Louisa Meets Bear (17 page)

“Do you work in Houston?” Richard asks Babs.

“Used to.” Babs looks coyly at Cubby. “Till Cubby gave me a better offer.”

“Yup. When I saw Baby carting around those airline trays, I thought, what a
waste
of talent. I offered her a job as my personal assistant—double your salary, I said, but you got to start immediately.”

“I said, Cubby, I don't even have a change of clothes with me, but Cubby, he said he'd buy me all the clothes I need for the job when we got to Rome.” Babs pats her peach sweater with her matching fingertips. “He bought me these clothes this morning!”

Richard starts to fit the pieces together: Babs, the shopping trip, the missed flight earlier today.

When the waiter uncorks the bottle of champagne, Cubby cheers and Babs giggles. Cubby finishes his glass in two gulps. His skin looks tight and pink across the expanse of his forehead, and his hairline, Richard notices, has crept back even farther since their last meeting. Cubby pours himself a second glass, and Richard considers saying,
How about slowing down?
but it seems pointless—twenty years too late. If Lena were here, he imagines, Cubby would be under better control. Richard can remember occasions when Cubby jumped up on a table or, once, wrapped a woman's bra around his face as mock sunglasses, only to drop the antic after being met by Lena's cool, questioning gaze.

The old woman who'd greeted them at the door brings the tagliatelle. Richard steals a glance at Brianna, who stares into her plate. She eats quickly, barely pausing between forkfuls of the creamy white noodles. Richard takes a forkful himself, but his throat feels tight. The food reverberates in his chest and for a moment he fears he will get sick. He pushes back his chair and takes a long drink of water. Cubby eats with his left arm over Babs's shoulder. His fingertips brush the side of her breast.

“Mmmm,” Babs says. “What do you call this? It's so yummy.”

When the veal arrives, Cubby orders a second bottle of champagne. Brianna again eats quickly, hardly looking up. Richard moves to put an arm around his daughter, but then pulls back his hand, appalled at the image of Cubby and himself, both of them with their paunches hanging over their belts and their arms draped around a girl.

Cubby pours Babs another glass of the champagne. Richard covers the top of Brianna's glass with his hand. Last night, he and Lena had told Brianna that she could have half a glass of wine with dinner. Brianna eagerly drank the two ounces and then pleaded for more. Lena had said absolutely not but then let Brianna take little sips from her glass. Tonight, Brianna has not even tasted the champagne.

Babs is talking about the hotel in Rome. “The bathtub was the size of a swimming pool.”

“Babs here
loves
taking a bath.”

“It was so deep, you had to climb up these steps to get in!” Babs leans toward Brianna, her breasts an avalanche approaching, then touches Brianna's arm, as though her comment were something another female would naturally understand. Brianna startles, a forkful of veal in her hand.

It flashes through Richard's mind that he is exposing his daughter to something obscene. He shakes his head slightly back and forth to see if this makes sense. With Richard's articles, Guy had been fond of saying, if you can't figure something out, try to step outside and look at it as though you were a stranger. Richard looks around the room. No one seems to be paying any attention to them. He wishes Lena were here so he could ask her. Only, he realizes, if Lena were here, she and Brianna would be sharing their food and softly talking together and everything would be different.

Brianna lowers her fork, leaving the veal speared on the end. She picks up her purse. “Excuse me,” she says.

Richard watches Brianna make her way across the dining room. Like Lena, she walks with her head absolutely still.

“Yup,” Cubby says. “We were damn lucky. Snagged what they call the Royal Suite. An emirate from one of those Arab countries canceled at the last minute. There was a butler came with the suite and a private workout room.”

“Cubby bought me a camera so I could take pictures to show my mother. Me, sleeping in the
same
bed where a queen slept! Honey, which queen was it that butler said had just been there?”

“The Queen of Sweden. Only I bet she didn't look half as good as you in that bathtub with bubbles up to your ears.”

It occurs to Richard that Cubby and Babs are telling each other, not him, about their escapades of the past day—making a history out of their forty-eight hours together. When the waiter comes to clear the table, Richard glances at his watch and puts his hand over Brianna's plate to indicate to leave it. It seems to him that Brianna has been gone a long time, but then Lena always complains that the men's bathroom is invariably empty while women stand endlessly in line.

The food no longer under his nose, Richard feels his stomach relax. He takes a few sips of the champagne. The waiter returns to take their dessert orders, and Richard orders three coffees, a tisane for Brianna, and two servings of a fruit tart for the four of them to share. Again, he looks at his watch. Ten minutes have passed since he last looked. Could Brianna be sick?

“Excuse me.” He heads out of the dining room the way he watched Brianna do, surprised at how unsteady he feels on his feet. The old woman—the word
crone
comes guiltily to mind—who'd brought the tagliatelle is back standing guard by the door. He keeps his eyes on the tiled floor and turns the corner.

At the end of the dark hall are two closed doors,
SIGNORE
and
SIGNORI
, each with a shadow portrait: a woman holding a parasol, a man in a top hat. Beads of sweat form at Richard's hairline. He presses his ear to the door marked
SIGNORE.
But what if she—the crone—rounds the corner? Quickly, he steps back.

Richard knocks on the door with the picture of the man in the top hat. When there's no answer, he turns the handle and enters. He locks the door and stands looking at his reflection in the mirror, his sandy-colored hair that remains his last vestige of youth, his eyes now hooded with age. Like his father, he'd lost his looks early. As a little girl, Brianna would pat Richard's stomach, saying, “My Daddy, my Daddy,” over and over, as though her daddy were somewhere inside.

For a moment Richard stands lost in his memories of Brianna as a child. Then a wave of anxiety again rushes over him.
Jesus, where is she
? Feeling a pressure in his bladder, he unzips his pants and urinates: a hard, odorous stream. Afterward, he splashes water over his face and dries his hands and cheeks with a wad of toilet paper. Maybe the
SIGNORE
door will be open when he comes out.

But it's not. Richard knocks. “Brianna,” he says, first quietly, and then, as he repeats his daughter's name, louder and with greater insistence. “Brianna, pet, are you in there?”

Richard waits. He knocks again.
“Persona?”
he asks. The corridor is silent. Now Richard is certain that the crone is watching him. He looks over his shoulder, expecting to find her, arms folded, at the end of the hall.

No one.

He turns the door handle.

No one.

Richard rushes down the corridor. The crone is at the door. Seeing Richard, she raises her hand to her throat. Instinctively, Richard checks his fly.

He can't remember how to say
daughter
in Italian.
“Mia bambina?”

The woman looks confused. She rubs her hands on her apron. Then she waves them up and down by her face. Long hair. Brianna's long hair.

“
Si
,” Richard pants.

The woman points outside. She darts her hand in and out from her chest.

“Quanto tempo?”

The woman shrugs her shoulders. She looks at the clock on the wall.
“Mezz'ora fa.”

Richard clenches his fists to keep from grabbing her. He has the impulse to shake her or, even worse, sink to his knees and begin to cry.

“Capisce?”

Richard shakes his head no.

She moves to the clock and places a knobby finger on the face. It's nearly half past nine. She sweeps her finger back to the nine.
“Alle nove.”

Richard holds up nine fingers.

“Si, si.”

*   *   *

Richard runs—past an old man walking a dog, past a crowd of women with covered heads coming out of Santa Maria Formosa, past groupings of tourists, laughing and waving guidebooks and cameras. His breathing has shifted from panting to something heavier and rougher. Once, he stops to pull out his map, but his fingers feel thick and rubbery and he gives up before he has it half unfolded.

It had seemed too complicated to explain to Cubby and Babs that Brianna had left. “Her stomach,” Richard said. “I'm going to take her back to the hotel.” Richard pulled out his wallet, but Cubby pushed away his hand, saying, “Don't be a
moron
,” and then Babs cooed, “Poor thing, tell her to drink a ginger ale, that's what my mother always says, nothing a ginger ale won't help.”

As he runs, Richard tries to put out of mind the thought that he's made a wrong turn. Again he stops to look at his map; this time he gets the map unfolded before realizing that it's useless since he doesn't know the name of the street he's on.

When he finally reaches the Grand Canal, it's at a vaporetto stop north of the Rialto Bridge. He looks at his watch. It's been nearly an hour since Brianna left the table; if she'd retraced their steps and had not herself got lost, she'd be back at the hotel by now. He wonders if he should call Lena. If she's not there, though, Lena will panic. Then what? Would they call the police so soon?

Richard studies the map on the wall of the vaporetto station. Their hotel is five stops to the south. Farther south, after Santa Maria della Salute, the vaporetto heads out to Lido. Brianna loves riding on the vaporetto. If she were to ride to the end of the line, she could be stuck on Lido for the night with no return boat until morning.

When the vaporetto comes, Richard walks out to the front deck. He zips his jacket. The boat is nearly empty and in the quiet he can hear the rumble of the engine and, in the distance, the lapping sounds of the water on the steps of the palaces. Many of the palaces are lit, the colors pale, aglow with yellow light, the rich tones of the striped mooring poles buried under the darkness of night. For a moment Richard has the terrible thought that Brianna has left them for good—that just as she came to them out of nowhere, she has now disappeared. Returned to her people, like a princess in an ancient fairy tale.

Once, a few years back, Richard had a sexual dream about Brianna. Despite all attempts to erase the dream from his mind, he still vividly remembers both the day before the dream and the dream itself. He had been changing his clothes before dinner when Lena came upstairs. “It
happened
,” she whispered. “Brianna got her period.” Richard felt a moment of confusion, uncertain if he should be concerned or pleased. He looked to Lena for guidance; she seemed thrilled and almost dewy-eyed. “Don't say anything to her. She told me I could tell you, but she doesn't want you to talk about it with her.”

At dinner, he had felt shy with Brianna, who avoided his eyes. Lena had taken special efforts with the dinner. Classical music played in the background and an uneasy quiet fell over the three of them as they sat in the dining room (usually they ate in the kitchen) eating broiled lamb chops and lemon rice. Afterward, Richard volunteered to do the dishes. Brianna and Lena disappeared upstairs. Once, Richard turned off the water and listened. There were muffled sounds, something that sounded like laughter.

That night, Richard dreamt that Brianna came into his bedroom. In the dream, he woke as she was pulling her nightgown over her head, her small breasts with their dark nipples pointed up as her arms reached over her head. In the dream, he was surprised to see that she had a full triangle of hair between her legs. She pulled the covers off of him, leaned between his legs, and began sucking on his penis. He woke feeling dirty and queasy. It was the first wet dream he had had since college. For weeks, the dream flashed into his head: while shaving, while driving, once while talking with his secretary at work.

Richard watches the bow cut into the water and the navy ripples dancing out toward the edges of the canal. In the dream, as Brianna walked naked toward him, she said, “It's okay, you're not really my daddy.” He rubs his eyes to erase the phantom Brianna, but she darts into his mind's eye. She tosses back her hair and laughs; Babs's guttural laugh echoes in the canyon of his head.

Richard presses his thumbs into his temples. The dream Brianna pulls back her shoulders, and her brown nipples float through the air. His stomach clenches, and then begins to churn, up and down with the motion of the boat. He leans over the guardrail and heaves tagliatelle with prosciutto and veal with polenta into the Venetian night.

*   *   *

Richard fumbles in his jacket pocket for the key, and then unlocks the hotel door. Lena is lying in the same spot as three hours before, a half-eaten plastic cup of strawberry gelato in her hand. On the bedside table to her left, the Uffizi catalogue is closed. To Lena's right, Brianna lies curled on her side. The crown of Brianna's head and the tips of her knees rest against Lena's torso and thigh.

Lena points at Brianna and places a forefinger against her lips. She holds the cup of strawberry gelato out toward Richard. “
Fragola
,” she whispers. Richard takes the melting ice cream from her. His mouth tastes foul from vomit and he feels light-headed and terribly thirsty. Lena reaches toward the end of the bed where a gray blanket is folded at her feet. She unfolds the blanket and spreads it over Brianna and herself. Then she turns out the bedside lamp.