Elixir (12 page)

She walks onto the rooftop, Sean behind, a drained pool in front of them, nobody else up there. “They close it after summer,” she says. “They don’t lock it though. No one is ever up here in the fall. You can have the whole thing to yourself.”

He stares at the eight-foot-deep concrete crater, then at a cabana next to it, windows boarded, dust in every crevice. There are no lounge chairs or towel stacks or anything else typical of a hotel pool. He feels there’s a sadness to the place as if it were lost or forgotten, or both.

She leans over the railing along the edge, checking out the amazing view of the city. He stops a few feet to her side, gazing at the Colosseum in the distance. They take in the Roman skyline through the glare for a while. He puts on his sunglasses. She doesn’t put on hers.

Squinting, she peers through the shine, nowhere in particular. She looks like she’s thinking about something. A lot of things. He wonders how often she comes up here alone and does what she’s doing now. About two minutes go by, neither talking. Then in a flat tone she says, “I like Rome.”

“Yeah. So do I.” He leans against the wall, playing with the zipper on his leather jacket, a hint of nervousness in his hand. “Did you always live here?”

“We’re from Switzerland. We moved a few years ago. For my dad’s job. You know how it goes.” Hands on the banister, she sways forward, then back. “What about you?”

“Nah. States originally.”

“I had a feeling.” Her back to him, she saunters across the deck and skips onto the diving board. She rubs the sole of her leopard-print sneaker against the grainy plastic coating on the end. She jumps a few inches and lands. “So what do you do other than vandalize houses?” she asks, vibrating with the board under her feet.

He scratches his left calf with his right boot toe. Trying to be funny, he says, “Vandalize office buildings.”

“Makes sense I guess.” She doesn’t laugh at his attempted joke. She hops again, her attention on the pit as the board pulsates.

He decides to change his approach and get a bit more serious, hoping it’ll open her up. “Art’s my thing. Especially the graffiti stuff. Me and my buddy, the guy from the other night, we tag all over town. I do some canvases too and sell them at a few of the local galleries.”

“Which one are you anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Rex Cassidy or the Moondance Kid?”

He thinks for a moment. “To be honest with you, neither. Or, I mean, both. We never really talked about it. Or picked. We just wanted to come up with a cool name for the two of us. Like a duo.” He rubs the back of his neck. “It’s kind of cheesy I guess. People remember it though.”

“You should be the Moondance Kid. I like that one better. I picture a dude in really big sneakers dancing on top of the moon with headphones on.”

He chuckles. “Okay.” He can’t quite get a read on her.

She sweeps her vision over the city, the left of her body in sun, the right a shadow. “Hey, wanna bounce me?” she asks, turning to him.

“What do you mean?”

Holding out her hands, she motions him toward her with flicks of both ring fingers. “Here. Come up.” He pushes off the wall, strides across the terrace, and steps on the board. She spins, the backs of her heels hanging off the front, then grabs his wrists and pulls him in. Being so close to her, he feels his heart speed up. “Okay. Do a really big jump and it’ll shoot me in the air. It’s fun.”

Observing the ominous hole, he asks, “What if you slip?”

“Just catch me.”

He finds it somewhat flattering she would trust him with such a thing. “You ever do this before?”

“In a regular pool. With water. Me and my friends used to do it in Zurich.”

He takes another peek at the pit and says, more to himself than her, “I don’t know.”

“I won’t fall. I promise.”

“You’re crazy.” He scratches his head. “Fine.” He adjusts his jacket collar, not sure why, maybe to give himself another couple moments before he has to do this. He meets her eyes. There’s that expression of hers again from the lobby, part mischief, part cheer. He bends his knees, a rush of adrenaline pumping through him. He leaps and lands, board dipping about a foot, then launching her in the air. Arms in front of him, he follows her with his stare, her thin legs kicking in the sky. As she comes down, her sneaker bottoms scrape against the board and she tilts to the right. He clutches her. He can feel her heartbeat, just as fast as his.

She snickers against his chest as they teeter. “Nice. I was up there.” She stands straight, pinches the corner of his sunglasses, and tilts them down. “What’s your favorite band?”

“Smashing Pumpkins. What about you?”

“The Cure.”

“Cool. I like them too.” With a slight smile, she looks into his face.

“You ever go to the Happy Dragon?” she asks, tapping her fingers on her tight stomach as if she was playing a bongo drum.

“Happy what? No.”

“Best karaoke bar in Rome. In Italy.” She throws her arms up and says, “The world.”

Chuckling, he rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not any good at singing.”

“I’m terrible. It’s fun as hell though. Let’s go. We’re going.”

Glancing at her, he thinks about all the times he visualized her since the other night. She almost doesn’t seem real to him, more like a collection of thoughts plucked from his brain and played back to him on a screen. But he can smell her perfume and notice how she narrows her eyelids a bit when the wind blows and see the way the shoelaces of her leopard-print sneakers flop as she steps. She is real. And he’s glad he’s real to her.

And he wants to hug her and tell her a joke she thinks is funny and watch a good movie with her and watch a bad movie with her and know what scares her and protect her from all those things and laugh about something silly she does in front of him and laugh about something silly he does in front of her and sit by a fire somewhere at night with her and eat something delicious with her and kiss her.

But he doesn’t speak any of this. He just puts his hands in his pockets, looks at her with a grin, and says, “Sure, let’s do it.”

In ten minutes or so Sean swings a leg over his bike, knocks the kickstand back with his boot, and starts the engine. Natasha, a couple feet away, fastens the helmet strap under her chin. Gripping his forearm, she hops on the seat behind him.

“You good?” he asks.

“Good.”

“Just kind of hold onto me.”

She squeezes his leather jacket at the armpits. “Like this?”

He laughs. “No. Like around me. Like make a circle.” She inches closer, wrapping her arms around him, interlocking her fingers on top of his chest. “Yeah. You got it.” The engine roars. Eight or nine people in front of the hotel stare. The wheels spin and the bike accelerates across the pavement.

He drives down the street onto a main road, the Colosseum and other ancient landmarks zipping by in their periphery. “You doing okay?” he asks, his voice fighting the whip of the air.

“What?”

“You doing okay back there?” he asks, louder.

“Yeah. First time on one.”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Very funny.”

They cruise for about twenty minutes. Bearing right at an intersection, he heads into a dumpy neighborhood with pieces of litter scattered on the road. He parks on the side of the street in front of a fortune-teller storefront with colored wooden beads in the window. The engine quiets. He jumps off, then helps her down. He unhooks the strap under her chin, slides the helmet off, and hangs it. “What did you think?” he asks, running a hand through his hair, putting it back in place from the windy ride.

She gives him a thumbs-up, then points off in the distance and says, “It’s up there.” Grinning, she claps her hands a few times and starts walking. He steps to her side. A brisk wind cuts through the square, blowing discarded paper plates and soda cans across the pavement in front of them. She folds her arms, trying to stay warm against the passing chill. “How long have you had the bike?”

“Just a few months. Got it when I turned eighteen.”

“Why’d you get one?”

He doesn’t speak for a bit. “You ever see the movie
Easy Rider
? With Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.”

“Jack Nicholson’s in it too, right?” He nods. “Yup. Saw it.”

“About four years ago I really got into that movie. Right around the time I moved here. Just something about them not being attached to anything. You know? Like having no baggage I guess. I thought it was cool. I always said to myself I’d get a bike when I turned eighteen. And I did.”

“Why’d you move here anyway?” she asks, arms still crossed.

Avoiding the question, he motions toward an intersection and asks, “Which way?”

“Left.” They walk another block, sun sinking above them in the late-November sky, everything around touched by an auburn glow. “There,” she says, pointing at the Happy Dragon sign, bright red letters with a burnt-out “O.” They approach the karaoke bar, a drycleaner to the left, a pawnshop to the right.

As she opens the door, he scopes the graphic in the front window, a green cartoon dragon in sunglasses drinking a martini and smoking a cigarette at a silver microphone. They enter, stepping on the stained purple carpet. He glances at the small circular stage, a middle-aged woman singing an off-key version of Blondie’s “Atomic,” ten people or so watching from little square tables. He turns to Natasha and says in a playful way, “You’re not getting me up on that stage.”

“We’ll see about that.” She winks.

“Yes, we will see about that.” He spots the bar. “I’m grabbing a beer. Want one?”

“Sure.”

As she sways to the Blondie song, he walks to the bar. Four Asian tourists, three men and a woman in their fifties, sit there on stools. He signals to the bartender, a sleepy-looking twenty-something with a crooked bow tie, and says, “Two Peronis.” In a minute or so the bartender sets two bottles in front of him.

As Sean takes some bills from his wallet, Natasha strolls back to him with a skip in her step, still bobbing her head to the music. Glancing across the bar, she notices a Polaroid camera hanging around the neck of the Asian woman and says, “Cool camera.”

“Thanks,” the lady says. The men next to her lean over and ogle Natasha.

“My birthday,” one of the guys says to her in slow English. “We’re taking a lot of pictures. We came from Korea. To celebrate.” He puts his hands on the woman’s shoulders and pats twice. “My wife.”

“You have a very beautiful wife,” Natasha says. He bows his head in gratitude. “Happy birthday. You picked the right place.”

“My brothers,” he says, pointing at the two men next to him, one in a blue suit, the other a gray one. They wave, goofy smiles on both of them, their faces a tad sweaty from all the booze they’ve been drinking.

“I’m Natasha.” She points at Sean with her thumb. “That’s James.”

Handing Natasha a beer, Sean looks at them with a grin and says, “Hey.”

Natasha takes a sip, then puts her hand on Sean’s right shoulder. “He’s never done karaoke before. Can you believe that?”

“Never?” the husband asks. Peroni to his lips, Sean shakes his head. The man nods at the beer bottle. “Just have plenty of those. You’ll love it.”

“With the kind of voice I got, everyone in here needs to have just as many to be able to bear it.”

The tourists chuckle. The husband leans to his wife and says something to her in Korean. She nods. He turns to Sean and Natasha and says, “We reserved a private singing room for my birthday. Upstairs. Will be ready in a few minutes. You two should come.”

Looking at Sean, Natasha smirks, a this-can-be-fun expression on her. He shrugs. “Sure,” she says to the man, eager.

About fifteen minutes later the sleepy-looking bartender escorts the six of them into a small room with metal walls, a disco ball rotating on the ceiling, purple and blue light spots all over. “This is so cool,” Natasha says, squeezing Sean’s forearm.

The brother in the blue suit beelines to a shiny table in the center, grabbing a white binder labeled “Songs.” He opens it and flips through. “Not bad,” he says, pointing at a couple songs on the page, getting motivated. “Oh yeah.”

“All right,” the bartender says in English, a strong Italian accent making it hard to understand him. “It’s all yours for two hours. Pick your songs in the binder.” He motions toward a monitor on the wall, a digital dragon logo bouncing around on it. “Type in the song code on the pad next to the screen, the music starts and the lyrics show up. Pretty basic. I’ll come check on you every now and then.” Looking at his reflection in the screen, he adjusts his bow tie. “Another round of beers before I go down?”

“And a round of shots,” the brother in gray says with zeal. “We’ve got a birthday to celebrate.” He bangs his hands together and circles his index finger above his head. “Vodka for the room.”

“Got it,” the bartender says, still perfecting his bow tie. “I’ll be back up in a bit.” He walks out, closing the door behind him, sealing the room from any outside noise.

Ten minutes or so later the brother in blue is standing next to the monitor singing, microphone in hand, tie off, Bruce Springsteen’s “Rosalita” blasting from the speakers. Everyone else, in a booth across, claps along to the music, six empty shot glasses scattered on the table. “And my tires were slashed and I almost crashed, but the Lord had mercy,” he sings. “And my machine she’s a dud, all stuck in the mud, somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. Hold on tight, stay up all night, ‘cause Rosie I’m comin’ on strong.”

A few minutes later the other brother has the microphone, belting out “Honky Cat” by Elton John. “It’s like trying to find gold in a silver mine,” he sings. He drops to a knee. “It’s like trying to drink whisky, ohhhhhhh, from a bottle of wiiiine.”

Sean glances at Natasha three cushions down in the booth, a big smile on her, the husband and wife listening to her tell a story, the disco-ball lights running across her face. He’s never seen anyone with such a magnetic appeal, all the tourists gravitating toward her, Natasha not even trying to impress them.

In a couple minutes the bartender walks through the door balancing a tray of six more vodka shots. Everyone cheers as he sets them on the table. “To new friends,” the husband says, grabbing and raising his drink. They all touch glasses and put back the shots. Leaning over the table, Natasha grabs the Polaroid camera, resting on the booth. Cradling it in her arms like a baby, she jumps on Sean’s lap.