Arcadia Burns Read Free Page A

dogs, and cats looked out from tree trunks. Faded American flags hung under windowsills. And sometimes, at night, an empty baby carriage rolled across an intersection, on fire, a declaration of war by a gang fighting off boredom.
    That had been Rosa’s New York. Today, only a few months after leaving it all behind, she was staying in a luxury hotel booked by her secretary in Piazza Armerina. She was paying with a platinum credit card, and the doorman addressed her as Ms. Alcantara. Six months ago he’d have thrown her out on her ear. She didn’t just feel like a stranger in this city; she felt like a stranger in her own body. Taking over some other girl’s identity.
    She walked around for almost an hour, let herself drift with the flow of the crowd, and finally decided that what she needed was a grubby backyard, a snow-covered blind alley, some kind of still eye in the hurricane of the metropolis. She found an alley wider than she had hoped for, but dilapidated enough to remind her of the New York she knew. She felt the worn asphalt through the snow, listened to the roar of trafficin the streets, smelled the stale air coming up through a subway grate.
    Why did her longing for him have to hit her here, right at this very moment? Well, nothing she could do about it. One moment she was thinking, So here I am again, and the next, It would be better if he were here. If she wasn’t careful, she’d soon be dreaming of ironing his shirts.
    Almost reluctantly, she started rummaging around for her iPhone, began to think someone must have stolen it in the crush of people, but finally she felt it among the other stuff in her bag: paper tissues, eyedrops, a notebook. She wasn’t sure why she even carted the notebook around with her.
    But what she’d thought was her cell phone turned out to be another book. Smaller, fatter, in a disintegrating binding. The leather on the spine bore the words Aesop’s Fables in tiny lettering. She held it under her nose and breathed in deeply. The smell took her straight back to a sun-drenched graveyard deep in the Sicilian countryside.
    Silly. Totally childish. She quickly put the book away, found her phone, and discovered that it had been on during the entire flight. Obviously God wanted her to live and suffer.
    No text message. No email. Out of sight, out of mind.
    She tapped in: arrived. new york in the snow. v. romantic . Then she hesitated, and added: getting a bladder infection. bad climate for snakes. stupid weather. stupid city .
    SEND . And her sensitive love letter was winging its way to the other side of the Atlantic. Where it would be two in the morning. She bit her lower lip, feeling guilty. Alessandro’s cellphone always lay beside his pillow, switched on.
    It was only a minute before the answer came back.
    can’t sleep. thinking of you too much .
    Her heart beating faster, she typed: did you shift shape?
    deprivation = no transformation , he replied.
    This must be International Bad Equations Week.
    new york minus alessandro = even colder , she wrote back.
    He replied: cold + rosa = snake (better not) .
    only when cold + sex .
    sex + city, like on TV?
    must buy manolos. hope you sleep better now .
    His reaction was a little while coming. rosa?
    alessandro?
    steer clear of the new york carnevares. meant to say so at the airport, but your tongue got in the way .
    idiot .
    i mean it. my ny relations don’t like the alcantaras .
    OK .
    I really do mean it .
    I get the idea .
    have fun buying shoes .
    That’s not likely, she thought. will be in touch soon .
    wow, HAIR everywhere…ewww!
    She was grinning at the screen like a lunatic. She waited a moment to see if there’d be anything else, then put the cell phone back in her bag.
    She stood there in the alley, undecided, rubbing her handsto warm them and staring at the snow around her shoes.
    Well, why not?
    The next morning she took a taxi to Gothic Renaissance on Fourth Avenue and bought black steel-toed boots with a diagonal seam