It was the second hour of math, and Elisa decided to abandon paying attention. The numbers refused to behave. No matter how much she squinted her eyes or pushed her temples or bit her tongue, understanding danced teasingly out of reach. Her brothers had drilled her on basic math functions until she could do simple calculations. Beyond these, she was in the dark. The teacher wrote an equation with a decimal point on the board, and though Elisa, like all the children, copied down the information dutifully with her blue pen, she allowed her mind to roam, imagining a castle inhabited by birds wearing fanny packs, pecking at decorative towers of birdseed.
The flutter of umbrella pines whispered, pulling her gaze through the window. Chin on her hand, she could practically feel the breeze caress her skin as she imagined dancing with clouds. The fog, sweet and cool, swirled around her, enveloping her, until she felt coddled and safe, insulated from the world. The music was the music of stars, high and clear. The air smelled of ice caps and the underside of stones and the trails of stars, blazing across the sky.
An alley cat leapt onto the window ledge, startling Elisa out of her reverie.
“Oh!” She jumped in her seat, knocking over her papers. A quick survey of the room revealed that her quaderno lacked the large sections copied in red pen that her fellow students had filled in their notes.
Her heart sank into the silence that followed her yelp.
“Elisa!” shouted the teacher.
“Sì, Professore?” answered Elisa, hoping the term of respect would buy her some mercy.
“Come here. Bring your notebook.”
It did not appear to buy her any mercy whatsoever.
Hoping to delay the inevitable, Elisa slowly leaned to pick up her quaderno. The teacher barked, “Now!” and Elisa flinched.
She scooped up the notebook, furtively trying to push the papers back into the leaves. Papers she once again wished she had remembered to organize and glue in last night. Elisa placed the notebook into the teacher’s outstretched hand, and a ruler came down hard, across her wrist. The teacher quickly flipped through the papers, and with an aggrieved sigh and a roll of his eyes, he pointed at the notes on today’s lesson.
“Look at this! Half of your numbers are still facing the wrong way! You are far too old for this babyish habit, Elisa. I’ve been trying to get you to learn this since first grade! Are you an imbecile?”
Elisa seethed. Yes, she used to write her numbers backward. But she had worked at it, and now only the 3’s were backward, and that only when she was in a hurry. Or not paying attention.
“You will stand in the corner, so everyone can see what happens to students who hold up the class with their unwillingness to learn. Move, Elisa. Avanti!”
Elisa’s cheeks flushed as she stumbled. She wanted to ask if her maestro would be calling her mother. She needed to prepare, to get her mother out of the house again. Her teacher shoved the notebook back at her.
“You think I want this garbage? Take your ‘notebook’.”
Elisa reached for her quaderno, but failed to make contact with it before the teacher released it to the floor in a flurry of papers. Elisa could hardly see as her eyes swam with tears. Suddenly she noticed another set of hands brushing the papers into a neat pile. Elisa looked up and saw the new girl, the one from Morocco—Alina? Salina?—on her knees carefully collecting the loose sheets. The girl looked into Elisa’s eyes and gave a sympathetic smile. Papers gathered, she handed the notebook back to Elisa. Who took it.
Hundreds of rolling hills away, in what Romans would tell you is the unassailable birthplace of the civilized world, fourteen men and one woman rose in unison from the long, gleaming table to stretch and organize lunch plans. Massimo flicked his wrist forward and back to expose his watch’s face and calculated. If he called now, would he wake Margherita from her afternoon repose? Imagining her petulant expression when wrested from sleep, he decided not to risk it. He’d see her when he got home. Turning toward the door, he almost stumbled into the lone woman, slowly arranging papers in her folio.
“Did everyone leave?” he asked. Isotta, he suddenly remembered her name.
She looked up, surprised at being addressed. “Yes. I think they all went to Leo’s. If you want to catch up with them.”
Massimo considered. Another hour discussing bank business sounded deadly dull. He studied Isotta, realizing his gaze had slid over the one person in the room not wearing shoulder pads. Now, he narrowed his eyes, as she took her time placing pens in the correct slot of her briefcase and zipping her folio. His breath caught. Her features lack conventional beauty, perhaps, but had a certain quality. A shadow briefly clouded his vision before he impulsively said, “Leo’s will be crowded. I’d like to unwind a bit before diving back into it. I’ll find someplace quieter, if you’d care to join me?”
Isotta’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. She fought the urge to peer over her shoulder at the person Massimo must be addressing. It seemed impossible that he meant that slow smile for her. On a good day she might be the recipient of a man’s jocular bump on the shoulder, but no more than that, and certainly by no one like Massimo. She bit her lip and wondered if he was joking. As he waited patiently for a response, she decided that he must simply be friendly. Her heart beat too fervently for caution. “Sure,” she said, shrugging on her coat.
“Great,” Massimo said, straightening her coat collar before nestling his hand at the small of her back to steer her past the chairs left in disarray around the table. “Bankers,” he joked. “So careful in every way except the state of a room when they leave it.”
Massimo’s sense of humor was not as
