“Let me tell you what...”
“Can we please not hold hands?”
“I want to hold your hands.”
“I want to hold yours, too. But...”
“Then don’t worry about it.”
“Andrew, suppose someone...?”
“What would you like to drink?” he asked, and signaled to the proprietor, who came sidling obsequiously over to the table, wringing his hands, big grin on his wide round face. They were sitting at a small corner table where a candle burned in a Chianti bottle on a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. The proprietor wasn’t quite Henry Armetta in the old black-and-white movies she’d seen on television, but he ran a close second. Hovering over the table, wringing his hands in joy, he seemed to be daring them not to be in love. From speakers discreetly hidden only God knew where, operatic arias suffused the room, audible enough to be heard, soft enough to sound as if they were drifting from open leaded windows above the Grand Canal. The place was relatively crowded for a Wednesday night. There was the pleasant hum of conversation, the clink of silver on china, the smell of good food wafting from the kitchen.
“Sí, signor faviola,” he said grandly, which she guessed was Italian for “Yes, favored sir,” or “Yes, favorite gentleman,” or something of the sort, favola, faviola, whatever. A solemnly attentive look on his face now, his hands still pressed together, he lowered his voice and gravely said, “Mi dica.”
“Sarah? What would you like?”
“Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks,” she said, “a splash.”
“Beefeater martini on the rocks for me,” Andrew said, “with a couple of olives. Or three or four, Carlo. If you can spare them.”
“Signore, per lei ci sono mille olive, non si preoccupi,” he said, and went swiftly toward the bar.
“Do you understand Italian?” she asked.
“A little.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“No. Are you reading my mind?”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s part of what I have to tell you.”
Carlo was back.
“Bene, signor faviola,” he said. “Ecco a lei un Johnnie Black, con una spuzzatina de seltz, e un Beefeater martini con ghiaccio e molte, molte olive. Alia sua salute, signore, e alia sua, signorina,” he said, and bowed from the waist, and backed away from the table.
“Even I understood the signorina part,” she said.
“He thinks you’re seventeen.”
“Ho-ho-ho.”
He raised his glass, held it suspended. “Here’s to you and to me,” he said. “Together. Forever.”
She said nothing. He extended his glass across the table. They clinked glasses. Still, she said nothing. She sipped at the Scotch. He watched her across the table.
“Does that scare you?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this past little while,” he said. “About you. About us.” He took another sip of the drink, fished an olive from the glass, popped it into his mouth, chewed it, swallowed it. She had the feeling he was stalling for time. At last he said, “Sarah, you know I’m single, you know I’ve been seeing other girls...”
She hadn’t known that.
The admission hit her like a bullet between the eyes. What girls? Girls? Seventeen-year-olds like those the unctuous Carlo had conjured with his flattering signorina? How many seventeen-year-old girls had the “favored sir” brought here? She realized he was still talking, realized she had stopped listening the moment he’d...
“... until I was out there in Kansas, a million miles away, in the middle of nowhere. I began really thinking out there. About you. About just what you meant to me. I couldn’t shake it. Even when I got back, it was with me. Thinking about you all the time. Trying to figure out what you meant to me, what we meant to each other. It was like having a fever and not being able to think straight, and all at once the fever breaks, and you’re okay, you can think clearly again. What finally happened, I said to myself who needs these other girls? Who’s the only person I really want to see, the only person I want to be with, the only person I love? And the answer was you, you’re that person. You’re the only person I want to be with from now on, from today on, this minute on, till the end of my life. That’s why I brought you here tonight, so I could tell you in public, right out in the open. I love you, I want to be with you forever.”
“What girls?” she asked.
“Well... is that all you have to say?”
“Yes. What girls?”
“Well... there was someone named Oona I was seeing, but that’s over with now. And there was a girl named Angela I knew from Great Neck, but I’ve already told her...”
Sarah was still conjuring Oona. Great name for a cooze, Oona. Great name for a seventeen-year-old Irish cooze he’d probably been screwing in the very same bed he...
“Did you take them there?” she said. “These girls?” she said. “To the apartment?” she said. “To... to... our...”
“Yes,” he said.
“Andrew, Andrew, how could...?”
“But I’m telling you that’s finished. It’s done with, it’s over. Do you understand what I’m saying? I thought you’d be happy. I thought...”
“Happy? You’re screwing,” she said, and then immediately lowered her voice, and repeated in a whisper, “you’re screwing I don’t know how many young girls, and I’m supposed to be...”
“Was,” he said. “Not anymore.”
“How many?” she said.
“Two hundred and forty,” he said, and grinned.
“Very funny, you bastard.”
“I’m trying to tell you...”
“How many?”
“Half a dozen, maybe.”
“You sound like my goddamn sister!”
“What?”
“Half a...!”
“Sarah, I’m single! Before I met you, I was...”
“Go to hell,” she said, furious now.
She picked up her glass, drained it.
“I want another one of these,” she said.
He signaled to Carlo.
“Another round,” he told him.
“Si, signor faviola,” Carlo said, and scurried off again.
“Favored sir, my ass,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You gonna stay angry all night, or what?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, fine.”
They sat in silence until the fresh drinks came. Carlo went through his presentation routine yet another time, and then said, “Alia sua salute, signore, signorina,” and backed away from the table again.
“Some signorina,” she said, and pulled a face, and lifted her drink and took a heavy pull at it.
“I’m leaving for Italy next week,” he said.
“Good,” she said.
“I want you to come with me,” he said.
“Take Oona,” she said. “Take the whole dirty dozen.”
“Half a dozen.”
“Who’s counting?”
“I can’t understand you, you know that?”
“Gee,” she said.
“I tell you I’m never gonna see any other woman but you in my entire...”