Abroad (8 page)

One sultry night we dragged the little table outside. It didn’t exactly fit, as our terrace was barely two feet wide and four feet long, but it made one feel romantic anyway, particularly if you were facing away from the busy street. Claire was out that night, presumably exploring.

“You are out every night,
bella
,” Alessandra teased me, filling my glass. By this time I had taken to supplying my own wine, usually decent, three-euro bottles of Pinot Grigio, which, sipped out of the jelly glasses in the kitchen, tasted metallic and cold.

“No boys yet?”

I shrugged, my mind lurching immediately to the man from the museum.

“She hasn’t met the ones downstairs,” Gia said. “Or they haven’t seen
her.
Soon enough they’ll come sniffing up.”

“Are they nice?”

“Nice!” Gia laughed, showing a mouthful of bread. “No. Well, Marcello, he’s okay. Alfonso is an ass.”

“Don’t listen to her,
bella
,” Alessandra said. “None of those boys are nice. I can barely walk down there, it stinks so much from
spinello.
”

“I hate nice boys,” Gia said, tearing her bread.

Alessandra stood to clear the plates. “These guys buy drugs, probably they sell them, too, for all I know. That Alfonso was bragging about a gun once. I don’t like them at all.”

Gia shrugged. “Like I said, Alfonso’s an ass. So what do you think of the new girl? Claire?”

“She’s sweet,” I said.

Gia nodded. “Very beautiful.”

The words stung, somehow.

“I think she likes to party,” she added.

“I hope not too much,” Alessandra said. “Not here.”

“
You
are a good flatmate, Taz,” Gia said.

“Yes,” Alessandra said. The two women gazed at me thoughtfully, as if I were an object they were thinking of buying.

As sweet as my flatmates were to me, I had yet to go out with them. They had their own full lives, and while I believe they genuinely liked me, taking me along to their parties and gatherings would have, as my sister would say, sandbagged them. Most nights they spent at their boyfriends’ apartments. And when they did bring their boys home, they were utterly silent. No amorous groans, not even the inadvertent smack of a kiss. Certainly sex happened; that I knew from the strewn lingerie and condom boxes. Yet they kept their passions silent.

Night after night I went out with some combination of the B4. Sometimes, at twilight, Jenny and I would take a blanket and a picnic basket to a lawn in front of one of the smaller churches, where we would drink Prosecco and eat fruit and various cheeses she’d picked up from a shop she liked behind the university. Jenny paid special attention to me. Whenever the four of us had plans, she would come by and pick me up first, linking arms with me as we walked down the street. Despite the unlikely nature of it, I couldn’t help wondering if I was her favorite.

By this time I had quietly used some of my father’s money to buy a long blue dress and silver sandals more in keeping with what the others so often wore. Anna, spotting the ensemble the first afternoon I wore it, remarked on it as she joined Jenny and me on the grass to polish off a bottle of Orvieto white.

“Taz, is that new?”

“Yes,” I said. “There’s this very nice shop near the university where—”

“Look, there’s no reason to buy new clothes. I’ve got loads. We all borrow one another’s things. I’ll bring some over.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

“You’re not allowed to buy anything more,” Jenny said in a final tone. “We can’t let you waste your money.”

“I’ve got money. I mean, I’m not as rich as all of you, not by a long shot. But my father gave me four thousand pounds, and I made two thousand at my job this summer. I have six hundred euros right here in my purse.”

I don’t know why I said it. I suppose I was tired of feeling like the beggar girl. But the silence that followed was clear. The words hovered and spun, waiting to be waved away.

“Nevertheless,” Anna finally said, mercifully. “You oughtn’t spend that on something we already have.”

As promised, there was a bag left inside my door the next day. When I shut myself in my room and tried on the contents in front of the mirror—jewel-toned frocks and tunics of finely wrought silk and wool—I couldn’t help the girlish, giddy feeling that a hidden door to a secret garden had been opened just for me.

One night, Luka suggested that she and I go to an outdoor movie. I met her at her apartment—a charming, luxurious flat with a brick floor, vaulted ceilings, a fireplace, ferociously clean linens, and a view of the grand fountain in the main piazza. Jenny loved to have us gather there. She called it “the Club” and had taken to using Luka’s marble bathroom instead of the crowded shared shower at her residence hall. Most of her clothes were in a cardboard box on Luka’s floor.

The apartment was filled with odd pieces of art from Luka’s travels. There was a painting of a factory rising above a beach in Réunion; a few rubbings of some particularly sexual bits of the walls of Angkor Wat, done in fluorescent paint; a collage of South African soda and beer labels, compiled to form a vast, intricate landscape. I was impressed that Luka had brought all this to Italy, but when I asked her about lugging the stuff around, she shrugged. “I like to have my art around me.”

“Are you a collector?”

“Hardly. I mean, look at this stuff. It’s mostly crap.”

But it wasn’t. Even my untrained eye could see that these pieces would be expensive and difficult to find.

“You doing art history, then? That’s why Enteria?”

Luka shrugged. “Modern Italian painting, that’s my main thing.”

“Then why not Rome? Or Florence? There’s not a lot going on in Grifonia art-wise after the fourteenth century, is there?”

She turned away from me. “You need a drink.”

Luka made a show of fixing us both large martinis at a polished wood bar cart complete with a silver mixer and a collection of tools I didn’t recognize.

“I had them shipped over,” she explained as she wielded the shaker with an expert hand. “The Italians aren’t much for cocktails.”

“And where is this one from?” I persisted. It was a portrait of a young woman in a slip hugging her legs on a bathroom floor. It was a startling work, extraordinary in its realism and color.

“I did that,” she said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear her.

I turned the corner to the bedroom. There were more watercolors and sketches of the same model, a plain young woman with light-brown hair. In some she lay on the floor, in others on a bed. In all of them, her face was lifeless, her gaze off into the distance. She looked familiar in a couple of them, but her features were so blurred in others she could have been a thousand different girls.

“I didn’t know you painted, Luka.”

“Come on, bottoms up,” she said. “Movie’s in just a few.” I sipped my drink, the vodka burning my throat. On our way out, seeing I’d had only a few sips, she downed the rest of my martini in one swallow before swinging the door shut.

At the film—
Amarcord
, an ambitious choice, given our poor mastery of the language—she pulled out an engraved silver flask and two matching small silver cups.

“Aquavit,” she said loudly, drawing irritated looks from the Italian girls sitting near us. “Ever had it?”

“No.”

“Well, cheers,” she said, handing me my cup. Better than the vodka, but it was much too strong, and by the fantasy scenes at the Grand Hotel, I was passed out on Luka’s shoulder. We struggled back to Luka’s apartment, and I woke at dawn on her sofa to the sound of her snoring loudly. She was in an expensive-looking slip, sprawled out with a silk eye mask over her face. Scratching out a thank-you note, I slipped out, wondering whether I should ever mention the evening again.

Passing time with Anna was a different sort of beast. Most of the time she seemed genuinely kind, possibly the nicest of the three. She loved to walk arm in arm on the promenade and talk about her childhood home: the horses, the teas, the tiresome, charming droves of cousins. She never specified when this life had ended, or why she was out of contact with her mother; indeed, the memories seemed quite alive to her.

Yet often, my new friend would veer wildly from her genteel manner. Particularly while shopping. For Anna Grafton was a vicious bargainer. Not a bargain
hunter
—Anna took no pleasure in finding knockoffs or cheap things. She shopped at the most expensive stores, and wouldn’t leave happy unless she had cut the salesperson down some notches. This habit, Jenny told me, she picked up having watched her mother abuse servants and salespeople throughout her childhood in a variety of cities and countries. It was only natural for her to do the same.

“Get me the green pants!” she’d say from the fitting room of the most expensive shop off the main piazza. “No, no,
no
, the ones on the left!” Sniffing, the Italians would serve her, obviously impressed.

“How much?”

“Four hundred euros.”

“For
these
?” Anna would scoff. “The thread is coming off. Look!”

“I—”

“It’s dreadful. Four
hundred
? I thought Italians were all about quality!”

“Signora—”

“Very disappointing. All right, hand me that red dress. Yes, the Dolce! What did I just
say
?”

Anna never actually bought anything, usually storming out instead in a cloud of feigned fury. It was a lesson in human nature, really. The worse she treated these people, the better they treated her. I would watch, fascinated, as the terrifyingly chic shop women slashed their prices more and more in an effort to please this impossible young woman.

“One hundred,” one salesman practically begged, holding up a two-hundred-euro dress. It was exquisite—a close-fitting floor-length black skirt and sleeveless top embroidered in gold and jet beads.

“Maybe you should actually buy this one,” I whispered. The salesman—compact, over-sunned—raised his eyebrows. Anna paused, then looked at me and smiled.

“I will buy it for my
friend
for ninety euros,” she said.

“No, no, I—”

Anna held up her palm, silencing me. The man’s shoulders sagged a bit, and she smiled.

This is how I came to own the only truly beautiful dress I ever had. I was mortified that she bought it for me; but, then, she insisted, and terrified as I was of running through my father’s cash, I was quietly thankful. Afterward, I said goodbye and rushed to the cottage, the dress thrillingly heavy in my bag. When I came in, Claire was sitting on the terrace, strumming the guitar in messy, loud strokes.

“Hey!” she said. “Finally I have you all to myself.”

I smiled politely, wishing just then that the other girls were home, and then feeling guilty for it. I had only been alone with Claire a few times, and though I liked her, I found her air overly familiar. She was a girl who rushed in, without giving a damn if you were ready for the intimacy or not.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Oh, I—I got a dress.”

“Just a dress? Let’s see it.”

I drew it out and held it up carefully to my body.

“Oh my God, Taz. You’ll look like a princess in that. Seriously. Try it on.”

“Oh, we don’t have to—”

“Come on, hottie. Let’s have some wine. Here.” She rose, stepped into the kitchen, pulled out a bottle of white, and poured us both large jars full, plopping ice in for good measure—a move that truly would have made Alessandra faint. “I have a dress, too, that I bought in Germany.” She pulled off her shirt, throwing it on the floor. “It’s in here somewhere.”

I took a long sip and retreated to my room. The truth was, I was afraid to put the dress on, as I hadn’t actually tried it on in the store. I’d only seen it on Anna, who was so thin she looked consumptive. I pulled off my jeans and shirt and looked at the dress, which I’d laid carefully on my bed.

The door opened. Claire was in an ill-fitting electric-blue strapless dress that was too tight on her hips and had a terrible fringe at the knee. Yet on her, it looked charming, slipping dangerously off her shoulders, pouring over her curves.

I was only in my underwear. I covered my chest with my hands.

“That is a truly horrible dress,” I said. “But of course it looks terrific on you.”

“I’ll take that as Irish humor.” She reached over and pinched my naked waist. “Come on.”

“Just give me a minute, please.”

She pushed her way into my room and sat on the bed, watching. Flushing, I grabbed the dress and pulled it over my head.

“Lemme zip it,” she said, shooting up again. Turning me a little roughly toward the mirror, she kept her hands on my hips. She had a smell to her, clean but mysteriously masculine, as if perhaps she used her father’s aftershave.

“Damn,” she said.

I looked in the mirror. The black silk grazed my hips and flowed along my body to the floor. A band of gold-and-black beading accentuated my waist, which, despite the recent influx of pasta and gelato, remained respectably narrow. I thought of what my sister, Fiona, would say, seeing me dressed up like this. And Babs. And my mother, who, I knew, would beam and ask me to twirl in front of her.

“It’s a little tight,” I said, moving away a bit.

“It’s
hot.
Like, really hot.” She gazed at my image, then looked at my face. “But you don’t look that comfortable.”

“Well, it’s for … a ball or something.”

“Your new friends told you to get it?”

“Something like that.”

Claire paused, her hands still on my waist. “Hey, take it off. Let’s go outside.” She moved away to the window, looking down at the ravine. “There’s an old shed down there, I want to check it out.”

Quickly, I took off the gown, stepping back into my shorts and T-shirt.

“Come on,” she said.

We walked out into the garden, then hopped the wall into the grove. Music was playing from the apartment below. The sun was bearing down, and I could see Claire’s shoulders were burned. On her left tricep, a large and hideous tattoo of a moose. It was as if her beauty overwhelmed all the things she did to herself, defeating the piercings all the way up the lobe, the dirty nails, the lavender hair now fading to gray, the worn, soiled clothes.