Page 143 of Bitter Poetry

“You’re welcome.” She nods toward the door. “I’d better go.”

“Do you... Do you know where he’s gone?” Something unwholesome unfurls in my chest. What if he has gone toher, his wife?

“Dante?”

I nod.

“No. I was just told to shop and bring it here… There’s a code for the door, by the way. To get in and to get out. I’m on a warning not to tell you. I get a strong impression you’re better off here anyway if you’re who I think you are, and I saw your pictures in the paper after the Kennedy Memorial charity ball, so—” She snaps her mouth shut.

The hairs at the back of my neck stand to attention. I don’t know this woman beyond Leon trusts her with his credit card and the code to Dante’s door. Only I’ve trusted men I consider family before and look where that got me.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

She really shouldn’t, but that she did is a forewarning. I remind myself that Leon trusts her, but yeah, mine is in short supply. He probably didn’t know she’d seen my picture with Ettore and understood enough about me, and my husband in particular, to conclude I’m better off out of his sphere of influence.

There is never a good time to faint, I reflect, but the proximity of a couch and her reflexes in rushing to sit me onto it rather than letting me pitch into the coffee table are advantageous, nevertheless.

“Head down.” She doesn’t give me a chance to comply; she just shoves my head between my parted knees and holds it there. “That’s the way. You’re doing great. Just stay there until it passes.”

Her hand is cool on the back of my neck.

“You’re remarkably competent at this for a dancer in a club,” I mutter as the sparkling dots begin to recede. “Do you deal with fainting women often, in your line of work?”

She snorts a laugh. “Hardly. Stay there. I’ll get you a glass of water.”

I hear a cupboard open and close, then another, and another before the faucet turns on.

It makes me smile. Either she’s a quick thinker, or she wasn’t downplaying her relationship with Dante.

Her feet enter the space before me. I sit up slowly, and she hands me the glass.

I take a drink.

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah.”

She sits on the coffee table directly before me, giving me no choice but to look at her.

Her expression is wary… and also sensitive: I’m fairly sure mine is the same, but I make myself address the elephant in the room. “You’re thinking about what you said and who my husband is, possibly theorizing about what I’m doing here.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing here either, beyond the fact that the man my husband employs as my bodyguard is a loose cannon, plus Dante thinks he owns me.”

Her lips twitch.

I get a strong notion I can trust her.

Then I realize I already do, which takes me by surprise considering Jessica is the only person I’ve previously given that lofty accolade to.

“I didn’t aspire to become a dancer,” she says. “This career was thrust upon me out of sheer desperation… I find it liberating now, but it wasn’t my first choice… A senior administrator at the hospital where I worked assaulted me. I pressed charges, and that’s where my life and career came unstuck. He was a friend of a powerful man named Ettore Gallo.”

I inhale sharply.

She leans forward a little. “It’s not a recommended approach to therapy, but I semi-stalk your husband, take screenshots of any pictures of him, and draw comedy mustaches on them.”

I burst out laughing.