“Let me explain,” she adds.
“Please.”
“You have told me a lot about yourself.”
“Too much.”
“Perhaps. But I asked you to, and it was a fair question, I think. But having said that, I have not been fair with you in return. I have not told you much about myself. The fact is, I come from a traditional Florentine family, meaning a traditional Italian family. My mother and father have been married for forty years. But my father has been equally traditional with his endless infidelities. He is like a lot of Italian men who marry their sweetheart to give them their children, and then they assume the right to be with as many women as they wish. Mistresses. It’s almost a part of our culture.
“It has always been very difficult for my mother, but especially in this day and age. I don’t want that type of life. I have seen my mother’s suffering, and it hurts me. I don’t wish it for myself. I don’t wish it upon any woman.
“And with respect to you, I know how you have changed, and I understand how your life has progressed. And it seems logical that it would evolve the way you described it. I am not judgmental about it, obviously, or I would not have let you get this close to me. But a leopard really does not change his spots. And maybe not today, or tomorrow, or next year, or five years from now, but as a professional artist who needs experiences from which to derive inspiration, you will eventually feel the need to have one of your changes. And we will be in the very situation that I am telling you I don’t want. And I will be in the same situation my mother has been in all her married life. So, I am here to tell you I need to stop seeing you.”
My brain goes completely numb and I cannot speak. My whole world centers around Carlotta. Not just my emotions and my thoughts but my work, too—what I want to paint now, what I need to paint now, the way I express who I am becoming and who I want to be. There is a catch in my throat and I can feel a mist behind my eyelids. I remind myself, Carlotta taught me that I am an Eagle. Now I must behave like one.
“Okay,” I finally manage to say.
“I’m sorry, Rodrigo.”
I already know her well enough to know it is useless to argue with her right now. Is there anything at all I can say to keep the door open even a little bit, so I can try to reach her in the future? I have to try. “I feel so much gratitude for your honesty. And the way you have told me this, it helps me further understand why I love you so much. It lets me know, well, it’s out there—people of your integrity. And perhaps at last I am looking for the right things in someone.”
“I think you are. And I know it has not been easy.” Carlotta’s eyes are welling with tears now. “And I know I do love you.”
“And I love you.”
She reaches forward and clutches one of my rough, paint-splashed hands. “How is the work going?”
“Come to the show sometime. You’re the only one with a ticket.”
She attempts a smile, but her chin quivers instead. “I’m not that strong . . . Maybe someday.” She tries to regain her composure and clears her throat. “I have something I want to tell you. But now—”
“Now what?” I ask.
“—I can’t remember.” She has a relapse and brings my hand to her bowed forehead, hiding her face, which is contorted with emotion.
Eventually her head lifts up. The lids to her beautiful emerald eyes can hold back the tears no longer. They pour a series of tiny silver droplets down her cheeks as her chin trembles again.
“Don’t lose faith, Rodrigo. And don’t slip back. To former ways. That would be a shame, you know?”
“I won’t . . . I’m an Eagle.”
And she smiles through her tears. She looks down and strokes the top of my hand with her thumb while studying it. She bends low and kisses it.
“So many beautiful colors,” she says as she rises and then quickly runs off. Through my own tears, I can see her twist back, and a final “Ti amo” crosses her lips, but her fractured voice can’t produce the sounds, and nothing comes out.
16
MAKING TRACKS
It was all very hazy. A gentle hand stroked my forehead and brow. My eyes unsealed, but my vision was still blurred. I looked around in a foggy daze and gradually recognized my surroundings: my private room in the subterranean drug den in Brooklyn. I was still lying on my back in bed.
Akira was sitting next to me. Her shimmering black hair, smooth immaculate skin, and full, deep red lips looked beautiful in the soft candlelight. She was still wearing the same glamorous skintight red satin dress, with the same elegant string of tiny pearls suspended from her vulnerable thin white neck. She was as feminine a creature as I’d ever seen. When she noticed that I had become more aware of my surroundings, she smiled, showing her snow-white teeth.
“Hello, Mr. Concepción.”
“W-where am I?”
“Don’t worry. You are back,” she said in that gentle, silky voice. “I was worried about you.”
“What a . . . nice way . . . to come back. How long have I been out?”
A voice called out from behind Akira. It was Melanie, the dosage technician. “Over a day!”
“Really?”
Akira nodded and smiled sweetly again and swept my bangs gently off my forehead.
“You be careful. Very dangerous what you do,” Melanie remarked.
“You took care of me all this time?”
“I was worried for you. You were very sad.”
“I’m a sad man.”
“You were crying. A lot. For hours. It made me sad. They were going to take you in an ambulance. But I said no. I said I would take care of you.”
“God bless you, Akira.” I brought her hand to my lips and kissed it. “Akira, can you do something for me?”
She nodded the shortest of nods. “I will do for you whatever you wish.” She squeezed my hand.
“One more. I have to go back.”
Her expression changed from warm glow to more serious. “That would be very dangerous.”
“I’m fine. I’m strong. Like a bull,” I said, and added a smile.
“I will see what I can do.” She let go of my hand and stood up. I reached inside my underwear and found the hidden stash. I handed her a thousand in cash before she left the room.
I sat up and put my face in my hands and rubbed my eyes. When I tried to get up, I was unsteady and tipped over. On the second try, I made it over to the bar and poured myself a Scotch. I downed it and poured myself another.
Dangerous or not, deadly or not, I had to go under again so I could see Carlotta in Florence. Akira had brought me back to waking life in the Brooklyn drug den before I even had a chance to try to change Carlotta’s mind and win her back. I couldn’t imagine life without her in any world or universe, dream or otherwise.
Akira came back in and said, “One more. But you are finished after that.”
“Thank you, Akira. Last time,” I agreed, and settled onto the bed again, holding her soft hand.
Akira said, “But you must promise—you will come back to me.”
I eyed her profoundly and produced a spare nod, as if to say, “I promise,” though behind my assurance there was little more than hollow conviction.
I felt my arm being tugged and pricked, and I saw the world in sepia before I drifted blissfully off in a luxury ride to heaven.
17
PRIVATE AUDIENCE
I don’t know how long I have been back in Florence painting, but it seems like it’s been a long time, maybe months. Much as I try, I cannot get in touch with Carlotta. Instead I am concentrating on work, so I can have everything ready to show her when I do find her. I am in perfectionist mode, consumed with fine-tuning The Universe. Adding brushstrokes here and there, deepening color panels, providing supplemental shadings; I have even signed each work with a fresh and improved “RC.” I want everything to be completely new in this private and personal period—no connection to past oeuvres.
There is a knock on the door and I call o
ut, “It’s open!”
Arturo, my neighbor, a fellow tenant from the floor below, steps in and informs me there is someone outside who would like to speak with me.
I take the coffeemaker off the flame and turn off the burner. I ease down the stairs, taking my time, thanking my neighbor for checking with me before allowing any unknown visitor entrée.
I pop out the front door, and to my total shock, Carlotta is there, standing before me. We greet each other warmly with twin pecks, and I’m heartened that she’s perhaps come for a visit.
“Can you come up?”
“I have to go, Rodrigo. But I came to tell you—”
“Just for a moment . . .”
She hesitates. “But only a minute.”
We climb the stairwell, slip into my foyer, and ascend the steps to the studio. I open the door and let her enter first. Carlotta scans the walls momentarily and emits a sharp gasp.
She drifts to the middle of the room, spinning. She takes it in. She is silent, with her hand to her mouth. For over a minute she doesn’t utter a sound.
I stir a little cream into my homemade macchiato and ask her if she would care to have one. She doesn’t hear me. I fade back to the kitchen to light the burner once again.
I reenter the space where she’s now seated on the couch, and I see her wipe her eye. She seems to be mesmerized by the Cala de Deià horizon and sunset sub-series. The boat, the water, the rescue. She pays particular attention to the five eagles, taken from different locations and angles. Flying, soaring, floating upon upcurrents, on the bow, and on the mast. Then the Eagle Eye Triptych—three angles taken from the eagle’s own vantage point. I suspect she may be entertaining memories of that vacation.
I’m filled with much joy. It would have been enough that she has materialized before me in the flesh, that she has come to visit. But in addition, she seems to be appreciating what is before her. She is the only audience ever intended, and she is moved. It is one of the happiest moments of my entire life.
“Are you pressed for time?”
She doesn’t answer me. She doesn’t hear me. She is transfixed, which is always a positive indicator that your efforts—all the planning, the preparation, and the execution—are validated. There is nothing more satisfying than to earn the appreciation of those you cherish most, and the respect that comes with it.
“Rodrigo,” she whispers, as if in church. Respectful. “You have taken my breath away.”
“Really? It gives me such joy to hear you say that. I’m overwhelmed, actually. That you approve.”
“Approve? Rodrigo. I’m completely—I don’t know what to say. These are masterpieces. That’s the most obvious thing I can say. That anyone could say, in any language. How marvelous . . .”
“Do you have time still?”
She nods quickly.
“Come,” I say. She follows.
I maneuver across the space and tug away a large drop cloth that is covering more works stacked against the far wall. These are the seascapes and landscapes from the Cala series: the cove, the beach, the Serra de Tramuntana mountains, the full range and singular high peak formations, the donkey trains. There are twenty-five in all. I flip through one by one. I get to the Tramuntana mountain sub-series—the full range captured repeatedly from the same angle and composition, but taken at different times of day, with different light and different weather.
Again her eyes well up and she does not offer words, only intermittent shakes of the head. As she moves from one canvas to the next, tear droplets fall from her eyelids. Her chin trembles.
It surprises me that she is reacting to the high peaks this way. They are just mountains, after all. Then I realize I am an insensitive dolt, an imbecile. She is perhaps envisioning the beautiful time we enjoyed together. These manifestations are no longer paint on canvas but postcards to us, celebrations of the time we shared. These postcards, caught in the slow mail of life, have been delivered to her in giant size, all at once, with an impressionistic haze and a concentrated intensity. That must be the reason for her emotional response.
Her reaction is even more gratifying because now she is experiencing the emotion that fueled me while articulating them. My emotional grid has been properly transferred through paint and brushstrokes on canvas.
She stands next to me as she studies one piece after another. I feel her hand gently clasp mine. With each piece she sees, she grips my hand tighter.
I cannot help but recall witnessing the tears in her eyes when she told me she could not be with me, and how starkly different it is to see them now, in this context.
I step back and go to the kitchen to pour her a coffee.
“May I?” she asks as she begins to flip through the rest of the stack.
“Of course!”
I return and hand her the coffee in a mug.
“Caro, I am so proud of you.”
“I didn’t have room for everything.”
“You mean there’s more?”
“These are the initial forty-five. There are twenty-six more.” There is not enough wall space to hang the entire two initial chapters of The Parallel Universe, composed of seventy-one works in all.
“Dio mio. Where are they?”
“You want to see?”
“Don’t play games with me!”
I laugh. She has caught me; I am playing. And why? Because I am the happiest man on the planet. I have to pinch myself to know this is really happening. Her. Me. In my studio. And for a private audience.
She walks behind me down the corridor. I open the door. The room is dark, as the shades are drawn.
“Stay here, per favore, it’s dark.”
I move through the space to the far wall, to reach the blinds that have been blocking out the day for weeks on end now. I need the dark to effectuate an endless time continuum, to help me finesse the blossoming Universe in constant conditions, without being distracted by the changing light of different times of day.
I locate the wall switch and flip it. The motorized blind begins to rise with an old-world metallic racket and at an old-world snail’s pace.
As yellow light slowly floods first to the bottom of the room like water in a bathtub, indistinguishable gray shapes begin to pronounce themselves. With more light, the gray transforms and the shapes begin to take on color.
“Scusi, please forgive the mess . . .”
She says nothing.
Soon the entire room is filled with light, and the chaotic condition of my large bedroom reveals itself—paint-covered clothes strewn everywhere—in addition to a four-wall display. Suspended around the room is the final sub-series of The Universe’s second chapter, the prequel to Cala, comprising the day we first met in Florence.
“Carlotta?” I call out. “Come on in. It’s ready for you to see!”
The noisy motorized window blind stops, and I hear the faint sound of crying. I dash back to the bedroom door to Carlotta and find her leaning against the door frame, her face in her hands.
I clasp her hand, and she spins toward me and collapses into me. “I’m so . . . so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. I’m here. You’re here. All is good. Tutto a posto.”
“B-b-but,” she stammers, “how did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That is my totem animal.”
“Which? I do not know.” I scan the Animal sub-series, arranged across and down in the order that I have painted them.
“That!” She points to the head-shot portrait of the true beast—captured close and in tight, with the huge golden eyes, the menacing expression, the exposed slashing incisors, the broad head. A fierce portrayal.
“Panthera onca, yes. The Latin genus name for ‘panther.’ The sub-series is all panthers.”
“How did you guess, then?”
“I don’t know what you mean . . .”
“You asked me so many times. I never told you. The panther is . . . me . . .”
“That’s—”
“Sì, caro!”
“I did these from memory.”
“What memory?”
“Of our first day together. I found you on the Ponte Vecchio. At the silver artisan’s shop. You were admiring the panther ring in the showcase when I caught up with you and gave you the drawing of the flower. That’s what this installment is about: when we first met. It’s a prequel. Because this happened before the first installment. Though I painted it after.”
As she takes several deep breaths to regulate her breathing, I go to the kitchen to get her some water. When I return, she says, “Our last night together, you were speaking about parallel universes. And contacting New York. Like you still lived there. I thought you were losing it. Or had lost it. You seemed crazy.”
“I was drunk.”
“But it scared me. I was so scared, Rodrigo.”
“I’m a scary drunk.”
“But—all along you had processed me, you knew me, so incredibly well—more intuitively, intimately, deeply than anyone ever before. Including my parents.”
“Coincidence.”
“Mah!” she exclaims. “No such thing. Not in this life. Instinctively, you knew. You discerned the very essence of my being. You felt it. And you expressed it. In paint. You may not have done it consciously. But part of you knew.” She gives it more thought. “Maybe we are all dream players, like you said. Passing in and out of one another’s dreams. And that is life—just one big dream.”
My reaction is to twist away, albeit imperceptibly, as my arm hair stands on end. I will stay away from this line of conversation. For now, at least. I am afraid to talk about it anymore; talking about it might make it all go away again.
“I’m sorry I doubted you, Rodrigo.”
I don’t say anything. What is there to say? And what purpose would it serve? What do I have to prove? All of this is good enough for me. For the second time in recent days—the first being my actions during the intervention by my “friends” in SoHo—I find myself exercising restraint. From ego. And from senseless psychological needs for vindication. Or revenge. Or to be right all the time. Or to get credit.
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