He heard the sound of rain and so he went to a window but could not see the substance of this harmonic pattering in external darkness. He listened to its orphic sounds, inventing reasons to go into this gentle falling of sky: milk for his cornflakes or batteries for his Walkman that he could purchase at the AM/PM or the 7-11.
He wrote: Gabriele put on her hat and sunglasses and went into the rain with a bag carrying her keys, passport, wallet, sketchbook, and charcoal pencil as well as makeup and a bottle of this newly acquired substance, perfume. She had been told that there was a park near her hotel where she could see the ruins but, despite floating on cloud nine, when she arrived there all she could see were the ruins of her own life.
Michael was lovingly amuck in her thoughts and since she would see him in a few hours she was in a heavenly abyss greater than having the license to do some Italian stud fishing in the pool of her hotel. She loathed how the chemicals of this infatuation had been detonated in the Leaning Tower of Gabriele causing major structural damage. Furthermore, the smoke of the aftermath distorted the world in such a fervent red mist. If she hadn't been on her guard or had been born a half-wit she could have easily believed in love and bliss at every turn. She, the master of reality, guessed that she was walking on a precipice: that very soon if she were to part with him for a week she would be there in the pangs of the travail of loneliness — a most lost and forlorn creature and an ignominy to herself.
And yet despite her higher authority and monitor wanting her to discard this man sooner rather than later, she regretted that she had resisted the idea of him getting a room in the same hotel where she was staying. She could have made his trip less lordly and more "in touch" with the common man if he had stayed with her instead of ensconcing himself in four-star hotels. Also she would have saved him money, not that saving money was so essential if he were indeed part of the wealthy Quest family of Albany.
She thought it was noble that he, a member of the wealthy class, had chosen to be a mere educator to help young minds. " In a sense," she thought, "we are both educators but he has chosen to not make business and money a priority whereas I yearn for money and things. I am just a fool who has gone from being impecunious to an upper middleclass snob — okay, a bitch with a servant even if I call her my assistant. And I am not free. I'm always fettered to canvas." She meant that as free as she was she always had to be unique, clever, and technically masterful at all times to have a reputation and to pay her bills—one of which was her tuition. She could have gained a "scholarship" but she did not care to have strings attached. She did not want to teach pathetic dilettantes in some basic class what a paintbrush and pallet looked like. She didn't want to sing to them, "This is the way we paint a pig, paint a pig, paint a pig. This is the way we paint a pig so early in the morning."
Perambulating through the park, attempting to conceptualize the internal and external reality she wanted to transpose to canvas, she became distracted by Italian lovers. Strangely, for her, she looked on them in joyful awe. Unlike in America when she had wanted to roller- blade through their interlinked arms or sweep away these lovers who littered the world with their specious illusions, she now appreciated them. These Italian couples abetted her fantasies of she and Michael strolling together under one umbrella instead of the solo half being under there now. She could sense that her rule in the crumbling and further leaning tower of Gabriele was faltering, floundering, and foundering. This, while she walked, was evident by her sporadic humming of Joni Mitchell's "Michael from Mountains."
Sitting on a bench in the gentle rain, she watched the heavy traffic and the shuffling array of Italians through the iron bars of one of the many walls that went around the park. It seemed to her that it all had the splendor and significance of love. She was not at ease in this rosy/fiery way of looking at all things and yet she couldn't quite see the harm in such elated perspectives. If all people were like Moonie cult members avoiding negativity wouldn't the illusion transform reality? If love were an illusion, she couldn't see how it was different from anything else. Each generation of people were passing shadows thrust out at dusk before being swept into darkness. Everything was an illusion although it seemed to her that some things were more real than others or at least less illusionary. Shadows were illusions of tangible things and perhaps these blocked rays of light or diminished forms were of something bigger. Was life just a pale version of what was really out there? She did not know. She was still waiting to get an email from God.
This inchoate friendship/ relationship was releasing her from the manacles of heavy, oppressive, and dragging thoughts and so in certain moments she couldn't see any reason to oppose it. Did she care to be as dour and sour as a spinster? Such women became more acrimonious with each new birthday.
Before she had time to go back to her hotel room with only a couple rough drafts to show for her efforts, they came for her in the park. Although he, like his son, preferred motion, Michael had persuaded his son to sacrifice a bit more of their time before her beloved alter of art. The taxi's meter was aggrandizing numbers for some time when they finally found her and took her away with them.
He believed that his closeness to Gabriele would increase if he showed himself as someone willing to enter her hallowed institutions — institutions he came here to see but on the fifth or sixth time these buildings were like visits to a mausoleum.