Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 33

James

La Festa del Duca has descended on the streets of Urbino. Knights on horses, musicians playing harpsichords, and women dressed in full Renaissance garb meander through the crowd greeting locals and tourists alike. Street vendors selling handmade jewelry and antiques haggle across the table, while the squealing and laughing of children bounce off the cobbled stone as they gather near the archery exhibit to try their hand at the target. A fencing match breaks out to the left, while a jester juggles brightly colored fruit from a stand on the right. On any given day in this city I feel as if I’ve just stepped into the past, but today that feeling is compounded exponentially.

Even in my angry stage as a post-American preteen, this festival lit up my soul—the experience so heady and authentic that I became obsessed with everything about the period, most particularly the art. For the last eight years, I’ve been in charge of the photography for the Historical Foundation’s media pages. But no matter how hard I work and how closely I pay attention to the details, I’ve never felt like my photographs have done the event justice.

I step into the doorway of Signore Galuscio’s pelletteria as flag throwers fill the street and launch their bright banners into the air. The lens never leaves my eye as I snap away at the show, working to capture the movement of color against the bright sky as the flag spins in the air. The sound of drums crashes through people’s chatter, and I snap several shots of a little boy running through the procession waving his own miniature flag—his smile equal parts joy and mischief.

The festival is a perfect distraction from the pit in my stomach about last night. I barely slept thinking about the way she looked in my arms as we danced. The way her eyes widened imploringly when she admitted she wanted more time with me and showed that rare vulnerability. The way she chewed on the corner of her lip, making me want to kiss right where she worried. But I walked away. Almost ran, really.

Coward.

I take in a deep breath, and the smell of roasting meat mingles with the scent of leather coming from the open door behind me, sending a wave of nausea from my gut to my head. I haven’t eaten since early this morning. It’s time to take a break.

I make my way back down the hill toward Vincenzo’s trattoria, sidestepping a bard as he recites a poem to a group of women having negronis on their hotel balcony.

“Gi!”

Nina waves over the heads of a group of students huddled around a snake charmer. I smile and wave back, squeezing through the crowd headed up the hill toward the piazza. As I draw closer, I see that Nina’s elbow is linked with the freshly reddened skin of the woman I can’t seem to escape.

Ava turns away from her conversation with Signore Turino and fixes her narrowed eyes on me. She looks pissed.

“Hello, Zia. Ava.” I nod in Ava’s direction.

Nina looks between us and lets out a dramatic sigh.

“Dove vai?” Nina asks.

“Ho fame. I’m heading to Vincenzo’s—”

“Perfetto. Ava was just saying how hungry she was. Weren’t you, cara?”

Ava opens her mouth to speak, but Nina puts a finger to her lips.

“You are not allowed to be hungry in Italy,” she tells her, and if my amygdala wasn’t pumping out the signal for flight, I would enjoy the wide-eyed nodding that Ava is currently partaking in. I know that look well from years of wearing it whenever Nina uses that tone.

“Va bene, then off you go,” Nina says, taking Ava’s arm and linking it in mine.

The second the soft skin on the underside of her arm touches my inner elbow, my brain shuts down completely. There’s nowhere to run to now, so I focus on getting us away from the crowd without thinking about how warm and right she feels beside me. Nina blows us a kiss and takes off uphill like a greyhound released from the gate.

After a moment, Ava slides her arm from mine and steps back from me.

“You don’t need to eat with me. Really, it’s—”

“Why don’t I show you the apartment while we are here? I can whip you up something to eat in the kitchen there,” I tell her.

I can’t blame her for wanting to get away. Twice I’ve left her stranded without an explanation. She looks around, possibly considering her options for escape, then settles her gaze on me.

“Okay,” she nods.

I hesitate, surprised that she’s agreed. Or possibly surprised at myself for offering. Then I gesture for her to head up the alley that runs perpendicular to Borgo Mercatale. She looks up the narrow, shaded foot path and takes in a deep breath, then leads the way.

The moment we step between the buildings into the shadows, there’s a sense of calm and quiet as we escape the chaos of the festival and the swelter of the late afternoon sun. Dark green shutters and oversized doors appear haphazardly at our flanks, and Ava studies the soft stone surrounding them as we walk, keeping her eyes on everything but me.

“Are you enjoying the festival?” I ask her.

The path before us splits, one way leading down and to the right, and the other leading up to Via Mazzini. I put my hand on the small of her back and she stiffens, then relaxes into my touch as I guide her left and upward.

“How could I not? It’s surreal,” she says.

I nod. We are passing beneath iron balconies that cling to the buildings on either side of us, so close together that if the residents were to reach out, they could touch each other across the footpath. They are filled with flowers, dripping from pots, cascading between the iron rails and through the grates. It’s as if these neighbors are having some sort of competition. I lift my camera and point it directly upward. The angle gives the effect of being in the hanging purple gardens in Florence, but with more color. It reminds me of melting old crayons with Nonna’s hair dryer, letting the wax slide down the white paper and—

“It is like all of the Italians in Urbino got together and decided to coordinate the exteriors of their homes to complement each other.”

Ava’s voice pulls me back to earth, and I lower the viewfinder and find her admiring the balconies. I get on one knee and take a few shots of her from below, her face turned up toward the waterfalls of flowers. Then my field of view goes black as Ava’s palm blocks the shot.

“Italians worship beauty—always have,” I tell her as I stand.

“Sounds like a recipe for narcissism,” she murmurs.

“More so than the ideal of making as much money as possible and buying as many things as you can?”

She holds up her hands.

“Did I offend you? When did you become more Italian than American?” She’s enjoying pissing me off. I know the tilt of her mouth and the angle of her brows when she wants to rile me up.

“I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy,” I tell her, motioning for her to continue uphill. I hear her say something about pompous pricks under her breath, but I ignore her and answer the other half of her question, “And I didn’t become more Italian—it was there all along—carved into something inside me. It just took some time to recognize that I was denying it.”

Shockingly, this shuts her up.

“It sounds shallow, when you apply the value of beauty only to physical appearance, but if you look around—everything embodies that appreciation for beauty,” I point out. “The food, the art, the language.” I gesture out in front of us.

We’ve reached the top of the hill and we are now looking down over the north side of town, the rust-colored roofs staggering down and away like a staircase leading to the distant hills. Every shade of green stretches beyond the city walls.

“These moments—these views—they aren’t arbitrary. The city was designed with this exact experience in mind.” I point to the deep forest green door to our right. “This door was painted to complement the color of the boschi—woods—you see out over the wall. All of it is intentional.”

“How could you possibly know why they chose this color for the door?” She is looking up at me like she does when I give a lecture, mouth slightly parted, brows tugging together.

I try not to smile.

“Because I painted it.”

She looks up at the building again.

“This is the apartment?”

“Sì. My apartment,” I correct.

“Your apartment?” she whispers. And I can see the range of emotions that pass over her face as she reddens. What is she picturing in that beautiful head of hers?

I turn my gaze away and focus on twisting the key in the door, then push it open to reveal the narrow stone staircase that leads up to the studio. I put out my hand for Ava to lead the way and she meets my eyes for a moment, breathes in deeply, then looks back at the inside and brushes past, just barely grazing my thigh with her hip. And I know the moment that whisper of a touch sends a shock up my spine that bringing her here was a very, very bad idea.