As I got into it, I worked faster and expanded my reach. I didn’t take my eyes off Paul, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t looking at my face. All his attention was focused between my legs; I swear, he acted like he was seeing parts of me for the very first time.
I had been worried that I might not be able to get off in front of Paul, but if anything, having him in the room was proving to be a turn-on. Eventually, I leaned back on the bed and closed my eyes.
In the silence, I could hear Paul unzip his pants. “That’s not what we’re doing,” I whispered, then reached for his hand and pushed his forefinger deep inside me.
“You are so wet,” he said, a little worshipfully.
“Mmm-hmm.”
He started to move the finger back and forth, but I shook my head. “I don’t need you to do anything. Just keep it there.”
It was one of the few times in our marriage when I made an unequivocal demand and Paul listened to me. No arguments, no dealmaking, no quid pro quos. Maybe he was feeling insecure, or maybe it had dawned on him that I knew something he didn’t. Regardless, I was grateful.
I could feel the buzzy build, knew that soon I’d have no control over what came next. “Don’t move,” I said one last time, to be sure that he knew this request was nonnegotiable. “I’m going to—” Before I could get the words out, my muscles began to clamp around his finger.
It went on like this for several seconds, and all Paul could say when it was over was “Oh my God.”
I let out a little laugh and said, “Uh-huh.”
“I could feel that,” he said.
The thing about trying harder with people is that they try harder with you. I won’t tell you that this one demonstration changed our sex life completely. But I will say that Paul started paying more attention to my needs, asking what he could do to help me get to the same place he was.
In other parts of our life, too, he seemed more attentive. He started buying me fresh flowers in the piazza. Or occasionally offering to cook dinner. For my twenty-fifth birthday, he gave me a pair of earrings. They were these beautiful gold knots, and I took to wearing them every day.
I guess I tell you all this just to say that, after that first kiss with Teo, it wasn’t like Paul and I were done. In some ways, we were better than we’d been before.
115.
IN MAY, BRUNO’S TEAM RECEIVEDword that they were getting a real research vessel. We assumed, although it was never explicitly stated, that theChartridgegrounding and resulting media coverage had something to do with it.
TheNereidearrived in La Maddalena in early June. It was a converted thirty-five-foot buoy tender—double the size of theAlessandra—and could accommodate fourteen seamen and another fourteen scientists, although it was operating with a skeleton crew when it chugged into the harbor.
Bruno was chief scientist, but he had other duties back in Rome, so he brought on Luca as a full-time research scientist and hired Nina to work on a contract basis, since she was still finishing her dissertation.
Luca gave me a tour of the boat soon after its arrival, and as soon as I stepped aboard, I could tell what a step up it was from theAlessandra. It had two depth-sounding systems, a variety of special winches and cranes, and on the starboard side of the deck sat a sixteen-foot Boston Whaler that could be dispatched to smaller embayments as needed.
He took me down to the lab, where he showed off the equipment the team could use right on the boat to test for phosphorus, silica, chloride, alkalinity, ammonia, chlorophyll, and a host of other chemical components. I let out an admiring whistle.
“It’s great, right?”
“Yeah, really great,” I said. “Can you test for radionuclides?”
He shook his head. “The equipment you need, it’s too sensitive—and too expensive—to put on a research vessel.”
“So you’ll still be shipping out your samples?”
He rolled his eyes. “For the time being.”
Now that he had his boat, Bruno had begun advocating for the region of Sardinia to build a lab in La Maddalena because, as he liked to remind anyone who would listen to him, CNEN had not agreed to monitor thearchipelago indefinitely. In fact, the original agreement had been for the agency to take the lead on all monitoring activities through the summer of 1976, when it was thought that the local and regional governments would have had enough time to reallocate their budgets and establish their own monitoring procedures. So far, there was no indication that this was happening, and Luca—who had begun dating a local girl named Matilde—was not so secretly hoping that CNEN would be forced to stick around forever.
As we toured the rest of the boat, Luca explained that the team would soon start a more comprehensive environmental study commissioned by the Ministry of Health. I wanted to offer to help, but Bruno had already warned me that when theNereidearrived, only authorized personnel would be allowed to go out on the boat. Everything was more official now, which was as it should be, but which also made me feel left out.
“It’s so incredible that this is all coming together,” I said, trying to be positive.
“But you know what’s fucked up?” said Luca.
“What?”
