Free Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman Page A

books and Enzo, the cook, can drop acid and organize radical political meetings in the galley kitchen, drinking up Romaine’s Barolos with his communist friends, thumping the ashes from his cigarette into her gnocchi.
    Today her lunch, tomato soup and croquettes, is untouched on the tray, which she has pushed into the corner so as not to smell it. As far as he can tell, Romaine takes joy in nothing. She turns friends away, leaves letters unopened.
    He tiptoes toward the door, hoping to get back to his novel, Caproni’s translation of Céline’s Death on Credit.
    Mario!
    She’s awake. He sighs.
    Can’t you see that I’m doing my exercises?
    Mi scusi.
    She looks to the right, a hard right. Then to the left. She’s exact in her movements; she’s been doing these exercises daily for thirty years. Down, around, repeat. Now angles. Now close and far away.
    Mario hears the neighbor’s rottweiler barking. The dog sits on the rooftop patio across from Romaine’s bedroom, howling at ambulances, barking for hours. Once the dog starts he can’t quit.
    You must make the dog stop, Romaine says, holding her trembling fingers to her temples.
    Mario has tried explaining that he can’t make the dog stop barking, but Romaine expects the impossible. So he opens the doors onto Romaine’s terrace and yells at the thick-necked dog, who only barks harder and louder upon seeing Mario, frothing at themouth, placing his front paws on the planters filled with red begonias. Vaffanculo , Mario mutters.
    He picks up the broom they leave on the terrace and sweeps the dead blossoms from the terra-cotta tiles; as soon as the sun goes down Romaine will take her wine out here, as long as the dog is quiet. How can she be so paranoid when she can have anything she wants? he wonders.
    When he comes inside Romaine is staring at the wall.
    Should I set up your paints? he asks.
    This question is a formality. Romaine has not painted in forty years.

    Enzo is chopping a spoiled onion, wild-eyed as usual, shirt unbuttoned, glass of Barolo precariously placed on the marble chopping block. He has two bags of carrots nearby, which he will make into the juice that Romaine drinks twice daily for her eyesight.
    Ecco! he says, sweating, laughing, always laughing. È la domestica!
    I’m a student.
    You’re a nurse! To an old woman with droopy tits and a mouth like a marinaio .
    Zitto.
    Do you have to wipe her ass? What’s it like?
    Mario ignores Enzo and collects the mail, opening the complex series of bolts Romaine has ordered installed on the door. Among her many paranoias: theft, blindness, and the belief that trees try to feed off one’s “life force.”
    Romaine is not kind, but she is interesting; he will allow her that.Every week there’s a letter from an art dealer in New York, hoping, no begging , for some of Romaine’s work. She never responds.
    An envelope stands out in today’s stack: expensive lavender card stock, perfumed and embossed with a lily. He knows this stationery. It comes from Paris, from a woman named Natalie. He knows what will happen. He’ll take these letters to Romaine on her dinner tray and she’ll toss them on the floor or leave them underneath her silverware. Some days she painstakingly marks the envelope to be returned to sender: “Miss Barney—Paris.”
    Mario usually reads the letters in the kitchen on his lunch break. Natalie’s are his favorites; she seems to know she’s having a one-sided conversation, that Romaine will never answer. She writes of the war, of the time twenty-odd years ago when she and Romaine were living in a Tuscan villa, gardening like peasants just to feed themselves. Her sentences move from hemorrhoid management to oral sex. Natalie is, from what he can tell, an elderly woman with an active libido.
    Tonight, instead of taking the letter to Romaine, he puts it into his coat pocket and, after checking on