“Of course. You miss Masso?”
“Yes, I miss Masso.” He feels more like home than my home, he’s kinder than my father. “I want cheese.”
“I can pick out cheese for you.”
“I could get on a plane right now.”
“You could, but it’s late. Are you sure you’re okay?”
She was quiet for a moment.
“I don’t think I really want to come back to L.A.,” she said. “I think I just want to come back to last week.”
“Ah.” He considered it. “Okay, then we’re in last week.”
“Together?”
“Of course. It’s last week, isn’t it?”
“Which moment last week?”
“You tell me.”
“Okay. Okay.” She fidgeted, toying with the beads on her dress. It was cold outside, and she started walking, because getting a cab on New Year’s Eve in River North wasn’t fucking happening.
“It’s that day you took me to the beach,” she said. The ocean wasn’t very close to Pasadena; it was a full day’s activity just to go there and back, and the water wasn’t particularly warm. Certainly not warm enough to get in, but she did, sort of. “I’m standing with my feet in the ocean, and you’re smiling at me like I’m an idiot.”
“I wasn’t smiling like that.”
“Yes, Rinaldo, you were.”
“No, I meant—I was just trying to keep you there, prolong it in my head. I guess I didn’t know I was smiling.”
The idea that even he didn’t recognize happiness when he felt it was comforting, in some way. She was comforted by knowing he was equally as stupid and hopeless as she was.
“You want to know what I was thinking?” she asked.
“Tell me.”
“I was thinking that sex on the beach is probably overrated.”
He laughed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, the sand probably just gets everywhere, and besides, it was the first time I didn’t want to have sex with you.”
“Ouch.”
“No, I mean… not like that.” She pulled her coat tighter around her. “I was thinking about the way the water felt hitting my ankles, the way it could pull me away. I thought about how easy it would be to disappear, to get dragged under the waves and be lost forever, but you were standing right there, and I thought… all I’d have to do is reach out.”
She could feel his silence. She imagined him tracing the shadow of something foreign and incomprehensible on her skin, ancient letters that stood for ancient concepts.
“I’m going to try to get a flight tomorrow,” he said.
She exhaled swiftly, like a sob.
“You don’t have to.”
“Well, who knows if I’ll be able to, but still, I want to. I miss you.” Everything that had ever left Rinaldo Damiani’s mouth was a fact, and with the same degree of factual authority, he said, “Stay on the phone with me until you get home.”