Page 57 of Three Times You

But we both know we’re sinners. We have no interest in repentance. When you love like we do, you know you’ve already been absolved of your sins. Isn’t this the love God spoke of? I’d give up everything to be able to go on experiencing it.

We walk silently through this immaculate, renovated apartment. “It was only just redone, no one else has lived in it. It’s where we’re going to live, and we’ll color it with our love.”

Then Babi steps forward and throws her arms around me. “I love it. It’s just the way I’d have done it. It’s a dream come true. I know this is wrong. I know I’m making a horrible mistake. But this is what’s going to make me happy.”

And we kiss, at the center of that bare-walled living room, in that empty apartment without curtains or paintings but full of light, fun, and reckless passion. Like the sea at sunset, calm and peaceful, with who knows what tempests impending. But not now. Now we’re happy, at peace, the way we always should have been.

“Come with me.” And I take her to a closed door, and I open it. There’s a bed with new, dark silk sheets and, on the nightstand on the left, a vase of red roses and a bottle of champagne with two glasses, still wrapped in paper.

“So, shall we start over?”

“No need. I’ve never stopped. I love you.”

“Tell me again.”

“I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“But this time, don’t change your mind.”

Chapter 46

And suddenly my life changes in a way I could never have believed. Or perhaps it just goes back to what it always ought to have been.

And so we furnish the apartment. We arrange to meet in shops to buy curtains, carpets, and sheets, but no television set. Every day, at lunchtime, we eat together, and we consider some new piece of furniture for our little penthouse.

“Do you like these drinking glasses?”

“I do, a lot.” So she puts them away in an antique cabinet that we found in a Trastevere junkshop.

Then I shrug. “Maybe we can use them someday, if we have guests.”

“Yes, definitely.”

But we both know that that can never be.

***

The days go by peacefully in our Borgo Pio penthouse.

“Tonight, Gin is having an all-girls dinner at our place, so I can stay out if you like. Shall we do something at our penthouse?”

“At last I can cook you something delicious. Yes, I’ll see you there, then?” Babi sounds happy.

“All right. If you like, I can do the grocery shopping while you put Massimo to bed. That way you can hurry straight over.”

“Yes, sounds like a great idea.”

“Okay, then text me everything you need, and I’ll go to the supermarket and then we can meet there.”

“Okay.”

I continue working away at a few different projects when I hear the ping of an incoming text.

Parmesan cheese, arugula, avocado, lettuce, a green tomato and a red one, red onion, an apple, a pear, a bunch of grapes, a bottle of maraschino cherries, and a bottle of Pinot Grigio…Does that remind you of anything?

I read what she’s planning to make me and notice that she’s tossed in lots of things. I answer immediately.

Hey, are you planning to fatten me up like the classic husband?

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