Susan Phillips - Breathing Room

Her stomach felt queasy again. How many of Gage’s movies had she seen? Four? Five? Way too many, but Michael loved action films, the more violent the better. Now she’d never have to see another one.

She wondered if Gage felt any remorse for Karli Swenson’s death. It would probably add to his box-office appeal. Why were nice women so fascinated with bad boys? The rescue fantasy, she supposed-the need to believe they were the only women powerful enough to transform those losers into husbands and fathers. Too bad it wasn’t that easy.

She cleared the edge of the town, then turned on the dome light again to see the rest of the directions: “Follow the road from Casalleone for about two kilometers, then turn right at the rusty Ape.”

Rusty ape? She envisioned King Kong with a bad dye job. Two kilometers later her headlights picked out a lumpy shape off to the side of the road. She slowed and saw that the rusty Ape wasn’t of the gorilla variety, but the remnants of an Ah-pay, one of those tiny vehicles beloved by European farmers. This particular junker had once been the famous three-wheeled Ape truck, although its trio of tires had disappeared long ago.

As she turned, stones clicked against the undercarriage. The directions mentioned the entrance of the Villa dei Angeli, “Villa of the Angels,” and she took the Panda around another series of uphill curves before she saw the open iron gates marking the villa’s main drive. The gravel road she was looking for lay just beyond. It was barely more than a path, and the Panda lurched as it rolled downhill, then took a sharp curve.

A structure rose in front of her. She slammed on the brakes. For a moment she simply stared. Finally she turned off the ignition, killed the lights, and dropped her head against the back of the seat. Despair welled inside her. This crumbling, neglected pile of stones was the farmhouse she’d rented. Not beautifully restored, as the description from the real-estate agent had indicated, but a dilapidated heap that looked as if cows still lived inside.

Solitude. Rest. Contemplation. Action. Sexual healing was no longer part of her plan. She wouldn’t even think about it.

The house offered solitude, but how could she rest, let alone find an atmosphere conducive to contemplation, when she was locked inside a ruin? And she needed contemplation if she intended to come up with an action plan to get her life back in gear. Her mistakes piled higher and higher. She could no longer remember what it had felt like to be competent.

She rubbed her eyes. At least she’d solved the mystery of why the rent was so cheap.

She barely summoned the energy to get out of the car and drag her suitcases toward the door. Everything was so quiet she could hear herself breathe. She would have given anything for the friendly blare of a police siren or the gentle roar of a plane flying out of La Guardia, but she heard only the chirping of crickets.

The rough wooden door was unlocked, just as the rental agent had indicated it would be, and it creaked like a bad movie sound effect. She braced herself for a flock of bats to come flying out at her, but she was greeted with nothing more ominous than the musty scent of old stones.

“Self-pity will paralyze you, my friend. So will a victim mentality. You’re not a victim. You’re filled with a magnificent power. You’re-“

Oh, shut up! she told herself.

She fumbled along the wall until she found a switch that turned on a floor lamp with the wattage of a Christmas-tree bulb. She glanced around just long enough to note a cold, bare tile floor, a few ancient furnishings, and an unwelcoming stone staircase. At least there were no cows.

She couldn’t cope with any more tonight, so she grabbed her smallest suitcase and made her way upstairs, where she found a functioning bathroom-thank you, Mother God-and a small, stark bedroom that looked like a nun’s cell. After what she’d done last night, nothing could have been more ironic.

Ren stood on the Ponte alla Carraia and gazed down the Arno at the bridges that had been built to replace the ones the Luftwaffe had blown up during the Second World War. Hitler had spared only the Ponte Vecchio, built in the fourteenth century. Once Ren had tried to blow up London’s Tower Bridge, but George Clooney had taken him out first.

The wind whipped a short lock of hair over his forehead. He’d had it cut that afternoon. He’d also shaved and-since he intended to avoid lighted public spaces tonight-removed his brown contact lenses. Now, however, he felt exposed. Sometimes he wanted to step out of his own skin.

The Frenchwoman last night had spooked him. He didn’t like misjudging people. Although he’d gotten the anonymous sex he’d wanted, something had been drastically wrong. He managed to find trouble even when he wasn’t looking for it.

A pair of street toughs ambled toward him from the other side of the bridge, looking him over as they came closer to decide how big a fight he’d put up if they tried to take his wallet. Their swagger reminded him of his own youth, although his crimes had been limited more to self-destruction. He’d been a punk with a silver spoon up his ass, a kid who’d figured out early on that misbehavior was a good way to get attention. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Nobody got more attention than the bad guy.

He reached for his cigarettes, even though he’d quit six months ago. The crumpled pack he pulled from his pocket held exactly one, all he let himself carry these days. It was his emergency stash.

He lit it, flicked the match over the side of the bridge, and watched the boys come closer. They disappointed him by exchanging uneasy glances and passing on.

He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and told himself to forget about last night. But he couldn’t quite manage it. The woman’s light brown eyes had shone with intelligence, and all that buttoned-up sophistication had excited him, which was probably why he’d neglected to pick up on the fact that she was a wacko. At the end he’d gotten this gut-churning feeling that he was somehow attacking her. He might rape women on the silver screen, but in real life that was one outrage even he couldn’t imagine.

He left the bridge behind and wandered along an empty street, taking his foul mood with him, even though he should be on top of the world. Everything he’d worked toward was about to happen. The Howard Jenks film would give him the credibility that had eluded him. Although he had more than enough money to live the rest of his life without working, he loved the whole business of making films, and this was the role he’d been waiting for, a villain who would be every bit as memorable to audiences as Hannibal Lecter. Still, he had those six weeks to get through before Night Kill started filming, and the city felt claustrophobic around him.

Karli… The woman last night… The sense that nothing he’d achieved meant anything… God, he was sick of being depressed. He tucked the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, shoved his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and kept walking. James-fucking-Dean on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

The hell with it. Tomorrow he was leaving Florence and heading for the place that had drawn him here.

Isabel turned over in bed. Her travel clock said nine-thirty, so it should be morning, but the room was dark and gloomy. Disoriented, she gazed toward the windows and saw that the shutters were closed.

She rolled to her back and studied the combination of flat red roof tiles and rough wooden beams above her head. Outside she heard something that might have been the distant rumble of a tractor. That was all. No reassuring clank of garbage trucks or musical shouts of taxi drivers cursing each other in Third World languages. She was in Italy, sleeping in a room that looked as if its last occupant had been a martyred saint.

She tilted her head far enough back to see the crucifix hanging on the stucco wall behind her. The tears she hated started leaking out. Tears of loss for the life she’d lived, the man she’d thought she loved. Why hadn’t she been smart enough, worked hard enough, been lucky enough to hold on to what she’d had? Even worse, why had she defiled herself with an Italian gigolo who looked like a psychopathic movie star? She tried to fight the tears with a morning prayer, but Mother God had turned a deaf ear to her delinquent daughter.

The temptation to pull the covers over her head and never get up was so strong that it frightened her into dropping her legs over the side of the bed. Cold tile met the soles of her feet. She made her way across the dreary room into a narrow hallway with a utilitarian bathroom at one end. Although small, it had been modernized, so maybe this place wasn’t quite the ruin she’d imagined it to be.

She bathed, wrapped herself in a towel, and returned to her martyred saint’s cell, where she slipped into a pair of gray slacks and matching sleeveless top. Then she walked over to the window, unlocked the shutters, and pushed them back.

A shower of lemony light drenched her. It streamed through the window as if it had been poured from a bucket, the rays so intense she had to close her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she saw the rolling hills of Tuscany lying before her.

“Oh, my…” She rested her arms on the stone ledge and took in the mosaic of buff, honey, and pewter-colored fields, broken here and there by rows of cypress, like pointed fingers against the sky. There were no fences. The boundaries between the harvested wheat fields, the groves of trees, and the vineyards were formed by a road here, a valley there, a simple curve of land somewhere else.

She was gazing out over Bethlehem. This was the Holy Land of the Renaissance artists. They’d painted the landscape they knew as the background for their Madonnas, angels, mangers, and shepherds. The Holy Land… right outside her window.

She took in the distant view, then studied the land closer to the house. A terraced vineyard extended off to the left, while a grove of gnarled olive trees grew beyond the garden. She wanted to see more, and she turned away from the window, then stopped as she saw how the light had changed the character of the room. Now the whitewashed walls and dark wooden beams were beautiful in their sparseness, and the simple furniture spoke more eloquently of the past than a volume of history books. This wasn’t a ruin at all.

She moved into the hallway and down the stone steps to the ground floor. The living room, which she’d barely glanced at the night before, had the rough walls and vaulted brick ceiling of an old European stable, something it had probably once been, since she seemed to recall reading that the tenants of Tuscan farmhouses had lived above their animals. The space had been beautifully converted into a small, comfortable living area without losing its rustic authenticity.

Stone arches wide enough for farm animals to pass through now served as windows and doors. The rustic sepia wash on the walls was the real version of the faux treatment New York’s finest interior painters charged thousands to reproduce in uptown co-ops. The old terra-cotta floor had been waxed, polished, and smoothed by a century or more of wear. Simple dark-wooden tables and a chest sat along the wall. A chair with a muted floral print rested across from a couch covered in earth-toned fabric.

The shutters that had been closed last night when she’d arrived were now thrown open. Curious to see who had done it, she passed through a stone arch into a large, sunny kitchen.

The room held a long, rectangular farm table nicked and scarred by a few centuries of use. Red, blue, and yellow ceramic tiles formed a narrow backsplash over a rustic stone sink. Below, a blue-and-white-checked skirt hid the plumbing. Open shelves displayed an assortment of colorful pottery, baskets, and copper utensils. There was an old-fashioned propane stove and a set of wooden cupboards. The rough French doors that opened to the garden had been painted bottle green. This was everything she’d imagined an Italian country kitchen to be.

The door opened, and a woman in her sixties walked in. She had a dumpling figure, doughy cheeks, dyed black hair, and small dark eyes. Isabel quickly demonstrated her crackerjack mastery of the Italian language.

“Buon giorno.”

Although the Tuscan people were known for their friendliness, the woman didn’t look friendly. A gardening glove hung from the pocket of the faded black dress she wore with heavy nylon stockings and black plastic mules. Without a word, she removed a ball of string from the cupboard and went back outside.