he said remorsefully.

  “As far as I’m concerned, if it was okay to break up in London, it should be okay to spend the rest of the world making up again.”

  Drumming his fingers on the table, Becker nodded. “Fair enough. I can handle that. But I need a little time to think over how to do this.”

  “It’s simple: pure romance,” Maddie said. “Bowl me over all over again. But better this time. You know me a heck of a lot better than you did when we first dated,” she added with a grin, “so it shouldn’t be h
ard to know what’ll knock my socks off.”

  Becker smiled, refilled their wine glasses, and raised his to propose a toast. “To my once and future wife.”

  Maddie laughed and clinked her glass to his. “To second chances.”

  ~~~

  July 19

  Maddie woke up to the insistent ringing of her phone. Blindly groping her hand over to the other side of the bed and onto the nightstand to find the handset, she could only manage a mumbled hello.

  “Good morning,” came the bright and chipper voice of Becker. “Your carriage awaits, madam.”

  “Carriage, wha…?” Maddie sleepily countered. Rubbing her eyes and looking at the sun streaming through the small opening in her closed curtains, Maddie suddenly remembered where she was and what was going on. Sitting bolt upright, she grasped the phone in two hands and struggled to get herself untangled from her sheets. “Where are you?” she finally asked.

  “Where else would I be awaiting, madam?” he asked with mock indignation. “I’m in the lobby, of course.”

  “Okay,” Maddie said, while trying to collect her thoughts. “Give me ten minutes to take a quick shower and throw on some clothes.”

  “Make sure it’s pants,” Becker advised.

  “Uh, sure,” Maddie replied before hanging up. Cautiously she moved over to the window, expecting to look down and find horses pawing at the asphalt. There certainly wasn’t any carriage down there. Just the usual Roman panoply of small honking cars, Vespas, and delivery trucks. “He’s pulling my leg,” she decided and padded into the bathroom to get ready.

  When she descended the stairs and entered the little lobby, there stood Becker in a short-sleeved white shirt and jeans, grinning from ear to ear.