How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer Read Free Book Online Page B

moonlight. It murmurs an incomprehensible prayer.
    The mosquito netting fills with wind and then hangs limp again, brushing Aïda’s shoulders. Her face is full of concentration. She touches the swollen arch of my foot. I can hardly feel it. You could help me if you wanted to, she might say now. You have lived longer than I have and could let me know how it is, but you don’t. You let me dance and giggle and look like an idiot. You like it. You wish it. Is she saying this?
    “How did we get home?” I ask her. My voice sounds full of sleep.
    “You’re awake,” she says. “You sure messed up your ankle.”
    “It feels like there are bricks on my chest.”
    “Signora Cellini gave you Tylenol with codeine. It knocked you out.”
    Sweet drug. My wisdom-tooth friend. One should have it around. “Where are the guys?”
    “Home. We made quite a spectacle.”
    “You did.”
    “That’s what I do, Cousin Mira.”
    “
I
don’t.”
    “Was I the only one to faint today?” She raises her eyebrows at me.
    “Well, I didn’t do it on purpose.”
    “You’ll have to go to a doctor tomorrow.”
    “So be it. This is your fault, you know,” I tell her. I mean for it to be severe, but the last part comes out “falyuno.” I am almost asleep again, and grateful for that. With my eyelids half closed I can see the wings rising from her shoulders again, and her feet might be fused into one, and who knows, she might after all be sexless and uninvolved with the commerce of this world, and I might be the Virgin Mary, receiving the impossible news.
    The next morning Aïda calls a cab and we go down to the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova, where a dark-haired nurse named Bella examines my ankle.
“È grave,”
she tells me, shaking her head. My ankle, if I were to reproduce it on a canvas, would require plenty of aquamarine and ocher and Russian red. Bella calls for an English-speaking doctor, who handles me gently. He orders X rays and tells the technician to take plenty of pictures. In another room the doctor puts my films up on a lighted board. He shows me a hairline fracture, which looks to me like a tiny mountain range etched into my bone. He does not understand why I smile when he gives me the bad news. How can I explain to him how apt it is? Drew would recommend a self-portrait.
    When I return to the waiting room wearing a fiberglass cast from toes to mid-calf, I find Aïda eating a croissant. I feel as if I will faint from hunger.
    “Hi, gimp,” she says. There’s a smirk. I’d like to whack her with my new weapons. Instead, we head for the door and walk down Via Bufalini toward a café where I can find some breakfast. The sun is out, and the
zanzare
. Big fat ones. Unlike American mosquitoes, these actually hurt when they bite. It’s the huge proboscis. At least my ankle’s safe from that for a while.
    The doctor has prescribed normal activity, with caution until I learn to use the crutches better. It’s my first time on them—I always wanted them when I was a kid, but somehow managed to escape injury—and I think I will stay home as long as possible. Time to paint. No more vineyards. Aïda can do what she likes for the last two days of her visit.
    At the café we have a marble-topped table on the sidewalk, and a kind waiter looks at me with pity. He brings things we do not order, a little plate of biscotti and tiny jam-filled cookies. Aïda twirls her hair and looks at her feet. She is quiet today and has neglected to put on the customary makeup: something to make her lips shine, a thin dark line around the eyes, a pink stain on the cheeks. She looks almost plain, like anyone else’s cousin. She actually eats the free cookies and biscotti.
    Our waiter sets espresso cups on the table. Aïda’s growth will be stunted forever by the staggering amount of caffeine she has consumed in Florence. Of course her father doesn’t allow it, back home. “Does it hurt?” she asks, pointing at the ankle.
    “Not so much