When I paused to grab the shampoo, the song went on without me. Through the shower glass, I saw a frame, da Vinci's frame, as he peeled off his shirt and hummed the song I didn't even know he knew. “Is okay to shower now, Mona Lisa?” he asked.
I instinctively covered my body parts, which was ridiculous since he obviously meant to get in with me. The very naked me. I sucked in my stomach, stuck out my chest and smoothed my hair back. “Come on in, da Vinci.”
When is a shower more than a shower? When you share it with someone else. Especially a someone with a hard, wet body pressed up against yours, thigh to thigh, chest to chest, arms wrapped around each other's slick, soapy bodies. And then? Lips on lips. Lips on collar bone. Lips on breast, stomach, thighs. Anh was right. Enlightenment can come from the simplest things. We hadn't even gotten to actual sex yet, and I was feeling the out of body experience that came with the transition from becoming to being.
I wasn't thinking of anything while we were in the shower, mind you. It was better than getting back on a bike, one thing leading to another and I would have most certainly let nature take its course if it hadn't been for Zoya and Gabriella both calling my name in their thick accents beyond my bedroom door. “Ramona, we're here.”
“Shit.”
“No stop,” da Vinci said as he continued to kiss me.
I began to panic. “Didn't you hear that? My neighbors are here. I can't believe we've been in here thirty minutes already.”
“Just five more minutes,” da Vinci said, and as much as I would've liked to have gone through with it, I wouldn't be able to enjoy it knowing my neighbors could walk in on us any minute. They had no idea I had company. Why would they?
“Here's the plan. I go out first. You wait five minutes, get dressed. Fully dressed, da Vinci. And walk out the front door and around to the studio. Okay?”
Da Vinci scrunched his brow but said okay. “But shower nice, no?”
I kissed him one last time, hard on the lips. “Yes. Shower very nice.”
Gabriella, Zoya, and Simone were already eating cinnamon rolls they had heated themselves when I joined them.
Zoya was complaining, her hands flying everywhere as she spoke. “I'm tired of baby-trying,” she said. “Used to sex two times a week. Now sex every night. Zoya don't need baby that bad.”
Gabriella, who had five children, reassured her. “Just get pregnant, and you'll get sex much less often. He'll be afraid to hurt the baby and after baby comes, you'll get sex hardly ever.”
“Really?” Zoya's eyes widened. “Then maybe baby now good thing.”
We laughed, but my neighbors stopped laughing, Simone's eyes like saucers, when da Vinci, wearing only a yellow towel that barely closed, walked through the kitchen, his hair still dripping wet. “Da Vinci!” I yelled, wishing I had a dishcloth big enough to cover his whole body. What part of get dressed and go through the front door did he not understand? I swear. Sometimes he says okay when he has no idea what I'm saying.
“ ¡Dios Santo! “ Gabriella gasped in Spanish. Sweet Lord in Heaven.
“ Pelo amor de Devs! ” Simone whispered in Portugese. Heaven help us.
“ Glückliches weibchen, ” Zoya said in German.
“Zoya!” I scolded. She'd called me a lucky bitch.
“Ladies,” da Vinci said, walking casually over to me where he planted a kiss on my temple. It didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out we both had wet hair and had come out of the bathroom within minutes of each other. And the kiss said more than any explanation could. “Good morning.” He proceeded to pour himself a cup of coffee while we all stared at him. What could I do?
“Good morning, indeed,” said Gabriella.
Simone slit her eyes. “You didn't tell us you'd already had breakfast, Ramona.”
“The shower in the studio is broken,” I told them nonchalantly.
“I'll have Jesús fix it,” Gabriella said, then raised a brow. “Or perhaps not so fast?”
We smiled, the chemistry in the room thick with surprise, our eyes all on da Vinci's back where drops of water glistened on his shoulders.
“ Schlechtes Mädchen, ” Zoya said as she wagged her finger at me. Bad girl.
Being bad had never felt so good.
Chapter 10
I'D NEARLY CONVINCED MYSELF the shower scene was an anomaly, an erratic blimp in an otherwise normal platonic relationship, yet for the life of me, I couldn't get it-or him-out of my head.
The cursor blinked on the screen, beckoning me to conjure the words, to fill the white space in the quiet hours meant for my dissertation. My outline clearly demanded I write about the history of love letters, but contrarily I'd spent the morning reading the most romantic love letters the world has ever seen and fantasizing about finishing what da Vinci had started.
I, the lover of words, did not wish to write. I only wished to do. Whether I would actually go through with it if and when the time ever came would be a great surprise, like opening a forbidden sex box. I could daydream for hours about the package itself, let alone what I might find inside.
Doing would not be possible for the foreseeable future. Though not nearly as tragic as the love letters written by authors separated by war, da Vinci and I could not pursue our mutual attraction because he was a student first, a worker second, and a lover third. It had been so long since I'd been kissed or whiled away the morning daydreaming about sex that I didn't even care if I came in third place.
Because the real thing wouldn't be home from work until midnight, I spent the rest of the morning researching love in the Renaissance and what secrets I might find in the original da Vinci's past. Anh had dropped off several da Vinci books from her own collection. I had never paid any attention to the origin of da Vinci's works, or wondered about his subjects, until my da Vinci began calling me his Mona Lisa.
The Renaissance, a time of rebirth between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, was marked by reflection and resurgence, improvement and perfection. Da Vinci's insatiable curiosity about how the world and everything in it worked gave birth not only to brilliant art, but brilliant ideas. Much like my young Leo, old Leo seemed thrilled to be alive, to make new discoveries in the everyday. Could the scholars be right? Did Leonardo invest in his studies the passion usually reserved for a lover? Out of thousands of pages of notes, not one doodle hinted of a personal affection. Even back then, surely you couldn't resist writing your lover's name just once. Or initials with a heart around it. But maybe that's just me.
Maybe Leonardo was in love with life and that was enough for him. Could it be enough for me?
I stared at the picture of a painting of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan and da Vinci's patron for several years, who commissioned da Vinci to paint the Last Supper. Why did I find the fact that da Vinci orchestrated Ludovico and Beatrice's wedding celebration far more interesting than a great work of art? Da Vinci: Renaissance Man, Wedding Planner.
On the next full page, I studied my favorite da Vinci portrait, The Lady and the Ermine. Da Vinci was known for using symbolism in his work, and the ermine-the white, short-tailed weasel known for its hatred of dirt-symbolized purity. With mounting disappointment, I read that the “lady” was no lady at all, but Cecelia Gallerani, the favored mistress of the Duke of Milan, and had in fact given birth to the Duke's first son the same year as his and Beatrice's wedding. Was da Vinci a natural jokester, or was it simply so accepted that every husband keep a mistress on the side that no one caught the irony of the ermine in the mistress' lap? At least the ermine was a weasel, and-also fitting-a carnivore.
Poor Beatrice. Four hundred years between us, and I know how you must've felt. As Ludovico lay in your bed, did you not wonder if he was thinking of her? I know. Sharing his heart was far harder than sharing his body, was it not?