“And this person you work for-” Olivia ventured.
“Mrs. Van Owen. A widow, in Chicago.” He knew he was painting a more staid portrait than was warranted. “Very rich. She’ll continue to pay for everything.”
“You say she is willing to do anything to get this Medusa.”
“Yes.”
“But you?” She looked at him intently now. “Why do you want to find it so much?”
“I’ll get a big promotion,” he said, not wanting to get into the whole story yet. Not here, not now. “And I’ll be well paid.”
She frowned, and, shaking her head, said, “No, no, no.”
Not for the first time, he felt like she could see right through him.
“You are not someone who works for money.”
“I’m not?” Pretending otherwise.
“No, you are like me. We don’t care about money,” she said. “We only care about knowledge, and truth. If we cared about money, we would do some other kind of work than this. We would be bankers.” She said that last word as if she were saying swine.
Overall, he took her point.
“No, what we do,” she concluded, “we do for love. There is some love at the root of this-always-and it is personal, too. That is what is pushing you.”
It was as if she’d shot an arrow right into his heart. He longed to tell her about the real stakes he was playing for-he ached to unburden himself of the truth about his sister and the strange promise of his mysterious benefactor-but he was afraid he would sound crazy. Even to someone as open-minded as Olivia.
“If we are going to do this thing together,” Olivia said, “from now on you are going to have to tell me only the truth.” As the cab slowed down to check the street addresses, she pressed him. “Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“On the right,” Olivia said to the driver. “Next door to the cafe.”
They got out of the cab, went inside, and climbed three stories of rickety steps with worn carpeting; it made his own place, David thought, look pretty good by comparison. On the third floor, Olivia stopped at a door decorated with a postcard of the Laocoon and put the key in the lock. Something seemed to surprise her, as if the lock had already been turned; but she opened it and stepped inside.
Even with the curtains drawn, David could see the chaos. And when Olivia flicked on the lights and saw her books strewn across the floor and a wooden perch of some kind toppled over, she said, “Oh my God.”
It was plain she’d been burglarized, but it wasn’t so plain that the thieves were gone.
“Hold on,” David said, stepping in front of her and moving cautiously toward the next room. As he approached the half-open door, he thought he heard some commotion inside, and was about to back off when something gray suddenly flew smack into his face, wings fluttering wildly, before careening off into the living room.
“Glaucus!” Olivia cried.
And then David heard another noise-a muffled groan-from the bedroom. He pushed the door wider with one finger and saw a man with a gag in his mouth, half-on and half-off the bed. His hands dangled above his head, tied with a phone cord to the bedstead. Dried blood was caked all over his face and neck.
As David rushed to his aid, Olivia appeared in the bedroom doorway, and said in horror, “Giorgio?”
By the time the ambulance had come and gone, and the police had finished interviewing Olivia, it was too late to make any of the flights David had hoped for. As far as the carabinieri were concerned, it had simply been a break-in, and the old boyfriend had come back to collect his stuff at just the wrong time. Olivia said she was missing some cheap jewelry, but that was about it. “I’m just glad he didn’t take any of my books,” she told the cops. “They’re the only valuable things in here.”
For much of the time, David had sat outside on the stoop, thinking and keeping his own counsel. It didn’t seem to have occurred, even to Olivia, that this could be anything more than a burglary gone awry. But to David, who had been nearly run over at the skating rink, it seemed like some very odd things had been happening since he’d gotten mixed up with Mrs. Van Owen. And was this one of them? Or was the strain on his nerves just getting to him? He checked his watch again, recalculating how quickly he could be on his way to Paris.
And when the last police car pulled away, Olivia settled down beside him and said, “Giorgio and I broke up a few months ago. He’d been on a sabbatical in Greece.”
“Then you’re okay?” David said, draping an arm consolingly around her shoulders.
She sighed, and fumblingly lighted a cigarette.
“You don’t need to stay here to look after Giorgio?”
“Him?” She blew out a cloud of smoke in disgust. “Let his new girlfriend do that.”
David felt like an immense weight had been removed from his heart. He was ashamed to admit it, even to himself, but ever since Giorgio had turned up in the apartment, he had been wondering where things stood between Giorgio and Olivia. What if she was still in love with him? “So,” he said, “does this mean you would still consider going to Paris? There’s a TVG, leaving in ninety minutes. We could still make it.”
But Olivia didn’t answer at first; in fact, it was several seconds before he realized that she was shaking, then quietly sobbing. He hugged her tighter, as the shock of what had just happened at her place sank in. The police were gone, her apartment had been ran-sacked, her old boyfriend was on the way to the hospital. David, who was so good when it came to talking about an edition of Dante, was again at a loss for words. The lighted cigarette hung, neglected, from her fingertips, before it finally tumbled onto the broken steps. But when she lifted her dark eyes, wet with tears, to his own, he knew-for once in his life he knew-that words weren’t what was called for. He pulled her closer and touched his lips to hers. There was no response, and her lips were cool. Her eyes remained open and inquisitive.
“I need you,” he said.
“Because I speak French better than you?” she said, with a troubled, uncertain smile. Her shoulders were still quivering.
“ Je vous aide,” he said flawlessly, “ parce que je t’adore.”
And now, when he kissed her again, her shoulders were still, and her lips were warm. And they clung to each other, sitting in the middle of the broken steps, saying nothing. For David, burying his face in her dark hair, feeling her arms wrapped around him, it was the sweetest respite he had known for a very long time, and he wished that they could have stayed that way all night.
Chapter 18
Cellini watched from the shadows as the catafalque was carried across the piazza. Four members of the Accademia, of which he had been a founder, bore it on their shoulders, followed by a throng of black-clad mourners. The doors of the ancient Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, in which the tomb was waiting, were held open by a quartet of friars.
He touched the silver garland around his temple to make sure that he was still well concealed by its powers.
Inserting himself into the crowd, unseen and unnoticed, he passed under the narrow archway and into the celebrated Chiostrino dei Voti, or Cloister of the Votives. For centuries, pilgrims to the church, who had come to see its marvelous fresco of the Annunciation, had left their own wax candles and figurines-often of themselves-as offerings here. On that night, February 15, 1571, the whole motley collection, in white and yellow and brown wax, was lighted, along with a hundred torches in the basilica beyond.
The church itself was a simple affair, erected in 1260 by the Oratory of the Servants of Mary. Beneath its dome, there was a single long nave, flanked by altar niches and culminating in a rotunda, where the famous fresco could be seen. Legend had it that the painting had been begun by a member of the Order, a Servite, who had despaired of ever making it beautiful enough. Throwing down his brushes in defeat, he had fallen into a deep sleep, and when he awakened, the painting was done… finished by an angel.
