I laughed.
By then, Raffaele had moved next to me on the bed. We made faces until we collided into a kiss. Then we had s.e.x. It felt totally natural. I woke up the next morning with his arm wrapped snugly around me.
After that first night, and for seven days, Raffaele and I were a thing. We spent all the time we could together. After breakfast I"d run home to shower-his was cramped-and change for cla.s.s. We"d meet up back at his apartment or mine for lunch. In the afternoons, I did my homework while he polished his thesis, which was due in two weeks, a week before his graduation. His father was planning a huge celebration at a fancy restaurant nearby.
We communicated through a hodgepodge of Italian, English, and German-but often fell back on kisses and caresses. I loved curling up in his lap or hugging him from behind while he did the dishes. When we took a shower together, he washed my hair and then toweled me dry, even cleaning my ears with a Q-tip. To me, it was intensely tender; it felt as intimate as s.e.x.
Meredith had just started seeing Giacomo, as a boyfriend, and she and I joked that we were living parallel lives. When we overlapped for a few minutes at home without them, we would both download. She said, "I like Giacomo, but he"s shy with me when we"re around other people. It really bothers me when he doesn"t say h.e.l.lo or even acknowledge me if I run into him in town."
"Maybe you need to give him a little time," I suggested.
"Yeah, that"s what I think, too," she said. "But what about Raffaele? It seems like you totally like him."
"Yeah, I really do."
And I did. He was generous with his time and with me. He had a focused attention to detail. His shirts were soft cotton and his sweaters and scarves were cashmere-all a lot nicer than my jeans and sweatshirts. And even though I didn"t know anything about cars, he was proud to show me his Audi. When Raffaele found out I didn"t have a signature scent, as a good Italian woman should, he took me to a fragrance shop downtown to pick one out. I"d put a drop on my arm and hold it up for him to sniff. We settled on a perfume made with sandalwood-something light and earthy that reminded me of how Perugia smelled in the morning. Raffaele paid without hesitation and handed me a pretty shopping bag tied with a blue ribbon. The experience made me feel sophisticated and, for once, truly s.e.xy. We walked to his apartment holding hands.
That night, when we were cuddling in bed, he turned to me and said, "Ti voglio bene"-literally, "I wish you well." I"d heard this phrase a lot since I"d been in Perugia, and TVB is standard Italian text speak.
"Anch"io ti voglio bene," I said-"I also wish you well." I didn"t realize how much weight his three words could carry. It"s what Italians say to their families, just a step below the most amorous expression, "Ti amo"-"I love you."
Raffaele looked at me seriously, appreciatively. "Will you be my girlfriend?"
We"d known each other for three days.
"Yes," I said, feeling a tiny twinge that I took as a warning sign. This is moving too fast. Is Raffaele making too much of our relationship too soon? He"d already said he wanted to introduce me to his family at graduation, and he was planning our winter weekends together in Milan. We barely knew each other.
I couldn"t see how we would last, because we were a couple of months away from living in two different cities, and I was definitely going back to Seattle at the end of the next summer. Since a big part of why I"d come to Italy was to figure myself out, it occurred to me that maybe I should be alone, that I should slow things down now, before they rocketed ahead. But just because I thought it doesn"t mean I did it.
It was easy to shove my doubts aside, because I really liked Raffaele. He was sensitive, and I felt calm around him. And without any solid ties, I"d been lonelier in Perugia than I"d realized.
In hindsight, I recognize that he ... that we were still immature, more in love with love than with each other. We were both young for our ages, testing out what it meant to be in a caring relationship.
Being with Raffaele also taught me a big lesson about my personality that I"d tried so hard-and harmfully, in Cristiano"s case-to squelch. I was beginning to own up to the fact that casual hookups like I"d had with Mirko and Bobby weren"t for me. I like being able to express myself not just as a lover but in a loving relationship. Even from the minuscule perspective of a few days with Raffaele, I understood that, for me, detaching emotion from s.e.x left me feeling more alone than not having s.e.x at all-bereft, really.
I didn"t know that this lesson had come too late to do me any good.
As it turned out, Halloween fell on the one Wednesday Raffaele and I were together. Unlike in the United States, kids in Italy don"t go door-to-door collecting candy. Still, in a college town like Perugia, Halloween offers an irresistible excuse for students to dress up in costumes and to party-and the local bars and discos go all out to oblige them. For clubs, it is the number one make-money night of the year.
Patrick had asked me to show up at Le Chic even though it wasn"t supposed to be my night, and Raffaele stayed home to work on his thesis. I"d been so caught up in my love life that I didn"t even think to buy a costume until it was too late. So I was pretty proud of myself when I dug through my closet and found a black sweater and black pants. Raffaele helped me draw on whiskers using eyeliner, and off I went, transformed into a black cat. The bad luck superst.i.tion never occurred to me.
The town was jammed, and all the masked, wigged, mummified students made the mood in Piazza Grimana feel ominous. Of course I knew the crowd wasn"t threatening, but I"ve always been kind of creeped out by costumes. As I pa.s.sed long lines of people waiting to board buses chartered by clubs such as Red Zone, I sent Meredith a quick text: "What are you doing tonight? Want to meet up? Got a costume?"
The prosecutor and the press later used Meredith"s reply, "Yes I have one, but I have to go to a friend"s house for dinner. What are your plans?" as proof of our fraying relationship, even though she signed off with an X for kisses. But Meredith had her own set of friends, and I didn"t expect to be included in everything she did. I texted my friend Spyros, the guy who worked at the Internet cafe, and we agreed to catch up.
Le Chic, usually so empty and desolate feeling, was packed that evening, possibly for the first time in its yearlong existence. Juve was standing near the front door. He"d painted his face white and had fake blood trickling down from the corner of his mouth. "Where"s your costume?" he asked.
"I"m a kitty cat."
"You"re supposed to be scary," Juve said.
Patrick poured me a gla.s.s of wine, and I hung out on the edge of the crowd for a while. But, for some reason, I was feeling a bit flat. I caught Patrick"s eye and mouthed, "I"m leaving," waving good-bye. He gave me a nod, and I was out the door.
Around 12:30 A.M., when I met Spyros and his friends for drinks, I couldn"t get into the good time they were having. Even on a blowout party night, Perugia"s social scene didn"t do much for me, and the whole evening felt like a dud. It made me nostalgic for the sit-around-and-talk gatherings of friends at UW. I was glad when Raffaele came to Piazza IV Novembre to walk me home. By that time it was 1:45 A.M., and most of my eyeliner whiskers had rubbed off. Thankfully, Halloween 2007 was over.
All Saints" Day, on November 1, is a national holiday in Italy, a day to honor the dead. Except for church bells ringing, Perugia was quiet that Thursday morning. Everyone my age must have been sleeping off the night before. I was happy for the solitude when I left Raffaele"s for a few hours on my own at home.
Around noon, I was sitting at the kitchen table reading when Filomena and her boyfriend, Marco, stopped by to change clothes for a party. She was in a rush as she chatted with me through her open bedroom door.
"How are you?" she asked. "Where"s Meredith?"
"I"m good," I said. "Just waiting for Raffaele to come over for lunch. Meredith must still be asleep."
Filomena and Marco left about an hour before Meredith wandered in from her room. She looked sleepy-eyed.
"You"ve still got vampire blood on your chin," I told her.
"I know. I couldn"t get all the paint off," she said. "I was so tired when I got home at five A.M. that I didn"t wash my face."
"What did you end up doing last night?" I asked.
"I went to a dinner party. It was amazing. They filled a surgical glove with water and froze it to make an ice hand. It looked cool floating in the punch bowl. Then we all went dancing at Merlin"s"-Meredith"s favorite pub. "What about you?"
"My Halloween was lame. I thought it was fun seeing everyone"s costumes, but mostly I was bored."
By the time Meredith got out of the shower, Raffaele was at our house. We were eating pasta when she came out of her room carrying an armload of dirty clothes to put in the washer in the big bathroom. She was wearing baggy boyfriend-style jeans.
"Dang, girl. Nice pants," I said.
"Yeah, my ex-boyfriend bought them for me," she said, hip-b.u.mping me in response to my compliment. "What are you doing for the rest of the day?"
"Hanging out here for a while and then we"re going back to Raffaele"s," I answered.
"Oh, cool. I"m heading out with friends, so have a good day."
She grabbed her purse. "See you. Ciao," she said, tossing the strap over her shoulder and waving as she went through the front door.
Raffaele and I were good at being low-key together. We chilled out in the common room and smoked a joint while I played Beatles songs on the guitar for an hour or so. Sometime between 4 P.M. and 5 P.M., we left to go to his place. We wanted a quiet, cozy night in. As we walked along, I was telling Raffaele that Amelie was my all-time favorite movie.
"Really?" he asked. "I"ve never seen it."
"Oh my G.o.d," I said, unbelieving. "You have to see it right this second! You"ll love it!"
Not long after we got back to Raffaele"s, his doorbell rang. It was a friend of his whom I"d never met-a pretty, put-together medical student named Jovanna Popovic, who spoke Italian so quickly I couldn"t understand her. She"d come to ask Raffaele for a favor. Her mother was putting a suitcase on a bus for her and she wondered if he could drive her to the station at midnight to pick it up.
"Sure," Raffaele said.