He cleared his throat. “Am I invited?”
“Where’s Celeste?” Mick asked.
As far as I knew, Mick was out of the loop. He knew the basic premise of the situation, but he never bothered with specifics. I was never sure if this was a conscious decision on his part or if he just wasn’t the type of person to pick up on what swam beneath the surface.
Mitch shrugged. I didn’t miss the quick eye connect between him and Violet. “Over.”
“You can’t just leave her, man,” Mick said, not bothering to wait for privacy. “She’s pregnant.”
“No,” Mitch said, meeting my eye. “She’s not.”
Scarlett cleared her throat, breaking the tension in the room. She hurried over to Mitch, taking his hat, scarf, and coat and hanging them on the rack in the vestibule.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re almost finished with the tree. Then Romeo has a game.”
I slapped him on the back and said no more. But the sprawling new tattoos on his forearm—shadows of Big Ben, Peter Pan and Wendy, along with two flying boy forms trailing behind them—gave me a hint of his current state of mind.
Chatter picked up after that, and Scarlett ran into the kitchen to help Eunice with more food and drinks. Just before Romeo started to explain the rules of the game, music on the television silenced the room. Everyone recognized the theme song, and the woman about to burst onto the screen ceased all movement, all ability to speak.
Graceful. Beautiful. Artistic. Iconic. Delicate. Lyrical.
The words floated across the black and white screen, each syllable carefully pronounced, each word sensual but to the point. Each word was spoken out of my wife’s mouth. Glimpses of her sewing herself into her ballet shoes came from the side of the camera, while the focus was on some type of warehouse—a boxing gym.
Then there was a moment of dramatic pause.
“But do you seeme?”she asked.
Right afterward, Scarlett came twirling out like a supple tornado, like the athlete she was, every well-defined muscle highlighted by the light and tone, her movements precise—fierce but so damn smooth.
Puffs of white powder, the kind that boxers use for their gloves, made clouds around her feet. Her movements sped up, her feet and legs a magnet to the eye—all they could accomplish, all that split her in two, artist and athlete in one—as her voice floated across the screen in a hypnotic tone once again.
Woman. Fierce. Athlete. Now. Powerful. Talented.
The commercial ended with her crouched on the floor, and even through the moody tint, her green eyes blazed, steady on the camera, on you.
“Do you see menow?”she asked.
A challenge.
The spot ended with the company’s name, Bella Athletic Wear, and then with Scarlett’s full name at the bottom, making lines through the white clouds in red.
Guido breathed the word “damn” in Italian, and Mitch translated a second after.
“She is bigger than ever,” Scarlett’s mother whispered. Pride was evident in her tone.
Silence descended once again, though the movie resumed where it had left off.
I was married to the woman, lived with her and loved her, day in and day out. And sometimes seeing her that way, in that particular light, gave me a peculiar jolt—an electric shock to reality.
It caught me unaware most of the time—Times Square, seeing her up on the monstrous billboards, her twirling feet moving in and out of frame, her name in lights. My name connected to hers in an irrevocable blood-written vow—Scarlett Rose Fausti.
Mine.Il mio.
I looked to my right to find her standing next to me. She wasn’t staring at the room. She was staring at me.
“What?” she asked me so quietly that it was almost all breath.
“Do you seemenow?” everyone chanted all at once. Then cheers erupted.
