hadn’t been there when it started? And why wasn’t I told? Why wasn’t I able to reconstruct the moment when they progressed from x to y ? Surely the signs were all around me. Why didn’t I see them?
I began thinking of nothing but what they might do together. I would have done anything to ruin every opportunity they had to be alone. I would have slandered one to the other, then used the reaction of one to report it back to the other. But I also wanted to see them do it, I wanted to be in on it, have them owe me and make me their necessary accomplice, their go-between, the pawn that has become so vital to king and queen that it is now master of the board.
I began to say nice things about each, pretending I had no inkling where things stood between them. He thought I was being coy. She said she could take care of herself.
“Are you trying to fix us up?” she asked, derision crackling in her voice.
“What’s it to you anyway?” he asked.
I described her naked body, which I’d seen two years before. I wanted him aroused. It didn’t matter what he desired so long as he was aroused. I described him to her too, because I wanted to see if her arousal took the same turns as mine, so that I might trace mine on hers and see which of the two was the genuine article.
“Are you trying to make me like her?”
“What would the harm be in that?”
“No harm. Except I like to go it alone, if you don’t mind.”
It took me a while to understand what I was really after. Not just to get him aroused in my presence, or to make him need me, but in urging him to speak about her behind her back, I’d turn Chiara into the object of man-to-man gossip. It would allow us to warm up to one another through her, to bridge the gap between us by admitting we were drawn to the same woman.
Perhaps I just wanted him to know I liked girls.
“Look, it’s very nice of you—and I appreciate it. But don’t.”
His rebuke told me he wasn’t going to play my game. It put me in my place.
No, he’s the noble sort, I thought. Not like me, insidious, sinister, and base. Which pushed my agony and shame up a few notches. Now, over and above the shame of desiring him as Chiara did, I respected and feared him and hated him for making me hate myself.
The morning after seeing them dance I made no motions to go jogging with him. Neither did he. When I eventually brought up jogging, because the silence on the matter had become unbearable, he said he’d already gone. “You’re a late riser these days.”
Clever, I thought.
Indeed, for the past few mornings, I had become so used to finding him waiting for me that I’d grown bold and didn’t worry too much about when I got up. That would teach me.
The next morning, though I wanted to swim with him, coming downstairs would have looked like a chastened response to a casual chiding. So I stayed in my room. Just to prove a point. I heard him step lightly across the balcony, on tiptoes almost. He was avoiding me.
I came downstairs much later. By then he had already left to deliver his corrections and retrieve the latest pages from Signora Milani.
We stopped talking.
Even when we shared the same spot in the morning, talk was at best idle and stopgap. You couldn’t even call it chitchat.
It didn’t upset him. He probably hadn’t given it another thought.
How is it that some people go through hell trying to get close to you, while you haven’t the haziest notion and don’t even give them a thought when two weeks go by and you haven’t so much as exchanged a single word between you? Did he have any idea? Should I let him know?
The romance with Chiara started on the beach. Then he neglected tennis and took up bike rides with her and her friends in the late afternoons in the hill towns farther west along the coast. One day, when there was one too many of them to go biking, Oliver turned to me and asked if I minded letting Mario borrow my bike since I wasn’t using it.
It threw me back to
I began thinking of nothing but what they might do together. I would have done anything to ruin every opportunity they had to be alone. I would have slandered one to the other, then used the reaction of one to report it back to the other. But I also wanted to see them do it, I wanted to be in on it, have them owe me and make me their necessary accomplice, their go-between, the pawn that has become so vital to king and queen that it is now master of the board.
I began to say nice things about each, pretending I had no inkling where things stood between them. He thought I was being coy. She said she could take care of herself.
“Are you trying to fix us up?” she asked, derision crackling in her voice.
“What’s it to you anyway?” he asked.
I described her naked body, which I’d seen two years before. I wanted him aroused. It didn’t matter what he desired so long as he was aroused. I described him to her too, because I wanted to see if her arousal took the same turns as mine, so that I might trace mine on hers and see which of the two was the genuine article.
“Are you trying to make me like her?”
“What would the harm be in that?”
“No harm. Except I like to go it alone, if you don’t mind.”
It took me a while to understand what I was really after. Not just to get him aroused in my presence, or to make him need me, but in urging him to speak about her behind her back, I’d turn Chiara into the object of man-to-man gossip. It would allow us to warm up to one another through her, to bridge the gap between us by admitting we were drawn to the same woman.
Perhaps I just wanted him to know I liked girls.
“Look, it’s very nice of you—and I appreciate it. But don’t.”
His rebuke told me he wasn’t going to play my game. It put me in my place.
No, he’s the noble sort, I thought. Not like me, insidious, sinister, and base. Which pushed my agony and shame up a few notches. Now, over and above the shame of desiring him as Chiara did, I respected and feared him and hated him for making me hate myself.
The morning after seeing them dance I made no motions to go jogging with him. Neither did he. When I eventually brought up jogging, because the silence on the matter had become unbearable, he said he’d already gone. “You’re a late riser these days.”
Clever, I thought.
Indeed, for the past few mornings, I had become so used to finding him waiting for me that I’d grown bold and didn’t worry too much about when I got up. That would teach me.
The next morning, though I wanted to swim with him, coming downstairs would have looked like a chastened response to a casual chiding. So I stayed in my room. Just to prove a point. I heard him step lightly across the balcony, on tiptoes almost. He was avoiding me.
I came downstairs much later. By then he had already left to deliver his corrections and retrieve the latest pages from Signora Milani.
We stopped talking.
Even when we shared the same spot in the morning, talk was at best idle and stopgap. You couldn’t even call it chitchat.
It didn’t upset him. He probably hadn’t given it another thought.
How is it that some people go through hell trying to get close to you, while you haven’t the haziest notion and don’t even give them a thought when two weeks go by and you haven’t so much as exchanged a single word between you? Did he have any idea? Should I let him know?
The romance with Chiara started on the beach. Then he neglected tennis and took up bike rides with her and her friends in the late afternoons in the hill towns farther west along the coast. One day, when there was one too many of them to go biking, Oliver turned to me and asked if I minded letting Mario borrow my bike since I wasn’t using it.
It threw me back to
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