Chapter 13 #3
His chopsticks were Japanese, much nicer than the disposable ones in white paper bags that Michelle had dug out of her kitchen drawer. After she spooned his prawns onto a bed of steamed rice, he picked up his plate and headed to the dining room. Then he froze, because the table wasn’t laid.
Michelle walked right past him, carrying her own dinner. She didn’t stop until she reached the couch in the living room, feeling a little thrill when she saw that the repositioned side table remained exactly as he’d left it during her last visit. It meant something, she felt sure.
‘We’re eating in front of the television?’ His dismay was palpable.
‘Yup.’ She sat down and reached for the remote, offering it to him. ‘There’s bound to be a renovation show you can stream. Whatever you want.’
When he didn’t speak, she looked up into his troubled face and said, ‘I’m forcing you out of your comfort zone. Cohabitation is all about compromise.’
He took a deep breath. Then he set down his plate and headed for the carved sideboard across the room, extracting from its top drawer two crisp, white, linen napkins. He draped one across Michelle’s knees, like a high-class waiter.
Michelle let him. Cohabitation was all about compromise.
For the next hour or so, she enjoyed watching Filippo get overexcited about duck-egg blue and tapware.
He also seemed to enjoy her kung pao prawns, only raising his eyebrows once, after his first bite.
‘Spicy!’ he remarked, with a glance that made her cheeks warm.
But it soon became apparent that this particular episode of Architechy was all about a married tech couple slogging it out over a tithe-barn renovation, and as they spiralled into a tornado of debts and disagreements, Michelle worried it might trigger Filippo – who was getting more and more worked up at the wife’s choice of flooring and insulation, not to mention her kitchen layout.
The wife, Michelle couldn’t help noticing, looked a bit like Bianca Vargo.
‘I can’t believe where she wants the dishwasher. Miles from the sink!’ Filippo spluttered. ‘And you need a minimum of four feet of workspace between the sink and the stove. Dio mio, this is so important. And the bins – they have to be near the sink too.’
As he lectured Michelle about the rights and wrongs of colour matching, she wondered if the show was simply reinforcing his attachment to rules and mandates and social expectations.
But she didn’t want to change the channel; that would be a Bianca-ish thing to do.
Instead, she cleared away their empty plates and fetched the goodie bag she’d brought from home.
By laying out its contents on the table in front of them – microwave popcorn, Bombay mix, loose-leaf tea, hot-chocolate sachets, rocky road, corn chips – she managed to distract Filippo from a dramatic argument about ag drains.
‘I know it’s not a proper dessert, but see if you can find anything you like,’ she told him. ‘I call this my TV Indulgence Selection.’
He smiled. ‘All it needs are waffle slippers and a reed basket and we could offer it to our Torcello guests.’ After inspecting every item, he chose the hot chocolate. ‘Will I make one for you also?’
‘No, thanks. But go ahead.’ Michelle pulled open the packet of corn chips and stuck her hand inside, ignoring his full-body cringe. ‘Don’t bring back any serving bowls,’ she warned him loudly, as he vanished into the kitchen. ‘Do you want a play-by-play?’
‘A what?’ he yelled back.
‘Do you want me to tell you what’s happening?’
‘What’s happening is a disaster! That corner foundation is going to collapse!’ Then his comments were swallowed up by the roar of boiling water, and by the time he returned, cradling a mug, his prediction had come true. The corner foundation had collapsed.
‘See? I told you,’ he said smugly, settling onto the couch. But his eyes were glued to the television and he wasn’t watching his hands. A splash of hot chocolate hit the pale designer rug.
‘Ah!’ He uttered something in Italian that Michelle guessed was a swear word, set the mug down and sprang to his feet. Michelle grabbed her napkin and dipped it in her glass of water.
‘Here. Let me,’ she offered.
‘No!’ He flung out his hand. ‘Don’t touch it! Prego.’
He rushed off to the kitchen, where she heard crashing and banging and the sound of slamming doors.
By the time he returned, laden with cloths and bottles, she was frantic.
That rug was probably worth tens of thousands of dollars, and it was only because Michelle had insisted on eating in front of the TV that it had got stained.
‘I’m so sorry—’ she began.
‘Sorry? Cara – it was my fault, not yours.’
It wasn’t, though. Lacerated by guilt, she moved the table and hunkered down beside him on the rug, where he’d launched into a four-step cleaning process that involved lukewarm water, detergent, vinegar, white cloths and lots of precise blotting motions.
‘When I was learning hotel management, I supervised a housekeeping team for a while,’ Filippo said.
‘The mastery of stains depends on the chemistry of each substance, the carpet, the stain. You must commit to memory the different treatments, because speed is of the essence.’ He was poring over the little splash of brown like a surgeon over an open wound, and Michelle felt rather like a theatre nurse as she handed him whatever he needed: this bottle, that bottle, an extra-absorbent cloth.
If only she could have stayed busy passing him things, she would have been fine.
But it was a slow and painstaking process, requiring immense concentration, and in the long gaps between Filippo’s requests, Michelle kept noticing his strong, expressive hands.
And now that his shirt was pulled tight, the muscles in his back were clearly defined. He was making her giddy.
She had to look away, towards the couch. And as she did so, she spotted something.
‘What’s that?’
‘What?’ His tone was distracted.
‘There’s something under the sofa. Something gold.’
‘Gold?’ He stiffened, then threw himself flat on the ground to peer into the dark slot framed by the Chesterfield’s lion-paw feet. Michelle joined him, wriggling and straining, pushing her arm into the gap.
‘Could it be the winding crown from my Vacheron Constantin?’ Filippo exclaimed. ‘Dio, I thought that was lost forever! Can you reach it?’
‘I – I don’t think so . . .’ Teeth clenched, eyes screwed shut, Michelle desperately waggled her fingers. Nope.
‘Let me. My arm’s longer.’
As he reached into the void, Filippo jostled Michelle, his hand brushing hers. Her own hand tingled and she drew it away, but he moved closer, straining to get at the object, and their heads knocked gently. She could almost feel the breeze when he blinked.
Michelle was overcome. Afraid that she might whimper and give herself away, she quickly pulled back and scrambled into an eager crouch – Michelle Redlin-Wu, ready to assist wherever possible. But try as he might, Filippo couldn’t recover the mystery object under the sofa.
He finally sat up, brushing dust off his hands. ‘We must move the sofa. Can you help me?’
‘Of course!’ Surging to her feet, Michelle seized the rolled arm of the Chesterfield.
‘It will be heavy,’ Filippo warned. ‘Don’t hurt yourself. Tell me when to stop.’
The next few minutes were a struggle because the couch was a dead weight. But after a series of incremental lifts, they were able to clear a narrow space beside the skirting board. And there, among the dust bunnies and dead insects, lay a sliver of gold.
‘Grazie a dio!’ Filippo pounced on this tiny treasure, scooping it up and cradling it in his palm as he picked strands of fibre off it. ‘Che fortuna! But how filthy it is, back here. I need to have a word with housekeeping.’
‘Is it your winding thingy?’ asked Michelle.
‘It is!’ He looked up, his whole face glowing. ‘Come!’ Then he turned and ran for the stairs, bounding up them two at a time.
Michelle followed, swept along by his enthusiasm.
‘For months I’ve been searching,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘but I couldn’t find a replacement winding crown.
This is vintage Vacheron Constantin – there are no spare parts.
To get one made . . . I might as well buy a Ferrari.
The price of gold and the required competenza, you know?
But now these two will be together again! ’
All at once, Michelle found herself in Filippo’s bedroom. It was at the front of the house, with twin French doors opening onto a veranda. Warmly lit by a range of lamps, it was luxurious but masculine, with just the right amounts of softness and sheen.
Though his bed wasn’t as big as Katrina’s, it looked comfy, with linen sheets. Did he sleep naked? Michelle swallowed and dragged her eyes away. She didn’t want to think about the bed, or about Filippo lying between those sheets wearing nothing at all.
‘My collection is here,’ he said, flinging open his wardrobe, which was a built-in, not a walk-in, and stretched the entire length of the wall facing the bed.
‘It’s not big, because I wear every piece, so they all mean something.
’ He parted a row of hanging shirts to reveal a wall safe with a keypad lock.
The shirts were arranged by colour, in a kind of ascending palette.
Hovering beside him, Michelle wondered if he’d organised the clothes himself, or whether he’d paid hotel staff to do it. She could smell camphor, fabric softener, and the woody, spicy scent she now associated with him. She wanted to bury her face in his shirts.
‘The Vacheron, especially,’ Filippo continued, tapping out a code. ‘It was my grandfather’s. He left it to me.’