All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [46]
I SPEND ANOTHER couple days in Paris with Charlotte, wandering the streets, visiting museums, eating long lunches, and finding little shopping areas. With all the beautiful clothes and jewelry, we are still mainly interested in food; the only things we buy are mustards and salts from a gourmet shop on Île-St.-Louis. On our last day, we’re on a busy street near a bookstore, and I see a familiar figure emerge, with his curls and scarf. Out of everyone in Paris, I randomly run into the Professor on the street. I walk up to him and shake my head wordlessly.
He kisses me on both cheeks. “Incroyable,” he says. “You see? We keep meeting each other.” He glances at his watch.
“Ciao,” I say. Hello and good-bye. Ciao, ciao.
“Ciao, Laura,” he says, pulling away. “Ciao, bella. Ci vediamo.” We’ll see each other.
I WISH IT were as simple as the Professor made it sound, to just be my strong self and start traveling again. But I’ve had one good trip with my cousin, so I feel I can venture out again as long as I’m not alone.
On the way home, I stop off in New York to break up the trip and call Gustavo. He is busy but glad to hear from me, and one evening he takes me to a Brazilian restaurant, where we eat big chunks of meat, drink hearty red wine, and talk about movies. The restaurant is cozy and warm, and he speaks to the owner in Portuguese. He touches me affectionately, the way Brazilians do. We go back to where I’m staying, and I’m glad to feel that same chemistry, drawn to his irresistible sexiness. We kiss, but he can’t understand why I keep pulling away, repeatedly getting up to get a glass of water or use the bathroom. I don’t want to tell him, it seems like too much information, too intimate—strangely, for all that we’ve been intimate—but then I finally stammer out that I haven’t felt comfortable with men since I was sexually assaulted several months ago. I say “sexually assaulted” as a euphemism but hate that it takes so many more syllables to say.
“I’m sorry about that,” says Gustavo and touches my cheek. I’m glad he isn’t reacting as though it’s a huge horrible deal, the way a couple of my women friends did. “But I think—what’s the expression you use in English?” he asks, his big brown eyes searching mine. Then he has it. “I think you better get back up on the horse.” And then he pulls me toward him, puts his familiar arms around me, safe, holds me tight for a moment, and starts kissing me again. I let myself go; I do want to get back to being myself, to feeling sexy, to being able to make love, to trust. Even though I know I’m not going to be with Gustavo in the long run—and maybe because of that, because there is no great emotional risk—I feel comfortable with him, with his animal self, who finds the animal within me again, who wakens her and plays with her and strokes her softly until morning.
IN MAY, ANOTHER opportunity to go to Italy falls into my lap; Gourmet wants me to write a story about the cuisine of my favorite islands in the world, the Aeolians, the archipelago north of Sicily. This is a dream assignment, but I’m hesitant. A year after my trip to Samoa, I still do not want to travel by myself, even in a country I know well, where I speak the language. I’m uncomfortable, too, with the idea of eating at all those restaurants by myself. You can’t enjoy meals in Italy so much if you eat alone, the food doesn’t taste as good. And I’m conflicted about returning to a place where I had a romantic love affair.
There are some places to which you should probably never return. The Professor mentioned that to me several years ago, when we were on a boat to the Aeolian Islands, watching the volcano on Stromboli blowing smoke into the dawn like an Italian lighting his first cigarette of the morning. The Professor had climbed the volcano years before and never wanted to go back, for fear that the lines of tourists with their headlamps and walking sticks would