Shouting at a Lover by the Sea: Graciela Enjoys Her Power, Such As it Was

There was nothing like shouting at a lover by the sea, before the commiserating applause of waves. Daniel didn’t like it when Graciela spoke Italian, especially to other men, and that night there was a villa’s worth of Italian men in her parents’ home, cousins and nephews, family friends. Graciela had known well enough where it would lead when she’d slipped into her mother-tongue with the elder Medici signore, but she’d had enough of catering to her husband’s jealousies for one evening. After nine years of marriage, she couldn’t help the parts of herself he’d failed continually to understand, if he’d ever truly tried at all.

“I want to know what you were saying!” said Daniel when they were alone on the terrace. He let her arm go with a shove and she started off for the beach, quickly, her own heat rising with humiliation, anger, fear. She slipped out of her heels as she went, kicking them aside to better walk in the sand, and didn’t turn to see if Daniel followed. There was no question that he would, but he wouldn’t strike her, not in any serious way. Though he’d make of a show of how greatly he wanted to. He’d let her see how far she was pushing him, let her appreciate the struggle to restrain himself.

He kissed her mouth again and then drew back, holding her still as though she were a danger to him, both of them breathing hard. The flurrying scents of tequila and wine passed between them like sympathy.

“Meeo mareeto nonay mehstato en eetalia!” he called after her, high and mocking, trying to imitate something she had said to the signore and managing nonsense. But he’d understood marito—husband. He’d learned that much of her language at least.

“What did you say about me?”

She laughed harshly and turned so he could see her disdain. “You sound ridiculous!”

Enraged, he closed the distance between them in a leap and grabbed her. “You looked ridiculous, flirting like a bitch in heat!”

Tears in her eyes, she wrenched herself away and ran from the dry sand to the packed damp earth of the shore. He caught her with little effort and was kissing her sooner than she’d guessed he would, in that bruising way that told her how far along he was already. It wasn’t difficult for her to catch up, because her heart was in her ears and his next words against her throat sent a thrill through her spine: “I could break his face for looking at you and it would be your fault.” He kissed her mouth again and then drew back, holding her still as though she were a danger to him, both of them breathing hard. The flurrying scents of tequila and wine passed between them like sympathy.

“Sometimes I think you enjoy doing this to me.”

Did she enjoy this? she wondered. She shouldn’t, but his lips took hers hungrily and the knowledge of his wanting stabbed her with desire, like that first burn of a hard drink, the way it entered her head with a hum. At least when he wanted her like this, there was something of him that was hers and she was grateful for that power, such as it was. Sometimes it could feel like everything.

Suddenly she broke away from him with a scream and pushed against him with all her weight. He took a step back, but it was clearly by choice. Her short, slender frame was an afterthought to his height and strength. Regarding each other like two prowlers in the night, Graciela straightened the thin silk straps of her gown, catching her breath. She was close to tears again as Daniel took a pack of tabacos from his suitcoat pocket. He put a long brown stick between his lips and it dangled there as he offered her the pack, his eyes taunting and self-satisfied. She grabbed the pack and was running before he could react, her skirt hitched up in her free hand as she splashed barefoot into the tide. She lacked the hesitation of her husband, who stopped at the edge of the water with a curse of frustration and watched as she hurled the tabacos into the grasp of the waves.

Inflamed in a delicious rage, he shouted, “Come here, loca! What’s the matter with you?!”

Graciela laughed until something entangled her feet in the receding tide and she cried out in alarm, reaching down on impulse to grab what she assumed to be seaweed or worse—something grasping and tentacled. Her hand emerged holding a soaked and dripping bunch of cloth. On closer inspection: a dress.

***

Excerpt from The Music of Pedro.