“Isn’t he handsome?” one said.
“Did you see his blue eyes?”
“And the dimples when he smiled?”
Hearing them, I smiled too. Obviously, they were talking about Luca, my husband—in name only, but still.
“—I wonder how he got stuck with her.,”
“No wonder she wears glasses.”
“But you can still see her face—”
Halfway down the promenade, Luca caught up with me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, breathlessly.
“Nothing,” I answered, wondering if he’d heard the girls’ snide comments and felt sorry for me. “I just want to go back.”
On the way back to the hotel, the fog that had been hovering all night thickened so that it was hard to see, and we walked very close together without touching. Glancing toward him, Luca’s profile unnerved me in its perfection, and I wanted to hurt him as badly as I had been hurt. Then it occurred to me that I could simply stop walking. In the fog, he did not notice that I was no longer beside him.
Soon, he did notice, and his voice was casual at first. “Darcy, are you there?” I stood listening. He called again, more fearful this time. “Darcy, where are you?” Then with bravado, “Come out right now! I don’t want to play games.” And finally, almost appealingly, “Darcy, please come out if you’re there.”
But I wasn’t there, not really. Not then. Not yet. Here was the true test. Here he was, a stranger in a strange place. At night and in a fog, an elemental test, a test of my own design. Did he need me? Would he be able to find his way back without me? It was a silly way to be thinking, silly and feminine, and I was ashamed of myself. But I did it anyway.
I waited. Soon he gave up looking for me, and I heard him walk away down the boards. Then I, too, started back. Walking alone, I was a little scared myself, but not of getting lost. I trusted my instincts to guide me and when the time came, I would know whether to turn right or left. I was afraid of something much stranger, a thing as murky as the night around me. A kind of struggle between us that had been there from the first day we’d met. Who was stronger? Who was smarter? Who needed who most? And nonsensically, I decided the outcome would be determined by who would be able to find their way back to the hotel first. If it was me, I would be magnanimous in victory. But if he got there first, it would be clear that he did not need me or want me at all, and I would shut him out of my heart as punishment.
I went down the hall to my room with a feeling of terrible suspense. The atmosphere of the hotel that I had earlier admired now seemed only dank and sinister, like the gathering of ill omens. I turned the corner in the hallway and there he sat, leaning against my door.
“What happened to you?” He stood and came to me. “I was afraid you’d gotten lost.”
“I don’t know,” I said crossly. “I guess I lost you in the fog.” I took out my key and set it in the lock.
“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
“No. I’m tired and I want to go to bed.” I could have left it at that, but some lingering nastiness was yet unsatisfied. “Why would I even think of letting you stay in my room tonight? It’s not like we were really married.” A bitter taste filled my mouth, as if I’d been chewing tobacco.
“But we are married, or at least we could be if… A husband has a right to—”
“Right, piss! You have no rights. You only married me so as not to get deported.”
I watched his face, waiting for him to argue with me. He seemed to be struggling with what to say next. In the end, neither of us was willing to be at a disadvantage.
He looked around, disoriented. “Well…why did you marry me?”
I looked into his face again for something I did not find, and with great perverse pleasure, I answered, “You know very well why. I did it for three hundred dollars, and you had just better start saving up for that divorce like you promised or I’ll get a lawyer myself to notify Italy that I’m returning you.” Then I turned around and walked into my room. But it was Luca who would have the last word. I felt heavy hands on my shoulders turning me around roughly to face him, his face close enough that I could feel his breath on my cheek. His eyes filled my vision, a field of blue as big as the sea. But not their usual shade. Hot blue, warmed with something akin to hate.
“I don’t think I’m getting my money’s worth,” he said and left, slamming the door as he went.
I didn’t see him again until it was time to get the train back and what Luca did with the time left to him on our honeymoon is unknown to this day.
A lot can happen in a couple of years, or almost nothing at all. And during the two years after we had come back from Wildwood, nothing happened that stands out in my mind. We ate, drank, slept, and grew older, with nothing much to make one day different from the next.
One thing though. I remember being driven half crazy by a key I found one day in the pocket of an old dress I hadn’t worn for years. It was a key like any other, and I tried that key in the front door,
