Florence
Troy watched Sasha’s rage drop to a simmer. She did not raise the cause of her anger in conversation, as though storing it up for future reference and deployment. Had he given her the benefit of the doubt, he might have concluded that she was trying to make the holiday work for Rod’s sake, but he felt no urge to be her beneficiary. She was plotting something. He just didn’t know what.
It was their second night in Florence before he saw the glimmer of a smile. A bar in Oltrarno, with a view of the river, after a morning inside Brunelleschi’s Duomo, and an afternoon in the Bargello, where she had gazed rapt at Bartolomeo Ammannati’s Leda and the Swan.
“Unbelievable. No … I mean the opposite. Believable. You really can believe the swan … well … you know …”
Silently Troy agreed, whilst finding it predictable she would fall for the most erotic sculpture in the city. It was something about the beak-to-lips kiss, something about the way his wing was held in the crook of her thigh and calf.
“I mean to say,” she had said, “all those dozy buggers standing around in the piazza with their box cameras, snapping away at David’s willy, about as erotic as yesterday’s cold rice pudding, and here’s this, tucked away inside … a hidden whatchermacallit … thingy … gem! … and I’d never heard of it!”
Sasha stood, wrapped up in a shawl, on the bar’s open terrace, looking across the river towards the Uffizi.
She turned as Troy approached, and then he saw the smile. So unexpected. He realised the temptation was to read too much into it. Forgive and forget were not concepts the woman understood.
“What’s making you smile?”
She put an arm through his, pulled him close, whispered into his ear—not that anyone would have heard if she’d spoken out loud.
“My imagination.”
“And what are you imagining?”
“Fucking a swan.”