“Communism never sleeps.”
This argument, that we had to fight the spread of communism, wasn’t new. We’d used it to justify our actions in Korea and Cuba and Vietnam. And while I agreed that living in a democracy was the way to go, I was starting to question the idea that the U.S. military could be everywhere all at once. “We’re just one country,” I said to Paul.
“Yeah, but we’re the greatest country in the world.”
I wasn’t going to argue this. But if I had, I might have told him that this was the type of bravado that had gotten my brother killed. “I still think that we should hold the president of the United States to a high standard. If you lie or you cheat or you convince your goons to break into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters, you should get impeached.”
Paul’s expression soured. “Let’s watch it, okay?”
“Watch what?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“There’s no evidence he had anything to do with the break-in.”
“Well, if he’d release the tapes—”
“He’s still my commander-in-chief, Eileen.”
The reprimand surprised me. “Sorry,” I said, although I didn’t know what I was apologizing for. Vice President Agnew had already resigned, and while it would be another two months before Nixon turned over the tapes that would effectively end his presidency, most Americans already agreed he was guilty of obstruction of justice. Until a few minutes earlier, I’d assumed Paul was one of them. But I was learning that my husband was a company man.
We pulled up to the house as the sun was pushing against the horizon, which cast the whitewashed exterior in a warm orange glow. “This is it?” Paul asked, and I pointed to the unit on the right, then turned to the driver and tried to explain that I wanted him to wait for us.
“Torneremo tra cinque minuti,” promised Paul.
The house was exactly as I remembered it, but now I was seeing it through Paul’s eyes, and all I could see was peeling paint, broken roof tiles, and weeds. Had the hairline crack in the foundation been there before? What about the rusted railing? It was important, I felt, to project confidence, so I didn’t let on that I was second-guessing my decision. Instead, I pointed out the apricot tree and told him how I wanted to learn to make jam, which I realized, even as I was saying the words aloud, was patently ridiculous.
“Does anyone live here now?” Paul asked as I led him up the steps and onto the small porch, where I hoped we might be able to peek in the windows.
“Nope,” I said, but knocked anyway.
There was no answer, so we pressed our faces against the tempered glass, trying to get a look inside.
There wasn’t much to see. The windows on the front of the house were shuttered with heavy green persiane, which I would, of course, come to appreciate on hot afternoons in the middle of summer but didn’t yet know how to operate.
“Come this way,” I said, and Paul followed me down the steps and along the side of the house to the back garden, which—mercifully—was every bit as beautiful as I remembered. I did a little spin in the center of the patio. “Isn’t this perfect?”
Paul ran a hand over the top of his head, an overwhelmed sort of gesture. “Yeah, it is.”
“There’s a cat here somewhere,” I said, and started to make increasingly elaborate kissy sounds, but Miele didn’t reveal himself. While I looked for him in the fig tree and behind the granite boulders, Paul got a look at one of the bedrooms through the sliding glass door.
“Okay, this isn’t bad,” he said in a voice loud enough for me to hear, and I breathed out a sigh of relief.
60.
PAUL WAS IN SUCH Agood mood on the ride back to town that he slid his hand up my thigh and inside my underwear. The driver was saying something to me in Italian from the front seat, but I didn’t know what, so I just kept smiling and nodding while Paul raked his finger back and forth. Had I been older or more mature, I might have swatted his hand away, indicating that this was not the time or the place, but I was neither of those things, so I let him keep doing precisely what he pleased.
When the driver finally arrived in front of our hotel, it was all I could do to mumble a “Grazie” and climb out of the car. Paul paid the fare and hurried me inside the hotel and up to our room, where we were out of our clothes in less than fifteen seconds. He was ready to go and so intent on putting it somewhere that I barely had time to get over to my side of the bed, where I kept my diaphragm in the drawer of my bedside table. “Just a sec!” I nearly sang as I hurried to the bathroom to insert it.
Back in the bedroom, I tried to pick up where we’d left off. But what I really wanted was to return to the backseat of the cab, where Paul had been forced to think a little smaller. “I liked what you were doing back there in the taxi.”
He pulled me onto the bed and climbed on top of me, kissing my throat and collarbone and breasts. “Oh yeah?” he said as he tugged at a nipple with his teeth.
“Mmm-hmm,” I said, encouragingly. “It felt like I was going to explode.” I wasn’t lying. Those little jolty movements he’d managed in the car hadn’t been dissimilar to the pulse of the damned shower nozzle, and now I understood that a lot of slow and steady attention could add up to something big. “Do you want to try it again? That thing you were doing, with your finger.”
“Oh, baby,” he said, his breath hot in my ear. “We are way past that.”
I wasn’t confident enough to argue with him. So when he entered mea few seconds later, all I could do was let out a low moan and raise my hips to meet his. He began to move inside me, slowly at first and then faster, and I arched my back and begged for more of him, which he gave me in short, measured thrusts. The elusive feeling I’d been after—whatever it was I’d felt in the backseat of the cab—was gone, and it wasn’t coming back, and that knowledge left me feeling frustrated and maybe even a little sad.
Paul’s orgasm came with little warning. “You are so sexy,” he mumbled into my hair when it was over and he had gone limp. I nodded, not because I agreed with him, necessarily, but because I was delirious with want. Two months ago, I wouldn’t have called it that. I’d have ascribed the dull ache in my belly to some other emotion like love or joy or even satisfaction. That’s how screwed up I was about the whole thing. And it made me wonder, if I couldn’t recognize and name my own desire, what right did I have to expect Paul to?
