Three Light-Years: A Novel (8 page)

They leave the doctors’ lounge. Two nurses down the hall greet them with a nod and they respond by raising the same arm, as coordinated as a pair of synchronized swimmers.

“I screwed up?” Cecilia whispers, smiling, as Viberti takes off his white coat in the locker room. Right, he actually said “I screwed up.” What was he thinking? Why not “I have an appointment” or “I don’t feel well, I’m going home”? If he really wanted to make an excuse. But why does he need to make excuses?

He kisses her again, pushing her against the metal lockers. He wants her to feel how turned on he is, but her backpack is between them. Viberti thinks her mouth is exactly the right size, that their mouths were made to fit together. She pushes him away. “Let’s go.”

They leave the hospital. They walk quickly; they’re fleeing, or chasing something, they’re late, they have to make up for lost time. They look around. They don’t run into any of their colleagues, but if they had they wouldn’t have noticed.

“My car,” he says. He points to the other side of the boulevard like a military commander; neither of them smiles at the gesture.

On the opposite sidewalk they pass by their café. “I need something to drink,” Cecilia says.

“Yes, but not here.”

They get into Viberti’s Passat, stop after a couple of blocks, check out a café from the outside, it seems too dismal, they look for another one, they find one. Viberti double-parks alongside some green garbage bins, gets out and goes around the car, and only when he’s already on the sidewalk does he realize that Cecilia hasn’t gotten out, she’s jammed in, she can’t get the door open even though she’s slamming it rather persistently against a Dumpster. He gets back in the car, shifts into reverse, makes sure the door is clear so Cecilia can get out, then moves forward again, gets out, and locks the car. During all these maneuvers neither of them comments or jokes or smiles even for a second; they’re serious and focused as if they were about to rob the café instead of getting something to drink.

This time they don’t drink mineral water. Cecilia orders a Campari and, although he doesn’t particularly like the taste of Campari, Viberti has one, too. They’re sitting at a table in the back of the room, facing the wall. Viberti, leaning forward, strokes the inside of Cecilia’s thigh as she spreads her legs and slides toward him on the chair, looking at him languidly, her eyelids half-lowered and her lips parted. She is the picture of a woman who wants to fuck, Viberti thinks, he must have seen it in some film, then immediately corrects himself: no, not a picture, it’s she herself, she’s the woman who wants to fuck, in the flesh, and it’s him she wants to fuck. Can it be? It seems so, but it’s still strange. They stammer words of little importance and almost no meaning: “How did it dawn on you,” “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” “All of a sudden like that.”

They drink the Campari quickly—as soon as they set their glasses down on the table they pick them back up to take another sip, they toss them down in five minutes. Their thoughts are very confused, not so much about what they want but about how to get it. They get back in the car. They come out on one of the streets bordering the hospital, they end up in a traffic circle, they make two complete turns around it, with no comment, not a smile, not even when the tires screech during too sharp a turn.
Like with all spare parts, it’s not worth trying too hard to save money on tires, better to replace them at regular intervals, every year and a half, every two, every three years, depending on how much you use the car; there’s nothing worse than having to change a tire yourself, and it’s impossible to know when they’re worn through, you can’t trust the tire guys, obviously, just decide for yourself how long they’ll last and then don’t worry about it.
Viberti then turns onto a bridge, crosses the river, and drives into a wooded area surrounding a school. Antonio lives not too far away, the neighborhood is familiar to him, and around the corner Viberti knows a dead-end street lined with plane trees, fairly quiet and secluded, where they can talk. Where they can calmly decide where to go to do what they want to do. They should go farther away from the hospital to make sure no one sees them, but what the hell, Viberti thinks, if she’s not worried about it why should he be worried? Besides, they’re only stopping to talk, that is, essentially to decide what to do and where to go, that is, Viberti is essentially going to try to persuade Cecilia to go straight to his house to have sex, even though getting into his building without running the risk of being seen by Giulia will be a whole other story, but they’ll face one problem at a time. But as soon as the Passat is safely parked on the dead-end street, deserted at that hour as it always is, as soon as the engine is turned off, the windows lowered to let in the cool air of late afternoon, as soon as they find themselves close and alone, seemingly alone, safe from prying eyes and unwelcome encounters, Cecilia and Viberti don’t start talking.

Without a word they cling to each other and kiss each other and suck each other’s lips and bite and touch, pressing and rubbing, they undo buttons and loosen belts and slip their hands under shirts and into jeans. Viberti grabs a breast and squeezes the erect nipple between his thumb and forefinger, Cecilia pulls out his dick and whips her hand up and down, scratching his stomach with her nails, Viberti (in thirty seconds, leaning out of the driver’s seat with a contortion that he’ll look back on for months with pride and disbelief) manages to lower her jeans and panties to mid-thigh and dives in to kiss and lick the triangle of brown fluff that looks like a stylized drawing of a cunt between closed legs, the drawing of a horny teenager, but this isn’t a drawing, down here there’s a real cunt, can it be? Yes, it seems it can, and although Viberti has seen a cunt or two in his life, it’s as if he were about to see one for the first time. It’s like the mythical first time he never had because he preferred to erase the real, disappointing first time from memory, if only the damn panties would come down lower so she could open her legs, if only the legs would open and let him see and kiss and lick what he wants to see and kiss and lick, if only she would slide down on the seat and raise her legs on the dashboard, if only they were in a bed instead of in a car, but suddenly Cecilia pushes him off and screams loudly, loudly enough to be heard at the hospital emergency room: “Stop!”

Viberti raises his head and she hugs him, hiding her face against him and resting her cheek on the patch of chest exposed by his unbuttoned shirt; she’s breathing heavily. They’re both breathing heavily now that they’ve stopped, and Viberti, rather alarmed, rather worried, is trying to figure out what could be the matter. “Sorry,” he says finally, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.” But he really did mean to, and she really meant to also, so why is she shaking her head, she’s shaking her brown hair against him and holding him even tighter, so what’s the problem?

“There’s someone back there.”

Viberti turns his eyes to the rearview mirror and sees a man with a dog ten yards from the Passat, in silhouette, the unmistakable image of a dog walker with an animal that can’t make up its mind to do its business. He’s not a Peeping Tom; on the contrary, he’s turned his back because he must have seen that there was someone in the car. Viberti could wait, but the man seems vaguely familiar to him. Who does he know who owns a dog? If it were winter, it would already be dark at that hour. There’s too much light.

He starts the car and leaves by driving onto the wide sidewalk between the trees and the houses so that the dog walker, across the street, won’t be able to see their faces even if he wants to. Meanwhile, Cecilia has straightened her clothes again, she’s pulled up her jeans and is buttoning her blouse, concealing the superb splendor she’d shown. “Don’t worry,” Viberti says, “he didn’t see us.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“No, why? Who was he?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t see him.”

“It was nobody.”

“Somebody from the hospital.”

“Is it so bad if they see us? Let’s go to my house, we’ll feel safer.”

“And maybe we’ll run into your ex on the stairs…”

“She has office hours until eight.”

Cecilia shakes her head. “No, I have to go now, it’s late.”

“Please.”

She squeezes his arm, and smiles. “I want to, too, but I can’t. We’ll talk about it with cooler heads tomorrow.”

Viberti isn’t sure that a cool head will encourage the realization of his desires, but he nods: “All right.”

He takes her to where she left her car, and despite the fact that they are nearly across from the hospital and she’s evidently afraid of being seen, Cecilia gives him a long, passionate kiss, or at least that’s how it seems to Viberti. Otherwise maybe, when he watches her get out and head toward the Scénic, he wouldn’t think: That woman is mine, that woman is mine, that’s my woman.

*   *   *

Viberti was right, a cool head never encourages the realization of certain desires, because the next day Cecilia came to the café all worked up, explaining that she hadn’t slept a wink all night, but that she’d come to an important decision.

“You don’t look tired, or maybe insomnia makes you even more desirable,” he said. The words were so unlike him that the panic he was feeling was even more evident. It wasn’t the assumed self-assurance of an actor, it was like flailing your arms as you fall through space, a useless conditioned reflex.

Cecilia had thought and thought about what had happened, tossing and turning in bed, and had decided that it was all wrong. It was wrong because she couldn’t afford to, she was no longer mistress of her life, plus she wasn’t being honest with him, he was an important friend, but he would never be anything more. “I was an idiot, no, more precisely I was a shit, people shouldn’t act like that, I don’t know what came over me, or maybe I do know—anyway, I’m terribly sorry, now you’ll hate me, and you’re right, you’re absolutely right, you
should
hate me.” A speech delivered unhurriedly, calmly, almost in a subdued undertone.

Viberti was stunned, he hadn’t seen it coming, it struck him head-on. Not that he felt he had found the woman of his life (or at least the second part of his life), not that he imagined being able to actually marry her, but he certainly hadn’t thought it would end so quickly, before it even began. And it certainly seemed like it was really over, the tone and composure used to announce dire decisions proved it.

“Last night I was upset, I felt like I was someone else, I didn’t know why I’d done it, and why I then suddenly wanted to take it all back, not just for me, not for what it meant for me, but because I realized what I’d done to you. I’ll never forgive myself.”

Speaking softly, Viberti said there was no need for forgiveness, there was nothing to forgive, and he certainly wasn’t capable of hating her, but he didn’t understand and maybe he shouldn’t even try to, they would talk about it later (with cool heads? How cool-headed did they need to be?). He told her it was best to let a few days go by, so that both of them would be thinking more clearly.

“All right, but I’m already thinking clearly, that’s what I want you to understand. I’m quite clear about the situation. I did something foolish and you shouldn’t expect it to happen again; please, tell me you won’t expect anything from me anymore, because it won’t happen, and it would be worse if you kept…”

Interrupting her, Viberti stood and said he had to go back to the hospital, and although he was beginning to get irritated he managed to take her hand and tell her almost affectionately that he didn’t expect anything, he was a big boy, inured to this kind of thing, and he didn’t expect anything from anyone.

“But don’t desert me now,” she said.

“What do you mean? It seems to me it’s the other way around.”

“No, no, don’t desert me, you don’t know how important you are to me, don’t desert me, let’s keep seeing each other, keep being friends.”

“All right.”

“No, don’t say ‘all right’ like that. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“We’ll see each other at lunch tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

He left her in front of the café rummaging through her backpack, looking for the car key. He took off nearly at a run; he didn’t believe in a fit of madness, he didn’t believe it had been a slip. He’d like to force her to take another look at herself: not just the kisses and embraces and caresses, not just what she had done or would have been ready to do, but
how
she had done it. A long close-up of her face from the moment they’d shared their first kiss until they’d parted: passion and abandon weren’t a lapse, they weren’t a mistake, they weren’t foolishness. He wanted to force her to open her eyes. Her real face was
that
face, not the wooden mask she’d just shown him.

But he, at least, had to remain calm, not sedated as Cecilia seemed to be, calm and responsible; he had to think and decide for two, since she was wholly incapable of seeing clearly and knew so little about herself. He had to remain calm, but he was so worked up that without realizing it he passed right by someone who’d stopped to say hello.

“Claudio.”

Viberti was finally wrenched from his trance; turning, he saw Antonio. He immediately noticed his mischievous expression.

“Hey, I saw you acting like a dirty old goat.”

Viberti smiled blankly.

“I have a dog! A present for the boys, I don’t know what I’m going to do with it … You want it?”

“A dog? You don’t have a dog.”

“I was out walking the dog and I saw you wrapped around her like a python, I recognized your car. Unless you lent it to someone.”

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon. It’s a Dalmatian. He seems really dumb. Come on, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, I can tell from your eyes that it was you.”

“Did you see me?”

“Well, I couldn’t very well go and put my face up against the window, I’m not a Peeping Tom. Besides, the dog couldn’t make up his mind to take a crap. But tell me, is she who I think she is?”