dear Francesca. The endless obstacles the gods delight in placing between the two venal lovers. Traffic jams, rotten weather, the suspicious spouse, the vagaries of Italian airlines—what happened to you, anyway? You were invited for lunch.”
“Caro, don’t be angry with me. It was not my fault. The stupid director, Vittorio, he would not let me leave the set for two hours past the time he promised. And, then it was a vagary with the stupid Alitalia. And then —”
“Shh,” Stanfield said, putting a finger to her infinitely desirable red lips. He pulled a small gilded chair away from the window, sat, and said, “Turn around. Let me look at your backside.”
Francesca obeyed and stood quietly with her back to him, sipping her third glass of champagne. The dying rays of light off the canal played with the taut curve of her hips and the cleft of her celebrated buttocks.
“Bella, bella, bella,” Stanfield whispered. He emptied the balance of the cold wine into his glass and, without taking his eyes off of the woman, picked up the phone and ordered another bottle.
“Caro?” the woman asked after the click of the receiver in its cradle had punctuated what became a few long moments of silence.
“Tiptoes,” he said, and watched the fetching rise of her calf muscles as she giggled and complied. He had taught her the word tiptoes soon after they’d met and it had become one of her favorite words. She flung her blonde hair around, twisting her head and gazing down at him over her shoulder with those enormous brown doe eyes. Eyes which, up on the silver screen, had reduced men the world over into quivering masses of helpless, dumbstruck protoplasm.
“I have to pee,” she announced. “Like a racecourse.”
“Horse,” Stanfield said, “Racehorse.” He smiled and nodded his head and Francesca walked across to the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind her.
“Christ,” Stanfield said to himself. He got to his feet and walked out onto the balcony and into the gathering twilight. He found himself breathing rapidly and willed his heartbeat to slow. He saw this emotion for exactly what it was. Unfamiliar, yes, but still recognizable.
He might actually be falling in love with this one.
A phrase from his plebe year at Annapolis floated into his mind as he stared at the familiar but still heartbreaking beauty of the Grand Canal at dusk. An expression that the pimply cadet from Alabama had used to describe the path of his alcoholic father’s personal ride to ruin.
My daddy, he was in a hot rod to Hell with the top down.
She could bring it all tumbling down, this one could, like one of those devastating Sicilian earthquakes. His thirty-year-old marriage, his hard-fought place on the world’s political stage, his—
“Caro? Prego?”
The Campanile bell tower in the nearby Piazza San Marco tolled seven times before he turned and went to her.
Pale blue moonlight poured through the windows. Francesca feigned sleep as her lover slipped from the bed and went toward the dim yellow light of the bathroom. He left the door slightly ajar and she watched him perform his usual rituals. First he brushed his teeth. Then he ran two military brushes through his silver hair until it swept back in perfect matching waves from his high forehead. She admired his naked back and the muscles bunched at his shoulders as he leaned forward to inspect his teeth in the mirror.
He then pulled the door softly shut. She couldn’t see him but she knew precisely what he was doing. He’d be lifting the seat to urinate, then putting it back down. Then he’d take a hand towel and wash himself, down there. His grey trousers, white silk shirt and cashmere blazer were all hanging on the back of the door. Reaching for them, he—
It would all take five minutes, easily. More than enough time to do what she had to do.
She’d deliberately left her shoulder bag on the floor just under her side of the bed, shoving it there with her foot while he was admitting the room service waiter. She rolled over onto her stomach and reached for it, pulling the drawstrings apart. She reached into the bag, slipping two fingers inside a small interior pouch. She found the tiny disc and withdrew it. She then backhanded the heavy bag under the bed again so that he wouldn’t step on it when, as was his custom, he bent to kiss her before slipping out for his traditional solo nightcap.
She rolled over to his side of the bed and reached for the alligator billfold on his bedside table. She held it above her face, opened it, and ran her index finger lightly over the gold monogrammed letters S.C.S. Then she carefully slipped the encrypted micro-thin disc into one of the unused pouches on the left side, opposite the credit cards and a thick fold of lire on the right. The thin disc was made of flexible material. The odds of his discovering it were nil. She put the wallet back on the bedside table, exactly as he’d left it, then rolled over onto her back.
A soft shaft of yellow light expanded on the ceiling as the bathroom door was opened and Simon padded quietly around the foot of the bed. Eyes closed, her bosom rising and falling rhythmically, Francesca listened to Stanfield slip his cigarette case, billfold, and some loose change into the pockets of the beautiful black cashmere blazer she’d bought for him in Florence.
He came around to her side of the bed and stood silently for a moment before bending to kiss her forehead.
“Just going over to Harry’s for my nightcap, darling. I won’t be long, I promise. One and done.”
“Ti amo,” Francesca whispered sleepily. “This is for you, caro,” she said, handing him a small red rosebud she’d plucked from the vase on her bedside table. “For your lapel, cosi non lo dimenticherete, so you won’t forget me.”
“Ti amo, too,” he said, and, after inserting the stem of the rose into the buttonhole in his lapel and stroking a wing of her hair away from her forehead, he left her side. “Ciao.”
“Ritorno-me, caro mio,” she said.
A moment later, the bedroom door closed softly behind him and Francesca whispered in the dark. “Arrividerci, caro.”
Stanfield took the service elevator down to the ground floor, turned to his right and proceeded down the short hallway that led to the kitchen. Il facchino, the ancient hall porter named Paolo, was dozing with his chair tilted back against the tiled wall. Stanfield placed the tasseled key to his suite on the folded newspaper in the old fellow’s lap.
“La chiave, Paolo,” he whispered.
“Con piacere. Buona sera, signore,” he said as Stanfield passed. He’s been through this routine so often he now says it in his sleep, Stanfield thought.
Stepping through the kitchen’s service door and out into the empty Campo Santa Maria del Giglio, a smile of pleasure played across Stanfield’s features. It was his favorite time of night. Very few people about, the enchanted city now turned many shades of milky blue and white. He started walking across the plaza, the recent memories of Francesca still blooming in his mind like hothouse flowers, the lush scent of her still lingering on his fingers.
Yes. Her ivory skin, whiter in those places where the most delicate articulations of the joints showed through; and her lily fingers which danced upon his body still, to some mystic memory of music.
And now, the small perfection of a quiet stroll over to Harry’s for a large whiskey, straight up, an appropriate cigar, the Romeo y Julieta, and some time to reflect on his incredible good fortune. He’d always enjoyed wealth, been born with it. But he’d played his cards right and now he’d reached the point where it was time to see what serious power felt like. Now he knew. A thoroughbred pawing the turf in the starting gate.
And, he’s off! called the announcer in his mind, and indeed he was.
He turned right on the Calle del Piovan, then crossed the little bridge over the Rio dell’Albero. It was only a quarter of a mile to Harry’s, but the twisting and turning of the narrow streets made it—
Jesus Christ.
What the living hell?
There was a strange, high-pitched chirping sound behind him. He turned and looked over his shoulder and literally could not believe his eyes. Something, he could not imagine what, was flying straight towards him! A tiny red eye blinking, blinking faster as whatever the thing was headed rapidly for him, and he realized that if he just
