Swann went off to his fittings and blockings, conveying the secret message that the cast were all invited for a hearty supper whenever Tesla released them from their duties or nine o’clock that evening, whichever came first. Meanwhile Maggie had the run of the city. She couldn’t remember feeling so free and fulfilled since the day that Hooper entered nursery school. Actually, all that seemed another lifetime—not just Hooper’s childhood but Connecticut, Kettle Hill Farm, and the rest of her alleged real life. Though a self-confessed control freak, she was determined to refrain from checking in with the crew back home as long as possible—certainly not on her first day in Venice. So, after inspecting the kitchen—fabulously up-to-date—and the pantry—full service for twenty—she left the palazzo for a quiet little café off the Campo San Angelo to reflect on the amazing path that fortune had taken her down since the fateful Christmas Eve party when she threw Kenneth out into the snowy darkness.
Here she was, a woman on the shady side of forty-five, widely admired, successful in business, financially secure, physically radiant, desired by a man with the look of an angel and the libido of a Shropshire ram; and she was in Venice, no less, consorting with stars of the silver screen, supported by a Hollywood strike force of technicians and factotums. Even Tesla’s insane diktats about food worked to her advantage: she was truly in a position to rescue her new friends. It was too much. She wanted to sing out Rogers and Hart right there in the café. But the extremity of her own high spirits rather alarmed her—or perhaps it was the poor night’s sleep on the airplane or the syrupy Italian coffee jangling her nerves. In any case, she resorted to the palliative that rarely failed to clarify her mind: she began making lists. She devised a menu for that evening’s secret banquet. She made a shopping list. And she wrote out a game plan for getting things done. She liked the way her sense of organization made her feel so in charge, so forthrightly American.