Read an Excerpt
One
a visitor
Let's start with some facts.
On day 126, I moved Whitney Houston up to the end of my bed.
Hold on. Even that's not quite true.
On day 126, I asked Max to move the bowl, filled with water, multicolored gravel, plastic coral, treasure chest, ruined archway, and Whitney Houston herself, swimming in panicked circles, and bring it sloshing up the nine steps to the mezzanine, where he placed it at the end of our bed.
Partly the goldfish move was for company, a cellmate of sorts. I had only moved into Max's basement flat a couple of weeks before I got sick. So I'd barely unpacked before I began to spend long stretches of the day in bed alone. Max's hours at the hospital were relentless and for weeks now I'd stopped wanting visitors.
But the main idea for having Whitney Houston join me upstairs was that when I feel myself getting sucked back into The Pit it would stop me thinking: Something truly catastrophic is happening; the doctors won't tell me, but they think I'm stuck like this forever. Or rather, when I did think that, I'd catch sight of my golden fantail swimming blithely around her bowl and try to remember that this is how it always feels. The fact that I kept forgetting, this violent yo-yoing between thinking I was fine and thinking I was stuck forever; this odd, Etch A Sketch memory: Well, that was part of the sickness too.
Sometimes it worked, sort of. When I felt the clamp tightening at the back of my skull, when I lost feeling in my fingers and toes and the strange, poisoned aches began to flood my system, I'd fix my gaze on Whitney's translucent tail wafting through the water and remind myself that this panic, this sense of doom that kept circling my brain like a fish in a bowl: That was just the illness speaking.
Mostly it didn't work.
Because the dirty secret was that although I joked about seven-second memories and Jewish hypochondria, this whole episode had dragged on way too long to be funny. By now, everyone was frightened. My friends were frightened, my family was frightened. Even my boss sent orchids in an expensive ceramic pot.
I saw it in Max's eyes too. At least I thought I did. And when a doctor is frightened, you know you better start worrying.
That's the problem with this story, so much is guesswork. There aren't enough hard facts. In the end, I did break free, even if I'm still trying to piece together from what. All I knew then was that I had to serve my time, imprisoned by whatever sickness it was. Only thing was, no one would tell me how long. As the weeks gave into months, so much else blurred.
Some days, it felt like only Whitney Houston was really there.
The vortex pulls me down and I thrash around inside a wave of pain. Muscles I didn’t know exist are crawling with fire. A belt is tightening around my chest. There isn’t enough space for my lungs. My brain balls itself up like a frightened bug and everything goes very slow and quiet, like my senses have been plugged. I’m gripped by a powerful loneliness, such a sharp need to touch, hear, or feel the presence of someone else that I’m scared I will not be able to breathe again without it.
Please . . .
Max.
Gracie.
Anyone.
When I surface, gasping for air, Luigi da Porto is sitting at the end of my bed. Lately he's been stalking my night thoughts. I haven't been able to work out quite why, after all these years, but now that he's here it feels strangely natural. Like when the chronology is skewed in a dream and a dead relative or a teacher from your primary school shows up. I don't think: Impossible, sixteenth-century Italian warrior-poet Luigi da Porto pitching up in my basement flat in North West London. I just think, Thank god, there he is.
And just as I think this, the edges around him blur.
I try to focus on his features, try to get purchase on something solid outside my body, but the next wave from The Pit is crashing over me. This time it brings with it a deadening exhaustion that is almost sweet. I slip back into unconsciousness without a fight.
When I wake again, the mezzanine of our apartment seems brighter than usual. Sun is pouring through the half of the window that's above pavement level, striking off Whitney's bowl and Max's favorite painting, which I've been forced to spend rather too much time with: a pair of lovers on a London Bridge, stock-still and lost in each other, as commuters swirl around them.
This time I can see Luigi very clearly. He's lounging on the yellow armchair that Max brought up to our bedroom space for visitors, wearing the same clothes as he was in that oil painting where I first saw and fell for him: a fur-trimmed tunic (cinched rather tight), pantyhose, slip-on leather shoes, and a velvet cloak flicked over one shoulder.
When he sees I'm awake, he leans forward. His broken nose, the thick dark eyebrows, the hollow cheeks and startling fullness of his lips-all the thuggish beauty of his broad features rearranges itself into a picture of concern.
"Oh, my dear, you are having an awful time of it, aren't you?"
The clock by Whitney's bowl, the one which you can't always trust, says 2:36. I must have been down there for a while this time. Two hours, maybe three? The thought of someone watching me while I am thrashing around in The Pit gives me vertigo. I wipe my mouth quickly with the back of my hand to check for dribble.
"How did you get here?" I try to stack the pillows behind me so I can sit up straight but the effort is too much.
"Can I help with that?" Luigi asks, half rising. "I can't tell you how much I feel for you. You know, of course, I was bedridden for several months following the injury. So you don't need to explain to me the crushing effect it has on the spirit as well as the body."
I feel a flicker of guilt. It's true, he's been on my mind. But not because I've been reflecting on his time stuck in bed. Rather, I've been dreaming lately about my life in Verona, that tiny flat a stone's throw from the Arena, so that in the summer months when the opera was in full swing you didn't need to buy tickets, the music came floating over the rooftops. Wondering when it was that I gave up on that younger bit of me: sex in a train, on a boat, and once-a fail-up a tree; the me that believed in poetry (even my own) and got stoned, so very stoned, then pinched warm pastries from the trays outside the bakeries on the way home at three a.m., the me that I feel so fucking far from now.
"Mind you"-he lowers his voice-"I probably shouldn't say this with you feeling so reduced. But you do know your cheekbones have never looked better?"
"Oh." I touch my face, pleased. "Well, thank you. Someone said I was looking gaunt."
It seems disloyal to name Max.
"Nonsense. You look ravishing. Even with the strange bed garments. All edges, angles, and pools of dark eyes. If my heart was not already spoken for . . ."
I glance down at my flimsy gray T-shirt-a favorite, bought in a hipster store in Brooklyn years ago, worn thin with age, now stuck to my back with cold sweat-and a pair of faded black drawstring trousers I've been wearing since yesterday morning. Was that really only yesterday?
Time has collapsed since I got sick. Night and day have lost their seam. Or perhaps that happened a few weeks after, when I realized I wasn't getting any better and the world had moved on without me? Leaving me trapped in this purgatory, a place in which I wake with dread to see which version of myself I will be: a well person who is stalked by sickness, or a sick person who may never get well. The repetition and the solitude are enough to drive you crazy, but seeing people is worse. So you sit with your goldfish and your memories and your boredom and you wait, and wait, and wait.
"How long have you been here?"
"Oh, only a couple of hours. I wasn't bored at all," says Luigi, waving a hand airily. "Quite the contrary. I was transported by the most exquisite music coming from upstairs." He closes his eyes. "The flow of arpeggios"-the hand traces languid curves in the air-"that haunting melody buried in between."
I nod carefully. Every muscle in me feels stiff, like I've been pummeled in a boxing match. "My upstairs neighbor is a piano teacher. Her students come and go through the day . . ."
"How marvelous," says Luigi, clapping his hands together. "What a salve that must be. The sound of angels transporting you from your sickbed."
"If only. Most of the time it's just scales. Played over and over, badly."
"Ah, yes. Torture. Nothing worse than a stumbling scale. But this was a thing of . . . startling beauty."
"Probably the teacher playing then."
"Flawless for a few minutes"-his nostrils flare, moved by the memory-"that simple, sad melody arching into that first cadenza, then suddenly-" He breaks off, switches his gaze back to me. "She is very sad, is she not?"
"Who?"
"The piano teacher."
"Oh. I don't know, actually. Haven't met her yet. I got sick soon after I moved into this flat, so . . ."
"A profound sadness in her tonality. Heartbreak, I'll wager. It takes one to know one-" His face twists suddenly, one side of his mouth disappearing. For a horrible moment I think he is going to burst into tears about . . . what was her name, the woman who jilted him after his injury? Lucina Savorgnan. How could I forget; the betrayal that inspired the greatest love story of all. Then he shakes his head, his expression clearing. "Ignore me, cara mia! I have left all that behind me. I'm here to talk about you." A smile takes over his face again. "How has life treated you since Verona? Apart from this horrible sickness of course. You make talking stories, I gather?"
"Talking . . . ? Oh, yes, sort of. I produce this regular podcast-"
"How thrilling. Please tell me you are still attached to that wonderful artist who makes worlds?"
It takes me a moment. I'd never thought about him like that. Danny Cousins was an occasional assistant set designer for theater and opera, who I'd met and fallen hard for in my mid-twenties. He was the reason I went to Verona; I'd followed him out there while he worked for an opera season, leaving behind my lowly job at a publishing imprint for art books and the lovely but not-quite-it boyfriend I'd been seeing. I had a vague notion that I might find something to write about, a book or a screenplay, either way an excuse to stick around and pay my way until Danny's contract ended. But as I dug into Luigi's life, the project that started out as an alibi became an obsession. Soon I was persuading Danny to use a Saturday to explore some new location-the ruins of a villa, the remnants of a ballroom, a river between fields that had once been a battleground-while piecing together Luigi's story.
"Oh. God, no," I say. "That ended years ago. I'm with a doctor now." I gesture at Max's side of the bed, which is much tidier than mine: a radio alarm which I've told him is broken (I took the batteries out; on top of a crushing illness, the state of the world is too depressing); two books about climbing; and a bunch of the little clay figures he makes when he has insomnia: a fox, an oak tree with miniature leaves, a motorbike.
"A doctor?" says Luigi, crestfallen. "What a shame."
I frown. "Why would you say that?"
"Dangerous people. Lack nuance." He shudders. "When I think of all those instruments of torture they made me wear when I was paralyzed . . ."
"How awful. But that was quite a different time-"
"The whole thing . . ." He flutters his hands. "Downright medieval. The truth is that what I really needed, over and above someone who saw me as a problem to fix, was someone who understood." He gives me a keen look. "You know what I mean?"
I shake my head, although this hits a nerve. Despite our moments, I've never really doubted how lucky I am to have a doctor at home while I am sick. "Max is extremely brilliant, the second youngest colorectal consultant surgeon in the country. Very nuanced. In fact, I've never . . ."
My mouth suddenly dries. I reach out for my water glass. Luigi gets up and limps over toward me.
"Allow me. You need a refill. I trust the tap water downstairs is OK?"
I try to hide my shock. The twist to his back and shoulders is very apparent. I do my best not to stare at the dramatic angle of his spine and neck where the spear must have pierced through a gap in his armor.
Of course, I think. How stupid of me. Those portraits of Luigi I had seen, they would have been painted before the battle of Friuli, where he'd been injured. I have a flash of that afternoon-six, no, seven years ago?-when I first came across them, diving into the cool darkness of the church off Piazza Bra, in search of some respite from the crushing heat. Hot, itchy, and preoccupied, I'd nearly sailed straight past the oil paintings-tucked away in a gloomy side chapel-when the words "original author of Romeo and Juliet" jumped out of the Perspex-framed descriptions.
In the first painting he was dressed just as he is today, sitting at a desk in front of a piece of parchment, holding a quill and looking thoughtful. In the other he was standing tall in his armor, chest puffed and chin raised under a helmet adorned with a large, proud ostrich feather. In both there was something about his gaze, something that shouldn't have been visible in a flat Renaissance painting: like he'd been waiting for me forever and couldn't believe it took me so long to show up.
Walking these days is clearly a painful affair, his left foot landing lightly before he slams down his weight on the right.
