The Imperfectionists: A Novel Read online

  "Don't."

  "I won't. But I keep wanting to."

  "Don't. It's stupid. Of me, I mean. Not you."

  "We agreed this wasn't supposed to happen, but never worked out what to do if it did. Unless, of course," she says, "you intend to make this important. Ending-marriage important."

  "Don't be insane." He opens and closes the fridge for no apparent reason. "I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm an asshole. It was such a total nothing. If you'd let me tell you the details, would you feel better? To see how dumb it was?"

  "I'd feel worse."

  "So what do we do?"

  She

  shrugs.

  He tries to lighten the atmosphere. "Now you have a fling and we'll be even."

  She isn't amused. "Me, have sex with someone else?"

  "I'm

  kidding."

  "Why kid about it? Maybe it's a good idea."

  "I didn't mean it."

  "Look, I don't want to have an affair. For God's sake. I'm just more hurt than I expected."

  "Than you expected? You expected this?"

  "I knew this was happening. You're easy to read," she says. "And who knows--maybe I'll take you up on your idea of a free affair, maybe I won't. You can wonder sometimes."

  "Are you kidding?"

  "No."

  "What can I say--if you want to be that way, fine. I can't stop you, but I really regret it."

  " You regret it?" she says, raising her voice. " I fucking regret it. I didn't precipitate this. I fucking regret it."

  In the coming days, she is rude to the interns--always a litmus test of her mood--and seeks confrontations with reporters, then batters them. She phones the publisher, Oliver Ott, and leaves another message on his answering machine, demanding an increase in the budget, implying that her resignation is not unthinkable. She sends an email to the Ott Group board in Atlanta with a similar warning.

  The way she left matters with Nigel disgusts her. A free affair--what kind of people are we?

  Later that week, she turns up at Dario's office in Berlusconi's party headquarters on Via dell'Umilta. He meets her downstairs. He is more lordly than he used to be, has more confidence; his colleagues clearly respect him. He ushers her into his crimson-carpeted office, a muted flat-screen TV on the wall playing an all-news network, a Napoleonic cavalry battle frescoed on the ceiling. "Maybe you're right about Berlusconi if he hands out office space like this," she says, leaning out the open shutters over a courtyard four floors below.

  "Can I order you a coffee?"

  She sits. "Don't have time, I'm afraid."

  "This is just a quick hello, then?"

  "Just a quickie," she says. "Funny, isn't it--our offices are so close, but we never bumped into each other around here."

  "I knew you were back at Corso Vittorio, so I steered clear."

  "You shouldn't have."

  "I know--it was stupid."

  "Anyway." She stands.

  "That

  was quick." He rises, rounds the desk.

  She touches a hand to his neck. She moves to kiss him.

  "That's actually not a good idea." He pats her hand but does not remove it from his neck.

  "One kiss? To remind myself what it's like?" She's kidding--she releases him.

  "Sorry. I couldn't resist you."

  "Nice to be irresistible."

  "No,

  then?"

  "Not a good idea."

  "If we closed the shutters?" She raps suggestively on his leather-topped desk.

  He laughs. "You're crazy."

  "What time do you finish here?"

  "We have a dinner strategy session after work."

  "What time does that finish?" She cuts the distance between them and rests her hands on his shoulders. He places his palms on hers. While they kiss, she looks at him.

  His eyes are closed. They step apart, their hands sliding down until they find each other's hips.

  "That

  was."

  "Strange."

  "Very

  strange."

  "You.

  Again."

  "Yes. You, again."

  She buttons her coat. "I'll return after the paper closes tonight. A little after ten, say?"

  "It'll be in the middle of this dinner thing."

  "So come back here for some reason. I'll be downstairs."

  She arrives as planned, and he escapes from his dinner. He leads her up to his office.

  "I have one demand," she says.

  He is uncertain whether to sit behind his desk or remain standing.

  "I don't want to be like I was before," she continues. "I sounded awful the way you described me."

  "I'm not like I used to be, either," he says, sitting. "Which is maybe why this doesn't make sense."

  "We'll just talk, then. But can we at least talk on the same side of the desk? Or are you afraid you're going to launch yourself at me?" She comes around, leans down, and kisses him. She sits on his lap.

  She studies him, his vulnerable face. Look at him: he wants to have sex with her.

  Reading this, she is suddenly quenched. She flips a forelock from her brow and exhales.

  "What time is it?" she asks. "I guess I should leave."

  She checks her BlackBerry on the way home. She has an email from Accounts Payable saying the Ott board is considering her request for fresh investment. The only condition is that the paper cut labor costs. If a few layoffs win her money for new reporters overseas, it's well worth it.

  She tips the cabbie generously and takes the elevator up to her apartment, imagining all that the paper will now be able to afford. A proper correspondent in Paris, finally. A full-time stringer in Cairo--God, that would make such a difference. She walks in with the standard apologies to Nigel, who hands her a glass of Vermentino. She pats him affectionately and sips. "Mmm, delicious. Really nice."

  "Nothing that special," he replies modestly, but is clearly buoyed by her approval.

  "Hits the spot. Truly does. Good choice. I felt like something like this. By the way, I have very cool news." Triumphantly, she recounts her victory over the tightfisted Ott board. He grows enthused along with her and, filling each other's wineglasses, they plot what the paper might do with the money.

  She allows him to go first. He works himself up, eyes glowing, as if this modest tranche could transform the publication. She indulges him, touched by his excitement.

  Then he looks up and says, "I don't know, maybe that's dumb." He's a funny man, she thinks--he strikes these bombastic poses, then shrinks when our eyes meet, as if his every intellectual foray were like being caught singing in the shower.

  At the office, she leaks news of the possible investment, shrewdly omitting specifics, so that each department becomes charged up and hopeful. Rumors spread about merit raises. She tamps down the most exuberant fantasies but allows a bit of pleasant dreaming to percolate through the newsroom.

  She receives an email that afternoon from Dario but doesn't immediately open it.

  Must she answer right now? Maybe she shouldn't answer at all. How would a dalliance look? Highly unethical. The paper reports regularly on his employer. And Berlusconi is such a joke. If people knew she was mixed up with a Berlusconi flack, it would not look good. It's a double standard, she thinks. Everyone is so censorious when professional women have affairs--they can't pay attention at work, their judgment is affected, they're under the sway of their lovers. Yet when a male editor seduces some P.R. babe, it's he who has the upper hand, he who's taking her for a ride. It's bull. However, she has heard women demolished over less. She'll go back to the States someday, back as something bigger. She needs her reputation intact. This job, whatever its flaws, should upgrade her; she intends to leave here as executive material. Don't risk stains.

  Meaning? Well, meaning Dario. A pleasant man, but weak. He had a breakdown, poor guy. Not a total surprise. Perhaps he ended up in P.R. because that's what he is: P.R.

  material. A sweet
person, but not an exceptional one. Maybe he's found his level.

  She reads his email. It's merely a remembrance of a trip they took on the Adriatic in 1988, when they rented a yacht that neither could navigate. She smiles at the mention of ajvar, the Yugoslav vegetable spread they ate throughout the vacation to economize.

  She pinches her hand, disgusted with herself--that assessment of Dario was such a betrayal. She rereads his email and responds: "Hey, shall we get a drink after work?"

  They meet at the cocktail bar in 'Gusto. The hostess crams them into a low table by the window. A jazz band is playing at the back, and they must sit close in order to hear each other.

  "Have you tried a caipiroska?" Dario asks. "They make it with strawberries here.

  Let me order you one."

  "What is it?"

  "It's like a caipirinha, only with vodka instead of cachaca."

  She laughs. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "You don't drink cocktails?"

  "Pretty much wine for me. I see you've gotten into cocktails since I left."

  He winks. "Drowning my sorrows."

  "Don't people drown their sorrows in things like scotch? Not strawberry whatever-it's-called."

  " Caipiroska. I'm ordering you one. Come on."

  This isn't innocent, she thinks. This is flirting. She triggered something in him when they were in his office. She visits the toilets and, on her return, finds their drinks on the table: a strawberry caipiroska for her and a glass of pinot grigio for him.

  "After all that," she exclaims, sitting, "I'm stuck with the girl drink and you got wine! Unfair!" She tastes hers. "Mmm. It's got bits of real strawberries."

  "I told you."

  She takes another sip. It's one of those fruity mixes in which the liquor goes straight to the knees. "I could drink this all day." She wants to touch him across the table.

  She won't. It's irresponsible. She has to make clear that this is going nowhere. She needs to put down the strawberry whatever-it's-called and concentrate. "Hey," she says, taking his wrist.

  He places her hand in his palm and grips her fingers.

  She says, "So nice to be with you again." What is she doing? This is cruel. He's clearly still in love with her.

  "It was really difficult after you left Rome," he says.

  "I know. I'm so sorry."

  "And it's difficult seeing you again."

  She considers kissing him.

  He places her hand gently on the table. "I have to say something."

  "I know, I know." Her mind races for a way to stop him--he's about to announce himself. She's going to have to jilt him yet again. She must cut him off.

  He goes on, "I have to make clear, Kath, before this goes any further, that we can only be friends."

  She sits back. She leans forward, then sits back again. "Well." She takes another sip of her cocktail.

  "Not drift back into anything like before, I mean. Is that ... ? What do you think?"

  "This thing is cloying, has a cloying taste. It's too sweet." She puts down the straw. "Yes, I completely agree. I was about to say that myself." She looks around the room. The jazz band is too loud. She takes another sip. "Hmm."

  "What's the hmming for?"

  "No, nothing." She pauses. "How come, though? I mean, I agree--I'm not trying to change your mind. But I'm kind of confused. A few days ago, if I'm not mistaken, you wanted to have sex with me in your office."

  "No, I didn't."

  She gapes at him. "Did that not happen? Was I hallucinating?"

  "Nothing more was going to happen."

  "It almost did happen, Dario."

  "It didn't. It wouldn't have."

  "Oh, come on."

  "It wouldn't have happened," he insists. "I'm not attracted to you anymore."

  "How do you mean?" It's perfectly clear what he means, but she is prevaricating until she can compose herself.

  "I'm not sexually attracted to you anymore," he says. "I don't mean to be harsh."

  She flips her hair aside. "Evidently I need to start dyeing out the gray."

  "It's not age."

  "Yes, right--Ruby's older than me and age never stopped you with her."

  "I told you, with you it's like you're the aggressor. And I don't understand you sometimes. Even in my office, you seemed eager but then, when I responded, you just went away."

  "You're fixated on how things used to be between us. But we agreed that we wouldn't revert to our old habits, no? And I'm not like that anymore, if I ever was."

  He drinks the last of his wine; her cocktail is gone, too. But neither is ready to leave. This encounter has been so sour.

  "Another

  drink?"

  "I'd have another."

  He catches her smiling. "What? What's funny?"

  "Us. We had my dumb honesty session before--it was supposed to get rid of all my bad habits! But instead." She shakes her head. "You really are smart, you know. I haven't given you enough credit." She runs her forefinger down the bridge of his nose.

  "I know you haven't."

  She holds her head in her hands, peeking theatrically through her knitted fingers.

  "I sound so awful when you describe me. And I can't even disagree. Well, I can. But not honestly."

  He shifts his stool closer and, as her face emerges, he strokes her hair. He touches her forehead. "You," he says. "You again. You're still dear to me. You are goodness." He smiles. "I told you that before."

  She shifts away. "What," she says hurriedly. "What are you talking about?"

  "You--you're so driven. Like a mole burrowing in the earth, just pushing ahead.

  But I remember you." He smiles. "I remember you waking up. You sleeping. You getting the hiccups at the movie theater."

  She can't talk.

  "But it makes me sad," he concludes. "You make me sad a bit. I still love you, but we're not going to start anything."

  Her eyes well up. Quietly, she says, "Thank you." She wipes her nose. "When I'm old and bent and sitting in a chair, you come and hold my hand. All right? That's your job. Okay?"

  He takes her hand and kisses it. "No," he says. "When you're old and bent, I'll be gone. I'll hold it now. Later, you'll have to remember."

  1962. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME

  Newsroom noises drifted into Betty's office: guffaws and murmured gossip, the clack and bing of typewriters, copyboys emptying crystal ashtrays into the garbage can.

  She sat at her desk, unable to work, spirits sunk beyond all reason.

  Ridiculous--that's how she felt. Absolutely laughable. She had no right to be mourning still. To have cultivated the notion that she and Ott had a particular bond.

  Looking at paintings together. But what about the old days in New York?

  Everyone felt this way about Ott, she supposed--this amplified sense of their importance in his life. He had that effect. His attention had been a spotlight; all else dimmed.

  However, she had exerted no such force on him. He had left her in New York, had gone back to Atlanta, pursued his life of profit and expansion. He had married, produced a son. Betty should have forgotten about him; his absence shouldn't have mattered as much as it had and for as long. Eventually, she moved away from New York, traveling to Europe to report on Hitler's war. In London, she met a fellow American reporter, Leo, and they married. After the war, they settled in Rome, she consuming more Campari than she'd imagined the first time she tasted the stuff, writing less than she'd planned, too.

  Then Ott had turned up, his presence at once magnifying all the small compromises she had made over the years, while offering an escape from them. She wanted to write again and believed she could. He installed her as the voice of the paper.

  Leo had the title of editor-in-chief, but everyone knew she was the brains of the operation. She came back to life with Ott across the newsroom. But outside the paper?

  Ott had never sought to resume anything with her. Their outings to buy paintings, their lunches
at his mansion--meaningless. Look, she reminded herself, he never even told me he was sick. He never asked for help. He never contacted me when he was dying.

  I didn't have that role in his life. I have no right to this grief.

  One night, when Leo was out boozing with the staff, Betty took a taxi up to the Aventine Hill and stood before the spiked fence surrounding Ott's old mansion. Nothing remained in there. Only the paintings they had collected together: the swan-necked Gypsy by Modigliani; Leger's wine bottles and bowler hats; the acrobatic blue chickens and emerald fiddlers by Chagall; Pissarro's cozy English parsonage, smoke twisting out the chimney; the sloshing shipwreck of Turner--all of them, hanging in the pointless dark.