“I don’t have to go back,” she said.

“No?” I said, feeling myself hard again.

“We have lots of time.”

“I’m sorry I—”

“No, no. Me too. Now we can start.”

And this time it was slower, almost lazy, so that I felt her around me, not plunging in and out, everything slick, but taking the time to feel the moist, hidden skin, the secret part of her.

Afterward we lay in a tangle, exhausted but not wanting to stop, touching each other.

“What did you tell them, at the Accademia?”

“That I was sick. Everyone is sick in Venice in the winter. My god, listen to that. No wonder.”

The rain had grown stronger, a real downpour now, noisy against the window.

“But it makes it nice in here,” I said, the cheap hotel room suddenly a refuge.

“Yes. And freezing,” she said, pulling a sheet up around her.

“No, let me look at you. I’ll keep you warm.”

She moved closer, talking into my shoulder.

“It’s the first time since I came back. You forget how peaceful, after.”

The perfect happiness of sex, drowsy and full, something you think happens only to you.

“I feel honored,” I said, teasing. “Why me?”

“I told you, I liked your looks.”

“That’s right. My looks.”

She raised herself on one elbow. “And you. Do you like mine?”

I shook my head. “Your mind.”

She looked at me, puzzled, until I smiled. “It’s an American joke. Don’t worry. I like everything. Here. And here.”

She wriggled away from my hand but stayed close. “Did you have a girl in Germany?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I felt sorry for them. You can’t, when you feel sorry for somebody.”

“Sorry for Germans?”

“They were hungry. Living in cellars. So they’d do anything—even make you think they liked you. How would you feel?”

“Don’t ask me that. I can’t feel sorry for Germans.”

“Anyway, I didn’t go with anybody,” I said, moving away from it. “Maybe I was waiting.” I brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear.

“Ha. More romantics.” She was running her fingers across my chest, an idle examination. “No marks. Were you wounded?”

“No. I pushed paper. Not so dangerous.”

“So you never killed anybody? No Germans?”

“No. Did you?”

“Who would I kill?”

“I don’t know. The man at the camp maybe.”

She stopped running her fingers and sat up, turning toward the window.

“He kept me alive. I was grateful to him. Imagine, being grateful to someone like that. Imagine what the others were.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was killed. After the Germans left. Maybe by partisans. It was like that, those first weeks.” She turned to me. “You don’t mind about him?”

“No. Why should I mind?”

“Some men—” She paused. “I saw his body. Dead. I felt nothing. After all that, nothing. Maybe you get used to it, all the killing. That’s the problem. You think you want to kill them all. Where do you stop? The guard who pushed the children on the train? Yes, him. Then why not the ones watching? Why not everybody? And then you’re like them.”

“You’re not like them.”

She looked up at me. “Everybody’s like them.”

“No, we’re not,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder and pulling her down to the bed, leaning over her. “Anyway, it’s over.”

“Yes.” She reached up, touching my neck. “I wanted to know. If it would always feel—the way it was with him.”

“Does it?”

She shook her head.

“Good. Let’s make sure.”

The afternoon went on like that, stroking each other and then, excited again, grabbing at flesh in a kind of fury, and then dozing off, drugged with sex, hearing the rain in our half sleep. Even when it was finished we kept touching lightly, not wanting to arouse each other but unable to take our hands away. Once, during a break in the storm, I dressed and ran out for a bottle of wine, half afraid that when I got back she’d be taking her clothes out of the armoire, the mood broken, but she was still there, sheet pulled up just over her breasts.

“I’m sick, remember? I have to spend the day in bed,” she said while I poured the wine. “You’re soaked.”

“Not for long,” I said, taking my wet clothes off and climbing back in, clinking glasses. “So, a picnic finally.”

“Oh, on the Lista di Spagna.”

“You should see the water out there. We’ll be our own island in a few hours.”

She looked at me over the glass. “That’s nice, to say that.”

We slept finally, lulled by the wine and the steady rain, her back curved into me, and when I woke the sound of running water was coming from the tub. There was a thin light under the door. I got up and looked out the window. Not really late but already dark, as if the waterlogged city had simply given up and turned out the lights.

“I don’t know if there’s enough hot water for two,” she said when I went into the bathroom. “It was already getting cool. Do you mind? I thought, at your house—”

“That’s all right. I’ll just watch,” I said, sitting on the edge of the tub. The room was spare, the bathmat just a skinny towel thrown on the cold linoleum. Whatever steam there had been was now gone from the flat mirror over the basin.

“One look, then. I’m getting out,” she said, pulling herself up and posing with her hand on her hip, a kind of burlesque wiggle, then folding her arms across her chest in a shiver. “Oh, this cold.”

“Here,” I said, wrapping one of the thin towels around her as she stepped out. I held her for a minute, letting the towel blot the water, then began rubbing her dry with another one. “Come back to bed. It’s warm.”

“No, it’s late.”

“Have dinner.”

“No, it’s time to go home. I have to keep respectable hours. For the neighbors,” she said, slipping on her underpants and hooking her bra. “To be respectable.”

“You’re not,” I said, smiling.

She came over and put her hand in my hair. “I used to be.”

I picked up my shorts. “All right. I’ll take you home.”

“No, not tonight.” She looked at me. “It’s better. You stay here.”

“What am I going to do here?”

“You can watch.” She slipped on her skirt, her face sly, as if she knew this covering up would turn erotic, each simple move, even lifting a blouse from its hanger, a secret between us, her body something only we knew, more ours than ever as she hid it from everyone else, piece by piece.

She came over to the bed and looked down. “And you want to go on the vaporetto?” She leaned down, taking my erection in her hand while she kissed me. “Sometimes, you know, when it’s like this, we want to think it’s something else. But it’s not, it’s just what it is, that’s all. It’s enough for me, what it is. You understand?” She ran her fingers up the side of my penis, then moved her hand away.

I nodded.

“Thank you,” she said. “For the day. For the room.”

“Tomorrow?” I said.

She looked at me, then smiled. “But somewhere nearer. I’ll have to go back to work. Not all day, like this.”

“Anything. The Gritti?”

“No, somewhere cheap. With sheets like this.” She gestured toward the rumpled bed. “So we don’t care what we do.”

I got up to follow, grabbing part of the sheet to cover myself, making her giggle.

“Very funny.”

“Well, it is, though. How is that? So serious and then it’s funny. You think it’s funny for the animals?”

“No, but they don’t go home early, either.”

She laughed. “One o’clock.”

I went over to the window and waited to see her come out below, the wide shoulders of her coat as she moved into a line of umbrellas, people hurrying home from work, none of them turning around to look back, none aware that anything had happened.

CHAPTER TWO

My mother picked that evening, when my head was groggy, still flooded with sex, to put her foot down about dinner with Gianni.

“He’s going to think you’re avoiding him. I waited until the last possible minute. Where have you been, anyway?”