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OK, I’m giving the kid another five minutes to leave. It’s nearly midnight. Doesn’t he have some computer system he has to go hack into somewhere back home?
Now she’s asking him about A
I slap down a two. So does Peter.
War.
Oh, it’s war, my boy. In more ways than you know.
Wait. What’s that?
Meowing. The cats are back.
She leaps up and heads into the kitchen to find something to feed them. Peter and I are alone at last.
By the time she returns with a bowl of what looks to be the contents of several cans of tuna, Peter is gone.
“Where’d Peter go?” she wants to know.
And I can’t help but believe that she genuinely doesn’t know.
This is a mystery I’m only too happy to clear up for her.
Travel Diary of Jane Harris
Travel Diary of Holly Caputo and Mark Levine
Jane Harris
IS HE INSANE? I mean, I know he thinks I’m silly, what with my “little cartoon” and my too-high heels that I’m always tripping over and the whole “carabinieri” thing.
But it never occurred to me that he might think I’m the STUPIDEST HUMAN BEING ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET.
Because that’s exactly who I’d have to be to fall for his whole “It’s just a kiss, it doesn’t have to mean anything” routine.
But you know what? I’m not going to let him. Ruin the wedding, I mean. He can sulk all he wants tonight, but if he comes downstairs tomorrow morning with anything but a great big happy smile on his face, I will personally give his arm hairs a twist he won’t forget.
Who does he think he is, anyway, Enrique Iglesias? “I just want to kiss you. You’re an an artist. I thought you people were used to living in the moment?”
Whatever!
Apparently he thinks just because I am an unmarried woman of a certain age who lives with a cat, I must be desperate. Or retarded.
Well, I’d HAVE to be pretty desperate—or retarded—to fall into bed with HIM. What, just because he did me (well, Holly and Mark, really) a favor today, I’m going to sleep with him? Because we had a nice lunch and some laughs, I’m easy? Please.
And okay, the guy is truly, almost unbelievably hot. I’ll admit I was checking out his hands as we played cards. They’re all big and sinewy, exactly the kind of hands a girl wouldn’t mind roaming all over her body.
And he can be charming when he puts his mind to it. Even kind of fu
And he’s definitely intelligent. At least, about stuff other than women. And he can be fu
And he’s nice to cats—when he thinks no one is looking.
But I’m sorry, my days of sleeping with guys just because they happen to have nice hands and can tell a fu
I’m over that. WAY over that.
You think that’d have been clear to him from the begi
Apparently he didn’t get the message. I mean, I come out with food for the cats and Peter is gone—kind of suddenly, since we’d been in the middle of a card game when I got up.
So I’m all, “Where’s Peter?” and Cal’s like, “I gave him twenty euros and told him to make himself scarce.”
Me: “You WHAT?”
Cal: “You heard me. About time, too. He’s been keeping me from being able to do this all night.”
And then he took me by the shoulders, and before I had any idea what was happening (no, really, I NEVER suspected he was attracted to me, since he’s done nothing but grouse at me since the moment we first met. Well, except for putting his arm around me, back at the consulate. But that was just for show!), he pulled me to him and started kissing me.
Kissing me! Like we were in a romance novel, or something!
And OK, he’s no slouch in the kissing department. Clearly, he’s had some practice.
And OK, I didn’t exactly hate it. Far from it, actually. All the different parts of me that usually go all melty when someone hot kisses me in a purposeful way went all melty, right on schedule, when he did it.
And I will admit that for a split second, I was all, “Oh my gosh! He likes me! He REALLY likes me!” and I entertained a quick tiny fantasy of us strolling down Second Avenue hand-in-hand and going to Veselka’s for blintzes and me introducing him to The Dude. And I started to kiss him back….
But then I realized… that fantasy? It will never, ever come true. Because he doesn’t believe in love, much less marriage, and he will NEVER go to Veselka’s for blintzes with me, much less stick around to meet The Dude—at least not long enough to form a meaningful relationship with him. And how long can I keep introducing The Dude to men he isn’t ever going to see again? He’s very sensitive, and when he does bond, it’s forever. He wouldn’t finish his Friskies for days after Malcolm left.
And then Holly’s voice chimed into my head with You’ve got to start thinking about the future, and date people who will actually stick around for a change, and I remembered that bride we saw outside the church in Rome, and how happy she looked, and how her dad was beaming down at her—
And right then and there, I realized something that I don’t think I’ve been willing to admit to myself since college, or whenever it was that the idea of getting married no longer seemed as cool as it had back during those Barbie games in fifth grade:
And that’s that I WANT to get married someday. I do. I really do. I want the bouquet and the red carpet and the gown and the veil and the weepy dad and the flower girls and till death do us part.
So what was I doing kissing some guy who thinks marriage as an institution ought to be abolished?
So instead of wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him back, as I’m sure he was expecting me to do, and as I have to admit I really did WANT to do—at least, my BODY wanted me to—I put my hands on his chest and shoved.
He staggered back into the metal lawn chair he’d been sitting in, and just sat there blinking up at me, like, “What gives?”
But before he had a chance to say anything, I went off.
Me: “What do you think I am? An idiot? I am NOT sleeping with you.”
Cal: “Um… it was just a kiss.” Me: “You don’t believe in love. You think it’s all a result of phenyl… phenyl… whatever it is.”
Cal: “Phenylethylamine. And, not to be pendantic… but it was just a kiss.”
Me: “But unlike you, I do happen to believe in love. And marriage. So what’s the point? One night, and then what? I become another name in your Blackberry. No, thank you.”
Cal: “Pardon me if my memory is the one at fault here, and, keeping in mind that it was, again, just a kiss, didn’t you e me not long ago that you were in no rush to get married or have children because you wanted to concentrate on your career?”
Me: “I might have. But I want to get married EVENTUALLY. So why in God’s name would I fall into bed with some guy who’s totally against the very idea of marriage? What’s going to happen tomorrow morning, when you can’t even make eye contact, and are avoiding me? And how about on the plane going back to New York, when we have to sit by each other again? And when we get back to Manhattan? Are you going to call? Am I ever even going to hear from you again?”