“Well,” I said, stuffing a wad of bills in my front pocket, “maybe today you’ll get lucky.”
We both did. In spite of having no luggage and looking as if we’d crawled out of a Dumpster—we had, albeit a small, blue one—we were offered adjacent rooms, the price of which Antonia was able to haggle down to just under five hundred dollars per night per room.
I pulled out the cash and gave the clerk what I thought was a pretty convincing line about having had our belongings stolen. He went right for the manager; ID is big in Italy. I repeated the story to him, grumbling about the two whole days we were going to have to suffer through before our new identification would arrive. “Thank God,” I told him, waving the thick handful of bills,“we’re prepared for anything.”
“Except for having no place to stay,” Antonia added.
It was a nice touch.
We signed in under assumed names. I was Chet Cook. I always thought Chet was a cool name, and Cook came to me because I was starving. Antonia’s nom de plume was Lisa Gherardini, which, she explained to me, was the maiden name of the woman many art historians thought to be the Mona Lisa.
I didn’t mention that I knew that.
Asking the Gritti to forward my clothes didn’t seem prudent. So, after converting some more dollars to lire at a money exchange and stopping for a pizza, we proceeded to pick up the things we needed at a couple of shops on Via Montenapoleone.
The busy city felt preoccupied with itself, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched.
“Here,” I said, handing Antonia four million lire, about twenty-five hundred dollars, along with a thousand in U.S. currency.
She looked blank-faced at me, then at the money.
“Where’d you get it?”
“Just take it,” I said. “When you get low you can have more, no questions asked.”
“Just like that? I ask for money, you give it to me?”
“As often as you need it.”
She hesitated a second then took the bills, folded them, and stashed them in a change purse. She continued walking.
We stopped at the first men’s store we came to, where I purchased a change of underwear and some new running gear. Antonia stayed close by. A few stores down the road, she stopped at a lingerie boutique.
I said I’d wait outside.
She opened the stainless-steel and glass door, pausing. “Hey,” she said a little pensively. “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”
“I’ll be right here,” I answered. “Go in. Panties await.”
She shrugged and entered. An eager clerk approached her.
I loitered under an expensive awning, watching Antonia through the window. A few hours ago she was a total stranger to me, someone I couldn’t pick out of a crowd. Since then I’d seen her drive a getaway boat with people shooting at her, cry and vomit, and snore in a beat-up car. I was chest-deep in the most profound adventure of my life with the very girl who was browsing through lingerie.
I recognized her now. I’d internalized the way the musclesbunched when she clenched her narrow jaw, memorized the tiny scar peeking out from the top of her right eyebrow. I had been hit by that girl—hard—and not just in the stomach. And I didn’t know what to do about it.
I shifted from foot to foot, hoping she wouldn’t spot me spying on her. I saw her pick out a bra and a handful of thong underwear.
I tried not to, but I began to fantasize. Alone in the store, illuminated by soft lamplight, Antonia stood behind the cash register in a lace-trimmed teddy. Her chin was down, her eyes in a lover’s gaze as she curled a beckoning finger at me. I locked the heavy door behind me.
She moaned my name as I approached her. The sound of her voice, the sight of her hard nipples behind the thin satin made my breath soft and my erection hard. She uncapped a cherry-red lipstick and slowly applied it, never taking her eyes from mine. Replacing the cover, she sensually ran the stick over each breast and then south and out of sight.
I stepped behind the counter, feeling the heat radiating from her damp desire. I heard the lipstick clink against the floor, felt her hot hands slide up under my shirt, then down to my belt, deftly unbuckling me, hungrily unzipping me, and then . . .
Someone tugged at my sleeve. A short, old Japanese lady stood practically toe to toe with me, breathless with excitement.
“Pahdon me,” she said in a heavy accent, thrusting a pen and paper in my face. “You are famous Amelican actor Tom Sroane?”
She might as well have thrown a bucket of ice water at me. “No,” I said firmly, backing away from her. “Definitely not.”
The woman looked devastated, as though her dream of a lifetime had just been dashed.
As she walked away, I wished I’d given her Tom’s autograph.
At least one of us would have been happy.
