22. Palmo Su Palmo - Lords of Serendipity

Katrina’s boyfriend Mather was pleased with himself. He didn’t even need to explain his order to the barman, he frequented the café so often during his study abroad in Rome.

One with sugar, one without, yes?

Con zucchero, no zucchero, si, said Mather.

Okay, boss, said the barman, a bow-tied little brown man who took Mather’s receipt and tore it and dropped it in a coffee-splattered pile.

The barman moved to the side of the counter. Under a silver awning, he prepared Mather’s cappuccino and Katrina’s cappuccino.

Mather turned around and leaned back to survey the crowded café, resting his elbows on the cold metal counter. He didn’t notice the annoyed looks from the people to his left and right, crumpled older Romans sipping espressos. He was staring at the group of Chinese women standing with their arms akimbo, directly in front of him, pastel shopping bags hanging from their wrists.

Mather smiled. It was a very American smile—friendly, victorious, pure, and also, he had perfect teeth—the kind of smile that makes millions of people around the world go to the movies and also burn American flags in the streets.

Takeaway, boss? the barman called over the others.

Mather turned and nodded.

He took the drinks and walked through the crowd, smoothly tilting back and forth along the fulcrum of his firm, trim waist. Just before leaving, as was his ritual, he looked to his right, at a black-and-white picture of Henry Kissinger drinking a cappuccino in this same place, decades earlier. Mather nodded at him and walked into the piazza. It was late afternoon in late November. Rome was darkening, the light was tea colored, and the old stone city looked and felt golden. Mather breathed it all in, with pleasure. He liked this goldenness so much more than the glitzy gold of churchy Rome—the coffered ceilings of the basilicas, Bernini’s sculptures and altars, the gross Jesus and pope swag in the shops and displayed on the African vendors’ roll-up carpets and fold-up tables: all of it was so bright and vulgar and distracting, Mather imagined his New England Episcopalian grandmother saying. And he kind of agreed with her.

But he also knew the real gold of Rome was just being in the ordinary day-in day-out city at the right time, and also, with the right person.

Katrina and Mather began every morning with a 10K along the Tiber and shared a litro of water and baggie of fresh-cut mango on the walk back to the apartment they were sharing with Cham. He agreed with Katrina that it just kind of made sense for the girls to get another place together, and with him there, too. Cham had offered no explanation or apology yet, Katrina reported, but still, that was better than dealing with a rando new roommate in a different country, and obviously Katrina and Mather weren’t getting a place together, just the two of them! So far as Mather could tell, Cham didn’t seem to care much that he was living with them. In fact, she basically kept to herself in Rome, even more than in the off-campus apartment she had rented with Katrina for spring semester. Each of them had their own room. And not just officially. Other than taking time to tuck Katrina in every night, which ended with little kisses and this thing where they pressed their palms together slowly, repeatedly, pleasantly, Mather had stayed in his room.

So far.

They weren’t waiting like doughy campus Christian kids dreaming of trad marriages.

They were just, you know, waiting.

Every morning, post-run and separate showers, they left for work together and met up again in the late afternoon for cappuccinos at the café with the Henry Kissinger picture, near the church where Katrina was doing fieldwork for her independent study on the supports that migrant women received from religious organizations in Italy. Mather always finished work first; his father had arranged an unpaid research opportunity for him with a green free-market think tank that had a discreet but palatial office near the Vatican. Sipping coffees, free hands pressed together, they would walk back to the apartment after a languorous-feeling while. It was the second floor of a building with a tall green door, near Campo de’ Fiori, where, under eight-hundred-year-old exposed beams, after beeswax candles were lit and a playlist was played, they would hold each other in happy, heavy silence on the hard little couch in the living room until one of them asked the other if they were ready to go out and get things for dinner. When the other agreed, they would graze necks with noses and pursed lips, then take the elevator, a tiny glass box rimmed in green metal with dull gold finishes, down to the main floor, and go back into the city with their little wheeled grocery bag, Katrina in a checkered kerchief and Mather in a dark blue fisherman’s cap, like an old married couple going to market, only an old married couple that actually kissed a little bit, now and then.

That is, until today.

Today, there was to be a detour.

Three months into their Rome semester, and more than eight months into their relationship, Katrina and Mather were getting tattoos.

After that, in further celebration of their many months together, they were going to have drinks at a little place on Borgo Pio and dinner at a nearby restaurant he’d researched. A place where local Romans ate. Authentic. Befitting their plans for the night. The night of no more waiting. After dinner they would walk through nighttime Rome, maybe buying each other roses from one of the endless brown guys coming up to them with best price best price before returning to the apartment.

And then they were going to fuck on Mather’s futon.

Mather walked through the huddled crowds near the church where Katrina was doing her fieldwork—it was named for the patron saint of deer hunters and had a deer head on top of its steeple, which Mather found just so interesting, so primitive. He reached the portico, where, like a well-trained hunting dog waiting to go into the field and fetch the fresh kill, Mather leaned against one of its massive columns, ready. From there, he watched as Katrina chatted just outside one of the church’s side doors with the soup kitchen’s coordinator, a scruffy, middle-aged Italian man in red running shoes. Katrina saw Mather and smiled, and the coordinator, following her smile, turned and waved, then nodded at Katrina and went back into the church.

She quick-stepped toward him as he pushed off the column. She stopped suddenly, just in front of him, by which point both of them were shaking a little and trying not to smile too much in front of the homeless people waiting for food.

Katrina took her coffee and took his hand and they walked back through the square, past the café. Mather nodded formally at a trio of carabinieri gathered around a pair of traffic bollards. The police smiled at Katrina and nodded at Mather.

The English-language reviews for the tattoo place they’d chosen were consistently positive about the quality of the work and about the hygiene practices of the artists. The shop was down a side street behind another nearby church, in between a vintage watch shop and a store that sold ornate fabrics in broad dusty bolts.

They entered and signed the waiver forms, only declining to have their tattoos posted to the shop’s social channels. This wasn’t about the rest of world, and Mather was also very, very careful with social media. They confirmed, in both English and Italian, using their phones to make sure the translation was clear, what they wanted, and where.

After sending hundreds of pictures and emoji assessments back and forth, they had decided on matching images of a palm tattooed on their palms.

Palm on palm.

Palmo su palmo.

Mather had to tap this into his phone repeatedly because it kept autocorrecting to palma su anima.

Palm on soul, he said.

Palm on soul, she said.

But technically that was Spanish, not Italian, Mather noted. AI could be so annoying. And the Italian word for soul was super long and that meant a lot of writing to have tattooed on your hand, he added. Sighing, Katrina agreed. But Mather thought it was better to go with the original plan, because they would always both know that palm secretly meant soul, just the two of them. Sighing in a happy way, Katrina agreed.

Sketches were made and scale was discussed and everything was agreed to. Two artists were free, so after squeezing each other’s palms a ceremonial final, virginal time, they went into separate rooms, where, at the last moment, Mather made a further request, not discussed in advance with Katrina, but consistent with his being very, very careful with social media. He was also thinking about all the many times he was going to shake important hands in the future.

As a result of this further request, the work on Mather’s palm was completed well before Katrina’s. He was waiting when she came out wincing and teary but smiling. They hugged. In turn, finger in finger, they walked to Borgo Pio for aperitivos, stopping in front of St. Peter’s to think about a selfie, given the empurpling skies around the great dome, streaked here and there with the last of the day’s tea light. But so many other couples were doing it that they walked on, smiling at each other every time they were given funny looks because of their matching bandages.

Drinks and dinner passed quickly—they had Aperol spritzes in a crowded little bar playing loud British dance music and went to the restaurant Mather had researched. There, they shared a bowl of carciofi and tried each other’s primo plates, vongole for him and norcina for her. They were too full for secondi. Together, they nearly finished half a bottle of Barolo (Katrina’s undiagnosed allergy to wine appeared to be situation-specific). They sat side by side instead of across from each other, to keep finger-clinging. They sighed and smiled sweet, sad smiles about the awkwardness of eating and drinking with bandaged hands.

So, said Mather.

So, said Katrina.

Did you want dessert?

No. Did you?

No.

Katrina leaned into him and whispered, Then what do you want?

Mather called for the bill.

Back at the apartment, the light under Cham’s door was off. Was she there or not? Did it matter, either way? Just in case, Mather turned the air filter in his room on high and put on some music. Katrina’s tattooed hand was hurting, a lot more than Mather’s. Throbbing, actually. She was worrying the bandage and pacing around Mather’s clean and orderly room.

He paused the playlist and went over to her.

This doesn’t need to happen tonight, okay? It can wait. What matters is that you’re feeling okay with everything.

I’m okay, she said.

Are you sure?

She nodded.

Really?

She nodded again.

He nodded, smiled, and then moved her toward the bed, quietly confirming again and again that she was okay right up until he was on top of her under the thin blanket.

Is this okay are you safe do you consent

Yes

Is this okay are you safe do you consent

Yes

Is this okay are you safe do you consent

Yes please stop asking

I can’t stop O can’t stop can’t stop

Yes you can wait

WAIT?

It hurts

It hurts?

Yes it hurts okay? And my hand hurts too

So stop?

No, just, can you, there, it’s okay keep going maybe slower

Is this okay

I guess

Yesssssssssss

Mather what’s my name?

Katrina Katrina Katrina yesssssssss

Okay then keep going

Keep going?

Yes

That was really nice thank you

What? That’s it?

Thank you how are you?

My hand hurts

Yeah

It really hurts

What does? Wait what hurts is it your . . .

Hand

Hand okay yeah that’s what the pamphlet said and also fatigue so are you also feeling sleepy?

No

Okay yeah so I think I’m going to sleep now

Really?

What an amazing thank you good night

She woke him up an hour later and asked to be taken to the hospital. He got out of bed and wanted to run out of the room and keep running until he was back home, in his childhood bedroom, but then, remembering all the safety and consent workshops and webinars he’d taken at school, he said he understood her request and asked Katrina if she needed him to obtain a rape kit as part of the process. She said no. She said she wanted to go the hospital because her hand was really, really hurting. Shirtless, pants half-on, Mather fell back onto the futon, breathing out future careers of relief. Katrina pressed her heel into his shoulder to interrupt his prayer of thanks to God, the first he’d uttered since childhood. Mather rolled off the futon, his face full of concern and responsibility, and took care of everything.