Eating With the Angels (7 page)

Yes, it is fair to say that I was in the clutch of a post-separation lust from which I could not have extricated myself even if I’d wanted to, and so Marco and I went at it like jungle animals. And it was
oh-my
-God extraordinary. We made love until I thought every square inch of me was rubbed raw with the scratch of his whiskers, the rasp of his tongue, the nip of his teeth, the print of his fingers, the clawing of his nails. I felt things in parts of my body I had forgotten about, craved things I didn’t know I could have, offered him parts of myself Sister Thomas Aquinas is probably still churning up soil over.

And then we decided we would go out for dinner. Truly, if every affair were like that, we would all be having them. All the time.
There was no room in my head for Tom at all. Not at all.

We showered together, which took a lot longer than any shower I ever took on my own, then I pulled on one of my little black dresses, slipped into my only pair of Jimmy Choos, and let Marco lead me once again through that magical collection of water and stone that was turning me into an entirely different woman.

‘You will like it in here,’ Marco assured me, as we came upon the doorway of the Trattoria Alla Madonna, an unpretentious older-style restaurant with an enormous vine growing up through a hole in the roof. ‘It’s where the Venetians eat.’

The place hummed with grumpy old waiters — it was like being in Peter Luger steak house in Williamsburg but without the porterhouse. An ice counter was constantly being re-filled with fresh whole fish, the tables buzzed with chatter. The smell of green beans and garlic filled the air and lifted my heart, already impossibly light. I felt Marco’s arm around my shoulder, steering me through the busy room to a table in a side alcove, the waiters acknowledging him grouchily. My feet hardly touched the ground. I floated.

‘I’ll have a beer,’ Marco directed a squat balding man with bushy eyebrows who showed us to our table.

‘A man who drinks beer lives a hundred years,’ he replied without a trace of humour.

‘And I’ll have a glass of
soave
,’ I chipped in. ‘So how long will I live?’

He showed no sign of having heard me, leaping nimbly out of the way to avoid a collision with a tray of
spaghetti alle vongole,
and disappeared into the throng of white-shirted waiting staff.

Actually, my wine arrived within minutes, but not so Marco’s beer.

‘A man who waits for beer lives two hundred years,’ our waiter said and this time I thought I detected a tremor of hilarity in those bushy eyebrows.

We ordered and then we ate, oh how we ate! Tiny little hard-shelled clams that I sucked on till the roof of my mouth stung; thick
dark sausages with a white bean stew; spaghetti with fried zucchini and parsley; veal cutlets cooked in lashings of sweet, nutty butter; soft chunks of white bread that drank up spicy olive oil; green beans and fresh peas well-cooked in a salty broth; and, to finish, a chocolate torte so rich and delicious just one mouthful was enough.

Actually, just one mouthful was all I could manage. And by then the waiters had stopped being grumpy and were looking at me with what I can only describe as admiration.

Mr Bushy Eyebrows even pulled back my chair as I got up to leave and Alla Madonna did not strike me as normally being that sort of a joint.

We walked back to the hotel in companionable silence, the streets still alive with giggling tourists and star-struck lovers. It wasn’t until I caught our reflection in the window of a shop selling beautiful Italian linen that I saw that was what we looked like too. Or at least, I looked like that: Marco’s reflection was harder to catch. He was standing on the other side of me and the reflection of his features was blurred by the sheets and pillowcases and quilt covers draped dramatically on the other side of the glass.

By the time we got back to my room, tiredness was attacking me from all angles. My eyes were having trouble staying open. I could feel sleep washing over me like waves on a pebbly shore, leaving me small windows of alertness before drowning me again in weariness.

Wordlessly, I let Marco take off my clothes and put me to bed. I felt the warmth of his hand on my stomach before drifting away into deep, deep sleep. In my dreams, the blackness swirled like a sinister oil painting with streaks of other colours spurting and spraying in front of my closed eyelids. It was unsettling, angry, confused. Very Jackson Pollock on a bad day. And it went on for far too long, leaving me feeling anxious and out of sorts when I woke up.

‘Marco?’ I whispered sleepily, turning to face him, seeking solace in his arms. But his side of the bed, of course, was empty. There would be no solace. Marco was gone.

I suppose you would have seen this coming. And had I not been blind to all but Marco’s animal magnetism, I suppose I would have seen it too.

As it was, I looked around my gorgeous room, which showed no sign at all of ever having had a handsome gondolier in it, no trace of the man who could make me forget my husband. There was no point in checking the wardrobe or under the bed. I knew in my heart of hearts that he was gone. No doubt about it. Gone. Devastation seeped into every pore, knocking the wind clear out of me.

I mean I knew it was preposterous from the start, someone like me and someone like him, but it had just unfolded so naturally, so perfectly, and felt so right that something inside me must have screamed ‘I deserve this!’ because I hadn’t fought it at all. I hadn’t argued with myself that he’d mistaken me for someone else, I hadn’t joked my way out of his embrace, I hadn’t let the guilt with which I was so heavily endowed overwhelm my instinctive desire. I had seized the day, I had carpe diemed up the wazoo. I had opened myself up to him, despite it all, despite the real me, and I’d had the best goddamn experience of my whole goddamn life.

I sucked back a sob. Whatever Marco had awoken in me I could not bear to put back to sleep. I felt alive for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long. I tingled with the memory of him. How could I live without feeling those lips on my skin, those hands on my breasts, those thighs pressed against mine, his breath hot on my neck?

It was morning, the sounds of the city awakening were sifting in through the window, the light casting shadows on my pistachio surroundings. I calmed the panic in my chest. I had found an antidote to my doubts over a future with Tom and I was not going to let it go.

I pulled on my jeans and the cashmere cardigan Fleur had given me for my last birthday and ran out of the hotel. I would find him, I decided. I would bring him back. I would make love to him again and then maybe I would know what to do next. Right then that was all I could come up with; it was as far as I could see — a growl low
in my stomach calling out for more of my gorgeous gondolier.

Of course, at Traghetto Santa Maria del Giglio his gondola was gone and the other gondolier there, the same slob who’d been there the night before, claimed to know nothing of Marco but offered to take me for a ride for 100 euros, a snip, he claimed, at that price. He was blowing the smoke of a strong cigarette in my face and eyeing me in a way that made me feel dirty. His gondolier hat was ratty and his white shirt frayed at the collar with a dribble of something red spilled down the front. His teeth were stained brown, his fingers yellow and he smelled of nothing pleasant.

‘Marco,’ I stressed, realising as I did how little I knew of the man, how few clues I had to help me find him. Not even his surname. ‘You must know Marco. He’s tall, quite tall, and wears a black T-shirt and trousers. He has 12 gondolas. He was here last night, with me, you must remember.’

A sleazy smile crept over the gondolier’s face. ‘Oh, so you’ve been with Marco,’ he said. I felt relief for a moment. Perhaps help was at hand. ‘Well, let me tell you little Miss Americano — there’s nothing Marco can give you that I can’t.’ He made a lewd gesture with one hand and his crotch, only narrowly missing setting himself on fire as his cigarette end brushed against his acrylic pants.

‘Excuse me,’ I said prudishly. ‘But there is no need to be disgusting.’

The gondolier laughed. ‘It is not me who has been disgusting, Signorina,’ he said, spitting into the canal as he did so. ‘You all think you are so special.’

I tried to tough it out but it was too hard. ‘You all? What is that supposed to mean?’

‘You think you are the first pretty girl to fall in love with a gondolier like Marco?’ This man’s face was twisted and mean. I just knew that he was not a gondolier with whom pretty girls fell in love. ‘These canal waters overflow with the blood of foolish women’s broken hearts. Go home, Signorina. Forget him. Go home.’

I turned and ran, not even bothering to wipe the tears from my cheeks. But running is not my thing, due to not being thin and pert, and no matter how quickly I wanted to get away from the ugly gondolier’s lies — or even worse, truths — I just couldn’t keep myself jiggling up and down like that. So I slowed to an upset sort of a scurry, then to a walk. I would go to the Rialto where I had seen Marco yesterday, I decided. Of course! Marco had to work! He would be there, or not far away, and I would wait for him. And everything would be all right.

This thought lifted my spirits and I skipped across the Rio di San Moise, the smell of coffee in the air reminding me that I couldn’t be too far away from Pasticceria Marchini, which was alleged to have Venice’s best pastries. But my heart needed feeding before my stomach and in fact my jeans were feeling a little firm after the feasting that had gone on the day before, despite the high calorific burn factor, so I kept moving towards the Rialto.

Halfway there I caught a glimpse of a tall, dark gondolier disappearing around the corner in his boat, the familiar throaty laugh of a female passenger echoing around the canal. It sounded just like Fleur.

And wouldn’t that be just like her, I found myself thinking, to steal my beautiful boyfriend — she who could summon up anyone she wanted and at least five spares. I started to run again then, ignoring the jolt in my knees and the jiggle in my bra, following the direction in which I thought the gondola had gone. But the water is by far the simplest way to get around Venice and trying to follow the gondola on foot I was thwarted at every turn. Within two minutes I had come to a dead end in a dingy little alley and knew I had lost Marco and Fleur forever. But there was no way it could have been Fleur and if it had been Marco, he was probably on his way back to the Rialto.

My heart sank when I got there and saw the clutch of other gondoliers mooching about on the pier, my one not among them.

‘Have you seen Marco?’ I asked, but the first lot turned their backs on me.

‘Marco?’ I asked another trio, but they talked amongst themselves and laughed at me, one even jabbing at me with his cell phone, his eyes deep set and dead-looking.

I knew how it looked. I knew what they were thinking. But I just couldn’t believe that Marco would do that to me. So I waited. And waited. And waited. But by 11 o’clock I felt that every one of Venice’s thousand gondoliers but him had passed me by.

‘If he comes,’ I told the gondoliers standing beside me, ‘if Marco comes tell him I’ve gone to Do’ Mori.’

‘Quello lì, non lo vedrai mai più,
’ the tallest one said, shaking his head. While I couldn’t be sure exactly what he meant, I could tell that it wasn’t good.

It took a while to find Do’ Mori. It was not that far from the bridge but the alleys were all narrow and dark and one looked much the same as the other. But eventually I recognised the wooden sign hanging over the hidden doorway.

‘Signora Marinello!’ I cried with relief when I finally stumbled into the bar. Marco was nowhere to be seen but the sight of her ruby cheeks was most welcome. ‘Have you seen him? Seen Marco?’

Signora Marinello poured a glass of wine and slid it over the worn wooden counter-top. ‘I’ve seen Marco, yes,’ she said. ‘But you don’t need Marco no more, Constanzia.’

I pushed the glass back to her. I had thought she was a friend. I felt anger surge through me with near-volcanic heat then shrink away again to a hard little rock, leaving me empty and scared.

‘But I do,’ I whispered, my eyes sliding desperately over the tuna croquettes, my mouth not even bothering to water. ‘I need him more than ever. Why would you say otherwise?’

‘Is just the way it is,’ Signora Marinello wiped her hands on the dishcloth that was tucked into the apron tied around her substantial middle. ‘Is just the way it is, Constanzia. Time for you to move on.’

The concern was still there in her eyes. It killed me. She must have known from the start that Marco was going to drop me like a
hot potato. She straightened a tray of polpette, which failed to tickle my taste buds in the slightest. I was really not myself. The tinny taste was growing stronger and stronger in my mouth. The headache that had waxed and waned over the past day or so throbbed violently now in at least three different places.

‘You going to be fine,’ she said vehemently. ‘You going to be better than you was before. You don’t need Marco no more. Trust me, my love.’

I started to say something, to argue, to plead, to beg her for any suggestion that might lead me to my gondolier, but at that moment a familiar but most out-of-place face walked into Do’ Mori. It belonged to Ty Wheatley, a snooty magazine publisher I knew vaguely from Manhattan — yet he seemed hardly surprised at all to see me.

‘There you are,’ he said and he leaned in to kiss me, on the mouth.

Now Ty Wheatley was not a man I expected to kiss me on the mouth, nor anywhere else for that matter. He was just about
good-looking
but not up my alley at all, no way. You may know the type. He’d started if not on the wrong side of the tracks then near them, but came into money thanks to some distant uncle when he was in his 20s. He’d then hot-footed it from Idaho or Iowa or Oklahoma to seek fame and fortune in New York, cleverly buying a property magazine that with the boom turned out to be a brilliant investment. He was squashy around the middle, prone to speaking in a phoney English accent and always dressed in cream linen, something I totally deplored.