Blood Orange (8 page)

“I’m really sorry about the dog. Is it okay?” He added, “I worry
about you, Danita.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s your name.”

“No one calls me Danita.” Except her grandmother. It was a
memory of the old life, the life before she met David and began to
live as normal people did.

“I’m glad the dog’s okay.”

For a few moments she had forgotten the terrible afternoon and
night just past. Now the fear and panicky confusion, the tactless policeman, and her argument with David rushed back at her with the
power of a flash flood.

He put his hands on her arms, and she jerked away. “Don’t be
mad, Dana.”

“What do you expect me to be?”

“Just listen to me, okay?”

“What’s the point? We’ve been over this a dozen times.”

“No, I’ve got something new to say.” His face was bright with
conviction. “Where can we sit?”

“Say what you have to say, Micah.” There would be no sitting
down, no getting comfortable.

He laughed as if he read her mind. By the light of the street lamp
outside the store Dana saw his blue-black eyes crinkle with amusement. “I’ve got this friend, he owns a great little house on the beach
down in Mexico south of Ensenada, and he wants to sell it to me.”
As he talked, he walked back and forth between the rows of bookshelves, letting his fingers trail along the spines. His nervous energy
filled the store, crackled through the bookshelves and along the
countertops like heat lightning.

“You could come down sometimes. It’s only a couple hours’
drive, and David’d never have to know.” He grinned at her. “I’ll
stay out of the way; you won’t have to worry about me.” Another
grin. “I’ll be a good boy.”

Groaning, she slumped onto the stairs and rested her head in her
hands.

“Dana, I’ve had time to think. I was way out of line before. I
know that. But you’re important to me.”

He crouched before her, taking her hands.

“My beautiful Dana, I don’t want you to suffer.”

His back was to the window, his face in shadow; but a gray dawn
light had begun to fill the store, and as he spoke she watched his
mouth, wanting to trace the sulky outline of his lips with her fingertips.

She spoke to break the spell. “What about Lexy?”

“Forget my sister. Think about what I said.”

“She loves you, and she worries, and you won’t answer her
phone calls.”

His lips pinched in irritation. “I’ll call her, okay? Okay?” He
stood up and paced in front of her.

Dana felt her will strengthen.

“You never should have come back here.”

“I want to be near you.”

“Go back to Italy. You had a good life.”

“First say you’ll think about Mexico,” he said.

“No, I won’t.” He was not a python. There was no lightning. “I
told you, Micah. My life is in San Diego with David and Bailey. You
can’t be part of it.”

She stood and pulled her back and shoulders straight. “I want
you to go.”

“What’s wrong? Why did you change?” His question was almost
a whine.

“This is a pointless conversation.”

She expected him to argue with her, but instead he walked to the
door. With his hand on the knob he said, “I love you. You either
don’t know what that means or you’re fooling yourself. Either
way …” He pressed his fist against his chest. “The pain, Dana, I
can’t stand it.”

He waited, but she refused to speak. If she did not respond to
his drama, he would leave.

“Okay, I’ll leave, but don’t tell me to go back to Italy. I’m not gonna do it until you come with me. In the meantime, if you want to
see me, I’m living in that apartment house on Fourth and Spruce,
second floor front.”

And then he was gone, and it was as if a tornado had passed,
sucking the air from the bookstore, leaving Dana with a bruised
pain in her chest. She sat on the stairs again and by the gray light of
dawn stared into the grain of the wood as if she hoped to read a
message there.

.n January David had received a large bonus check, the first in
.Cabot and Klinger’s history. He endorsed it over to Dana and
told her to buy a ticket to Italy. No one got a Ph.D. in art history just
thumbing through picture books, he’d said. She was both excited
and fearful at the prospect of traveling alone. If she left her family
for her own pleasure, fate might choose that time to punish her for
being careless with what she had never deserved to have in the first
place. She fretted about accidents, earthquakes, epidemics, and terrorists.

David said she was sweet and superstitious, but with the assistance of Phillips Academy and Guadalupe he would manage just
fine. She had never been anywhere. Before she went to school in
Ohio, she had not ventured farther from home than Los Angeles.
She told Lexy she wished they’d used the bonus for a new roof.

“It’s Europe,” Lexy said. “And Italy’s practically the cradle of
civilization. You’ll get there and you won’t want to come back. But you do need some backup, and I’ve got just the thing. My brother’d
love to show you around. He’s been in Florence almost ten years.
He’s practically a native. Plus he’s an artist. That can’t hurt.”

Dana did not want anyone to see what a klutz she was sure to be
without David.

“He speaks the language-didn’t you just tell me you’re worried
about not speaking Italian? He’ll love you because he loves me.”

Lexy persevered, and Dana gave in and let her call Micah.

“You have a right to have fun, Dana. Go for it.”

David said almost the same thing when he saw her off at
Lindberg Field. Friends and people she barely knew told her to
have fun. It offended her, the way they tossed the word out-as if
fun was a universal concept everyone but she understood. She did
not remember playing games with the kids she grew up with. She
had never owned a doll and never wanted one. Dana had been a
loner, a quiet and bookish kid who’d had part-time jobs from the
time she was eleven. The first “fun” time she actually remembered
having was with David at the circus in Cincinnati. Even the barista
at Bella Luna, the one with five rings in her left nostril, told her to
relax and have fun. As if it were that easy. Just a wish and a click of
the ruby slippers and she would be able to cast off the careful habits
of a lifetime. Take some risks, Lexy told her. Life isn’t about being
safe all the time.

After three hours in the Atlanta airport and dinner thousands of
feet over the gray Atlantic, she swallowed a sleeping pill, then until
she fell asleep made lists in her head: places she wanted to visit, particular works of art she wanted to see. Before she dozed off she
kissed the photo of David and Bailey she had shoved in the side
pocket of her carryon. She missed them both and wished she’d
stayed at home.

Micah met her at the airport brandishing his ridiculous and embarrassing sign, shocking pink, with her name in black Old English
letters eighteen inches high. At the entrance to the four-star hotel
where David had insisted she make reservations because it was only
two blocks from the Uffizi Gallery, Micah had parked at an angle
between a BMW and a Renault. He sprang from the car, grabbed
her bags, and handed them to a bellman. Another uniformed person
opened her door and put a gloved hand under her elbow. Her head
spun and her knees almost buckled. She’d barely slept in the last thirtysix hours. And eaten virtually nothing. She leaned against the desk
for support as she signed the register and gave the clerk her passport.

As she followed the bellman to the elevator, Micah said, “I’ll
wait down here.”

For what?

“If you go to sleep now, you won’t wake-“

“Until I’m totally rested. That’s the whole idea.” She barely contained her annoyance. She did not want to offend Lexy’s brother,
but she knew what she needed. Her body was shouting that if she
did not sleep, she would die.

They stood at the elevator while the bellman held it open. Micah
said something to him in Italian, the man stepped into the elevator
alone, and the doors slid shut.

“What did you say to him? I need to-“

“He’s putting the stuff in your room.”

She jingled her room key in front of him. “He can’t get in.”

“He’s got a passkey.”

She slammed the heel of her hand on the up button of the elevator.

Micah said, “It’s just past five here. You need to keep moving
until at least ten.”

She leaned her forehead against the wall.

“I know some people, they got here about the same time as you
and went right to bed. They woke up at one-thirty in the morning.
Screwed their whole day.”

The elevator appeared to have taken up residence on the third
floor. She imagined the bellman going through her suitcase and
finding the emergency five hundred dollars David had tucked in the
pocket of her slacks.

“You can’t give in to jet lag,” Micah said, grinning. “It’s the
physical equivalent of terrorism.”

She sighed. “Can I at least have a shower?”

“But don’t lie down.”

“Generally, I shower on my feet.”

“You’re done for if you lie down.”

The elevator door opened. The bellman stepped out, and she
stepped in.

“If I’m not down in thirty minutes …”

“I’ll come get you.”

“Ring my room.”

“I’ll pound on the door.”

In the early twilight the Arno was a satiny olive-green. It lay to
their right across a narrow cobbled street jammed with cars and
motor scooters that filled the air with noise and stinking black exhaust. Micah told her, “If you know where the river is, you can’t get
lost in Florence. Not in the Old City.” He pointed across the river to
a red-tiled palazzo of pale gold stucco. “That’s where I live, the
place that looks like it’s falling into the river, which it almost is. I
rent the top floor from the princess who owns it.”

“A real princess?”

“Italy’s got hundreds of ‘em. Mine’s eighty and poor as a
peasant.”

He steered her out of the traffic onto a cobbled street wide
enough for one car and stopped a block up in front of a shop selling
upscale souvenirs of the city.

“That’s me,” he said, pointing to the elegantly precise pen-andink rendering of a Florentine skyline displayed in the window.

Dana was surprised by how good it was.

“One of these pays the rent,” he said. “I generally sell a couple a
month. More during the summer.”

“I want to buy it and take it home.”

“Nah, it’s way overpriced. I’ll give you one.”

They followed the narrow street. As they stepped into the Piazza
della Signoria Dana’s knees went suddenly weak. She cried out inadvertently, surprising herself. There before her were the statues
she had seen in books: the immense figure of Neptune rising from
the sea, and Duke Cosimo astride a beautiful figure of a horse. No
matter how fine the reproduction in a book, nothing could have
prepared her for the size and life that emanated from the actual statues. She forgot about having fun, about David and Bailey.

In front of the reproduction of Michelangelo’s David, Micah
said, “I’ll take you to see the original in the Academia. It’s amazing,
of course, practically a shrine, with camera Nazis all over the place
and everyone telling you to be quiet if you raise your voice above a
whisper.” He looked disgusted. “I actually like this one out here
better, even if it isn’t the original. The David was meant to be public
art, exposed to life. I understand all the practicalities, but I don’t
like it when people treat art like it’s … holy. Mostly Italy doesn’t do
that.”