12
LUCA BELLANDI
The sofa was too short.
I reached that conclusion after taking off my jacket, rolling up my sleeves, and looking at it from several angles, as though the right one might add thirty centimeters to the cushions. Gabriela stood by the window, trying not to laugh.
“You can have the bed,” she said. “I’m smaller.”
“No.”
“It’s a bed, Luca. I’m not ceding territory.”
“You’re taking it.”
I moved a cushion to one end of the sofa. My feet would hang off. She opened her bag and gave up arguing. I’d spent nights in airplanes, conference rooms, hospitals. A bad night’s sleep would be nothing new. Sharing a suite with her would.
My bag held nothing but documents. I’d remembered Paola’s suggestion too late. “I’ll ask the hotel for clothes.”
“I have a shirt in my bag.”
“For tomorrow?”
“To sleep in.”
My imagination supplied the image before I could stop it. Gabriela in nothing but a shirt. Bare legs. Hair loose over her shoulders. I picked up the phone.
“I’ll ask for some for me.”
The kitchen sent up a late dinner. We ate at a small table on the enclosed balcony overlooking the Grand Canal. Boats moved through the fog, their lights breaking into gold lines on the water.
We talked only about the supplier. Gabriela reviewed the amendment while eating pasta. I answered emails. We might have passed for strictly professional if I hadn’t noticed every time she brought the wineglass to her lips.
“You can stop staring,” she said without looking up.
“I’m reading.”
“The document’s on your tablet. I’m over here.”
I lowered it.
“Maybe I’m checking whether you can go ten minutes without working.”
“You brought a tablet to dinner.”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“We never are when you don’t like the conversation.”
She signed the report electronically and pushed her empty plate away.
“There. Ten minutes off, starting now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Ask for another blanket. You’ll need it.”
When it arrived, she placed it on the arm of the sofa. She gave the sofa one more look but didn’t offer to switch again.
She went into the bathroom with her shirt and a small toiletry bag. I opened the balcony doors to the cold. I needed distance, even if it was only a few meters.
My phone vibrated. Beatrice. I declined the call. Seconds later, a message arrived. “I hear you’re staying in Venice. Do you need me to send someone?”
I replied only that the contract was sorted out. As I put the phone away, I heard the bathroom door. Before the screen locked, another message appeared. “Lorenzo says little Duarte went with you. Be careful. Women in debt mistake attention for opportunity.”
I deleted it. Beatrice knew the old suspicion: why did anyone get close to me? Money made business simple and poisoned the questions I could never answer. I didn’t want to hear her tonight.
Gabriela appeared in a loose white shirt that reached halfway down her thighs. It should have looked innocent. It didn’t. The fabric moved with her body. Her legs were completely bare. I turned toward the canal.
“The bathroom’s free.”
“Thank you.”
“The hotel sent you a robe too.”
“Thank you,” I said again, not turning around.
She stopped.
“Did something happen?”
I closed my eyes. Honesty. She was always asking me to be honest.
“I’m trying not to look at you.”
The silence behind me thickened.
“Oh.”
“Exactly.”
“I can put my pants back on.”
“No. I’m taking a shower. Then I’ll sleep on the sofa, and neither of us will argue about it.”
I went into the bathroom before I did something stupid.
Cold water didn’t help. When I came out in the T-shirt and light pants the hotel had sent, she was already in bed, reading, the covers up to her waist. I turned off the main lights, arranged the blanket on the sofa, and lay down. My feet stuck out beyond the end.
“Comfortable?”
“Perfectly.”
“Your knees are bent.”
“I like it this way.”
“Liar.”
“Go to sleep, Gabriela.”
She switched off the lamp. Only the light from the balcony cut through the dark. I closed my eyes. Fifteen minutes later, I shifted. Twenty minutes later, a sofa spring was digging into my spine.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“No.”
“You talk in your sleep too?”
“Only when someone won’t stop talking to me.”
She turned the lamp back on.
“The bed’s enormous.”
I sat up.
“No.”
“We could put pillows down the middle.”
“No.”
“I trust you.”
That killed the humor. She noticed.
“It’s meant to be a compliment.”
“I’d rather stay here.”
She looked at the empty space beside her. For a moment, I thought she would insist.
She said nothing. I lay down again, on my side now, knees drawn up even farther. A few minutes later, the mattress shifted and I heard footsteps. She put on the hotel robe and went out to the balcony. I tried to ignore it. Failed.
I found her leaning against the railing, watching the canal. The fog was beginning to lift, revealing pale facades and little bridges.
“You’re cold.”
“A little.”
I took the blanket off my shoulders and draped it over hers.
“You’ll freeze on the sofa.”
“I’ll survive.”
“Do you always have to turn being uncomfortable into a test of character?”
“Not always.”
“You could just admit you’re afraid to share a bed with me.”
I rested my hands on the railing.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“What are you afraid of, then?”
The answer. What would happen if I woke with her a few centimeters away. What was already happening, with her scent caught in the blanket and the canal quiet below. The desire that didn’t lessen when we argued, worked, or talked about Augusto.
“Making a mistake that costs you more than it costs me.”
“Because of the contract?”
“Everything.”
She looked down at the water.
“My father fell in love with my mother when she was twenty-four. He was thirty-nine.”
“I didn’t know.”
“People said it wouldn’t last. It lasted until he died.”
“He died too soon.”
“I was already grown. It didn’t make a difference. My mother still talks about him as though those years gave her more life than fifty years without him ever could.”
My chest tightened.
“Is that what you want?”
“What?”
“Marriage. Children. A whole life with someone.”
She smiled without turning to me.
“This feels like a job interview.”
“Answer me.”
“Someday, yes. I’m not in a hurry. But I want a noisy house. Children running around furniture they’re not supposed to touch, someone complaining because I’ve left construction plans on the dinner table.”
The picture hit me hard: Gabriela pregnant, laughing in a bright house. Children with her eyes. A man who wasn’t me coming home at the end of the day. I pushed it away.
“What about you?”
“No.”
“You never wanted that?”
“It’s not an option.”
She turned.
“Why?”
I could tell her. Say that tests fifteen years ago had ended any hope. That I couldn’t father children, and had made the absence into a choice so it wouldn’t look like a loss. But I couldn’t bear to see pity in her eyes.
“Because I’m not made for it.”
“No one’s born knowing how to be a husband or a father.”
“Some of us know we shouldn’t try.”
“That sounds more like a sentence than a decision.”
“Maybe it is.”
She studied me. The teasing gave way to uncertainty.
“Is there someone?”
“No.”
“Was there someone who made it impossible?”
“Not the way you think.”
“Then how?”
I looked at the canal. Fifteen years earlier, after the engagement ended, I’d gone to Marinelli to ask if there was any chance the child could still be mine.
He knew about the injuries from the accident and ran tests.
The chances, he said, were virtually nonexistent.
A second result turned “virtually” into “never.”
I’d told only Sofia and Lorenzo. Not Augusto. Years later, I’d told Beatrice, one night when alcohol and loneliness had let my guard down.
“There are things my body can’t do,” I said at last.
She frowned.
“Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Luca, if this is about children—”
“Don’t ask.”
My tone shut the door. She lowered the hand she’d begun to lift.
“All right.”
I should have been relieved. She turned back to the canal. A motorboat went under the bridge, sending water against the wall below us.
“I wasn’t asking because I’d started making plans,” she added. “You said your body couldn’t do something. I thought you were sick.”
“I’m not.”
She nodded, but she was still cold. I pulled the blanket up over her shoulder. Before I could take my hand away, she caught it and turned to me.
She rose onto her toes. I leaned down before I could think better of it. Our breaths mingled. Her mouth was so close. All I had to do was let go of the last of my control. I almost did.
Then I remembered her answer. Marriage. Children. A noisy house. Everything I couldn’t give her. I released her hand and stepped back.
“You deserve someone who’s free to love you.”
Her expression changed.
“And you’re not?”
“No.”
“Because you won’t, or because you can’t?”
“It ends the same way.”
She pulled her robe closed.
“There’s always a difference.”
She went inside, shut the glass balcony door, and crossed the sitting room. The sliding door closed behind her. I stayed outside until she turned off her lamp. I couldn’t remember what was supposed to be so right about spending the night out here, cold, staring at a closed door.
The night grew colder. I went in and lay on the sofa, bending my knees to fit. It couldn’t have been long before the bedroom door opened and she came out with a blanket.
“Don’t take this as an invitation.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“You dare almost anything.”
I caught the edge of the blanket before she could go.
“Gabriela, I didn’t pull away because I don’t want you.”
“That much was clear.”
“I pulled away because I know what happens when someone thinks I can give them a future.”
“Are we talking about Beatrice, or you?”
I didn’t answer. She went back to bed but left the sliding door open. I watched the lamplight spill across the sitting room. Heard her turn over, and later the small click of the switch. Only then could I sleep.