Read Alibi: A Novel for Free Online

but already dark, as if the waterlogged city had simply given up and turned out the lights.
    “I don’t know if there’s enough hot water for two,” she said when I went into the bathroom. “It was already getting cool. Do you mind? I thought, at your house—”
    “That’s all right. I’ll just watch,” I said, sitting on the edge of the tub. The room was spare, the bathmat just a skinny towel thrown on the cold linoleum. Whatever steam there had been was now gone from the flat mirror over the basin.
    “One look, then. I’m getting out,” she said, pulling herself up and posing with her hand on her hip, a kind of burlesque wiggle, then folding her arms across her chest in a shiver. “Oh, this cold.”
    “Here,” I said, wrapping one of the thin towels around her as she stepped out. I held her for a minute, letting the towel blot the water, then began rubbing her dry with another one. “Come back to bed. It’s warm.”
    “No, it’s late.”
    “Have dinner.”
    “No, it’s time to go home. I have to keep respectable hours. For the neighbors,” she said, slipping on her underpants and hooking her bra. “To be respectable.”
    “You’re not,” I said, smiling.
    She came over and put her hand in my hair. “I used to be.”
    I picked up my shorts. “All right. I’ll take you home.”
    “No, not tonight.” She looked at me. “It’s better. You stay here.”
    “What am I going to do here?”
    “You can watch.” She slipped on her skirt, her face sly, as if she knew this covering up would turn erotic, each simple move, even lifting a blouse from its hanger, a secret between us, her body something only we knew, more ours than ever as she hid it from everyone else, piece by piece.
    She came over to the bed and looked down. “And you want to go on the vaporetto?” She leaned down, taking my erection in her hand while she kissed me. “Sometimes, you know, when it’s like this, we want to think it’s something else. But it’s not, it’s just what it is, that’s all. It’s enough for me, what it is. You understand?” She ran her fingers up the side of my penis, then moved her hand away.
    I nodded.
    “Thank you,” she said. “For the day. For the room.”
    “Tomorrow?” I said.
    She looked at me, then smiled. “But somewhere nearer. I’ll have to go back to work. Not all day, like this.”
    “Anything. The Gritti?”
    “No, somewhere cheap. With sheets like this.” She gestured toward the rumpled bed. “So we don’t care what we do.”
    I got up to follow, grabbing part of the sheet to cover myself, making her giggle.
    “Very funny.”
    “Well, it is, though. How is that? So serious and then it’s funny. You think it’s funny for the animals?”
    “No, but they don’t go home early, either.”
    She laughed. “One o’clock.”
    I went over to the window and waited to see her come out below, the wide shoulders of her coat as she moved into a line of umbrellas, people hurrying home from work, none of them turning around to look back, none aware that anything had happened.

CHAPTER TWO
    M y mother picked that evening, when my head was groggy, still flooded with sex, to put her foot down about dinner with Gianni.
    “He’s going to think you’re avoiding him. I waited until the last possible minute. Where have you been, anyway?”
    “Looking at art.”
    “Art.”
    “I’m not avoiding him. I’m just tired.”
    “You’re always tired.” She bit her lip. “Do this for me, would you, sweetie? I don’t want to have to make apologies again. It’s rude, aside from anything else.”
    “Well, I can’t go like this,” I said, patting my soaked jacket. Everything crumpled, like the sheets. It occurred to me that I might even smell of it, the whole sweaty afternoon. “I have to wash.”
    My mother sighed. “All right. Meet us at Harry’s. I’ll send the taxi back and tell him to wait. You won’t even need the traghetto. But darling, quickly, please?”
    “All right.