The Rome Affair. Laura Caldwell

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      I ordered buffalo mozzarella and asparagus to start, then porcini risotto. While I waited for my food, I sipped from a glass of crisp white wine. But I hardly noticed the tart apple flavor as I glanced around the restaurant. Where had he gone? But then, what did it matter? I quickly finished the glass and ordered another.

      I ate my mozzarella when it came. The cheese was so fresh, it must have been made that day. Yet I had to struggle to appreciate it, more focused on the fact that the restaurant was full to capacity, and everyone was having a delightful time. With their friends. With their spouses.

      I ordered another glass of wine with my risotto, a creamy concoction that somehow turned my stomach. I pushed the rice around on my plate, imagining Nick in the bed of some woman. Then a thought struck me. He might have her—whoever the hell she was—in our bed. I was glad I wasn’t in Chicago then. I could easily become one of those people who chased their straying spouse with a semiautomatic.

      The waiter had just handed me my bill when the man I’d seen earlier appeared at my side.

      “Ciao,” he said. His voice was low, smooth.

      “Ciao,” I answered.

      “I will call you then.”

      I blinked a few times. “Pardon me?”

      “I would like to call you.”

      “Look, you don’t know me…”

      He smiled. It was a kind smile, one that bore the experience of many years. I thought he must be in his mid-forties. How is it that Italians wear their age so well?

      “You are alone in the city?” he said.

      “No, no. I’m with a friend.” I realized the ridiculousness of this statement.

      “Please,” he said simply. The collar of his shirt, which I could tell up close was made from a soft, and probably very expensive linen, had fallen aside again. He made a gesture to right it. His tanned hands were long and elegant and dotted with splatters of paint. Artist’s hands.

      “You don’t know where I’m staying,” I said somewhat coquettishly. I felt a xpleasing blaze in my stomach at my boldness.

      “Yes,” the man said. “True.” There were flecks of green in his smiling brown eyes. “Where shall I call you?”

      I shook my head and forced out a little laugh. I knew Italian men loved to seduce American women, the thought being that they were—sexually speaking—much easier when on the road, particularly in Europe. I wasn’t one of those women, although clearly this man thought I was.

      “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I can’t do this.” I put some euros on my bill. Feeling silly, I stood. “Excuse me, I have to go.”

      The man bowed slightly, then stepped aside. “Of course.”

      I moved around him and without looking back, I headed out into the warm Rome night.

      

      When I pushed open the door to our room, I saw that Kit was still gone. I checked for messages. There were none, not from my husband or Kit.

      I called Nick’s phone. That grating message again. I called home. No answer.

      I slipped between the cool white sheets, and waited for sleep to envelop me. I dozed, my mind working through short bursts of dreams, all of them unintelligible but filled with the color of Rome’s gold. I awoke and kept thinking about the man, although I knew this was illogical. I turned over in bed.

      Just as I did, the phone rang—an unfamiliar bleat that reminded me I was far from home. I sat up and stared at the phone. I looked over at Kit’s empty bed, then lifted the receiver.

      “Hello?” I said. “Pronto?”

      “Giorno.” It wasn’t Nick. It wasn’t Kit. It was him. I just knew. “Giorno,” he said again when I didn’t respond.

      “Is it morning?” I said.

      “Soon.”

      A pause.

      “How did you get my number?” I asked.

      “My friend who works at the ristorante. He told me where you were staying.”

      “Oh.” More than anything, I was surprised at how flattered I felt that he’d searched me out.

      “Please do not be angry. It is hard to explain, but I feel I have to see you, to know you.”

      “I’m not angry.”

      “You will meet me?”

      I thought of Nick. Of course I did. And the image of him, which should have stopped me—his round brown eyes, his curly, light brown hair, the constellation of freckles over his cheeks—instead incensed me.

      I threw back the sheets and said, “Yes.”

      4

      “Ciao,” I called to the sleepy guy at the bell desk, as if I always left my hotel by myself in the wee hours to meet a man who was not my husband.

      I stepped out into the inky night. The kiosk across from the hotel, which sold water and pizza, was closed, the apartments surrounding the hotel dark. It was not nearly morning, as the man had said, and daylight seemed far away, as if I might never see the sun again. I liked that thought.

      My body felt light, made of air. I moved down the street like a patch of fog. He had told me to meet him halfway up the Spanish Steps. As I took the first white marble stair, I halted. The Spanish Steps are hundreds of feet wide and sky-high, so what exactly did “halfway” mean? The first landing? The second? Ignoring the questions, ignoring common sense, I climbed.

      My shoes went tap, tap, tap as I padded upward, and in my chest, behind my ribs, a drumbeat of anticipation began.

      I glanced up for a moment and saw the moon—a small, yellow globe—and the dark sky behind it. The steps were nearly empty of their usual crowd, but somewhere on them, young Italian men were singing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few pairs of lovers. No single man in a linen shirt. My eyes climbed the huge stairway for him. Maybe he wouldn’t come? Relief. Disappointment.

      At the second landing, I turned and stared down toward the fountain. A few stragglers were gathered around it. Maybe he was one of them? Had I walked right past him? But he’d said “halfway.” I remembered that for sure. Maybe “halfway” was some Italian lingo. The confusion nearly pulled me from my dreamlike state. I started to process what I was doing, or at least how I hadn’t a clue of what I was doing.

      But when I turned back to look up the steps, he was there.

      “Ciao,” he said.

      “Ciao.”

      He came to me and took one of my hands. I felt a flutter through my belly and my limbs. “I don’t know your name,” he said.

      “Rachel.”

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