The Lover From An Icy Sea Read online

  When Daneka’s breathing returned to normal several minutes later, she raised her head and looked directly into Kit’s eyes.

  “I love you more than my own life,” she said. A fresh set of tears began to fall as she contemplated the depth of the emotional abyss into which she had, with this single declaration, just hurled herself.

  Chapter 40

  Kit stood up from the bed and pulled Daneka up with him. He hadn’t intended to answer her declaration with one of his own; he really didn’t know what to say. Instead, he embraced her, then kissed both her eyes—now slightly puffy and lacking any evidence of the elaborate make-up she’d applied to them while he’d been at the demonstration.

  “Let me take a quick shower and then smarten myself with a bit of science, darling. I won’t be ten minutes. ‘Promise.”

  “No!” Kit was prepared to stand firm. Daneka looked at him curiously.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “I mean no! No shower. No make-up. No anything but what I see right in front of me here and now.”

  “But Kit, I’m a mess!”

  “You’re nothing of the kind. I’ve never seen you more beautiful!” Daneka’s look suggested to Kit that she didn’t know whether to feel flattered or devastated. “I mean, yes. of course I have. But there’s a raw, uncluttered beauty about you at this moment that I adore—that I want to enjoy now and for the rest of my life.”

  “But my laugh-lines!” Either Daneka hadn’t heard Kit’s declaration, or she had quite intentionally passed right over and around it. “I can’t go out like this. People might think I’m your mother.”

  “Let people think what they will. You and I know you’re nothing of the kind. That’s enough for me. Isn’t it for you?” Kit suspected he should say something to disabuse her, once and for all, of this nagging discrepancy in their ages. But it was too late; he’d missed the opportunity—and Daneka’s pained expression confirmed it.

  “Please, darling. At least a little powder.”

  “Okay. A little.”

  He sat back down on the bed while Daneka went into the bathroom and half-closed the door behind her. When he heard her turn on the shower, however, he jumped up and pushed the door open.

  “No! No shower!”

  “But darling! I smell—. Oh, I don’t know. I think I smell a little—.”

  “You smell divine. You smell savage. You smell like sex. You’re pure nose-candy. No shower.”

  “May I at least—? You know.”

  “No you may not! Powder—that’s it!”

  Daneka chuckled. “Well, darling, it’s your nose.” She turned to the mirror, studied her face for a couple of seconds, then reached into her make-up bag. Kit walked out of the bathroom and sat back down on the bed. Two minutes later, she re-emerged with just enough powder and rouge on her face to highlight her cheeks to bewildering effect. She went to the dresser, pulled open a drawer and took out another pair of panties. Kit jumped off the bed and came up behind her. He took the panties out of her hand and dropped them back into the drawer, then closed it.

  “And no panties.”

  Daneka looked at him for a moment as if he’d gone perfectly mad, then chuckled. “Are you planning on a second course before we even sit down to dinner?”

  “Maybe.”

  Daneka stared hard at Kit as she moved like a leopard to a position directly in front of him. She reached inside his jeans, and Kit felt himself respond immediately to her touch.

  “Well, now,” she whispered. “Let’s not forget that I, too, have an appetite.” Kit put his mouth on hers. She responded with her tongue, with a murmur, and with a squeeze. As she dropped her other hand to undo his belt buckle, he reached for it.

  “Now stop that! C’mon,” he said, taking hold of both of Daneka’s wrists. “We have to eat something. We’re going to die here if we don’t!”

  “Yes, I know, darling. But what a way to die! One little nibble before we go? Just one little nibble for this naughty nymphet?” she asked as she returned unabashedly with both hands to his belt buckle and zipper.

  She had the first undone and the second down before Kit could object. Whatever his head and stomach told him, another part of him was screaming the contrary—and Daneka knew precisely how to answer the call. She dropped to her knees; freed him of his pants and underwear; took him into her mouth. Kit looked down at her—this woman he loved almost to the point of pain—and wondered at his luck. Not only was she brilliant and beautiful, clever and charismatic, seductive and occasionally even seditious; she could also give a blow-job, he imagined, like nobody else on the planet. He watched as her lips worked, crawling steadily and cautiously forward until she had taken in all of him. He knew that many men preferred oral to genital sex. He didn’t. Whatever power or dominance the act suggested was not something that moved him. He liked oral sex, but only as titillation, as foreplay, as a preamble to the real thing. And the real thing for Kit was being inside her; his mouth on her mouth; his arms around her, and hers around him.

  He knew he could easily have come in that instant. He knew that Daneka would not have objected, and that she would’ve been delighted to see, once again, how easily she could bring a man to climax. But not now. Later. Tonight. In bed. Inside her—where once again, with luck, he could make her come with him.

  “Darling,” he whispered as he bent down and gently forced her to disengage. “Let’s go to dinner.”

  * * *

  They arrived by elevator at the ground floor and walked across the hotel lobby. At the sight of Daneka, the bell captain wasted no time in stepping up to open the front door for her. Having paused momentarily to pull a cigarette out of its pack, Kit trailed her with just enough space to see the bell captain’s nostrils flare as she passed by. Kit smiled to himself at the man’s unconscious gesture. This vestige, this left-over from a time when homo sapiens were not yet homo sapiens, when their bodies were still covered with hair, when they freely and spontaneously reacted with their noses not to the chemical concoctions of Revlon or Estée Lauder, but to the natural flower of estrus or the musk of a female’s unwashed hind quarters—this, Kit knew, was also human. It took someone like Daneka, however, to make the latent obvious.

  They walked arm in arm like young lovers—like young, Roman lovers—across the Piazza Campo de’ Fiori and turned right into the Via dei Farnesi, then veered briefly left into the Via Giulia and up over the Tiber River onto the Ponte Sisto. Here, as she’d suggested she would, Daneka struck up a grand pose—which, Kit knew, she could only have learned from the movies—and pronounced for any who cared to hear: “Alea iacta est!” Then she turned to Kit with the look of a gamine. Her finishing-school English, however, belied any secret ambitions she might’ve had to suggest some mysterious origins in the backstreets of Araby.

  “How does one say that in English, darling? I knew once, but I’ve forgotten. And since almost nobody in New York knows Latin anymore, I never get a chance to refresh my early knowledges.

  Kit knew this last flourish was intended for him. He loved it when she was able to poke fun at non-native speakers whose knowledge of English had as much in common with hers as a rhinestone might have with a diamond. The twinkle in her eye only confirmed it as she stood, Caesar-like, with her body facing imperiously down the Tiber, but her head and neck strained in Kit’s direction. Kit looked at the tendons in that neck. God, but it was beautiful! “The die is cast” was all he said as his eyes dined silently on the exquisite curvature. She turned her head again to look downriver and lifted her chin as if to make an historic pronouncement.

  “The die, you bastards, is cast!” she pronounced as she pretended to flutter her hand impatiently. “So now make haste to lay waste, before my reign is past!”

  Traffic over the bridge did not come to a standstill. In fact, nothing in all of Rome had changed one bit of its intentions. But Kit’s heart soared. She jerked her head back around, careful not to lose one line of its expression as she looked at h
im to test the effect of her oratory. Apparently satisfied, she broke into gales of laughter and jumped into his arms.

  “Oh, darling, that felt so good! What do you think? Could I, too, be a Viking princess? Just a little bit of one? Maybe just for tonight?”

  Kit wanted to answer with a simple but enthusiastic “Yes! Yes! Yes!” to each of her questions. But the knot in his throat stopped him. Instead, he hugged her passionately, greedily, looked out over her shoulder at this city of lights and domes, of distant laughter and even more distant cathedral bells ringing out the hour, and wondered how much longer he could keep her.

  * * *

  They walked on, down off the Ponte Sesto and into Trastevere. It wasn’t long before they found a place called the Trattorìa da Lucia, walked in and announced their intention to the Maître d’. He greeted them solemnly—as Kit might’ve expected from a man whose position contrived to inure him to the sight of a beautiful woman. Yet even this Maître d’, for all of his self-control, could not defeat an automatic reflex as Daneka stepped up to his desk to ask for a table. Nostrils once again flared at the smell of her sex that now, like some kind of savage perfume, seemed to pervade the air of the entire restaurant. One by one, the faces of both men and women turned in her direction as she and Kit followed the Maître d’ back to their table. Kit knew the cause of it. If Daneka did as well, she was giving no hint either of pride or of embarrassment at its effect on the other diners.

  The Maître d’ chose to seat them in a corner of the trattorìa as far removed from himself and from the rest of his clientèle as possible. He wanted to avert a riot—at least a riot of the senses. He noted that other women in the restaurant were looking conspicuously unexcited as their male consorts—husbands, lovers, even sons—squirmed in their seats.

  She’s a fucking aphrodisiac! Kit thought to himself. There was apparently no limit to the effect she could have not only on him, but on every member of his sex who still possessed senses and organs alive enough to react with. But there were limits, he realized—even in Rome; or maybe especially in Rome. In any case, he hoped the two of them would survive this night and get out of town intact. And for the future, he would never again suggest that she walk out into a public space without panties on.

  * * *

  The next hour would prove to be among the most memorable of Kit’s life.

  Their waiter had to come back four times to get their order. He broke two pencils in the process, yet still managed to get it wrong in the end. Busboys dropped bread, pitchers of water, plates, glasses. The same busboys then broke two brooms in their effort to clean up the mess. A constant stream of visitors walked past their table on the way to the men’s room—sometimes, the same men two or three times. What had been any number of quiet dinner conversations when they’d first entered the trattorìa turned into brawls. Women yelled at their men. Men yelled back at their women, then marched off to the men’s room. The few children present may’ve had no understanding of what was going on, yet they happily contributed their share of noise to the general uproar until distraught mothers picked them up and walked out with them. One couple had been unfortunate enough to bring along a baby, who now wailed ceaselessly. At long last, the mother picked the baby up and dropped it like a stone into her husband’s lap. She then picked up the check and wrapped it in a soiled diaper. On her way out of the trattorìa, she flung it at the Maître d’.

  The restaurant was verging on hysteria and breakdown. When desert finally came, Kit felt it expedient to ask for the check.

  The waiter came back flustered: he couldn’t find the check; there was no check; there was no evidence of their having eaten anything. Kit offered to review with him again what they had eaten and let him write out a new check.

  At that moment, the Maître d’ appeared at their table. He looked like a much older version of the very composed gentleman who’d greeted them upon their arrival. It was very kind of Kit to offer … but there would be no need … no need at all … compliments of the house, the chef, himself, the entire wait staff. Did they need a taxi? He could have one at the front door in seconds. He knew the man personally. Very dependable—his brother, in fact. ‘Would take them anywhere in Rome—anywhere at all.

  He’d taken out his cell phone and had already started dialing when Kit told him it wouldn’t be necessary, that they could walk back to the hotel. The man visibly withered and seemed to age even further as he stood before Kit and Daneka imploring them to leave with every body part except his mouth, which simply couldn’t pronounce the actual words. He was crumbling. His restaurant was crumbling. All of Rome was crumbling.

  Daneka went on munching. Kit recognized that a crisis was at hand. He had no desire to be the cause of the second fall of the Roman Empire. He suggested to Daneka they could finish desert in the hotel. She apparently didn’t understand what all the fuss was about or why the rush.

  “Trust me, darling,” he finally said to her as he took the spoon out of her hand and put it down on her desert dish. “It’ll be better this way.”

  Kit stood up and pulled Daneka’s chair back. The Maître d’ looked at him with tears of gratitude; his restaurant might yet be saved thanks to this man. Rome, too. He mumbled words about a “second liberation” as he ushered them out: Daneka, like an unruly puppy on an invisible leash; and Kit, understanding better this man’s sense of urgency—and so, coaxing Daneka along from behind. At the door, both received a final “Grazie, grazie” and “Buona Notte” before the Maître d’ closed the door behind them, sat down on the floor and wept.

  * * *

  “What in the world—?” Daneka said, apparently ignorant of the part she’d just played in the near demise of a family business of multiple generations. “My, but these Romans are a lively bunch!”

  Kit didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This woman, otherwise and in every instance entirely self-aware and consequently aware of the effect she could have on others, obviously had no clue about the near-chaos she’d just caused—and not, this time, exclusively because of the way she looked, but much more because of the way she smelled. He thought, however, that the situation called for discretion.

  “I just don’t know what got into those people. Do you, darling?” she said to Kit as she looked at him through big, round eyes.

  “I don’t know either, Daneka. But you know how temperamental Italians are—at least by reputation. Maybe there was something in the food. Or in the wine. Or maybe even in the stars,” Kit said as he looked up at the sky, trying desperately to suppress a guffaw. “You don’t suppose there might’ve been something in the air?” he asked.

  “In the air?” Daneka said. “You mean, like pollen?”

  “Well, related.”

  “Related? How related?” she asked.

  “Well, darling. There’s pollen and then there’s the pollen receptor—the pistil or stigma. Surely, you remember enough from botany, or from biology, or from whatever you called it in Denmark at the time you were of an age to study it at school.”

  “Yes, of course. But I just don’t see the connection. Are these pistils, like pollen, in the air? And do they somehow cause people to act a little strange?”

  “'Could be, ‘could be,” Kit lied, allowing himself just the hint of a smile. They were once again on the Ponte Sisto en route back to the hotel. However much the little Comedia del’arte they’d just staged was still on his mind, he couldn’t ignore the serious beauty surrounding them. Rome suffered from pollution at least as much as any other big city he knew—and yet the stars were clearly visible. The Tiber flowed beneath them on its steady course towards the sea. Buildings that had withstood the ravages of time, of war and of invasions—some of those buildings for over two millennia—greeted his eyes with the same quiet solidity with which they’d greeted the eyes of countless lovers before them and would no doubt greet as many after them. And somehow, it all worked.

  Kit knew he and Daneka were two human beings of no consequence, acting out their insi
gnificant parts on an enormous stage which had as little regard for them as it did for any other pair of lovers. And yet, at this instant, their insignificance didn’t mean a whit to him. If love and happiness meant anything at all in the universe, if some god—or gods—somewhere were not entirely indifferent to it, then he had at last found the only thing worth finding—the only thing that gave his life, or any life, real purpose and meaning. And he had found it with her.

  They walked on and eventually arrived at the hotel. The lobby was quiet except for some late-night activity in the reception area. They took the elevator to the fourth floor, got out, opened the door to their room and turned the light on. They undressed quickly; turned the light back out; got into bed. Before he could even wish her sweet dreams, Kit saw that Daneka had fallen asleep.

  “Goodnight, my little Viking princess,” he said to her eyelids and kissed them both.

  Chapter 41

  The next morning, Daneka and Kit rose early, checked out of their hotel, grabbed a taxi to the airport, retrieved their luggage and rental car, then headed out to the autostrada in the direction of Naples—and, ultimately, of Positano—albeit in no particular rush. They simply wanted to be out and away from it all: away from the traffic, the noise, the unrelenting thrum of city life.

  Positano was located on the Gulf of Salerno at 40.37˚ north of the equator and just a few tenths of a latitudinal degree south of New York, so daytime temperatures would likely feel familiar. The summer solstice was fast approaching. These would not be the hottest days of the year by any means—either in Positano or in New York. But they’d certainly be warm enough for swimming, for sun-bathing, for taking walks along the beach well into evening.

  Kit and Daneka had estimated two hours for the drive if they pushed hard; three hours if they didn’t. The key to their roadmap told them this tiny gem of a village by the sea was about one hundred twenty-five miles south of Rome. As they coasted along with other southbound traffic, Kit let his mind wander. Highway travel was highway travel the industrialized world over: one could practically put one’s vehicle on autopilot; set the accelerator to 70 or 75 mph; then just go with the flow.