ROME: January, 2003 (Part 3)

At the Excelsior I learned to stomach the curious glances from hotel staff as I paraded through the opulent reception area with my plastic bags of groceries or laundry (take that, overpriced hotel cleaning service).

Our January in Rome included nights pounding with thunder, lightning and rain followed by mornings of clear, crisp air in sunlight and a climate in the mid-fifties. I have never spent summer days in Italy and have no desire to do so. Winter is best for sightseeing without crowds or heat. I walked, bused or took the Metro every day.

Outside St. Peter's Basilica a life-sized Nativity scene stayed erected, as if the city were unready to call a halt to the holidays. I wandered through the cathedral and the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo's ceiling fresco had been completely restored to the vibrant colors of the artist's original work. The Vatican museum and its massive golden treasures made me think about a Papal rummage sale as a source of funds for all the sexual abuse lawsuits against the Catholic Church we keep reading about.

I jaunted over Roman bridges and into Castel Sant'Angelo, the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian and his family, now a museum with a fantastic view of the top of St. Peter's, the Tiber River and their surrounding environs. The sky, a brilliant blue under the warm sun, created the effect of having walked directly into a scene from a postcard.

I spent an afternoon in Campo di Fiori. Translation: field of flowers — and it is. A flower and vegetable market near Piazza Navona, the square is filled with restaurants, a fountain and outdoor cafes. I lunched on soup and salad while I people-watched. I have found that in design and fashion, Europe is a good two or three years ahead of the United States. I saw women in stiletto-heeled boots with sharp pointy toes and winter coats trimmed with fluffy fur-like boas. Styles we wouldn't see for a long time back home.

My days in Rome started with an alarm at eight in the morning. I walked William to the subway, then ambled about the city, sometimes up to seven miles in a day. Occasionally I had a workout in the hotel gym followed by a sauna. Very nice and very luxurious. I worked on my writing projects, took a nap, and found food for William's late dinners.

After two weeks of this schedule, I was anxious to get away to smaller Italian towns, and started planning my exit. William's work had taken on new pressures since Morocco. His workload, and stress levels, had doubled, and no amount of tasty pasta deliveries on my part could alleviate the strain.

I became an unwitting additional source of stress during his off-hours, peppering him with questions he was too exhausted to answer. I asked for computer help and he indulged my needs even though he was burnt as overdone toast. I cajoled, he missed the humor and ended up snapping at me. As delighted as I was to be in Rome with him, I wasn't really with him, and it was difficult to accept I couldn't make things better.

It is the nature of filmmaking to operate at a heightened state of tension. Escalated pressure is encouraged from the top, the idea being that the work is better, faster and more profitable as bodies accumulate under the strain. It is both a sick and exciting art form and it was taking a daily toll on us.

William would call me upon leaving the studio and I knew his trip home would take an hour — unless he got caught up in some last-minute details, when more unacknowledged hours would tick by. When this happened I sputtered and spewed my way around the hotel room until William arrived home, took one look and realized he probably should have called about the delay. Then I would take a very adult approach and burst into tears.

It was time to take a break. William didn't have time to worry about me and I couldn't do any good worrying about him,

ROME: January, 2003 (Part 2)

I couldn't have chosen a better location for William to be overworked in. His schedule was grueling. He would be working long, long hours while I traipsed and ate my way across the country, mile after mile, town after town. There was simply no way around it. One of us had to bring home the prosciutto, and one of us had to eat it.

And we were staying in one of the most romantic, prominent hotels in the city: The Excelsior, on the Via Veneto. This spectacular inn had acted as base camp for the affairs of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. William and I had a lot of kissing to live up to.

I taxied into the city, checked out our hotel room and hit the bustling streets still lit brightly in Christmas illumination. I picked a restaurant, ordered a glass of red and a bowl of spaghetti carbonara, a Roman specialty. I studied my Lonely Planet book and shivered with the giddy knowledge that life simply couldn't get much better.

Six weeks in Italy. I would spend time in Rome and take many excursions away from the main hub. After dinner I asked the waitress for an order of tiramisu to take home for my true love. A small token of thanks for getting me here...Italy...La Dolce Vita.

As elegant as the Excelsior was, as highbrow and rich, I needed to make adjustments for our lifestyle. I asked the bellhop to have the refrigerator in our room emptied of all snacks and drinks.

Tutto? He raised his eyebrows.

Si. I nodded sadly as if William and I were on a strict no-nuts, no-wine diet.

The next morning I walked William to his Metro stop, where he hopped on a subway car on an hour-long trip to the film studio. He claimed the ride had a pleasantness because the subway was filled with beautiful Italian women. Ah well, the guy needed something and I could hardly begrudge his visual treats.

Those weren't the only treats William discovered in Rome. He had never been a coffee drinker but when introduced to the local cappuccinos he became a convert. Every day, as he arrived on the studio lot, he stopped at the coffee bar and for seventy-five cents (take that, Starbucks) picked up a creamy, dreamy espresso treat.

I found my own little caffeine bar on the street (take that, overpriced room service) and stood (cheaper to stand; they charge extra to sit at a table) reading a morning paper, sipping foam and nibbling on a cornetto pastry. Then it was off to the market, where I filled my backpack and two grocery bags with water, juice, wine, fruit, yogurt, nuts (take that, hotel fridge).

Inevitably I would realize I bought too much when I faced the steep Spanish Steps at the end of my shopping journey. William usually arrived home hungry by ten-thirty each night. Our hotel room was just a room, not a suite, and it had no microwave or stove. So I had to improvise.

The marble bathroom not only housed fluffy giant white towels but lovely linen cloths, which I laid across our king-sized bed for dinner service. Every night I spent in Rome involved a search for take-out food. William would come through the door to a glass of wine and pizza, or Chinese, or broiled chicken with salad and little balls of fresh made mozzarella. Sometimes I dished up poached salmon and green beans or room-temperature lasagna. Luckily, William's an easy-to-please diner.

It was on these location stays that our day-to-day patterns of dependency were set. At home, William takes care of all things technical: computers, televisions, phones. Getting internet access, fixing printers and programming remote controls all fall under his watch.

I take care of all things domestic: meals, guests, gifts, reservations, thank-you letters, shopping and scheduling medical appointments. Even while far away in some hotel room, we played the same roles. I regularly flipped out over a computer glitch and he calmly addressed the problem. He could happily survive on beef jerky and Pop Tarts were I not around to offer a vegetable or two.

ROME: January, 2003 (Part 1)

I stood in line with Jesus.

It's the truth. I arrived in Rome on the night of January 7 to find my luggage hadn't made the trip with me. So I ended up waiting in the "lost baggage" line, only to find the actor James Cavieziel standing behind me. Cavieziel, not so famous at the time, would find himself very famous a year later when Mel Gibson's bloody opus, "The Passion of the Christ," opened worldwide to great fanfare.

The "Jesus movie," as we liked to call it, was being shot at Cinecittà, the historic Italian film studio where William worked. His office sat directly above some dressing rooms, allowing him occasional glimpses of the stunning Monica Bellucci, who was cast as Mary Magdalene. The coincidence of having traveled to Rome, on Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas, only to find myself entrenched with Jesus at the airport while my boyfriend ogled Mary Magdalene was not lost on me.

Meanwhile, it was evening, William was working, I was exhausted and hungry yet beyond excited because I was in one of my favorite countries in the world, albeit without fresh clothes.

Seventeen years earlier, I had spent six weeks traveling in Italy and fell in love with the small towns, the food and the people: dark-haired and short like me. Using a translation book I threw together Italian phrases and rattled them off like a local, or so I thought. I was never corrected and no one looked askance as I negotiated hotel rooms and ordered meals in restaurants. I simply pretended I was Italian.

That trip had me fleeing a collapsed engagement, and this current trip had me gallivanting toward marriage. The juxtaposition should have made for entirely different moods when I found myself traveling alone in Italy but, oddly, they didn't. When I was wrestling with the disappointment of a breakup, Italy embraced me with her rolling hills, marble walls and ocean air. On this expedition, as I perched on a single bed in a convent or climbed high above a Tuscan town or wandered rain-soaked streets in Florence, she gave me hope for the future.

MOROCCO: November, 2002 (Part 8)

I flew out of Marrakech two days later by way of Casablanca, London, Washington, D.C., and finally into Los Angeles. The trip took a full twenty-four hours, which makes perfect sense. That is how long it should take to leave a land so far, so cryptic, so peregrine.

I arrived home in time to hang Christmas lights, put up a tree and wrap gifts. William would arrive two weeks later to our house aglow in festivity. We were looking forward to two and a half weeks together at home before he would have to leave for his second location: Rome, Italy. The film would continue both shooting and cutting at the famous Italian Cinecittà studios.

Christmas was a quiet and lovely time to watch old movies, eat home-cooked food and study flames dancing in the fireplace. Stinky and Spencer curled up on the living room carpet. Peace. All looked hopeful and right in the world...until New Year's Eve.

Happy New Year! I raised my champagne glass and we clinked. This will be a big year for us, I continued, with a sip and a twinkle in my eye.

Why? William scratched the dog's ears.

By year's end we'll have been living here for two years and we both know what that means.

We do?

I could tell he was messing with me. This is a favorite pastime of William's, but this night I was on to him.

Oh, yes we do.... On the television, Michael Corleone kissed his brother and said, "I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart."

Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about.

Stop it.

We both watched the TV.

I really don't.

And then I got he wasn't kidding around.

Two years...within two years of living together we...you know....

What?

Get married! That was the deal! Within two years of living together we would get married.

No...we said after two years of living together we'd get married.

Hello, 2003...here's your first firework. Outside on the street, there were real fireworks exploding as our happy neighbors gathered to cheer the new year. Inside the house Stinky barked as if a war had been launched.

Don't you want to see the end of the movie? William asked as I left the room.

Seen it. Michael kills Fredo. Going to bed.

Awww, come on.

I didn't want William to see my tears. He followed me into the bathroom, where I started to floss my teeth like it was any old regular night.

Mel—

I placed my toothbrush down and stared at my reflection.

Here's what I don't want. I don't want to become a whiny girly-girl waiting for a proposal. We had a deal. As far as I can tell you're breaking it and I have to deal with that.

William slipped his arms around me and kissed the back of my neck.

The deal is on. You'll get a real marriage proposal.

When? I whined in the very voice I told myself I wouldn't use.

Well, you're going to do something. I'm not going to say what...but when you do that thing, the proposal will happen.

Is this a game?

It'll be fun...kind of like a game...but it will happen, I promise.

Trust. Rearing its ugly head and testing us both. I didn't know if I could and I didn't know if he was ready. I brushed my hair and crawled into bed.

Fine, have it your way, but at least give me a hint about what this thing is.

Nope, no hints.

Please?

Nope.

God, you bug me

Happy New Year. I love you.

I met his eyes. He sat beside me.

And we kissed good-bye to 2002.

MOROCCO: November, 2002 (Part 7)

And then the rain came, in sheets, for days. My morning swims ended. My afternoon walks, already fast-paced to avoid confrontations, ramped up to near sprints. I sloshed through the hotel lobby in squishy shoes, dripping and grouchy. The pressure of William's work began to increase. After months, he and Tom were fed up with the limited hotel lunch menu. Their conversations had been reduced to regaling each other with the delights of hole-in-the-wall Mexican joints back home. Things were tense in what was starting to feel more like a lockup and less like a charming exotic location.

Over yet another dinner of cold sandwiches, I queried William about what was going on downstairs and he bit my head off. Feeling trapped, alone and at odds with my writing project, I bit back. We turned into a morose couple as headless as two chocolate Easter bunnies attacked by greedy children. I wanted to go home. So did William, but he couldn't and I could.

The rain continued. With three days left for me in Marrakech, I made a reservation for William, Tom and me to indulge in a farewell Moroccan evening. 22 Derb Abdellah Ben Hessaien, Bab Ksour, Medina, Marrakech. This is the address of Le Tobsil, a fairy-tale restaurant set in a renovated former palace in the walled city. Try to find it. Good luck.

We took a taxi into the medina. The little car drove up and down, this way and that, around oh...one more corner...another, and another, and stopped. The driver pointed, we paid and exited the car, then stood like utterly clueless idiots in an alley. William noticed a sign with the restaurant's name and a crudely painted arrow pointing toward another alley.

From nowhere, a man in a white linen djellaba appeared, and motioned for us to follow him. We did. Down an incline to the right, to the left...corner after corner. Tom whispered, We're dead...dead, dead...we're going to die here.

I chuckled to make light of a situation that was starting to feel like an outtake from "Casablanca." Suddenly, the entire journey ended at a formidable glossy hardwood door. A built-in speakeasy-style grille had me recalling the world of Oz. Would a quizzical face appear and allow us to enter?

The door swung open in a gush and we were ushered into Morocco at its romantic best. We stepped on floors covered in elaborate carpets. I looked around at white stone walls adorned with brass lighting fixtures and at low tables dressed in freshly pressed linens and scattered with rose petals. Everywhere candles twinkled, their flames popping and sputtering.

Small rooms, one after another, sat under gently curved archways. In a corner, next to a blazing fire, a trio of musicians played Andalusian harmonies on lute, drum and zither. We were enfolded into an atmosphere of elegant, history-laden calm. It could not have been more opposite than the rattling world we left outside that dark door.

I sniffed aromas of spice, roasted meats and mint tea. We lowered ourselves into the feathery softness of large silk and brocade pillows set around a circular table. We relaxed like royalty. I made it clear to Tom and William that the evening was my treat. They were to enjoy their escape from the hoosegow.

Prix fixe menus are common in Morocco, and drinks were included for the single price of $50 per person. Easy to treat at that price.

So it began — course after course in our version of le grand bouffe. We were invited to order cocktails. Martinis for Tom and me, Jack & Coke for William. As soon as these were delivered in frosty glassware, the table was laden with appetizers. I counted fourteen different small plates. Olives and salty roasted Marcona almonds. Mounds of garlicky ground meat shaped like small cigars. Phyllo triangles stuffed with spinach and feta. Puffy Middle Eastern breads with zesty dips. Dates and raisins. Fourteen plates, and they were just the starter.

The waiter asked if we'd like drink refills and we declined because more courses, and wine, were on the way. Two tagines, one with chicken and the other with lamb, were placed center stage. Bowls of couscous and vegetables sat beside them as supporting players. We dug into the banquet and our glasses were filled and refilled with red and white.

We melted into our pillows, laughing and ready to pop buttons as our table was cleared and brushed, made ready for sweet desserts, tea and liqueurs. Plied by Moroccan gluttony, we were dazzled as our waiter poured mint tea from on high, his teapot held several feet above the small cups. A party trick and we were a tipsy audience happy to cheer him on.

At the end of our giddy evening we bounced off the walls into narrow pathways in our hunt for a taxi to get us home to le Sofitel. Our way out of the maze depended on our sense of direction, because our guide who led us in was nowhere to be found.

Outside the magical environment of Le Tobsil, we were as unsteady as drunken sailors in an unfamiliar port. We spun and quibbled about this turn or that, trying to find our way back to the big lights of the busy streets. We were smashed, no two ways about that, but somehow, someway, we found our way out of the stone forest, back to our rooms and into our hotel beds, where we slept like children.

MOROCCO: November, 2002 (Part 6)

I did spend hard cash on a private travel guide. The hotel concierge set me up with a dark-haired Omar Sharif-type for a day of sightseeing. We got into a taxi and he rattled off instructions to the driver. We arrived...somewhere...and Omar wound me around corners and up and down alleyways to see a palace, a museum, and a university, where students lived in cave-like rooms with small fireplaces for warmth.

We wandered through a shimmering mosque where colorful mosaic-tiled floors, walls and ceilings reflected light from water rippling in square pools. Tiny, shiny pieces of stone and ceramics in gold, cobalt and pomegranate red were embedded in the tile work.

My guide took me through many shops, all the while encouraging me to buy. I figured out this was part of the deal. He conducted the tour, the shopkeepers benefited from sales and he received a cut. I did my part. I bought a small bottle of saffron in a pharmacy after listening to a long discourse on healthy living. In a carpet shop I sat on pillows while the shopkeeper served cups of mint tea and his salesman threw brightly colored rugs at my feet.

Well, certainly William and I could use a new runner for the house. I appreciated the fine craftsmanship in the wool carpets, hand-dyed by Berber women living in the surrounding mountains. I asked about runners and the salesman obliged by showing me at least twenty varieties. Soon Omar and I were floating even higher on stack upon stack of carpets and I started to feel responsible for the mess and the effort it would take to roll all of them back up and, sheesh, here I was drinking all this free mint tea.

A lovely red and blue woolen runner with touches of yellow and white caught my eye. The salesman glimpsed my reaction and sensed I was a fish on a hook. Omar did not side with me as I settled in for what turned into hardcore dickering. He knew where his couscous was buttered and his profit depended entirely on a percentage of my payment.

The salesman offered the carpet, with sound reasoning, for $650. I left the store with a woolen Berber runner under my arm for $180. As far as I was concerned, everyone won. Omar acted impressed at my tough bargaining. I did back off from my initial offering of $150. It was important for the salesman to save face and for me not to insult him.

I was feeling very cocky about my negotiating abilities...until I walked into William's office to show the runner off. In one agile move I rolled the beauty out in front of William and Tom. They eyed my prize, then Tom made a joke about letting a woman loose in the souks. William wondered why we needed the damn thing anyway. I grunted and went back up to the room with my prize.

I was slightly peeved no one understood that I had held my own for over an hour of tough trading. I laid the runner across the floor of our room, sprawled on it and took a smart nap. I did very well, I told myself, no matter the lack of sensational reactions. I did very well...yes...I did....

MOROCCO: November, 2002 (Part 5)

Ah, the game. The one I didn't want to play was coming up in the new year. We were on the brink of 2003, the end of which would mark two full years of living together. Our bargain — within two years of living together we would get married — was approaching.

I was clear that we were clear and I imagined clear sailing into wedded bliss. I didn't need a wedding, formal or informal; a justice of the peace or judge would do. Easy-peasy. No games, except rounds of Scrabble over dinner. I was excited about 2003, that much was sure. I looked into our new Moroccan mirror and thought, I'm going to marry the guy. Oh yeah.

When I think of Morocco, I think: food. A brilliant combination of Middle Eastern spice and French know-how made for dining experiences unlike any I'd had. Cinnamon and cumin-flavored chicken tenderly wrapped in phyllo pastry and baked until crispy and golden. At our table, the lid of a tagine was lifted to reveal chunks of lamb swimming in honey, figs and walnuts. We were served scoops of fluffy couscous topped with carrots, eggplant, zucchini and dates all sweetened with ripe stewed tomatoes and dark olives.

However, because of William's work schedule, we experienced only a few of these restaurant dinners. It was simply too late by the end of his workday for him to go out. A couple of evenings a week Tom and I would take a taxi to the Marjane, a giant Wal-Mart-type store set along a highway. Tom's day finished earlier than William's, so we partnered off to find foodstuffs to fill our hotel refrigerators.

The Marjane sold...well, soup to nuts...and wine to television sets. A special private room held shelves of liquor. Muslim law had us showing our passports for entry to purchase wine. After loading a cart with those precious bottles I roamed aisles of cheese, cold cuts, vegetables and breads. Dinner with William usually involved a variety of sandwiches I would whip up using a Swiss Army knife. We'd picnic on the bed, sipping wine and playing Scrabble.

Despite staying in a luxury hotel, we lived cheap. This was okay with me. I grew up in a low-income home and never got used to extravagance. Having no money gave me an appreciation of a pleasant stability when there was enough and when bills could be paid. William grew up in an upper middle-class home, so we settled in the center on the money thing.

I washed our clothes in the bathtub and hung them to dry on a retractable line that ran over the tub. It often took two or three days for a pair of jeans to dry, but I couldn't see spending money on hotel laundry services. William and I shared the same policy with our in-house dinners. We couldn't imagine paying extravagant room-service prices. It wasn't our way and those sandwiches, stuffed with fresh avocado and cucumbers, ended up not half-bad. Even with ten million dollars in the bank....