by Diana Cachey
“Yes?” She waited for more explanation about her apparent antics of the night before.
“You were snockered last night, wanted me to stay.”
“Why didn’t you stay?”
“ I thought it best for you to sleep.”
The answers always come if we wait.
All her answers. Drunk? Totally. Laid? Not. Boat ride home with Tom? Si, si, that’s how he knew where she was staying.
“Sorry, hold on...,” she replied. She ran to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face, gargle mouthwash, throw on sexier lingerie.
“It’s okay,” he yelled, “I love you sleepy with smeared last night’s make-up.”
“Shut up and wait,” she yelled back. He’d reminded her of the smeared make-up. She touched it up. It looked like she just applied it.
Tom obeyed the command to wait, although what was in his trousers was about to break down the door.
Some lip gloss. All set. She answered the door.
With fur draped open, she revealed her pushed-up breasts and a peek of her rhinestoned thong. He didn’t, couldn’t, wait for the door to shut. He shoved both hands into the fur then put one hand softly on each breast. His tongue thrust down her throat.
They stood there long enough for her nipples to register more than the cold. She begrudgingly stopped, pushed her pelvis onto his.
“Let’s not waste anymore time.” She pulled him by his scarf while walking backwards towards the adjoining room and he kicked the door shut behind him.
They didn’t make it to the bed nor the adjoining room. Rouge had felt his trouser tent and she’d put a wool blanket in the hallway to keep her feet warm. It now kept everything warm below her as they rolled onto the marble floors. Entwined and breathless, he kept the top of her warm, very warm. Slowly and seductively then alternately vigorous, he filled her insides full of warmth too.
Firm yet gentle, he didn’t waste anymore time.
She had not asked, “Why are we wasting time?” It was a command. One he obeyed.
He continued to obey her commands. She moved his lips to various parts of her face, neck, breasts, tummy and on and on, all the way to her toes. She worked on him too, being a little less gentle, not using her lips but something else in all of those areas.
Next she demanded to be spanked, for which she returned the favor countless times before they moved to the bedroom.
Since the bathroom was on the way, they stopped in for a shower, its hand shower appliance being very handy indeed. He didn’t last long in the shower, but she did.
The bed was eventually taken over with their long awaited entrance, which he staged as he draped her across it and covered her with lemon-scented tasting oil.
They had a lengthy day ahead of them. So they napped. Briefly. Tom couldn’t sleep and so he wouldn’t let her sleep either. By now it was dusk and she lit candles, which gave her another idea. A symphony of wax.
It’s going to be a good trip, she thought and walked to bed with the candle.
Tom’s reality reached out and scratched that record when he saw the candle.
“Is it dark already? I gotta go. My wife is gonna kill me,” he said.
“Oh baby. What happened?”
“I’m supposed to take her friends in my boat to a Carnival ball tonight.”
Rouge’s symphony turned into nails on a chalkboard.
I wanna go to the Carnival ball, she wanted to whimper. Instead she listened to him whine about not wanting to go.
I wanna go to the ball, she kept thinking.
Then she remembered she did have an invite to a ball. Barbara’s hot new Italian boyfriend, Massimo, was hosting a private affair. Somewhere. Where? She couldn’t remember the details.
Screw this, I have to get ready for my own ball, she thought. More clever than Tom, she didn’t let on.
“Okay, go home. Your wife scares the crap out of me.”
“She scares the crap out of me too. She scares the crap out of everyone.” He rolled over and pulled a wool blanket over his head whimpering.
“You know, she will kill you before she kills me,” Rouge said slyly. “Worse. She’ll let you live.”
“Ohhhhhh.”
“I’m taking a shower and putting on Cleopatra. It’s time to get my Carnival on. You driving me or not?”
“Yes,” he moaned from under the covers.
“Then get your butt in the shower. Now.”
“Noooo,” he said.
He knew he sounded infantile but these two women, his wife and Rouge, had that effect on him. It wasn’t difficult for any woman to have that effect on him.
“Honey, no, go home to your wife.”
“See you in a few minutes?” he begged and reached out to grab her and pull her back. With what little strength he had left after their frenzy, he failed in his attempt to hold on to her.
“Sleep. I will shower and change.”
“All-right,” he mumbled.
He dozed off thinking what a shame that they were extremely compatible but could never be together. He knew they were soul mates. Sexually.
While he snoozed, Rouge became Cleo.
Madonna went all Cleopatra at the super bowl performance, recalled Rouge, or so she’d been told. She couldn’t force herself to go to the popular Venetian bar where Americans watch championship sports. Rouge, now turned Cleopatra, was soon ready for the ball.
Massimo’s festivities were supposed to be in a palazzo overlooking Campo San Polo, San Polo, being Venetian for Saint Paul. It was near another large plaza, Campo dei Frari, which she called “the magical place” ever since she’d had what Barbara called her “spiritual experience.”
In the church there, Chiesa di Santa Marie dei Frari, around Christmas, she came upon a nativity for Epiphany. All churches in Italy seemed to have them and parishioners took great pride in building their own. Like the basilica that hosted it, Frari’s nativity was grander than most.
An entire farm town had been created around a little manger of the carpenter, his wife and baby Jesus. Rebecca had watched in awe while the farm completed a full twenty-four hour cycle. Within minutes, the farm life changed from dawn into day into dusk into night and back into dawn. Chickens went in and out of barns, dogs and other animals scurried with town folk before all rested when the sky darkened. Stars came out and the moon rose. After the moon fell, the sky lightened with a rising sun and the cycle began anew.
Rouge refused to believe it was spiritual, but rather thought of it as a cool, over-the-top Venetian-style epiphany scene. Yet it had caused a feeling like something banged on her chest when she watched it. Beams of light rays came out from her chest straight to the infant in the manger.
Spooky. Spooky, yes, that is how she would describe it. Not spiritual. No way.
Her second weird experience at magical Frari occurred in the chapel that houses the relics of Jesus’ crucifixion. When she stood in front of the alter that held thorns from his crown, a nail from the cross, his blood and other relics, her telefonino flew out of her hand, crashed to the marble floor then spun across the colorful marble inlays until it stopped right in the middle of the mosaic that depicted the crown of thorns. The phone didn’t break and, in fact, it started to play her morning alarm even though she routinely turned it off when she visited art in churches. Also she hadn’t set the alarm for that time of day, or any time for that matter. The alarm was off, the phone was off but both had taken on a lives of their own.
Barbara had said it was Jesus telling her to wake up.
“Wake up? Wake up to what?” Rouge had asked Barbara. Barbara responded with a silent grimace and exasperated sigh.
“Spiritual experience,” scoffed Rouge as she crowned her Cleopatra head with its golden headband. Then, just at that moment, Tom’s alarm blasted loudly behind her on the bed.
“Shoot, I didn’t set that alarm. Sorry. That was loud,” he yelled and switched it off. “Anyway, we gotta go, baby.”
Startled, Rouge d
rew wings of black eye liner that led straight up to her temples.
They left her apartment, she in the highest pair of heels she could handle on cobblestones, he in a rumpled golf shirt. He’d already resigned himself to the big trouble he knew awaited him at home but couldn’t resist giving Rouge one more ride up the Grand Canal to her royal destination. She assumed a regal stance, pulled her shoulders back and thrust out her breasts in defiance of Tom’s plans for the evening that didn’t include her. At the end of her journey, she hiked up her gown to step from his boat onto the shore. Heads turned.
“Incredeebeelay,” said a group of young boys who passed her. In her beaded and braided black wig with sequin-trimmed headband, she nodded at them. A golden mantel and python necklace lay marvelously across her chest. She’d left her cape wide open under the mantel to allow the tops of her breasts to peek out from under the fur collar. Perfectly fit for the part of Queen of the Nile, Cleo intended to fully get her Carnival on, with or without Tom.
He whimpered at the thought of his boring obligations for the evening and watched her saunter off into the crowded square. Making her way to one of those exclusive parties to which she always managed to find an invitation, she was enticing enough to make a grown man cry.
And he did.
“My Italian language class is full of beautiful woman transplanted here from around the world by their resident boyfriends,” Barbara announced to Louisa and Rouge.
This was not good news. All were quite enamored with their own local men and, of course, liked to think they were special. The obvious implication made by Barbara’s declaration? Replacements for them by their respective boyfriends was simply a matter of finding another pretty tourist, of which Venice was bursting at the seams.
“I guess the best begets the best,” said Rouge, wanting to ignore the negative implication of Barbara’s words.
Likewise, Louisa chose to ignore her sister. The loaded pigeon killer gun packed in her bag caused such a fright in her that she’d done nothing about dead birds or glassmakers since receiving it. None of the clues made any real sense and she had plenty of work to do on the police department’s Interpol project. Work plus a bad cold had kept her out of harm’s way until Rouge arrived to keep her distracted with freewheeling antics. Fed up with ghost hunting, obscure clues and Matteo’s philandering, the last thing Louisa wanted to do on her day off was talk about how scores of women milled about the damn city and offered themselves up to the hot-blooded Venetians. What Louisa wanted was lunch.
Barbara decided to also feign interest in the obvious implications of her own statement. “Thus, the bella figura gene pool is fortified,” she said, “should a transplanted beauty bear a child with a Venetian.”
Bella figura means everything to Italians and means more than it’s literal translation of “the beautiful figure.” Bella figura means never going out without correct dress, top to toe. It meant, for women, never showing up without makeup or the seemingly mandatory high heels, heels being preferred no matter how many bridges one would need to traverse in them. It required spending more money than you should on clothes and forever replacing them with the latest fashion or trend. It prescribed a tanning regimen for a year-round bronze glow. It obligated expensive and flashy sunglasses, of which many full page spreads were featured in any major Italian magazine, further promoting the theory that it’s always sunny in Italy. Bella figura assumed good eating habits and regular exercise to stay trim and fit for perfect swimsuit form even in the winter.
It meant too much pressure for Louisa, Barbara and Rouge, who preferred to be a little more informal and forego such excessive grooming habits.
Louise nodded in agreement and sighed in dismay.
The pressure those poor Venetian women must face, she thought. For a change, she felt happy to be American and free. Free, at the very least, to wear flats.
The three women walked in comfortable but fashionable shoes towards Rialto. They planned to people watch or window browse the two rows of bustling commerce on the famous bridge. Commerce such as glass of all colors, sizes and prices and molded into every imaginable shape. Glass made into menageries of cats, dogs, birds, fishes, cows, pigs, roosters as well as formed into Venetian figurines in costumes, from medieval to present day.
The bridge market also held many jewelry shops for glass jewelry, or gold watches, original artistic beads, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires and other stones. Sport shops displayed outfits for every Italian soccer team and most other countries too. Boot stores, mask vendors, shoe shops and other kiosks sold silverware, sweaters, linens, books, cards, postcards, handmade paper, silk, wool, cashmere and tweed fabric. Ferrari apparel, trinkets, model boats and cars, various gondolier and other tourist T-shirts, all blinded them with quantity and quality.
Barbara stopped briefly to peruse masks in a shop as well as the man selling them, but then continued her earlier rant.
“Il ragazzo, ragazzo, ragazzo, that was the answer every time the teacher asked why the students, who I might add were mostly women, came to study Italian in Venice,” said Barbara.
“A boy, a boy, a boy,” said Rouge.
“They chanted it.”
“ Over and over, again?”
“Yes, even the one male student, who apparently was gay, said it.”
“The boy was even here for a boy,” said Rouge.
“I wanted to scream,” Barbara said.
A man she’d stopped to admire paused to admire her back. He made sure she noticed it. With a twist of his handsome head, he smiled in her direction.
When the three women arrived at the end of the row of shops, they instinctively looked out at Rialto traffic, both on and under the bridge. They couldn’t help notice that romance along Rialto was in full force.
Couples dangled themselves along the steps, enraptured with one another. Others kissed, hugged and nuzzled. One especially zealous couple got the full frontal high beams focused on them by the captain of a passing boat, which invoked much laughter by everyone around them, above and below. The two lovers continued to fondle each other, in spite of or perhaps because of, the audience and spotlight.
“What was your answer,” Louisa said, “when the teacher asked why you were studying Italian in Venice?”
“What?” Barbara said. She’d forgotten the language school train of thought and was now focussed on a luxurious set of designer bed sheets in a small boutique window.
“We want to know your answer to the question,” Rouge said.
“Oh, right. Luckily I sat at the end of the table and had time to prepare a more mature response -- in mandatory Italian, you know because the number one rule is No english. Sempre Italiano. Always Italian,” she finished without answering their inquiry.
“Why are you,” Louisa persisted. “taking Italian lessons in Venice?”
“Sorry I can’t remember how to say it in Italian.”
“Then say it in English.”
They laughed because the total immersion aspect of the language class had worked so well that Barbara forgot she could answer Louisa’s question in English there at Rialto.
Or maybe she is stalling, thought Louisa. Rouge nodded as if she was thinking the same thing. They waited for an answer.
“I told them I was taking the class because I wanted to start a business in Venice.”
“That’s a lie. Isn’t it?”
Louisa was curious. Why had Barbara enrolled in a two week total immersion Italian class when she could be on vacation instead?
“Yes, it’s a lie,” Barbara replied. “But it’s always a fantasy, isn’t it? To start a business, a life, in Venice? What the hell. At least I’m not here because of il ragazzo.”
“Il Massimo doesn’t count?” Louisa prodded.
“Massimo is a man, is he not?” Rouge said.
“What kind of business do you hope to start here in this fine town, pray tell?” Louisa said when Barbara didn’t answer again.
“I had a number of
ideas for a Venetian business, ristorante, enoteca, gelateria, the common ones.”
“Any more creative ones than a wine bar, restaurant or ice cream shop? In English, if you must.”
“More creative ones? Restoration of depleted fisheries,” said Barbara, “establishment of artificial reef systems, scuba shop, promotion of any of those, tourism, writer, artist. When in doubt, I can write or make art,” she said. Her tone, however, was way too matter of fact.
“Avvocato per Americani,” Louisa added. She wasn’t kidding. Being a lawyer in Venice for Americans had long been a fantasy of hers, but she hadn’t quite figured out how to pull that one off yet. The Interpol job wasn’t it.
Barbara wasn’t kidding either. She loved being in Venice and America had started to seem far, far away, more so with each passing day. She considered what she might do for income if she stayed, because ever since she met Massimo, she didn’t want to leave anytime soon. It was most certainly il ragazzo that made her take that language class. No way she would admit it to Louisa and Rouge.
It didn’t matter what she said, Louisa and Rouge knew exactly what was going on with Barbara. It did, however, surprise Louisa because it wasn’t like Barbara to be, uh, adventurous, that was the word. In typical defense attorney fashion, Louisa phrased her next question such that any answer would be the one she wanted, the one she knew to be the truth. Cross-examination style.
“Isn’t it true that the reason you’re thinking about ideas for a business in Venice is the same reason all those other girls take Italian classes?” Louisa asked. She stopped directly in front of Barbara.
All three women blurted out the answer in unison.
“Il Ragazzo!”
They couldn’t stop laughing but all three still noticed the beauty the city was offering them at that moment. As they breathed it in, they were struck by the beauty of a young Venetian male coming towards them.
“Hello I love you won’t you tell me your name,” he passed them singing with a Latin accent and sensual nod. The perfect thing for an Italian man to sing as he walks down a calle or across the campo.