Red, White and Dead Part 10

Yet even as I said it, I thought of someone who had told me he needed s.p.a.ce. Sam. It was Sam who made the call that we were done for now, because he wanted us to be firmly into our relations.h.i.+p, no in-betweens, no maybe we're dating, maybe we're not, we'll figure it out, we'll see how it goes kind of thing, while I had grown more fond of, or possibly more comfortable with, the maybes and the in-betweens.

But Sam was still the person I had checked in with every day for years; the person who, for years, had made all life decisions with me. And even though we weren't together anymore, I wanted to tell him that I was leaving town. It was a courtesy he hadn't given me last year when he'd disappeared, but what was done was done, and I didn't believe in punis.h.i.+ng.

I looked at my watch. It was Sat.u.r.day, which usually meant Sam was with the Chicago Lions rugby team. Sam wasn't one of the starters, but he was one of the guys who trained with the team or helped out when they traveled locally. The Chicago Lions schedule was still in my datebook, because I used to have to plan our social stuff around it. I glanced at the schedule. The team was on a road trip to San Francisco, and Sam didn't usually attend cross-country games. Instead, he was probably at his apartment, strumming his guitar, maybe having a Blue Moon beer. Just the thought made me miss him.

I told Mayburn Sam's address. "I need to stop by on the way to the airport." When he opened his mouth to protest, I held up my hand. "Look, if I can't make any calls, then I have to stop by. I'm not getting on a plane unless I talk to him first."

Sam's apartment was in Roscoe Village, sandwiched next to a bar called the Village Tap. He'd been there for years, to the chagrin of his mother, who, every time she visited, told him he should move out of his bachelor-esque pad and head downtown into a place more "grownup." The plan had been that Sam would move in with me when we were married, but since that hadn't happened, the apartment with the funky gray door was still his home.

"Hurry up," Mayburn said, pulling up to the curb, putting on the hazards and focusing nervously in the rearview mirror. I jumped out.

"The Tap," as everyone in the neighborhood called it, already had a hopping lunch crowd. You could hear happy outbursts of laughter from the beer garden in the back.

Sam had stopped carrying my keys a few months ago, a fact that had surprised and wounded me, but I'd never stopped carrying his. I guess I wasn't ready to put away the idea of Izzy and Sam.

If he was home, I'd tell him I was going out of town, and if he wasn't, I'd leave a note and call him when I landed. But at least I'd make the effort. He would know that I still missed us. I still thought about us. I still thought there was a chance for us.

I got out my keys, opened the street door and walked up the flight of stairs. I rapped lightly on the door, the way I used to, then let myself into the apartment. The living room was dark and looked the way I remembered it. His leather couch was slouchy and slightly dusty looking. The blue afghan with the Cubs logo, which Sam's grandmother had knitted for him, was tossed over the side of it. On the coffee table were financial papers and magazines like Barron's and the Fenton Report, and next to those were two empty Blue Moon beers. Sam had stayed home last night apparently, a fact that made me feel slightly sick with guilt, since I had spent the night, and the last few, with Theo.

Something glinted on the coffee table, something next to the beer bottles. I looked closer and saw they were two tiny diamond earrings, set in gold. I picked them up. For a moment I thought they were mine, but my diamond earrings were fake and set in silver. As I held them up to the sunlight filtering through the window, I could see that these were clearly the real thing.

Sam didn't wear earrings.

A shuffle from one of the bedrooms. I froze, irrationally scared for a second. What was I scared of? I looked down at the earrings. I thought I knew.

The door to Sam's bedroom opened, and there he stood. He was wearing boxer shorts, only that, over his short powerhouse of a body. He wiped sleep from his eyes, despite the fact that it was already noon.

"Iz?" He pushed up at his cropped blond hair, making it s.e.xily jagged with angles. He blinked his eyes, which were a sparkly olive color, so much so that I'd always thought of them as martini-olive eyes. But he was staring curiously at me now, and his eyes didn't seem to be sparkling so much as squinting. "What are you doing here?"

He pulled the bedroom door closed behind him as he asked the question. And it was that movement, more than the earrings, that told me everything.

"So, you have a date?" I said.

More blinking. "Something like that. Were you and I supposed to meet or something?" He said it in an irritated way. He knew we had no plans to meet.

"I'm going out of town. I wanted to let you know, and they told me not to make any phone calls."

"Who's 'they'?"

I shook my head. "It's a long story. But I'm going away."

"Where?"

I could almost hear Mayburn screaming, Don't tell anyone where you're going! "I'm not exactly sure yet."

"For how long?" He s.h.i.+fted his arms over his chest as if he were suddenly embarra.s.sed to be seen by me-by me!-in his near nakedness. He was so cute, though, his trim, compact body so delicious in person-and in my memory-that I couldn't get worked up about his modesty.

But what happened next made it easy to get worked up.

Yes, of course the bedroom door opened, and yes, of course a girl in panties and Sam's Jeff Beck T-s.h.i.+rt, the one I used to sleep in, poked her head out. But that wasn't what left me speechless.

It was the fact that it was Alyssa.

Alyssa Thornton was Sam's ex-girlfriend, the one I'd been crazy jealous about since I met her at their high school reunion and had seen two things. One, she was ethereal, stunning, and, as I'd always said, thin as a bag of doork.n.o.bs, which, with my curves and my envy, was not intended as a compliment. With her white-blond hair, Alyssa almost looked like a miniature, female version of Sam. The second thing I had noticed at that reunion? Alyssa still loved Sam. She glowed when she gazed at him. Just like I did. But Sam had told me he was the one who broke up with her a few years into college, that they were just friends, only that.

After the reunion, I tried to put a lid on the jealousy, but it kept bugging me, especially because I knew they e-mailed often. Finally, I asked Sam if he'd stop e-mailing her. I knew my jealousy was irrational, I told him, but it wouldn't go away. Sam had smiled at me. And he agreed.

As Sam and I continued to date and then got engaged, I got over the thought of Alyssa. But then Sam disappeared, and I found out that he went straight to her for help when he did so. I later learned his reasons. But still. But still. I hadn't gotten over that.

Clearly, Sam hadn't, either, because there she was. There she was positively glowing at him again as she peeked from behind his bedroom door.

If my insides had been slightly twisted with guilt over the fact that I'd spent the night with Theo, my stomach filled with bile now. It's one thing to learn your ex is dating someone else. It's another thing to find out that "someone else" is the girl you always had the bad, bad feeling about.

And it was a whole other bag of cherries to see them post-romp.

"Hi, Alyssa," I said.

"Hi." There was no triumph in her voice. "I'll give you guys some time."

She pulled her head back inside the room. Click went the door of Sam's bedroom, then click again, because it had to be pushed twice to keep it closed. The fact that Alyssa knew that slayed me. Tears sprang to my eyes as I stood there looking at my fantastic, adorable, beloved ex-fiance, who had clearly moved on with his life.

"I thought she lived in Indianapolis," I said.

"She moved here a few weeks ago."

"To be with you."

"No, to work at Rush Medical Center. She's in geriatric-"

I cut him off. "I remember." Alyssa was a researcher in the geriatric field, working to improve the quality of life for the elderly, particularly those who were bedridden. She was, essentially, an angel of mercy. Which, I'd always said, made it pretty tough to compete with her as an ex-girlfriend. Or maybe she wasn't the ex anymore. It appeared she was the girlfriend now, and I was the former.

The energy I'd had in my apartment crashed, replaced by a sorrow so deep I took a few steps to the couch and sank into it, putting my face in my hands.

"I'm sorry, Iz." He sat next to me and put his arm around me.

I didn't think there could be anything worse than finding Alyssa in Sam's apartment, but this-this-was worse. Sam awkwardly patting me on the shoulder, trying to comfort me, sure, but making it somehow clear in his stiff body language that his body didn't belong to me anymore, nor, apparently, did his heart.

And what of my heart?

I thought of Q, my former a.s.sistant. Q had just entered the gay world when we'd met, and as such, he took any and all breakups hard.

One day we were discussing his latest, and he had asked me when my heart had last gotten broken.

"Never," I'd told him. And it was true.

The guys I'd dated before Sam-Timmy, my boyfriend in college, and Blake, the one I dated during law school-had been such insignificant relations.h.i.+ps compared to the one I had with Sam. I was the one who broke up with Timmy-his love of beer bongs got old after freshman year. And Blake and I were on againoff again and had finally decided to part when we couldn't find time to get together with our busy law school schedules and also found we really didn't care. And when Sam and I split, well...How to explain it? I guess I never saw it officially as a split. Even when he disappeared and even after that, when he said he needed to move on, I didn't really expect him to move on. I a.s.sumed that Sam and Izzy, Izzy and Sam was still an option that hung in both our horizons.

Now I felt the heat of his skin as he sat next to me. I breathed in that Sam smell. Both of these things had brought tears to my eyes in the past, and this time was no different. And yet those tears definitely were different. They weren't the sweet tears that glitter from your eyes when a deep connection makes you so happy, so filled with joy. No, those were tears I'd never felt before-hot, almost burning tears that must have come from the skin that protected my heart, the skin that felt sliced now, carved deep.

"I'm sorry," Sam said again. He turned and gave me a half hug, and the self-consciousness of it cut me even deeper.

"It's okay." I stood, wiping tears. They splashed on my cheeks and chin. They felt as if they were leaving marks, burning me. "I have to go." My voice sounded like someone else's. And as I looked at Sam, my eyes clouded, making him look different, too. "I'll talk to you later." My voice sounded strangled.

"G.o.d, Iz." He started crying now. He stood, grabbed me fiercely, wrapped his arms around me in a way that felt so Sam, so us. We stood together, a tight ma.s.s, quietly choking out sobs.

I heard a persistent bleat, bleat, bleat, bleat. Mayburn honking from outside.

"I have to go."

He nodded, sniffed, stared into my eyes. And that stare said it all. It said, Goodbye.

PART II.

14.

"C iao, ciao," the porter said to me, as I left.

I waved at him, went out into the courtyard and walked a pathway lined with stone busts.

My first day in Rome, and I felt as if I was in the middle of one big flashback.

When I had arrived at O'Hare yesterday, my flight wasn't leaving for a few hours. Using one of the public computer kiosks, I got on the Internet and searched for hotels in Rome. The rates were astronomical. Since Mayburn picked up my flight, I was willing to take on some credit card debt (something I'd never done before), but if I stayed a week in the Roman hotels, even the modest ones, I'd have to live in a cardboard box under Lower Wacker when I returned.

I kept thinking about the summer I'd spent in Rome years ago. It was during that time that my friends.h.i.+p with Maggie solidified into sisterhood. Maggie and I immersed ourselves in Roma, in our fellow students, our professors, the tenets of international and comparative law, and it was as if a happy bubble had sprung up around us. Of course, there were the usual traveler's woes-blisters adorning our feet, having to wash your underwear in a dorm sink-but I loved every bit.

As I remembered that time, a thought occurred to me. I found the Web site for Loyola's Rome campus. It was in Monte Mario, a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city with upscale apartments and a few piazzas full of shops.

I scrolled through the Web site. And there, on the bottom of the Housing page, it said, Alumni: Rent a Room! Low Occupancy in the Summer Means We Welcome Visitors! I scrolled to find the cost-less than half of what the hotels were charging. I could put up with dorm-style living in order to save money and to be, once again, in Rome, where I could escape Dez Romano and where Elena couldn't escape the questions about my father.

The campus was set on a long, narrow, gra.s.sy plot of land, the main building a three-story una.s.suming brick affair. But if the architecture and the setting were somewhat unremarkable, the feel of the place-the energy-wasn't. Rome is a seen-it-all kind of place. No matter how much the Italians delight in things-food and wine and s.e.x, to name a few-the fact remains that their cultural DNA includes a world weariness of it all. And yet the American students who studied at Loyola were visiting Italy, and sometimes Europe, for the first time. They were wide-eyed, eager to see, to learn, to live. And so the campus with its otherwise sleepy appearance hummed with that energy. It vibrated at a low level but with a certain light that colored everything a pretty ochre, that made the place soothing and yet made it sing.

Thank G.o.d, because dorm living and me really weren't made for each other. But I let the energy of the place take me, happily, to the showers that scalded in such a familiar way and then turned suddenly freezing, to the teeny bed that was really just a cot with sheets that felt like paper towels. I slept a dreamless sleep-a G.o.dsend-and in the morning, I left my dorm room and strolled past the campus's stone busts. I pushed through the tall metal door set into the high brick wall and walked onto the street.

A bus took me to the Balduina subway station, and I rode a couple trains until I landed at the Barberini stop. I got out there simply because I couldn't remember seeing the piazza during my last visit. When I got to the top of the subway steps, I chose a cloth-covered table at a restaurant, essentially because it was the first one I saw, and I was bleary and hungry from the overnight flight.

Even though I normally avoided caffeine, I knew I should probably get a cappuccino, something to power through my jet lag. But when in Italy one tries to do what the Italians do, and the Italians don't drink cappuccino with their midday meal, they drink wine. I ordered a gla.s.s of Greco di Tufo.

Then I got out a notebook I had brought with me, opened it to the first page and wrote at the top: Christopher McNeil, Things to Do.

Under that, I wrote: 1. Find Elena, get her to talk 2. Bug Mayburn to find R. J. Ohman, flight instructor. Ask him why Fed instructor needed for McNeil and also what was cause of crash 3. Learn who killed Grandpa Kelvin 4. Find out more about the Rizzato Brothers I put the pen down and looked up via Veneto, the street that the restaurant faced. It was a wide, stately avenue flanked with regal appartamenti decorated with stone balconies and potted plants. It ended at the Piazza Barberini. A hotel sat at one side of the piazza. Its unimaginative brick front looked more like an American hotel, but surrounding it were stuccoed buildings painted brick-orange, their windows and shutters thrown open. Taxis and scooters and the tiniest of cars zipped around the circular piazza. And not just any scooters. Vespas! Rome wasn't just the capital city of Italy, it was the capital city of Vespa country. They skirted the fountain and shot up via Veneto. I itched to get my fingers on the handgrips of one of them.

I took my cell phone from my bag and set it on the table, hoping my aunt Elena might call. I had followed Mayburn's recommendation that I turn on my international service while in the car on the way to the airport, and so my phone worked. Since I didn't know where she lived I had called Aunt Elena three times since landing in Rome. Each time, the phone was answered with a quick message in Italian. I couldn't understand whether it was Elena's voice telling me to leave a message or a recorded message notifying me I had dialed wrong.

I had decided I would keep calling and, meanwhile, forge into the city. If there was one thing I learned on my previous visit to Rome it was how much I didn't get to see. The treasures, the hidden courtyards, the historic sites-these are endless in Rome. And according to a guidebook I'd picked up, a rash of new musi, galleries and palazzi had opened.

I pulled out that guidebook and flipped through it now, setting my sights on the Barberini Palace, right around the corner from the piazza. I kept studying the book, hoping I could divine the gallery Elena had mentioned, the one where she was working and which she said was close to her heart. The problem was, I didn't know Elena very well. I didn't know what moved her heart. Come to think of it, I wasn't sure what moved my own heart these days.

The sight of Alyssa in Sam's apartment-in Sam's T-s.h.i.+rt-nagged me, kept showing up in my mind like a neon-lit image. I let that image linger and filled it with more light, because sometimes that chased away the feel of Sam's farewell embrace.

To get rid of both of them, I perused the menu.

I ordered a pasta I'd never heard of and watched the Sunday foot traffic on the street, hoping in vain that somehow Elena might walk by, fearing that if she did I wouldn't recognize her.

I looked at my watch. It was early in Chicago, but that was probably the best time to catch Q. He would make me laugh about my whole situation somehow. He would encourage me to enjoy this time.

I called his home phone, at the apartment he shared with his wealthy boyfriend, but their voice mail picked up right away. We're not in right now, I heard Q's recorded voice say. In fact, we're in St. Bart's, and we're not checking messages, but leave us one, and we'll call you when we get back.

I hung up, suddenly wistful at the thought of how much time Q and I used to have together and how our life paths had diverged so sharply. I went back to watching the foot traffic pa.s.s my table. The longer I stared at the parade of pedestrians, the more I noticed that Rome was different from when I was here eight years ago. Or maybe it was just the Roman men.

When I was last in Rome, if a reasonably attractive woman stopped on the street to consult a map or much less ate alone at a restaurant, as I was doing, it would invite a torrent of male attention. The men would literally surround you-touching you, shouting come-ons in a desperate mix of Italian and English. It became one of Italy's few liabilities.

As I sat near the Piazza Barberini, alone and unap-proached, it was clear things had changed.

My pasta was delivered-green-and-white striped noodles in a mushroom-y broth. Delicious.

I kept eating my pasta and sipping my wine, depressed a bit about the change in the Roman men. Being single for the first time in years, I had envisioned a bevy of male attention that, although largely unwanted, would serve to lift me away from my questions about Sam, from a lingering taste of fear at the back of my throat every time I thought of Dez and Michael.

In fact, most of the men strutted by, not noticing any women. The men were dressed in exquisite fas.h.i.+on, their heads held high. Most of them were in perfect shape, their black hair tousled to perfection. It was almost as if they expected to be watched now, expected that they should be the admired ones. They were preening peac.o.c.ks, full of bravado, no longer reduced to preying on tourists.

I picked up my phone and called Maggie.

"What courthouse?" she barked into the phone. I could imagine Maggie in her South Loop apartment, her body only a tiny b.u.mp in her big bed. "What's the bond?" Maggie loved to sleep as late as possible, but was constantly awakened by drug clients who often landed in holding cells over the course of the night.

"Sorry, Mags," I said.

"Hey, just because you're not working doesn't mean the rest of us aren't." A pause. "Well, actually, I was going to be working because of my trial but I got directed verdict on Friday. Which means I'm going back to bed. Call you later."

"I'm in Rome!" I tossed out before she could hang up.

"What?"

"Yeah, I got here yesterday."

"You're kidding me? Did you get a hold of your aunt Elena?"

"Not yet. But I just felt like getting out of town." And away from Dez and Michael.

"You're in Rome?"

"Yeah. I'm sitting outside near Piazza Barberini right now."

"How is it?"