The Story of X: An Erotic Tale Read online

  THE STORY OF X

  An Erotic Tale

  A.J. MOLLOY

  DEDICATION

  For S

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  SO HERE I am: the Caffè Gambrinus. I’m finally in Italy, having just completed my final exams, sitting at a table on the open terrace of a famous cafe, on a famous street corner in glorious Naples, and the air is warm, and the evening sky is cloudless, and I can smell the garbage, which is piled that high across the road.

  A cop walks down the street in front of a faded, crumbling, graffitied palazzo. He looks like he is designed by Armani: he has the sunglasses, the gun, the look, the tailored blue shirt and pants, the gleaming leather; the way of slouching as he walks. A cop by Dolce & Gabbana.

  He is handsome. There are lots of handsome men here. But the most handsome of them all is sitting about three tables away.

  “So who is he, then?”

  Jess leans forward; she looks at me.

  “Roscarrick.”

  “Huh?”

  My best friend from Dartmouth, Jessica Rushton—funny and sarcastic and pretty, British-born and entirely cynical—raises her very plucked eyebrows and threads back her long, dark hair. She tuts.

  “You’ve never heard of Lord Roscarrick?”

  “He’s a lord?”

  Jessica laughs a nicotined laugh.

  “Marcus James Anthony Xavier Mastrosso Di Angelo Roscarrick.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Close friends call him Marc.”

  “Well, it saves time.”

  Jessica grins.

  “And he’s a billionaire. All of Naples knows that.”

  I look across the tables of the cafe at this man, this apparently rich man. He looks barely thirty, at most. He also looks amazing. There is no other word for it. A more complex word would be, well, too complex, too unnecessary. He has dark skin—with distant and very pale blue eyes. A striking contrast. Also a slightly severe and yet compelling profile: hawkish, animal, sad, stubbled, and with a trace of boyishness mixed with pure adult, predatory masculinity. He is sexy; very, very sexy.

  This isn’t me. I’m not used to this instant reaction. I find myself adjusting my shoulder-length blond hair, wishing I had paid more the last time I got it cut. Wondering if he will look over. He doesn’t. He simply sips at his tiny espresso cup, sweetly lifting the china to his lips. Sitting alone. Sipping. Staring at nothing. Impassive. Oh God. That profile.

  “You’re not falling in love already, X?”

  Jess always calls me X. It was Jessica who christened me X when we first roomed together at Dartmouth. My full name is Alexandra Beckmann. Alex B. X for short. I am Californian, blond, a little bit Jewish, and twenty-one years old. Jess thinks I am naïve. She may be right. I am also reasonably smart and definitely well educated. And I am in Naples. In Italy.

  Jessica is still talking about this guy. I am just looking at him; can’t help it. I expected the men in Italy to be clichéd but hot, and maybe a little irritating. This guy is hot, but not in a way I expected.

  “Meh. Another good-looking bastard . . .”

  She talks away. Lighting yet another cigarette, pluming smoke from her mouth into her nose for a professional second. She didn’t used to do that back in New Hampshire.

  “He looks . . . interesting,” I say.

  It’s a helpless lie.

  “Steer clear, babes.”

  “Sorry?”

  Jessica laughs smoke.

  “Hello, lamb, meet slaughter.”

  “He’s bad news?”

  “Ladykiller, with an emphasis on the killer. Really, X. Not for the likes of you.”

  I bridle; I can’t help it. I know Jess thinks I am pure white-bread, ingenuous and innocent, just a one-guy girl, and she’s not entirely wrong: I am a little prudish and mainstream—compared to her. All through our friendship she’s been the drinker, the smoker, the man-eater, the one who has adventures, the one who rolls back to the dorm at three A.M. with another nameless frat boy to spend a few hours snorting lines off the kitchen counter and having sex on the kitchen table. Meanwhile I did the one-boyfriend-at-college thing, convincing myself I was in love, and I definitely did the studying.

  But the boyfriend got dull, or I eventually realized he was dull, at the same time the studies got more rewarding: I am aiming for grad school. And so I am here in Italy, researching my senior thesis, Camorra and Cosa Nostra: The Historical Origins of Italian Organized Crime in the Mezzogiorno.

  I want to teach Italian history, but the only reason I chose to do this precise thesis was so I could justify coming to Naples—to hang out with Jess and have fun. She came out here as soon as she could, six months back; she’s taking a year off college. She came to learn the language and teach some English, and in her calls and e-mails she made it sound so exciting: the food, the city, the men; yes, the men. Why not? I yearned to join her.

  Because I want to have fun. I am twenty-one and I have had two boyfriends, and one solitary miserable one-night stand. That’s it. Jessica openly derides me: an Almost Virgin, the Madonna of New Hampshire.

  I turn. The man is looking over. Gazing my way. He smiles at me, briefly, sketchily, as if he is puzzled. As if he recognizes but cannot place me.

  Then he turns back to his coffee.

  “He just looked over!”

  Jess laughs again.

  “Sometimes he does that, turns his head. It’s weird.”

  “Oh, shut up. This is all new to me.” I finish my black stain of coffee; the coffee is seriously good. “I’m not used to all these hot-looking men, Jess. All the boys in Dartmouth are wearing those pastel polos and khakis, like East Coast rich kids.”

  “Your boyfriend used to wear . . .” She shudders, visibly. “Deck shoes.”

  “Ugh!” I laugh, too. “Deck shoes with gray socks. Please don’t.”

  “What a total matador he was.”

  Lord Roscarrick is sipping his coffee and not looking at me anymore. I need to defend my ex-boyfriend. />
  “He was very good at math, though.”

  “Yeah. But he looked like a beach donkey, X. Good thing you chucked him.”

  “How’s it going here, anyway? You still working your way through the male population of Campania?”

  “Yes . . . or, at least, I was . . .”

  Jessica shrugs, moues, and grinds out her cigarette. A supremely chic waiter instantly whisks away the soiled ashtray and, with a charming gesture and a simple “Signorina,” replaces it with a clean one, glass and heavy, and engraved with the letters C G in belle époque style. The service is impeccable. The Caffè Gambrinus is frescoed and chandeliered and famous. Now I wonder how much this is costing: these excellent macchiatos and delicious little snacks—Napoli salami on the softest cubes of ciabatta. I worked evenings in bars for six months to help pay for this three-month research trip. My budget is limited.

  But I don’t care, not tonight, not my first night in Naples!

  The evening advances. This man Roscarrick is still sitting there; but he is studiously looking the other way, in his fine suit, with his fine profile, and I decide to forget him; there will be plenty more.

  The streets beyond the cafe terrace are abuzz with life—couples strolling and flirting, cops smiling and flirting, kids sitting on stationary green Piaggio scooters and flirting. It is all slightly raffish, and superbly alive, and very Neapolitan—though how I can judge this I don’t know, as this is my first visit to Naples, indeed to Italy. My only previous visit to Europe was a rainy week in London at age eighteen, a present from Mom and Dad, a reward for getting my Dartmouth scholarship.

  Mom and Dad. I get a sudden pang of nostalgia, maybe homesickness. No, it can’t be homesickness. I only left home two days ago—the little house in San Jose, the sunny yard, the sprinklers, suburbia, America.

  Now I’m in Europe, deepest, darkest, decaying, grandiose old Europe. Already I love it. What’s more, I am determined to love it.

  “You can kinda go off the guys, actually,” says Jessica.

  I look at her, surprised.

  “Sorry? You told me you adored them. Gave me a list of names. Quite a long list.”

  “Did I?” Her smile is lopsided, almost guilty. Embarrassed. “Sure. Okay. Yeah. There have been a couple.” A pause. “Couple of dozen. They’re cute—what’s a girl to do? But they are so bloody narcissistic, X, it starts to irritate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Half of them are mummy’s boys. They have a word for it, mammone. They live at home till they’re, like, fifty, and the clothes and the vanity, eeesh.” She chuckles some smoke from her ninth cigarette. “Manbags. I mean, who knew? Manbags?”

  “Purses for men?”

  “Yeah. Leather accessories for men? Way too bloody metrosexual. And the socks, trousers without socks—what is that about?—walking around in a business suit with no socks—put your damn socks on, silly boy—and all the preening and tweaking. Christ, there are queues for the gents in the bars longer than there are for the ladies, and after a while it starts to bloody get to you, I mean look—look . . .” She gestures rather wildly, her silver bangles jangling on her slender, elegant, suntanned arm, sweeping her hand across the view of Via Toledo and the Opera House and the big square with the Royal Palace that, I think, leads down to the Tyrrhenian Sea. “Look at the damn rubbish, the trash. Why can’t they just clean it up? Why not, like, stop fuckin’ worrying about your manbag for a while, Signor No Socks, and clean up your damn city. That’s what a real man would do.”

  A silence descends.

  “I need a drink,” she says.

  Drinks are ordered. A couple of “Venezianos.” I have no idea what a Veneziano is. Jess orders in almost flawless and very enviable Italian; she has gone from halting stutters to apparent bilingualism in half a year. I am jealous. I can barely say uno, due, tre. That’s another thing I am going to fix while I’m here: I’m going to learn Italian. That, and maybe, hopefully, please God, fall in love.

  Oh God, I would like to fall in love. Really in love. Not pretend-in-love like I did with Paul the Deck-Shoe Mathematician. If I fell in love it would be the first time. And I am twenty-one. I am starting to think I am incapable; barren of love. Poor X. Did you hear about X? Yeah, she can’t fall in love; the doctors have tried everything. They say she’s going to spinster clinic.

  “Signorina. Due aperitivi.”

  The waiter sets the drinks on the table. Two large, long-stemmed glasses contain three inches, each, of a lurid orange liquid.

  I gaze suspiciously.

  Jess smiles and laughs. Her dark hair looks very well cut. Different from how it was in Hanover.

  “It’s fine, X. I know it looks like radioactive effluent, but try it—delizioso, and fashionable, promise.”

  I lift the drink, it smells—and tastes—orangey and sharp and bitter and very alcoholic. It’s good.

  “White wine, fizzy water, and an orange liqueur called Aperol—not with Campari.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That’s how you make it, X. A Veneziano. I find three or four really set me up for the evening. Or maybe five.”

  We duly hit on two or three drinks, or five, until the night is squid-ink black and the moon is high and gawping and the opera-goers are exiting in their finery across the street, and we are giggling and joking like we are back in the old apartment, the one with the crazy guy downstairs. And while Jessica is flirting with the waiter, speaking Italian, I steal glances across the tables at him.

  Because all through the evening he sits there, in that immaculate suit, and the pristine white shirt, with the silver-and-gemstone cuff links, and the effortlessly silken violet necktie, sometimes taking calls on his slender cell, sometimes standing to greet a friend or an acquaintance.

  Every so often, a favored passerby is invited to sit down, and this guy, this amazing-looking guy, with his dark looks and his dark frown and his dark curling locks of hair that fall onto his crisp white collar just so, and the soft, pale, slightly sad eyes, and the cheekbones, the almost alien cheekbones, this vision of a man gestures firmly and expressively. He is not quite like the other Italian men; he seems calmer, more centered; distant. Aloof? No, distant. Perhaps a little dangerous.

  I realize with a kind of saddening pain in my heart, in my mind, that this man, this tall, rich, untouchable, maybe-thirty-year-old man, is beautiful. Maybe the first truly beautiful man I have seen, a darker Byron, a suntanned Bond. I’ve met plenty of pretty boys before, plenty of funny, plausible, skinny, kick-back-and-play-the-guitar pretty boys; there are lots of them in California; there was at least one at Dartmouth—and Jessica slept with him. But this man is beautiful, in a masculine way. Not remotely gay, not metrosexual, not sockless in a business suit and toting a manbag, but tall and male and adult and aquiline and lean and, God, I am drunk.

  Jessica tracks my thoughts, as always. She finishes her fourth Veneziano with a slovenly yet lovable burp and says, “They say his wife died. Accident. Or was it? Then he turned the, like, family millions into billions. Roscarrick. English dad, Italian mum. Google is your girlfriend, X. God, I’m hungry. Pizza?”

  She is drunk. But so am I. Drunk on all of this. The orange aperitifs and the acid-yellow Naples moon and the man in the fine gray English suit. Lord Roscarrick. Lord Marcus Xavier whatwasit Roscarrick.

  “Jesus, X.”

  “What?”

  I have been staring at the sky for two minutes. Now I am staring at Jess—who is, in turn, staring with an expression of shock at the bill.

  “What? What? How much?”

  She groans.

  “Why did we drink here? We could have gone to my local for a bevvy. Bollocks.”

  A cold nausea sweeps over me.

  “How much is it?”

  “Ninety euro.”

  “Chr
ist, we only had those Venezianos.”

  “And the coffees, and the snacks. Bloody hell, what a half-wit I am, I should have remembered how pricey this place is, sorry.”

  Jessica has very little money; the teaching job pays a few bucks. She lives hand to mouth, and she tolerates it well enough. But a ninety-euro drinks bill could ruin her week. I reach reluctantly in my purse for a card, but the waiter has already glimmered into view, and picked up the check, with a smile.

  “But you need my card,” I say.

  The handsome waiter smiles graciously.

  “Is okay! The signor pay. Signor Roscarrick.”

  “Huh? No—”

  I turn, heart jumping, stupidly excited, half embarrassed, to remonstrate in a bogus way—please don’t pay—we will be fine. My name is Alex. Alexandra. Alexandra Beckmann. Yes. That’s right. With two n’s. Here’s my phone number. Write it down. Maybe have it tattooed on your hand.

  But the table is empty. He has gone.

  The designer cop leans against the palazzo wall, smoking quietly in the dark.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I WANT TO get him out of my mind, so I spend the next day vigorously unpacking boxes in my new and infinitely tiny one-room apartment near the Castel dell’Ovo.

  When Jessica called me in the States a few weeks back, and told me she could secure an apartment next door to hers, she said it was located in a smart new district of the city, Santa Lucia. As I walk out, barefoot, onto the tiny, vine-wreathed iron balcony, I realize what “smart and new” means by Neapolitan standards: it means the neoclassical buildings are no more than two hundred years old, and the piles of uncollected garbage down there on the sidewalk only reach head height.