Chapter 11
WE SLEPT UNTIL FOUR, when the sound of a car horn on the street below stirred us awake.
Paul pulled me toward him, and we lay there, entwined, for a few minutes, before he raised himself up onto one elbow and kissed me, softly, first on the shoulder and then on my breasts, which I just have to say—for the record—were pretty spectacular back then.
I feel like I need to address our sex life before we get too far into this story.
We’d been intimate since the night we met (scandalous, I know), and if you’d asked me back then what sex with Paul was like, I’d have told you it was fabulous.
In those early weeks together, we did it every chance we got: in Paul’s Chevelle; in my childhood bedroom, if my parents weren’t home; and a few times—when we were feeling particularly flush—at the Holiday Inn, where we’d rented a room for the night.
That might be too much information, now that I’m rereading it, but if you are to understand everything that happened to us on that island, you’ve got to understand what it was like for us in the beginning.
Not to mention why, when Paul started to move on top of me that afternoon in the Pensione Michigan, I used my better judgment and wiggled out of the way.
“Nope!” I said with a laugh as I rolled off the bed.
“I am not about to spend my one day in Rome in bed with you.”
So we dressed and took off walking, armed only with the terrible map we’d been given at the front desk and my camera, which I’d loaded with a fresh roll of film.
“What do you want to see first?” Paul asked as he tried to make sense of the map. But I couldn’t even answer the question. What did I know of Rome? That the pope lived there?
We walked in the direction of the Colosseum, but we were too tight on funds to take the tour. Instead, Paul assumed an over-the-top Italian accent and pretended to be our guide. “This is where,” he said, with the jab of an imaginary sword, “gladiators fought each other to the death.”
“Oh yeah?”
He remained in character. “Many died, but those who survived were amply rewarded.”
“With what?”
“Gold, wine.” He arched his eyebrows at me. “Women.”
I punched him, lightly, on the shoulder. “Please.”
“What?” he said in his regular voice, but he was smiling.
I kissed him on the lips. “I don’t think you know the first thing about this place,” I said as I pulled away, then I took his picture because I wanted to remember the crumbling ruins in front of us, but also the way he was looking at me in that golden afternoon light.