TWELVE

Knowing the ins and outs of the Angelus better than anyone, I made it down to the ground floor before them. I went through the kitchen and dining room and into the main lobby. Though I’d grown up here and had never known another home, sometimes I still got a little flicker of joy when I entered the lobby and saw the huge chandeliers, the ranks of sofas and black enameled tables, the broad stairways and alcoves where people lounged and met, waited and read their magazines, drank bitter coffee from beautiful silver cups, nibbled glazed chocolates, and made slow elegant clouds of smoke with their Turkish cigarettes.

Today I had only one thing on my mind: following the girl, hoping she’d get rid of Carlos.

The elevator doors came open with a hissing sigh. Carlos got out, then the girl from the concert, and last was the other girl—the one I didn’t know—who said goodbye and went to the coffee shop just off the lobby.

I wasn’t hiding—not exactly. Sometimes I thought I didn’t need to hide as I snuck around the hotel, that I was almost invisible. Today, I just stayed back, hung around with others, blended into the background.

Carlos pointed to the hallway that led to D’Annunzio Boulevard. He was pouring on the charm, though it didn’t seem that the girl was paying much attention. She stared at the opulence of the lobby, stood there a minute just soaking up the overload of gold, silver, and bronze; of silk, damask, and satin.

Smooth as the maitre d’ of a great restaurant, puffed-up like the conductor of a world-class orchestra, Carlos gestured for the girl to go with him out to the street. They were talking, though I could barely understand any of the words. Luigi, Lukas, Santa Lucia, Jules. The names they’d mentioned upstairs came back to me again: L’s and oohs, floating in my mind.

I cut through a utility hallway, a narrow passage that guests never saw, and came out into sunshine on the east side of the hotel. For a second I panicked, thinking that Carlos had seen me and headed off another way. But then the doors opened and out they came.

He was still talking. She was silent.