Page 45

“I don’t want the sun to go down.”

“It’ll be back in the morning,” Conor promises.

Piazza Alberica fades into the blue in the last moments of daylight. I stop to inhale the sweet air. “Take a deep breath.”

Conor takes it in. “What is that?”

“Petrichor. The scent of rain on stone. Uncle Louie liked to watch when the stonemasons cut marble because they’d douse it with water as they cut. Had the same scent. Uncle Louie would close his eyes and say it reminded him of Carrara.”The rain is a sign, I tell myself.

Our heels tap against the marble tiles like sticks against a snare drum as we cross the serene town square. I look up, beyond the town square, where a ring of foamy clouds has settled over the mountaintop like a halo.

A regal statue of the Duchess of Massa in the center of the square oversees the town.

“Say hello to the duchess. Maria Beatrice d’Este,” Conor says.

“She’s a beauty.”

“It only mattered that she was rich.”

Maria Beatrice’s hooded eyes look up to the white hills where the marble from which she is sculpted was mined. The folds of her opulent alabaster robe and the crown anchored in her smooth curls are proof of her stature and the wealth she inherited from her lucrative family business. There’s a lion guarding his mistress at the base of the pedestal. Above the lion, the duchess holds a scroll in one hand, a staff in the other. A menacing bird at her feet protects her, even though it doesn’t appear that she needs it.

Conor leads me across the piazza, past the statue, to a white brick building set behind a black wrought-iron gate.

“This is the place I texted you about,” he says. I follow Conor inside the entrance garden. “If you don’t like it, there are options,” he says as he knocks on the door of number 19, apartment 1.

A youthful woman in her fifties, her brown hair tied back in a low ponytail, answers the door.

“Conor! Come in, come in,” she says. Signora Laura Strazza wears khaki pants belted at the waist with a white dress shirt half tucked, pale blue loafers, and gold hoop earrings.

I follow them inside through the small foyer and into the living room. Signora Strazza has decorated the place in the rich blue tones of a Francesco Albani painting, with none of the whimsy. This is an uncluttered and modern flat where every object in view has a purpose.

We hear laughter. An attractive woman and a good-looking man (both around my age) chat as she cuts his hair beyond the open French doors that lead to a garden. The woman is lovely, with shinyblack hair to her waist, while the man, with a thick head of brown hair, is draped in a beach towel. A girl around six or seven years old sits cross-legged on the green-and-white-striped settee, oblivious to her parents. She colors with crayons in a book.

The woman lifts a small section of his hair and cuts, shearing a curl before it falls to the garden floor. A feeling of desire peels through me. Conor is right; in the land of the Ferrari, this guy is a Lamborghini. He is a stranger to me, and yet he’s familiar. I am drawn to him, until the man looks up at me and through me as though I am the Uninvited.

Signora Strazza introduces us. “Questo è mio figlio, Angelo. Dalia si sta tagliando i capelli, e quella è Alice.”

Angelo nods. Dalia smiles, and Alice looks up from her book and gives a little wave.

Signora Strazza closes the French doors. “My garden is not always a barbershop.”

“This is Signorina Baratta from New Jersey,” Conor introduces me. “Signora Strazza has an apartment available for rent.”

“Aren’t I asignoraif I’ve been married?”

“Technically, yes,” Conor says, shooting me a look. Evidently, divorce carries the same stigma in a traditional Italian village as it does in my hometown in New Jersey.

“Signorinais fine,” I tell them.

“Signorina Baratta. You’re American.” She places her hands on her hips.

“Yes.” What is this, an inquisition?

“Your people are from Puglia. The south.” Signora Strazza puts her nose in the air.

“I’m also Tuscan.”

“On her mother’s side,” Conor adds.