The Rome Affair. Laura Caldwell

in Chicago had little in common with. And yet Kit also had a sparkly kind of mystery about her. Even now, she wore rose-colored mirrored sunglasses and a taupe chiffon scarf around her neck, her rusty red hair tousled artfully. If she took off the glasses, you could see that her blue eyes were almost purple, depending on what she was wearing, and those eyes had a sly, knowing way about them. She looked like an intriguing woman, a Hollywood starlet on the lam. As one of her closest friends, though, I knew she was hurting from her failures out West.

      “Thanks, Nick.” She smiled at him.

      I breathed a sigh of gratitude for that grin. Those who knew about our marital problems were furious at Nick. They either refused to talk to him, or they made snide remarks when they did. I knew he was getting sick of being the whipping boy, and I didn’t like it, either. Although I could taunt him and stalk away all I wanted, I didn’t want anyone else treating him badly.

      “Meet you at the ticket counter?” I said to Kit.

      She readjusted the scarf around her neck. “Sure thing.”

      I turned to him when she’d left. “What are you going to do while I’m gone?”

      “Work. Miss you like crazy.”

      I smiled. “Get some sleep, huh?”

      Nick and I spent our evenings together again, but after I’d gone to bed, he would work late into the night on a new paper, hoping it would bring him a partnership. He’d gone into plastic surgery not for the glamour surgeries and the money they brought, but for the real treatments that could help people. But now that he was at the best plastic surgery office in the city, he had to perform those glam surgeries, and he had to publish to get promoted to partner.

      “I doubt I’ll get much sleep,” Nick said. “I’ve got to take a couple of board members to dinner, too.”

      “When do they decide?”

      He rolled his eyes. “A month or so.”

      Despite his feigned nonchalance, Nick was anxious about making it on The Chicago General Auxiliary Board—what everyone in the city called The board. It was a group of handpicked young and influential people who threw parties, ostensibly to raise funds for Chicago General Hospital, where Nick was on staff, but really to identify themselves as the crème de la crème of Chicago society. Nick wanted to get on the board not only to improve his chances of becoming partner, but also because he’d always been a member of the in-crowd growing up in Philadelphia. His father was a longstanding politician, and although the Blakelys had never been wealthy, they were exceptionally well connected and admired. They were invited to every soiree and function in town. When Nick took off for med school, and eventually his residency in Chicago, he said he was leaving Philly so that he wouldn’t ride his family’s coattails. But the limelight was a place where Nick was accustomed to being. He missed it. And although I could be just as happy in our basement painting my black-and-white photos as I could be at a grand charity ball, I supported Nick. I’d known our social life would be a busy one.

      Nick kissed me on the forehead. “Good luck with your sales pitch, hon.”

      I closed my eyes, leaned into him and inhaled the warm scent he always carried, as if he’d just come in from the sun. “Thanks. And really, Nick, make sure you sleep enough.”

      “You know I only sleep with you.”

      We both froze for a second. It was the kind of remark that was supposed to be light, but was now only a reference to what used to be true.

      “Seriously,” Nick said, rushing in to fill the silence, to fix it. “I meant I’ll be up all night because I won’t know what to do without you.”

      I took a step back and looked away. To my right, a dad struggled to extract a stroller from the trunk of his car. That was the kind of problem I thought Nick and I would be having at this point—how to fit the stroller in the car, where to put the crib, what color to paint the nursery.

      “Rachel,” Nick said. “I’m sorry.”

      I knew he was sick of apologizing, and the truth was, I was getting sick of hearing it.

      “C’mere,” he said, pulling me to him again.

      He kissed me, and despite myself, I responded. Before, we had been like everyone else. Now, we were passionate people, fighting for our relationship, and Nick was a man who couldn’t get enough of me.

      “Be careful, okay?” he said, holding my face in his hands.

      “Nick, I’m not gone that long.”

      “Tell me you’ll be careful.”

      “Of course I will be. I’ll strap my purse around me tight. I’ll watch out for gypsies.”

      He studied my face. “I’ll miss you,” he whispered.

      “I love you,” I said in response, because that was true, and it might not have been true to say I’d miss him.

      2

      It’s been said that Rome lacks the languid, friendly allure of other Italian cities, but the Roman mornings, at least to me, are undeniably charming. The colors stun the mind—the thousand shades of gold that are impossible to capture on film or in memory. Even when I’ve taken black-and-white photos of the city and painted on them, I can’t adequately capture a Roman morning—the way the sun gives a misty yellow glow to every corner of the city.

      It was that pale yellow blush that struck me as we stepped out of our cab, just around the corner from the Piazza di Spagna.

      “Wow,” Kit murmured for at least the tenth time since we’d landed. She embraced me as the cabbie lugged our bags from the trunk. “You are amazing for bringing me here.”

      I had used most of my air miles to upgrade us both, and I had paid a few hundred dollars of Kit’s ticket, as well. Since moving back from L.A., Kit was short on cash. Not that this was anything new. I’d known Kit since first grade, and ever since her father died a few years after that, money had been tight. I used to pay her way into the movies and buy her bracelets at Claire’s Boutique so she could be like the rest of the girls. Money was even scarcer now. Kit told people she worked “in the marketing department of the Goodman Theatre,” which was true and sounded respectable enough, but the plainer truth was she was the department secretary. She collated, she stapled, she answered phones. She made very little money. What she had usually went toward the bills surrounding her mom’s cancer treatment.

      “I’m glad to do it,” I told Kit, squeezing her hand. I was filled with a giddy feeling of promise, of a friendship renewed and, with the exception of my sales pitch tomorrow, a few days away from reality.

      Kit and I checked into Il Palazzetto, a restored palazzo near the Spagna subway station. My mother had been to Rome the previous summer with her new husband, a real-estate mogul much older than she, and they’d stayed for two months at Il Palazzetto. She insisted Kit and I would be crazy to book anyplace else. When we stepped into the small foyer, I could see why.

      The floor was a mosaic of colored stone. Sunlight flooded down the spiral marble staircase with its twisted, wrought-iron railings. On the second floor, our room had soaring ceilings, Roman columns and walls draped with gauzy, flowing fabric.

      I opened the French window of our room, just in time to catch the sight of the pristine, white sun hitting the Spanish Steps.

      I smiled over my shoulder at Kit.

      “This is going to be good,” she said. Her voice told me she was excited in a way she hadn’t been in a long time. “This is going to be really good.”

      I turned back toward the Roman morning and nodded.

      

      Nearly everyone loves Italy. An adult who says, “Oh, I adore Italy” is like a child who says “I love Disneyland.” Of course you do.

      The funny thing is that Italophiles believe it is they who