I left, feeling lighter and heavier at the same time. I wanted to turn around and tell him I'd like to make him 35 Across and shop at the lighting store and walk on his concrete floor with my bare feet. But I kept it tucked inside, like a secret daydream.
I wiped the drool from my mouth and then my dissertation notes when I awoke to the sounds of a man singing, before it registered it wasn't a man singing at all, but many men singing. Joel's wall clock read 10:30 p.m. Da Vinci was late. Again.
Groggily, I roamed through the house, listening for the source of the singing and my heart sank when I saw the Scrabble board was still on the kitchen table, untouched. Damn da Vinci.
The singing continued. Whatever it was, they were at least in unison if not on key, but I couldn't make out the words. It sounded old-fashioned and muffled, nothing like you heard on the radio in this day and age. TV in the living room? Off. Clock radio by the bedside table? Silent. The singing got louder as I stepped into the foyer when the sight of candles flickering outside caught my attention. The singing was right outside my front door. My heart sped up. What in the world? Isn't it a little early for caroling?
Cautiously, I opened the door to find nearly fifty young men on my lawn surrounding da Vinci. I noticed they'd brought out the whole cul-de-sac: Gabriella and Jesús and Zoya and Donald all watched the scene. Even in the light of their front porches, I could tell they were amused. I waved to them, shrugging my shoulders in embarrassment. Was this some kind of pledge hazing?
In an instant, my boys were down by my side in their pajamas staring out at the serenading frat crowd.
Most girls I've met I'll soon forget,
They could never be true
'Cause for me there is only one
Who could stand for the Gold and Blue.
In my heart is a girl with a smile on her lips
Lovely to see, precious to me
With her eyes like the stars
And our rose in her hair
No one can quite compare.
When shadows try to hide us
Dreams will see us through
Tho' the years come and go,
She'll be loyal, I know,
She's the sweetheart of ATO.
Da Vinci towered above his brothers, handsome and proud, and I wanted to whisk him away from these boys who had taken up all of his time, yet who had welcomed him so openly to America and the mainstream. This wasn't about them, but about me. This wasn't a pledging haze at all, but a sweetheart serenade-something that was only supposed to happen to other girls: cute, young sorority girls, not middle-aged widows. Da Vinci stepped forward and handed me a red rose, kissing me on the lips while his frat brothers cheered him on and chanted, “ATO! ATO! ATO!”
William hugged my leg while da Vinci placed his fraternity pin over my poodle's rear of my flannel PJs. He kissed me again, while I began to cry-not because I was filled with joy, but because I wondered what planet I was on and how I ever landed here. Making love in the frat house had been one thing-a fantasy come true for a part-time linguist and full-time housewife-but this?
Da Vinci waved goodbye to his frat brothers as he lifted me into his arms and carried me into the house.
“Neat, huh?” William said. “Was that, like, the coolest thing in the world or what?”
“Put me down,” I said, but da Vinci only held me tighter.
“Boys, back to bed,” da Vinci said to them, and amazingly, they obeyed.
As they walked down the hall to their room, they high-fived, which was even stranger. “Da Vinci?” I asked as he threw me on the bed he had begun to refer to as “our bed” and began unbuttoning my poodle PJs. “What's going on here?”
He took off his shirt, revealing Adonis abs, and knelt over me as he trailed my abdomen with his tongue. “What does it look like? I'm going to ravage my American bride-to-be.”
“Oh, my God.” I grabbed for my pajama top, but he had already pulled off my pajama bottoms and began kissing my hips. “Da Vinci, we're not getting married. Can you stop that? It's very distracting.”
“I know,” he said, looking up at me. “That's the whole point.”
“Yes, but about the marriage? You know we aren't ready for that.”
“We've got time. We're young.”
“Well, you're young, but that's not the point. Why are you doing this?”
Da Vinci lay his strong body over mine. “Because you're my Mona Lisa. I've been a terrible boyfriend. Spending so much time away for my studies and my fraternity brothers. And I realized something the other day when another woman kissed me.”
“What?” I rolled him off of me.
“It was TLC night of pledge week.”
My heart began to combust. “What do they do, bring in whores?”
Da Vinci was nonchalant. No big deal, kissing. “Just college girls. I don't want there to be secrets between us, so I must confess. Three girls kissed me and I kissed them back.”
“Da Vinci! Was it some kind of orgy?”
“Orgy?”
“Group sex! How could you?”
“Just kissing, tesoro.”
“Don't call me darling. I'm very angry with you. Mad. Upset. Hurt.”
He held my hand. “I admit the pleasure of the body can take over, but I realized they were nothing compared to you. So I wanted to do something to show you how much you mean to me. You're the real thing, Mona Lisa.”
We sat side by side in silence until we lay back, his head on my chest. Pleasure versus the real thing. Could it be possible to have both? I knew without a doubt that da Vinci was not the real thing. He was my romance-novel cover model, my sexual fantasy, my key to liberation from loneliness, but he wasn't even close to the real thing. “Leonardo, I don't think we want the same things.”
“But I thought this would make you happy.”
“I don't think you really love me. And it's not like you need citizenship just yet. You have a student visa.”
Da Vinci raised his voice. “It's not about that. I feel safe with you.”
“Safe isn't the same thing as love. Love is what you had with Chiara.”
He rolled over onto his stomach, his brows furrowed. “Don't speak of Chiara. She is gone.”
“She sent you a letter.” I resisted adding, a love letter.
“I don't care.”
“You don't want to read it? It sure smells nice.”
“She broke my heart. When I told her I wanted to come to America and I wanted her to come with me, she refused. She is marrying my cousin.”
“Why didn't you tell me about her? I would've understood.”
“I didn't think the past mattered.”
“You're talking to someone who's been living in the past. But you can't stay there, and you can't pretend it didn't happen, either. You learn from it and cherish it and build on it and try again. You're the one that showed me that it's okay to live again. To love again.”
“But not love me? I can hope you'll change your mind.”
“I love you, but not in the way you want me to. You are a magical, wonderful, beautiful man. You've shown me how to let joy in and be happy. I'll never forget what we've had. And I don't want to lose our friendship, either. And neither will the boys. They love you, too.”
He squeezed my hand. “This is classic American break-up, no? The ‘let's be friends‘ speech?”
“I'm sorry. I guess it is. I'm not very good at this. I really don't want to hurt you.”
“But I'll miss you and Scrabble and footballing with Bradley. This is American dream.”
The American dream. I'd thought you only get one of those, and that mine had died along with Joel. I hadn't thought I'd get a second chance or that I even deserved one, but maybe I did. Maybe I could dream a new dream. “Oh, da Vinci. You've always been a dreamer. Don't lose that, okay?”
Defeated, he got up from the bed, put his T-shirt back on and left to sleep in the studio, his head hung low.