by Meg Cabot
Holly
* * *
To: Holly Caputo
Fr: Jane Harris
Re: Where is he?
Is Cal with him? Mark, I mean?
J
* * *
To: Jane Harris
Fr: Holly Caputo
Re: Where is he?
How should I know? I told you, I’m in my room. I came up to bed because I’m exhausted. What is WRONG with you? Where ARE you? Why are you acting so weird all of a sudden?
Holly
* * *
To: Holly Caputo
Fr: Jane Harris
Re: Where is he?
Nothing’s wrong. I’m on my way to bed too. I’m in a downstairs closet. I just don’t want to run into Cal. Go back to sleep. Sorry if I woke you up.
J
* * *
To: Jane Harris
Fr: Holly Caputo
Re: Where is he?
Right. Like I’ll be able to go back to sleep NOW. Janie, WHY are you in a downstairs closet? And WHY don’t you want to run into Cal? Tell me now, or I’m coming down there and ripping that closet door open.
Holly
* * *
To: Holly Caputo
Fr: Jane Harris
Re: Where is he?
It’s NOTHING, okay? After you went up to bed, and Mark went to see if he could find another bottle of scotch after we polished off the last one, Cal said he wanted to have a word with me alone before bed. That’s all. Now I am hiding in the closet because I don’t want to have a word with him. OK? Are you satisfied?
J
PS If you figure out where he is, let me know, and if he’s far from the stairs, I’ll make a run for my room. Then I can turn out all the lights and pretend to be asleep if he knocks.
* * *
To: Jane Harris
Fr: Holly Caputo
Re: Where is he?
Janie, don’t be such a freak! He LIKES you. He MUST. Why else would he want to see you alone? He probably wants to… you know.
And why not? You’re both on vacation, you’re both attractive, you’re both single… why WOULDN’T you hook up?
Holly
* * *
To: Holly Caputo
Fr: Jane Harris
Re: Where is he?
Um, why WOULD we? He is a modelizer, lest you forget.
And believe me, sex is NOT what he wants from me.
J
* * *
To: Jane Harris
Fr: Holly Caputo
Re: Where is he?
Then what is it? What on earth do you think he wants to talk to you about?
Holly
* * *
To: Holly Caputo
Fr: Jane Harris
Re: What on earth I think he wants to talk to me about
Oh, you might be surprised.
J
* * *
To: Jane Harris
Fr: Holly Caputo
Re: What on earth I think he wants to talk to me about
Janie, you really have to get over this absurd prejudice you have about Cal. Mark and I were talking about it earlier, when you were doing the dishes, and Cal was cleaning the grill. You two actually have a lot in common. I mean, you both come from small towns. You both are extremely successful, and you both built up your careers from basically nothing. You’re both attractive and creative. And you’re both friends with us! You two would make an AWESOME couple. Just give him a chance. I know he’s not up to your usual standards—seeing as how he has a job and is over twenty-five—but he might surprise you.
Holly
* * *
To: Holly Caputo
Fr: Jane Harris
Re: What on earth I think he wants to talk to me about
Excuse me, but did you just use the word AWESOME?
J
* * *
To: Jane Harris
Fr: Holly Caputo
Re: What on earth I think he wants to talk to me about
Stop being so silly. Come out of the closet. See what he wants!
Holly
* * *
To: Holly Caputo
Fr: Jane Harris
Re: What he wants
Believe me, I know. And it is so not going to happen. Trust me on this, H. It’s in your own best interest.
J
* * *
To: Jane Harris
Fr: Holly Caputo
Re: What he wants
Well, I think you’re being completely ridiculous. And I’m not having this conversation anymore. I’m going to get some sleep. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow—you promised you’d go into Castelfidardo with us to petition for the marriage license and pick the day for the ceremony. I don’t know about you, but I want to look good for the mayor’s office. Good night.
Holly
* * *
To: Holly Caputo
Fr: Jane Harris
Re: What he wants
Fine, go to sleep. Traitor. I’m doing this for your own good, you know.
Well, no, I guess you don’t.
And believe me, I intend to keep it that way!
Buona sera.
J
PDA of Cal Langdon
God bless Zio Matteo. The man may not care much about his home’s electrical wiring, but at least he keeps a well-stocked liquor cabinet. Mark and I finished off the better part of a bottle of twelve-year-old scotch, and though it’s a bit hard to type this, with my fingers feeling so numb, at least I got the picture of that snake out of my head at last.
The rain’s finally stopped, too. The stars have come out, and there’s a lovely warm breeze—slightly scented with horse manure—coming from the east. The pool and the wet stone surface around it are glistening in the moonlight, and somewhere in the distance—over the snoring of Mark, passed out facedown at the table beside me—I hear the braying of a donkey. It reminds me of those nights in Baghdad with Barbara Bellerieve, before she finally gave up on getting a ring out of me and hooked up with Aaron Spender—poor bastard.
Something which I realize has begun to happen with alarming regularity. Women I’ve slept with settling down with someone else, I mean.
I guess I shouldn’t complain. God knows I’m not looking to register at Williams-Sonoma with any of them.
But it is a bit strange that all of my friends are pairing off. Mark, for instance. Well, not that I wouldn’t have expected it of Mark, seeing as how he never exactly blazed any trails for rugged individuality in his lifetime. He does grill a mean turbot though.
But even people I’d pegged as lifelong bachelors—John Trent, for instance, over at the Chronicle—and Spender are taking the plunge.
Will it be long before I am the only single male my age left in the world? And if so… why? Don’t these guys realize what they’re getting themselves into?
I will admit, in Mark’s case, the situation doesn’t seem as dire as I once thought, despite what Ruth Levine might claim. Holly appears to be a cheerful, caring companion, who doesn’t fall short in the looks department, either. She put together a wicked antipasto to go with the fish, an artfully arranged platter of marinated artichokes, mushroom, olives, fresh mozzarella, roasted red peppers, sundried tomatoes, and parmesan, all drizzled with olive oil and balsamic.
And when Mark mentioned something self-deprecating about his column, she chastised him, and proudly told me that his pieces are the Health section’s most popular.
And when we sat down at the table her friend Jane had set—somewhat whimsically, with, I believe, every candle from the house on it, since we were dining al fresco on the logia, as the rain beat down just beyond the stone arches around us—Holly insisted on taking a picture, to mark our first meal at Villa Beccacia.
Then Ms. Harris—rather pointedly—insisted on taking a picture of Mark and Holly together—“To remember one of your last meals as an unmarried couple”—and the two of them wrapped their arms around each other….
Well, I could see Jane’s point about the two of them being perfect for each other. They are a lovely couple. Holly doesn’t strike me—so far—as the type who’ll, as soon as she gets a ring on her finger, quit her job and divide her days between Neiman-Marcus and her Pilates classes at the gym—
Must remember to stop judging all women by Valerie.
If Valerie had been at our evening meal, for instance, instead of Holly, she’d have consumed two of Zio Matteo’s excellent bottles of montepolciano all on her own. And if Valerie had been here, she’d have made sure that the conversation, instead of flowing humorously from the troubles with the oven to the possible sex life of Frau Schumacher, would have revolved solely around her.
And afterward, of course, she’d have staggered to the toilet and heaved everything she’d just consumed into it.
Somehow, I can’t picture Holly Caputo doing any of these things.
Still, that doesn’t mean Mark is completely out of danger. A man can enter into a marriage thinking he’s getting one thing, when the reality is, he’s getting something very, very different. Mark’s Holly may seem like a perfect helpmate at this point in their relationship, but who’s to say once the blush is off the rose, so to speak, and they’re declared man and wife—or uomoand moglie,as the case may be—she isn’t going to turn into a stark raving bitch, demand that he make more money in order to buy her more expensive jewelry and spend all of her time obsessively weighing herself and recording every morsel that passes through her lips in a food journal?
I think Mark needs be made aware of this possibility.
And if he were conscious right now, I would make sure he knew.
As it is, however, I will have to wait until morning, and hope that we have another chance to talk privately before we make the trip to the marriage license office.
Speaking of hoping for a chance to talk, I mentioned to Ms. Harris that I was desirous of a private audience with her this evening, and she promptly disappeared into the house, never to return. I looked for her not long ago, and saw that she had retired to her room, the door of which was firmly closed. I have no doubt that, if there is a lock, she’d turned it.
For a woman who’s capable of sending such blatantly hostile emails, she is remarkably reticent about face-to-face confrontations. It’s always been my experience that women enjoy telling men what to do. Jane Harris, on the other hand, seems only willing to do this when it is her fingers, not her lips, doing the telling.
She strikes me as a very odd girl, overall.
But then, she is an artist… and a popular one, at least if the drooling half-wit boy from next door, who can’t seem to take his eyes off her whenever they happen to be in the same room together, is to be believed.
How well I recognize his pain. I believe I had the same sort of all-consuming crush on my tenth-grade science teacher, Miss Huff.
Although Miss Huff did not exactly share Jane Harris’s most impressive attributes… those slim ankles—the slenderness of the right one emphasized by that grinning cat’s head—and that insouciant smile.
Insouciant. God. How in hell did I get a book contract, anyway?
Speaking of which… what in hell am I going to write about for my next book?
Oh, well. Much too tired—and too late—to think about it now. Will put this away and get to bed. It must be past midnight, and I’m still on New York time. Thoughts on the follow-up to Sweeping Sands—and further speculation about Ms. Harris—will have to wait until tomorrow.
PDA of Cal Langdon
One last thing before I go, though:
She still seems bizarrely fixated with the fly of my jeans. I am starting to wonder if Mark didn’t resuscitate that ridiculous rumor from our days at Ohio State, about my having a super-sized wang, and share it with Holly, who in turn shared it with Ms. Harris. How else to explain why I keep catching her staring in that general vicinity?
If this is true, I will be forced, simply, to kill Mark. You would think that, at his age, he’d be over such childish pranks.
But he does work in the sciences, and those gifted in that arena do occasionally seem not to have quite as evolved a sense of humor as the rest of us.
Remember to ask him tomorrow.
* * *
To: Listserv
Fr: Peter Schumacher
Re: JANE HARRIS
Good morning all of you fans of Wundercat! I go now to take my motorino into town to get the brotchen for JANE HARRIS! She is not yet awake. I can see that she has not yet opened the curtains of her bedroom window.
But when she does, she will find that there is fresh brotchen to enjoy with her coffee! Courtesy of me, #1 Wundercat Fan Of All Time!
Wundercat Lives—4eva!
Peter
* * *
To: Mark Levine
Fr: Customer Service New York Journal Travel Privileges
Re: Car Rental
Dear Sir,
Our great apologies for the misunderstanding concerning your vehicle. Our offices, as you discovered, are not open on Sundays. However, if you return the automobile you were assigned to the car rental agency in Ancona on Monday, we will happily allow you to exchange it for the four-door sedan you mentioned.
Sally Marx
New York Journal Travel Specialist
Travel Diary of
Holly Caputo and Mark Levine
Jane Harris
OK, everything I wrote in here last night about hating Italy and wishing I were home watching ER? Strike that.
I LOVE Italy. I LOVE it here.
Just now when I woke up, I pushed back the heavy curtains from my window, expecting to see more of the hard cold rain from yesterday….
Gone. No more rain.
Instead, there was a cloudless blue sky. And a distant, green, castle-topped hillside straight out of a fairy tale. And a crystal pool sparkling below me. And the scent of freshly cut hay. And the sun-washed stone walls of the terrazza dripping with the thick green leaves and fire pink blossoms of bougainvillea, and birds singing in the treetops—
Well, what else could I do but slap on my swimsuit and hit the water?
And it was so very, very…
COLD!!!!
OK? The water is REALLY cold. Like ice-cube-tray cold. I’m writing this half-shivering to death on one of the lounge chairs, completely draped in towels.
But even though it’s only like nine in the morning, or something, the sun is already beating down. Steam is coming up from the damp towels on my legs. Soon I should be toasty….
YES. Now THIS is how I’ve always pictured a European vacation. Just me, the water, clear blue sky, bright hot sun, and a bottle of acqua con gas (sparkling water, which I found in the fridge). It’s SO quiet here. No car alarms. No sirens. No neighbors squabbling over possession of the remote control next door. Just birds tweeting, and horses neighing, and the wind rustling through palm fronds and the leaves of the olive tree beside me, its branches heavy with little round balls deepening from a pretty pale green to a deep brown color… totally bitter and indigestible (yes, I tasted one. Who knew they had to be marinated or whatever? The pomegranates from the tree at the other end of the pool
are MUCH better).
In the air is the crisp, clean smell of chlorine from the pool, the scent of freshly cut hay from the field beyond the hedge, and… OK, well, the smell of horse manure drifting over from the Centro Ippico, but it’s very faint.
And off in the distance, atop a deep green rise that seems to come from the middle of the hay field, sits another fortified city, topped by a castle… Castelfidardo, where we’re going to go today to apply for Mark and Holly’s marriage license. If they can pry me from this spot. Which I sincerely doubt. Because the only way I’m moving is if—
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
* * *
To: Listserv
Fr: Peter Schumacher
Re: JANE HARRIS
Greetings! I have served breakfast to JANE HARRIS! I surprise her very much with the brotchen and hot coffee! She had just had her morning swimming when I come into yard with tray prepared by my grandmother! She scream very big!