Blood Orange. Drusilla Campbell
too.”
She had prepared herself for guilt, but not for the sudden desire to see her husband and wrap her arms around his solid football player’s body.
She had to get back to her script.
“That’s what I wanted to talk about.” She heard the silence on the line and the sound of David’s breath. “There’s so much to see, all the little towns around have fabulous art, not to mention Venice and Rome.... It feels kind of wasteful to fly over here, spend all that money, and not see more.”
In the background, “Mommymommymommy.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” The lawyer was back in his voice. The trained interrogator.
She thought of the things she could say.
I love Micah Neuhaus and I’m never coming home.
Never that, never those words. They would hurt him too much; and no matter how much she loved Micah, she loved David too. And Bailey.
Dana, the smartest girl in her class, the girl who had always known where she was going and what she wanted: she knew her script and had learned her lines.
“Mommymommymommy.”
But when she tried to say something, she was interrupted by her own small voice, weeping into the musty pillow in Imogene’s spare room. For weeks she had worn shorts and a T-shirt to bed so she would be ready when her mother’s lugging Chrysler turned into the driveway.
“Are you saying you want to stay longer? How much longer? Another week?”
“No.”
“I don’t get this, Dana. What’s going on? Is there something I should be worried about?”
“I don’t want to leave, that’s all. But I’m fine, really. I just love it here, that’s all. You’re right, I fell in love. With Florence and Italy. David, I don’t ever want to leave. I belong here. It’s part of me now.”
“Dana, sweetheart, it’s a town, a city.” He laughed fondly. “There’ll be another time. One of these days I’m gonna get a big case, and when I do I’ll take you back to Florence. I promise.”
The open piazza was bright and bitter-cold and crowded with student groups. Hordes of boys and girls in signature black, mobs of young crows cawing Spanish, German, French, and guttural languages Dana could not identify, lined up to enter the Romanesque cathedral. To the right of the cathedral, Micah was one of a dozen artists who had set up tables and easels. Dana stood apart, so embarrassingly American in the yellow wool coat she would still be paying for this time next year. Bright as a target, she thought, aware that the crowds of young Europeans vaguely frightened her. Two days earlier she had ignored them and seen only the cathedral’s pink and green and white marble facade like an elaborately decorated cake.
Micah wore his struggling-artist costume on Sundays. Black turtleneck, ragged at the cuff and throat, a Greek fisherman’s cap, torn Levi’s, and sandals. He hadn’t shaved that morning and looked dissolute and pallid. As he spoke to a browser, Micah’s gold earring flashed in the sunlight and a chill ran up Dana’s legs. She wrapped her arms around herself, grateful for wool the color of midsummer lemons.
As she watched, he sold two watercolor-and-ink cityscapes to a pair of Japanese tourists. He could produce one of these in a couple of hours. He bragged that he had the Ponte Vecchio down to ninety minutes flat.
Micah looked in her direction. A wide smile opened his face, and he lifted his arm, gesturing her to him. She felt something move in her, move and stretch and snap.
She was too old, too married, too American.
And he was too young. Not in years but in the way he lived, thinking only of his pleasure, content to sell mediocre drawings in a piazza while other men erected bridges, negotiated treaties, and raised families.
Micah’s hand cupped the air more urgently. “Turn around, let me see the back.” He twirled a finger in the air. “That coat!”
Two men, passing with easels shoved under their arms, said something in rapid Italian, and Micah responded, and all three laughed.
“What?” Dana asked.
“They wanted to know if you were my American mistress. One called you Mistress Sunbeam.”
“I’m going back to the apartment,” she said. “I’m cold.”
“You can’t go. I won’t let you. You have to stay.” He motioned to a stool. “I’m sorry I teased you, honestly. It’s a beautiful coat. Here. Sit down. You watch the store and I’ll get you a coffee. Are you hungry?”
“My feet are frozen.”
“What’s the matter? What happened? Did you call him?”
Another group of Japanese tourists stopped at Micah’s table. He turned his attention to them, though occasionally, as he smiled and laughed and cajoled and took their money, he glanced sideways at Dana. When they left he showed her the pile of hundred-Euro notes.
“Not bad, huh? Give me another hour and I’ll shut down.”
She covered her face with her hands.
“What did he say?” Micah waited for her answer. When she said nothing, he pulled her hands away from her face and peered into her eyes. “Okay. Go home. I’ll close up here.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ll load up the car and meet you back at the flat.”
He brought fresh rolls and mozzarella, tomatoes, and blood oranges from Sicily. They ate a picnic on the bed. Dana was suddenly ravenous. Micah sliced a blood orange and nudged her onto her back, opened her mouth with his fingertips, and squeezed the fruit onto her tongue as his other hand lifted her sweater and cupped her breast. The juice was the color of raspberries and filled her mouth with sugar. Her nipples tingled as they hardened.
He shoved aside bread and mozzarella, clearing a space for them to lie. A knife clattered to the floor. He licked her sweet, sticky mouth.
I will always remember this. The smell of the fruit, the smell of him.
It was dark when she awoke, and cold. The wind was up, spitting rain against the window. In candlelight Micah sat across the room facing the bed, his sketch pad propped against his crossed knee. She pushed herself up on her elbows.
“What time is it?”
“Almost seven.”
“You shouldn’t have let me sleep. Why didn’t you wake me up?” The remains of their meal still covered the bed and floor. An orange had bled onto the duvet, staining it brown.
“I wanted to watch you. Sleeping. You’re so uninhibited,” he said. “Awake you’re always in control, or trying to be. But when you sleep your body lets go. You lie on your stomach with your legs apart. I can see all of you and you don’t care.” He held out his pad. “Here, look at yourself.”
He had drawn her thighs and buttocks and her sex with the same precise detail as he rendered the rooftops of Florence. She handed it back.
“You don’t like it?” His question sounded like a dare. “Why don’t you take it home and show it to your husband?”
She went into the bathroom and sat on the bidet. He came to the door
“Go away. I want to be alone.”
“You didn’t care how much I watched you yesterday. You let me see anything, and now all of a sudden you’re a nun. What did he say that’s turned you against me?”
She splashed warm water between her thighs, then stood and dried. She still felt sticky and ran hot water in the old-fashioned tub so hard the room quickly filled with steam. She added cold and, when the temperature was right, stepped in and sank until the water