Backlight, page 19
"I went to Kerala, and the flavors there were so intense. I wanted to bring it back in a way."
"It's brilliant," Francesca said. "I love it. This is the best tiramisu I've ever had." Sara smiled modestly.
"Grazie. It's a happy surprise to have you both here."
Bruno tried to pay for dinner, but Sara refused.
“It’s the principle, Bruno,” she said. “I know you could buy the whole restaurant but this is my gift to you.”
THEY WALKED INTO THE Venetian night, the cold sharper than before but dulled by the two bottles of Amarone they'd drunk. The cobbled streets of Cannareggio were hung with tiny lights, a twinkling string of stars leading from bridge to bridge. As they walked past shuttered windows, they heard the sounds of living; television broadcasts and washing up and scolding children.
"How are we getting back?" Francesca asked. She had forgotten how far they'd walked from the hotel. She wasn't even sure which direction the hotel was.
"It's not so far to walk," he said, pulling out the map and studying. "Provided we don't get lost. But I think that's faster than taking a boat, see?" He traced the route on the map: a nearly straight line walking through the city, the curvy, backwards S of the Grand Canal.
The streets were quiet, nearly deserted in the untouristed Ghetto Vecchio.
"You're not too cold?" He held her leather-gloved hand in his.
"I'm fine," she replied. "I like it here. Venice is one of those places that isn't quite real."
"Isn't it." They paused in an empty piazza, a little campo with trees and benches, a statue of the Virgin Mary standing silent sentinel. The noises they'd heard from passing windows before had muted, and they were alone in the dark.
"I don't want to wait until we get back to the hotel," he said. His voice was dark and dangerous, steeped in desire.
She looked around nervously. In the shadows she couldn't see his face, couldn't see the marks of the other boxer's fist, the disfiguring black eye. Nor could she read his expression; in the dark, with what he was suggesting, she could hardly tell he was the same Bruno she thought she knew.
"There's no one here," he said, insistent.
"We're outside," she protested weakly.
"I'm sure that's never stopped you before." In the silence of the piazza she felt his words echo off the walls of the surrounding buildings, buffeting her. She looked around again.
"There," she said sharply, pointing at a low, narrow sottoportego. They walked into the darkness, and she braced herself against the rough-hewn walls. He wrapped his coat around them both, enveloping her and drawing her close, and he kissed her hard. She dropped her bag to the ground and freed her hands to grasp his waist. Still gloved, she loosened his belt and unzipped his jeans, furiously fumbling at her own. Amidst the chill, she felt his warmth pressed against her own, his breath hot in her ear.
"I want you," he said; she felt him hard against her as he jerked at her jeans and pulled them down past her ass.
“Yes.”
She shifted down—it was easier; he was taller, she could brace herself against the wall without scuffing the heels of her boots on the stone. And then he thrust inside her and she felt massively, deliciously full.
"This is how you like it," she said breathily, "taking me here, like a stranger, like a woman you just ran into on the street." She fingered his earlobe with her leather-clad hand; without bare fingertips, she only had sensation in her lips and her pussy. And in those places, she was electric.
"Tell me more." He thrust harder.
"I'm going home from a party," she began, frantically grasping for a story. "I left alone; I'm going home to an empty apartment and a cat." He slammed into her. "You saw me at the party and followed me here."
"I didn't have a choice," he said raggedly. He had quickened his pace, his coat had slipped and the bare small of her back was rubbing against the rough wall. The pain felt good.
"I saw you at the party, too. I couldn't stop thinking about you there. I left to see if you would follow me. I led you here because I wanted you to fuck me." Her back was raw, and she sank her teeth into his earlobe to distract herself.
He was going too fast now to stop, even for the pain. "I wanted you inside me." With a final thrust, he came, so hard it knocked her head back against the wall.
"Is your head okay?" he asked, fastening the buttons on her coat.
She furrowed her brow. "I think so," she said.
"Are you able to walk back?"
"I'll be fine."
They walked without speaking, letting the silence of the sleeping city envelop them.
BACK IN THEIR ROOM, Francesca dropped her bag and coat on a chair, beelining for the bathroom.
"I'm going to draw a bath," she called over her shoulder. She emptied a jar of bath salts into the tub and turned the faucet; as the tub filled, she stripped off her clothes, assessing her body in the mirror. There was a red, raw patch on her lower back from the friction against the wall. She turned the water cooler, anticipating pain.
When the tub had filled, she sank into the warm, frothy bathwater all the way up to her neck. Her back smarted for a moment. But then she relaxed. She ducked her head under the water and exhaled and didn't break the surface again until she had cleared all the air from her lungs. She coughed and felt sore. Bruno knocked on the door.
"Can I come in?"
"Sure." Her entire body was submerged, and only her head remained above water. He came and knelt next to the tub, trailing his fingers through the sudsy water.
"How are you feeling?" he asked.
"I'm okay."
"How's your head?"
She hadn't thought about her head. It throbbed with a dull pain, but it wasn't terrible. "It's okay," she said. "Do you want to get in?"
"If you'll have me."
She patted the surface of the water. "Come on."
She watched him undress, careful to avoid the left side of his face when he pulled his sweater over his head, flinching. He was more hurt than he let on. He stepped gingerly into the tall bathtub.
"You surprised me," she said quietly. "I didn't expect you would have done that."
"Now you know why I study maps," he replied. She splashed him.
"Who else has there been?" she asked.
"Excuse me?"
"I know Bianca, and now Sara, and I'm sure there must be others. The one you were waiting for in Capri. Tell me about them."
"You're not really asking that, Francie."
"I am. I want to know."
"I don't want to talk about it. I don't make you talk about it."
"You don't have to. If you've read a magazine in the past eighteen months, you know it all. I was an open book."
"Well, I try to respect people's privacy," he replied. "I'd rather not talk about it."
"I even told you about Pierolari."
"And I told you I didn't care." He slipped his head under the water.
She leaned back against the marble of the tub. What great secret could he be so nonplussed about? And how serious could he be about her if he didn't want to know her history, or tell her his?
He surfaced, blinking the water out of his eyes.
"Look what you did to my back," she said, turning around to show him the scraped-up patch.
He held her hips to look at her, then pulled her to sit between his legs. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "We're the walking wounded."
"It feels better in the bath, doesn't it?"
"Much," he agreed. "Just like this." He shifted his body to hold hers more closely. "Much better now." He cupped her breasts in his warm, soapy hands, teasing his fingertips to her nipples. She kissed his biceps.
"You know what I didn't do today?"
He shook his head.
"Smoke a cigarette."
"How do you feel?"
"I think I'm okay. Two bottles of wine helped a lot."
"How did you start?" He asked.
She flinched, aware of every point on her body that intersected with his, every place his skin touched hers. She wanted to get out of the tub, out of the water where she could so easily drown, wrap herself in safety and never see the inside of another hotel room again. Instead, she closed her eyes and inhaled the lavender fragrance of the bath salts, trying to calm her racing heart.
"With Selim."
"That's it?"
"I thought we were being private." She stayed close to him another moment, certain he could feel the blood throbbing in her veins, betraying her. Damaged, damaged, her heart pulsed. If he could have secrets, so could she. Sweet Sara of the perfect risotto, beautiful Bianca with her polished manners. Neither of them had to run away to get an abortion. Neither of them had been raped in a hotel room. Neither of them had a brother who had flung himself off a building. How could she still be the Francesca of his dreams if he knew the truth?
She stood up in the bath, letting the water slake off her skin.
THEY LINGERED IN BED the next morning, reading the newspaper, drinking coffee, and talking. Outside Venice was a crystalline kingdom, rooflines iced with frost. Within these canals and palazzi, she wanted to believe there was no one else. Just Bruno and Francesca. No Selim, no Paolo, no Ricci. Just the dream of the two of them.
Francesca wrapped herself in a blanket and stood at the window. "The end of Venice is like the edge of the earth," she said quietly, staring out towards the sea. Boats filed out of the lagoon in a line, into the fog, a steady procession into the blankness. Bruno came and stood behind her.
"That sounds dark," he said. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"I don't think it's dark." She dug around in her bag for her camera. "I've always wanted to do a shoot here," she said, aiming out to capture a picture.
"Why don't you?"
"Can you imagine? The poor models, they'd freeze to death. And the seasons would always be off—there's not enough lead time, you'd be shooting summer clothes in winter."
"Why don't you just take pictures? Not for work. No models."
"Well, that's a sweet thought, but I can't live off of art pictures. As an investor, you should appreciate that."
"But you should be able to take the pictures you want to take."
"Selim used to say that. He tried to promise me I could be an artist. You saw how well that turned out."
Bruno turned her away from the window. "I'm not him," he said.
"I know that. But you should be encouraging me to do my work. I took snapshots this weekend; we looked at art. That's enough."
"You've been working hard. You can relax a little, can't you?"
"Aren't we relaxing right now?" She tousled his hair, losing her blanket as she reached up.
"I suppose we are," he said. "We could be relaxing more." He slid his hand down her spine, skipping over the skin scraped on the wall, resting with his palm cupping her ass.
"You like sleeping with me, don't you?" She broke away from his touch. "Everyone likes sleeping with me. I'm a great fuck." She spit the words.
"Francie, what the hell? We were just—"
"You say you love me, but you just love how I make you feel," she said, gathering the blanket to cover her body.
"What makes you think that? Nothing could be further—"
"You don't want to let me in. You want to wall me off, to keep everything private. You don't talk about your exes."
"Francie, that doesn't have anything to do with you."
"Of course it does. They were all so perfect. All such nice girls. And then you get to me, train wreck Francesca with the dead brother, sloppy as hell but a tiger in bed."
"Francie, that's not what I think. I can't even imagine why you would say that."
"I'm afraid you're only with me because you feel guilty about Ricci," she blurted out.
He turned away from her to the window. "I'm sorry you feel that way."
"But you don't deny it."
"You're being ludicrous. I should have to deny it? Your brother was one of my closest friends, and I'm going to miss him for a long time. I'm sad about him, and it's going to take me a while to get over that. And yes, since you mentioned it, I do feel responsible. I feel like I could have done something, and I didn't. Not that night. Before then, even. I should have seen it, and I didn't, for some reason. I didn't pick up on any of the cues that he was depressed or considering suicide. Neither did you."
"Thanks for reminding me," she interrupted.
"But Francie, you know I was attracted to you when Ricci was alive. You know how I felt in Capri, and all the times I saw you after then, I was always—always—into you. And you were the one who couldn't manage to give me the time of day until your life started falling apart."
"Are we really going to fight about this?"
"Are you really going to be so self-absorbed and insecure?" His eyes still betrayed the kindness of his heart; he couldn't flash anger if he tried, and again, she struggled to picture him in the ring, landing a punch on another man's jaw. She blinked.
"Maybe I'm not ready yet."
"I love you, Francesca. I'm not just in it for a good fuck. I love you." He swallowed hard, and in the silence between them, the ticking of the mantel clock echoed in the room. For a moment, she was afraid. "Do you love me?"
She didn't expect him to ask. She hadn't even thought he'd noticed she hadn't said it back. But he meant it; he was serious.
"Yes," she whispered.
"Then you'll have to be ready. Because if you walk away from me now, I'm not going to wait around until you come back."
She shook her head. "Is that a threat?" If he was Selim, she'd be down on her knees, imploring him to stay. She'd changed more than she'd thought. Old Francesca would have been weaseling her fingers inside his waistband, teasing his earlobe with her lips, using all forms of trickery to remind him of the good thing he had. New Francesca stood with her feet planted, arms crossed. Her old tactics hadn't worked with Selim. And she knew they wouldn't work with Bruno.
"No. I want to be with you. I think I've made that abundantly clear. But I won't allow you to abuse me the way you abused Paolo—"
"You know nothing about Paolo!" she snapped. "Abuse him?"
"You let him think you were serious, you let him think you wanted a relationship with him and then you got scared and ran off the first chance you had."
"That was not the first chance—"
"You know what I mean. You're not going to do that to me. Lead me on. String me along. I want more than just a good time."
"Thank you for explaining that."
"You seemed to be in doubt."
She watched the fog roll in from the lagoon to the canal, grayness everywhere.
He poured more coffee into his cup, tasted it, then returned it to the table in disgust.
"The coffee's cold," he said.
"Why don't you order more?"
He picked up the phone and politely asked for another carafe of coffee, with steamed milk for Francesca.
She turned back to him when she'd heard him hang up the phone. "I wouldn't do that to you, you know," she said quietly. "I don't ever want to. I'm a different person now."
"I know you are."
"Then why are you afraid?" she asked.
"Self-preservation, I suppose." He swallowed, his adam's apple rose and fell. "Better to be aware of all the risks than pretend they don't exist. I'll tell you about the others if it makes a difference to you, Francie, but I love you in a way I didn't love them. That's why they don't matter."
She sat down on the carpet, unable to trust her legs to hold her weight any longer. He sat with her, easing into a comfortable position.
"I believe you," she said.
He reached for her hands and held them in his, stroking them with his strong thumbs.
"You're not Ricci's sister, or Paolo's ex, or my girlfriend," he said. "You're Francesca Garancini. And everything that that encompasses. All the flaws, all the joy, all the beauty, all the sorrow, all the talent, all the kindness. All the brilliance. And all the love."
Chapter Seven
"He said he loves me." Francesca didn't even wait for Valeria to say hello; as soon as the call connected, she started talking.
"Francie? I'm sorry, I'm at the store, I couldn't hear you."
"Bruno. He said he loves me. We spent the weekend in Venice together and he told me that he loves me."
Valeria giggled. "Of course he does, silly."
"Why is that silly? When we were at your house, you were all ready to set him up with that soul-sucking French girl—"
"Soul-sucking French girl?"
"At Scrabble."
"Isabella. I wasn't going to set them up; her partner works with Gio. She's in a committed relationship. And I would never do that to you."
"Why not?"
"Because there were literally only two people on earth who didn't know that you and Bruno were meant to be together, and one of them was him but the other one was you."
Francesca could see Val pushing her cart through the grocery aisles, making grand pronouncements while selecting pasta varieties from the shelves. Rigatoni, Farfalle, Francesca, and Bruno.
"You could have told me," Francesca said.
"I couldn't have. You had been obsessed with Selim. And then you were so sad. And by the time the light returned to your eyes, it was more fun to see how long it would take you to figure it out yourself."
"He's so wonderful, Val. We got into a terrible fight and everything, and I'm so glad we did. I feel like we said all the things I've always been afraid to say."
"You had a good fight?"
"I usually don't have fights. With Paolo, one of us would give in, and with Selim, I tried so hard not to annoy him. I've never been with anyone who's seen a fight through to the end."
"That doesn't seem right."
"Do you and Gio fight?"
"Over little things, yes, like he'll probably be upset I didn’t get the apples he likes and I'll tell him to shut up and eat the apples I bought. But most of the time I'm just too tired."
"This wasn't like that. He wouldn't talk about his exes and I asked him why and he called me insecure and—"
