Florence in Ecstasy. Jessie Chaffee
and began flirting with a stranger, faceless now, who wouldn’t prod or pry. I asked the stranger to dance. And still Julian wouldn’t go, not that night. But eventually, when I’d said it enough times and with enough venom—Leave me alone—he did.
“E Mariotti?” Carlo booms now.
“Boh,” Stefano says.
“He is too afraid,” Luca whispers to me. I don’t know what he’s referring to, and still I nod and nod and sit up straighter, try to mirror the women around us, but the room is moving, coming apart in ribbons. I watch the men and hear their voices, but I can’t make out the words. Until Gianni rises and announces, “Su, balliamo.”
Luca turns to me: “We dance?”
I don’t want to dance, cannot imagine even standing now, but it is easier to follow than to explain, and so I follow him to the center of the room. And then we’re dancing. And isn’t this how it always happens? Things are fine and then they aren’t, and I’m in a place I didn’t mean to be, watching it all deteriorate. Hold on to yourself, I think, hold on to yourself this time, but everything is moving quickly. I’m coming loose. Luca smiles, his features large as he sways side to side, the smell of his cologne surrounding me. I try to mimic his movements but the floor is shifting. I remember the S of the Italian women, the easy movement of it. I lean in, lean out. But it’s useless. I don’t have the spine for it. I am pitching too far one way or the other. It is all I can do. All I can do to remain standing. The crowd becomes a single creature, tilting and stretching, closing in. I lean in. Lean out. Lean in. Lean out.
Darkness.
Then hands on my arms propping me up. Voices circling.
“Andiamo.” Luca’s voice, his arm around me. “I take you home, va bene?”
The voices continue. I nod. I want to hear, want to know what they are saying about me. But it’s impossible, even, placing one foot in front of the other now. Why? Why did I drink so much? What did I eat? I begin with the morning. The coffee. The toast.
The air outside hits cold, wakes me.
“Sorry,” I muster as we walk slowly. “I mean, mi dispiace.”
“Di niente,” he says. “It is late for me also.”
Luca’s car is small and he drives quickly, the lights outside a blur as we race out of the park and into the old streets. It rattles and rattles and rattles. We take a sharp curve as we approach Piazza del Duomo and my stomach jumps. I grip the door handle and shut my eyes, hoping he won’t see. But he has seen.
“Stai bene?” he asks. “Stai bene?”
I can’t speak. I concentrate on the hum of the engine, mute. In a second Luca veers to the curb outside a small bar. He ducks out and I watch him, bent, almost jogging into the bar. I want to hide, want to leave, but that would only make things worse. I look at the comically large Duomo, striped green and white, and its angles swim. I can never get a feel for the whole. It must be late, very late, but even now a juggler stands on the steps surrounded by a cluster of students. The juggler says something I can’t make out and they laugh. The car door opens and Luca slides in with a bag and hands me a bottle of water, uncapped.
“Grazie,” I mumble, taking a large gulp, and try a smile. “Mi dispiace. Too much to drink. I must be confirming all your stereotypes. About Americans, I mean.”
Luca doesn’t smile back. He opens the satchel, producing a roll. “Mangia. You’ll feel better.”
I think, What are you doing? and in the same breath, How did you know? But there’s no hiding now, so I take a piece, put it in my mouth, and chew slowly, trying not to think about it. I swallow and focus instead on the juggler, and then on two men who appear from around the corner of the cathedral holding forties. One of them pauses, hands his beer to his friend, and turns into one of the crevices to piss, the dark stream gleaming on the marble.
“Che schifo,” Luca says, watching them, too.
I don’t know how long we sit in the car. Luca puts on the radio, hands me a few more hunks of bread. I accept them and listen to the music, chewing slowly until all of it is gone. The students disperse and the juggler sits on the steps of the Duomo counting his money.
“Allora,” Luca says finally. “We walk?”
I nod. He helps me out of his car, locking it behind me.
“I follow you,” he says.
I know this much at least, my route home. We walk away from the Duomo, then down through Piazza della Signoria, empty now. Possibilities seem to open up with the space, and if things were different, if I were different, this might be romantic. But the statues that I love are eerie in the moonlight, and I am a child who cannot keep a straight course, Luca’s hand intermittently on my elbow to prevent me from drifting too close or too far. I remember my first boyfriend, years ago. We sat on a curb in the middle of a cold November and he took off one of my inadequate canvas shoes to warm my foot with his hands, and I knew that things were coming and I only had to wait. But now I’m not waiting, only walking. And Luca is tired and quiet. Finally we reach the river, where the reflections of streetlamps spread across the water in long pews of light.
“Which way?” Luca asks.
I gesture left and soon we’re by my door and I can feel, already, the regret tomorrow will bring.
Luca takes my hands and kisses me quickly on each cheek. “Buonanotte.”
“’Notte,” I say, turning and putting my hand on the door for support as I search for my keys. I find them and choose, impossibly, the right one. I try to fit it into the lock.
“Aspetta”—Luca takes the key and easily opens the door—“I accompany you to your apartment?”
“No,” I respond quickly. I’m angry, swimming in it. Carlo was right about him. “I don’t even know you.”
He starts laughing, the sound of his voice gentle in the dark. “I will walk you to your door only, sai?”
I feel my face grow warm. “Grazie, I’m fine.” I mean to right things, but he looks puzzled as I step into the lobby and shut the door.
The apartment is dark. I shuffle to the bedroom and unlatch the tall shutters. Luca walks slowly up the street and disappears around the corner. I’m shaking, and my body relaxes only when I lean on the sill smoking a cigarette, a habit reserved for nights like these. It is raining again and the air bites at my hands as I watch the ash drop. I begin with the morning. I close my eyes, see the familiar tower grow. Such a long day. So much to remember. The coffee. The salad. I make it to the club, but the drinks I’m forced to estimate. Then I remember the small bits of roll, broken gently and passed like Communion in the car. I try to forget, to see only the hand, the gesture, the kindness in it. But the hand is lost, the gesture lost. Don’t. Don’t. My head begins to buzz. I drop the cigarette, run to the bathroom, and it all comes up.
I wake the next morning to rain that doesn’t let up. At the club, everyone will be indoors—all bodies crowding in, all sounds echoing loud, all the older men clustered in the bar instead of on the embankment, all eyes and voices. I avoid it. I should open my laptop, look for work, but I avoid that, too.
I visit San Frediano in Cestello on the other side of the river, the Oltrarno. Luca was right—the church is beautiful. A small plaque on the wall outside announces that the mystic, Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, lived and died in the adjacent convent. Inside, there is a chapel dedicated to her with a painting of the saint in ecstasy, and in the chapel’s belled ceiling she welcomes souls into Heaven with sweeping arms. This is why he sent me here. There is nothing more, though—not in the little brochure I was handed and not