Free The Other Language by Francesca Marciano Page B

I had remembered. I had no idea he was so attractive.”
    Balti’s aroma had made her dizzy. The reflective, elusive, desirable producer so many people she knew, including herself, dreamed of working with. Somehow, in that crowded café, among the tinkling sounds of cups and spoons and the hissing of the espresso machine, she felt a gentle shift take place under her feet. It was a physical sensation, like the harbinger of a fault running horizontally, severing her from the life she had been living till then. Caterina felt a combination of panic and exhilaration.
    Yes, her new life must be waiting just around the corner from that crowded café, ready for her to slip into it. There was nothing to fear, all major changes tend to come in a flash, unannounced—like floods and fires.

    So there they were the following day, their last in Venice, divining their future over iced cappuccinos, basking in the tepid September sun. The waiter brought the check on a plate.
    “Fifteen euros,” noted Pascal, arching an eyebrow.
    “I’ll get this,” she said, feeling famous and beautiful again. She picked up the check and left a five-euro tip. She stood up, triumphant.
    “What shall we do now? No more art, please. I’d say we’ve seen enough,” she said, excavating some authority over Pascal from the depths of her soul.
    “Fine. Let’s go try on some clothes, then,” Pascal suggested.
    Pascal loved fashion in the same way he loved art. He thought of clothes as beautiful objects to be looked at, sampled, felt, experienced. Designer shops to him were the equals of galleries. One should walk in and try on whatever one wanted, just to enjoy the tactile experience.
    It was a game they’d played before and there were rules that had been established. Pascal had mastered the technique to the point of perfection. Caterina had watched him walk with a confident stride into Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Hermès on the Via Condotti in Rome and ask for a jacket, a pair of trousers, a coat. Salesmen flocked because of his confidence and good looks, certain he must be a celebrity. The way he went straight to the rack, testing the fabric, shaking his head—at times even grimacing—as if nothing truly convinced him, was admirable. He would then ask for something more formal, with less of this and more of that. Money clearly wasn’t the issue, he was careful never to ask the price.
    Once, at Gucci, he had tried a black evening coat lined in wolf fur. He looked fabulous and impossibly dramatic. The salesmen surrounded him while he studied himself in the mirror showing the usual dissatisfaction. Caterina had kept quietly in the background(she was always nervous whenever they played the game) but that once, taken by a sudden inspiration, she felt confident enough herself and had stepped in closer.
    “This would be perfect for the St. Petersburg concert,” she had said out loud, looking straight at him through the mirror with an amused expression. She expected a sign of recognition or gratitude from Pascal for her brilliant idea (an orchestra conductor, of course! Who else would need a wolf-lined evening coat?). Instead he had glanced at her with an icy frown—as if to say, “That was ruinous, why did you have to do that”—and immediately took the coat off.
    “I don’t like anything in this shop,” he declared and dropped the coat in the hands of a young man with a perfectly shaped goatee and a diamond earring.
    For her part Caterina never possessed the guts to look sufficiently dissatisfied with the clothes so that she and Pascal could leave a shop making the salespeople feel inadequate and not the other way round. So, whenever it was her turn to try on something, Pascal would have to support the act by playing the irritable costume designer, the fussy buyer, the purist. He knew exactly when it was time to end the game and had his own exit strategy figured out. He would look at each dress with an air of exasperation that bordered on