Not much good has ever been prefaced by variations of "Have a seat." I thought of headmasters' offices and electric chairs.
Melissa JensenMaybe if he hadn't paused to take an audible breath, we wouldn't have heard it. But as it was, the creak from the floor outside my half-open door came in loud and clear. Alex shot up like he'd been poked with a sharp stick. I crossed the room in a single breath and jerked open the door.
Nonna, halwayf past my room and clearly heading for the stairs, looked like something out of a cartoon. Her shoulders were hunched, she had one foot lifted off the floor, and she was cringing. "Oh,Fiorella. I am sorry!"
In an alernate universe, another Ella was frantically reassuring her shrieking grandmother that nothing had happened, she had not endangered her immortal soul, and it would be a very good thing, please, if Poppa's revolver went back into its dusty case.
In this one,Nonna had a gun forefinger to her own temple. She popped her thumb and rolled her eyes.
Not knowing what else to do, I stepped aside. "Um...Nonna, this is Alex Bainbridge. Alex, this is my grandmother..."
He was already across the room, hand extended. "Buongiorno, Signora Marino. Piacere di conosceria."
She responded with a delighted cackle and a torrent of Italian. I caught "welcome" and "sausage." Of course, I might have been wrong about both. Alex listened attentively, then gave her a crooked smile. "Scusi, signora. I don't speak Italian. Well, much,anyway. I just practiced a couple phrases for...um...practice."
"Ah"-Nonna reached up to pinch Alex's cheek, not to hard-"it doesn't matter. You have me at buongiorno. Now, come,come.
Dad was still holding the knife. He gave Alex a very long look. Then he set down the knife, wiped his hands on his apron, and extended one. "Ronnie Marino."
Alex almost leaped forward to take it. "Alex Bainbridge." He have a tiny wince,and I figured Dad had squeezed.
I knew no one was going to chase me for cutting school,especially not in a museum ("Hey,you! What do you think you're doing, hanging out in a cultural institution! Just wait til your parents hear about this!"(, but I still felt a little twitchy.
More than that, I felt sad and pretty scared.
One popular connection was enough for him,ya think?" I asked the bronze Mary above me. "If you Phillites are scary now, I can only imagine what you were like a hundred years ago."
No shocker, she didn't respond. The guard, however, gave me the hairy eyeball.
They came in to look. I watched them. Most people go through museums like they do Macy's: eyes sweeping the display, stopping only if something really grabs their attention. These two looked at everything. They both clearly liked the bicycle picture. Yup, Dutch, I decided.
He was a few steps ahead when he got to my favorite painting there. Diana and the Moon. It was-surprise surprise-of Diana, framed by a big open window, the moon dominating the sky outside. She was perched on the windowsill, dressed in a gauzy wrap that could have been nightclothes or a nod to her goddess namesake. She looked beautiful, of course, and happy, but if you looked for more than a second, you could see that her smile had a teasing curve to it and one of her hands was actually wrapped around the outside frame. I thought she looked like she might swing her legs over the sill and jump, turning into a moth or owl or breath of wind even before she was completely out of the room. I thought she looked, too, like she was daring the viewer to come along. Or at least to try.
The Dutch guy didn't say anything. He just reached out a hand. His girlfriend stepped in, folding herself into the circle of his outsretched arm. They stood like that, in front of the painting, for a full minute. Then he sneezed.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue.He took in and, without letting go of her, did a surprisingly graceful one-handed blow. Then he crumpled the tissue and looked around for a trash can. There wasn't one in sight. She held out her free hand; he passed over the tissue, and she stuck it right back into her pocket. I wanted to be grossed out. Instead, I had the surprising thought that I really really wanted someone who would do that: put my used Kleenex in his pocket. It seemed like a declaration of something pretty big.
Finally,they finished their examination of Diana and moved on.There wasn't much else, just the arrogant Willings and the overblown sunrise. They came over to examine the bronzes.
She saw my book. "Excuse me. You know this artist?"
Intimately just didn't seem as true anymore. "Pretty well," I answered.
"He is famous here?"
"Not very."
"I like him." she said thoughtfully. "He has...oh, the word...personism?"
"Personality?" I offered.
"Yes!" she said, delighted. "Personality." She reached behind her without looking. Her boyfriend immediately twined his fingers with hers. They left, unfolding the map again as they went, she chattering cheerfully. I think she was telling him he had personality. They might as well have had exhibit information plaques on their backs: "COUPLE." CONTEMPORARY DUTCH. COURTESY OF THE ESTATE OF LOVE, FOR THE VIEWING PLEASURE (OR NOT) OF ANYONE AND EVERYONE.
Well, good night," he said cheerfully. "Thanks for dinner."
"Oh. Right." I took a half step back toward the house. "You're welcome."
"Ella."
"Yeah?"
"You've gotta be kidding."
PECo hadn't some yet, so it was pretty dark where we were standing. I don't know how his hand found mine so fast, but one second I was thinking about how much I didn't want to say good night, and the next I was up against his chest, standing on my toes with my feet between his.
"Is this okay?" he asked, his breath chocolaty and warm against my forehead.
"Yeah," I answered, my own breath coming in quick little jumps. "Yeah."
"Good.I have something I have to tell you."
I waited.
"I hate that Klimt painting," he said. "I really hate it."
Then he was folding me into his coat and his face was right above mine, and there was only one kiss that mattered.
I was still convinced that I was going to wake up, or walk out of a bathroom, or look up from my homework to discover I'd imagined the whole thing.
Melissa JensenFor two weeks now,we'd been meeting when we could. Which, tragically, had been all of four short times: three at his house, once at mine, for a small amount of French before a lot of kissing. We'd had one furtive little interlude in an empty music room at school, but I'd been too nervous to really get into that one. At home, we were entwined, fingers and lips. At school, we barely spoke.
Melissa JensenFive years from today. Where, exactly, do you want to be?"
Her eyes lit up. Sadie loves that kind of question. "Ooh. Wow. Let me think. December, getting close to Christmas. I'll be twenty-one..."
"Passed out under the tree with a fifth of Jack, half a 7-Eleven rotisserie chicken, and a cat who poops in your shoes." Frankie returned our startled glances with his lizard look. "Oh, wait. That's me. Sorry."
I opted to ignore him. "Five years to the day,Sadie."
She glanced quickly between Frankie and me. "Do we need a time-out here?"
"Nope," I said. "Carry on."
"Okay. Five years. I will be in New York visiting the pair of you because, while NYU is fab, I will be halfwau through my final year of classics at Cambridge, trying to decide whether I want to be a psychologist or a pastry chef. You," she said sternly to Frankie, "will be drinking appropriate amounds of champagne with your boyfriend, a six-three blond from Helsinki who happens to design for Tory Burch. Ah! Don't say anything. It's my future. You can choose a different designer when it's you go. I want the Tory freebies." She turned to me. "We will be sipping said champagne in the middle of the Gagosian Galley, because it is the opening night of your first solo exhibit. At which everything will sell."
She punctuated the sentence by poking the air with a speared black olive.
"I love you," I told her. Then, "But that wasn't really about you."
"Oh,but it was," she disagreed, going back to her salad. "It's exactly where I want to be. Although" -she grinned over a tomato wedge- "I might have the next David Beckham in tow."
"The next David Beckham is a five-foot-tall Welshman named Madog Cadwalader. He has extra teeth and bow legs."
"Really?" Sadie asked.
Frankie snorted. "No.Not really.
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