and chocolates, and Ariel sips barley cappuccino and listens to Carinth go on about her cystitis. Although Ariel is deeply distracted, she is damned if she is going to let anything slip, not even to her loyal friend with the milkmaid’s complexion and the lascivious eyes. Damned if she will turn Roberto’s birthday into just another easily retailed feminine secret. Avoiding temptation, she looks defiantly around the shop at shelves of meringues, marzipan, candied violets, chocolate chests filled with gilded chocolate cigars, glazed almonds for weddings and first communions, birthday cakes like Palm Beach mansions. The smell of sugar is overpowering. And, for just a second, for the only time all day, her eyes sting with tears.
At home, there are hours to get through. First, she e-mails an article on a Milanese packaging designer to one of the American magazines for which she does freelance translations. Then she telephones to cancel her lesson in the neighboring village with an old artisan who is teaching her to restore antique papiers peints, a craft she loves and at which her large hands are surprisingly skillful. Then she goes outside to talk to the garden contractors—three illegal Romanian immigrants who are rebuilding an eroded slope on the east side of the property. She has to haggle with them, and as she does, the leader, an outrageously handsome boy of twenty, looks her over with insolent admiration. Pretty boys don’t go unnoticed by Ariel, who sometimes imagines complicated sex with strangers in uncomfortable public places. But they don’t really exist for her, just as the men who flirt with her at parties don’t count. Only Roberto exists, which is how it has been since that long-ago third dance, when she drew a circle between the two of them and the rest of the world. This is knowledge that she keeps even from Roberto, because she thinks that it would bore him, along with everyone else. Yet is it really so dull to want only one man, the man one already has?
After the gardeners leave, there is nothing to do—no children to pick up at school and ferry to activities; no homework to help with, no dinner to fix. The dogs are at the vet for a wash and a checkup. Unthinkable to invite Carinth or another friend for lunch; unthinkable, too, to return to work, to go shopping, to watch a video or read a book. No, there is nothing but to accept the fact that for an afternoon she has to be the loneliest woman in the world.
Around three o’clock, she gets in the car and heads along the state highway toward Lake Como, where over the years she has taken so many visiting relatives. She has a sudden desire to see the lovely decaying villas sleeping in the trees, the ten-kilometer expanse of lake stretching to the mountains like a predictable future. But as she drives from Greggio to San Giovanni Canavese, past yellowing cornfields, provincial factories, rural discotheques, and ancient village churches, she understands why she is out here. At roadside clearings strewn with refuse, she sees the usual highway prostitutes waiting for afternoon customers.
Ariel has driven past them for years, on her way to her mother-in-law’s house or chauffeuring her daughters to riding lessons. Like everyone else, she has first deplored and then come to terms with the fact that the roadside girls are part of a criminal world so successful and accepted that their slavery has routines like those of factory workers: they are transported to and from their ten-hour shifts by a neat fleet of minivans. They are as much a part of the landscape as toll booths.
First, she sees a brown-haired Albanian girl who doesn’t look much older than Elisa, wearing black hot pants and a loose white shirt that she lifts like an ungainly wing and flaps slowly at passing drivers. A Fiat Uno cruising in front of Ariel slows down, makes a sudden U-turn, and heads back toward the girl. A kilometer further on are two Nigerians, one dressed in an electric pink playsuit, sitting waggling her knees on an upended crate, while the other, in a pair of stiltlike platform shoes, stands chatting into a cellular phone. Both are tall, with masses of fake braids, and disconcertingly beautiful. Dark seraphim whose presence at the filthy roadside is a kind of miracle.
Ariel slows down to take a better look at the girl in pink, who offers her a noncommittal stare, with eyes opaque as coffee beans. The two-lane road is deserted, and Ariel actually stops the car for a minute, because she feels attracted by those eyes, suddenly mesmerized by something that recalls the secret she heard in Beba’s voice. The secret that seemed to be happiness, but, she realizes now, was something different: a mysterious certitude that draws her like a magnet. She feels absurdly moved—out of control, in fact. As her heart pounds, she realizes that if she let herself go, she would open the car door and crawl toward that flat dark gaze. The girl in pink says something to her companion with the phone, who swivels on the three-inch soles of her shoes to look at Ariel. And Ariel puts her foot on the gas pedal. Ten kilometers down the road, she stops again and yanks out a Kleenex to wipe the film of sweat from her face. The only observation she allows herself as she drives home, recovering her composure, is the thought of how curious it is that all of them are foreigners—herself, Beba, and the girls on the road.
Six o’clock. As she walks into the house, the phone rings, and it is Flavio, who asks how the plot is progressing. Ariel can’t conceal her impatience.
“Listen, do you think those girls are going to be on time?”
“As far as I know, they are always punctual,” he says. “But I have to go. I’m calling from the car here in the garage, and it’s starting to look suspicious.”
He hangs up, but Ariel stands with the receiver in her hand, struck by the fact that besides worrying about whether dinner guests, upholsterers, baby-sitters, restorers of wrought iron, and electricians will arrive on schedule, she now has to concern herself with whether Beba will keep her husband waiting.
Seven-thirty. The thing now is not to answer the phone. If he thinks of her, which is unlikely, Roberto must assume that she is in the car, dressed in one of the discreetly sexy short black suits or dresses she wears for special occasions, her feet in spike heels pressing the accelerator as she speeds diligently to their eight o’clock appointment. He is still in the office, firing off the last frantic fax to Rome, pausing for a bit of ritual abuse aimed at his harassed assistant, Amedeo. Next, he will dash for a pee in his grim brown-marble bathroom: how well she can envision the last, impatient shake of his cock, which is up for an unexpected adventure tonight. He will grab a handful of the chocolates that the doctor has forbidden, and gulp down a paper cup of sugary espresso from the office machine. Then into the shiny late-model Mercedes—a monument, he calls it, with an unusual flash of self-mockery, to the male climacteric. After which, becalmed in the Milan evening traffic, he may call her. Just to make sure she is going to be on time.
Eight-fifteen. She sits at the kitchen table and eats a frugal meal: a plate of rice with cheese and olive oil, a sliced tomato, a glass of water.
The phone rings again. She hesitates, then picks it up.
It is Roberto. “Allora, sei rimasta a casa,” he says softly. “So you stayed home.”
“Yes, of course,” she replies, keeping her tone light. “It’s your birthday, not mine. How do you like your present? Are they gorgeous?”
He laughs, and she feels weak with relief. “They’re impressive. They’re not exactly dressed for a restaurant, though. Why on earth did you think I needed to eat dinner with them? I keep hoping I won’t run into anybody I know.”
In the background, she hears the muted roar of an eating house, the uniform evening hubbub of voices, glasses, silver, plates.
“Where are you calling from?” Ariel asks.
“Beside the cashier’s desk. I have to go. I can’t be rude. I’ll call you later.”
“Good luck,” she says. She is shocked to find a streak of malice
