Girl in the Moonlight (24 page)

A few minutes later, she appeared. She had changed out of her black dress and was now wearing a beach cover-up and carrying a towel. “Here,” she said. “Here’s an old swimsuit of Cosmo’s. It might just fit you. After you change, let’s go for a swim. I need to get out of the house. I’ll meet you on the beach.”

When I joined her, she had spread out two towels and was lying on her back on one. I sat down on the other. The folding chairs that had been set out for the ceremony had been removed. The beach was no longer a grave site. The water rolled gently up and back, eternal and impervious. The only indications of what had just happened here were faint footprints in the sand.

“Let’s get a little sun first and then go in,” she said. It was hot, and already her skin was glistening. She was wearing a bikini, her body toned and brown. It was impossible not to stare at her. She was presenting herself, like a feast, a gift. I would have had
to be a rock to not be aroused. My eyes traveled over her breasts, where little beads of perspiration had formed in her cleavage, down to the navel I had kissed so many times and to the swell of her mons. She knew I was watching and took pleasure in it, a coy smile curving on her lips.

“Thank you for staying,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “I think I’d go crazy if I was alone right now. Mare has Randall, Carmen has Jonathan, and Cosmo never needs anyone. Normally, it would be Lio and me. He was always the one I turned to first. But now . . .” She sighed and sat up. “Fuck.”

There was nothing for me to say. She already knew. I just reached out my hand to her, and she took it. “Wylie, you’re always there for me when I need you. Why are you so good to me?”

“You know why.”

She let go of my hand and nodded. “Let’s go for a swim,” she said, grinding her cigarette out in the sand and standing up. “Race you!” She started sprinting down the short strip of sand to the water. I jumped up and ran after her, but she had too much of a head start. We both splashed through the shallows and dove in, the water cool and marvelous.

“Here we are again,” she said, coming up from the water, clearing her wet hair from her face. “That first night? The night of Gog’s party? Remember?”

“I could never forget,” I answered.

“That’s good. Would you believe me if I told you I never forgot either?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I never really seem to know what you think about anything.”

“We were both so young. You were so sweet back then. Cute too. What a lovely body. We had fun, didn’t we?”

“Until you left.”

She shook her head. “Yes, I suppose I had that coming.” Then, “That was stupid of me. I was wrong.”

“And Paris? And all the other times? Were you wrong then too?”

“Shit, Wylie. Don’t you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“I don’t know. What?” She was close now, impossible to ignore. I was no more invulnerable to her than when I was a boy. Like Ulysses, I wished I could have had wax in my ears too, been tied to the mast.

“Well, when you figure it out, you let me know, okay?” she said and then dove into the water, swimming with fine strokes out to the old floating raft. I followed. She was already up on the raft when I reached it, her legs dangling in the water.

“So how’s your friend? The pretty blonde.”

“Kate? She’s good.”

“Kate. That’s right. I couldn’t remember her name. She made a big impression on Cosmo.”

“She’s a fan of his music.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why wouldn’t you? She’s lovely.”

I resented Cesca talking about Kate like that. I also felt guilty, and she knew it, daring me to say something, bring it out in the open. If anyone else in the world had asked me that question, I would have told them yes. But Cesca wasn’t anyone else in the world. As always, she brought my deepest desires to the surface, kicking over my carefully constructed fictions and half beliefs as if they were so many sand castles.

“Well, if you don’t know . . .” she continued.

“I don’t know. You’re talking about marriage. That’s a big step.”

“I know it is. I made the step, remember? And, boy, did I step in it.” She laughed.

“Why did you marry Gavin?”

“Why? I don’t know. I suppose I thought it seemed like the
right thing to do at the time. So much of life is like that, isn’t it? Doing something and then regretting it later. I liked the idea of getting married. And he was successful, mature, handsome. On paper it looked perfect. In reality it was something else.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I just couldn’t make it work. In a way he was too perfect. I always felt as though I wasn’t good enough. Not smart enough. Not successful. He put me on the mantel like a little statue and just expected me to look decorative. That’s what he wanted from me. I had other ideas.”

“I’m sorry.”

“God, don’t be. I’m not. I felt trapped. Useless. Couldn’t really do what I wanted to do. It was always his friends or his plans. I couldn’t even decorate my house because it was already decorated, and he didn’t see the point in doing it over again. One day I just woke up and realized that if I stayed married to him for one minute longer, I’d go completely insane.”

“How did he take it?”

“Surprisingly well. He wasn’t what you’d call a passionate man. Everything was weighed. Analyzed like a business deal. Risk versus reward. When he realized it made more sense to cut his losses, he did.”

“Do you think you’ll ever get married again?”

“Why? Are you proposing again?” She smiled, daring me.

“No, what I meant was . . .”

“Oh, don’t get your panties in a knot, Wylie. I know what you meant. Just having a little fun with you, that’s all. Anyway, we should be getting back. Mare’s expecting us for drinks at seven.”

She stood up and dove into the water, clean as a knife. Once again, I followed her. On the beach, she picked up her towel and started drying her hair, before wrapping the towel around her torso. I remember watching her. Even when she was performing
the most simple acts, it was impossible not to be struck by her beauty. The angle of a knee, the muscles in her arm, the shape of her toes. Like that of a great athlete, her grace was inborn. We walked back to the Playhouse, passing Aurelio’s studio.

“Do you mind if we look inside?” I asked. “It would mean a lot to me.”

“Sure. I’ve been in a few times.”

“Was it strange?”

“No. It felt quite natural. It looks just the same. I still feel Aurelio there. His presence is so strong even though he hasn’t been there in months. Poor Lio. Oh shit.” She stopped talking and started to cry. I wrapped my arms around her, comforting her. Feeling her skin cool from the water, her wet hair, her closeness. I felt myself becoming aroused and shifted my hips so they weren’t touching her. When she had calmed down and her breathing returned to normal, I let go.

“Oh God. Sorry,” she said, wiping tears from her face. “It just hit me again that he’s gone.”

“We don’t have to go to the studio, if you don’t want.”

“No, no. It’s fine. I’d like to go.”

The studio was dark, and, despite the still strong smell of turpentine and oil paint, it felt musty, like the room of a child away at college. Everything was left just so, waiting for the return. The brushes had been cleaned. The palettes scraped. I looked around at the sketches and photographs pinned to the walls, recognizing some from years ago, taking in more recent ones. The splotches of dried paint on the cement floor. The racks of canvases, some still primed and waiting for paint that would now never come. I searched through the older paintings. I found the one he did of me from years before.

“God, I look so young.”

“Mmm, you were. Almost too pretty for a boy.”

“What about now?”

“You’ve lost your prettiness. Now you look just the way you should look.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should.”

I then found the early portrait of Cesca that had so transfixed me the first time I had been here. It was perfect. The slightly crooked smile. The intelligence and fire in her eyes. It was all there. “You look just the same.”

“Liar.”

“I used to stare at this whenever Lio wasn’t looking.”

“You should see the nude he painted of me in Barcelona.”

“I did.”

“Oh, you did, did you? And? What did you think?”

I remembered when he had shown it to me. The pride in his work. For my part, admiration infused with acute embarrassment and lust. “It was miraculous.”

“It was quite a painting, wasn’t it? Did you get all horny when you saw it? I bet you did.”

“I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of an answer.” I smiled. “Whatever happened to it?”

“He gave it to me.”

“He did? Where is it?”

“It’s a secret. A girl has to be careful about who sees a painting like that,” she said with a smile.

I nodded and looked around the room. “So, what are you going to do with all of his other paintings?”

“That’s something we’ve been talking about for months. Mare and I want to have a show, but Lulu’s not sure what she wants to do.”

“Lulu? Why does Lulu get a vote?”

“Oh, you probably didn’t know. Lio married Lulu. He left her everything. Paintings, money, the apartment in Barcelona.”

“Wow. Well, good. I suppose.”

“Yes, she was incredible to him. I’ve never seen such devotion.”

“When did they get married?”

“Two weeks ago. There was a little ceremony in his bedroom. He could barely talk. But he had asked her. He wanted to do something for her. To repay her for her love. He was like that.”

“Were you there?”

“Yes,” she laughed. “We all were. He was such a dear man. He was so weak, but he wanted to look special for his wedding day. There was an old top hat that had belonged to Gog and a white silk scarf, and he insisted on wearing those things in bed. Lulu wore a little white dress. We filled the room with flowers. Cosmo played the wedding march. A friend of Mare’s who is a judge officiated.”

“Where did Lio meet her?” I asked.

“In Barcelona. She’s Danish. He saw her panhandling on the street. She had been backpacking around Europe for several months and had run out of money. There had been a guy, but they’d split up at some point. Lio was afraid she might soon start selling herself, so he invited her for lunch. The next thing he knew she had moved in.”

“Was he already sick by that time?”

“Yes, I think so, but he didn’t know it. You can only imagine how Lio felt about going to the doctor.” She smiled. “He thought everything could be cured with tea and sleep.”

“Could they have saved him?”

She sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe. In a few years, they might find a cure. If he had lived that long. I’ve read a lot of articles about AIDS, talked to Carmen. She knows a lot about it. She’s specializing in internal medicine at St. Vincent’s now. There’s so much about the disease they don’t know and so many more people who don’t want to know.”

“So what is Lulu going to do with Lio’s paintings?”

“I don’t know that either. We brought it up with her after he died. Cosmo said we ought to organize a global tour. Hang them in hospitals in major world capitals. He’d go and play. He could get his manager to arrange the whole thing, but Lulu said no.”

“Why?”

“She said she didn’t want to lose any more of him. Each one of the paintings was precious to her, and she couldn’t bear to part with them.”

“That sounds a little nuts to me.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I think she’s grieving right now. Let’s see how she feels about it in a couple of months. Come on, let’s go back to the Playhouse, or we’ll be late.”

There was an outdoor shower, where she stopped and turned on the water. She undid the back of her bikini top to remove the salt and stood with her back to me. I couldn’t help but stare at the sides of her uncovered breasts, which were as brown as the rest of her. Then she washed the sand from her feet. “Your turn,” she said, taking the towel and wrapping it around her head, leaving her naked from the waist up. The casualness of it all annihilated me. I had never wanted her more.

She walked by me saying, “After you’ve finished, wait for me downstairs, and we’ll walk over together, okay?”

There was no one else in the big house when we walked in half an hour later. Cesca walked up to the bar, put ice into two glasses, and filled each with vodka. “Here you go,” she said.

“I have to drive.”

“One won’t hurt you.”

Slowly, the rest of the family wandered in. Roger and Diana first. Carmen and Jonathan. Even Ugo and his new wife. Roger’s mood had improved, and he began telling funny stories. He told one about my father and him when they were in college. “One night we were in a bar in the South End, and there was
this fabulous girl. Redhead. Great tits. Both of us wanted her, and neither of us was going to give the other guy a crack at her. There was dancing. So each of us danced with her. While we were dancing, she whispered in my ear that she liked me better than your father. Naturally, I wasn’t surprised to hear that. Later I drove her home in my car. I was at the wheel. She was in the middle. Mitch on the other side. The interiors of cars back then weren’t as brightly lit as they are today. At one point I felt her hand snake over to my crotch, unzip my zipper, and begin giving me a hand job! Of course, I wasn’t going to say anything. I didn’t want to make your father feel bad. She finished before we got to her place, somewhere out in Watertown, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, as you can imagine. She gave us each a good night kiss, and as we were driving off your father turned to me and said, ‘See, Roger? I knew she liked me better. She just gave me a hand job.’” Everyone roared.

Dinner was surprisingly lively. It was a simple meal, leftovers from earlier that day. A dozen wine bottles. A green salad. Served buffet style on the sideboard. Candles were lit on the long dining table. Kitty welcomed me warmly. It was the first time I had spoken to her all day. “I am so glad you could come,” she told me. Roger and Cosmo took turns entertaining the crowd, telling uproarious stories, each more outrageous than the last. The wine flowed. Cesca and Carmen joined in. Many of the stories had to do with Aurelio. About the time he accidentally lit himself on fire, or when he had dared Cesca and Carmen to spend a night alone in a graveyard, and how he had pretended to be a ghost but had tripped and fallen accidentally into a hornet’s nest. Even Lulu was weeping with laughter.