The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [57]
“Paris,” I lied at precisely the moment Heidi lied, “Mantua,” both of us covering our tracks for no pursuers.
“Oh, so a sad farewell at the airport, then, eh?” Lawrence clucked sympathetically. “Well, I’ll get you there, no worries. We’ll make short work of this mess. You know, you probably escaped by a hair. Ten minutes later, this would be two hours’ traffic.”
We were lucky! We had escaped with moments to spare! We were clumsily lying and our contradictory lies were massaged into sense by this loquacious Cockney. The narcotics of hysterically imagined danger and actual spontaneity carried us to Heathrow, to a counter where I treated, and into the last two (widely separated) seats on a flight to Venice, for which we had to sprint through the airport and onto the plane, our breathless and enforced parting in the cabin yet another stimulant. I sat far in the back, tumescent and aching for Heidi, writing that letter to Dana, trapped between two enraged and tormented babies and the useless adults who sighed beneath them. Heidi—the back of her head calling out to me when I stood to go to the toilet—glowed far away between the ridged and glistening back panels of two Italian fashion-magazine cover boys, back from a show, off to a shoot, back from a shoot, off to a show, Milano, Firenze, Roma, Verona.
My thoughts were an unbridled horse, dragging me through the mud and brambles: what we would be in Venice, hot jealousy of the Italian heroes (out of all proportion to their threat or my claim), remorse at my abandonment of my employers and my girlfriend in New York, fear at my unsalaried future, fear and exhilaration at my unidentifiable self: Who would recognize me where we were going? And if there was no one who could, if I had no job, if I was not in the company of my twin or friends, what would make me me? Surely a new and better me was waiting at the hyper-aptly named Marco Polo Airport. The jealousy I felt for Heidi on that flight was the strongest I have ever known; I nearly wept with anger at the Italian men. I think now this was quite logical, for during this bridge time, Heidi was the only definition of me: I was only “the man who was with Heidi” (whose last name I did not know), and if I’d lost her, already, to either or both of the incomprehensibly handsome man-gods flanking her, then I was in danger of vanishing entirely, shattering between squalling babies.
And so I steamed between my howling colleagues and saw the twin Vogue uomos take her between them, bending and forcing, stroking and guiding, grasping and greasing, wetting and chafing, until I was both excruciatingly aroused and shaking with violent impulse: I crushed their heads in car trunks, then squealed the tires on the flesh of their backs until the smoking rubber raked skin from red fibrous muscles snapped off slick and fraying bone.
Restored to her and myself at the airport, I clung to Heidi until the boat came to shuttle us into town, clung to her through the spray until the gulls became pigeons and we stepped onto puddled stone, some inches above the sea, onto a mirage city straining to reach high enough to stay dry for one more minute.
I had both our suitcases, rolling one and shouldering the other, plus her carry-on. I was also trying when possible to hold her hand, nibble her nape, grab her ass in narrow alleys no wider than a man and his roller bag. She must have sensed my urgency, running ahead to a corner while I sweated and tugged her belongings onto towering curbs, around metal posts, across doll bridges, up uneven stairs. She would dose me with her touch with the stingy precision of a medic rationing morphine as too many men in his unit cried out with wounds. She would kiss me at the base of a bridge, her hands in my hip pockets, then begin to retreat until only her lips remained. Then they, too, were gone, and she was waving from a corner, behind which she disappeared. When I reached that corner, I turned it and found a multi-balconied square out of which a dozen bridges sprang into their own alleys, terraced staircases,