Elsewhere in the restaurant someone called out Masso’s name, a burst of laughter ricocheting from where they stood. Aldo looked over his shoulder, catching Regan’s silhouette; she’d emerged from the bathroom, smiling as someone took her hand and admired her, probably saying to her, How pretty you are, and Regan was probably saying, Oh, no, don’t be silly, as if she hadn’t heard the same thing every day, every hour, every minute of her life.
She looked up, caught his eye, smiled. She pointed to him, her lips parting to say something like, There he is.
There she is, Aldo thought.
Masso cleared his throat, following his son’s line of sight. “Rinaldo, listen—”
“You’re wrong about her,” Aldo said, turning back to his father. “I mean, you’re right, she’s impulsive,” but it’s an easy conclusion, too easy, it’s not the sum of all her parts, “but she’s not like Mom.”
He was saying, in pleasant tones: Don’t worry, Dad, I hear you, but it’s different.
But he was thinking, with iron certainty: I have spent a lifetime encountering problems that ravaged my abilities before, Dad, and none have destroyed me yet. If I’m still here, then surely it’s for something.
If I am still here, Dad, then please. Let it have been for something.
“I like her, Rinaldo, I do, I just—”
“You worry, I know,” Aldo said, and beckoned for Regan from afar. “But don’t.”
She joined them; he slid an arm around her waist; she smiled and he kissed her cheek.
“What are you two talking about?”
If this is what it is to burn, he thought, then I will be worth more as scattered ash than any of my unscathed pieces.
“You,” he said, and she smiled, leaning against his shoulder as if to say, Okay.
Okay, so let’s do this, then.
* * *
REGAN, ALWAYS CONSCIOUS of overstaying her welcome, came back to Chicago a week before Aldo did. She would resume the practice of normalcy, doing things like the laundering of clothes, the buying of groceries, the running of nameless errands. She would schedule her annual gynecological exam. She would return to the Art Institute, reconvene her usual tours. She thought perhaps she would return Marc’s calls, grudgingly. She might return her mother’s calls, impassively. Whatever tasks were required to begin approximating normal life activities, she would do them, responsibly.
In the end, she did only one of those things. The calls remained unanswered and the pap smear would have to wait. Without Aldo, Regan felt an uneasiness, a restlessness, something close to recklessness or, perhaps, far beyond it. She felt a vibrating sense of blankness, like the buzz of a fluorescent sign. Closed, open, vacancy, no vacancy. She felt like a door swinging open and shut, things coming and going, and she was merely the operator saying, Hold please. She sat on the floor of her studio with her dearth of possessions and thought: I should get on a plane, I don’t remember how to be without him, maybe if I ask him nicely he’ll say yes.
Part of her thrilled with the idea of an emergency. Yes, an emergency, she thought, that would certainly bring him home. She thought about catching pneumonia; it would be easy. She’d only have to walk outside and stand in the snow for a few minutes until she turned blue. She imagined herself being found, unconscious, the emergency contact being dialed, Poor girl, Aldo sitting with his father and receiving the call, the phone falling from his hand as he shouted at his father: I have to go, I have to, she needs me and I need her!
Regan didn’t want to die, obviously—nothing that emergent. She just wanted something reasonably compelling; something that would make him think about how precious time was, how every moment of it should be spent at her side, the two of them together. Eventually, though, her capacity for rational thought would return and she would remind herself that walking into traffic and getting hit by a car （“MASSO, I HAVE TO GO, SHE’S LYING IN A HOSPITAL BED AND IF I LOSE HER NOW WHAT WILL I DO, WHO WILL I BE?”） would be an unpleasant experience, and probably not even worth it. No, maybe it would be worth it, but what kind of sex could she have with a broken leg? Just wait, she told herself, just wait.
Of the things she told herself she would do, returning to the Art Institute was the only one that seemed manageable, largely because she thought she could walk into the armory and see Aldo there, overlaying a hologram of him from her memory onto the empty floor. Sir, you can’t sit there, she’d say in her thoughts, and he would turn to her and say, Can’t I? And she would say, Sir, please, this is a museum, and he would take her in his arms and without hesitation he would take her standing up, holding her against the wall. He’d fuck her slowly, tormentingly, his eyes never straying from hers. He’d say: I came to look at art, to marvel at something, and here you are and so I will.