The Girl in the Glass (19 page)

We stepped inside and she flipped on a light switch. The room was no bigger than ten by ten, with a tall, twin-sized bed fluffed high with a feather mattress and pillows, matching dresser and nightstand, and a wardrobe with climbing roses painted on its sides and front. The paintings on the wall were of flowers and an outdoor flower market and a little girl gathering blooms in her arms.

I suddenly felt like I was ten. I hadn’t slept in a twin bed since junior high, but at that moment it didn’t matter. I’d been feeling like I was a kid since the airport.

“Will you be all right in here?” she said. “The bed is a single, but it’s very cozy. You will be surprised how much. I sleep in here sometimes just to remind myself how cozy it is.”

“I’m sure I will be fine,” I said. The bed looked delicious to one who’d only slept a few hours and had missed a night of sleep. I pointed to the paintings. “Your father painted those?”

She smiled brightly. “Yes. The little girl is me!”

“They are beautiful.”

She pushed the suitcase to the corner. “And now we eat a little something, yes? Are you hungry? Did you have supper already?”

I couldn’t answer her at first. I couldn’t recall what meal I’d had and when. There had been a sandwich in Paris, whenever that was. “I don’t think I’ve eaten since lunch,” I said.

She clapped her hands together. “I am so pleased I get to make you your first meal in Firenze. Come! We have a glass of wine, and I make you supper!”

She fairly skipped back to the kitchen, and I followed, bringing my purse with me so that I could keep my promise to my mother and Gabe to let them know when I had arrived. Sofia directed me to a tiny table covered in a lemon-patterned tablecloth. A closed laptop lay on it covered with a folded newspaper and a saucer with a curl of toasted bread on top of that. No wonder my presence on her doorstop surprised Sofia. Likely she hadn’t looked at her e-mail since the day before when she sent me the last two chapters.

“Sorry about my plate.” She grabbed the saucer and took it to the sink.

“Not at all.” I took a seat at the little table. “I’m just going to let my family know I made it here.”

I quickly tapped a text message to my mother. I could just imagine what she would think when she read Dad wasn’t in Florence and I had to call upon a writer friend Lorenzo knew to house me. I left out the part that the same writer friend believes a dead Medici talks to her.

Sofia brought two glasses to the table and poured dark red wine from an unmarked bottle. She saw me looking for a label as she poured.

“Florence is in Tuscany; this you probably know. Many vineyards in the countryside. In the city you can take your empty bottle to any local
vino sfuso
, and they will fill it for you. You have to remember what you have them put in or make your own label.
Vino sfuso
wines are made from grapes that
are what you might say, common. Not fancy, yes? Ordinary. You have to drink it soon after you buy.”

She placed a plate of sliced bread and basil-flecked mozzarella balls before me. “A little snack for you while I make us supper.”

I sipped the wine, and its robust warmth was soothing.

Sofia opened a fridge no taller than either one of us. “So I have some pancetta and onions. Tomatoes. I throw together with some pasta and pecorino. Some basil. You will like it?”

“Sounds wonderful.”

Sofia poured olive oil into a skillet and tossed some chopped garlic into it. Then she began to brown the pancetta and onions. The little kitchen began to smell like a corner of heaven. She turned from her cookstove, a spatula in hand.

“I am just so pleased you are here,” she said. “I have to pinch myself to know I am not imagining this, that I am talking to you in my kitchen.”

“I can hardly believe it myself.” I took another sip. “Yesterday—I think it was yesterday—I thought it would be next year before I’d finally see Florence.”

She stirred and then stopped. “Next year?”

Perhaps it was the wine or the length of time I had been up, but I told Sofia exactly how I came to be at her doorstep.

“He didn’t come,” Sofia murmured when I was finished, speaking of my father, her voice soft with compassion.

“No. No, he didn’t.” I popped a mozzarella ball into my mouth. Smooth and creamy as butter.

She set a pot of water on the stove. “We will have to talk about something else, Marguerite. I do not know what to say to that.”

Fine with me. I didn’t know what to say to that either. My phone vibrated next to me, and I thought for sure my mother had just read my text.

But it was Lorenzo, at last. “Cara! Where are you?”

I knew it would cost me a buck a text probably, but I decided to have some fun with him.

“Where are you?” I texted back.

“At home! Where are you?”

“You always ignore people you call ‘my treasure’?”

“Playing bocce ball! Left phone at flat! Just got home. Where are you?”

“Was alone on your doorstep. In the dark.”

“I looked up and down the street for you!”

“Not on the street anymore.”

“Tell me where you are.”

“Your polizia cars are smaller than police cars in America.”

“You torture me!”

I’d had my fun.

“I am next-door. At Sofia’s.”

I looked up at Sofia who was slicing ruby-red tomatoes. “I think we might be hearing Lorenzo knocking on your door in about two seconds.”

But I was wrong. He didn’t knock. He just came swooping into the room.

I’d seen Lorenzo only in head shots and Skype screens where I could see his upper body. Geoffrey and Beatriz had met Lorenzo and Renata in person at a conference in New York a couple of years back, but I hadn’t been on that trip. Lorenzo had been mostly a floating head, five o’clock shadow, tanned skin, coffee-brown eyes—for four years. For some reason I was unprepared to see him with legs, moving toward me. I stood slowly from the table as he barreled into the little kitchen and swept me up in his arms to kiss me on both cheeks.

His muscled arms, the scent of his cologne, and his height and physical strength covering my body overwhelmed me. I had not been hugged by a
man since I fell into my dad’s embrace on Poppy-Seed Day. I was tired from jet lag, from suppressing my odd feelings toward Devon, from the emotional duress of the last twenty-four hours, from yet another crushing disappointment from my father. There in Lorenzo’s strong arms, the brave front I had constructed crumbled. As he laughed his way through our hug, my defenses evaporated and traitorous tears began to ooze out of my eyes.

I wanted to stop them, but they wouldn’t be stopped. He started to pull away after he had planted his kisses, and I would not let him.

I drew my arms tighter around his neck, wanting to squeeze the manly strength out of him, wanting to feel safe and wanted. It seemed I couldn’t hold him tight enough, and my skinny arms were like a cheap vice around him. I was aware of the second he understood that something was wrong about why and how I was there. He startled at that moment of clarity, but then a second later, he brought his hand up to the back of my head and began to stroke my hair, whispering soothing Italian words. I buried my head in his chest, refusing to cry out loud but letting the tears fall since I couldn’t stop them anyway.

After a moment he began to sway with me, like a parent might comfort an addled infant, and I was surprised at how quickly that lullaby motion coaxed my tears into submission. It was like a dance with no steps, and soon I was swaying too. He was still whispering something. And I was vaguely aware that Sofia had turned her attention back to what she was cooking.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered.

“You do not need to be sorry about anything. What happened, cara?”

I would’ve liked to have had a one-sentence answer for that question. When someone sees a bandage on your arm and they ask “What happened?” usually you can answer in a sentence how you got hurt.
I cut myself in the kitchen. I fell playing soccer. My neighbor’s dog bit me
. But I didn’t know how to tell Lorenzo what had happened to make me fall apart in his arms.

It wasn’t one thing; it was everything.

I could sense him looking at Sofia. She said something softly to him that sounded like this:
Suo padre ha rotto il suo cuore
.

The only two words I knew were
suo
and
padre
. Her father.

Lorenzo stayed for dinner. Sofia added more pasta to the pot, and the three of us crammed around her little table, eating from wide ceramic bowls and finishing off the anonymous bottle of wine.

When we were done, Lorenzo grabbed my hand and told Sofia he would have me back pronto, that he just wanted to walk me to the river and back.

“The Arno by moonlight is the only time it looks pretty,” he said.

Sofia said she’d clear away the dishes while we were gone and she’d make coffee to have with some anisette cookies she had made the day before.

I could barely keep my eyes open, but I left with Lorenzo.

On the stairs, with my hand firmly in Lorenzo’s, I told him I didn’t want to talk about my dad.

“I don’t want to talk about him either,” he said.

We emerged onto the street, calmer now than it had been earlier but still electric with motion.

“Did you see the Duomo when you came in?” he asked as we turned west onto the narrow street.

“My taxi driver didn’t exactly point out any highlights.”

He laughed and pointed behind us. “It’s just over there. I am sure you will see it tomorrow. Very pretty in the sun.”

The night air was fragrant with exhaust, warm stone, and dinner plates from open kitchen windows in the flats above the stores. I could close my
eyes and pretend for a moment that I was back in San Diego, except that in the distance, I could hear the seesaw siren of a European ambulance. “Sorry to spring this trip on you like this,” I said.

“No matter. You are here at last. Renata is gone until Tuesday. But we will take you to dinner. She will want to take you to her favorite place.”

Tuesday. Did that mean I wouldn’t see either one of them again until Tuesday evening? “You have a busy week?”

He pulled me across the street. “Not too busy for you, cara. We make time for you.”

We turned down a second street lined with shops all shuttered for the night. A sandal-maker. Stationers. A pharmacy. A clothing store for children. A candle shop. A little store that seemed to sell nothing but olive oil. A sweet shop. Cars and scooters zipped past us as we crossed another street, and then another and another. Then suddenly we were at the river. A line of Vespas, parked like dominoes ready to fall, lined the street that overlooked the water. Bridges stretched across the Arno at well-placed intervals, looking like bracelets.

Lorenzo pointed across the water. “The Pitti Palace is just on the other side, and the Boboli Gardens. Very beautiful. And that”—he pointed to a bridge with windowed-structures all along its length—“is the Ponte Vecchio. Old Bridge. The Germans didn’t bomb that one. Long ago, butchers had their shops there, and they tossed all the carcasses into the Arno to drift down to Pisa, a place no one liked. Funny, no? The Medicis didn’t like the smell, though. Tossed the butchers out and put goldsmiths on the bridge. They are still there.”

I waited to see what it was that Lorenzo had wanted to tell me by bringing me out to the river’s edge. I thought maybe he’d ask if I was all right staying with Sofia since I had only just met her. Or if I thought her memoir had a chance. Or if I’d changed my mind about why I had cried like a
schoolgirl in his arms and did I want to talk about it after all. Because all those things were on my mind, and I was surprisingly ready to talk about all of them.

But apparently he really did just want to show me the Arno under moonlight.

We walked back to the flat, me at a sauntering pace, and I nearly gave in to Lorenzo’s laughing offer to carry me up the stairs when we returned. Sofia’s coffee was the best I’d ever had, and there were no worries that it would keep me awake. I could barely finish my cookie, my eyelids were so heavy.