That Month in Tuscany (Take Me There)

by Inglath Cooper

  A concert-goer, who had flown from Minneapolis to see the show with tickets for front-row seats, told a Charlotte newspaper that “something went very wrong in the last two songs.” She claims that Sawyer became pale and shaky. Having attended a concert in every one of the band’s individual tours, she stated, “I have never seen him leave the stage and not return for an encore.”

  Questions directed at the band’s manager were dismissed as nothing more than unfounded speculation.

  Sawyer’s current girlfriend, model Gretchen Macher, was seen in New York City last night at Club Scout with another member of the band, drummer Tommy Rainieri.

  Sawyer was said to not be in attendance.

  I click out of the article, feeling a little like a voyeur peeping in through a window to Ren Sawyer’s personal life. Granted, the article appeared in USA Today for anyone to read. Even so, I feel as if I’ve wandered into someplace I shouldn’t be.

  This time, I follow through with closing my laptop, getting up from the desk chair and walking back to the terrace for a last sip of now lukewarm coffee.

  The street below has come to full life, tourists wandering among the locals headed for the next attraction on their checklists.

  I don’t want to think about him. But I can’t seem to stop myself from wondering what happened at the end of the concert in Charlotte. The concert that had taken place the night before we flew across the Atlantic on the same airplane.

  I try to think if I had noticed anything similar to what the concert-goer described, but my memory would not be the most accurate considering my state of inebriation.

  Even so, he had seemed normal, whatever that is for a rock star. I have to wonder what exactly could be so horrible in a life like the one Ren Sawyer leads. Fans waiting for him wherever he goes. A supermodel girlfriend on his arm.

  And, too, the recognition of being really great at something you love to do.

  Maybe like most lives, that is simply the surface, the outer coating the rest of the world sees that in no way suggests what might be beneath. I suppose my own life is a good example of this.

  On the outside, I have pretty much everything a woman my age could want. A successful husband. A beautiful, intelligent daughter. An enormous house in a great neighborhood. If you’re standing back looking from a distance, it does look really good. I can’t deny that.

  But there are cracks.

  I feel a little ashamed in admitting this because maybe I really have nothing to complain about. No one has a perfect life. Not even, I suppose, someone like Ren Sawyer.

  I wonder if his girlfriend will be meeting him in Rome. If maybe she is already there. Will she be able to help fix whatever went wrong for him at his last concert?

  If I had to guess, I would say yes. What man wouldn’t allow himself to be fixed by someone like her? But then, I think about my own hurt. I wonder if it is even possible for someone else to fix us. If maybe, it is only possible for us to fix ourselves.

  9

  Ren

  I SLEEP FOR thirty-four hours straight. If you don’t count getting up to go to the bathroom three times and twice for a glass of water.

  This time when I start to wake, I’m no longer tired. I feel that immediately. The leaden weight of physical fatigue is gone. I wait, hopeful that the mental fatigue will also be gone.

  But the weight on my chest is still there, heavy, gray, and I’m suddenly angry to acknowledge its presence. I want it gone. I hate what it does to me. Hate how I do not have the energy to push it away. I know I should. I just cannot find an angle from which to attempt to get enough leverage to move it. Every possible avenue for escape seems an impossible effort.

  The curtains in the room are closed, but the seam at the middle where the two are pulled together is broken by a crack of sunlight. I need to get up. I will get up. I will order coffee. Take a shower. Eject myself out of this room and into the world. A ball cap and sunglasses, and I will go mostly unrecognized.

  Here, I can wander the streets alone. At first, this sounds good to me. Alone means no pressures from anything related to the business. No decisions to make. No arguments to settle between band members. This is what I’ve wanted. And I tell myself it will be good.

  I roll over, swing my legs to the side of the bed, and sit up with my elbows on my knees. That’s when I think of her. The woman I met on the plane coming over. I remember her face in the airport when she’d seen me standing in the middle of all those screaming girls. The surprise that widened her eyes, made her lips part slightly.

  I had liked it better when she didn’t know who I was. I’d seen the transformation in her face the way I had seen it in others too many times to count. Before, she’d thought I was some regular guy she’d had a moment with. A moment that, under other circumstances, we might have both acted on.

  Once she’d seen the other me, the one signing autographs for teenage girls, all of that had melted away, as if it never existed.

  I call downstairs, and the coffee arrives in minutes, even though it’s one o’clock in the afternoon. I down three cups and wait for the caffeine to kick in.

  I spend a good fifteen minutes in the shower. One, because it feels good to get clean again. And two, if I’m honest, because getting out will mean having to follow through on leaving the hotel room.

  I finally force myself out, dry off and then wrap one of the hotel’s extra thick towels around my waist. I wipe the fog from the bathroom mirror, and there I am, staring at myself.

  I could use a haircut. My eyes are red despite all the sleep. I wonder what’s happened to the energy I once saw in my own gaze, the energy that pulled me forward day to day, made me want to reach for the next rung with the kind of determination that didn’t take no for an answer.

  It’s gone. I can see that. Feel that. In the mirror, I see a shell of my former self. Breakable. Weary.

  I unzip my leather shaving case, pull out my toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste and brush my teeth. I reach in the case for a razor, and my hand hits the plastic bottle I haven’t let myself think about since putting it in there after the concert in Charlotte.

  I pick it up; stare at the label where my name is written.

  PRESCRIBED TO: REN SAWYER. THIRTY TABLETS.

  Only there are sixty. Two bottles in one because I deliberately held on to a month’s worth before having the prescription refilled.

  I stare at the bottle for a long time, thinking how easy it would be to down the lot of them and simply go back to bed. Not have to live another moment with the guilt eating a hole inside of me. The lure of this option is so tempting that I have to anchor my hands to the sink counter to keep from giving in to it.

  I hear my brother’s voice, the promise we’d made to each other when we first started to hit it big. “So here’s the deal,” Colby had said one night after we’d just written a new song together. “No alcoholism. No drug habits. No ending up dead in a hotel room. Promise me neither one of us will end up a rock-and-roll cliche.”

  At the time, it hadn’t seemed like such a difficult thing to promise. Drugs and alcohol had never been our thing. Women? Well, that was a different story—for us both.

  I let myself picture the headlines. Temporal Lead Singer Found Dead in Rome Hotel.

  I cram the bottle back in the case, zip it shut and shove it inside the cabinet below the sink.

  I get dressed quickly, jeans, t-shirt, ball cap. I grab a pair of dark sunglasses from the backpack I’d carried on the plane. I take the elevator to the lobby, walking through the main area without meeting eyes with anyone.

  I start to think I’m home free, stepping outside into the sunlight only to spot a group of teenagers hanging out at the foot of the steps. I hope like hell they’re not there for me.

  I aim for the other side of the stairs, ducking my head and walking fast. Just then I hear a gasp, followed by a squeal and then suddenly the entire circle of girls is running at me. I curse Stuart for leaking my stay here. And also for what he woul
d expect me to do, now that I’ve been found.

  Stop. Smile. Sign. Be thankful for fans.

  That is exactly what I’ve done for the past ten years. As if there’s actually a manual for this kind of thing, and I am its poster boy.

  I nearly stop and turn around. Almost. But then something explodes inside me, and I’m suddenly running, full out, down the sidewalk, until I hang a right onto a narrow, cobblestone street. It’s one way, and cars are coming toward me. I hug the side of the building to my right and keep going, ignoring the horns honking around me.

  I glance over my shoulder. Three of the most determined girls are following me. They’re doing a fine job of keeping up.

  “Wait!” one of them calls out in an English accent. “Ren! We just want your autograph. We’ve bought all your songs!”

  I continue to run as if I’ve been doused in gasoline, and they’re carrying flaming torches.

  I’m only too aware of how easy it would be to hate me for this. How many guys wouldn’t welcome the opportunity to be chased down an Italian street by three girls? Had it really been that long ago when I loved the attention, the adoration? When it somehow, even if temporarily, filled the hole inside me that seemed to not quite believe that any of it was real?

  I don’t slow down until I no longer hear the click of their heels on the cobblestone street. I glance over my shoulder to see that they are no longer anywhere in sight. I begin to walk, dragging in ragged breaths that tell me how wrong I was to slack off on my running.

  I want to lean against the closest wall and slide to the ground, but I force myself to walk, one foot in front of the other, step after step until my breathing begins to slow, and my chest no longer aches. I’ve reached a square by now that isn’t one I recognize. Several people are throwing Frisbees to their dogs. Other people sit on benches, watching, eating bread, sipping from bottles of water.

  I seek out the closest bench, sit down and glance around the perimeter of the square to make sure the girls haven’t caught up with me. I feel my phone vibrate in my back pocket. There’s a text from Stuart.

  WTF, Ren? They’ve been waiting two days for you to come out.

  I consider not answering at all. I don’t have to. But fury prompts my fingers to the keys.

  Did you not understand what I meant when I said I wanted some time alone?

  You’re mostly going to get it. A few public sightings to keep you on your fans’ radar. What’s the harm in that?

  I want to be off radar. That’s why I’m here.

  Nobody understands what’s going on with you, man.

  Nobody needs to. I trusted you, Stuart.

  I’m sorry, Ren. It won’t happen again.

  No. It won’t.

  I send the text and turn off the phone altogether. I stick it in my pocket and head back to the hotel. I stop in a little shop along the way, buy a new hat, a jacket and some different glasses.

  Just before reaching the hotel, I stop at the corner where I have a clear view of the entrance. The girls are no longer there. I suspect it’s because Stuart has gotten worried enough to call his spies at the hotel and warn them to make everyone leave.

  I can’t say that I’m sorry, but it’s too little, too late.

  I take the elevator to my room, pack what I have to pack and again leave the hotel.

  I don’t bother to check out, because I don’t want to give Stuart that much notice that I am no longer here. Outside, I ask the bellman for a taxi, and wait with my head ducked while he summons one.

  When it pulls up, I hand him a tip and slide in the back. The driver glances at me in the rearview mirror, his face bland of any recognition and says in heavily accented English, “Where to, signore?”

  “The train station,” I say and sit back.

  10

  Ty

  NORMALLY, YOU WOULD have waited longer. Given her more time to absorb who you are, what you are to this firm. More time to draw the conclusion that you’re a man who’s worth the risk.

  Normally, you let it be her idea. Even if you had to set her up a bit for it. You like for it to be her idea. It makes it way less complicated when things are over.

  How can she blame you when she’s the one who started it?

  But this time, you don’t want to wait. Maybe this thing with Lizzy has you so thrown for lack of a better word that you need some kind of reset to remind you that you’re the one in control of your marriage, not Lizzy.

  If she thinks she can do something like this without repercussion, she is wrong.

  You’re sitting at your desk, tapping a pencil against a white legal pad and working on your third cup of coffee when it occurs to you how incredibly stupid Lizzy is being. Did she forget that you’re an attorney?

  You take satisfaction in knowing that if you ever decide to end your marriage, you’ve already made sure that Lizzy will never be able to touch the majority of your assets.

  You lean back in your chair, study the tan of your hands against your white shirt and wonder if she knows exactly how easy it would be for you to trade her in for a newer model.

  Not that it hasn’t occurred to you. It has. Many times.

  Until this very moment, you’ve actually preferred things the way they are. Lizzy has been a constant in your life. Home base, if you will. And you have a short attention span. You get bored easily.

  Maybe you’re getting bored with Lizzy. The discontent you feel in her every evening when you get home from work. As if the life you share together is one she’s merely tolerating.

  The irony of it is like acid in your gut. She doesn’t work. You do. She has all day to run. Read her books. Take care of the house. Tough life.

  You can only imagine that there are plenty of women who would sign up for that lifestyle in a heartbeat.

  And so, when the new associate knocks at your door and steps inside with the glow of twenty-something beautiful, you decide to test your theory.

  11

  Lizzy

  I’VE SPENT THE entire day, another long, glorious self-indulgent day, meandering one street to another with no greater purpose than to see what lies at the end of the next street.

  I have my iPad with me and sit at an outside table of a trattoria, reading the first book on my very long list of books to read while I’m here. I take my time with the most delicious salad I’ve ever eaten. The greens are fresh, as if someone just picked them from a kitchen garden. The olive oil is smooth and flavorful and made only an hour or so away, according to my polite and slightly flirtatious waiter.

  Time has slowed for me here. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I don’t have a cell phone attached to the palm of my hand, or that there’s no painfully long to-do list prodding me toward completion. Or if it’s that I am alone and I have nothing more to think about than what I will see next.

  Whatever it is, I’m beginning to love this pace of life. I think of how quickly an ordinary day at home goes by, swallowed in bits and pieces by the everyday tasks that seem so necessary there.

  Here, they don’t seem necessary at all. Here, I wonder why the list of books that I would like to read has grown so long that I’m not sure I will actually finish them in my lifetime. Here, I read a book yesterday and will probably finish another today.

  As much as I love to read, it has become something that I never quite get to.

  Ty hates it when I read in the evenings. He can’t understand why I would want to disappear into the pages of a book instead of talking to him. But then our talking isn’t exactly talking. It’s more me listening while he talks about his day, the cases he’s working on. I nod, shake my head, agree, and sympathize.

  I could resent this except that I will be the first one to admit that his days are usually far more interesting than mine. There’s only so much I can say about the five-mile run I do each and every morning or the trip to the dry cleaners or post office. And so, at home, I’ve become an accomplished listener.

  Across the square, an elderly woman sits on
a bench with her back to me. She’s facing a church, centered nearly with the front doors of the beautiful building. Its walls are washed with age, the golden color streaked and mottled, gracefully aged in the way of so many of the buildings in Florence.

  Her dark hair, heavily streaked with gray, is anchored in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her shoulders are perfectly straight, her posture that of a twenty-year-old runway model. I actually yearn for my camera. It’s been so long since I’ve had that feeling that it startles me. To see something and recognize it as a moment that needs to be captured. It’s a feeling I once loved completely.

  I brought my camera along on the trip, but I’ve yet to take it out of the hotel room. Somewhere along the way, my photography had become a hobby that seemed to take a little too much of my attention. I believe those were Ty’s exact words. This, when Kylie had been a teenager and required more of my time than she had as a toddler. There had been practices to drive her to after school, homework to help her with in the evenings.

  It was one evening in particular when Kylie had been fourteen that I finally realized what Ty thought of my work. He’d gotten home late from the office. It was eleven or so. I had been in the dining room, sorting photos on the table for a show I had been asked to take part in the following month.

  I’d been so intent on arranging the pictures that I hadn’t noticed him standing in the doorway until he said, “Is there any purpose to what you’re doing?”

  Startled, I glanced up, meeting his gaze. It only took that one look in his eyes for me to know he had been drinking. He could never hide it. Something about alcohol unveiled a meanness in Ty that was otherwise never really present in him. I saw it clearly then and stepped back automatically.