The Faces of Angels (5 page)

‘I'm hungry,' Henry said suddenly. And, as if on cue, the other three of us got to our feet, realizing we were hungry too. Then Henry went inside to use the bathroom, and Billy and Kirk indulged in their nightly ritual of haggling about the bill. The Japanese girls were whispering together, their heads bent, trying to decide whether or not they were hungry as well and should come with us, and as a result no one was watching me. So no one saw as I reached for the evening paper and slipped it into my shoulder bag.

That was several hours ago. Now all of the lights are out, and the arches of the portico are dark loops of shadow in the courtyard below. Over the rooftops I can just see the spine of Santo Spirito, lit up for the night. It is still too chilly for crowds, and the piazza will be empty, chairs piled on the tables of the bars, the branches of the trees nothing but black scribbles against the sulphurous grey of the sky. City cats will be prowling the base of the fountain, picking fights and looking for scraps, and all of it will be watched over by the giant Cyclops eye of the church window. Even in daylight, it's hard not to feel that eye looking down on you, and when we finally left the bar this evening, I was sure it was watching me, sure it saw as I picked up the paper, and stole the little picture of the dead girl.

I go back inside and close the French windows. In the kitchen, breadcrumbs are scattered across the polished wooden counter and there is a piece of tomato that will laminate itself onto the top of the stove if someone doesn't clean it off sometime soon. Two paper napkins are crumpled in a used glass, and a munchkin-sized ice tray has left a pool of milky water in a cereal bowl. The general effect is sluttish, which pleases me. Pierangelo's kitchen is virtually military in its order, and I have been neat all my life, so coming here and leaving dishes in the sink and clothes dropped on the floor feels like loosening a shoe lace.

I call goodnight to Billy as I pass her room, and then, even though I get no reply, I lock my door. I don't want to be interrupted. Hunkering down on the floor, I pull the paper out of my bag and spread the front page out. The print is a little smeared from being folded up and the picture's crumpled, so I can't see the girl very well, but I study her anyway. She has long dark hair and slightly slanted eyes. She could be Italian or French or Albanian, or, for that matter, anything. Anyone. It's impossible to tell. The article says she committed suicide, but it's not specific. I imagine she jumped from a bridge, or took an overdose and lay down beside the water to die.

I hold the paper up to the light, lean closer and look at her.

I shouldn't be doing this, I know, but I can't help myself. It's something I've acquired since the accident—that's how I think of it, incidentally, ‘accident,' as if being chased and bound and cut was on a par with a car crash. Anyways, since then, I've acquired a heightened interest in dead people. It's not general, of course. I don't pay too much attention to the casualties of old age or disease. No. The ones who interest me are the ones who are like me but a little less lucky: the by-products of ‘accidents.'

It started back in Philadelphia, in the months before Piero reappeared. During the nights I didn't sleep, when I couldn't reach Benedetta and Eleanora in my dreams, I searched Ty's ‘accident' on the internet, and read about others. Perhaps it made me feel less alone, or maybe I believed that reading details in black and white could somehow make something up to him. I couldn't access what got published at the time here in Florence, which I never saw, thanks to being in hospital, so one of the first things I did after I arrived was go to the library and look up the newspaper articles from Monday, 26 May. I told myself I owed Ty that, and I was shocked to find an editorial by Pierangelo, which isn't really fair, given that it is his job. Still, it was strange to see myself written about as part of a phenomenon, an example of the breakdown of Italian society, and to know that my lover's hands had typed the words. At least he didn't refer to it as ‘
L'Assassinio della Luna Miele
,' the Honeymoon Killing, like most of the other papers did.

I think about this as I get down on my knees, pull the manila envelope from under the jeans in the bottom drawer of my dresser, and let the articles I've copied slither out onto the cold marble floor. The sheets rustle and whisper. I shuffle them around, put them in an order of my own, and think some day maybe I'll look up the other two women Karel Indrizzio kissed, just to make my collection complete.

The idea has a certain appeal, but I do realize that, like picking scabs, this little fixation is not particularly socially acceptable. I'm not even sure, exactly, why I do it any more.

It's a sort of crutch, I suppose, and I will give it up when I'm ready. In the meantime, however, I think it best to keep the manila envelope and its contents to myself. It's private. My harmless little secret. Perhaps the only one about me that even Pierangelo doesn't know.

P
IERANGELO CALLS EARLY
the next morning to say he will be on the evening express from Rome. I offer to meet him and he laughs, but he doesn't tell me not to. This is one of the things I love about Piero, he understands tiny extravagances. A glass of wine in bed. A single flower. Meetings at train stations.

He has been in Rome for the last week because, even though he is now an editor, he still likes to do the occasional story, and the paper's upcoming feature on Florence's own pet cardinal, Massimo D'Erreti, is too important to be handed over to anyone else. D'Erreti is rumoured to be close to the Pope, and although St Peter's is hardly Pierangelo's natural stomping ground—he is at best agnostic and definitely a liberal ‘small c' Communist—he covers the cardinal himself because he likes the challenge. D'Erreti is right-wing enough to have acquired the nickname Savonarola, and I think fair and balanced coverage requires every ounce of Pierangelo's professionalism. As a result, it's anyone's guess whether he'll come back from Rome in a fit of depression at the state of the nation, a black temper at the state of the church, or on an exhausted and slightly euphoric high, the kind runners get when they've just completed a marathon.

The six o'clock bells are ringing as I come into the station. People swirl around me, and finally I spot Piero halfway down the platform. He pauses to let a young woman pushing a baby stroller pass. To everyone else he's just one more tired businessman getting off the express from Rome, dark hair tousled, coat thrown over his shoulders, briefcase gripped in one hand and suit bag in the other. But not to me. To me he's the only person in this crowd. Which is precisely why I love meeting him in stations, or airports, or as he walks across a piazza or down a sidewalk; because in those few unconscious seconds, I own him entirely and don't have to share him with anyone, even himself.

On the way back to his apartment, we shop. Veal,
vitello
, already pounded wafer thin. Fresh asparagus. Tiny artichokes so young their outer leaves are soft and devoid of prickles so you eat them whole. A bottle of Brunello. But for all that, dinner has to wait. A week is a lifetime, and the dips and contours of another human body might somehow be forgotten. In time perhaps this desire to consume each other will wear down like a tired clock, but not now and lying on the faintly rough linen of his sheets I let Pierangelo read my scars. He walks his fingers across the angry red lines and pale risen welts. Sometimes he bends down to kiss one of the ridges, as if it's a landmark on a map he loves.

With the exception of doctors and nurses, whom I could not avoid, no one else has ever been permitted to even see the secret calligraphy embossed on my skin, much less touch it. Most of the time I wear turtlenecks, and when I don't, I keep collars buttoned. Sometimes I wind scarves over and over around my neck. And on the very rare occasions when I slip up, or when I'm forced into a position where someone gets a glimpse, I mumble about an accident. I give the distinct impression of twisted metal and shattered glass.

‘You changed your hair.' We are finally getting out of bed, driven by hunger of the more banal kind, and I watch in the bedroom mirror as he runs his hands through my tiger stripes. They're bronze and copper, with one deep pink streak on the left side. Our eyes meet in the glass, mine an intermediate hazel, his the peculiar pale bluish-green one sees occasionally in this part of Italy, bits of luminous glass set in the severe, almost hawk-like cast of his features. ‘It looks great,' he says. ‘I love it, Mrs Warren.'

‘Who's she?' I ask. ‘Your other lover?'

‘Yeah,' Piero replies, ‘a lady I knew once. No one you need to worry about. You don't even look like her.'

In the kitchen, I lean on the counter, rolling a lemon back and forth across the bright stainless-steel surface while Pierangelo pulls the cork on the Brunello and pours us each a glass. His apartment is almost directly across the river from Billy's and mine, and although it's also in an old palazzo, the similarities end there. From our leprous gilded mirrors to the silk counterpanes and massive beds it's clear, to me at least, that Signora Bardino's eye for design comes pretty much directly from
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
and
The Leopard
. Pierangelo and, I assume, Monika, on the other hand, are distinctly ‘New Europe.'

The ceilings here are as high and the windows as symmetrical as those of the apartment Billy and I live in, but instead of marble, Piero's floors are stripped pale wood. Natural-linen blinds hang in place of our armour-plated ones, and the lighting is so recessed it's virtually invisible. Large Rothko-like canvases cover bright white walls whose plaster is smooth and silky. Even the lemon pots on the roof terrace are not the regulation terra-cotta, but cylinders of stainless steel. The trees themselves are studded with tiny lights that glitter in the leaves like Dante's stars.

Pierangelo cooks to relax and his kitchen is outfitted with glass-fronted cabinets, magnetic racks of knives, and gadgets. Centre stage is a six-burner gas range I've seen him stroke as lovingly as other middle-aged men stroke sports cars. The results of his meticulous preparations are almost disturbingly perfect, which I tease him about. I've threatened to get a measuring tape and make sure his cubes of zucchini are exactly symmetrical, or, worse, to make dinner myself, which would almost certainly involve spilling things.

At the moment, he's concentrating completely on slivering the tiniest carrots I have ever seen. The tip of his knife flashes up and down, and I know better than to interrupt. Instead, I occupy myself with a game I play called
How many traces of Monika are left here?
I've yet to find anything as concrete as a piece of clothing—an old bra at the back of a laundry basket, or a shoe. Not even a half-used lipstick. If I didn't know better, I'd sometimes think she never existed. Now, I slide open the drawer that holds the phone books to see if there's anything lurking, and hit gold dust almost right away. Underneath a set of manuals for the dishwasher and the dryer, there's an old Catholic calendar, one of those gory ones with all the saints and martyrs and how they died. I give myself a ten for the find and another ten for speed, and roll the lemon absently as I read that today is the anniversary of three guys called Felix, Fortunas and Achilleus, who were scourged and broken on the wheel somewhere in ancient Gaul. The names sound like brands of men's cologne, and why people would want to remember things like this is beyond me. Pierangelo finishes with the carrots, heaping them on a plate and setting it aside, which means I can talk to him.

‘How was Savonarola?' I put the calendar back, and slide the drawer closed, thinking D'Erreti would probably approve of some scourging and breaking himself.

‘It was OK.' Piero grabs the lemon in mid-roll and replaces it with the glass of wine. ‘In fact,' he adds, ‘I would say His Eminence is thriving. This Vatican suits him. All they need to do is bring back the Holy Inquisition and he'll be in seventh heaven.'