Cleopatra and Frankenstein(131)

Cleo smiled sadly. “But how do you stop tap dancing if you’re like us?”

“I just got too tired, Cley,” he said. “The shoes didn’t fit anymore. And when I stood still, Eleanor was there standing with me. And I think you deserve to be with someone like that, who can provide that safety and that stillness for you in a way I never could. Even though God knows I wanted to, Cleo. I really wanted it.”

Cleo took his hand across the table. Frank’s freckled hands. She remembered them always in motion, flitting across surfaces, adjusting his glasses, accentuating words in the air with an emphatic, flared-palm gesture that was, just, him. She squeezed his fingers between hers.

“I know you did,” she said. “I wanted to do that for you too.”

The young waiter brought the check to sign, and as Frank often did when feeling a little low, he attempted to lift his spirits with a burst of unnecessary generosity by tucking a fifty-euro tip inside the bill.

As the boy took it away, a minor commotion began to take place on the square. A young couple was running with loose-limbed abandon across the large flat stones and laughing loudly, shouting to each other for no reason, it seemed, than the joy of being youthful and beautiful somewhere ancient and beautiful. They’re not much younger than Cleo, Frank thought. They’re so much younger than me, Cleo thought. An old bearded man they passed was laughing too and waving his cane, calling after them in Italian. Cleo and Frank watched the couple’s faces, flushed and free, as they raced past.

“Do you understand what the man was saying?” Frank asked.

Cleo shook her head as the waiter appeared beside her.

“Signor, this is not right!” The bill was open between his hands like a prayer book. “It’s too much!”

“No, no, it’s all right,” said Frank. “It’s for you. Did you hear what that man was saying? To the kids running?”

“Yes, I think so,” said the boy. “But this—”

“Can you translate it?”

“But this tip,” said the boy. “It is … too American.”

Cleo laughed when she saw the bill. “I’m glad not all of you has changed,” she said.

“Can you tell me what he said?” Frank asked again.

“How strange you are,” said the boy looking from one to the other. “It’s an Italian saying. It is something like, ‘Wherever you are going, it is waiting for you.’”

“Wherever you’re going is waiting for you?” repeated Frank.

The boy turned to Cleo apologetically.

“It doesn’t sound so good when he say it,” he said.



Cleo and Frank left the café and walked arm in arm down the Spanish Steps toward his hotel, where the divorce papers were waiting. Outside the restaurants, clusters of people sat enjoying the clement weather, their glasses of wine glinting in the light. Above them a black flock of starlings filled the sky. People turned their faces upward to watch. The birds swirled and pulsed, contracting to a dense black swarm, then twisting wildly into a dipping, fluxing swirl, a loose constellation of Vs. Frank stood mesmerized as they transformed from a dancing cloud to a pulsing wave to a lung breathing in and out.

“It’s called a murmuration,” said Cleo, surprising him, again, with the breadth of things he did not know she knew. “It’s warmer here in the city, so they return every evening from the surrounding areas.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

“And destructive. They cover everything in shit. You can see people all over the city in the morning washing it off their cars and mopeds.”

“But how do they do that? All move together?”

Cleo had read about this when she first moved here, and she was happy to know the answer. “Each starling is only ever aware of five other birds,” she said. “One above, one below, one in front and one either side, like a star. They move with those five, and that’s how they stay in formation.”

“But who’s the leader? Who decides which way they go?”

“There isn’t one.” Cleo smiled. “That’s the mystery.”

They walked through a piazza where tourists idled around a marble fountain. A warm breeze lifted the hair from the back of their necks. The air smelled of petrol and olives. They passed a cobbled alley mottled with shadow where a pair of teenagers kissed against a moped. At the other end, a gypsy woman hiked up her skirt and urinated into a puddle. They walked on.

“Who are your five, then?” asked Cleo. “The ones you watch?”

“My five people?” Frank thought for a moment. “Well, Zoe’s one, of course. Santiago, too.” He looked at the ground, which indeed was scarred with bird shit. “And Anders.”

“I’m glad,” said Cleo, meaning it.

“And now Eleanor.” Frank glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She was nodding slowly.

“And you. That’s five.”

“Me?”

“You,” said Frank. “Always you.”

They looked at each other. Cleo’s face was serene as a cathedral. All around them the city was settling into evening. A child cried for its mother. A bottle popped open. A motorbike roared. The starlings flew on.