Black Elvis (22 page)

"You have to calm down," he said. "You have to calm down." Her eyes were moist and full of hatred. "You. Have. To. Calm. Down." Slowly, he released the pressure. Neither one of them did anything at all. He watched a spider bungee jump out of the high corner of the ceiling, then make its way quickly back up into the shadows.

"Desire?"

"All right," she said, at length. "I'm calm."

It was loud in the square, with the mingled sounds of voices and laughter and music spilling out of the bar across the street. Their tablecloth was red and white checked, their waiter obsequious, yet obviously dismissive of yet another couple of American tourists. Neither of them had said a thing about what had happened.

A middle-aged man with an accordion, accompanied by a younger man who had a violin, set up a few yards away from their table and proceeded to play a medley of gypsy-sounding music. When they were done, Desire waved them over and gave them five euros.

"Thank you, thank you, beautiful lady," said the older one, who was clearly in charge. The other simply bowed.

"You are
too
kind," said Desire, her personamus swinging into play.

"American?" asked the accordionist, pleased to report the obvious. "On holiday?"

"I'm here professionally," said Desire. "You may have heard of Black Days? In Castelpoggio?"

They looked at each other briefly, and the younger one said a few words in Italian that seemed to trigger something for the other, who the Professor had now come to see was certainly his father. They had the same eyes, the same heavy brow, the same aquiline nose. "Yes, yes," he said. "Of course."

"Well, I'm one of the black people. Desire Jones," she said. "From Atlanta, Georgia."

"Atlanta!" he repeated. "Very nice! You are a singer?"

"
Si
," said Desire. "
Bravo
." The Professor massaged his forehead. Within moments, he was alone at the table, watching Desire confer with them on what they could play that she might sing. There were another eight tables besides theirs, two of them unoccupied. Perhaps a dozen people, total.

"I'd like to do a little blues number for you," she said, stepping forward in front of the two men. "Accompanied by my new friends, Matteo and Giorgio." The older man played a quick flourish of notes on his accordion.

And then she was singing it again, "House." In this context, with its rudimentary melody underlain by the wheezy, French-café-in the-fifties sound of the accordion, the song was even more painful to him. Plus, the violinist kept doubling Desire's vocal at the same pitch.
Bad idea
, he wanted to tell him.
No one sounds good that way
. The two men flanked her, one on either side, smiling at him, at the other diners at their tables respectfully enduring this interruption. They formed a strange sort of family portrait.

He pulled forty euros from his wallet and tucked the bills under his water glass, then stood. Her eyes met his—they simply acknowledged him. For three days he'd been longing to say to her,
If you're so damned psychic, what the hell are we doing in Italy at all?
Then he walked away.

At the statue of Giordano Bruno in the middle of the square, he observed a group of young people standing around smoking and laughing and wondered if they understood that they were at a place of execution, that the man on the platform above them had been burned alive there. He was just getting ready to ask one of them for a cigarette—he was doing his best to figure out how he might say this in Italian—when, like birds, they moved as a group, suddenly, all in one direction. He watched them go. They were headed back in the direction from which he'd come, and looking that way, he realized that a little audience had begun to form near Desire and the two musicians. She was singing something else now, and although he'd put quite a bit of distance between them, her voice carried enough that it was audible over the din of the crowded square. The song was Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." It was one they'd practiced in preparation for Black Days, the two of them sitting for hours going over it and over it in the living room of her apartment in Marietta that always smelled of fried fish and potpourri. That living room, too, was the first place they'd been naked together, with just the blue-gray light from the parking lot outside filtering through the Venetian blinds to see by, her small Christmas tree still set up alongside the television. And it was where she'd finally told him her real name, Janice, whispered it tentatively in his ear like a password, before they'd put their clothes back on and stepped out into the cold, early morning to see about getting something to eat.