One Summer Day in Rome

by Mark Lamprell

  Meg opened her shoulder bag and unzipped a silk-lined compartment from which she removed the small parcel wrapped in tissue paper. She put her bag back on the seat and placed the little parcel in her lap. With a reverence that irritated her husband enormously, she lovingly unwrapped it layer by layer until they were both staring at a small, shimmering tile, with the kind of illusive blue glaze that recalled an electrical spark, a flash of lightning, or a lost lagoon.

  Meg wondered for a moment whether she might dive into it. Alec knew that he should just snatch the wretched thing and toss it out the window. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something about this tile. There was just something about it.

  TWELVE

  Colosseo

  A THOUSAND WILD FLOWERS BLOOM

  FROM EVERY CHINK, AND THE BIRDS BUILD THEIR NESTS

  AMONG THE RUINED ARCHES, AND SUGGEST

  NEW THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY TO THE ARCHITECT.

  —Longfellow, Michael Angelo

  Lizzie and Constance were back in the dusty white Mercedes, turning into the Via Cavour. Gianni had collected them after he had dropped his niece’s piano teacher for a manicure and shellac at Nice Nails in the Piazzale Montesquieu. It was across town, but he didn’t mind; he was fond of these old English ducks, and besides, they tipped like Americans.

  Directly ahead, looking down the Via degli Annibaldi, Constance glimpsed the Colosseum framed by the dusky stone-and-render buildings. “Magnificent, isn’t it?” she said.

  “What?” said Lizzie.

  Constance could hear the irritation in her sister-in-law’s voice. She didn’t blame her. She knew she was behaving strangely. They had always been frank with each other; it was part of the rules of their engagement, rules strictly adhered to over decades of friendship, and suddenly she was behaving like a fractious diva.

  “Roma,” answered Constance.

  “Well, yes, I suppose so,” said Lizzie, “although it’s difficult to find anything magnificent when your companion drops a bombshell at breakfast and refuses to elaborate until you get to some chapel halfway across the city.”

  Quite. Constance searched for something funny and modern to say. “Build a bridge and get over it, girlie,” was the best she could come up with.

  “If I die of curiosity before we get there,” said Lizzie, “be it on your head.”

  Constance smiled and took Lizzie’s hand, a gesture that startled Lizzie with its intimacy. She looked down at the veined fingers clasping hers and then looked out the window. As they turned in the Via dei Fori Imperiale, there it was again, the Colosseum, ancient and full of stories.

  * * *

  Inside the sunlit arches of the Colosseum, Alice lifted her phone to take a photo. She knew that she would never show these snapshots to anyone, not even Daniel. They were just for her, to remind herself of a time that suddenly, inexplicably, she, who was always so concerned about what others thought of her, felt miraculously free of the burden to please anyone but herself. Even New Alice, with her mandate to live in the moment rather than document it, approved. She felt so light and happy she thought she might float.

  Alice framed her shot, and August seized the moment to examine her. He felt an impulse to bury his face in the titian hair that cascaded from her perfect head and tumbled onto her shoulders. It would smell of sunshine, he knew. He felt his crotch stir again and, begging it not to make a spectacle of itself, tried to remember when his dog died. God, she was Life and Beauty. Her breasts, round and splendid with two ripe, eager nipples, suddenly flashed before him. What if he just took her and ravaged her mouth with his tongue? What would she do? Call the police, that’s what she’d do. He tried to recall his dying dog again.

  A cloud moved across the sun and swept Alice with it; she was suddenly taken by the true antiquity of the space, transported back two millennia. She looked down into the network of underground cells where the wild animals and gladiators were once incarcerated; she looked up and saw the crowds of spectators waiting for the free show. First, the animals doing circus tricks then the gladiators fighting until one is killed or horribly wounded. A thumbs-up from the emperor, the wounded man is spared; thumbs-down, he dies.

  “Unimaginably cruel,” she said. And then realizing that he had not made the detour with her, she elaborated, “The men killing each other and animals. And all of Rome showing up to watch like it was … okay.”

  The semester before last, August had completed a major project on the Colosseum for ARC 235 Architecture in History. So had his compatriots, and he now realized that this was why Rick wanted to bring her here. So he could show off. But of course Rick was occupied elsewhere, and August had hit Rick’s jackpot. He smiled. She frowned, and he realized that his was not an appropriate response to her comment. He went mining for an interesting fact with which to redeem himself.

  “It was horrible,” he said. “They had other stuff, too, like women gladiators fighting dwarf gladiators.”

  “Women gladiators?” she said. “You’re making that up.”

  “But you have no problem with the dwarves?”

  “I was getting to that,” she said, “but I’ve never heard of women gladiators.”

  “It’s true!” he said. “They were, like, Ethiopian, I think.”

  That was probably enough. It would be foolish to prattle on like a know-it-all, but she was looking at him like he knew what he was talking about, and while she kept looking, he kept saying stuff to make her look.

  “It’s the largest amphitheatre the Romans ever built. Well, they didn’t build it; Jewish slaves did.”

  “Jewish slaves. Wow,” she said, looking around.

  Was she being ironic, or was she genuinely impressed? The girl he met yesterday at the airport would definitely be going for ironic, but this girl he was with now seemed softer somehow. A cultural divide suddenly opened before August. If she had been British, he would have known in an instant whether she was toying with him. He knew Americans weren’t strong on irony, so he decided to carry on as if she were interested.

  “They used to flood the arena as well and hold full-scale naval battles,” he continued, “with real ships.” Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered reading that this was incorrect and that the mock battles were actually held in another part of Rome. But he could see her staring into midair, imagining, so he decided not to correct himself and continued with his naval narrative.

  Alice could listen to him all day, she decided. Was it the timbre of his voice that was so mesmerizing? Was it the British accent, almost upper class but a trace of something else—a place maybe, or a city, like Liverpool or Manchester? Whatever it was, she liked it. And while she was at it, she liked his forearms, too, the meaty way they met his wrists. And his mouth; lips a little too thin but such a clever smile. If she licked him on the neck, he would taste salty and musky. She imagined his hand resting on her belly, pushing downward, pressing against her. A liquid swoon between her legs jolted her back to reality.

  “I’m getting married,” said Old Alice.

  “What?” he said.

  “I’m getting married,” said New Alice. It was true. He had to hear it sometime.

  “No, you’re not,” he said.

  “I am,” she said. “That’s who I’m meeting in Florence. My … him.”

  Both Old and New Alice felt it was important to declare this before … before what? Nothing had happened. Absolutely nothing. Sometimes at home, in an attempt to bond with her brilliant but short-tempered older brother, Alice would watch football matches with him in their father’s plaid-wallpapered study. Once she watched a player shoot across the field and tackle another who was seconds from a touchdown. The camera was in a close-up at the moment of the tackle. Clearly the player had not seen his opponent coming. His expression was one part devastation, one part astonishment. She could now see this look on Pea Green’s face. Pea Green. She didn’t even know his name.

  August had no idea why he was so upset.
What did it matter what this girl did? Yes, he loved her, but he wasn’t deluded about it. Or rather, he knew he was deluded and that she would never love him back. And besides, she was getting on a train soon, and he would never see her again. Still, he felt like someone had squeezed his heart, or punched it. He wanted to sit down and put his head in his hands.

  “You don’t have to make up some mythical guy,” he said, trying not to sound hurt or bewildered, both of which he unaccountably was.

  “I’m not,” she said. “It’s true.”

  “How old are you?”

  It was a reasonable question, but Alice found it infuriating. “Nine-year-old girls in Africa get married every day,” she said. New Alice stepped up, front and center. “I’ve been menstruating since I was eleven years old. Old enough to reproduce, old enough to get married.” She liked the shocked look on his face when she said “menstruating,” although she was a little disconcerted by the surge of anger she was feeling.

  August found his wry smile and pasted it on his face. He decided to leap over the issues of eligibility and menstruation, returning to her announcement of impending nuptials. “You don’t exactly have a lot of credibility after the whole ‘Scusi, I gotta getta my bagga’ routine at the airport yesterday,” he said.

  “I was in a hurry.”

  “And nowa you needa to get rid of me.”

  “If I was trying to get rid of you, I’d just do this.” She raised her middle finger at him, turned, and started to walk away across the giant paving stones, horrifying Old Alice by what she was doing but compelled by New Alice to do it anyway.

  He followed her, confused. “Sorry, I just don’t see you as the kind of…” No, this was heading in the wrong direction. “I just don’t see you being engaged with a fiancé and all.”

  “He’s not a fiancé, he’s a guy,” she said, “and we’re getting married. No big deal.”

  But of course it was a very big deal. It had been ten days since she had announced to Daniel that she was going to spend the summer in Italy. It was a last-minute thing, she explained, a kind of challenge laid down to her by one of her professors.

  Alice had always suspected that she was much more into Daniel than he was into her, and she guarded her heart accordingly. Part of her had sensed that he was as much attracted to her mother’s power to advance his career as he was to anything else she had to offer. So, when she tentatively outlined her travel plans, it surprised her that he was quite put out, or rather, how put out he was.

  She didn’t want to disappoint him; she liked Daniel enormously. He was much more sensible than other boys she had dated, because he was older, she supposed. Not just sensible, sensitive; interested and therefore interesting. And he genuinely tried to help her with her assignments. Sometimes he could be patronizing, but it was just his way of expressing frustration with her, which was as much her fault as his because she allowed him to treat her like that. Aside from the issue with his ears, he was certainly “eye candy,” as her mother had somewhat creepily observed, and he was a nice lover. No, not nice; he was considerate. A good lover.

  He was also ambitious. Not in a ruthless way, but he was clear about what he wanted, and he was set on achieving it. It was well known that he was right on track to being the youngest senior partner in her mother’s firm. So it came as quite a surprise that Daniel suggested he come to Rome, too.

  “You can’t,” said Alice. “Mom would flip.”

  “Not if there was a special reason,” said Daniel. “I could get away for a week or so if there was a special reason.”

  “What kind of special reason?”

  “We could be getting engaged, for example,” he said.

  The example lay on the black granite bench between them while Alice buttered toast. Daniel smiled and put his hand on hers. “If you wanted to,” he said very quietly.

  This lovely man is asking me to marry him, thought Alice. She had never given it serious consideration; it was something she might like to do when she was older, when she was about thirty, say. She was not one of those little girls who hijacked her tutu for a veil and playacted her big day. She did appreciate, however, that she was being asked now, that the opportunity may not come again, and that if she accepted his offer, her life would be imbued with purpose and direction. Her mother would be pleased. He would be pleased. She would no longer be a disappointment.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  Daniel looked her in the eye. “Very,” he said. “Completely.”

  She loved his certainty most of all. She, who had little or no certainty about anything, who had developed such a phobia about disappointing people that she could only make decisions after writing extensive lists of pros and cons, felt herself falling into him. Into his certainty. It was such a relief.

  Strangely, it was also a relief that Daniel could not get himself on the same flight to Rome as she had. The best he could manage was a flight into Florence the day after, and the most he could get was three days off. Alice couldn’t work out why she felt relieved, but she told herself, for once, not to overthink it and not to make lists.

  * * *

  As they exited the Colosseum, a morbidly obese gladiator waved his plastic shield at August and Alice, shouting excitedly in a mix of Italiano and English, inviting them to pose for a photo with him. They both smiled, declining with grateful gestures, both of them feeling sick to the stomach. It was awful. Something had broken between them; they each felt it and each knew the other felt it. Not that there was anything to break in the first place, Alice reminded herself. She decided she should get herself to the station and wait for her train.

  A raggedy boy with dark skin and cheeky grin approached them. In a gravelly little voice, he said, “Scusi, photo? Photo? With both, you and you.”

  August shook his head and smiled. Alice reached into her pocket and produced a couple of euros. The boy looked most offended; he wanted to earn his money.

  “Photo. Photo,” he said.

  Surrendering, August and Alice stood next each other.

  “Camera?” said the boy.

  It occurred to Alice that he might try to run off with it, but she handed over her phone anyway. The boy put the phone into camera mode and framed a shot. Almost immediately he lowered the phone from his expert eye and looked disapprovingly at his wooden subjects. “Baci. Baci.”

  “What?” August squinted.

  “It means kiss,” she said to August and then loudly and firmly responded to the boy, “Just take the photo.”

  The boy took the photo. Alice handed him the two euros, and this time he accepted them. Without a word he scooted off. (He was, of course, acting on my behalf. If ever you encounter a scruffy boy in Roma who wants to take your photo, do be kind to him. He’s more than likely engaged in very important work.)

  August and Alice looked at the photo on the screen of the phone. Their heads pressed together for a moment before they simultaneously became conscious of touching each other and pulled away.

  “I’ll send it to you. What’s your number?” she said.

  August could see that she was withdrawing, preparing to leave. He knew he should let her go, that even “letting her go” was a delusional notion; he never had her in the first place. While one voice shouted at him to not let this pass, to take this moment, to seize her somehow, another voice laid out two major obstacles: firstly, she was engaged to someone else; secondly, she was out of his league.

  He realized that if he gave her his phone number, it would not be the beginning but the end; she would use it to message him their photo, and having bookended their brief encounter, she would not contact him again. He could, of course, contact her, but his romantic history told him that he would hear the reluctance in her voice, feel foolish, say something stupid, and end up wishing he hadn’t.

  It was now or never. So instead of giving her his phone number, he gave her an idea. “You know when you have a big night out and you end up completely legless, exchanging life stories
with some stranger? You get their number and vice versa, but when you wake up the next day you realize that what you thought was a life-changing mind-orgasm was actually two piss-heads rambling shit.” He could feel the wind behind him, suddenly inspired just when he needed to be. “You feel obliged to call, but you don’t want to. And you end up ruining what would have been an enjoyable moment, if you’d just let it be.”

  Alice hadn’t really ever had a night like that, but she got the point of what he was saying. And she enjoyed his funny way of saying it. He could see that he had hooked her, and the feigned boredom of her tone confirmed it.

  “Is there a point to this story?” she said dryly.

  It was an invitation to dance.

  “Let’s not do numbers or swap e-mails,” said August. “I’ve got two hours in this amazing city with this gorgeous American girl who has already broken my heart by running off to marry some tosser—”

  “He’s not a tosser, whatever that is,” she interrupted, grinning.

  “How do you know he’s not a tosser if you don’t know what a tosser is?”

  Alice rolled her eyes.

  “Anyway, in two hours you are getting on a train to Florence, and I will return to my farting, fouling companions—”

  “Erck. Thanks for the visual.”

  “You’re welcome. So what do you say we really enjoy this? Really live it and all that. Then we go our separate ways, and phht, that’s it.” He suspected it sounded a little lame. But he hoped she would see that it also made sense.

  “Do you always go on like this?” Alice said.

  “Yeah, sorry. Second-child syndrome. Brilliant but silent older brother. I’m the talky one. Dysentery of the mouth.” The last quip was one bridge too far, he knew, but he didn’t care. He was feeling light-headed, heady, victorious, happy, and glorious.