The Unforgiving Minute (26 page)

shaved and put on a suit, a shirt and a tie. I was the

quintessential Roman gentleman with nowhere to go.

I walked into the hotel dining room with my copy of the

Tribune and sat at a table overlooking a beautiful garden. I

kept my eye peeled for perhaps a woman alone or a group of women.

I felt like a teenager who needed a date for New Year’s Eve. I

ordered a continental breakfast even though I wasn’t in the least

bit hungry. After about fifteen minutes, I saw an elegant—

looking woman being seated at a table quite close to mine. She

was tall, blonde, and wore a dark green sweater, brown tweed

skirt and boots. I tried to catch her eye several times but she

either accidentally or purposely avoided my glances. Finally, I

walked over to her table and in my most charming manner, bowed

slightly from the waist and said, “Bongiorno, parla Inglese?”

She looked up at me imperiously and said, “I should think

so, being that I am English.”

“Oh,” I said. “Fortunately, since I’m an American, it’s

my best language. May I sit down?”

“Of course,” she said. I couldn’t believe my luck, that

an elegant lady such as this should be available. My phenomenal

luck with women was continuing.

I introduced myself and started a conversation. She

introduced herself as Maude Blaney, an English newspaperwoman

covering a convention of Italian automobile manufacturers. She

explained to me that she was attending a gala New Year’s Eve

party which was being thrown by the manufacturer’s group. I

asked if I could escort her, but she was strangely elusive. She

did, however, invite me to attend this gala, black-tie affair.

She instructed me to show up in formal attire and volunteered to

leave my name at the door. I was elated that New Year’s Eve

would not be a zero for me. My day was made. My headache

disappeared miraculously. We exchanged pleasantries and parted.

I immediately went back to my room and slept until noon.

After arising and taking a second hot shower, I went off

in search of formal attire.

I visited a high-fashion men’s shop on the Via Veneto and

purchased a tuxedo, cummerbund, tie and formal shirt. I paid

extra to have them altered within hours and arranged to pick them

up at five o’clock. It was a beautiful winter’s day, about

fifty-five degrees, not a bit of wind and quite sunny. The wide,

tree-lined street that is the Via Vittorio Veneto truly glowed in

the December light. The sidewalk caf´es added a touch of color

and animation and the flag on the American embassy next door gave

me that feeling of patriotic pride I always get when I see Old

Glory in a foreign country. I walked north to the Villa

Borghese, where the view from the gardens is a panorama of the

Eternal City. As I stood in the clear light overlooking the

city, all of the tension and trepidations of the morning seemed

to disappear. I felt that New Year’s Eve was going to be a high

point and that romance with the elegant English lady was

imminent. I eagerly awaited the evening.

I lunched in a small sidewalk cafe on the Via Veneto and

enjoyed the sport of people-watching as I sipped a glass of wine

and enjoyed a cold pasta salad. There was an endless parade of

good watching. Priests in long cassocks and flat hats; elegant

ladies with fine legs walking with that gait that only fine women

and fine racehorses can elicit; street urchins in caps that

looked like something out of an old Dead-End Kids movie; well-dressed Italian gentlemen with an air of nobility, strolling with

their hands behind their backs; and finally, the mandatory

Japanese tourists complete with Nikons and flag-toting guide. I

marvelled that a day that started with such despair could move on

with such elation. I must have sat there for two hours, adding

several espressos to the already-imbibed vino.

At about three o’clock, I returned to my room, lay down on

my bed and proceeded to write a letter to Ann Marie.

My dear and beautiful friend,

I can’t express in words how great I feel today.

Tonight is New Year’s Eve and I am going to a

wonderful party that is being given by some high—

powered Italian auto manufacturers. I feel that the past

five months have been the most enriching experience of

my life and that I am possibly ready for another five

months. Of course, I miss you very much. I think that

some of the great conversations of my life have been

lying naked with you, making love, and then baring our

souls as our naked bodies touched. It was almost as if

our naked souls touched at the same time. You have

been to me lover, teacher, mother, and sister. I don’t

know what I would have done without you. You are

probably, except for my children, the only tension-free

relationship I have ever had in my adult life. I am now at

the Excelsior Hotel in Rome and the way I feel I might

be here for quite some time.

I’ll write again very soon.

Love,

Robert

I put the letter in the envelope, addressed it and laid it

on the desk. I called the desk and left a wake-up call for five

o’clock and napped. I slept the sleep of a happy man.

At five o’clock I walked to the men’s shop and picked up

my formal clothes. I had to admit I cut a dashing figure. I

looked forward to the evening with tremendous anticipation. I

dropped my new clothes off in my room and walked off my nervous

energy by walking west all the way to the Trevi fountain, into

which I tossed the mandatory wish coins. I truly felt this was

my lucky day.

I walked slowly back to the hotel and returned to my room

to await the evening’s festivities.

I thought of last New Year’s Eve. We had usually gone

down to a vacation home we owned in Florida but, due to an

unusually warm December, Julie decided to postpone her winter

hiatus until sometime in January. Our country club was throwing

its usual gala black-tie New Year’s dance. There is a syndrome

in country clubs that I will never understand. It seems that no

one likes to sit at a table for four or six or even eight. It

seems to be a mark of dishonor or a symbol of leprosy not to be a

member of a table of at least twelve people. As usual, we were

sitting at a table for fourteen. To be seated at a table that

size gives you three choices for conversation. You can speak to

the woman on your right or the woman on your left. Since the

seating is always arranged boy/girl, one of these women is your

wife. The third choice is to holler on top of your lungs above

the noise of the band to someone else at your very large table.

The band, by the way, always seems to be hired by an

entertainment committee that is enthralled with music written no

later than 1948. I don’t know why they think that any one over

the age of fifty shouldn’t be in the least bit contemporary.

I was seated between my wife and a woman name Lee Morell,

who is particularly obnoxious to me. She knows everything there

is to know about everything and spouts it incessantly.

There is an old saw that says, “Wise men talk about ideas;

fools talk about people.” I was trapped in a ballroom filled

with fools.

I was not happy to be there at all. This party seemed to

be a symbol of everything I hated. The people were boring and I

had heard all they had to say a hundred times before. The music

didn’t turn me on at all. The intellectual stimulation was nil,

and since the party was for members only there were no new people

to meet. During the predance cocktail party, I don’t know how

many vodkas on the rocks I had, but since I was not in a very

conversational mood I drank more than my usual quota. I became

very cynical, rude and at least as obnoxious as those other

people that I considered to be so. As the evening progressed and

I zeroed in most of my venom on the convenient fat body of Lee

Morell, my wife became more and more annoyed. At one point,

Julie went to the ladies’ room with Lee. Lee’s husband, Danny,

who is usually a quiet, gentle man, came up to me and said,

“Don’t you ever talk to my wife that way again!”.

I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Or what?”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“If I talk to her that way again, what are you going to do

about it?” I said. He just looked at me, waved his arm

derisively and walked away. For the rest of the evening, I sat

there glassy-eyed, staring into space morosely, duly noticing

Julie’s annoyance. I asked Julie to dance, finally, and she

said, “Don’t do me any favors,” and did some of her own staring

into space, which she is very good at when she gets angry. By

the time we left for home at about two a.m., I was totally

blotto. Julie drove home and I scarcely remember getting into

bed.

New Year’s Day, 1985, was one of our major brawls. She

was livid with anger and quietly aloof for most of the morning.

I busied myself getting clothes together to take to Florida.

Somewhere around noon she came to me with tears in her eyes. “I

can’t stand you. We’re not accepting any more social

invitations. You’re a boor and a son of a bitch. If you don’t

like the life we lead, why the hell don’t you just leave. Don’t

think I don’t know you have some other woman in your life. Go to

her. Let her suffer your moods and your drunken evenings. I

hate you!” With that she got into her car and sped out of the

garage in a rage. I don’t know where she went, possibly to the

club, but I didn’t care. I wanted to call Laura and tell her I

was leaving right now, and that it had finally come to a head

with Julie. As usual, the same complications got in the way.

The kids were home for the holidays. (Each was staying with a

friend over New Year’s Eve.) I had an important business

function coming up in two weeks in Miami, where it was absolutely

necessary that Julie attend. Last but not least, I was

negotiating the sale of my business and I did not need financial

complications. In addition, I couldn’t imagine moving in with

Laura, her teenage daughter, and twelve-year-old son in a three—

bedroom apartment in Queens. Looking back in retrospect, I know

now I didn’t really love Laura. She was merely my woman of the

moment. I lay about the house that day, reading and catching up

on paperwork. The kids started to filter in about two o’clock

and by the time Julie, who had gone to the club and stayed to

play cards with some friends, came home, all three kids were

home. We make it a practice never to fight in front of the

children, so the squabble didn’t continue, but I’ve thought for

some time that the decision to drop out and take this trip had

its birth on New Year’s Eve. Like so many things that have gone

wrong between us, this one didn’t come up again, but the seeds

were sown.

I took a luxurious bath in my ornate bathroom at the Hotel

Excelsior, carefully shaved and spent some time styling my

thinning hair. Tonight, in honor of my English lady, I wore it

in the Prince Philip style, combed straight back and flat to the

skull. I donned my formal attire and stepped back to admire

myself in the full-length mirror on my closet door. I checked my

watch; it was nine-thirty. I planned to make my entrance at ten,

so I sat down patiently and read for a half hour. As I descended

to the ballroom in the elevator, I had the frightening thought

that possibly my name wasn’t left at the door after all and broke

into a cold sweat. There was a line at the ballroom and the wait

seemed interminable. When I got to the door, a man in tails

checked a list and said “Ah, yes, Signore Boyd, I see you are a

guest of Angelo Morani. You will be at table twenty-two for the

dinner. The Morani tables are fourteen through twenty-nine.” I

was impressed with Maude Blaney’s connections. Morani made one

of the most expensive high-performance sports cars in the world.

More expensive and more highly rated than Ferrari or Maserati.

There must have been five hundred people milling around

with cocktails. I wandered around for about fifteen minutes,

nursing a vodka on the rocks before I found Maude. She was

standing with a man about five feet eight inches tall, with a

leonine head of white hair. He appeared to be in his early

fifties and was slim-waisted with broad shoulders. His face was

ruggedly handsome and tanned and his piercing grey-blue eyes all

but burned out from his face. In her heels, Maude stood about an

inch and a half taller than the man, whom I instantly recognized

as the legendary Angelo Morani, former world-class racing driver

and most recently the chief executive officer and principal owner

of Morani Motors. I knew that Morani, whose home was in Torino,

was married to a famous diva of the La Scala opera company. She

was a dark and beautiful woman whose face was also

internationally famous. I looked around for her and she was

nowhere in sight.

I walked over to them and said to Maude, “Hello there. I