Chapter 33
Michael
The note was a tad middle school, as in, “Do you want to be with me? Check yes, no, maybe,” but I didn’t want to leave things unresolved.
Did she find it? Did it work?
I wondered about it all evening, thinking about the bad timing of it all; if she hadn’t had to supervise Linda’s sleepover, we could have ended the night here, in my bed . . . Finally, just as the sun is rising, I hear a light knock on my door.
“Come in,” I say to Elisa, as I settle down to welcome her, the sheet barely covering me. “I was waiting for you.”
“I highly doubt that,” says Donatella, surprising me with her aplomb.
“Shit!” I exclaim, pulling the sheet up to my chin. “What are you doing here?”
“There are visitors here for you, Mr. D’Arcy.”
“I’m not expecting any visitors,” I reply dryly. I can’t handle another sister, cousin, or tenth-degree relative of the three Cozzi cousins. I’m done with that.
“Your girlfriend is here with your other girlfriend,” she says, unfazed.
Her sentence sends me scrambling to sit up, alarmed. “Whaaat!”
“Miss Sheila and Miss Danielle are waiting for you in the living room.”
Exactly as I feared. But how is this possible?! Grasping for words, I find myself speechless. If Elisa finds them here, it will be such a mess! Shit!
“Shall I tell them the gentleman will come down, or shall I send them up to your room? And in the latter case, do you prefer to receive them one at a time or both together?” I seem to detect a vaguely sadistic streak in Donatella’s serious and competent tone.
“I’ll go down,” I grumble.
“Very good. I’ll make some coffee.”
“Donatella,” I call her back before she disappears. “I don’t have a girlfriend,” I say.
“Okay, then you should probably share that information with them.”
I quickly pull on my clothes and go downstairs to the foyer, where I find Sheila and Danielle sitting next to each other on the sofa, arms crossed and livid.
“I’ll just be taking this,” Donatella announces, entering and snatching away a vase from the coffee table. “It’s a Ming.” She must have noticed things are looking ominous. “Would you ladies like anything?”
“Cyanide,” Danielle says through gritted teeth, staring at me.
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” Donatella hands me over to the firing squad.
“Surprise, darling,” Sheila greets me sourly.
“Yes, quite.” This isn’t the time for sarcasm, but my nerves get the better of me.
“Did you think we were idiots?” she attacks me, surprising me with an aggressiveness I’ve never seen from her.
“No, I just didn’t imagine . . .” I didn’t think they’d ever cross paths.
“That we’d find out you were screwing two women at once?” finishes Danielle. “You nearly got away with it too. Except my sister gave me a voucher for a massage at a new spa near her place in Maida Vale, and guess who gave me the treatment?”
“Me,” Sheila replies, raising her hand. “You know, Michael, it’s quite normal for masseuses and clients to chat about this and that during a session, and it turned out we both had a boyfriend named Michael, they both worked in asset management and that—get this!
—they were both in Italy for a month to close a real estate deal. A few too many coincidences.”
“I can explain,” I defend myself, behind my open hands to protect against any forthcoming blows.
And since God hates me and wants me to know it, he chooses this very moment for Elisa to make an entrance.
“Explain what?” she asks from the doorway, confused by the strange scene.
“Looks like she’s the third,” Danielle exclaims, elbowing Sheila.
Although she’s only just arrived, Elisa knows English well enough to have understood. At Danielle’s mention of a third, her gaze changes, her eyes filling with disappointment.
“The third what?”
“It’s not a business trip,” spits Sheila. “He’s sleeping with her too.”
“It’s not what it seems,” I say to Elisa, in a tone that’s hardly reassuring. It’s not what it seems—it’s worse.
“Who . . . who are these women?” she asks me with a tremor in her voice.
“I’m Michael’s girlfriend,” Sheila says quickly.
“So am I,” adds Danielle. “What about you? He’s with Sheila during the week. He’s with me during the weekend, so where do you fit in? What are your shifts?”
“I can’t believe it,” Sheila moans with tears in her eyes. “I trusted you. We’ve been together for six months. When did you start seeing other women?”
“Well, Sheila, that’s the point. I never started seeing other women, I’ve always seen other women,” I confess, ashamed to the core. “I didn’t think we were exclusive . . .”
“Well, instead of thinking it, you could have bothered to say it,” Danielle confronts me.
“You know what? You’re just a big dick with a little man attached to it.
You don’t offer anything a nice vibrator doesn’t, so you can go fuck yourself, Michael,” she shouts, as she coldly brushes past Elisa, who is watching me silently.
Sheila, Elisa, and I remain, immersed in a chilling silence.
“You know, I can see why you’re into Danielle. She’s a beautiful woman, classy, she holds herself well for forty-three—but her?” Sheila asks, pointing to Elisa. “You go for slobs now too?”
“Sheila, please don’t insult someone who has nothing to do with this,” I stop her. “It’s my fault.”
“You’re right, it is your fault. I was wasting my time with you. We could have been a family one day!” she says, grabbing a glass ornament and hurling it at me, though it misses and hits the mantelpiece. “Don’t ever speak to me again,” she shouts, before walking away.
Elisa looks at me and shakes her head.
“Please, I . . .” I implore her. “I can explain.”
“What is there to explain? I saw it all with my own eyes, and in any case, unlike these two unhappy people, you told me. In fact, you wrote it down in black and white that we are not a couple. You don’t owe me any explanations.
I’m sure you can easily find some other naive lady to add to the notches on your bedpost.”
“Elisa, I know I’m not in any place to speak, but you’re not a notch. Not you.”
“Look, we’re okay. Anyway, what else could there have been between us, if not a one-night stand?
At least this way, I’ve had the chance to make an informed decision and still maintain a modicum of dignity.
It wasn’t a great way to find out, but I still prefer it to believing lies.
” She turns and walks out, her shoulders hunched like someone who suddenly has a heavy burden to carry.
“Elisa—wait!” I chase after her, but she stops me with a wave of her hand.
“That’s enough. I don’t want to hear your pathetic and hypocritical excuses. You’re ridiculous.”
She exits the villa, and I’m left standing alone at the entrance, contemplating the vastness of my idiocy and looking for a nonexistent way to turn back time.
I only come out of my haze when Donatella appears from the kitchen, carrying a breakfast tray.
“Your coffee, Mr. D’Arcy,” she says, handing me a cup. “I see there are some pieces to pick up.”
“Yeah, Sheila threw an ornament at the fireplace. I hope it wasn’t valuable.”
“Oh, it was just a Bohemian crystal bear from Otto von Bismarck’s collection. But that’s not what I was referring to,” she replies with her characteristic nonchalance.
“In any case, I’ll reimburse Bingley.”
“You know, Mr. D’Arcy, I’ve been with three men too.”
I look at her, amazed. “Really?”
“Yeah, but not at the same time,” she replies with a vague tone of regret. “At a certain point, we either learn to choose or life chooses for us, only in the second case we have to take what it gives us and not what we would have chosen.”