Alibi: A Novel (4 page)

It didn’t matter. She came onto the quay and it was just as I imagined it would be—the same direct walk, a glance up from under the umbrella, a sudden stop, and her surprised face, unguarded, absolutely still until something turned over inside, loosening an involuntary smile. She was wearing the same wool coat and sharp-lapeled suit—her only one?—and for a second I saw how she would take it off, just the jacket, nothing else, sliding it back from her arms while she stared straight at me, taking it off for me. Now she hurried into the shelter, folding her umbrella, eyes still wide, disbelieving.

“Have you been here all night?” she said, laughing a little.

I shook my head. “I get up early.”

“But what are you doing here?”

“I want you to get to know me better.”

Her face softened. “At this hour?”

“I thought we’d better start. I don’t know how much you want to know.”

She said nothing, her eyes still reading my face, pleased.

“I like risotto. Any kind of fish.”

She laughed. “Do you think I’m going to cook for you?”

“Okay. We’ll go out.”

“A rich American.”

“I live in Dorsoduro. My room has a view of the Redentore.”

“I’m not going to your room. In your mother’s house.”

“Then I’ll find something else.”

“I’m not going anywhere, except to work.”

“That’s why I’m here. We can talk on the way.”

“To come here like this, at this hour. You must be crazy.”

“Must be. What time do you get off for lunch?”

“You’re so sure of this?”

“Yes.”

She looked away. “Here comes the boat.”

I reached up and moved her chin with my hand. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

Only a few people got on with us, but the boat was already packed with commuters coming from the Lido, reading newspapers or just staring out the windows. We stood away from the rain but wedged near the gangplank gate, pressed against each other.

“Just like the bus,” I said, but of course it wasn’t, dipping with the shallow waves, even a morning commute turned into an excursion. The water gave everything in Venice this playful quality. Ambulances were boats, so not quite ambulances. Fire boats and delivery barges and taxis—all the same, yet different, bobbing on the water, somehow looking half made-up. “We should have a gondola, like the old days.”

“No, they frighten me. So unsteady. I can’t swim.”

“In Venice?”

“Nobody swims in Venice. Where, in the canals?” She made a face. “It’s not so unusual. Even gondoliers.” A city people, rooted to pavement. “Anyway, I never learned. So I don’t go in boats. Only these,” she said, waving her hand toward the crowd.

“I’ll take you out. I’m good with boats—that’s something else to know. You’d be safe.”

“Oh, you have a gondola?”

“Actually, I do. One came with the house. But no gondolier, so it’s
up on supports. There’s a boat, though. We could take that. With life jackets. Go and have a picnic.”

“In this weather.”

“Well, when it’s nicer.”

“And you’ll be here when it’s nicer.” She turned to me. “You don’t have to do this.”

“What?”

“Act like this. Take me on boats. Take me anywhere. Picnics. Like the films. So romantic. It’s not like that anymore.”

“No?”

“Not for me.”

“What do you want me to talk about, then?”

“What you’re thinking. Not this—what?”

“Flirting?”

“Playacting. It’s not serious.”

“No. It’s supposed to be part of the fun.”

She looked away, then stepped back to let some passengers get near the rail. We were pulling into Salute. She moved farther away, not wanting to talk with anyone close by, pretending to look at the church. Even in the drizzle, the baroque curves were bright white, like swirls of meringue. When the boat swung out again, she turned to find me looking at her.

“Now what? More picnics?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“What I’m really thinking?”

She nodded.

“What it would be like. You, taking your clothes off. What you would be like.”

For a moment she said nothing, her look embarrassed, no longer direct.

“I’m sorry. You said no more playacting. It’s what I was thinking—what it would be like.”

She nodded slightly. “All right,” she said, and turned to the rail.

Which meant what? Anything. But her back was to me, like a
finger to the lips, and I said nothing. We rode that way, both facing the palazzos. After we tied up at Accademia, I took her arm and we crossed the gangplank. In the open square in front of the old convent, we stood bareheaded, surrounded by umbrellas.

“What time do you get off for lunch?”

“One. Go and look at the pictures.”

“All morning.”

She smiled. “Some people take days. And now it’s the best time—no one’s there. You can stand in front of
The House of Levi
as long as you want.”

“A Jewish picture?”

“No, the Last Supper. But Veronese put in a drunk and dwarfs and the pope said it was—what? profane?—so he changed the title.”

“Italian accommodation.”

“Hypocrisy. Well, we had good teachers.” She looked up at me, serious. “It won’t be like that with us, will it? No pretending. Just what it is.”

I nodded. “So you’ve decided.”

“When I saw you this morning.”

I leaned forward. “Don’t go to work.”

“No, one o’clock,” she said, then reached up and put her hand on my chest. “Get a room.”

I felt a twitch, like a spurt of blood.

“My house is—”

“No. Somewhere no one knows us. Not here. Near the station. One of those places. You can afford that,” she said with a small smile. “You’re a rich American.”

I bent over to kiss her, but she stopped me, pushing against my chest, her eyes playful. “Later,” she said. “You can think what it will be like.”

We became lovers that afternoon in one of those hotels off the Lista di Spagna that put up students with backpacks and salesmen from
Padua. The vaporetto ride had seemed endless, dripping umbrellas and anxious looks, not talking, the few blocks on foot worse, umbrellas forcing everyone to walk single-file in the narrow calles. In the room, past the sour desk clerk, we were suddenly shy, like the students who usually stayed there, and then she slipped off her jacket with the sliding movement I’d imagined, and hung it in the armoire and turned to me, and I understood that I was to unbutton her blouse, and I began fingering it, feeling the warmth underneath, until finally she put her hand over mine, guiding it to each button so that we did it together.

It had been so long since I’d had sex, at least with anyone I’d wanted, that it felt curiously like a first time—tentative and then urgent, wanting to get it right but too hurried to find a rhythm. We hung up all her clothes, an efficiency that became a tease, then a kind of ritual, and when we were naked I started running my hand over her slowly, wanting to touch every part of her, but when I reached down she was already wet and after that we fell on the bed, both in a rush. Without the suit she was round, her skin soft, but her movements were still direct, the way I knew they’d be, never coy, reaching out to pull me into her. Just what it is. Skin on skin, without nuance, first-time sex, so hungry, tongues and sweat and a hurrying you can’t stop, over too soon. We lay for a minute, finally not moving, still together, panting. Then she reached up and pushed my hair from my forehead.

“I don’t have to go back,” she said.

“No?” I said, feeling myself hard again.

“We have lots of time.”

“I’m sorry I—”

“No, no. Me too. Now we can start.”

And this time it was slower, almost lazy, so that I felt her around me, not plunging in and out, everything slick, but taking the time to feel the moist, hidden skin, the secret part of her.

Afterward we lay in a tangle, exhausted but not wanting to stop, touching each other.

“What did you tell them, at the Accademia?”

“That I was sick. Everyone is sick in Venice in the winter. My god, listen to that. No wonder.”

The rain had grown stronger, a real downpour now, noisy against the window.

“But it makes it nice in here,” I said, the cheap hotel room suddenly a refuge.

“Yes. And freezing,” she said, pulling a sheet up around her.

“No, let me look at you. I’ll keep you warm.”

She moved closer, talking into my shoulder.

“It’s the first time since I came back. You forget how peaceful, after.”

The perfect happiness of sex, drowsy and full, something you think happens only to you.

“I feel honored,” I said, teasing. “Why me?”

“I told you, I liked your looks.”

“That’s right. My looks.”

She raised herself on one elbow. “And you. Do you like mine?”

I shook my head. “Your mind.”

She looked at me, puzzled, until I smiled. “It’s an American joke. Don’t worry. I like everything. Here. And here.”

She wriggled away from my hand but stayed close. “Did you have a girl in Germany?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I felt sorry for them. You can’t, when you feel sorry for somebody.”

“Sorry for Germans?”

“They were hungry. Living in cellars. So they’d do anything—even make you think they liked you. How would you feel?”

“Don’t ask me that. I can’t feel sorry for Germans.”

“Anyway, I didn’t go with anybody,” I said, moving away from it. “Maybe I was waiting.” I brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear.

“Ha. More romantics.” She was running her fingers across my chest, an idle examination. “No marks. Were you wounded?”

“No. I pushed paper. Not so dangerous.”

“So you never killed anybody? No Germans?”

“No. Did you?”

“Who would I kill?”

“I don’t know. The man at the camp maybe.”

She stopped running her fingers and sat up, turning toward the window.

“He kept me alive. I was grateful to him. Imagine, being grateful to someone like that. Imagine what the others were.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was killed. After the Germans left. Maybe by partisans. It was like that, those first weeks.” She turned to me. “You don’t mind about him?”

“No. Why should I mind?”

“Some men—” She paused. “I saw his body. Dead. I felt nothing. After all that, nothing. Maybe you get used to it, all the killing. That’s the problem. You think you want to kill them all. Where do you stop? The guard who pushed the children on the train? Yes, him. Then why not the ones watching? Why not everybody? And then you’re like them.”

“You’re not like them.”

She looked up at me. “Everybody’s like them.”

“No, we’re not,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder and pulling her down to the bed, leaning over her. “Anyway, it’s over.”

“Yes.” She reached up, touching my neck. “I wanted to know. If it would always feel—the way it was with him.”

“Does it?”

She shook her head.

“Good. Let’s make sure.”

The afternoon went on like that, stroking each other and then, excited again, grabbing at flesh in a kind of fury, and then dozing off, drugged with sex, hearing the rain in our half sleep. Even when it was finished we kept touching lightly, not wanting to arouse each other but unable to take our hands away. Once, during a break in the storm, I dressed and ran out for a bottle of wine, half afraid that when I got
back she’d be taking her clothes out of the armoire, the mood broken, but she was still there, sheet pulled up just over her breasts.

“I’m sick, remember? I have to spend the day in bed,” she said while I poured the wine. “You’re soaked.”

“Not for long,” I said, taking my wet clothes off and climbing back in, clinking glasses. “So, a picnic finally.”

“Oh, on the Lista di Spagna.”

“You should see the water out there. We’ll be our own island in a few hours.”

She looked at me over the glass. “That’s nice, to say that.”

We slept finally, lulled by the wine and the steady rain, her back curved into me, and when I woke the sound of running water was coming from the tub. There was a thin light under the door. I got up and looked out the window. Not really late but already dark, as if the waterlogged city had simply given up and turned out the lights.

“I don’t know if there’s enough hot water for two,” she said when I went into the bathroom. “It was already getting cool. Do you mind? I thought, at your house—”

“That’s all right. I’ll just watch,” I said, sitting on the edge of the tub. The room was spare, the bathmat just a skinny towel thrown on the cold linoleum. Whatever steam there had been was now gone from the flat mirror over the basin.

“One look, then. I’m getting out,” she said, pulling herself up and posing with her hand on her hip, a kind of burlesque wiggle, then folding her arms across her chest in a shiver. “Oh, this cold.”

“Here,” I said, wrapping one of the thin towels around her as she stepped out. I held her for a minute, letting the towel blot the water, then began rubbing her dry with another one. “Come back to bed. It’s warm.”

“No, it’s late.”

“Have dinner.”

“No, it’s time to go home. I have to keep respectable hours. For the neighbors,” she said, slipping on her underpants and hooking her bra. “To be respectable.”

“You’re not,” I said, smiling.

She came over and put her hand in my hair. “I used to be.”

I picked up my shorts. “All right. I’ll take you home.”

“No, not tonight.” She looked at me. “It’s better. You stay here.”

“What am I going to do here?”

“You can watch.” She slipped on her skirt, her face sly, as if she knew this covering up would turn erotic, each simple move, even lifting a blouse from its hanger, a secret between us, her body something only we knew, more ours than ever as she hid it from everyone else, piece by piece.

She came over to the bed and looked down. “And you want to go on the vaporetto?” She leaned down, taking my erection in her hand while she kissed me. “Sometimes, you know, when it’s like this, we want to think it’s something else. But it’s not, it’s just what it is, that’s all. It’s enough for me, what it is. You understand?” She ran her fingers up the side of my penis, then moved her hand away.