Laura Caldwell - The Rome Affair

My body felt light, made of air. I moved down the street like a patch of fog. He had told me to meet him halfway up the Spanish Steps. As I took the first white marble stair, I halted. The Spanish Steps are hundreds of feet wide and sky-high, so what exactly did “halfway” mean? The first landing? The second? Ignoring the questions, ignoring common sense, I climbed.

My shoes went tap, tap, tap as I padded upward, and in my chest, behind my ribs, a drumbeat of anticipation began.

I glanced up for a moment and saw the moon—a small, yellow globe—and the dark sky behind it. The steps were nearly empty of their usual crowd, but somewhere on them, young Italian men were singing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few pairs of lovers. No single man in a linen shirt. My eyes climbed the huge stairway for him. Maybe he wouldn’t come? Relief. Disappointment.

At the second landing, I turned and stared down toward the fountain. A few stragglers were gathered around it. Maybe he was one of them? Had I walked right past him? But he’d said “halfway.” I remembered that for sure. Maybe “halfway” was some Italian lingo. The confusion nearly pulled me from my dreamlike state. I started to process what I was doing, or at least how I hadn’t a clue of what I was doing.

But when I turned back to look up the steps, he was there.

“Ciao,” he said.

“Ciao.”

He came to me and took one of my hands. I felt a flutter through my belly and my limbs. “I don’t know your name,” he said.

“Rachel.”

“And I am Roberto.”

The singers broke into a slow, haunting song. The strum of their guitar wafted and lilted until it surrounded the two of us, as if the song was being played for us.

“Rachele, Roberto,” he said, gesturing to me and back to himself. “This is meant to happen.”

I clasped his hand tighter.

Roberto and I sat on the steps for an hour or so, talking softly, about Rome, about art. When the singers were chased away by the polizia, he stood and took my hand again. He led me away from the steps and began to guide me over the cobbled streets.

His apartment was only a few blocks away on Via Sistina. The short distance meant I didn’t feel scared or pulled too far. Inside, his floors were pine-planked. His artwork—canvases done in red—hung from the walls.

He stood behind me as I surveyed the place.

I noticed a small canvas on an easel, and I walked over to it. The painting was a series of thick, wine-red slashes, with small remnants of black beneath them. And in the center, amid the chaotic red, was a lighter area. On closer inspection, it was the profile of a woman, her face downcast.

Roberto came to my side. “It is you.”

I laughed. “Oh, you painted this tonight, after you met me?”

“No, I painted this ten, maybe eleven years ago. I did not know this woman I painted. She was here.” He tapped his forehead. “Then I see you in the ristorante tonight, and I know. It is you.”

“Come on.” I laughed again. “How many women have you told that story to?”

“Only you,” he said simply. He nodded at the painting. “It is you.”

On closer inspection, the woman’s hair was shoulder-length, like mine, her eyes small but lashes long, also like mine. And there was something about the high curve of the cheekbone that made me feel, if only for a sliver of a second, as if I was looking in a mirror.

“It is beautiful,” I said. “Bellisimo.”

He moved behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders, then lightly drew them up my neck, into my hair, lifting it. “No. You are beautiful.”

He leaned down, his breath in my ear. “Bellisima,” he said. “Bella.”

He repeated it over and over—Bella. Bella. Bella. His hands curled in my hair. His lips, warm and so soft, touched my neck. Bella. Bella.

It became a mantra he spoke as he led me to an old-fashioned brocade day-bed, right below one particularly vivid canvas. Slowly, gently, he unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it from my body, unwrapping me the way he might a precious painting.

When he lowered himself over me, Nick was in that room somehow. When I felt the full weight of Roberto’s body, I was punishing Nick—and myself. But I loved it. I craved it. I needed it.

In the morning, I let myself quietly into the hotel room. I had felt dreamy and languid tiptoeing through Roberto’s apartment door, but now the bright light of morning—God’s flashlight, my mother used to call it—made me feel exposed and slightly seedy.

I expected the room to be dark, Kit still with her man from the French embassy or else buried deep in her covers. Kit was a notoriously late sleeper, always the last to get up in the morning, but the room was filled with light, and there was Kit. She sat at a round table in front of the opened French windows, coffee and a basket of rolls in front of her. Outside, Rome was starting to awaken, the sun growing more gold over the domes of a thousand churches.

“Morning,” Kit said. She was wearing one of the hotel robes, and her hair was wet and combed back. She looked clean and fresh.

“Hi.” I stood uncertainly, then stepped inside and let the door fall closed behind me.

I wanted, suddenly, to throw my bag on the bed and rush into a telling of my night, the way I used to when we were younger. I wanted to tell her what it was like with Roberto on that daybed, how we’d moved to the floor, a couch and finally his bed. I wanted to laugh, to say, “I’ve had two hours of sleep!”

But I stalled. I couldn’t jump into a story of my infidelity, and how I’d quickly joined Nick’s ranks, when I’d been so shocked at his actions. Also, it felt somehow wrong to give any of the sexual details. Marriage had sealed my tongue to those kinds of conversations. And finally, I realized right then that the years of geographical distance between Kit and me had created some emotional distance, too.

“How was it?” Kit said.

I took a few steps inside. “What?” I turned my back to her, setting my purse carefully on a dresser top.

“Rachel, it’s me.”

I turned. Her violet-blue eyes looked concerned, and I noticed lines around those eyes that didn’t used to be there years ago. But then, I had such lines, too. Somehow the fact that we were both growing older made what I had just done seem embarrassing, unseemly.

“What do you mean?” My voice sounded false to my ears.

She pushed aside a cup of espresso. “Where did you meet him? Someone from your meeting?” Her voice was full of kindness, and I felt relief at the friendship I heard there.

I shook my head.

“Someone you met at dinner?”

I hesitated once more. An overwhelming desire to sleep covered me like a wave. I was too tired to figure out a way to lie to Kit.

I nodded. I searched her face for disappointment, but there was none.

“So how was it?” she asked again.

“Unbelievable. Amazing.” The words were out of my mouth before I’d had a chance to consider them.

“Well, you got back at Nick,” she said quietly.

“It wasn’t like that.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be harsh. It’s just that he deserves it.”

Silence trickled into the room. Outside, on the Spanish Steps, the sound of a woman’s laugh rang out.

“Sorry,” Kit said again.

“No, it’s all right.” In truth, I liked that Kit was protective of me. “It’s really not about getting back at him, though.”

But of course it was. Because I thought he was probably doing it again. Right now, possibly. I thought about telling Kit my suspicions, but my shame stopped me. Before I’d come to Rome, I had been sick of being the one who was right for so long, the one who sat on the moral high ground of our marriage. With regret seeping in, I now wished to return to that spot.