There’s something else too.
Grace is married.
My heart sinks when she tells me this.
“You’re all married,” I say from across the table outside the coffee shop. “All the good ones.”
Eyes wide, she shakes her head like she doesn’t understand.
“I’m sorry,” I say, staring down into my cappuccino, searching the white froth for divine inspiration. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You’re not married?” she poses, that red flush returning to her cheeks.
“Divorced,” I nod, holding up my left hand and one lonely ring finger. Then, “I have a son who’s not too much younger than you.”
“I’m thirty three,” she admits beaming the same smile.
“And all’s fair,” I tell her. “Even if I’m old.”
“Yes, you are an old man. All of what? Forty. Forty one?”
“Forty something,” I correct her. I don’t tell her my oldest son was born when I was only nineteen. I also don’t bother telling her I haven’t spoken with him since I left for Afghanistan more than a year and a half ago.
She nurses her tea and I sip my cappuccino and eventually she gets around to asking me if I wouldn’t mind taking a look at some of the pages she’s written for what she hopes will become her first novel. She has them in her bag. It would only take a moment. She would understand if I’m too busy with the conference, or if I’m too busy in general. She doesn’t want not to be polite.
I stop her. Mid-Sentence.
“I’d love to,” I say, finishing my coffee. “Maybe we can find some quiet space in my hotel. And something a little harder to drink.”
New York is teeming with cars speeding past on Park Avenue, hordes of suited workers and poorly dressed tourists crowding the sidewalks and the din of thousands of conversations going on all at once.
But somehow the whole world stands still.
Grace gets up, looks one way and then the other, and with her eyes peering not at me, but up past the glass and steel towers at the blue heavens, she says, “Okay. Yes. Why the hell not?”
* * *
We’re not three feet inside the hotel room before our mouths are locked and I’m undressing her and she’s undressing me. We leave a trail of jeans, underwear, coats and sweaters that leads to the queen-sized bed. It’s all very awkward and first-timey and at one point, we both start laughing out loud and I am able to feel more at one with her as I enter inside her, our hips pressed together, her wet heat surrounding my hardness tightly, drawing me further and further in until we both come to that place at the same time.
Afterwards, she lies with her head on my chest and I’m running the fingers on my right hand through her lush hair. I ask her to tell me about her husband. What’s his name, for starters.
“Andrew,” she whispers after a weighted pause in which her entire body goes perfectly still. “And I love him. Love him very much.”
This proves it, I want to tell her. But I don’t, because this…what we’ve just done…doesn’t prove anything. Only that it’s very possible she could also fall in love with me.
She begins to tell me a little about him. Snippets really. Little facts about the life. His life. That he’s a full professor at the university. That he’s a musician. That he’s one of the most loving and open men she’s ever known. Then without trying, she reveals something that might explain this. Explain us in bed, that is. Here and now.
“We’ve been together for sixteen years,” she exhales.
I allow the fact to sink in.
“Almost a full half of your life,” I say, my fingers dancing in her thick brunette hair.
“I never looked at it that way. But yes, half my life.”
I feel the heavy profoundness that can only come from our mutually staring out into the same space at the same time inside a cheesy New York Marriott hotel room. But then I also feel her fingers running down my chest and down my belly. When they find me she begins to work on me again. She uses her mouth and when I come she does not remove it. I return the favor by going down on her and afterwards we get out of bed to take a shower together. I slip on the porcelain and she reaches out and catches me before I fall, but not before I tear the plastic curtain off the ringlets. We laugh so hard I find it impossible to comprehend that we’ve only just met and that she’s married to a professor named Andrew, whom she still loves.
We get out, dry off and she looks at her watch.
“I have to get home to meet my husband,” she says.
Fun’s over.
* * *
When she’s gone, I feel the dreadful emptiness settle in. It’s been a long time since I cared for a woman and an even longer time since I might allow myself to care for one. After my divorce I committed myself to raising my sons and doing my work to the best of my God-given ability. But hiding my loneliness was like trying to hold up a house of cards in a windstorm. I stand all alone in the empty hotel room, my eyes fixed on the bedsheets and the never-ending sounds of the city outside my window making me feel like a prisoner. I smell her rose petal scent, and I smell her sex on me, and I see a single strand of her dark hair on the pillow. I realize she hasn’t even left me her phone number and I find my throat constricting and my chest growing tight.
Am I about to cry?
The tear running down my cheek is answer enough.
* * *
The next day I run into her at the conference and, to my utter delight, we decide to have lunch together. We small talk all through a couple of spicy tuna rolls and we avoid prolonged eye contact for too long or else it’s possible we’ll shove the food off the table and make love right there inside the sushi bar.
When lunch is over, she sadly confesses about having to meet up with Andrew at the uptown campus now that the class he teaches is over.
I walk her to the subway stop.
Before she descends the stairs to the trains, we take one another in our arms. We hold each other so tightly I’m not sure how long we can last before the air runs out. She kisses my cheek and I kiss her mouth. She slips a sheet of paper into my pocket and reveals in a whisper that it’s the number to her personal cell phone.
“Will you call me?” she asks.
“I will,” I tell her.
“How do I know I can believe you?”
“You’ll just have to trust me and see.”
As I watch her disappear into the dark tunnel, I see her wipe her tears with the back of her hand. I know then and there that I am madly in love with her. My Grace. She trusts me and I trust her. But I can’t prevent the sinking feeling in my stomach. The feeling that tells me I may never see her again.
Chapter 13
THE WAITER IS DRESSED in a white shirt, black trousers, and matching jacket. Or so Grace tells me. He escorts us to a table that overlooks the San Marco basin and the small islands set in the very near distance. Torcello and Murano.
Torcello.
Where Papa Hemingway fell in love with a beautiful Italian countess by the name of Adriana. He was fifty and still licking his wounds from World War II where he reported from the front lines in the dreadful Hurtgen Forest. She was nineteen and ravishing, and her family fortune was dwindling. Hemingway fell head over heels with her and even asked her to marry him, though he was already married at the time. She, of course, said no. He worshipped her anyway and spent many lonely days and nights in Venice writing a novel in which their love became more real than if it had truly happened, but for which he was badly maligned by the New York critics for being a poor parody of himself. He would eventually shoot himself in the head with his prized Italian side-by-side 12 gauge shotgun. The Italian countess would eventually hang herself from the rafters in her apartment overlooking the Grand Canal.
* * *
The wind picks up off the basin.
It seems to seep right through my leather coat into flesh, skin and bone. I try and hold my face up to the sun while the waiter takes our orders. Grace orders a singl
e glass of vino russo and a pancetta and cheese panini. I forgo the Valpolicella and order a Moretti beer and a simple spaghetti pomadoro. The waiter thanks us and I listen to him leaving us for now.
We sit in the calm of the early afternoon, the sounds of the boat traffic coming and going on the basin filling my ears. People surround us on all sides. Tourists who have come to San Marco for the first time and who’ve become mesmerized by it all. I don’t have to physically see them to know how they feel. The stone square, the Cathedral, the bell tower, the many shops and high-end eateries that occupy the wide, square-shaped perimeter. The pigeons. The people. Always the throngs of people coming and going amidst a chorus of bells, bellowing voices, live music emerging from trumpets, violins, and guitars, and an energetic buzz that seems to radiate up from underneath all that stone and sea-soaked soil.
It’s early November.
Here’s what I know about Venice: In just a few weeks’ time, the rains will come and this square will be underwater. The ever sinking Venice floods easily now. The only way to walk the square will be over hastily constructed platforms made from narrow planks. Many of the tourists will stay away and the live music will be silenced. But somehow, that’s when Venice will come alive more than ever. When the stone is bathed in water.
* * *
The waiter brings our drinks and food.
With the aroma of the hot spaghetti filling my senses, I dig in and spoon up a mouthful. I wash the hot, tangy sauce-covered pasta down with a swallow of red wine.
“Whoa, slow down, chief,” Grace giggles. “Eating, smiling, making love to me. What’s next? Writing?”
“Don’t press your luck, Gracie,” I say. “The sea change can occur at any moment. Just don’t start asking me to identify engagement rings.”
She laughs genuinely and I listen to the sounds of her taking a bite out of her sandwich. But then she goes quiet again. Too quiet, as if she’s stopped breathing altogether.
“There’s someone staring at us,” she says under her breath.
“Man or woman?” I say, trying to position my gaze directly across the table at her, but making out nothing more than her black silhouette framed against the brightness of the sun. Later on, when the sun goes down, the image of her will be entirely black. Like the blackness of the Afghan Tajik country when the fires are put out and you lie very still inside your tent without the benefit of electronic night vision, and you feel the beating of your never-still heart and you pray for morning.
“Man,” she whispers.
“What’s he look like?”
“It’s him again. The man in the overcoat who was staring at us yesterday.”
A start in my heart. I put my fork down inside my bowl. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I think. He’s wearing sunglasses this time. So, I think it’s him.”
“What’s he look like?”
“He’s a thin man. Not tall. Not short. He’s got a dark complexion.”
“Black?”
“No. More like Asian or Middle Eastern. He’s wearing sunglasses and that same brown overcoat and a scarf. His hair is black and cut close to his scalp. His beard is very trim and cropped close to his face.” She exhales. I hear her take a quick, nervous sip of her wine. “He keeps staring at us. At me. Just like yesterday, Nick.”
“How do you know he’s staring at you? It could be something behind you, Grace. We’re in Venice. Lots going on behind you. Lots to see.”
She’s stirring in her chair. Agitated.
“Because I can feel him. His eyes…I. Feel. His. Eyes.”
I wipe my mouth clean with the cloth napkin. I do something entirely silly. I turn around in my chair to get a look at the man. As if I have the ability to see him right now, which I most definitely do not.
“What are you doing?” Grace poses, the anxiety in her voice growing more intense with each passing second.
“Trying to get a look at him.”
“You’re joking, Nick.”
I turn back, try and focus on her.
“You think?”
We sit silent.
Once more I am helpless and impotent.
“I’m sorry,” she says after a time. “I’m not trying to insult you. This isn’t like yesterday with the ring. But this man is at the same café we’re at two days in a row? This is really starting to creep me out, babe.”
My pulse begins to pump inside my head. Not rapid, but just enough for me to notice. Two steady drumbeats against my temples. I find myself wanting to swallow, but my mouth has gone dry. I take a sip of beer thinking it will help.
“He’s coming towards us, Nick. I don’t like it.”
Heartbeat picks up. I feel it pounding inside my head and my chest.
“Are you sure he’s coming towards us, Grace?” I’m trying not to raise my voice, but it’s next to impossible.
“He’s looking right at me. His hands are stuffed in the pockets of his overcoat. And he’s coming.”
I feel and hear Grace pulling away from the table. She’s standing. That’s when the smell of incense sweeps over me. A rich, organic, incense-like smell.
There comes the sound of Grace standing. Abruptly standing. I hear her metal chair push out. I hear the sound of her boot heels on the cobbles. I hear the chair legs scraping against the stone slate. I hear the sound of her wine glass spilling.
“Grace, for God’s sakes, be careful.”
But she doesn’t respond to me. Or is it possible her voice is drowned out by what sounds like a tour group passing by the table? A tour group of Japanese speaking people. But once they pass, there is nothing. No sound at all other than the boats on the basin and the constant murmur of the thousands of tourists that fill this ancient square.
“Grace,” I say. “Grace. Stop it. This isn’t funny. Grace.”
But there’s still no response.
The smell of incense is gone now.
I make out the gulls flying over the tables, the birds shooting in from the basin to pick up scraps of food and then, like thieves in the night, shooting back out over the water. I can hear and feel the sound-wave driven music that reverberates against the stone cathedral.
“Grace,” I repeat, voice louder now. “Grace. Grace…Grace!”
I’m getting no response.
It’s like she’s gone. Vanished. But how can she be gone? She was just sitting here with me. She was sitting directly across from me, eating a sandwich and drinking a glass of wine. She was talking with me.
The waiter approaches.
“The signora is not liking her food?” he questions.
I reach out across the table. In the place where she was sitting. She is definitely not there.
“Is there a toilet close by?” I pose. “Did you see my fiancée leave the table and go to the toilet?”
The waiter pauses for a moment.
“I am sorry. But I did not. I was inside the café.”
“Then maybe somebody else saw her. Maybe you can ask them.”
“Signor, there are many tables in this café and they are all filled with people. And there are many people who walk amongst the tables who can block their view. I am looking at them. No one seems to be concerned about anything. Sometimes there are so many people here, it is easy to get lost. Perhaps she just went to the toilet like you just suggested, and she got lost amongst the people. I will come back in moment and make sure all is well.”
I listen to the waiter leaving, his footsteps fading against the slate.
Grace didn’t say anything about going to the toilet or anywhere else. Grace was frightened. She was frightened of a man who was staring at her. A man with sunglasses on and a cropped beard and a long brown overcoat. He was the man from yesterday. The man with black eyes. He was approaching us, this man. He came to our table and he smelled strongly of incense. He came to our table. There was a slight commotion, the spilling of a glass, the knocking over of a chair, and then Grace was gone.
I sit and stare at nothing. My
heart is pounding so fast I think it will cease at any moment. What I have in the place of vision is a blank wall of blurry illumination no longer filled with the silhouette of my Grace.
I push out my chair. Stand. My legs knock into the table and my glass spills along with Grace’s.
I cup my hands around my mouth.
“Grace!” I shout. “Grace! Grace!”
The people who surround me all grow quiet as I scream over them.
The waiter comes running back over.
“Please, please,” he says to me, taking me by the arm. “Please come with me.”
He begins leading me through the throng of tables and people. He is what I have now in the place of Grace. He is my sight.
“She’s gone, isn’t she?” I beg. “Did you check the toilets?”
“We checked the toilets. They are empty. I am sorry. I am sure there is an explanation.”
“Grace is gone!” I shout. “A man took her away. How could no one have seen it?”
“You’re frightening the patrons, signor. Please just come with me and we will try and find her.”
“She’s gone,” I repeat. “Don’t you understand me? My. Grace. Is. Gone.”
Chapter 14
BY THE SOUNDS OF it, I’m led though a near silent dining room into what I’m told is a small office located in the very back of the café. The wood door is closed behind me, and I am offered a chair. After showing him one of the many photos I have of Grace stored on my mobile phone, the waiter pours me a snifter of brandy and tells me to drink it.
“It will make you feel better,” he insists in broken English.
I do it.
In the meantime, I am able to speed-dial Grace’s cell phone by touch, while he makes a check for her in the area surrounding the exterior portion of the café. I get only the answering service. After leaving five messages begging her to call me, I get an automated message telling me her mailbox is full. I imagine that the man who took her away from me has tossed her phone into the Grand Canal.
The Disappearance of Grace Page 5