She had been to Rome before, way back, with two girlfriends from college. At the time they were backpacking, living on thirty dollars a day, and they slept in one room in some shabby pensione by the train station. She remembered only fragments of that trip: the chaotic traffic, the exhausting walks through the Colosseum and the Vatican museums, one heavenly carbonara, making out with a pretty Italian boy who sold them hashish in Piazza di San Calisto.
Diana felt shaky and fragile during the weeks that preceded her departure. Being separated from Mark for that long seemed but a rehearsal for what her future life could turn out to be.
And once she took her seat on the plane, she knew there was no going back: what she had methodically planned and cheerfully talked about to friends was no longer a fantasy. She took a sleeping pill and drank a glass of cheap spumante to dull her nerves. Had she been too impulsive? Was this separation really necessary? She leaned back on the polyester adjustable headrest and sighed. Well, it was too late to find out.
* * *
—
A month earlier, on a cold evening in Brooklyn, Diana had been in tears, walking home beside Mark from the subway.
As they turned a corner from Lafayette, they saw the girl coming toward them. She looked glamorous and fresh on her bicycle, with an old felt hat and long, bare legs showing from under her black coat. She worked in an expensive vintage clothing shop right in their neighborhood, so it wasn’t such an extraordinary coincidence that she should appear just as they were talking about her. The strange thing was that Diana never used to run into her before, whereas now the girl seemed to pop up on every corner. Maybe Diana had never paid attention—and why would she?—but now she wished she could un-know her face. The girl was pedaling toward them with a lopsided smile, as if conceived at the very last minute because of the speed of their unexpected clashing into each other. Her tentative smile could have meant two different things: seeing Mark and deciding to acknowledge him at the very last moment in order to keep up appearances and retain her dignity, or maybe—more possible—her expression wasn’t a smile at all, but a grin meant to show them her contempt. Diana cringed. Here they were, the older wife trying to pick up the pieces of their marriage after the girl had fucked her husband.
The girl disappeared in a flash of pale hair and white skin. There was a moment of tense silence.
“That was your friend.”
Mark pretended not to hear.
“Wasn’t it?” she insisted.
Mark didn’t say anything.
“With bare legs, pretending not to be cold in February.”
He shrugged and turned his head away from her.
“Of course it was!” Diana wiped what was left of a tear with her gloved hand.
“Please. Let’s not ruin the day by continuing this conversation,” he muttered, as he quickened his pace.
That night Diana had a dream in which Mark was confessing some other infidelity. The dream had produced a vivid rage, as real as her reaction when Mark had first admitted the affair. Despite the revelations, the tears, the promises and the impromptu, desperate sex they’d had in the wake of his confession, the dream was a warning: it told her that her fury was still intact, latent, only waiting to explode again. No, she just couldn’t forgive him.
* * *
As soon as Diana stepped through the grand entrance of the ancient palazzo she smelled a mix of marble and moss. It was early morning, and the inner courtyard was still quiet: a cluster of orange trees gave off a fresh whiff of citrus and a fountain covered in maidenhair fern dribbled into a large shell-shaped basin. The portiere was a small man with a patch of sparse hair, wearing a worn-out uniform with a couple of loose buttons dangling from the jacket. He introduced himself as Massimo in heavily accented English and took her luggage.
“I’m sorry, signora, but they didn’t have elevators four hundred years ago. We’ll have to walk up to the fifth floor,” he said, leading her toward the large spiral staircase.
“No problem at all!” she replied cheerfully. She certainly wasn’t going to complain about living in a seventeenth-century palazzo. “Four hundred years? That’s just wonderful!”
The stairs resembled a giant nautilus shell. Massimo noticed her awe.
“The palace was designed by Borromini,” he said proudly. “The staircase is a masterpiece. It’s in Wikipedia.”
Diana followed him slowly, savoring each step, stopping on each landing to admire the big wooden doors, the tall, vaulted ceilings. On the fourth floor she stopped to catch her breath while Massimo kept on going. Then the staircase shrank, as did the doors. Servants’ quarters, Diana thought, given the more human proportions. At the top of the very last flight of stairs, which were steeper and more reasonably sized, Massimo was waiting for her with her suitcases, in front of an open door. She walked in.
She wanted to scream with joy. A slanting ceiling, thick ancient beams, tons of light. Old kilims covered the diamond-shaped tiles, Afghan textiles draped the sofas. There were lots of books on the shelves, old paintings on the walls and a perfectly equipped kitchen. The three rooms were like train compartments—one ran into the next in a straight line, and once all the doors were opened, one could look all the way through to the end. Massimo brought in the two heavy suitcases and stood next to her by the large window as she was taking in the view of roofs that stretched below her. Oval cupolas and bell towers dotted the red terra-cotta landscape. She opened the door to the terrace and walked out.
“Don’t go out, please, signora!” Massimo pointed toward a chimney that sprouted on the slanting tiles. “No, no, please! There’s a family of seagulls right in there. It’s better you remain inside. These gulls can become very aggressive. One of them attacked the guest who was staying here just before you. And now they are nesting.”
“How dangerous can seagulls be?” Diana asked.
“They are big birds, and they can badly hurt you, signora. We had to take that gentleman to the hospital to get stitches on his head. The landlord recommended you stay indoors.”
Diana retreated inside. How inconvenient. She wanted to use the terrace—after all, she had paid for it. How much longer would it take for the seagulls to hatch the eggs? she asked Massimo. And wasn’t there a way to get rid of them?
Massimo opened his arms and looked up at the sky as if forwarding her questions to heaven.
* * *
Her first few days in Rome were exciting. Everything she did made her unreasonably happy: she picked the first carciofi romaneschi in Campo dei Fiori, found a beautiful old porcelain plate at the Porta Portese flea market, discovered a small Caravaggio in the way back of a dark church, bought a Borsalino hat. There was joy to all her finds, a sense of vibrancy.