Bella Rosa

Roni wanted to get in a few thousand steps before her shift. Ben volunteered to walk on the trail with her to hear what had come out of last night's family meeting. Though he disliked family meetings, he loathed his Aunt Mina--Roni's mother.

It was Roni's first time alone with Ben since he relocated to the area. The first time in seventeen years, now that she thought of it. The discussion flowed one way. Ben only spoke to veto the suggested changes to the itinerary. Being the VP of the travel company that organized the trip gave him an authority even Mina had to accept.

"She won't give up on extra time in Rome," Roni said.

"The pope's in South America."

"He has a cold. She thinks he might come home early. It's Mina, dude. And she's not young. This might be her last chance to tell the pope he's bad at his job."

Drizzle began to fall. Ben always chose silence and Roni's thoughts drifted to the possibilities she faced any Friday night she worked in the emergency room. She wondered if he faked small talk with clients. He never tried, most likely. His confidence and spectacular good looks intimidated his blood relatives, let alone strangers in need of his expertise.

"Two weeks ago," Ben said, "your husband asked me to help clear the gutters on Robin's house."

I have no idea why he bothered, Roni thought.

"It's not how I want to spend a Saturday," Ben added. "If he's mad."

"He found a guy from the shop to help him."

Both turned toward a sound on to the right. Their walk took them past the source. Roni heard the second sound more clearly. That sound only meant one thing.

Leafing trees and bright spring growth had replenished the greenery on either side of the train. Beyond a narrow barrier of greenery, the ground sloped down about fifteen feet. Ben moved behind one of the older trees.

Two young people lay on a blanket. Roni joined Ben as the pair below freed themselves from their underthings. College students, she thought. The boy's skin--well, man's skin, in the biological sense--contrasted with the light blue banket spread beneath them. Neither of the lovers could decide where to start. At the woman's request the man paused, until she planted her body and spread her knees for him.

Back on the trail Roni said, "They'll get cold in this drizzle."

With another person she would have described Ben's expression as thoughtful. But Roni, like the family in general, doubted he had depths. Roni didn't think of herself as particularly complex, either, but she brooded like a poet next to this guy. His wife Lilandra admitted marriage, even two children, had failed to reveal a glimpse of his inner life. "There's either too much to understand," she said, "or nothing at all."

Roni knew how to deal with him and that suited her fine. But for the first time since college Ben surprised her.

"Do you ever think about Sagamite Mountain?" he said. "Or when I stayed with you in the city?"

"Once in a while," Roni said. "Why d'you ask?"

He thumbed over his shoulder.

Had Ben ever told another person what happened? In this case, events provided the answer. Those kinds of secrets didn't keep. Within forty-eight hours of the story getting out, a medical examiner would write Sagamite Mountain on her mother's death certificate.

Seventeen years earlier, Roni's late father convened a come-one-come-all family reunion at the mountain's ski resort. She met many relatives for the first time. Others, like Ben, had moved away during her childhood.

Members of the clan ranged from nine months old to seventy-one. Roni and Ben occupied their own tier, below the thirty-somethings and post-college twenty-somethings, and above their younger cousins, none of them older than fourteen. The adults boozed, and kids played, and the two of them reconnected over a preference for the outdoors. Roni's outgoing personality introduced them to skiers and snowboarders their own age.

People had called Roni big boned since forever. At the time, three-plus semesters of dorm life had added fifteen pounds to her frame. In other words, she considered bulky ski clothes a godsend, doubly important because their new friend groups seemed to draw from a pool of Scandinavians and Germans cloned from Olympic athletes. Ben's unfeigned cool hit the women like cocaine. On Roni's side of the ledger, a beautiful Dane scheduled to leave the next day invited her to his room, where she experienced the first competent lovemaking of her life.

The resort kept its rinks in the town at the base of the mountain. Roni skated better than she skied. Ben joined her as the Europeans departed. When a cold snap cooped up the family at the lodge, the pair hid from the inevitable craziness inside cafés and bistros. Late one night, after wine and rich food, they sat close to murmur beneath the noise. Roni could feel his breath on her cheek. Their noses touched, their heads tilted.

By the time the reunion broke up each had unlocked the code on the other's body. Roni returned to campus raring to try out what she learned on break.

More than five years passed. They saw each other again when Ben asked to stay on her sofa while in town for job interviews. He joined her in bed on the second night. And throughout two evenings. In fact, whenever their free time aligned. One afternoon, and in the other evenings, they abandoned the bed for the shower, or the dining room table, or Roni with her hands flat against the kitchen wall forty-five minutes before Ben left to catch his flight.

Ben had been in a long-standing relationship at the time. Roni asked, "Do you consider yourself faithful to your girlfriend?"

"This exists in a place outside regular life," he answered. "That's how I see it. Like a pocket universe."

Roni's thoughts returned to the miserable present. A downpour hurried them back to the trailhead. They traded waves in the parking lot.

When she got home the next morning, Yosif waited with fruit and yogurt. He shared snippets of news about the kids before telling her Mina remained stuck on the Rome business. She had called an emergency meeting--her daughters and sister only.

"If I go, you'll raise the kids yourself," Roni said. "At this point I want to kill her."

"Tell her we lived in sin for eight months," Yosif replied. "Death'll be quick and painless." He watched her while she ate and she felt it. "So," he said, "you mentioned Lil is having Ben followed. When did Robin tell you?"

"Yesterday. That investigation should take about two days. Speaking of Robin, did she drop off the leather shoulder bag?"

"I swung by her house. The bag's next to the coat rack."

"You'll get groceries?" she said through a yawn. "This time try not to stay out for two hours when you've bought ice cream."

"No one told me the warm days had started. They should put first day of spring on calendars."

Roni's thoughts drifted as the work adrenalin wore off. What exactly did she share with Yosif? Love, for sure. A partnership strengthened by shared purpose and complimentary personalities, a bond strengthened by the kids and money, a comfortable life strengthened by security and habit.

Yet in a way it was a fragile friendship. Her good friends remained friends despite conflict and anger and months or years out of touch. Whereas her far more involved relationship with Yosif was vulnerable to a handful of transgressions that might tear apart their lives. Roni accepted the contradiction without philosophical musing, but the human nature side of it interested her.

Mina insisted the group travel together. On the way to the airport Roni daydreamed about ways to miss the plane, but the kids were insane to leave. Robin's daughter Helena, age thirteen, controlled the children during the flight. Helena's dictatorship gave the parents the luxury of only intervening to settle the most insoluble conflicts or escort someone to the bathroom.

Eventually blankets and pillows appeared. Ben leaned over the seat in front of Roni.

"I'm plan to go to Siena for work the day after tomorrow," he said.

His flat voice sounded nothing like a proposal. But something chemical, or a set of unconscious perceptions, released a physical reaction she never expected to feel again. Roni imagined the couple beside the trail, and other things.

"I'll let you know," she said, as if unsure.

Nothing passed between them as the tour guide led the group around Florence. No shared looks. No whispers. No one-on-one conversations. Everyone accepted Ben's side trip as a business necessity. Roni pitched her desire to tag along as a need to recharge on the Piazza del Campo.

"Are you sick of me or the kids?" Yosif joked.

They lucked into adjacent seats in the crowded coach. Once in a while, Ben pointed out a vineyard or described a luxury villa that stood behind such and such hill. She asked about their destination. An exclusive guest house off the beaten track wanted Ben's company to steer clients to the establishment. He and the owner would discuss details. The owner, he added, had comped a room for them.

Except for those moments, Roni raced through Tuscany with the voices of babbling tourists for company.

Ben asked her to spend fifteen minutes in the piazza during his meeting. She took pictures to pass the time.

The directions led her along narrow streets screened from the sun by aged houses. The guest house fronted a little square with a fountain. A sign carved with the words BELLA ROSA hung from a metal bar bolted to the bricks. Roses bracketed the name. The desk clerk smiled and greeted her by name in accented English.

"Did you know my name or was that a lucky guess?" Roni asked.

The man chuckled and gestured to her. "A strong looking American woman with a pretty face and brown hair. And so you are. It will not be long, if you wish to wait."

Ben returned. At the steps he handed her a metal key. No key cards here, she thought. For an instant she wondered if Lilandra's detectives had colleagues in Italy.

Each stair creaked underfoot. Excitement sang in her, albeit in a lower key than in the past, when she lived freer of uncertainty or worry. End of the corridor, Ben murmured.

Roni had an instant to take in the room. Subdued colors. A large dresser with a mirror. The pastel blue comforter. A full-length mirror hung next to the bathroom door. The moment Ben turned the lock they threw themselves onto each other. Gasping from the kisses, and amidst more kisses, she tried to undress and undress him at the same time.

When he pulled down her bra straps and bared her breasts, he lifted one into a rounder shape and attacked her nipple. Roni's shoes skidded across the floor. One hand pressed Ben's head into her. The other reached inside her waistband and pushed her pants over her pelvis. He knelt to get out of his slacks. She cried out in surprise when he yanked her panties to her ankles. As he stood Roni stroked his full size.

Roni took what she could of him, not nearly all, into her mouth. In their past couplings, a quick first orgasm started the stopwatch on his recovering to go again for real. Today, cognizant of the chasm that separated a man's early forties from twenty-five, she set a slow pace.

"Bend over the dresser," he said.

Ben always wanted to start behind her. Roni pushed back her hips for him. The out-of-control wetness--it started on the train--felt like it might start to stream down her legs. Ben let out a long moan as he entered her. Roni's hanging breasts jiggled in the mirror. Her chest turned the same bright pink as her face. As Ben's pace increased his breath became faster, desperate. The reflection showed his full attention locked onto her buttocks. She bent further. The thrusts reached deep inside her. She bit her lip to squelch her moans.

His frenzy excited her--scared her. Ben at this moment existed outside of Roni's experience. Sweat covered his upper body. The strange, helpless expression on his face remained as he left her.

"On the bed," Roni panted.

A hand moved her hips until her lower body lay flat on the bed. Ben's head bowed to her sex while she returned to pleasuring him with her mouth. Quivering, surrendering, sucking in her stomach at each jolt of electricity. A world outside her sensations ceased to exist. Roni's cries made it difficult to keep him in her mouth.

For a second she felt an onrushing tide push her toward her orgasm. Roni sensed a possibility open to her on an unexplored plane that promised gratification beyond anything she had experienced. But the moment of awareness caused the tide to retreat. In the fading glow of the lost promise her body told her it wanted what it was used to.

"Will you get on your back?" Roni said.

She enjoyed easing her body onto him. From there she matched Ben's frenetic tempo. Could people hear her in the corridor? Downstairs? She never sounded this loud in her own home. The intensity of her moans strained her throat.

"Grab my ass," she said. When his hands left her breasts Roni leaned forward until she felt her sex rubbing his abdomen. Her hands dug into the hair on his chest. She was confident the muscles could support her weight. Her cries sped up at the same rate as her body.

The animalistic, wordless sound of Roni's orgasm filled the room. For all she knew it had blown out the windows. Her cries turned to heavy breaths. Little by little she slowed her rocking. She wrung every bit of pleasure from their bodies.

Roni pushed back hair from her face as she rose to her shins. "I need a short break."

The hum between her legs tempted her to think she had topped the pleasure of their previous encounters. Not true, she sighed to herself. Today was their typical. That was the reason she was here.

Ben resumed behind her but only briefly. Eyes closed, Roni concentrated on his hands roaming across her buttocks and over her thighs. Those hands guided her onto her back.

Their intercourse moved Roni across the bed or forced them to reset from odd angles. Looking beyond Ben, she admired the image in the full-length mirror. The generous curve of her hips formed a welcoming half circle. Her thighs--held up with her hands and high in the air--bracketed his hips. He withdrew almost his entire length between thrusts.

"Inside you?" Ben gasped.

"It's no problem."

A minute later he rolled from her to recover. Roni went to clean up. There was no reason to stay in bed. Ben rejected aftercare, and she could not imagine him sharing those murmured, brief check-ins around the intercourse that she shared with Yosiff. A guy with a movie star's face on a porn star's body could skip the finer points without caring about the woman's judgment.

"Why'd you want this again?" Roni said.

Ben took a long moment to answer. "I just did, is all."

"Why did I want it? Was it what we saw on the trail?"

"Not for me." Ben said. He concentrated on buttoning his shirt. "I thought about approaching you. But the family situation's complicated." Another pause. "Recently something shifted. It'd be hard to explain."

Roni watched the same hills and vineyards pass in reverse order. Ben had used up his words for the day and left for the café car. Outside of physical pleasure, Roni had no use for his company, either. She felt guilty but not as guilty as she expected. Years of these workouts. Why Ben, of all people? What explained the strength of the craving? The urge was like the weather. Irresistible, and it always got its way.

The sound of a text interrupted her. Reya, the sanest of her sisters, asked her to go straight to Mother's suite when she got back. No, everyone was fine. Just get here as fast as possible. Roni's texts back went unanswered. So did her phone calls.

Ben declined to hurry when they disembarked. Roni found Helena and the children romping in the hotel playroom. Through the window she checked on her kids--both happy and unharmed--before turning for the elevators. The look on her face squelched courtesies from members of the staff. Passing guests stepped aside.

She jogged the last stretch. Someone had cracked the door to the suite. Roni entered with guns ready.

All the adults other than Ben turned to or looked up at her. Her sisters' expressions held both sympathy and trepidation. Mina looked angrier than usual. Lilandra sat drawn up into a ball.

They know, Roni thought.

Adrenalin slammed her with such force she leaned on the door. But if they knew, why call her and not Ben? Or did he refuse to come upstairs? No, Lil would never react this way. People in the street would hear her wailing.

Yosif stood alone to one side. His skin was bone white, his posture slack, lifeless. Across the room Robin drew her clenched fists to a face as pale as Yosif's. Her sister looked away. Her husband looked down. Another pocket universe, Roni said to herself, just as the shockwave hit her.