Sex and Vanity(32)

The first thing that popped up was this:

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,



Hell no, Lucie thought. As she scrolled through the next poem, she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. Oh God, it’s him. She braced herself and turned around, taken aback to see Auden smiling at her.

“So what do you think of Diefenbach’s paintings?”

“Um, who?” Lucie put her phone away quickly.

“Karl Diefenbach. The paintings in the refectory?”

“Oh, I haven’t seen them. We got here a bit late.”

“Here, come with me,” Auden said, taking her by the arm and whisking her down the corridor before she could protest. “You really must see them.”

They entered the refectory—a large, serene space where the austere white walls were hung with massive oil paintings by Karl Diefenbach. The paintings were uniformly dark and moody, depicting the island from different vantage points. There were dramatic cliff-top landscapes, stormy seascapes, and even nighttime views of a grotto seemingly lit by candlelight. Lucie studied the canvases intently, quietly moved.

“What do you think?” Auden asked.

“I love them.”

“I knew you would,” Auden said with a little laugh.

“This isn’t what I was expecting. What are they even doing hanging in a monastery?”

“I believe Diefenbach spent his final years living on the island.”

“They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen. So haunting … surreal almost,” Lucie said as she stared at a particularly dramatic painting of the Faraglioni glimmering in the moonlight. She remembered being at Da Luigi and standing in the same spot that Diefenbach had, gazing out at the mystical rocks. Turning to Auden, she said, “I wonder why he chose to paint everything so dark, when to me Capri is all about the light.”

“I would venture to ask the same thing about your paintings. Diefenbach was a symbolist. I feel like painting was for him a way to explore the inner landscape, rather than the outer one, don’t you think?”

Lucie smiled, revealing nothing.

Suddenly, the sound of a familiar piano composition could be heard echoing through the chamber.

“The Goldberg Variations, my favorite!” Lucie exclaimed. They wandered back into the chapel and found it empty except for Isabel, Dolfi, and a few others clustered toward the front of the altar where the grand piano was. Isabel turned to beckon Lucie to join them, and that’s when she saw George seated at the piano. Lucie stepped closer to the piano and watched in astonishment. George’s fingers were gliding over the piano keys with such apparent effortlessness, such grace and fluidity, it didn’t even look like he was actually playing. She noticed for the first time George’s long, elegantly tapered fingers and saw that his eyes were closed as he swayed slowly back and forth, completely lost in the music that he was creating.

She knew then exactly what she wanted to say to George. She was going to say, “I wonder if Neruda could play Bach as well as you can.” Now she just needed to get one second alone with him. She would seize the moment after he finished playing, and maybe she could use the excuse of showing him the Diefenbachs in the refectory. But just as he was finishing the piece, Gillian, the hyperefficient wedding coordinator, marched into the chapel with a panicked look and whispered something urgently into Isabel’s ear.

“Oh, shit! Sorry,” Isabel said to Gillian before turning to the rest of the group. “We need to get to the banquet. Apparently Dolfi’s grandmother started making a toast, not realizing that we weren’t even there!”

The group dashed quickly toward the central cloister where the banquet was being held, and when Lucie first caught sight of the space, she gasped in delight. The vast courtyard was filled with round tables covered in silver brocade and groaning with immense antique silver candelabras that looked like they had come straight from the Vatican. Over each table were suspended silver orbs of varying sizes, each containing candles floating on water. The water and flickering candles within the translucent silver cast a rippling, gossamer light over the entire space, making the already enchanting cloister look even more luminous and otherworldly.

Lucie quickly got to her assigned table, crossing her fingers that George would be seated there too. Instead, she found herself between an Italian youth with long blond hair who didn’t speak a word of English and, if the engraved place card next to her chair was correct, BARON MORDECAI VON EPHRUSSí. Her heart sank, and to make things worse, from where she was sitting she had the perfect view of George two tables away taking his seat between Sophie, Isabel’s beautiful Australian friend, and some equally stunning Asian woman named Astrid. One of the wedding’s black-clad videographers was not so discreetly documenting the scene of the photogenic trio greeting one another as if they were longtime friends meeting up at the front row of New York Fashion Week.

Mordecai, who had been chatting with some English duchess at the next table, returned to his seat rather reluctantly and raised an eyebrow at Lucie. “Where have you been, young lady? Up to some mischief, I hope?”

“Not quite. We were at an impromptu piano concert given by George Zao.”

“Really? And what was our strapping young Narcissus playing?”

“The aria from the Goldberg Variations.”

“How predictable!” Mordecai grumbled.