the morning after.

After Francesca had dressed and towel-dried her hair, she walked into the kitchen to find Paolo, shirtless, barefoot and wet-haired in jeans, standing at his big, expensive espresso machine.

“I didn’t know if you wanted cappuccino or espresso so I made both,” he said, gesturing to the two white cups, one large and one small, at the marble counter.

“Thank you,” she said, pouring the single shot into the cappuccino and giving it a quick stir.

“I don’t have anything to eat,” he apologized. “I’m rarely here, and I just get takeout when I am.”

“This is what I usually have for breakfast,”  she smiled.  They stood at opposite ends of the marble island.

“You live in Milano?” Paolo asked, beaching the silence.

“Yes, but I travel a lot, too.”

“Are you from there?”

“Yes.”

“Family still there?”

“Mostly,” she answered.

Her phone rang, and she was grateful to see it was Timo.  She could have let it go to voice mail; he would text her anyway to say whatever he had to say, but she answered to avoid continuing the conversation about her family.

“Where a-h-h-re you?” Timo asked with his favorite adopted affectation, an English accent mimicking the queen’s.

“I’m on my way in,” she fibbed.  She was, technically.  Her shoes were on, she could see the door, she was almost leaving.

“Everything from yesterday is ok, all pretty straightforward,” Timo reported.  The reason Francesca hired TImo, and the reason she loved him, was his efficiency.  He was over-the-top in his appearance and his demeanor, but in the office he was all business.  “Elena passed me a call from one of those new Turkish magazines, they want to fly you to Istanbul for some shoot on a boat.”

Francesca could tell Timo was at optimal caffeine consumption and ready to power through the day’s work, and she couldn’t give him her full attention with Paolo standing in front of her, half-naked.

“I’ll call you in ten minutes,” she told Timo, and ended the call.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized to Romaldo, and he waved her off.

“You’re busy,” he said.  “I understand.  You’re a fancy fashion photographer, you’re probably off to Ibiza with Kate Moss.”

“I am,” she answered.  “We go every month for the Fuck Me I’m Famous party.”

“I knew I’d seen you somewhere before,” he grinned, and standing behind her, kissed her warmly on the back of her neck.

She sighed, and looked at her watch.  “I need to call a taxi.  My car is at the stadium.”

“You’re lucky–I’m going that way.  Let me grab a shirt.”

“Do you really have to?” she asked, smiling.  He turned her around and kissed her again.

They rode down in the elevator the same way they’d ridden up; silently, separately, eyes fixed on the floor.  In the car, he kept the stereo and they didn’t speak.  Francesca looked out the window, trying to recognize anything along the way, trying to remember the same ride just twelve hours earlier.  Paolo drummed his fingers on the steering wheel randomly.

“So, you’re going straight back to Milan,” he said as they pulled into the huge stadium lot.

“I am, I’m afraid.  Back to work.  But it was lovely meeting you.”

“It was a pleasure, principesa.  I think this is you,” he said, pulling alongside her little red Alfa.

They got out of the car and she pulled her keys from her Bottega hobo.

“Keep in touch,” he said, and kissed her gently on each cheek.

“Ciao, Paolo,” she said, getting into her car.

inspiration #8 : je t’aime, moi non plus.

This song has nothing to do with Paolo and Francesca; rather, it falls more into the category of general inspiration.  Why write romance?  Because this exists.

(For more about why Serge Gainsbourg is amazing, please see the excellent Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life.)

blindfolded.

“Wait,” she whispered, and grabbing his tie, led him to the bedroom.

Her bedroom faced the courtyard, with airy windows and a big, Baroque wardrobe.  The bed was against the wall, an old-fashioned brass frame with piles of pillows.  She pulled him towards it, and he followed her, loosening his tie as he walked.

“I have an idea,” he said.

She looked at him, eyebrow raised.  He took off his tie and wrapped it around her head, covering her eyes.

“Are you ok?  Is it too tight?” he asked, tying a knot.

She shook her head.  “No, it’s ok.”  She couldn’t see anything, just a matte blackness.  He took her by the shoulders and walked her backwards until she felt the edge of the bed against the backs of her legs.  She sat, and he pushed her, gently, to lie back against the pillows.

“Give me a minute,” he said, and she could hear him undressing, the rustling as he shook off his shirt, the zip of his fly, his shoes as he kicked them childishly across the room.  She felt him near her, and instinctively she reached for him.  “Careful,” he said.  “Careful with your arm.  It’s ok, I’ll watch out for it.”

He pushed her legs apart and knelt between them, hovering over her on his hands and knees.  She felt his breath above her face and then he kissed her again, and she grabbed for him with her right hand.  He backed away, teasing her, swatting at her hand as she grasped at air, leaning back on his heels and laughing.

“I don’t know if I like this game,” she said.

“You will,” he answered, and put his hands on her breasts, flicking her nipples through the lace of her bra.  He pushed the straps off her shoulders and released her from the navy mesh, tossing her bra carelessly to the floor, quickly, returning to touch her, caressing the fullness of her breasts and pulling at her nipples, leaning in again to kiss them, circling her pink areolas with his tongue.  She reached and found the back of his head and wove her fingers into his hair, moving her body against his.  He shifted his weight to one side and moved a hand to her inner thigh, stroking closer and then closer still to her warm, pulsing clit.

“Paolo,” she cried, releasing his head and reaching down his chest toward his cock.  He backed away again, and she couldn’t tell where he was for a minute–he was gone–then he was back, ripping off her panties and diving between her legs, face first, eating her hard.  She screamed.

“You like it, don’t you?” he said, keeping up his rhythm with his fingers.  “Let me give you something else you’ll like.”  He was moving around again, and she was disoriented; he kept banging her with his fingers but she smelled him near her face, his hot, musky, masculine scent, she felt him over her and then his dick was on her lips, urging her to open her mouth.

She dropped her jaw and reached up to guide him, no longer understanding but just following instinctually.

“Oh, Cesca,” he said as she took him deep.  “Oh yes, baby, yes.  God, that blindfold.”

He pulled out, and she could tell he was still above her, somehow, and she sat up a little.

“Will you hold me?” he asked, and she reached out to where she thought his cock should be, feeling around until she had it in her hand, and it seemed bigger than it had ever felt before, thick and long and throbbing, and she could feel his big vein, the lip of his head, the tautness of his scrotum.  Then she was grasping it and sliding from the base to the tip, one, two, three quick jerks, and he pulled away from her again.

“Not yet,” he said, but she could tell from his voice he was close.  He kissed her clit again, brushing the insides of her thighs with his stubble, and then he hooked her legs over his shoulders and plunged into her, burying his cock to the hilt, and she was dizzy and light-headed as he fucked her relentlessly.  When they had both come he untied the blindfold and they lied panting next to each other.

inspiration #7 : Scruples.

(this is actually what my copy looks like.  rock on 1978.)

If we want to talk real inspiration, like the kind that causes one to put pencil to paper and write a book, for me it began with Judith Krantz’s Scruples.  This book is boss.  I discovered it tucked away on my mom’s bookshelf at the tender age of 13 and I never looked back.  I don’t think I fully understood how a blow job worked until I read the second chapter:

“He was recovering from his surprise, his cock beginning to twitch and grow.  She cupped his balls with her free hand, her middle finger stealthily sliding and pressing upward along the taut skin of his scrotum.  Now her lips and tongue were working together around the almost erect penis, which, though fairly short, was thick, as sturdily built as the rest of him.”

I mean, GOOD HEAVENS JUDITH.  And it goes on for like two more pages.  Fifty Shades has NOTHING on Scruples.  I started writing my first draft the next day.

Read this book.  It’s only $7.99 on Amazon!  You can probably even find it at the library.  And now Natalie Portman is producing it as a TV series…life is good.

waking up in the Armani Hotel; back at the office with Timo.

Francesca collapsed back onto the pillows and sighed.  All she wanted to do was stay in this perfect hotel room all day, but she knew any minute Timo would be calling to find out what had happened the night before and to give her the rundown on the work they needed to do today.  She picked up the phone on the nightstand and the front desk answered immediately.

“Buongiorno signorina Jolie,” a polite woman said.

He had signed her on the register as Angelina Jolie.  She had to laugh and could barely order her room service.  Cappuccino, fruit, cheese, and bread.  She was famished.  Her next call was to Timo, preemptively, to tell him she was going to be a little late.  By some incredible stroke of luck his phone rang four times and went to voice mail.  Fantastic.  She left a quick message and by that time, her breakfast had arrived.  Francesca surveyed the cheese (pecorino romano, drizzled with honey), the bread (a crusty roll), and the fruit (figs and blood orange segments, with more honey) while she drained her cappuccino.  She dove into the food with her hands, breaking the cheese into pieces and smearing the honey on the bread.  The figs were exquisite, ripe and bursting their crimson insides through the dusky mauve of their skins, oozing sweetness.  She was making a mess of the bed and licking the honey from her fingers but she didn’t care.

Thirty minutes later Francesca had showered and dressed, and she checked out of the hotel wearing her same clothes and with the staff still calling her “signorina Jolie”, though they could clearly tell she wasn’t.  She drove the quick fifteen minutes to her studio, anxious to avoid Timo’s wrath at any further tardiness.  But to her surprise, when she arrived at the studio, TImo wasn’t there yet.  She found her jeans in the closet and pulled them on, along with her boots from the day before, carefully hanging the pleated Prada skirt and putting the Giuseppes back in their box.  And then she set about to making another cup of coffee; Timo’s absence disoriented her and upset her morning routine, so she wandered aimlessly around the studio, trying to decide what to do first.

When Timo finally burst through the door Francesca was at her computer with her third cappuccino, clicking through sports news reports of the game the night before.  Timo was wearing the same black and white striped sweater and white jeans he’d worn to the football game, and Francesca raised an eyebrow at him.

“I called you this morning,” she said.

“I must have been in the shower,” he answered.

“Doubtful,” she said.  “You’re wearing your same clothes.”

“So are you,” he said, “but you smell like jasmine soap.”

“Ok, so you were in the shower,” Francesca conceded.  “Whose shower?”

“You probably won’t remember, because you were so absorbed with secret messages and meeting places and stolen glances across the field–”

“–I was not!” she protested.

He waved her off.  “You definitely were.  Whatever.  But if you had actually been paying attention, like I was, then you would have noticed the absolutely adorable boy sitting two rows up from us–”

“Not the one who was there with his parents?”

“Uh, no.  He was six.  Not my scene.  The one beside them, who was there with his friends from university.  I told you you didn’t notice.  You were too busy being all ‘oh, look at me playing it cool and pretending like I’m not thinking about Paolo Romaldo’s big thick dick.'”

“Fine.  Maybe I was trying to follow the game.”

“Anyway.  Dario’s studying physics at the university.  He’s from here.  It was hilarious, he snuck me into his parents’ house and we fucked all night long and got the maid to bring us risotto in the middle of the night and in the morning I had to escape out the back door.  So that’s why I’m late.”

“Dario,” Francesca mused.  “Dario the physicist.”

“Dario the dreamfuck,” Timo rejoined.  “But where are my manners–I haven’t asked what happened to you last night.”

Francesca sighed.  “So we met at the Armani Hotel, but he wasn’t staying there, he just wanted to meet there for drinks because if we went to his hotel there would probably be photographers there–”

“And he didn’t already realize you are a photographer?”

“And he wanted to go someplace more private, so he picked the Armani Hotel, which was a good choice because it was very private.  But I was worried, at that point, that this was a friendly drink, a since-I’m-in-town-I-popped-by-for-a-drink kind of drink, not a drink that was a precursor to going upstairs, because he didn’t have a room upstairs.”

“Nice girl that you are, you don’t want to give the wrong impression during a friendly drink.”

She rolled her eyes at him.  “I introduced him to Fernet and Coke–”

“Your two best friends–”

“And we started making out right there in the lounge and I felt it.”

“His penis?”

“God, Timo, you are on fire for having not gotten any sleep last night.”

“I’m sorry, please.  Go on.”

“There’s not much else to say.  He had to leave and take the bus back to Torino.”

“The bus? Ugh.  Really?”

“Apparently it’s a thing.  They ride the bus together.  As a team.”

“It sounds kind of gay to me,” Timo fluttered his eyelids and got up to make himself another espresso.  His phone buzzed and he ran to grab it, reading the text as he walked back to the couch.

“Dario?” Francesca asked.

Timo didn’t look up from typing on the screen.  “Yes, finally.  Sounds like he just woke up.  He’s so cute.  So where did we leave off?  The bus.  He’s taking the big gay bus of football players back to Torino.”

“Right.”

“Do you think he sits at the back of the bus?  Between the drinks and the bus what happened?  Other than feeling it?”

“Have you ever been to the Armani Hotel?  The beds are amazing.”

“Wait, you said he didn’t have a room.”

“He got a room.  And it was gorgeous.”

“You’re being very vague about this whole situation,” Timo said.

“I don’t know what else there is to say.  You were right about the skirt, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Francesca answered.  “Paolo liked the skirt.”

“Obviously you should listen to me more often.”  Timo got up and walked towards his desk.  “So what’s next?  Do you have to wait for another treasure map to see him again?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.  “I gave him my number–”

“Shit,” Timo interjected.  “I completely forgot we have to book that trip to Capri for the Bazaar thing.  Shit shit shit.  That will teach me to sleep through my reminders.”  And he started typing furiously at his computer.  “We need the proofs from last week, too.  Are they on the shared drive yet?  We should have about a hundred.”  He clipped his headset to his ear and she could hear him start talking to their travel agent.

running into Bruno in Capri.

via Assouline.

Francesca walked down the main street, looking desperately for a pharmacy where she could buy a bottle of aspirin–something to alleviate the splitting headache she’d developed during the shoot.  She was still wearing her work clothes–long, skinny white jeans, a slouchy Alexander Wang navy t-shirt, and K Jacques sandals, but she’d left her big Bottega bag in her hotel room and carried only her zippered Valextra wallet.  She’d spotted the green sign of a pharmacy about a block down the street when she heard someone calling her name.

“Ciao, Francesca!”

She looked across the street to a sidewalk cafe.  A man waved at her and she walked across to meet him, realizing as she walked that it was Bruno, the boy who had lived in the villa next to the one Marco and Letizia rented when they were children.  Bruno was Ricci’s age, several years older than Francesca, and she hadn’t seen him since the summer before he’d left for university, when she was only thirteen.

“Bruno!” she smiled.  “How did you possibly recognize me?”

He smiled sheepishly, gesturing to the chair next to his.  “I guessed,” he answered.  “I figured, here’s a beautiful woman, walking down the street like the ghost of a girl I knew in Capri, the worst thing that could happen would be that you kept walking.”

She ordered a limonata from the waiter.  “I still can’t believe it.  It’s been ages.  What are you doing now?”

“I’m working for a bank,” he answered, vaguely, and Francesca knew from his dismissive tone that he did something similar to her brother, and it was the kind of work one didn’t care to talk about.  “But you, you’re a big photographer now,” he said.

“Hardly,” she replied modestly.  “How did you know that?  I don’t imagine you read fashion magazines.”

“I’ve kept in touch with your brother.  He’s told me about your career.  You were such a funny little kid,” Bruno said.

“You keep in touch with Ricci?  Or Michele?”

“Ricci.  We ran into each other at a meeting several years ago.  I live in Roma now, but I call him when I visit Milano.  I’m surprised I’ve never run into you there.”

“I travel a lot,” Francesca explained.  Also, she did not explain, she lived five minutes from Ricci and hardly ever saw him.  She wasn’t surprised at all.

Bruno had been a gawky teenager–she remembered that distinctly.  He was a nerd, so her brother had reluctantly recruited him as a sidekick, primarily because he had a boat.  It was just a dinghy, but it meant that Ricci wouldn’t have to ask Marco to borrow his tender, an advantage that more than compensated for the size of the boat.  If Bruno had had a dinghy as a child, Francesca was pretty sure he now had a yacht.  All traces of his former awkwardness had been polished out by education and corporate life, and he seemed entirely comfortable and confident sitting across from her, all Rolex Milgauss and Lacoste polo, a successful businessman on holiday.  “What are you doing in Capri?” she asked him.

“I was in Napoli closing a deal,” Bruno explained, “and I promised my girlfriend we could come here for a few days when I was done.”

Francesca looked around and began to stand up.  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt–”

“Oh no,” he said.  “She gets in tomorrow morning.  I finished up early today so I came over this afternoon.”  He paused.  “What are you doing here?”

“Work,” she answered.  “Just work, unfortunately.  But I thought about wandering over to the old neighborhood and seeing what it looks like now.”

Bruno’s face lit up.  “I’ll go with you,” he offered.  “My parents sold their place about ten years ago–some Germans made them an offer that they couldn’t refuse–so I haven’t been back there since.”

“Oh, good,” Francesca said.  “I’m not entirely sure I could remember how to get there any more.  It’s been such a long time.”

“We can take my scooter–for old times,” Bruno said, gesturing to a black Vespa parked nearby.

They drove across the island quickly, with Bruno taking the back roads and shortcuts–Francesca remembered he had been obsessed with maps and orienteering, another reason Ricci found him useful.  With the wind in her hair she forgot all about her headache.  Bruno pulled onto the street where they used to spend their summers and parked the scooter halfway between the two villas.  They seemed both more and less imposing than they had when she was a child, she thought–more, simply because of all the work the new owners had done to the homes, lots of additions and landscaping, a swimming pool at Bruno’s old house and a tennis court at Marco’s.  But the house that had seemed so endless to her as a child, where she could hide for hours on rainy days and never be found because it had so many rooms, that same house looked small now in light of all the other massive homes she’d seen in the years since.  She and Bruno stood silently in front of the houses.

“I thought it would help me remember him if I came here,” Francesca said flatly.

Bruno looked at her quizzically.

“My father,” she explained.  “You wouldn’t remember.  We came here with him, before Marco.  He died when I was eight.”

“You’re right,” he said.  “I’m sorry I don’t remember.  I knew your father was dead, but I didn’t know him.  I always thought you lived with Marco and his family.”

“Only on holiday,” she answered, a little too quickly.  “Hey,” she said.  “Let’s go.  There’s a party tonight that the magazine is throwing.  You should come with me.  It’s going to be fun–they’ve hired a yacht.”

Bruno laughed.  “You know I’ll do anything if it involves a boat.”

“I remember that about you.  Come on.”

inspiration #6.

Jil Sander pre-fall 2012 collection.

I love emphasis on fabrication and tailoring–which have been cornerstones of Raf Simons’s work at Jil Sander.  This campaign is shot so beautifully…

chapter one.

Francesca Ghiberti leaned forward into her tripod to keep the heels of her four-inch Manolo Blahnik booties from sinking into the turf of Stadio dell’ Alpi.

“A little to the left,” she called, gesturing with her left hand to the models in front of her camera.  The girls, all young, all pretty, wore designer sportswear and high-heeled wedge sneakers and shuffled confusedly, first to their right then to their left while Francesca snapped photos.  A man in a training uniform ran out onto the field, then another, then about twenty-five of them, in a jagged formation, jogged onto midfield and right in between her camera and the models.  Two assistants unleashed a mesh bag of soccer balls and the field became a chaotic fractal of players and balls.

“Really?”  Francesca yelled, at no one in particular.  “Timo–” she called to her assistant.  “How long are we supposed to be here?”

A boy-man wearing  neon yellow Air Jordans, Y-3 track pants, and a D&G singlet with a screenprint of Kim Basinger ran up to her, iPhone in hand.  “We should have it for another hour,” he said breathlessly.

Timo had moved to Milan from a tiny town in Liguria, which he left as the only openly gay graduate of the local secondary school to attend art school.  Francesca hired him as an intern and begged him to stay on after he’d finished school, which conveniently coincided with her becoming renowned enough to need an assistant, and to be able to pay one, too.

“Hey!” she waved at the football players, moving out from behind her tripod.  “Hey, what are you doing?  I’m trying to shoot here!”  She staggered a bit as she tried to keep from losing her heels to the turf.

“Whoa, easy, signorina.  You don’t want to twist your ankle.”

Francesca felt a hand balancing her back and turned to face the voice behind her.

“I have a scheduled shoot here.  I need to finish it and you’re in my way.”

“Pardone, signorina.”  With an exaggerated gesture, the uniformed player apologized.

“I’m supposed to have another hour here,” she said, scrolling through a list of emails on her phone to find the confirmation.

“We always start at two on Thursdays,” the man said.  Francesca looked up from her phone at him and suddenly wished she’d done so sooner.  Long hair pushed back in a headband, the way that football players do, dark brown and shiny.  Equally dark, playful eyes.  And though he was only a little taller than her nearly six feet, he had a body like a god.  Muscular from his football playing and tan from days in the sun, he exuded sensuality from every pore of his body.  Maybe this wasn’t so bad, she considered.  The models were flirting with the players, who were posing ridiculously, hands on hips and chins cocked up, aping the girls.  She ran to the camera and started shooting again.

“You can stay,” she called over to the handsome man.  “We’ll be done soon.  This is good.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, smiling.  “First we have to go, now we can stay.”

“It’s ok.  We’ll finish soon.  I like these shots–they’re different.  Do you have an agent?  Someone we can contact to get permission to use images of the team?  TImo–” she called her assistant over again.  “Timo, find someone to give us permission to use the team in the photos.”  He scurried off again.

“Let me take you for a drink to make up for it,” the handsome man said.  “Tonight.”