Page 82 of Two Chances With You

Gin sniffs it and then dives into the center of that wild orchid to inhale its most intense perfume. I’m reminded of an animated movie. A cartoon.Bambi, that’s it. Those big eyes, thrilled and glistening, appearing beyond those delicate flower petals. Those eyes, frightened and uncertain, looking out upon the near and impending future. Not just any old future,herfuture.

First gear, second, and then third, and we’re traveling again. Small curves and then a steep climb. I steer around a barrier that’s supposed to stop us, and then I park a short way farther up. Campidoglio. The Capitoline Hill.

“Come on!” I help her out of the car, and she follows me.

“Wait, listen, you know—”

“Shh! Talk softly. People live here.”

“Yes, all right. I just wanted to tell you…Listen, you can’t get married here at night. Plus, we haven’t even discussed it. But I want a fairy-tale wedding, I’ve already told you that.”

“Namely?”

“Long white gown with a bit of a plunging neckline, flowers mixed with spikes of wheat, and a beautiful church set amidst the greenery. No, wait, make that overlooking the sea.” She laughs.

“You see that you’re still being indecisive?”

“Why?”

“Amidst the greenery or overlooking the sea?”

“Ah, I thought you meant that I was being indecisive about whether or not to marry you.”

“No, as far as that goes, you’re stunningly decisive. You’d kill to marry me.” I pull her close and try to kiss her.

“You’re conceited and not very romantic.”

She laughs and then wriggles out of my arms, like a fish leaping out of my net. She runs away, fleet-footed, turning the corner. And I’m after her in the blink of an eye.

We’re on the large Piazza del Campidoglio, a vast square on the summit of the Capitoline Hill. A brighter light. A statue at the center of the piazza with a sign fastened to it. We stop nearby, close but separate. Everything is beautiful, especially her.

She peeks out from behind the statue. “Well, what are you doing now? Have you already run out of steam?”

I pretend to leave, and she runs around behind the statue. I dart around the other side and catch her on the run. She shrieks. “No. No, stop it!”

I pick her up and carry her away. Away from the light, away from the center. We wind up beneath the colonnade in the shadows. I set her back down on solid ground, and she adjusts her jacket, tugging it down to cover her stomach. I take her hair and uncover her face, slightly reddened from the recent run. Her chest is heaving up and down, rapidly, and then it slowly calms down.

“Your heart is really racing, isn’t it?”

My hand is just above her hip. Under the jacket, beneath the T-shirt, light and gentle, almost like a mere shiver, on her own flesh. She shuts her eyes, and I gently climb up, at the edge, along her hips, up her sides, up up up, behind her back. I open my hand, and I pull her close, squeezing her tight, pressing her against my body, kissing her.

Behind us is an ancient column shorter than the others and wider in diameter. There, gently, I push her down, letting her lean back, lowering her little by little. And she lets herself go. Her hair, her back surrendering on that ancient platform, eaten away by time with its faded marble veins, so porous and by now seemingly tired. Oh, this column must have seen things in its many days.

Gin clamps her legs around my hips and sides, fastening me in a light vise grip, letting her legs rock right and left. And I let her take me where she will. All the while, my hands run happily aground, cast away along her belt, her trousers, her buttons. Without haste, without liberating anything. Without any excess of desire. For the moment.

Then, all of a sudden, Gin turns to her left and opens her eyes, and then opens them wider, in alarm. “There’s something over there!”

Frightened, determined, perhaps even slightly annoyed, I peer into the shadows, still somewhat tipsy from the faint drunken binge of love. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just some bum.”

“And you call that nothing? You must be insane.”

She sits up, and I take her by the hand to help her down. Together, we flee, leaving behind us both that ancient lopped-off column and that vaguely present, lurking figure, both forgotten in the shadows.

As if in some labyrinth, we make our way through the hidden greenery and the more-or-less suffuse lights of the Roman Forum. Beneath us, in the distance, are ancient columns and architraves and monuments. A narrow line winds up steeply from the Piazza del Campidoglio. Terraces jut eagerly forward, with gravel on the ground, neatly tended greenery, and wild, unbridled bushes and shrubs. All around, in every direction, a precipice. The Tarpeian Rock.

And so, seemingly buoyed up over the emptiness of those ruins, beneath a low wall, in a perfectly sheltered cone of shadow, we find a hidden bench.

Less fearful now, Gin looks around. “No one can see us here.”

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