Lara’s apartment in Rome was the same one in Via Plinio where she’d lived with her husband. After nearly three months of absence it looked foreign, abandoned and dreary. For a few days Lara moved around the rooms with circumspection, unsure as to what to do with her body, where to park it. She tried the couch, the green armchair, the desk, but couldn’t find a spot where it felt natural to be. She asked Anita over for dinner and realized she no longer knew how to cook in that kitchen. All the dexterity she’d had all summer long with food, her ability to throw together extravagant recipes in just a few minutes, was gone.
“They say having two houses is like having two wives. Neither one has the whole of you,” she said gloomily when Anita arrived. She’d shown up in a slinky Sue Wong dress and with a bottle of Prosecco, ready for a bubbly night of gossip and laughs. She pulled a minuscule puppy out of a tote bag and proudly announced, “And this is Carmen. A hairless Chinese crested.”
The tiny dog was as ugly as it was hairless—except for the long, soft tufts of white hair that flowed from the top of its head. From this very ugliness came its adorableness, Lara supposed.
But she was in no mood to discuss Chinese puppies with Anita. All she wanted to talk about was her restlessness; how her previous life in the city seemed impossible to resume, how she couldn’t find her center anymore, how hurting her knee had clearly been a sign, and not a good one. Lara barely gave the puppy a glance.
“It looks like a rat with a wig,” she said, pouring Prosecco in the glasses.
Anita stared at her, puzzled, then lifted the glass in a toast with one hand while settling Carmen back in the bag with the other.
The next morning Lara rang her ex-husband. They hadn’t spoken in almost a year. She said she wanted to see him.
“It’s important to me. I don’t want to think of us as enemies anymore, okay?”
“We are not enemies. I never felt that way, despite what you think, Lara,” he said, peacefully. A bit too peacefully, in fact.
“That’s great, then. One more reason to see each other, I’d say,” she insisted.
She struggled to find a sensible place to meet. A café could be hazardous—too many people, tables too close, what if she ended up crying? Her mind raced.
“How about the bar at the Excelsior?”
Her husband hesitated; the venue sounded dangerously romantic. Lara could feel a small panic rising in him.
“It’s comfortable, it’ll be quiet. And they make great martinis,” she reassured him. As if she went there regularly for expensive cocktails.
The day of their rendezvous was a premonition of fall, with a heavy sky and a constant drizzle, perfect weather for meeting an ex-husband. She wanted to surprise him by looking more glamorous and mysterious than she had ever been while with him, so he’d assume that a major event—a man, a new vocation?—had turned her into a different person, or, even better, allowed her true nature to emerge. She longed to be anything but the same woman he’d wanted to leave.
A few minutes after six, she limped into the lobby of the Excelsior a few minutes after six in a light beige raincoat and large dark glasses, her hair pulled back in a chignon with a vintage Hermès silk scarf folded and tied as a headband—in the vague hope of resembling Grace Kelly in one of those movies with Cary Grant.
Her ex-husband was waiting at a table in the far corner of the wood-paneled bar, among soft cushions and elaborate Japanese flower arrangements. He looked more attractive than she remembered and, like her apartment without him, oddly foreign. The memory of their physical intimacy—even its subtle scent—had vanished as though someone else (the woman with a sense of humor?) had erased it for eternity. He asked why she was limping and when she told him about the Janu Sirsasana incident, he couldn’t keep back a condescending smirk.
“Yoga. You didn’t give that up yet, did you?”
“It’s not like I’m doing heroin,” she said breezily, yet she regretted having mentioned the word yoga. He’d always found the subject—with its obsessive concerns about hips, knees and shoulder openings, breathing techniques, mantras and especially the smugness that came with an advanced practice—deeply irritating.
The conversation floated without a purpose for a few minutes, aided by the intervention of a young waiter who took their order. Her ex-husband asked for a pot of green tea but Lara felt she ought to order a martini. She tried to sum up the past year, giving a joyful picture of all that had happened without him. She was happy with her choice of the venue; it had just the right atmosphere: the bar was quiet, almost empty, the muted colors soothing, the decor minimal yet cozy. The drinks came, and there was another awkward silence while he juggled with cup and teapot. He then broke the silence with a studied casual tone.
“It’s great that you’re happy in your place down south. Where exactly is it again?”
“It’s just a tiny village south of Lecce. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
Because she’d bought it with his money she felt protective of it, as if he could lay claim to what was now only hers.
He smiled encouragingly. He only wanted to be nice and friendly.
“It sounds good, your life. I mean, you used to be such a city girl. I never pictured you in a small village growing vegetables.”
Lara wasn’t sure this was the kind of recognition she’d been looking for, and the eagerness he showed in approving her life without him was beginning to unnerve her.
Suddenly, in the richly upholstered, orchid-filled bar, her ideas about growing her own vegetables and making fig preserves sounded na?ve, even pathetic. She looked at her ex-husband, in his superbly tailored pin-striped suit, who kept smiling at her as one would with a crazy person. Now that she had him in front of her it wasn’t clear why she’d wanted to see him again. She didn’t love him, didn’t hate him or want him anymore, and certainly she didn’t care to be his friend. Maybe she thought that seeing him again would help her make sense of the nine years spent in his company. She needed evidence that those years had been meaningful for both of them but, the more she looked for that evidence, the less she found it.
“You look good. I like this look. The raincoat,” he said.
The martini was beginning to have its effect. She hadn’t had a stiff drink in ages and had a feeling her eyes were beginning to spin all over the place without a focus and her voice had started to slacken.
“Lara,” he said calmly.
“Yes? What?” Had she been staring at the wall too long? She quickly regained her posture in the velvet armchair.
“Nicole and I are getting married next month.”
There was a long pause. She collected herself again.
“Nicole? Oh. Is that her name?”
He nodded, with a hint of impatience. She knew her name, of course.
“We are going to have a baby in January,” he added as he sipped his tea, so that the cup would conceal the lower half of his face.
There was another silence. He took a deep breath.
“I meant to call you. I wanted you to know but you beat me to it. I didn’t want you to learn it from someone else.”
She kept still, her eyes fixed steadily on him.
“Lara? Are you okay?”
“Yes. Totally. Why? Well, that’s very good news. Really good. Congratulations. I mean it.”
“We’ll be moving to Paris next month. GreenTech has hired me as a consultant.”
“Paris? Wonderful.”
She smiled. He smiled back. Sipped more tea.
“I’m glad I got to see you. I really am. You seem good,” he said and then chuckled. “Except for your knee, of course.”
“You never made me laugh,” she blurted out.
“What?”
“You were never funny. You have no fucking clue as to what humor even is.”
His face morphed into the more familiar expression of hostility and alarm.
“Please, don’t let’s start.”
“Start what? I am so done.” Her rage had unleashed itself like a vicious animal. “I am so bored with you I cannot bear this conversation another minute.”
She stood up and wobbled across the creaky wooden floor without turning around. She asked for the ladies’ room and when she came across her image in the mirror—half drunk, her hands still shaking from adrenaline—instead of Grace Kelly what she saw was a dull, unattractive woman in a frumpy beige raincoat with a ridiculous scarf around her head.
That fall Ben Jackson was listed in Vogue as one of the Ten Best Dressed Men of the Year.
Leo sent her a link from his office in Los Angeles.
Check this out. How cool is that?
Vogue had posted several photos featuring Ben either attending different exclusive events in eveningwear, caught on the street fidgeting with his car keys, or walking with a take-out latte in his surfing shorts. Lara scanned the pictures one by one: nine times out of ten he was wearing one of Mina’s creations. The clothes had a distinctive, classic Italian cut with a slight retro look, which felt new and original because of the gutsy nonchalance he had in wearing them, thanks to the way he turned up the stiff collars without wearing a tie, or left the shirt cuffs dangling unbuttoned.
The other nine celebrities on the list had gone to great lengths to praise their favorite labels and designers, whose clothes they were wearing, whereas Ben told the press he detested labels and that his entire wardrobe had been cut and hand stitched by a single seamstress in a small village in the south of Italy. A true talent, he was quoted as saying, like those gifted dressmakers Balenciaga or Dior at one time had had in their maisons—a rare, endangered species that should be protected. The whole thing sounded fabulously exclusive and rare, and the writer tried in vain to obtain at least the name of the obscure Italian seamstress, which Ben refused to disclose. “I’m a no-logo, and I want to remain a no-logo,” he stated vehemently, like an anarchist standing on a barricade.
Lara e-mailed Leo back.
I hope he’s sent Mina a present. A ticket to Tahiti? A big fat check?
There was no answer. She re-sent the message as a text and got an instant reply.
what are you now, mina’s agent?
Lara put the magazine in the post to Mina and rang her brother at his office. She got his voice mail instead and resigned herself to leaving a lengthy message in which she listed all the things she most resented in their relationship. It was a long list that got cut off by the end of the tape.