Free Alena: A Novel by Rachel Pastan Page B

made my way through the quiet streets to the Hotel Gritti Palace, host to princes and divas, on the Grand Canal. Bernard had told me his room number, which happened to be the same as his birthday, so I went straight up in the elevator. But alone in the hallway, standing at the door, I lost my nerve. What right had I to wake him? No, better to leave a note of farewell and explanation, just so he knew what had happened, where I had gone. Perhaps I could append my phone number, my address, and someday if he happened to be passing through the city he might . . .
    I pressed my cheek to the cool, hard wood and, my eyes aching with exhaustion and desire, sent a silent appeal through the door. I visualized the thread connecting us, spun out from my heart like spider’s silk, navigating the whirling atoms of the door, arcing through the unknown space of the room to terminate just above the lapels of his pajamas. (I was picturing him clad for bed like a movie star from the forties—Clark Gable, perhaps, or Cary Grant.) Then, quite unexpectedly, I heard the sound of paper rustling, a stream of water, a window being thrust up. My heart flared. I knocked. Nothing happened. I knocked again, louder.
    The door opened and there was Bernard, dressed not in ironed pajamas but in gray silk boxers with stars on them, his fish-white jaws rough with stubble, his hair spiky with sweat, his body big in the shoulders and chest like a swimmer’s. It was a shock to see him like that, almost naked. He looked younger than I thought of him, more physically vigorous. He stepped into the hall. As he shut the door behind him, a flicker of movement inside the room caught my eye: a young man, perhaps my age, lounging on the rumpled bed. “What’s wrong?” Bernard said as the door clicked shut.
    “I came to say good-bye!” I said. “We’re leaving, Louise isn’t well. We’re flying back today, and I wanted—I didn’t want—” I tried to be calm, but my tears spilled over and my words caught in my throat. I was trembling.
    Bernard frowned, putting a thoughtful finger to his lips. “Go downstairs,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the breakfast room. Order coffee.”
    “I don’t have time!” I wailed. “We’re leaving the hotel at nine!”
    He smiled, the weary, patient smile I’d already come to know. “Better hurry, then,” he said.

    In the grand, hushed breakfast room, lush and intricately patterned carpets in blue and pink stretched luxuriously across the gleaming floors, and chandeliers of twisted, watery glass, suspended from the ceilings, caught the morning light and gave it back, honeyed and liquescent. Flowers bloomed in bowls on creamy tablecloths: frilly yellow peonies and carnal purple irises with green-white beards. The very air seemed golden, luscious, faintly narcotic. For a moment, stepping through the door, I forgot everything. So this was what wealth could do: transfigure a fragment of the world into beauty. For the first time a thin spine of envy pierced me. Not luxury, power, leisure: I didn’t care about those. But beauty, every piece of the world made golden. How was it fair that I should be barred from it like the poor relation I was, my face pressed to the window? I sat down in a daze and ordered two cappuccinos from the gleaming waiter who shook the snowy swan in front of me into a napkin and laid it, a linen blessing, across my lap. I looked hard into his handsome, neutral face. Coffee eyes, inky lashes, hair the color of butter. Did they choose waiters here for beauty too? Did the waiters know they were cogs in the machine of the sublime? And if they did, did they care?
    The cappuccinos arrived in pale green cups designed to look as though they were made of overlapping leaves. A moment later Bernard appeared, slipping through the liquid air, his hair wet, his face smooth, his skin hidden under scrupulous layers of buttoned cloth. “Now,” he said, “what’s all this about you going?”
    I pulled the