Free Blood Orange by Drusilla Campbell

south as Palermo, where he told her about a beautiful little museum and an extraordinary painting, loaded with subtext, called The Triumph of Death. She had to see it.

    “Tell him about me,” Micah said.
    Not yet.
    “Waiting won’t make it easier on him.”
    It was Saturday. Her flight home was on Monday morning.
    “It’s not one of those things I can just say.”
    “What can’t you say? That you love me?” He held her face in his
hands. His palms were hot and dry, and she imagined she felt his
lifeline mark her cheeks, making her his forever. “You do love me.
You know you do. Say, `I love you, Micah.”’
    She whispered it.
    “Tell him.”
    “Let me do it my own way.”
    “You want to leave me? You want to go back to that?”
    That.
    She would starve without Micah, dry up and blow away like
sculptor’s dust.
    She thought of a painting she had seen yesterday or the day before. Her days streamed together like watercolors. Or maybe it was
a story she had read, or maybe she was making it up right now to explain how she felt, because only metaphor could make her emotions
comprehensible. A maiden wandered into a dark and beautiful
wood. She danced with a satyr and fell into a swoon. When he bent
over her and asked for her will, she gave it to him.
    Before they fell asleep that night Micah said, “Say it.”
    “I love you.”
    “Louder.”

    She laughed.
    “I mean it. I want to hear you yell it out.”
    “I’ll wake up the princess.”
    “Get up and go over to the window. Stand there and yell it
across the river.”
    She sat up and stared at him.
    “Do it and I won’t ask you again.”
    She was tired, too tired to argue. She got out of bed and fumbled
for her nightgown that had fallen off the end of the bed.
    “Go like you are. Don’t put anything on.” He folded his arms
beneath his head. “There’s moonlight.”
    “What if someone sees me?”
    “You have a beautiful body. Don’t be ashamed of it.”
    “Micah, I’m not ashamed. I just don’t like to make a public-“
    “I’d like to put you on display in the piazza.”
    The gooseflesh rose on her arms.
    “The women would envy you and the men would all want to
fuck you. They’d offer me money.”
    She got back into bed. Pulling the blanket around her shoulders,
she said, “I don’t want to do this.”
    “Do what?” He bit her earlobe gently. “What don’t you want to
do?”
    “Stand in the window.”
    He poked her gently in the ribs. “I was only kidding.”
    For years Micah had sold his drawings in the Piazza del Duomo
marketplace on Sundays. These drawings were much less fine than
those for sale in shops around the Old City but still better than
most. If the weather was good he might make several hundred
Euros selling his pictures. While he was doing that Dana would
have the palazzo to herself. She could not talk to David with Micah in the room listening, feeding her lines, fluttering his tongue up her
inner thigh.

    She thought of the house in Mission Hills, the rooms she had
lovingly painted and decorated, the hardwood floors she had stripped
and sanded and buffed. She allowed herself to feel a pinch of regret
for what she was abandoning.
    She had not used that word before.
    “Mommymommymommy.”
    The impulse to hang up was like a hand jerking her out the door
and down the stairs.
    Mommymommymommy.
    She did not know what to say to Bailey. She had planned the
words for David, scripted their conversation like a phone volunteer
asking for campaign money. She had no spiel laid down for Bailey.
“I love you” was all she could think to say that wasn’t a lie she
would choke on.
    “Talk, Mommy.”
    She tried to swallow, but something had been added to her
anatomy. At the base of her tongue there was a growth the size of a
walnut.
    “Dana.” David at last. “Why didn’t you call? I’ve been worried.
Did you get my messages?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “I called the hotel, but you were never there.