Katherine Carlyle Read Free

once in his life he’s right: he
is
interesting — to me, at least. When he notices me, he tugs at his shirt collar as if to loosen it, then looks beyond me, pretending to be checking on the whereabouts of the projectionist.
Tell me more
, I whisper inside my head.
    Facing the screen again, the man is silent for a few seconds, then he says, “Is Klaus still living in the same apartment?”
    The woman nods. “Walter-Benjamin-Platz.”
    “Penthouse, wasn’t it?”
    “That’s right. Amazing place. You’ve been there, haven’t you?”
    “Once. There was that party —”
    The lights dim.
    The Passenger
intrigues me, as always, but I find that I can’t concentrate. I keep thinking about Klaus Frings and his apartment in Berlin. The inexplicable shock of recognition when I heard his name. The sense of being summoned, singled out. The sudden disappearance of my heart, as if it had been sucked into a black hole at the center of my body. There have been so many dry runsand dress rehearsals, but I always knew that sooner or later one of the messages would feel right. And now, finally, it does.
    When the film is over, I linger in the courtyard outside the cinema. The English couple are standing by the gate. In the same loud self-important voices they are discussing the famous scene in which the director, Antonioni, moves the camera out through the bars on Jack Nicholson’s hotel window — how Nicholson is alive when the camera leaves, and dead by the time it returns. The woman is taller than the man. Older too, despite her girlish voice.
    She catches me staring at her. “I’m sorry. Do we know you?”
    I laugh. “No, you don’t. I’m grateful to you, though.”
    “Grateful?”
    “It’s all right. You’ve played your part.”
    The woman flushes.
    “You can go now,” I say.
    The man fixes me with small hard eyes, and I remember something my aunt Lottie told me.
Some men are horrid when they meet you but you shouldn’t worry. It’s just because they fancy you. It’s actually a kind of compliment
. She paused, then said,
I wouldn’t get involved, though
—
not with one of them
. I wonder if the man in the raspberry-colored shirt is “one of them.” I wonder if he was horrid to Klaus’s girlfriend too.
    I set off through Trastevere, making for the Ponte Sisto. I have plans for the evening — a late dinner, then a new club on the outskirts of the city — but I decide not to go. I feel too elated, too giddy. As I cross the river I replay the conversation I overheard. Certain phrases have stayed with me.
Penthouse, wasn’t it? She left him
. They’re clues to a future I can’t as yet imagine, fragments of a narrative in which I’m about to feature as a character.
    /
    September 3. Alone in our rooftop apartment on Via Giulia I stretch out on the sofa with the French windows open. My father’s away, as usual. The dome of St. Peter’s floats above a jumble of palm trees, sloping tiles, and TV aerials. It’s nearly six o’clock. I yawn, then close my eyes. I hear my mother asking if I would like to go somewhere at the weekend.
We could drive to that forest — the one with the yew trees, remember?
She’s dressed in a green T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Her arms are slender, tanned. This would have been in England, at a time when she was well … It’s dark when I wake up. The snarl of a passing
motorino
, the clatter of plates in the restaurant downstairs. Rome again.
    I reach for my phone. I have messages from Massimo and Luca, moody boys with private incomes and slim brown ankles. They want me to come out. There are openings, they say. There are drinks at a film director’s house in Parioli. There’s a party. I think about my friend Daniela. I wish I could tell her about the man I slept with. How he took my hand beneath the Departures board, and how he came without a sound. How he kissed me on the street, then disappeared.
You didn’t!
Dani, sitting at a table outside the Bar San Calisto, a