La Bella Donna
Artist Marcello Mastroianni comes and goes. It’s a whirl of a week. He flies you to Barcelona, where he has another opening. He pronounces it Barthelona, which sounds positively absurd until you hear a number of actual Spaniards pronounce it this way, after which you will pronounce it this way forevermore. It’s hard not to compare this trip to Spain with your last, more than ten years ago. The first time, everything was new: your marriage, art, the world. This is new too, there’s a sensual charge to it; your skin feels like a penny in your mouth, and the world itself seems altogether changed, and it feels harder to reach that sense of promise you had back then. Is it just the difference between being nineteen and thirty? How could a person feel simultaneously so alive and so full of dread? Marcello’s Barcelona show is closer to what you imagined: a gallery with actual doors, art you can identify as such (even if it’s still probably not what you’d call your thing), with an added flurry of attention on him, photographers, acolytes, women younger than you — when did that moment happen? You’re barely into your thirties, not a line on your skin, but these women seem to have been born in groups of threes and fours, long-legged, effortless European beauties, style you can’t grasp; born muses they are, would that you could be one too, someone free of what exists in you, someone who could exist simply as an inspiration for the art of another, a type of well for another to draw from whatever he might. There are those, like Marcello, who would happily offer you this as a permanent post, yet it is not your calling. Marcello pays these muses-in-waiting no mind, though it’s impossible not to notice the amount of attention they lavish on him, the exact reverse of the ratio you aspire to. You have more than a few jealous bones, though in this case you’re not sure jealousy is exactly what’s at play.
You stay at the Majestic Hotel (silk fringe ties on the heavy brocade drapes, full-size bath soaps scented like lilies of the valley! — you like this a great deal), and he orders room service, which comes with champagne. This part of the trip is all about your wishes. You and Marcello spend the rest of the weekend in bed. For a second, this bed, with its incredible sheets and carts of covered food and its Marcello, could be the ideal place to stay forever. You’re not a big drinker; one glass of champagne is more than enough to make you forget you were once a genteel young lady from Muscatine, one whose parents have no capacity to imagine a universe where people do other than get married and stay that way; you only wish the champagne would help it stay forgotten the next day. You are not so much hung over as just no longer buzzed. You fly back to New York with a suitcase weighed down with Majestic Hotel letterpress note cards and a half-dozen bars of soap you pilfered from the maids’ cart when they weren’t looking; nothing wrong with that, it’s paid for. Bouquets of roses come to your door, some exotic breed with blooms the size of grapefruits, but despite the romantic notes pinned to them, you waste no time before breaking it off. Marcello treats you well, but you’re not interested in holding his spotlight, which is about all he asks in return. Audrey thinks you’re crazy, though she’d never say as much to you; it sounds like a dream to her, she’s a full-time nurse with four kids, you let it slip though that you “almost” envy Audrey, which she’s too nice to ever call you out on. You go on to say that she got a winner in Jack; she laughs and says Sure, I got lucky, but it’s still not all rainbows and kittens. I have three boys and a teenage girl. With boobs. Big boobs. You tell her you’re not ready to think about teenage girls and their boobs; she tells you not to worry, it’ll happen whether or not you think about it. Audrey knows that all you want is for her to tell you whatever might make you feel good in any given moment, so she says sure, she understands that’s not quite what you’re looking for, though secretly she does wish for some real thing that might make life easier for you. Her fear, and yours too, is that there may be no such thing, though Audrey is slightly more optimistic about this than you are. Audrey has a gentleness to her voice and a perpetual look in her eye that shows she was born to give care, seemingly just for you, though she has compassion to spare, and so when she asks directly what might help most, you say I don’t know, and if I did there probably wouldn’t be a big enough supply of it anyway.
You try a few singles bars with Peggy, and meet two or three men who by contrast make Dad seem like Cary Grant, dullards mostly, a long parade of businessmen types, blurring together to form one massive dullard, always enamored of you, always by and large unimaginative in bed, and adding these boring notches doesn’t help your feelings about yourself any.
A few more years pass with the dullard collective while you continue your studies, performing when jobs arise. Carolina arranges an audition for you with an agent from a more powerful outfit. You had not expected dissatisfaction with your career so soon, have not wanted to complain about it, but in confiding to Carolina she agrees that you have made great vocal progress and that she has someone for you to meet. She mentions nothing about how handsome — not to mention young — he is, and you’re glad she doesn’t. You prepare for the audition as though you’ll be meeting yet another closeted fifty-year-old music rep, and so when Victor Silvestri, a handsome, affable twenty-eight-year-old comes in, your eyes brighten just a little. His brighten a lot. You sing “Una voce poco fa” to which he responds with laughter, bold, jubilant laughter — he can’t stop looking at Carolina, who knows him and knows what it means, but for you this is a first. The closeted types tend to nod and smile, if you’re lucky. (You come to believe that you could have a dozen octaves and the voice of a seraph but what you’re sure these guys want is a tenor fresh out of college willing to carry their umbrellas and make themselves available for any darker whims. This is a belief you will hold until your last days, and your future husband will not disabuse you of it.) You’re pretty sure he isn’t laughing at how bad you were, but it’s an unusual response to say the least. He says he can have a contract ready for you tomorrow and would you like to sign it over dinner? Some quick math: eager + agent + Italian + handsome = everything you’re looking for, all in one.
You have a sense that the black cocktail dress you almost wore to the weird gallery opening might work for this one, and you’re right. He’s wearing his suit and tie from work. He picks you up at home, greets you with a kiss on both cheeks, takes you to dinner at Abruzzi, a dimly lit place on West Fifty-Sixth Street where he’s friendly with the owner, the kind of joint with old-man waiters who’ve been there forever. Tony, the owner, himself from Abruzzi, asks if you’d like some tomatoes and basil from his garden, it’s that kind of place (or it is for Victor). Tony doesn’t wait for an answer—Vito, slice up some of the tomatoes with basil, a little olive oil, a little mozzarella for Signor Silvestri. Vito brings this out in about ninety seconds, and it is the most delicious-tasting tomato ever. Tony says he has a Fantastic vitello, how does that sound? and you nod, even though you don’t know what vitello is, Victor says Terrific, and you close your menus and Tony says Enjoy your evening with la bella donna. La bella donna! You know what that means. That could be your diva name. Victor opens the conversation by saying Let’s get business out of the way first. He leans in, changes the tone of his voice. You’re a tremendous talent. You have something special. And it doesn’t hurt that you’re a knockout. I have big plans for your career. We’ll put together a huge promotional packet; I’ve got a great photographer for new head shots. I also represent several conductors who will go ape-shit for you. And I can have you on the road before the end of the year. This is more than you could have hoped for and you say so. Good, he says. Business done. Now tell me everything about you. So you tell him you married young, got divorced, have a nine-year-old daughter, beautiful, bright, and well behaved, news of which doesn’t cause him to flinch one small bit even though he’s not yet thirty and only weeks ago moved into his first apartment. When he asks why your marriage didn’t work out, you try not to say anything bad about Fred on the first date, so he says Something must have been wrong with that guy to let you go. You learn that his family is from the Bronx, Typical Italians, a little nutso, but good to the core, lots of musicians in the family, grew up with classical in the house always. You tell him you grew up with Benny Goodman. He’s good too, he says, and the next thing you know he’s asking if you’d ever want to get married again, you tell him you think so, he asks what June looks like for you. You giggle. It’s way too soon, but you can kind of see it.