25. Rome, December #2
When the meal ended, we were shepherded into a larger garden, which had a sloping lawn that jutted out into the Tiber.
A display of meticulously choreographed fireworks shot into the sky.
The crowd craned their necks and cooed as green, white, and red rockets exploded, their colored sparks vanishing gracefully on the surface of the river.
I hung back from the group and watched alone, but standing nearby was Lawrence, his fist clenching and loosening in time with the explosions.
I thought about how fluently the evening was going for him: His speech was complete, the crowd had hooted at every joke, and now they cheered over each rocket.
All he had left to do—all any of us needed to do now—was to go back inside and dance.
If he’d only left it there, things might have been different.
Inside, the band started up. The guests moved toward the dance floor, where it would be warmer.
I followed them, feeling a rush of relief that the formal part of the evening was almost over.
But where was Mary? As we inched up one stone stair and then another, I heard loud laughter erupt from behind me.
I swiveled round, searching for her, but, as I turned, my eye caught another figure, further off, far beyond the crowd.
Toward the end of the garden, standing close to the iron railings that protected us from the river, was Jean.
My chest went cold. I struggled against the movement of people to get a better look.
Could that really be her? She hadn’t been invited, so did she follow me here?
The woman far ahead of me was dressed in a toga like everyone else, and had her back turned, but I was certain it was Jean.
There was her dark bob, neatly blown smooth; there was the prim inward lean of her pigeon-toed stance.
Standing opposite her was someone else from the school.
They were talking intently. It looked as if Jean was holding her hands.
Then the crowd moved forward. For a moment, I lost sight of her. Back inside the party, I rushed over to the dining tables to get my phone.
Are you here? I wrote, stepping back outside. I searched around the garden but was unable to find her anywhere. I called twice. I messaged again.
Or am I suffering from delusions?!
Shivering, I leaned over the railing where I thought Jean had been standing.
I checked my phone again. Strangely, she wasn’t online.
I looked out over the river while I waited for a response.
On the Lungotevere, car headlights flashed through the trees as the traffic moved steadily forward.
I closed the app and reopened it, but Jean still wasn’t online.
A minute or two passed. Beneath me, the river parted as it passed the island, then each stream met again, and the water flowed down over a steep weir.
It was calming to think of how ancient it was.
The river would outlive every obnoxious guest at this party.
I imagined regaling Jean with that thought during our session tomorrow, when I told her all about the event.
Because it surely couldn’t have been her who I saw.
I must have been influenced by that conversation I overheard at the table during dinner.
It couldn’t have been her. We would have discussed it.
And she would have made a point of finding me here, and checking if I was all right.
Surely. Again, I checked my phone. Still offline.
She would have let me know. She definitely would have let me know.
As I weaved my way back toward the party, I caught sight of Mary’s mother ahead of me on the crowded gravel pathway.
She was standing beneath a large patio heater and speaking to another woman about the same age who—like her—wore a beautiful fur cape.
I went over there in the hope I might find Mary.
Then—still shaken from my vision of Jean—I hung back near Anna, slipping a cigarette from someone so that I could listen to her conversation.
“I used to visit your shop all the time,” the woman was saying. “The one on the Kings Road. And your memoir, your second. Well, it helped us through an enormously tricky time. We could only have one child, too.”
Anna smiled, without showing her teeth, and squeezed the woman’s arm.
“How’s Bonamy?” the woman asked.
“Oh, sick of me, I expect.”
“Where is he tonight?”
Again, Anna smiled sweetly, but her facial muscles had hardened. “Do you know, I have absolutely no idea.”
The woman paused briefly at the candor of this admission, then continued asking Anna questions about the school. Apparently, she wanted her daughter to attend, too.
“Mary loves it,” Anna was saying. “She’s totally absorbed. I hardly hear a peep from her.”
I listened to them talk for a few moments longer, then I interrupted and asked for a lighter.
“I just wanted to say hi,” I said, addressing Anna. “I’m Mary’s friend.”
“Not another one!” She laughed, briefly glancing at me and then around the garden.
“Where is she? Probably doing something naughty.” She flicked away her cigarette, hitched up her toga, and climbed the sloping steps back toward the party.
“Where’s my daughter?” she called, in the way a queen addresses a court, assuming that everyone was listening. It was clear that I had been dismissed.
I eventually found Mary on the dance floor, right in front of the band.
They were playing covers of the Velvet Underground and the Kinks.
I brought her a negroni, but she smiled and gestured I should drink it instead.
Then I saw the twins: Both of them were dancing witchily in their long dresses, waving cigarettes, and spinning slowly, with their eyes closed.
For a long while, I joined in with them, unselfconscious in my movement because I was so cocooned in alcohol.
Then the band started playing disco songs and we danced harder.
An old woman in a toga covered with feathers fell over and had to be helped up by a trio of men.
When the band eventually stopped, they were petitioned to play for longer by the adults, who threw fistfuls of euros onto the stage.
Before long, the DJ took over, and a bag of speckled pills was passed around.
The room got darker and hotter. Condensation crept down the old stone walls, and I began to sweat uncomfortably, which I felt nervous about, but then there was Mary.
She leaned in close, and I felt the muscles in my face turn to jelly.
There was so much I wanted to communicate to her, so much gratitude.
I was desperate to tell her how beautiful she was, how lucky I was to know her, how certain I was that the portrait would be brilliant because she was so gifted, she just couldn’t acknowledge it to herself.
We smiled at each other. Her pupils were wide, black discs.
I moved my hand to her waist, feeling earnest and clumsy in my movements, but it didn’t matter, because my pleasure was in my proximity to her, in the fabric of the slip dress she’d changed into, in the feeling of her ribs expanding and contracting against mine.
Still, I knew I couldn’t kiss her, not here, with everyone watching.
Instead, I let her hold my hand, to take puffs of my cigarette.
At one point, she cupped my ear and yelled, “I met someone you know.”
“Who?” I mouthed, over the music.
Mary frowned theatrically and gestured clumsily toward her neck. “ Amazing jewelry.”
I laughed, though my chest felt tight. “Who?”
Mary grabbed my hand again for the cigarette. “Jane?” she mouthed, exhaling. “Jenny?”
The sparkling sensation in my skin turned to cold lead, but Mary was speaking to someone else now and becoming distracted. I shook her wrist.
“Where?” I asked.
Mary waved vaguely. She could have meant the back of the room, or Rome more generally.
I pointed to the floor, then shook her shoulder.
Again, her attention was waning. The music seemed impossibly loud.
“You mean, here?” My heart started to beat uncontrollably.
I was too high to hear this. “I need water,” I said.
“Come to the bar with me?” I tried to lead Mary away from the dance floor, but she was transfixed by her phone.
“Wait,” she said, texting with one eye closed so that she could focus. “Shit.”
I looked down. A text had arrived from Vincenzo.
“Is he here?” I asked, my paranoia doubling. By the cloakroom , his message said. “Mary, did you invite him, too?”
“I’ve got to go.”
Mary stumbled away and I began to search hopelessly for my bag.
Away from the dance floor, the party was thinning out.
A few groups were still lingering outside by the heaters, but almost everyone who remained was dancing.
The euphoria I had been feeling only minutes ago had vanished.
Now, I felt only urgent dread as I considered Mary’s words.
Did that mean my vision of Jean by the river had been real?
Why would Jean come here of her own accord and not say hello?
I must have upset her. Why else would she avoid me?
I found my bag behind a speaker, though with no phone in it.
Then, abruptly, the music cut out. Suddenly, there was only the sound of protesting voices and a ringing howl in my ears.
As they struggled to resurrect the speakers, the other guests collapsed back into the circular tables.
I searched for my scattered belongings and found my phone on a nearby table, face down, the battery dead.
I glanced anxiously around the dying party.
No sign of Jean. No sign of Mary, either.