Faded Acts of Love

The tall and boney first-class British Air flight attendant has been monitoring my alcohol consumption since we took off from Heathrow under a mat of dense, gray clouds. Her shiny brass name tag announces that her name is Sharon. She has an effortless beauty that demands attention, tinged with a malignant glitter that portends disappointment. I suppose all women can be every man’s type, under the right circumstances. Frankly, her feigned geniality turns me off, although her presence provokes an invisible current of desire. She doesn’t seem like the type of woman inclined to pay attention to any man that might be tempted to seduce her. Close proximity to any attractive woman still manages to faze me, but after awhile, even beauty becomes one more thing you fail to notice about a person, even your wife. After I married Adrienne, the days of imagining perky girls cavorting around in French camisoles became irrelevant. Twenty-five-years later, exhausted by a discouragingly dismal personal history and a marriage too troubled to withstand the trauma of even a hint of infidelity, the little boy in me had somewhere been lost.

Sharon brought a pleasant smell with her in the cabin. By now she has probably made an accurate assessment of me, and I’m one-hundred-percent certain it isn’t flattering. I haven’t shaved since the Italian police confiscated my passport in Angliari and detained me after Pio discovered Fiona’s body at the villa. They forced me to stay put in Tuscany until the forensics came back from Rome. Fortunately, the medical examiner ruled Fiona’s death accidental, contrary to her forever-cryptic suicide declaration tucked safely away in my briefcase, stowed in the overhead compartment. I should have realized the Italian police would not be particularly inclined to quibble over the technical differences between an accidental overdose and a suicide, particularly when a British tourist was the subject corpse.

I’ve virtually slept in the same clothes for days, except when I took a shower to escape the ants at Locanda di Sari, the inn where I stayed while I searched the countryside for Fiona. The part about explaining to Adrienne why I was in Tuscany in the first place was incriminating enough. Having to explain to her why I was the last person to see Fiona Burton alive proved to be my ultimate condemnation, my future happiness ruined by one careless act. The circumstances surrounding Fiona’s death ignited a firestorm of justifiable belligerence in her. I couldn’t blame Adrienne for demanding a divorce.

Sharon gives me an unsettled look when I ask her for another B&B on the rocks, my fingers still sticky from the first. Frowning and smiling complete her total repertoire of facial expressions. When she turns around and walks to the galley I notice she’s slightly pigeon-toed, giving her a strut that’s more about diligence than finesse. Her closely cropped auburn hair bounces in synch with each step. In my state of mental disarray it’s best to feign indifference when reckless imaginations of sexual opportunity intrude. If sex, the social imperative that rules our lives, is more or less the same scenario with the same ending, why does everyone make such a big deal about it? Sperm united with eggs in the confines of a Petri dish accomplish the same end result. That thought boinked around in my head like a cat trapped in a garbage can until Sharon brought me another drink. By now there is a structural hatred between us that will never be masked by affirmations of caring.

Adrienne, my soon-to-be ex-wife, had always been relentlessly logical. That’s what I loved about her: an uncomplicated woman with amiability so intense it could at times be annoying. Even after Nicholas died, in her darker moments, she never tried to lay the blame at my feet, although she had every reason to do so. As a wife she had a need to provoke desire in order to feel fulfilled, that’s what had made her tick, and why I loved her. Unlike Fiona, she never attempted to punish me by looking bored, or hide her emotions behind a firewall of invulnerability. After my reckless excursion to Tuscany, how could I ever expect Adrienne to believe that Fiona had really nothing to do with our married lives? What woman alive could be persuaded to believe such a nervy proposition?.

Sharon struts back with another drink; the glass is brimming over with ice. The expression on her face is frosty, detached. Her disgust with me is communicated without saying a word. She’s figured out she’s dealing with an inconsequential loser with self-destructive instincts. That assumption is not far off the mark.

I recline my seat, close my eyes and try to conjure up more hopeful thoughts, without success. (Unlike real life, nightmares are something you fortunately wake up from.) “Mister Munger,” Sharon’s soft voice interrupts from the aisle, “we’ll be landing in a few minutes. Would you mind stowing your tray table?” She takes my glass and disappears. I don’t think we’ll be exchanging fond goodbyes. My daughter Penny and her husband Ned will meet me at JFK with a suitcase of clothes Adrienne provided. That should hold me over until I get settled, another uncertainty I’ll need to deal with when my head clears. Penny promised to drive me into Manhattan, where I’ve booked a room at The Beekman Towers for a week.

I love my daughter, but when children grow up they unfortunately become your harshest critics. Penny knows the truth about Fiona, more than I dared share with Adrienne. Well, actually—I would have revealed more before she hung up on me. Perhaps Penny understands why I had risked everything, even the marriage that spawned her, to track down Fiona, years after she should have lapsed into irrelevance. We all carry around within us experiences we’re not proud of, things we’d like to fix and return to a point in our life when we were actually happy. I’m not trying to make excuses for what happened, but sometimes in real life, that’s just the way things turn out.