Page 55 of Three Times You

“And I’m happy for you, my love.” She steps close and caresses my hand before leaning forward and kissing me. It’s a light kiss that barely brushes my lips, and yet I feel much guiltier at that moment than I did last night, with everything that happened then.

I smile at her as she sits back down. I wonder what she can be thinking. I hope she hasn’t become suspicious for some reason. I don’t think she heard me come home. Practically speaking, I barely had time to take a shower and have breakfast.

“Hey, everything all right? What are you thinking? You seem distracted.” I say.

“Nothing…Actually, yes, I am thinking something, namely that this tea is taking forever!”

“Oh, no, no, don’t worry. It’s boiling now!” So I turn off the stove, open the tea bag, dip it in, and bob it up and down.

“Not too much. I don’t like it very strong.”

So I take out the tea bag, just as she’s requested, and I set it in the sink. Then, with the hot pad, I pick up the teapot, and I fill a cup of tea for her. “There, it’s ready.”

She gets out the honey and then dips that spiral implement that keeps the honey from dripping into the honey pot. She turns it and then puts it into the cup.

“Well, I’d better get going. I have an appointment at the office.”

“Okay, have a good day. I’ll be at the law office. See you tonight. Goodbye, my love.”

And this time, as I kiss her, I feel less guilty. No two ways about it, human beings are just that way: they get accustomed to everything and the opposite of everything.

Chapter 45

Isee Babi arrive from a distance, striding briskly, and then she stops and looks around. But she doesn’t see me. I’m sitting at a table by the bar, savoring both the cold beer and the bracing sight of her. She looks well rested with just a hint of makeup and very little lipstick. She seems more grown-up, and only now do I really see that. Or perhaps it’s because I’ve finally accepted the way I feel about her. I love her. And there’s nothing that could be better than to find yourself shipwrecked in love, helplessly caught in the riptide of a specific, ineluctable destiny, adrift in your desire for one person, abandoned in dreams of her without any other thought.

I pick up my cell phone, and I text her.

Even God is surprised at how well He’s painted you. It’s strange that a city this size lets you go around…You’re a threat to public order, you’re a disturbance of the peace.

Babi reads it and starts laughing. Shaking her head, she types something on her phone. A second later, I receive her answer.

Quit pulling my leg. Where the hell are you, anyway?

At a table by the bar, right in front of you.

When she reads this last text, Babi turns to look at the bar, searching for me among all the people. At last she sees me. Then she smiles in that way she has, a devastating glare of beauty so dazzling that any restraint or inhibition I might still have is instantly set aside. If someone smiles like that, it’s as if they’d said “I love you” right out loud on prime-time TV, emblazoned it on the side of the Colosseum, carved it right into the face of the sun.

I stand up when she reaches my table. “You’re so beautiful.”

“Yes, sure. Ciao, you wannabe poet.”

We plant kisses on each other’s cheeks, like a pair of casual friends, but the spark of desire that I feel zap between us would be enough, I believe, to short-circuit Rome’s entire urban power grid and set it on fire, worse than a modern-day Nero.

Then we both sit down, and she starts laughing. “What game are you playing at? You asked me to meet you here…Leaving aside the fact that you were just lucky Massimo’s at school and I wasn’t busy…”

“Iamlucky.”

“And I know that.” She smiles. “We both are, but you didn’t ask me to drop everything and rush over here just to have an espresso together, did you?”

So I lay some money down on the table, stand up, take her by the hand, and lead her away with me. “Come on.”

We walk in silence along Borgo Pio. In the distance we hear church bells chiming.

“If those are wedding bells, then it sounds like trouble for both bride and groom.”

“Yes, I couldn’t agree more.”

“So what now? Shall we pretend to be tourists and just go home with a smile and a handshake?”

---