Romy got chatting to the American family behind them. The son was called Chad and he was at college and Romy said yeah yeah yeah and flicked her hair. Alys felt uncomfortable but she thought it was because of the price of the food.
Suddenly, space in the conversation opened up for her and she took it and said, Monte Ceceri.
Everyone turned to look at her.
Are you sure? said Chad.
Quite sure. It’s over there, and Alys pointed. Where Leonardo da Vinci tested the theory of flight. He sketched his ideas in notebooks, although none of the machines were ever built in his lifetime and even if they had been, they wouldn’t have been successful. Most of them were modelled on the anatomy of birds. They had pulleys and rods to imitate the flapping of wings— She knows everything, said Romy, cutting her off and laughing.
Not everything, said Alys and she felt awkward and ran her hand over her mouth and took off what little lipstick was left.
Romy paid the bill and Alys said she was going to the amphitheatre to draw. Wanna come?
Romy didn’t move. I’ll meet you there, she said.
Alys had the place to herself. She sat on the steps and took out a small notebook and pencil from the back pocket of her jeans. At her feet, flowering weeds were breaking through the Roman stone. She put her pencil on the page and let the line become an intricate flower head. It felt strange not to like Romy. She liked what they did together, but Alys was happier in bed with Romy than talking with her across a table. Or going to a gallery with her. Or even the cinema these days. She wondered if most people felt that way about the person they were with. Peg certainly did. Peg and Ted were physical but their words were unkind. These were Alys’s thoughts by the time Romy came down the steps. Romy bent down and kissed her; fuck was she confusing. They climbed up the stones together to the Vespa in the square. Romy told her to hold on tight.
That evening, they lay in bed smelling of one another and Romy turned towards Alys and said, Did you think he was cute?
Who? said Alys.
Chad.
I don’t know.
Really? You don’t think he’s, like, the perfect man?
And Alys shrugged because she didn’t know what Romy meant by ‘the perfect man’。
I’m going to marry someone like him, said Romy.
In seven words Alys’s life changed.
And back in Florence, someone else’s life was about to change too, with inevitable consequences for the young lovers. Romy’s father had just inserted a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter when the overhead chandelier fell on him. He had no time even to cry out. It was a simple equation of rotten roof beams plus gravity equalled accident waiting to happen.
Patty Peller was on the terrace, drinking. She heard a crash and thought it was an incident down below on the lungarno. She even leant over the railing to check. She only went into her husband’s study to see if he wanted a sandwich, and by the time the police and ambulance arrived, Reade Peller had been pinioned beneath the ornate light fixture for at least an hour. It took three men to lift it off his back. When his face was finally freed from the portable Empire Aristocrat, the type bars had dug so far into his skin, his cheek was an incongruous mess of letters and numbers. His wife was about to follow the stretcher into the ambulance when she suddenly remembered she had a daughter. She clambered out and spent the next half-hour looking for the telephone number Romy had scribbled down. She lit a cigarette and dialled.
What? said Ulysses. I thought they were with you, Mrs Peller.
And I thought they were with you, Mr Temper.
The conversation, as you can imagine, was brief.
It was the first time in Ulysses’ life that he didn’t know where Alys was. It was hide-and-seek in the cypress avenue all over again and he wanted to howl. Cress said, Just because you can’t see her it doesn’t mean that she ain’t close or safe.
Cress got him onto the sofa and said, We need to think this through. She’s in love. She’s gone willingly. A delight in privacy, remember what Pete said? Nipped off to a hotel— A hotel?
That’s what I reckon.
What about money?
Probably nicked some from my drawer.
Cress, she—
What did you want to do at that age, eh? Be alone. With Peg. You got up to all sorts.
Ulysses stood up. I’m gonna go and look.
Where?
Anywhere, Cress.
You go. I’ll stay and get the guests fed.
Ulysses left and Cress carried on with dinner. He wasn’t as calm as he imagined, because the pasta was overcooked and the salsa al pomodoro under-seasoned.
Night fell.
Patty Peller sat in the hallway of the apartment with a large drink in one hand and the telephone in the other. She thanked the doctor and replaced the receiver. The prognosis for her husband was good because he had an exceptionally thick skull. She could have told them that herself. She stared at the telephone, at the ugly console table cluttered with photographs and museum ticket stubs and keys for this, that and the other. Her daughter was missing, and she had the feeling that something obvious was staring her in the face – which, of course, it was. It would take another Negroni for her to work it out.