In Florence

by Kathy Prokhovnik

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The entrance to their hotel is a heavy door directly onto the street. Behind the door is a little red-carpeted lobby and a high desk in front of pigeonholes and keyhooks. A young woman sits behind the desk, ticking numbers on a sheet of paper and adding them under her breath.

Will places his hand heavily on the counter. “We have a reservation. Name of Patterson.” Kay looks away. She’d like to enter untainted by his voice, his words slow and spaced.

Kay takes her bag up first in the one-person lift, twisting the key in the lock, discovering the double bed in the middle of the room and a single bed under a large window, the street deep below. The double bed, of course, is two singles pushed together. Kay only needs to glance at the two sets of feet huddling under the bedspread. She turns to point it out to Will, to share an eye-roll as he walks in, but his hand is already on his phone. Two singles pushed together. Maybe that’s all they were. They might be married, they might share a bank account, but underneath, they were just two sets of separate feet.

Kay hangs up her shirts and puts underwear in the drawers. She hates rummaging in a suitcase, even for a few days. Will has abandoned his bag near the door to sit at a small tiled table and hunch over his phone, barking out directions like a parody of business gone mad. He’s a moderately successful businessman, Kay considers as she watches him switch his phone to the other ear and tap the table. The owner of two moderately successful clothes shops, sitting in a moderately priced hotel in Florence. What will he be like in ten years when he’s fifty, she wonders, changing her shoes. He might get calmer, a little more thoughtful. He might not, she thinks as she writes, “Back in an hour or so,” on a piece of paper and places it near his elbow, waving as she goes out the door.

The street is a tunnel of buildings keeping out the sun. She makes it as far as Piazza della Signoria before she hears the voices whispering. What are you doing out here alone? Haven’t you got a man? Aren’t you good enough? It’s just you then, is it? Just you? She frowns them off, refuses to enter their world where she is a brittle, compacted creature, hedged in by self-protection, weighed down by the daily demands of infinite repetition. She feels for her wedding ring, but turns also from that prop, forcing her right hand away from her left in a jerky swing. If Will is a moderately successful businessman, then what is she? Apart from being a mother and, fairly recently, a wife. Late 30s. Admin officer for a legal firm. What will fill the rest of her life?

Avoiding the couples who moon along the piazza, Kay strides, defiant of the voices, to buy postcards. She steels herself to select six, not grabbing the first ones she sees, but not allowing the paralysis of dissection, of assessing each card’s attractions and failings. She forces herself to look at the postcard seller when she pays, then sits boldly at the cafe. On her own. She orders a coffee, or at least nods when the waiter says “Coffee?” in English.

She fans out the cards. Which one for Cressida? The vista of Florence is nice and general, but sometimes it’s better to see something up close, like the doors of the Baptistry. Although maybe Cressida would find that dull, those hazy figures from stories she doesn’t know.

She stops herself. She’s doing it. Dissecting.

She turns the vista of Florence over and starts to write. Dear Cressida. She stops, not knowing what to say to her own daughter. Why is she bothering? Cressida won’t read it. She’ll be running off in a cloud of cheap perfume to her gang of thirteen-year-old judges and complaining that her mum’s in Italy with that lame fuck.

A cup of coffee has arrived on the table, the waiter a disappearing shadow. The postcard shames her with its emptiness. Write, she tells herself. Write anything. But the obvious next line is, I hope you’re having a lovely time with Daddy, and if Gordon reads it, he’ll resent the possible implication that Cressida wouldn’t be having a lovely time with Daddy and his young wife. He got married too, quite soon after she did. Kay had been disappointed by that. She had hoped that he at least would stick to the principles that they had eschewed. That was exactly the right word. As if they had chewed up the idea of marriage and spat it out. Pregnancy didn’t mean you had to marry.

We’ve just got to Florence, she writes quickly on the card. No point saying, I wish you were here, because the whole idea was to have a holiday just with Will. I’d love to come here with you sometime, she writes instead. There are great markets here! Will doesn’t want to shop, so we’re planning to go to the Uffizi this afternoon and the San Marco museum tomorrow. She’s just writing now, filling up the card with words.

Life is better after the coffee, the taste strong in her mouth, the waiter’s smile just a little friendly. Kay turns back to the hotel, walking without doubt, knowing her way, pushing her feet forward through the clumps of tourists, phones at the ready, gelati clutched like guilty prizes. She takes a flyer from a graceful young man who smiles and says “Nightclub”, brushing her hand with his as he taps on the address printed at the bottom. She never takes flyers from people. Does she take this one because the young man is so attractive, or does she sense the world reaching out, drawing her into its side streets?

Kay’s return to the room is abrupt, the door sticking in the frame then snapping open as she pushes. Will is still at the table, but he’s looking at the guidebook. Clothes spill out of his unzipped bag. He gives his book a last moment of inspection and looks up.

“It’s a bit late for the Uffizi now,” he says calmly, “but we could start with the Duomo.”

He talks softly, as if you could disagree or alter his decisions. Kay knows better and grabs her jacket before joining him.

They circle the Duomo with the stream of other tourists. They have to acknowledge that they belong to this band of well-heeled gawpers inspecting its lines and colours for the first time. Then they’ve done it – done the Duomo – and stand without purpose as shadows thicken and the old walls lose their glow.

“David,” says Will. “Galleria dell’Accademia. Open until 6.50 pm. Buy tickets until 6.30 pm. We’ll make it.”

He leads the way through emptying streets and cooling air. He walks as if pursued, pausing to pay at the ticket office, stopping only when they reach the room where David stands coldly in his semi-circular niche, waiting. Kay keeps walking around the statue. She doesn’t like it. It’s too sure of itself. Too perfect. She wants to see the bit where David wonders, or queries, or has a crisis of confidence. The human bit.

“Fabulous,” says Will. “Worth the 13 euros.”

Will scrolls through his contacts as they walk back to the hotel, stabbing at the call symbol, barking hello.

As they reach the door, the line cuts out. Will stares at the phone and curses Italy. Kay tries to be his wife. She sits in an armchair, a book in her hand, prepared to commiserate once he’s finally got through. But her neck muscles tighten and her shoulders contract, and she can’t stop her legs from standing and walking out the door.

Out in the street, she stops. She’ll leave a note with reception telling him she’s leaving him. Not just leaving. Leaving him. It makes her feel so light.

She rummages in her bag for a piece of paper and finds the flyer that the attractive young man had given her. A nightclub. Maybe the beat of a nightclub will send some joy into her veins.

She can’t really leave him. Not now. Her mother would have a field day. There would be references to her past. It would be called “your string of boyfriends”. And why was that, mum? What had she been searching for?

Kay unscrunches the flyer from her fist, smoothes it out, and looks again at the address. She’ll try this first. Anyway, she couldn’t bear the triumph on Cressida’s face if she left him.

***

A misty rain is starting to fall when Kay reaches the nightclub, the flashes of its sign hanging in the air. Inside, all the lighting is concentrated on the glistening bottles behind the bar, better than any church window.

She hands her flyer to the barman, receiving a conical glass half-filled with yellow liquid in return. She holds it by the stem, walks through to the edge of a dancefloor, sipping, stilling herself from running away from this, too. Someone is standing next to her.

The more she thinks about it, the more it feels as if the person has been beside her since she walked in. It is a young man in a leather jacket. She turns and looks at him, and his face is already smiling at hers. He points at the dancefloor, and she holds up her drink. How can she dance with a glass in her hand? He takes the glass and places it carefully on a narrow shelf. He unhooks her bag from her shoulder and hooks it below the shelf. He reaches around her shoulders and lifts her coat off, placing it over the bag. Then he gestures out again.

Kay had left caution in the hotel room. Will always needed a steady supply.

They dance through the whole throbbing set, bodies loosening, hands and eyes talking. He keeps her hand when the music stops and leads her back to her drink, flinging her coat and bag over his shoulder. He leads her to narrow stairs and up into a gallery where they sit at a table, looking down into the main room. He has let go of her hand to get cigarettes out of his pocket. He offers them to her, and she reaches out, then waves them away.

“I’m Kay,” she says. He shrugs his shoulders. She points to herself and says, “Kay”. He says something, but the sounds don’t fit any name that she knows. She puts her head on one side and smiles, and he repeats the name. Kay smiles again, as if she understands, and attempts to form what he said into something she can pronounce. She decides at last on Luciano.

Kay knows no Italian. She tries speaking French, but his face becomes blanker, his shrugs more emphatic. The languages look so similar on paper, she wonders if he is just being difficult.

When he goes to buy another drink – a pantomime of lifted glasses and smiles – she looks around.

Married women don’t do this.

Sitting in a nightclub with a stranger who she can’t even talk to. She feels for that gold ring, twirls it around her finger.

She could slip it off.

He’s back, placing another yellow drink on the table. He reaches out and takes Kay’s hand now, draws her close, kisses her. Full, soft mouth pressing into hers. She holds on to him, to his soft leather jacket, with appreciation. Through mumbled lips, they arrange to meet the next day, comprehension fired by passion, on the steps of the Duomo.

Outside, it’s shining, black and silver. Kay wants to walk slowly, to absorb the buildings, the walls carved with leaves, embellished by the glisten of rain. Groups of young people shout through the empty streets, dancing in the skeleton of the city. A girl runs in front of her and jumps up onto a step, her cape swirling and flicking the backs of her leaping legs.

Darkness is heavy in the hotel room, Will snoring on one side of the double bed. Kay undresses and slips into the little bed below the window, shivering with the naughtiness of creeping in, smelling of smoke, drink on her breath. The purple night sky shifts above her, and she falls asleep.

Will shakes her awake when the light is washed out and thin.

“We should get going,” he says starkly. “There will already be queues.”

This is Will’s way. He would never ask a direct question.

“What for?” Kay asks, her mouth dry and sticky. She tries to lick her lips, but Will is standing over her with burning eyes.

“The Uffizi!” he exclaims.

“You go,” she says. “I don’t feel like it today.”

“What will you do?” he asks, a lost little boy.

“I’ll go for a walk. I’ll go to the Boboli Gardens,” Kay answers quickly.

“All right,” Will says at last. “I might see you there. I’ll just be in the Uffizi.”

“Are they close?” she asks.

“Just across the river.”

“Isn’t there a lot you want to see in the gallery?”

“I suppose so,” he replies.

“Have a lovely time,” Kay mumbles, turning over, reaching for sleep.

She wakes again and stretches to a sky that is blue with ruffles of thin white cloud. She will meet Luciano, and they’ll go to the gardens, wrapping themselves around each other in a grotto, disgusting black-dressed old women walking with their families. As the sun goes down, they’ll be forced to leave, shivering and stamping the blood back into their feet, the grass damp under their shoes.

She sits on the steps of the Duomo. Tourists gather at the base of the steps, impressing each other with their rapid identification of the site.

She doesn’t know what he looks like. Dark wavy hair and strong, soft lips. Her recognition stops there.

When she sees a back with a leather jacket going around the corner, she runs after it. He turns when she taps his shoulder. He doesn’t seem to recognise her either, but takes her hand. That feels familiar.

He leads the way to a square, selects one of the small streets that branch off and hurries down to a tiny hotel. He speaks rapidly to the man behind the desk, who looks at them both, sneers, and points down the street. They go to a smaller hotel where the desk is located at the top of a flight of dark and narrow stairs, and where the proprietor keeps an expressionless face as he asks for passports. Kay wonders if Luciano has one for this sole purpose as he hands it over with a large sum of money.

Kay’s understanding of the possibility of choice is poorly developed. It’s only later, watching films where women follow men into terrible consequences, that her flesh creeps. Today, she has no language. All she can do is walk up more stairs behind the swift feet of the man she met last night.

The room is small, occupied mainly by a huge bed. Kay follows Luciano while he looks it over, checking the tiny, spotless bathroom, walking the few steps over to the bed and pulling back the cover. The sheets are white and crisp, the pillows plump and appealing. While she wonders what to do next, he takes off his clothes.

Before her stands David. In life, his skin is a silky brown, his arms and neck darker beyond the lines of his t-shirt. Tight muscles move perfectly proportioned limbs. He lies down on the bed and smiles at her, curls of black hair framing his sweetly blunt face. She pulls off her clothes, bit by bit, folding them onto a chair. His eyes are on her. He seems to see something other than the body she has always seen in the mirror. He seems to see something beautiful.

Soon, the room fills with the electricity of sex, its pulses, its sighs, its heavy scent. The afternoon blooms and withers outside.

They finally let the room return to their vision, limbs damp and limp. Where their arms and thighs touch, they mingle as if it’s always been this way. He turns and looks at her proudly.

“Stanca?” he asks tenderly.

Stanca? Kay opens her eyes wide. Does she smell? Is he asking her to have a shower? She shrugs and shakes her head. He smiles.

“Stanca?” he repeats, holding up four fingers.

Does he wonder if he smells? Kay smiles reassuringly and shakes her head again, surprised at his sudden show of inhibition.

“Stanco,” he says firmly, and points to himself.

“No, you don’t,” Kay says just as firmly, taking his face in her hands and kissing his mouth.

It’s nearly dark by the time they leave the hotel. She runs with him up to the square. She last sees him from the street side of a bus window as he holds onto a strap and gestures to an old lady to sit down. He is going home to his Mama, to sit at a large wooden table and tell his family that he ran into his friend Mario in town and that they just wandered around.

Kay glides through the streets back to the hotel.

Will is on his phone, his fingers tracing the edges of the table’s tiles. He looks up, but Kay just smiles as she sidles into the bathroom to stand under the shower, washing Luciano – was that really his name? – off her body. She smooths the soap across her breasts, down her thighs and her belly, closes her eyes to make it his hand. Everything feels different now.

She leaves the steaming bathroom with a towel clutched tight on her chest.

“How was the Uffizi?” she asks.

“What did you do this afternoon?” Will replies quietly.

“Boboli Gardens,” Kay answers, moving towards the wardrobe and clean clothes.

“I told you,” she adds. “Before you went out.”

“So you did,” Will answers humbly.

His hand still hovers in the air between them, a forgotten gesture, unfinishable now.

“I’m sorry, Kay,” he mutters, his eyes moving to the phone, his hand dropping. “I’m sorry.”

He watches her stand at the open drawer.

“Don’t sleep over there again. Tonight.” He stands up, moves towards her. “Please. Sleep with me.”

He stands behind her, removing her towel, sliding his hand around her hip, resting it on her stomach. He kisses her bare, warm shoulder, and she turns around to face him. They bend towards one another. Mouth on mouth, she moves into his embrace, letting him find reassurance in the only way they know.

***

London is cold, the flat is cold, the carpets are dusty, and the rooms are too familiar.

These domestic irritations don’t touch Kay. For her, the trip has been a success. She feels as if all her restlessness, her uncertainty, were sweated away on that long afternoon in Florence. She feels anchored, at last.

She walks down to the tube station on her first day back at work, her feet carrying her lightly. She reaches her desk, smiling at her colleagues, and rings HR to ask about study leave. She could train as a paralegal.

When Will goes on a buying trip to Barcelona in November, she misses him with a desire that she had forgotten. She stares at his photo, feels gratitude for his staunchness, and recognises that he keeps her from the pit that it has always been too easy to fall into.

The night he is due home, she wears a silk nightie to bed, wanting to be soft and dozy when he arrives.

She hears his key in the door and smiles, closing her eyes, pretending to sleep.

He drops his suitcase with a thud. She stays still while he undresses and crawls into bed. She turns and puts her arms around him.

“How was it?” she asks, and he tells her about haggling over prices and the bad lighting in his hotel room.

She lies comfortably against his shoulder, absorbing the smell of his body, ready to fall into hazy lovemaking.

“I got drunk one night,” he says.

“Uh-huh,” she says.

She imagines a group of businessmen getting pally with each other in the bar of their hotel, letting themselves go, getting tipsy, remembering rowdy teenager years. Maybe they got loud, and the other people in the bar glared at them. Maybe one of them was sick. Maybe one of them got angry.

If she weren’t so nearly asleep, playing with her own thoughts, she would have felt him become tense, his shoulder harden, his thigh move marginally away from hers as the muscles tightened.

“I met a woman,” he says, and Kay gasps.

“What do you mean?” she cries out, clenching her eyes, wishing that she could shut out his voice.

“I met a woman, one of the factory owners. We just got drunk, fooled around a bit. I wanted to tell you.”

“Why did you want to tell me?” Kay asks, pulling away from his hold.

“Stay with me, Kay,” he blurts. “Stay with me. It’s nothing. I’m here with you.”

Kay holds still. “Why?” she whispers. “Why did you want to tell me?”

He holds her tight, his whole tense body holding her in place, like the headlights that hold a rabbit in the road.

“Why?” she whispers again.

But his only answer is to move his fingers slowly on her back and fold her beating body against his.