The Wanting Life by Mark Rader

Author:Mark Rader
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2019-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

The next morning, Paul awoke to light through the slats of the blinds and, on the other side of the room, a blur that was Luca, straddling the room’s single chair, pointing his camera at him. Awake first again.

“Hey,” Luca said. “Look alive.” The shutter clicked.

“I want that photo so I can destroy it,” Paul said. A joke. Destroying it was the last thing he’d do. Hide it but not destroy it.

“Why?” said Luca. “You look nice.”

Last night’s dream, it seemed, had not quite ended. This time, when Luca came over and rubbed Paul’s shoulder, Paul initiated, and they did the opposite of what they’d done before, as if to confirm that it too was possible. He’d dreamed in the night of doing this again, and here he was, doing it, almost immediately. And so the first time became a second time: the same but completely different.

After showering separately, they left the hotel. Church bells rang out as they stood in line for coffee and a roll, and so strong was the joy of the morning, Paul felt protected from shame. In line he wished he could stop time completely so he could more deliberately savor the feeling, but then the man behind the counter was asking, “Yes? Yes? What do you want?”

They swam and baked on the beach. Ate lunch at two, then swam and baked some more, their suitcases beside their towels. For most of the day, the looming dread—he knew it was there—was ironed flat by the heat, kept cool by the water. But it wasn’t gone. As they walked to the bus stop, to catch a ride to Formia, where the train station was, he felt it, corkscrewing his stomach. The return to ordinary life.

Halfway to Rome, Luca fell asleep and rested his head on Paul’s shoulder. Paul was touched but worried; he looked around to see if anyone had taken notice. But others were in their own world. A little girl stomped up and down on the thighs of her father, like Godzilla, feeling her power. A young woman and her friend loudly ate potato crisps from a crinkly bag in the seat in front of them. Others slept or looked out the windows.

So he let Luca be. Moving only his head, so as not to disturb Luca’s sleep, he watched fields the color of sand and highbranched pines scroll past, his reflection sometimes surprising him in the watery glass. Father Paul Novak stared back. Son of Anna and Virgil Novak, from Edgar, Wisconsin, with a moppyhaired man’s head making peaceful sounds on his shoulder. Never would he be a virgin again. What had happened was as permanent as the summer landscape shooting past was fleeting. The reality of Italy outside made him fantasize for a while: the two of them in a small Italian town, quieter than Sperlonga; he a teacher of religion at some local school, Luca a photographer for the small local paper. Roommates to the world, of course, but inside their home, whatever they wanted.

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