Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

Viberti raises his head and she hugs him, hiding her face against him and resting her cheek on the patch of chest exposed by his unbuttoned shirt; she’s breathing heavily. They’re both breathing heavily now that they’ve stopped, and Viberti, rather alarmed, rather worried, is trying to figure out what could be the matter. “Sorry,” he says finally, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.” But he really did mean to, and she really meant to also, so why is she shaking her head, she’s shaking her brown hair against him and holding him even tighter, so what’s the problem?

“There’s someone back there.”

Viberti turns his eyes to the rearview mirror and sees a man with a dog ten yards from the Passat, in silhouette, the unmistakable image of a dog walker with an animal that can’t make up its mind to do its business. He’s not a Peeping Tom; on the contrary, he’s turned his back because he must have seen that there was someone in the car. Viberti could wait, but the man seems vaguely familiar to him. Who does he know who owns a dog? If it were winter, it would already be dark at that hour. There’s too much light.

He starts the car and leaves by driving onto the wide sidewalk between the trees and the houses so that the dog walker, across the street, won’t be able to see their faces even if he wants to. Meanwhile, Cecilia has straightened her clothes again, she’s pulled up her jeans and is buttoning her blouse, concealing the superb splendor she’d shown. “Don’t worry,” Viberti says, “he didn’t see us.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“No, why? Who was he?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t see him.”

“It was nobody.”

“Somebody from the hospital.”

“Is it so bad if they see us? Let’s go to my house, we’ll feel safer.”

“And maybe we’ll run into your ex on the stairs…”

“She has office hours until eight.”

Cecilia shakes her head. “No, I have to go now, it’s late.”

“Please.”

She squeezes his arm, and smiles. “I want to, too, but I can’t. We’ll talk about it with cooler heads tomorrow.”

Viberti isn’t sure that a cool head will encourage the realization of his desires, but he nods: “All right.”

He takes her to where she left her car, and despite the fact that they are nearly across from the hospital and she’s evidently afraid of being seen, Cecilia gives him a long, passionate kiss, or at least that’s how it seems to Viberti. Otherwise maybe, when he watches her get out and head toward the Scénic, he wouldn’t think: That woman is mine, that woman is mine, that’s my woman.

* * *

Viberti was right, a cool head never encourages the realization of certain desires, because the next day Cecilia came to the café all worked up, explaining that she hadn’t slept a wink all night, but that she’d come to an important decision.

“You don’t look tired, or maybe insomnia makes you even more desirable,” he said. The words were so unlike him that the panic he was feeling was even more evident. It wasn’t the assumed self-assurance of an actor, it was like flailing your arms as you fall through space, a useless conditioned reflex.

Cecilia had thought and thought about what had happened, tossing and turning in bed, and had decided that it was all wrong. It was wrong because she couldn’t afford to, she was no longer mistress of her life, plus she wasn’t being honest with him, he was an important friend, but he would never be anything more. “I was an idiot, no, more precisely I was a shit, people shouldn’t act like that, I don’t know what came over me, or maybe I do know — anyway, I’m terribly sorry, now you’ll hate me, and you’re right, you’re absolutely right, you should hate me.” A speech delivered unhurriedly, calmly, almost in a subdued undertone.

Viberti was stunned, he hadn’t seen it coming, it struck him head-on. Not that he felt he had found the woman of his life (or at least the second part of his life), not that he imagined being able to actually marry her, but he certainly hadn’t thought it would end so quickly, before it even began. And it certainly seemed like it was really over, the tone and composure used to announce dire decisions proved it.

“Last night I was upset, I felt like I was someone else, I didn’t know why I’d done it, and why I then suddenly wanted to take it all back, not just for me, not for what it meant for me, but because I realized what I’d done to you. I’ll never forgive myself.”

Speaking softly, Viberti said there was no need for forgiveness, there was nothing to forgive, and he certainly wasn’t capable of hating her, but he didn’t understand and maybe he shouldn’t even try to, they would talk about it later (with cool heads? How cool-headed did they need to be?). He told her it was best to let a few days go by, so that both of them would be thinking more clearly.

“All right, but I’m already thinking clearly, that’s what I want you to understand. I’m quite clear about the situation. I did something foolish and you shouldn’t expect it to happen again; please, tell me you won’t expect anything from me anymore, because it won’t happen, and it would be worse if you kept…”

Interrupting her, Viberti stood and said he had to go back to the hospital, and although he was beginning to get irritated he managed to take her hand and tell her almost affectionately that he didn’t expect anything, he was a big boy, inured to this kind of thing, and he didn’t expect anything from anyone.

“But don’t desert me now,” she said.

“What do you mean? It seems to me it’s the other way around.”

“No, no, don’t desert me, you don’t know how important you are to me, don’t desert me, let’s keep seeing each other, keep being friends.”

“All right.”

“No, don’t say ‘all right’ like that. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“We’ll see each other at lunch tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

He left her in front of the café rummaging through her backpack, looking for the car key. He took off nearly at a run; he didn’t believe in a fit of madness, he didn’t believe it had been a slip. He’d like to force her to take another look at herself: not just the kisses and embraces and caresses, not just what she had done or would have been ready to do, but how she had done it. A long close-up of her face from the moment they’d shared their first kiss until they’d parted: passion and abandon weren’t a lapse, they weren’t a mistake, they weren’t foolishness. He wanted to force her to open her eyes. Her real face was that face, not the wooden mask she’d just shown him.

But he, at least, had to remain calm, not sedated as Cecilia seemed to be, calm and responsible; he had to think and decide for two, since she was wholly incapable of seeing clearly and knew so little about herself. He had to remain calm, but he was so worked up that without realizing it he passed right by someone who’d stopped to say hello.

“Claudio.”

Viberti was finally wrenched from his trance; turning, he saw Antonio. He immediately noticed his mischievous expression.

“Hey, I saw you acting like a dirty old goat.”

Viberti smiled blankly.

“I have a dog! A present for the boys, I don’t know what I’m going to do with it … You want it?”

“A dog? You don’t have a dog.”

“I was out walking the dog and I saw you wrapped around her like a python, I recognized your car. Unless you lent it to someone.”

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon. It’s a Dalmatian. He seems really dumb. Come on, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, I can tell from your eyes that it was you.”

“Did you see me?”