Chapter 21 #4
“And you, sir, it was my pleasure.” He turns to Rob. “I advise you to keep this precious creature close to you. You may not know her as well as you think.” With that cryptic comment, the stranger disappears into the crowd.
Rob raises an eyebrow, taking me by the waist and pulling me close. “Making friends, I see.”
“Yeah, I lost you for a minute. He was nice. An outrageous flirt, but quite kind. Where were you?”
We sway to the music, smoothly but rather inexpertly in comparison with my previous dance.
“I was accosted by a fifty-something Texan woman who asked me where I was from and then was fascinated with my heritage. The Scottish part of course.” He winks.
“Ha!” I exclaim. “You were being chatted up too! I knew it. Told you the ladies would see you as a mysterious courtier.”
“Well, I guess she did. Not as mysterious as your new friend. What did he mean about not knowing you as well as I think?”
“I’ve no idea,” I lie, laying my cheek on his shoulder. “Something to do with not being ourselves.”
Rob takes a breath as if to reply but remains silent, instead moving me around the room. I relax into the beauty of the moment, soaking it in, filing the memory away.
We last until just after midnight, when the blurring becomes a bit much — no doubt a combination of alcohol, excitement, and jetlag.
Rob, his arm about my waist, guides me towards the entrance. “Time to head back, don’t you think?”
He helps me with my cloak at the coat check, and I switch back to the full-face ceramic mask as photographers are lining the lobby. Posing for them momentarily, we look toward the exit of the hotel, where there’s a long line for water taxis snaking down the dock.
“That’s going to take forever,” Rob observes. “How are your feet? Could you walk ten minutes, cut through the streets to the canal a bit farther up, and get a boat there?”
“Feet are fine,” I mutter through the mask. “Let’s walk.”
We leave by the side door of the hotel, and emerge into the cooling night onto a small, cobbled street.
I pull my cloak around me as Rob takes his phone out of my clutch to check a map.
He’s an incongruous sight in that costume with an iPhone in his hand.
“In a few streets we’ll be near the Rialto, we’ll pick up a water taxi there. ”
We stroll arm in arm, picking our way across the uneven surface. Ahead, a few other carnival-goers are prancing and wheeling about, disturbing the quiet of the night with the occasional hoot and holler.
“It’s like a scene from a movie,” I mumble. It’s hard to talk, but I’m reluctant to take off my mask, as Rob is still wearing his, so I don’t want to spoil the effect. “Have you seen The Wings of the Dove? The one with Helena Bonham Carter and Linus Roache?”
“Sure. We . . . watched it together. Not long after we met. That was when you said you wanted to go to Venice.”
“Ah.” We cross a small bridge, and the group in front veers off, leaving us alone in the street.
“Tonight made me think of that movie. The Venice carnival scene? Linus and Helena in masks and costumes, and they hide from the other woman, the one he’s also in love with, and have sex in a dark corner. ”
“You mean like this alley here?” Rob pulls me down a tiny, pitch-black side lane.
He stops at a battered old doorway and slips his arms under my cloak, around my waist, tugging me close.
He takes off his hat and his mask, tousling his black hair, and kisses me on the collarbone, moving me into the doorway, pushing me up against the frame.
“Are we Linus and Helena?” His voice is low, as he bends down, moving his mouth to my décolletage, running his lips over the top of my restricted, pushed-up breasts.
“Yes,” I breathe through my mask, arching my back into him, thinking of the other woman in the movie, how she was searching for them while they had sex.
Rob removes his gloves with his teeth and unfastens the top hooks on my bodice, reaching one bare hand inside my dress, finding my nipple.
After a moment, he crouches down and lifts the front of the full skirts of my dress, right up to my waist. He pushes aside the silk panties I’m wearing, putting his hand between my legs, his fingers meeting wetness.
Then he unbuttons his fly, wraps my leg around him and fucks me right there in the dark alley, the expressionless mask on my face the whole time.
At the moment both he and I cry out into the night, the ceramic mask can no longer take the pressure from my jaw, and it cracks under the chin. I lean back against the wall, spent.
Rob collapses against me. “Take it off,” he mutters. “I can’t get to you.”
I remove the mask, careful not to break off the cracked section. “I remember how, in the movie, it wasn’t enough for Linus and Helena that they loved each other, because he also loved the other woman.”
Rob seems to know what I’m thinking. “That’s not us.”
I fasten my bodice as he does up his fly. “I want to believe that. That’s why I married you.”
“We’ll be fine. We’re married, and we love each other.”
“You’re right. I do love you. I love you more than anything.”
Even though you’re a bigamist.
The thought leaps into my head, but I’ll never say it out loud. Even though I’ve made him one.