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He wasn’t drunk –- at least, not anywhere drunk enough; the remnants of last night’s whiskey clung to his unchanged shirt and curtain’s velvet like a damp cloud. Someone had left a window open. Michael was unaccustomed to the moonlight at Lake Tahoe. It seemed as if no amount of curtains could keep it out. He was far too familiar with the moonlight in New York City: gray and cloying, made murky by the smog-filled effluence and oil-slick city lights, swimming amongst the coffee-thick spittle of clouds. Out here, moonlight -- silver, razor-sharp -- seeped even into the cracks where the cockroaches hid. It left him achingly sober.
Plop.
Plop.
Plop. Was there a broken tap in the house? Maybe he forgot to shut it tightly enough. Every rusted droplet hit the sink and splattered, its echo haunting his ears.
The fine, rustling ends of her dress trailed the floor.
She came quietly. He could see her long toes, pressed flat, gripping the bare wooden floorboards, her ankles hidden behind tumbling lace. He remembered bowing over to kiss them, his tongue learning the memory of her calf, thigh, ankle -– however briefly –- when they shared their honeymoon in the dying days of summer. Apollonia in the driver’s seat, him sitting shotgun, the bruises and blotches of his past like a faraway cloud in the rearview mirror behind her smiling face. The whole summer had perched on the ridge of his two palms like a small bird; in the foolishness of his thunderbolt he’d forgotten that happiness was fragile, and that if he wasn’t careful, he could turn it over and shatter it.
He asked, “Did you climb in through the window, my love?”
“You are drunk, Michael. Drunk and stinking.”
She laughed, softly. The laughter broke over him like surfs breaking open on the beach.
He closed his eyes. “That's not your wedding dress you're wearing. I remember. The stitch-patterns were different.”
“Is it? Your memory might be playing tricks on you, Michele.”
No. I know. I remember.
She only stood there and looks him, arms rested by her side. Threads of moonlight shimmered and crawled all over her, fine as gossamer.
“So this is the moon in America,” she said. “It’s just like the Sicilian moon.”
I remember.
“It's the same moon, after all."
“America. The cities. I saw them, you know? Just as I come to find you."
"Did you?"
"Yes! They are big. So bright. So…” She gestured with her hands, a small, open-palmed gesture like she was offering him a fistful of soil. “You said you were going to show me America, Michael.”
“Come here, tesoro, and I’ll show you.”
She took a step closer. Beneath the layer of ivory, Michael fancied he could see the spindly pale-blue rivers of veins across her skin.
His voice might've been hoarse when his lips found the words--
“Why have you come?”
A small smile awoke at the corner of Apollonia’s mouth. “Do not waste time to ask me stupid questions, my love.”
“You are blaming me? I am liable to stupidity when looking at you.”
“Always so charming. Get up.”
He tried to sit up. The mattress had grown sluggish beneath him, as if it was filled with water.
“Dance with me, Michael.”
“I don’t remember how, Apollonia.”
“Liar.”
Her outstretched fingers found his. He tried to laugh – it came out a croak. “I can’t.”
“Of course you can. There’s nothing my Michele can’t do.” She said the latter part in English. Her accent was thick – so raw and familiar it grated against what was left of his heart.
“You’ll steer, Michele. I can lead.”
She pulled him upwards, tugging him by the sleeves.
His hands found her hips. Michael could do nothing but drink in her face with his eyes, her darker complexion made iridescent by the strange light. The shadows beneath her eyelids, the inky dimple like a scab in her cheek, the curves of her shoulders beneath the ivory gown.
There’s a broken tap in my head, he thought, and I can’t seem to turn it back off.
He stumbled, losing his footing, and Apollonia caught his arm.
“Clumsy.” She shook her head. “No practice? After I am gone?”
“Not so much as a step of promenade.”
“You’ve become joyless. No love.”
“Nothing that I love here could compare with you."
“You haven’t changed, you know? That clever tongue you have! That’s what fooled me into this in the first place.”
“Apollonia-–”
“You made me happy, when you fooled me.”
“As did you.” I love you so much, tesoro.
“Should we try the tarantella, now?”
“You are going to be so disappointed with me, tesoro.”
“Just one little pizzica. You wouldn’t even need to be all that quick on your feet.”
“Only if you play the mandolin for it.”
She laughed, again. In the moonlight her face was so radiant, so vivid. Michael became suddenly afraid of touching her. He feared that if he pulled his hand away, patches of her would come away with it, clinging like cobweb to his fingers.
“Stay, Michele,” Apollonia whispered. “Stay with me.”
She would’ve loved New York. She would’ve traded dresses for skirts and watered pots of hydrangeas on their windowsill. She would’ve drove like an American woman – with one elbow resting at the window and a cigarette between two fingers. But she would’ve never been an American woman. Apollonia would’ve known how to make Mama Corleone laugh, or to care for Vito with quick hands and clean rags. She would’ve been shrewd enough to hold her tongue when the men invaded the threshold of her home but hold his thumb like a prayer between her fingers when he crawled into bed late at night. And when the day came, would she had looked at him the way Kay looked at him now? Like he were a scar upon her skin?
He took a step back. A step forwards.
Apollonia swayed gently against him, following his lead, counting the beat beneath her breath.
A step forwards. A step back.
Stay with me, Michele.
Michael closed his eyes. If she were to leave him, again -– as all of them do –- he would prefer not to see her go. Lake Tahoe was nobody’s but his.