Brava, Valentine

  As I turn to go to the hotel manual by the phone to call the front desk, I see a box on the closet shelf, tied with purple ribbon. My name, in Gianluca’s familiar script, is written on the tag.

  I open the box. It’s a bathing suit. A tasteful yet sexy black one-piece maillot, with a plunging V in the front and sheer black mesh panels on the sides. It’s a classic suit. And it’s retail; this is no Chuck Cohen knockoff from the Loehmann’s sale bin.

  I take off my clothes and slip into the suit. Even the mirrors in this hotel are flattering. Then I remember it’s chilly outside. I plow through my suitcase again and find a black velour hoodie and pants. (My mother insisted I bring it; “It’s casual chic for breakfast in the hotel,” she said. Yes, yes, Mama is always right.) I pull it on over the suit. I slip into a pair of black Bella Rosa flats, and grab the keys.

  I almost skip through the mansion foyer and out the door to the gardens. Then, like an eighteenth-century duchess in a maze looking for her lover, I zig-zag until I figure out a direct path, and run through the hedges, toward the pool, to him.

  I slow down as I approach the deep blue water, lit from within.

  The pool reminds me of the lakes inside the Blue Grotto in Capri. The surface ripples in the breeze. I look around. I’m alone. No Gianluca. Was it a dream? Did I imagine the invitation? No, I couldn’t have—who dreams up a new bathing suit? But I read the letter so fast—maybe I missed the instructions. Did he say to call first? I’m about to turn to go back to the room to call him when I hear, softly, from behind:

  “Ciao.”

  I turn to face Gianluca. In this light, he’s actually more handsome than he was at Gram’s wedding. How is this possible?

  “How was your trip?” he asks.

  “Who cares?” I throw my arms around his neck. He laughs. The strong tilt of his nose and his firm jawline are as sleek and fine as the carved river stones that form the waterfall behind him.

  “How do you like the room?” he asks.

  “Did you upgrade me?”

  “I cannot upgrade you. You cannot upgrade the very best.”

  “Do you always say the right thing?”

  His expression, his eyes, the color of the deepest night sky, so clear, say more than his letters ever could about how he feels about me.

  Gianluca takes my hands in his. The rush of feelings that goes through me is familiar, yet completely new. I reach up to embrace him, I kiss his cheeks, his nose, and then he pulls me so close, my face rests in his neck like a velvet collar. His lips find mine, and this time, I’m ready.

  “Did you come alone?” he whispers in my ear.

  “Yes.”

  “No nieces?”

  “No.”

  “No nephews?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “No Aunt Feen?” He kisses my ear.

  “No, none of the above.”

  “Just you? Alone?”

  “I swear.”

  He kisses me tenderly. I’m lost in the moment—I forget the country, the hemisphere, the place. As we kiss, I could be anywhere—we are anywhere, the corner of Hudson Street, or the platform of the train station in Forest Hills, or high on the cliffs of Anacapri when the moon is out—it doesn’t matter. There is no world outside this kiss. Everything is a blur, forgotten, gone. The wind rustles the satin leaves of the eucalyptus trees, filling the air with the scent of clean mint.

  “Do you really want to swim?” I ask.

  “Do you?”

  “Well, the suit fits.” I unzip my hoodie.

  Gianluca laughs. “Then we swim.”

  I dive into the pool; the water is as warm as a bath.

  Gianluca dives in and finds me in the water. His arms wrap around me like silk ropes. I kiss his neck. “Your last letter was terrible.”

  He laughs. “Too short?”

  “It read like instructions for assembling a washing machine.”

  “My apologies.”

  “If you’re going to seduce me…”

  “Tell me how.”

  “As if you need instructions.”

  “Tell me what you need.”

  “I don’t know. I like when you compared me to a peony. That was good. And when you write how you feel. That’s always good. Here’s the deal, Gianluca. Have I mentioned that I like to say your name? It has the entire history of Italian civilization in its delivery. At least I think so.”

  “Thank you.”

  “As a general rule, you should never write love letters filled with imagery and then send a swatch of shoe leather. The sentiments in letters should delight and build until the woman is so enthralled she cannot imagine the world without you.”

  “Ah.”

  I let go of him and swim off into the deep end, into the blue water.

  The night air on my face is cold compared to the warmth of the water below. But the contrast is lovely; it’s waking me up in every way, from the long flight, from my anxieties about meeting Roberta, and from my ambivalence about getting involved with a man who might take me away from my work, when my career needs my undivided attention.

  Gianluca meets me at the deep end. “Are you hungry?”

  “Not really. Are you?”

  “No.”

  “So, what should we do?”

  He smiles, and that’s his answer.

  Good answer.

  Room service has left a good-night tray with a silver service espresso pot, cream and sugar, and a plate of fresh fruit: mango slices, strawberries, and kiwis, artfully arranged like a sunburst. There’s a polished sterling silver bowl filled with chunks of fragrant dark chocolate. There is also a fine bone china platter of tiny almond cookies sprinkled with candied orange bits. A small gold card with a handwritten note from the porter is propped on the tray. It says: “Complimentary.”

  “Why are you laughing?” Gianluca wants to know.

  “The way this night is going, I’m getting everything I want.”

  “That is how it should be.”

  “And what do you want, Gianluca?”

  “Do you have to ask?” he says.

  “Yes, I do. I don’t like questions answered with questions. Have you ever heard of…show, don’t tell?”

  He thinks for a moment. “No.”

  “Well, it means that I prefer to express my feelings with action, not words.” I climb onto his lap, and this time, unlike on Gram’s wedding night in Arezzo, I don’t withhold my feelings.

  “I like both. Action and words.” He kisses my neck.

  “But I’m not a poet, I’m a shoemaker.”

  “A good shoemaker is a poet,” he says.

  “Right.” I kiss him.

  “Do you think you can find the words tonight?” he whispers. “To tell me how do you feel about me?”

  I take his face in my hands. “I think I can’t describe it.”

  “Try.”

  “Okay, I never imagined you before I met you. You’re the kind of man who ends up with women who wear high heels and aprons.”

  He laughs.

  “I didn’t see myself with a man who had children, or was older, or who had a big life before he met me. And by big life, I mean a long marriage.”

  “I understand.”

  “But, and here’s what I pray for, I pray to stay open to the possibilities of everything in life. I also hope to never limit my choices by my own prejudice—or the limitations of my upbringing. But, here’s where I need your help. I was surprised by my feelings for you, too.”

  “Why?”

  “When I met Orsola—and she’s as fine a woman as any I’ve ever met, and you raised her—I could see that you are a wonderful father. Most women have to wait to find out if a man will be a good father. If they ever do. But with you, I knew right away.”

  “Orsola is the best part of my life.”

  “That’s very obvious. You’ve been a good father. As a daughter myself, I don’t think there is anything more important than that. It says more than anything else I know about you
, who you really are. But here’s the problem…”

  Gianluca waits as I find the words to explain my feelings. At Gram’s wedding, when I was helping corral my nieces and nephews, it dawned on me that I might like my own children to chase and coddle, to correct and defend—that it wasn’t enough to be an aunt with an extra pair of hands. And then, later, when I held Bret’s daughter Piper in my arms, I felt the yearning that can only be instigated by the embrace of a child holding so tight, she almost became a part of me.

  I have walked past Bleecker Park, filled with children, hundreds of times and never looked inside the fence to see what was going on. I tuned out their laughter and loud yells, their games and their joy. But lately, on my coffee run, I stop and observe them. I find myself standing at the fence, wondering if this exotic zoo is a place I will visit, or will I actually live inside someday? Will I ever be one of those mothers chasing her four-year-old down the ramp on the beat-up public scooter that the neighborhood kids share? After a while I check my watch and realize a mound of work waits for me back at the shop. On the way back, I consider what a child would mean to me in my life. I usually dismiss the notion once I’m back at the cutting table and tackling my to-do list. I put motherhood out of my mind until the next time I find myself outside the gates of Bleecker Park.

  There’s a moment for every woman who loves her family and embraces their good qualities while attempting to negotiate the mania, when she decides that she might want a family of her own to love and shape. It’s only natural. I’m in my mid-thirties, and time tells me I must think about these things, or make the decision to brush past them and build a life without a family of my own.

  I shape my question to Gianluca carefully because, depending upon his answer, I only want to ask it once.

  “Why would a man who already has everything I hope to have someday be interested in retracing those steps and starting over, building a new life? Last year in Italy, you said you weren’t interested in having another child. Have your feelings changed?”

  Gianluca inhales deeply. My heart races; I realize I’m afraid of his answer. He pulls me close. He says, “That would depend upon you.”

  “It’s all up to me?”

  “I think so. A baby is the woman’s choice,” he says. “I don’t know how else to say it. Why do you speak of children tonight?”

  “I went to a friend’s house recently. A birthday party. And there was a baby there who reached for me, and when she fell into my arms, I felt something I had never felt before—a connection, I guess. A possibility of some sort. Maybe it’s my age. Or maybe it was just that particular little girl. I don’t know.”

  “Or maybe you are thinking about life in a different way now,” he says gently. He kisses me. The kiss is like the soft wax seal on the envelope of a letter. There is something final about it—for him. Then he says, “Maybe you are ready for more.”

  The concept of more for a woman who has to stretch to reach for enough is almost unthinkable. I have no idea what I deserve, because I never know what to ask for. Gianluca has already had the life that I think I want. He already knows how the story ends. Gianluca begins a second life tonight, a new act, a new phase, as I move into my first one. I have no idea what to expect.

  I try to let go of the old habits and prejudices I have about love in order to make room for the mystery. I don’t have any control over what will happen. I’d like to know where this is going because I don’t want to get hurt again, but I don’t have any control over that either. I have to accept that I don’t know where this leads—I have to be bold about it and move toward happiness and trust that everything will work out the way it is supposed to.

  “Do you want to be with me?” he asks.

  The truth is, he already has my answer; he had it in Arezzo in February. He knows that I want him, but do I want all that goes with my desire for him?

  Love builds in a series of small realizations, he wrote.

  Maybe tonight will be one of them.

  Gianluca moves toward me and takes my hands. The same shivers I had on the balcony in Capri, at the church in Arezzo, from the accidental way his hand brushed mine when we reached for the same panel of fabric at the mill in Prato, ripple through my body.

  His beautiful hands have the strong and sure grip of an artist, one who walks in the world first through feeling, and then through touch. Gianluca is a craftsman who makes something lasting from nothing, who knows when to be gentle, and when to be certain, and when to be direct, and when to step back and observe. He is an artist who considers the angle, the placement, and the frame of the object he desires, so as best to appreciate it. Tonight, he is the lover who makes me beautiful; in his hands, I am the best I can be.

  How succinct Gianluca’s purpose was in winning me. How clear his vision as he removed every obstacle one by one, until he had me alone. Gianluca knows exactly how to treat me, because he took his time to observe me with an eye no other man ever has. As he kisses me, I feel something I can’t name—it’s as if we’ve already written our history, and this love affair resumes from long, long ago, when in fact, it is just beginning.

  As his lips travel down my neck, I see moments in my mind’s eye, of times we were together, in Capri floating on the turquoise waves of the Mediterranean Sea, and in Greenwich Village, on the roof with a blue afternoon sky behind him, when I disappointed him and let him go, and now in Buenos Aires where the sky is saturated indigo, where the stars make lavender pools of light in the dark and I finally see clearly enough to choose him.

  With each picture I see, I remember him and how he looked at me and took me in. He appreciates me for exactly who I am, and he understands me as I wish to be understood.

  Gianluca and I embody that old Italian word: simpatico. We are like-minded souls who say and do things that please one another, because it comes from a place of recognition.

  We lie down in a field of feathers, sinking deep into the covers, finding one another as we move through; we’re tumbling through clouds, weightless, nothing but an endless sky over us, and the world below, beneath us, so far away, its details blur so as not to matter.

  In Gianluca’s arms, I stay.

  We sail, we fly, and we sail and we fly deep into the night, long into the blue, with no destination in mind, just now, just this very moment.

  9

  The Street of Dreams

  GIANLUCA SLEEPS DEEPLY IN OUR bed. Even breakfast, rolled into the living room on a silver trolley filled with delicate croissants, raspberry horns, and a pot of rich, black coffee, did not disturb him. I pull the silk draperies closed against the early morning sun so as not to wake him.

  I’m showered, dressed, and ready to meet my cousin Roberta. I went through my morning ritual with such urgency, I kept dropping things in the bathroom. There is a lot more riding on this trip than I want to admit.

  I text Gabriel.

  Me: Gianluca is here.

  Gabe: In BA?

  Me: In my room.

  Gabe: OMG. Ding! Ding! Ding!

  Me: I know.

  Gabe: You realize that you had to actually leave the airspace over the continental United States to get laid?

  Me: Enough!

  Gabe: How’s the food?

  Me: Trays of fruit and chocolate and cookies.

  Gabe: Sex and cookies. My favorite marriage. Go and get busy with John-lucky.

  “Where are you going?” Gianluca rolls over in bed and looks up at me. His eyes are a clear china blue in this yellow room.

  “I was just leaving you a note. I’m going to the factory.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  I sit next to him on the bed. “No, no, you stay and rest.”

  “Because I’m old and I need it?” he teases.

  “Yes.”

  He reaches for my hand as I turn to go. I look down at him.

  “You look beautiful,” he says.

  “Thank you.” I lean down and kiss him.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. ?
??She will like you.”

  I close the door to the suite and walk to the elevator. It’s slow to arrive, and the empty moments send me into a slight panic. I have a few free minutes to think about all the things that could go wrong. Roberta will think I’m an idiot, so we’ll be forced to make the shoes in China. Then I up my anxiety. It’s rude to abandon Gianluca after the night we shared. Are we now in a relationship? Will it last? Ridiculous, improbable, disjointed thoughts tumble over one another until the elevator doors open. I check my tote for the files I brought to share with Roberta. My sketches of the Bella Rosa are printed in color and include a grid of specifications. I’ve done my homework. I remind myself that I am completely prepared. I can’t help it, I’m afraid. I can only hope these jitters are about my first-day-of-school nerves, and not the work itself. I am walking into a completely new and therefore uncertain situation.

  The cab speeds through the streets of Buenos Aires, through the barrios El Centro, San Telmo, and Palermo, whose moods change from residential, to arty, to high-tech and whose architectural styles flip from French Colonial to Spanish to Italian with every turn of the wheel.

  Last night, Buenos Aires was washed in every shade of blue, and this morning, in bright daylight, it’s as though this city was built out of candy.

  The stucco on the Mediterranean houses is the color of orange circus peanuts; the doors are painted in shades of bubble-gum cigars: bright yellow, soft lilac, and hot pink. Garden walls are washed in vivid tones of bright white, magenta, and periwinkle, trimmed in licorice black, resembling a dish of Good & Plenty. Tall wooden fences are drenched in bright Kool-Aid blue. Even the textures of the landscaping burst forth like showers of candy from a piñata: low mounds of nasturtium stuffed with buds that resemble Red Hot Dollars, and the pecan trees seem to be loaded with Root Beer Barrels.

  The cab pulls up in front of 400 North Caminito, a large, rustic pumpkin-colored factory building with rows of Catholic-school-style windows propped open. A weathered sign says:

  Caminito Shoes Inc.