This Crumbling Pageant Page 4

“Definitely not Boswell. And by the way, I hope you’re cleaning up after him when you walk him.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Just because other people here don’t clean up after their dogs, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t either. I tell ya, we’re in this beautiful city, and I can’t even look around and enjoy it, but instead I have to keep my eyes glued to the ground all the time—because the second I don’t,” Scott’s said, voice rising, “I step in shit!”

  Holly rolled her eyes. She had heard his dog poop spiel before. “Anyway,” she said, “Luca said he didn’t care about us keeping the dog. He also said it probably came from one of the provinces around here, where they breed them illegally. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you! I was talking to him about how I was sending out résumés looking for museum work, and he said he knows somebody who works at the Pinacoteca Nazionale and he would ask if there was any position available for me. He also knows people who can help get me a work visa. Isn’t that exciting?”

  “That’s all well and good for you, honeypie, but what about me? What am I going to do? Without a visa I can only stay in this country another two months. I don’t want to go back home while you stay here.”

  “No, of course not.” She took his hand. “I don’t want that, either.” Without conviction, she said, “Maybe Luca can find something for you too?”

  “Why do I get the feeling you already suggested this to Luca, and it didn’t go over as well?”

  Suddenly water sprayed over them. Standing by the door and shaking an umbrella fervidly was the woman from New Jersey. Unmistakably her. With a foul look on her face, she folded the umbrella and began sizing up the crowded room. Scott and Holly huddled together surreptitiously.

  The woman loosened her leather gloves finger by finger. She looked at the long lines, the lack of seating, and commented:

  “Oh, gimme a break!”

  She seemed to think that, in Italy, nobody could hear her scream. She was blocking the door too, and Italians were accumulating behind her.

  “Permesso?” a dignified citizen inquired, touching her on the shoulder. Instead of letting him pass, she made a point of eying his fingertips with a haughty and molested expression.

  He withdrew his hand and in clipped Italian tried to explain himself.

  She interrupted this nonsense at once. “I was here first!” she flared. “Jeez!”

  Now some middle-school kids were waiting for the exit. It was altogether too much for the beleaguered lady.

  “Forget this!” She turned around and burrowed back through the door. “This is ridiculous.”

  Holly and Scott sprang to their feet. They gathered their things lickety-split and went bursting out in hot pursuit. But the slippery little woman was gone.

  “I can’t believe it,” Scott said. A height advantage let him see over all the heads. He ran off in several directions, returned and announced, “I’m going to murder her.”

  He was only kidding, of course.

  6

  About a week later Scott and Holly’s luck changed. It was Sunday. The couple emerged from a movie theater after watching a matinee showing of The Magnificent Ambersons. The sky had evolved into a bright, rippling blue. Scott lit a cigarette and checked his cell phone. Holly shaded her eyes and took in her surroundings. The theater exited onto a charming, triangular little piazza that was closed to traffic. The irregular terraces of the sidewalk cafés were humming. The air was jingling with dog leashes and bicycle bells. A pretty clock tower looked over the scene. Outside a shuttered gelateria, a young artist was mixing oils behind a French easel. Holly drifted off to take a look.

  She assumed she would see a plein-air rendering of the little piazza. In fact it was a landscape painting. Its beauty sideswiped her. The painter had captured one of those wintry days when the clouds have gathered and seem to hover overhead like an alien mothership. The light had a roomy, interior quality, instantly recognizable to her from her Minnesota upbringing. The snow on the ground was brighter than the sky.

  The artist glanced behind him to see who was looking over his shoulder. Then he returned to his glass jar of turpentine and resumed mixing his pigments. Holly’s presence had been acknowledged with a barely perceptible flinch of a smile.

  “How much?” she said in Italian. Even this harmless bit of banter felt bold in a foreign language.

  The artist gave her a wry, sidelong smile.

  “You mean,” he began, crushing out Prussian blue from a tube of paint, “how much will I pay you to haul it to the dump?”

  “Not at all!” she said. “I think it’s incredible! It—”

  “Thank you,” he said curtly, then stepped back to squint at his work.

  Was she flattering an asshole? Depending on his reaction, Holly would make her next question her last.

  “Was this an observational painting?” she asked. “I wasn’t expecting to see this subject when I saw you working here.”

  The artist gazed down sadly at his palette. Alarmed, Holly ran over her words for anything wrong. She had a wholesome horror of upsetting Italians. The young man seemed to be consulting with himself. Finally, he said, “You’re curious why I’m out here on the streets, like some organ grinder?”

  “No!” she protested strongly. “Because that would make me your monkey.”

  He laughed, almost merrily, and went back to his canvas, applying the fine tip of his brush in a careless display of skill.

  They talked generally about his artwork—what were his other paintings like, and where had he shown. Then the topic turned to influences. This led to the revelation that they both preferred the work of Corot over his more lauded contemporaries, and soon they were discussing other, even more personal preferences, and things were about to get deep, when Scott came moseying along.

  “Ah, this is my husband,” Holly said, adding, “He doesn’t speak Italian.”

  Scott was still fiddling with his cell phone when he walked up to them, and he nearly tripped as his right foot contrived to step into a hole in the ground. He managed to regain his balance, only for his left foot to become involved in some dog shit.

  “Oh, honey,” Holly said weakly.

  Scott thought her tone was more disappointed than sympathetic. It was the dude next to her who looked aggrieved. He seemed to be swallowing his emotions, and inwardly fuming, and kept opening his mouth as if to speak volumes, but all that came out was a little broken English. “I hate the people... that walk the dogs.”

  Scott wiped his shoe on the ground. “Me too,” he said morosely.

  What struck him about the painter was how strong he looked. A real slugger. A power hitter. Also, the man was damn handsome—something that could not have escaped Holly.

  Introductions were made. The artist’s name was Luca. He declined to shake hands, since his own were covered in paint.

  “Come here,” Holly urged Scott. “Look at what he’s working on.”

  Scott came around and, after a sufficient pause, paid the painting the deserving tribute of a “wow.”

  The painter snorted, obviously pleased.

  “Tu vedi? È veramente magnifico. Sai il pittore Martin Heade? Perché la sua roba...”

  Holly had switched back to Italian, so Scott went back to the task at hand, which required that he find a nice, grassy surface where he could wipe his shoe clean. One honest plot of grass, that’s all he desired. But not so easy in stony Bologna. Instead, Scott settled on plundering a napkin dispenser from one of the al fresco tables. They were the tiniest of cocktail napkins. The whole messy procedure lasted five minutes.

  “Scott,” Holly said when he returned, “Luca says his latest work is hanging in one of the galleries near where we live, and they’re getting ready to have an art opening soon. I told him we would try to make it.”

  Scott smiled at the artist. “Great,” he said.

  Luca made a shallow bow.

  Holly asked him, “Do you
have any studio space? Maybe you can show us some of your other stuff in the meantime?”

  Scott cocked an eye at Holly. It was not like her to risk being so pushy. And her question did seem to touch a nerve. Once again, the Italian looked as if he were stewing in his own linguistic juices. He evidently had something to say, but in the end the best he could do was, “No.”

  As they were talking, two men brushed by, and one of them touched Holly on the side as he passed. She stiffened and looked over in confusion. Scott’s head darted up sharply.

  “Ciao, ragazza,” said the stranger, slowing down. He was a dandified thug: hoop earring, sly smile, and awash in such wholesale quantities of cologne they could have smelled him coming. He held Holly with his glittering eyes. Scott was instantly ready for pitched battle, but before anything could transpire the stranger’s companion sang out, “Scott! Holly! What a surprise!”

  It was Luca San Michele, their ubiquitous landlord. He hailed them in a manner that was, even for him, extravagant.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Whittier!” he serenaded, down on one knee, arms raised and fingers snapping like castanets. Then he rose to kiss them on the cheek four times apiece. His friend, occupying himself with a cell phone, took this opportunity to wander off, never to return.

  “Can you believe this sunshine?” San Michele said. “Grande! Finalmente! We should all send thank you letters to Africa for this.”

  He had beaten his cold gloriously. He was wearing brown herringbone pants and a white button-down shirt, fresh and crispy. He looked around, soaking in the sunshine, inhaling a bonanza of bright air. Then his face dropped. “No, but I tell you in all seriousness. This weather is well-deserved.”

  Holly introduced him to the other Luca, and invited him to look at the painting.

  San Michele took one look. “Bah!” he burst out roughly. “But this is a great work of art!”

  The artist gave a constrained smile.

  “Really!” the other persisted. “We have in our midst a young Tintoretto!”

  The painter made not the slightest reply. Luca San Michele turned back to his tenants.

  “And so how are you getting along in your apartment? Do you need me to come over and fix anything? I am at your disposal. Just say the word and I’ll be there in no time with my trusty plunger!” With his folded umbrella, he pantomimed the motions of strenuous plunging.

  As he was doing so, a young woman in white jeans passed by and succeeded in establishing eye contact with him. She had a deep tan and a mole above her lip. San Michele’s expression changed, becoming boyish and lost. Then she disappeared in the crowd and he snapped out of it. He spoke to himself in a bizarre dialect.

  “Do you live around here, Luca?” Holly asked him.

  “Yeah,” Scott chimed in. “Where do you live, Luca?”

  San Michele gaped at them.

  “Haven’t I told you,” he asked haltingly, “about my dear old Castello Famigerato? Oh, no, no, no. This is unpardonable. I simply must have you over! It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Just a normal convivial dinner, as Berlusconi would say. The drive is only a few short kilometers south of here. Yes,” he said resolutely, “we must all get together some night.” To the artist, he said, “You, too. I have a few pictures that might interest you.”

  Scott wondered if this party would end up like the truffle hunting party Luca had gotten so jazzed about and then dismissed from his mind. Maybe that was his ambitious style, to threaten, “I must do this! We must do that!” with nothing ever coming of it.

  San Michele now asked the other Luca if he was in the fine arts program at the university. The artist replied rather stonily that he was not. The two Lucas then began talking against each other about the university student population in Bologna, always a favorite topic. Luca San Michele, twirling his folded umbrella, said he liked having them there. They gave the city some oomph. The artist, on the other hand, said he would rather herd with hyenas than with those criminals and drunks, who stank up the library by day and threw up in the streets at night. San Michele was driven to admit that the students could be, at times, excessive, but all in all they were a refreshing change from the stuffiness of the city’s older inhabitants. The other Luca could not have disagreed more emphatically about the refreshing nature of the university students, and asserted that he would like to brain them all with their own tassels.

  During this exchange they had reverted to Italian, and Scott had been staring off in a stupor. Then suddenly he came to life.

  “I’m sorry, everyone,” he said, hastily shaking hands with the Lucas and even giving Holly a quick kiss on the cheek. “I gotta go.”

  He dashed out of the piazza.

  Holly watched him go. He had mumbled something in her ear, but she hadn’t caught a word. The artist was also getting ready to leave, gathering up his easel and things, and unchaining his bicycle from a bridle post. Then, looking her briefly in the eyes, he rode off, ringing his bell to clear a path.

  So that left only Holly and Luca San Michele. Holly invented an excuse for her husband, and Luca gave her a slow smile and offered a ride home. His car was parked just around the corner. He drove a pretty SUV, Coke can red, and it was fun, Holly thought, to swim through the narrow streets in such a monster.

  &

  While Scott and Holly were in the square, they had been visited by the woman from New Jersey. Scott was sure of it. He had caught a glimpse of her, flitting out of a hat store. That sporty, red leather jacket had given her away. She had gone down Viale de Nicolo, where he pursued her and sighted her wide bottom boarding an orange public bus. He sprinted toward the doors at the rear.

  They closed behind him and the bus jolted into gear. As there were no seats available around him, he stayed on his feet, but he kept his back turned so that the only people who could see his face were some sleepy immigrants in the back and a wealthy-looking older woman sitting below him. She was looking him up and down, masking her peasant curiosity behind a snooty exterior. The bus lumbered around a corner. Scott craned his neck to peer out the windows. They were going north, up Via Gemini, toward those two towers he kept meaning to see. They had only traveled half a block, however, when he felt the bus gearing down again. It jerked to a stop, the doors fanned open, and Scott gave a passing look to make sure the American woman wasn’t getting off. She was sitting in the front facing the driver, and wasn’t budging. She was wearing a hat this time, a peaked cap, but it was definitely her. Then a man in a blue uniform rose up behind her. A controlloro. One of those marauding officers who go around checking for people’s tickets.

  Scott knew from legends what to expect. Cash fine, public humiliation. The immigrants were already getting their passes out. The officer was waltzing toward him at a blistering pace. Scott shook his head at his bad luck, then dove out of the bus at the last second, the door closing on his foot. He yanked it free, and the bus nosed back into traffic.

  He found himself not far from the piazza where he had left his wife. In fact, here was his car—just where he had parked it that morning before the movie.

  He fumbled for his keys and got in. It was the one time he needed to go fast, and he got stuck on a narrow two-way street behind a large jalopy that was, with every bump in the road, restoring its car parts to the earth. Scott resentfully eased up on the gas and loudly groused about his bad fucking luck. The bus was pulling away ahead. Vespas and 500s bubbled up behind him, blatting their horns. As the pressure built up, one or two of these contraptions would shoot out of the pack and whiz past him and the jalopy with a long beep. Every time Scott thought about following their lead, he would lose his nerve. Up ahead, the bus had slowed at a crossing and was taking a wide left turn.

  He kept on until the car in front of him stopped at the same crossing. Scott idled in the bluish shadow of a truck that had pulled up flush behind him. They waited. There was no oncoming traffic, no traffic on the intersecting street—hence, Scott reasoned, there was no ear
thly reason for the hold-up. Was there even a stop sign? He couldn’t make out what species of Sunday driver was tormenting him like this. Finally, Scott tried his horn. His car, he learned, had a very powerful one.

  Then it was revealed what had been holding them up. A quadriplegic in a wheelchair appeared clattering across their path. The man was blowing into his little tube with eyes frozen open in despair, clearly unnerved by Scott’s beep. Scott shrank in his seat, feeling like a heel. There was a general sense of condemnation around him. He got out of there at the first opportunity.

  The bus had given him the slip. On a residential block of venerable old houses and stately arcades, he hit the brakes, jammed the stick shift into reverse, and backed into an empty parking space with a lurch. Then he climbed out and ditched the car while lighting a cigarette.

  He called Holly.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m home. Luca gave me a ride.”

  “Which Luca?”

  “Our landlord, of course.”

  He blew out a generous cloud of blue smoke. “What was up with that painter dude Luca?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Scott said. Already she was getting defensive about her new friend. “He just seemed a little strange.”

  “You should talk. Why did you run off like that?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I mumbled in your ear?” He mounted a set of steps beside an ocher-colored residence.

  “Scott,” Holly said, “all I heard was a mumble.”

  Aimlessly pacing the terrazzo floor of a long portico, Scott recounted his misadventures. When he was done, he waited to hear what she thought. Instead, he heard a telltale clickety-clack.

  “You’re on the computer!” he accused her. “You’re not even listening to me!”

  She gave a guilty little laugh, and went “Sh.”

  He thought this was funny. “Excuse me? Are you shushing me?”

  No reply.

  “Holly?”