Once Upon a Stair
When Polly takes a brutal fall in a Florence hotel bathroom, she’s forced to confront more than just her own mortality. A chance encounter at an art exhibit plunges her into a surreal mystery that blurs the line between past and present, memory and illusion. Is the ghost of her ex-husband haunting her—or is something more sinister at play? In a city steeped in history, Polly must decide what’s real, what’s not, and whether some wounds need to be reopened before they can heal.
Once upon a stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
Oh God, I wish he’d go away.
Polly Gardener, a vibrant woman of a certain age, had slipped and fallen on the marbled bathroom floor of her very expensive hotel in Florence. The fall was bad; her body had crashed into the edge of the tub and suddenly there was blood everywhere. Polly screamed and her husband, Frank, came running in, immediately horrified by what looked like a scene from a slaughterhouse. For a moment, Polly lay very still, unsure of what had happened. Then slowly she began to move her limbs. Although her skin was still fairly pliant, it was also growing thin and there were cuts all along the left side of her body. “Do we have bandaids?” she yelped at Frank. No, of course not. Frank had to go down to the front desk to see what they had. Meanwhile, the bathroom floor was soaked with bright red blood and wouldn’t be cleaned until the next day; for now, they would have to live with it.
Frank helped Polly apply bandaids, but they didn’t adhere very well. She felt no pain, just fear and numbness. She told herself this was a wakeup call, but for what exactly she didn’t know. Old age, perhaps? But Polly never thought of herself as old. At seventy, she was still a beautiful woman with a lean, athletic body, a head of thick chestnut hair, and a high-cheekboned face that bore no trace of sag or wrinkles (of course injectables helped). She could have easily passed for ten years younger.
They had come to Italy to visit Polly’s friend Gwenyth who lived in the outskirts of Venice with her new Italian husband, a kind and quiet man who was a computer buff and had some sort of bureaucratic job in the local government. The visit hadn’t gone well. The Gwyneth Polly had known since they’d met at an art gallery a few years before had become sour and brittle. She was a very pretty woman and the time in Italy should have enhanced her looks, but instead she appeared tired and overworked. And she was overworked. Through pulling a few strings, Gwenyth had acquired a job teaching English as a second language for a tourist organization and was constantly in demand, constantly exhausted. Despite being three decades apart, Polly and Gwyneth were close as sisters. One reason was they both loved to read. The other was they were both gossips. “Did you hear?” Gwenyth would say and go into a long story about a person they knew who’d been caught exposing himself not far from the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park.
Polly enjoyed the gossip, which was entertaining and often dramatic. “Oooh, did you hear about the Clarksons, that they had a threesome with some woman they picked up at a club who had a knife in her purse and tried to attack them?” Polly in fact did know that the Clarkson’s marriage had been shaky, and meanly relished the story for political reasons: Mr. Clarkson was a staunch Republican who’d donated a million dollars to the Trump campaign, while his wife was a liberal who unfailingly voted Democrat. (Rumor had it that the wife, who lived in Dallas, had traveled to New York with her sixteen-year-old daughter to obtain an abortion.)
The visit hadn’t gone well due to a misunderstanding. Gwyneth had acquired tickets for them to go to a special exhibit at the Palazzo Franchetti, but Polly hadn’t been reading her emails and she and her husband went to see some paintings at the Biennale instead. With her injuries from the night before, Polly didn’t feel very steady. She and Frank had obtained large band aids from a pharmacy down the street from their hotel, but even so, blood had seeped through and there were orangey red stains on her blouse. For this reason, she held herself stiffly and carefully, arms folded at her waist as she looked at the paintings.
Normally she enjoyed this, but in her mind an incessant conversation ran on and on about how old she was getting and how, perhaps, she only had ten good years left. Ten years! That was nothing. The fact that she had retired from her job as a merchandiser for a large department store in the spring didn’t help. She hadn’t really wanted to retire, but Frank had talked her into it; they were financially well off and he wanted to travel.
As was their habit, they wandered through the exhibit rooms separately, each looking at the paintings at their own pace. Polly, in a daze, didn’t really take anything in. She was wearing a light blue silk blouse over a white camisole and a pair of wide-legged linen pants. It was important to her to be well-dressed, and on this warm September day, although she moved tentatively, her clothing, at least, was fashionable. Her hair was drawn back in a low ponytail and her high cheekbones shone, but there were shadows beneath her dark brown eyes and her face looked weary. She really didn’t feel well and would have liked to sit down. But then …
… But then, a few feet away from her, she saw her ex-husband.
That was impossible. Her ex-husband, a Czech painter named Boris Ambroz to whom she had been married for a few years in the 70s, was dead. And yet here he was. The same slightly stooped body, the same wild hair, the same Slavic cheekbones, the same bright blue eyes. Even the clothing was the same, a worn tweedy jacket, black shirt, jeans. Immediately, without being able to stop it, Polly’s eyes teared up. The hairs at the back of her neck stood up. She gasped. She might as well have seen a ghost.
For a moment, she stood frozen, the breath knocked out of her. Then, shakily, she gathered herself and moved closer. Yes, it was Boris. But how could that be possible? He’d died of a stroke in 2010, and yet here he was, the exact replica. She circled around him, peering into his face, which bore the same lines and wrinkles as Boris’s. Even the same small, rosy birthmark at his left temple. His body, despite the slight stoop, was catlike and graceful, just like Boris’s. Even his personal smell was the same, a mix of peppermint, sugary pastry, coffee, a smell that once had made her dizzy with love. “Boris?” she said now, softly.
The man smiled at her, and as he opened his mouth, she saw the teeth were the same, a sexy crookedness between the two front ones.
“Boris, what are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead he reached out and gently touched the bloodstains on her blouse. As his fingers brushed over the material, she felt a shock of electricity that nearly bowled her over. Her whole body tingled. Sweat gathered on her forehead. What the hell was going on? The man continued to smile at her. “It’s good to see you,” he said in the same gruff, accented voice as Boris. And then, his smile deepening, he moved away, taking long strides as he disappeared from the room.
Polly was too astounded to move. She felt hollowed out, crazy. She knew she should follow the man, but also knew in her heart that he couldn’t be real – a vision perhaps? An emissary from another world? – and that she could scour the streets of Florence and never find him. “Let’s go back to the hotel,” she said to Frank. “I need to rest.”
At their hotel, the blood had been mopped up from the bathroom and the marble floor was pristine, not a single telltale smear. Polly removed her blouse, which she saw was too stained to ever wear again. She studied the bandages covering her wounds. Earlier in the morning, blood had been seeping through them, but now, miraculously, the bleeding had stopped. Peeling off one of the bandages, she saw that not only had the bleeding stopped, but the cut beneath it had totally disappeared. In fact, the swarm of cuts on her arm and all along the left side of her body had vanished altogether, leaving the slightly crepey, freckled skin smooth and normal.
She didn’t want to bring up the story about Boris with her husband. At the beginning of their relationship, Boris had lived behind the Iron Curtain (she’d lived in London with a girlfriend) and their meetings had been problematic. It had been a struggle for him to leave the country, even though his paintings had been shipped to England for exhibits. She’d even been followed through the streets of London as if she were a spy due to her association with Boris, and while those times had been exciting, she didn’t want to rehash them now. The marriage had ended badly and it had been years since they’d spoken. She’d been notified of his death through a British ministry and that was it.
Until now.
She decided strange things happened in life, and this was one of them. It had been a moment out of time, a blip in her imagination, and she might as well have dreamed the whole episode. But why had the bleeding stopped, the cuts disappeared?
It was a mystery that was beyond her and she’d just have to let go of it, relegate it to the heap of unknowns as one of those eerie incidents that didn't make sense, but had happened anyway.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. Polly’s friend Gwenyth was furious that she and Frank hadn't shown up at the Palazzo Franchetti, and in the end the misunderstanding cost their friendship, a fracture that Polly didn’t quite comprehend as the mistake hadn’t seemed that important. She and Frank returned to the States. They lived in a small town in Connecticut where, now that she was retired, Polly took up gardening and toyed with the idea of opening a small and charmingly homespun gallery for local artists, a place where people could connect and hang out, exchange ideas. She began to work on this, looking for spaces in Litchfield, not too far from her house. Her days were full and she was happy, going around in comfortable if less fashionable clothing. They drove into the city regularly, often staying overnight to go to theatre or dinner parties. One weekend in early March, they went to see an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum where they had an ugly argument. Usually they didn’t talk about politics – Frank was a Republican and Polly a Democrat – but on this day, Polly snapped and started hissing about the terrible Trump policies on immigration. “You voted for him!” she declared.
“Let it go,” Frank said reasonably. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“Are you kidding me? The man’s a tyrant! He’s going to take the whole country down!”
“That won’t happen,” Frank said, trying to remain composed.
“Then you’re blind, deaf and dumb. Where are your morals?”
“Morals?” Frank said.
“You know Trump’s a crook, and stupid on top of it. That makes you stupid, too.”
“Oh Polly –”
“Don’t ‘Oh Polly’ me!”
By now they were sitting on the steps in front of the museum. It was a beautiful sunny day and crowds of people were there on the steps, enjoying the good weather. Polly was so angry at Frank that she reached out and punched him hard in the chest. She had had her nails done for the weekend, and she could feel the pointy tips of them dig through the fabric of his shirt before she withdrew her hand. How could she be married to someone so dense? She’d always thought of Frank, a lawyer, as well-educated and smart, but right now her opinion of him plummeted. She hated him so much in that moment that she couldn’t bear to be in his company.
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” Frank said.
“No! I’m staying right here!”
“Well, I’m going back to the hotel. You can catch up with me later.”
He rose from the steps. Polly watched as he walked into the street, a man in his seventies in Ivy League clothing. She didn’t care if she never saw him again. Folding her arms around her knees, she tried to relax in the sunshine. She even closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she had a shock.
There, several rows of people in front of her, was the person she had seen at the Biennale, her late ex-husband, Boris. She opened her mouth to call out his name, but her voice stuck in her throat.
For a moment she was paralyzed, watching helplessly as the man stood up and headed down the steps to the street. Then she jumped to her feet and ran after him.
He was just getting into a taxi. Before he could close the door, Polly grabbed the handle and dove in next to him. “Where are we going?” she croaked.
The man studied her calmly. Then he said, “To my hotel.”
“Okay,” said Polly, not thinking of the consequences, too rattled to think of anything at all. He was staying at The Wales Hotel. The cab drew up at the front steps and a doorman rushed out to help them. Just before they entered the hotel, the man turned to her and said: “I hope you understand that if you agree to do this, you will be leaving your marriage.”
A sudden stab of anxiety, cold and deep, twisted Polly’s stomach into a tangle of knots. Leave Frank? That was impossible. “Are you really Boris Ambroz?” she asked.
“Who else do you think?”
“A fucking ghost.”
The man laughed and said, “Now, now, we both know that isn’t true.”
“But you died in 2010.”
“There are always mistakes.”
Polly was so startled by this possibility that she announced she had to go to the ladies room the minute they were in the hotel’s plush lobby. She nearly tripped in her hurry to get there. In the bathroom, she locked herself into a cubical. I must be going crazy, she told herself. This must be some stupid thing bubbling up from my subconscious. After she’d left Boris, she’d never entertained the thought of going back to him. He was too difficult, too controlling, too moody. Why would she go back to him now? Besides, she’d noticed a difference between Boris and his impersonator. The eyes were cooler with a hint of irritability. The Boris she knew had always had warmth and humor in his eyes. So who was this other Boris?
Abruptly, she decided she didn’t care. Let the guy, whoever he was, remain a mystery. She didn’t want to be drawn into his game. But how to get away from him? There were no windows to climb out of, so she’d have to somehow skirt him in the lobby. She steeled herself and tiptoed from the ladies room. And there he was, seated in a wing back chair close to the elevators, her late ex-husband, who had to be some sort of mirage. She was almost out of the lobby when she changed her mind, whirled around and walked straight up to him. “Who are you really?” she asked. “We both know you’re not Boris.”
“Oh but I am,” the man said, an odd, wry smirk creasing his handsome face.
“No, you’re not!!”
“Who else would I be?”
“I don’t know. An impersonator.”
That made the man burst into laughter. “I’ve been following you – tracking you – for years. I know everything about you. You were a woman who held promise, could have really had a future, but you’re only small potatoes now, aren’t you?”
The insult infuriated Polly so much that she wanted to whip out her hand and slap him. But she didn’t. She studied his face more carefully, the fuzzy brows, the bright blue eyes, the sexy mouth. And suddenly she had an inkling of who the man was. Boris had had a cousin whom she’d heard a lot about, but never met. According to Boris, the man was a trickster, a hoax, a cheat, someone to avoid at all costs. What was his name? It came to her quickly: Jakub.
She drilled her dark brown eyes into him. “Jakub,” she said. “I can’t say I’m happy to meet you. If you continue bothering me, I’ll call the police.”
“Oh yeah, really?” the man said. “I doubt that.”
“Try me,” Polly said, pulling out her cell phone. Before the man could even shift in his seat, she snapped a photo of him. “There,” she said. “Now leave me alone, or I really will go to the police with charges of harassment.”
“They won’t do shit about it.”
“We’ll see,” Polly said, stuffing her phone into her handbag. And then she did something her mother had done to her when she was whining and complaining about a meal she didn’t like as an adolescent. She held out her index finger and pointed it at him, slowly shaking her head as she exhaled the word, “Noooo.”
It was a demeaning act. The man withered before her eyes, practically crumpling in his fancy wing chair. Polly didn’t wait to see what would happen next. She rushed from the hotel on winged feet. Only when she was in a cab did she wonder about how a person as mean and difficult as Jakub could have a healing touch and be able to staunch the blood of her wounds. It was a mystery she’d have to learn to live with, she told herself. Life was filled with surprises, and this was one of them. And as she moved further into older age, she hoped she would still encounter mysteries to guide and inspire her rather than a withering away into total, obliviating senescence.