“STRENGTH AND CONSTANCY ENJOINED”
JULY 3, 1956
1.
Scottie made toast and eggs for Michael, who was reading his newspaper in silence. Why do girls swoon over the idea of marriage? she thought. Because they’re fed a pack of lies about what it is. She was worried about him, but had no idea how to say that without compromising his masculinity, making him feel like she had seen weakness. At the Palio dinner he had thrown that man down like a rag doll, but then tossed and turned all night. He had spent the day at his office, even though she pointed out that it was very unlikely anyone would buy a tractor on Palio Day. Maybe he was furious about the brawl the night before. But how would she know, if he never said anything? She wished she could pry open his head and see inside.
“That English lord that Rodolfo and Fiammetta mentioned—he might know where Robertino is.”
Michael put his paper down. “I know you’re worried about him, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be looking for Robertino,” he said. “Look at what happened the other night. It’s the job of the police.”
Another plank in the corral he was building around her. But she was a jumper.
“I just wish I could help,” she said.
He looked down at the butter on his plate. “You’re so kind. Like Elsie,” he said. “Beautiful, sweet and kind.”
“Are you comparing me to a cow on a milk bottle?”
The phone rang, and Michael answered it. He brightened up, told someone he couldn’t make it but he knew Scottie would love to go. He hung up and turned to her, his face bright and uncomplicated for once.
“That was Carlo Chigi Piccolomini. He’s going to Florence for the day and invited us along.”
Scottie tried to control her expression. “You told him I would go?”
“Yes. You need a day away. It will be fun.”
She turned so he couldn’t see her face, and said, “Yes. Maybe I’ll sign up for that American Women’s Club while I’m there.”
2.
A telegram had been delivered for him, and he was eager to get her out the door so he could decode it. He needed to keep her busy. And safe from everything that was happening.
And then Marchese Carlo Chigi Piccolomini telephoned and invited them to Florence for the day. It was perfect. Scottie would be safely out of Siena, off the Robertino trail, and would strengthen their friendship with a nobleman known to be friendly to the American cause. She was proving incredibly useful to him, without even meaning to. He wished he was better at telling her that. He felt a sort of grateful relief to Scottie for being so … prosaic. With everything that was happening, he’d so much rather be in her head, thinking about Gucci’s new bamboo bag or the eighteen-carat gold rope sandals Ferragamo had just custom-made for a special client. She is like that cow in the ads, he thought—beautiful, sweet, reliable and uncomplicated. When he had tried to tell her that, she had taken it completely the wrong way. He was sorry now he’d ever doubted his decision to marry her. It would be lonely here without a wife. He had grown fond of her. The way she had tried to save the old woman during that horrible, terrifying melee. It was sweet that she was worried about the boy. Of course she was—it was the right thing to do. His beautiful wife, the mother of his child. He handed her a small stack of bills he had taken from the briefcase. That’s not stealing, he told himself. That’s hardship pay.
“Replace the bracelet you lost,” he said. “And get to know the marchese,” he added, heading out the door. “He sounds like a very good sort.”
3.
Michael went off to work, and she went out to do some food shopping to fill the time before Carlo arrived, to make it go faster. A day with Carlo. She tried to stay calm, tell herself it meant nothing.
It was the morning after the Palio, and the entire city felt subdued and slightly hungover. She had watched the hours-long parade and the minute-and-a-half race from her window, feeling almost guilty about having such amazing front-row seats when there were thousands and thousands of people packed into the square below. She did love seeing the horses snorting and tossing their heads, and her tears flowed as they raced three times around the square, lean and beautiful and out of control, but the whole event felt slightly anticlimactic after the riot of the contrada dinner.
Robertino should be here, she thought. Without him, the whole thing felt muted and pointless.
The famous gray mare Gaudenzia had run for the Giraffe, coming a close second to the Eagle contrada. Scottie admired the rough beauty of the cranky mare, who kept her ears back and took care of herself on the slick, dangerous track. She seemed to know her job and, except for a slight jostling on the last turn, could have won with or without her jockey.
Now it was all over until August 16, when the second and final Palio of the year would be run. She hoped Robertino would be back by then. She hoped he was alive.
“Ci sono notizie del barbaresco scomparso?” Scottie asked the owner of the fruit and vegetable store—an unusually tall woman with a long nose and sharp eyes, married to a short, round man, neither of whom ever spoke to Scottie beyond the most basic pleasantries—for news of the missing groom.
The woman shook her head but, to Scottie’s surprise, took her hand. “You are American,” she said. “You have connections. Make the police do something for a change.”
Scottie nodded. “I’ll try,” she said, feeling a slight thrill.
“Grazie, signora,” said the woman. “Such a kind and lovely woman you are.”
Ecco dragged her toward the macelleria, where the butcher tossed him chunks of raw meat as he served the customers ahead of her.
The lord was the piece that didn’t fit for her. How would Robertino have met an English lord? It was true that the Brits had been coming on the Grand Tour since the late 1800s, and now they were beginning to buy up property that was being abandoned by people like Ecco’s former owners. There was a large and ever-growing colony of the English in Tuscany, but she didn’t see them stopping by Signor Banchi’s farmhouse. At a hotel?
Ecco sat and stared as Scottie looked over the cuts of beef. Whatever she chose would be beautifully wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string, as if it were a gift—this was the routine in every shop, even if you bought a box of aspirin at the farmacia. At first she had thought of it as wasteful—why not just toss it in a bag, like at home?—but now she found the whole thing quite charming, a sign of the pride Italians took in what they sold.
“Buongiorno, Signor Gracci,” she said to the owner, keeping her eyes on his face and not on his bloodstained apron. “Vorrei due bistecche di vitello.”
“Certo, signora,” he said. “Subito.” He showed her some lovely veal. “Chianina,” he said. “I hear you are looking for Robertino,” he added. “Che brava donna. What a good woman. The police, they have already forgotten about him. His contrada has replaced him. But you Americans, you do not turn your backs on a child so easily.”
Word was traveling fast, Scottie thought with a slight chill.
4.
As soon as he got to the office, he opened his briefcase and took out the telegram to decode.
Rosini has reported break-in and theft of membership list to Siena police, who have notified Italian Secret Service. Destroy any connection and cease all contact with your asset. Maximum deniability essential. If asset’s loyalty in doubt, eliminate.
Robertino was the asset. They were asking him to eliminate Robertino? But why had it taken Rosini so long to notice the theft? There was something else going on here that he couldn’t understand, something in this masquerade he wasn’t seeing.
If asset’s loyalty in doubt, eliminate.
Kill Robertino? He couldn’t imagine actually killing a man, much less a boy. Yes, his Agency training had covered both self-defense and assassinations, but there was a difference between reading about something and … doing it.
On the other hand, if Robertino were gone for good it would solve a lot of problems for him. And he was now in for a pound, as it were.
5.
A day with Carlo. She had put her hair in pink plastic curlers held in place with sharp metal clips to get the wave just right, and now she sprayed it into place with Helene Curtis Spray Net and covered it with a polka-dot-patterned scarf for the car ride. She shaved her legs and armpits after putting a new blade in her heavy metal Lady Gillette razor, plucked and penciled her eyebrows using an eyebrow stencil, curled her lashes and waxed her upper lip. Painted her nails and toes with two coats of Peggy Sage Spice Pink. Applied Revlon’s thick, creamy ivory liquid foundation, Michel flesh-colored powder that came in a huge pink can with a large pouf, brushed on a light shimmer of Max Factor eyeshadow, drew on the latest “wing” effect with her eyeliner, applied Maybelline mascara to her upper lashes, and brushed on very light rose rouge to the “apple” of her cheek. Coty Dahlia Pink creamy lipstick from a golden case, finessed into a “smile” shape. Joy by Jean Patou eau de toilette. Taylor-Woods fifty-four-gauge stockings, Warners garters, underwear, cinch brassiere and the hated girdle. Just another day being female, she thought.
Up until age twelve, life had been simple. She had tumbled out of bed in the mornings, thrown on dungarees and a T-shirt, gathered her hair into a ponytail, pulled on paddock boots and been on her way to the stable within ten minutes of waking.
Because her mother was gone, it had been her Aunt Ida who’d intervened on a Christmas visit. “You have to wear these now,” she’d said, dropping onto the bed a set of stiff, scratchy, reinforced garments made of thick white padding covered with white nylon lace. There were braces and straps and snaps, like the pony’s cart harness.
“Why?” Scottie had asked.
“Because you’ve started to jiggle,” she said. “And we can’t have that. Only whores jiggle.” She pronounced it “hewers.”
As Ecco slept on the bath mat, Scottie pulled on dress shields to protect against perspiration, then two petticoat half-slips, and the short-sleeved ivy-patterned cotton dress she’d bought at Bendel’s before leaving New York. She added rose earrings, a daisy-pattern necklace, a bracelet made of coins and another of laughing Buddhas, and her gold snaffle-bit Duval watch, slipped into the Dolcis red high heels that bit into her toes, and pulled on summer-weight white cotton gloves and a light duster and sunglasses.
She did not stop to ask herself if she was dressing up to make herself look good for Carlo, or if this was all a layer of protection from him, a way of hiding her true, vulnerable self under an armor of makeup and layers of clothing and hard metal jewelry. She simply grabbed her purse, traded the scarf for the new white feather hat Michael had given her, and left.
6.
I am trained to kill. Michael studied his face in the mirror. The bathroom attached to his office was small, but at least it was private—he didn’t have to worry about Brigante barging in, unzipping and unleashing a prodigious manly stream into some ghastly urinal while chitchatting about a soccer team. Though I am also trained to affect a French accent and wiretap a houseplant, neither of which I do very well.
He ran a hand over his cheek. He had shaved carefully, as he did every morning, with a new blade, but even now his inexorable, irrepressible beard was forcing its way to the surface again. He hated the way his face darkened as the day wore on—by five p.m. each day he did look like a killer, or at least someone shady enough to rob your grandmother. He sighed and turned to the shelf where he kept a spare Dopp kit. He washed his face carefully to remove the grit that ruined the blade. Then he dampened a washcloth with water as hot as he could stand and held it to his face for three minutes, as the latest issue of Esquire had advised. When his beard was softened, he lathered up and shaved again, stripping off the criminal shadow and restoring the appearance of youth and innocence.
Some days he shaved four times. Occasionally he wondered what it would be like to simply give in and let his beard grow. But even at Yale, where some slovenly types had advertised their commitment to their studies with bristled cheeks during finals, he had shaved every day, feeling that even a minor crack in the façade he presented to the world might lead to skipping naked across the quad reciting nursery rhymes, as an unstable classmate had done after a difficult semester.
He took a step back and admired the clothes he had chosen today, and composed a brief description of his look in the louche, knowing style that Esquire had defined as the male voice of the era: This dashing spy sports a lustrous chestnut-over-sand windowpane plaid silk shantung jacket with a contrasting sapphire lining and pocket square, just the thing for a day of espionage and intrigue. The caramel Dacron boxy sport shirt has short sleeves to stay cool in the most torrid of climes, while the generous cut of the charcoal slacks could hide any number of weapons. His two-tone loafers are perfect for a quick escape, while his jaunty black straw Trilby is enlivened with a peacock-pattern grosgrain band and secret listening device that lets him foil dastardly plans while still looking sharp.
Whatever happened, at least he would look good.
7.
She and Ecco found the robin’s egg blue Fiat parked just outside Porta Camollia. Carlo was leaning against it, smoking a cigar. He was wearing a stylish blue suit and a crisp white shirt with a red tie. Though in his playful moments Carlo could look like a little boy, he definitely looked like a man now.
“Carlo,” she called. He looked up and smiled. He greeted her in the Italian fashion, a kiss on each cheek. She could smell his wonderful mix of horse and tobacco and tweed.
“I didn’t recognize you two,” he said, laughing, opening the car door for her and for Ecco, who jumped in. “That hat!” She blushed, self-conscious.
“Do you have business in Florence?” she asked, settling into the passenger seat.
“Bookstores. I’m desperate for something fresh to read.”
“Why not shop here?”
Again that shadow on his face. “I prefer Florence,” he said. “Better selection. Any sign of Robertino?”
“No. He would never have missed the Palio.”
Carlo nodded, looking worried.
They drove down the winding road to the valley floor, then picked up the Via Cassia heading north. They passed the hilltop cluster of buildings that comprised the walled town of Monteriggioni, and then Scottie saw the turnoff for Poggibonsi, where Carlo’s son had died. She glanced at him, but his face displayed nothing. They passed Barberino Val d’Elsa, and Casole d’Elsa, huge towers and castles and imposing ancient stone.
“Do you know Lord Sebastian Gordon?” she asked.
“Not well, but yes. He’s taking credit for getting Italian luxury brands recognition overseas. He does public relations for Gucci, I think.”
“Robertino posed for him. Do you think he might know where Robertino is?”
Carlo considered this. “He might.”
Carlo was not flirting, which was a relief. Maybe they could just spend the day together as friends. That was what Carlo had wanted, after all. A friend.
* * *
Florence was crowded—it felt like everyone in the world had decided to spend the summer of ’56 there. Colorful flocks of laughing young men in loose, boxy shirts and women wearing scarves and big sunglasses swooped over the cobblestones on Vespas past Scottie and Ecco and Carlo, and at least half of the people they passed were speaking something other than Italian—French, American English, English English, with the majority speaking German. Carlo joked about the latest “German invasion,” but there was an undertone of slight alarm among the Italians, she thought—though this onslaught of West Germans came to soak up sun and spend, not to conquer.
“Neither Italians nor Germans ever seem to mention the war,” Scottie said cautiously as they strolled along the Arno. She didn’t want to bring up his painful past, but it seemed awkward to ignore it, too.
Carlo sighed. “Yes. Perhaps we all pretend that it never happened.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Everyone wants to forget the bad years and embrace the benessere,” he said. “You know that phrase?”
“Yes. Well-being.”
“We want to be like your hat. Stylish, amusing, light as air. I have some banking to do. I will meet you in front of David in an hour, okay?”
She nodded. It was all very innocent, just two friends having a day in the city.
Ecco was enjoying the Florentine smells as she made her way to the Ponte Vecchio to look for a new bracelet. She remembered how Michael had told her this was the only bridge the Germans didn’t detonate as they retreated from the advancing Allies. Now that she knew what the Americans had done, she saw it all in a different light. They should hate us, she thought. But then we liberated them, too. And now we’re rebuilding their country. It’s all so complicated. She studied the fabulous old covered span and its row of shops jutting improbably over the Arno. She chose the first bracelet that was hawked at her and headed back into the city center, feeling like the Queen Mary being towed by tiny tugboat Ecco through dense crowds.
As she passed a medieval palace adorned with heavy iron dragons, she glanced up at the sign: GUCCI. Carlo had said that Lord Sebastian Gordon did public relations for Gucci. Before going in she paused to gather her nerve. Fancy stores had always intimidated her.
She stood in the massive doorway. Something about the way the dark-haired, chicly coiffed saleswomen looked at her made her feel like they knew she was faking it. She had felt so right, so strong leaving the apartment this morning, but now she saw that her gloves already had a stain on them, and her stockings had a run starting. The veneer was chipping away and the real her poking through. Still, she and Ecco made their way into the store.
“Excuse me,” she said to a woman in a chignon and pencil skirt folding scarves under a ceiling frescoed with angels. “Is Lord Sebastian Gordon here today?”
“He does not work in the shop, madam.” The woman feigned horror at how inappropriate the very idea was. “He has a studio of his own in Via dei Cimatori. Number 6.”
And then Ecco began to make that horrible whomp-whomp-whomp sound …
“No no no!” shouted the enraged saleswomen, rushing toward them. Scottie tried to drag Ecco away, but he retched up a pile of grass-flecked chunky yellow vomit on Gucci’s pristine white marble floor. Scottie spotted last night’s peas and bread crusts in the mess.
“Mi dispiace,” she shouted in apology as the saleslady cursed her roundly. Her face was red as she escaped and clomped away, dragging poor Ecco behind her, nearly twisting an ankle on the cobblestones in her precarious, painful red heels.
The wave of shame was followed by anger. Go to hell, she thought. The poor dog was just being sick.
She stalked off in a rage, unaware of where she was going. Florence suddenly felt hot and dark and ominous, all appearance and deception, omnipresent laundry strung between iron balconies that hung from bullet–riddled façades. A group of young men leaning up against a Cinzano ad papered to the wall catcalled at her, making rude gestures. Ecco growled and strained at his leash, and the men sneered and laughed. She and Ecco turned abruptly into a narrow side street. She looked up and saw she was in Via dei Cimatori. She took a deep breath. She would steel herself and hunt down Gordon. She would have something to tell Carlo when she met him in a few minutes.
She rang the bell at number 6, admiring the heavy iron door handle shaped like a horse head. No one answered.
Disappointed, Scottie walked slowly back toward Piazza della Signoria. Everything felt like a dead end.
Under the statue of David, pigeons circling overhead, Carlo’s face lit up when he saw her, and she suddenly felt right again. An old woman selling scarves held an armful out to them as Scottie wordlessly took Carlo’s offered arm. “Per sua bella ragazza.” For your beautiful girl.
Memories of their afternoon at San Galgano flitted across her consciousness. The feel of his hands on her body. His mouth on hers. It was as if her belly and breasts were not swelling with the child, but with something else that was growing inside her.
8.
Michael sat in his office, reading the paper and writing a report to send to Rome. He hoped Scottie was having a good day in Florence. On one of his visits to Rome, Duncan had pressed him, and Michael had confessed that he was not exactly “doing his duty” with regard to Scottie.
“She’s pregnant!” Michael protested, glancing around the bar to make sure no one was listening. “You’re not supposed to be in … there … when they’re pregnant, are you?” He hated these conversations—they felt so disloyal to Scottie, and God knows they were embarrassing—but Duncan loved them. He loved to tease Michael.
“You have seen Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze illustrating the Ode to Joy in Vienna? One of the figures is a pregnant woman in a beautiful skirt, her naked breasts distended and her naked belly huge, her wrists in golden jeweled cuffs. She is surrounded by red-haired sexualized sirens who seem to be in a state of perpetual orgasm, and she gazes at a comical huge brown hairy beast with buttons for eyes.”
“And? What does Klimt have to do with us?”
Duncan laughed and sipped his martini. “They say she is meant to symbolize wantonness. Back in 1902, it was one of the most scandalous images ever exhibited. Can’t you picture the nice Viennese ladies fainting at the sight of it?”
“Yes. I feel faint myself.”
“No one wants to see a pregnant woman as a sexual being. It violates something primal in us. But there’s something you should know. They want sex when they’re pregnant. They crave it.”
Michael realized he had no idea whether Duncan was lying to him or not. Sex was the part of marriage that was hardest for him. He felt terrible about this, wondered if Scottie noticed anything wrong.
He hoped she was buying herself something nice in Florence.
9.
“I went to Gordon’s office, but he wasn’t there.” Scottie and Carlo were walking across another bridge toward the Oltr’arno side of the city, one bridge down from the Ponte Vecchio, scooters zooming past them. The river was broad and placid, with several fishermen down in the current, and shorebirds wading in the shallows.
“I know where he lives. You could stalk your prey to ground.”
“He doesn’t have a telephone?”
“Out in the country? I doubt it.”
Scottie considered this. “Would it be terribly rude to just show up there?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Why don’t we stop on our way home?”
Home. She didn’t want this day to end. They’d been avoiding each other’s eyes all day, pretending to be people who did not think the things they were thinking. They were good people who loved their spouses no matter what their flaws were. That was what marriage was. Loyalty. Absolute loyalty to someone else.
“One thing I want to do before we go,” he said. They strolled arm in arm, and she could feel the heat of his skin through the jacket sleeve. He pointed out the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens with wry asides about Savonarola and Dante and the Medicis. But he wasn’t a lecturer like Michael—he asked her about things. “Do you find that building harmonious? What do you think that woman thinks she looks like? Where in America is your favorite place of all?” She was laughing, chatting, relaxed, telling him about her evil childhood pony, and her father’s addiction to baby lamb chops. But always, there was an undercurrent of electricity.
“Sometimes I wonder if my memories are even memories at all, or just things I wish happened,” she said.
Carlo told her about something called Sehnsucht. It was a German word that he said had no real equivalent in English or Italian. “A pervasive sense of longing,” he said to her. “A yearning for something lost, but something you never really had.”
“Like white Christmases?”
“Yes. And it can be cultural as well as personal. England between the wars. America’s longing for a West where cowboys kept you safe.”
He led her through a warren of narrow streets to a small doorway that led to an even smaller upholstery shop that also had every size and shape of lamp shade, from tiny to enormous. She slipped Ecco’s leash over the iron hook outside the door, and he drank from the small dish beneath it. Carlo dropped her arm and talked to the owner while she wandered the aisles, admiring beautifully fringed pillows and bolts of brocade and striped silks, tassels and braid. She wandered all the way to the back of the shop.
Carlo found her there. “Ready?” he asked.
“No,” she said softly, and took his hand. She pulled him close, and they kissed. She could hear the shopkeeper moving about up front. Just one more kiss, she thought, leaning into him, her knees weak.
She heard the front door jingle, and a voice call out, “Carlo, I’m running out to get a coffee. Watch the shop, would you?”
Carlo’s sì was hoarse.
He engulfed her with his arms, his chest. She floated on a wave, higher, higher, higher, hoping the crest never came.
10.
Trying to sniff out if the theft had been tied to Robertino, and if Robertino had been tied to him beyond just his lessons with Scottie, Michael called Rodolfo and invited him to lunch on the pretext of asking him to explain the current agricultural situation. If things went well, he would bring out the contract in his briefcase offering Rodolfo a few thousand dollars a month in exchange for articles that were pro-Catholic and pro-America. Just a little PR, he would say. Laying the groundwork for doing business here.
“I don’t really understand what this strike is about,” Michael confessed in complete honesty as they sat down outdoors at Ristorante Papei in Piazza del Mercato. Though the fish market had ended by ten, a faint whiff of pesce floated on the hot air, reminding him of Fridays at home with his parents and making him slightly nauseated. The papers were full of news about an ongoing strike of agricultural workers. As the ostensible owner of a tractor franchise, Michael felt it was part of his cover to be fluent in farm issues, but instead of simple talk about weather and crop yields, as it was back home, the news here was all a mass of acronyms: CSIL, CGIL, UNI. Michael longed for an encyclopedia of Italian culture so that he would not have to ask stupid questions. On the other hand, in this case a stupid question was a way to get Rodolfo to open up to him.
Before they could proceed with lunch, there was the obligatory verbal sparring between Rodolfo and the waiter about yesterday’s Palio and the next one. Michael saw it as very similar to the tiresome way college boys talked about football, a way for men to converse and show friendship without vulnerability. Since the contrade had begun as militias, the Palio was in essence a war game, a definition Michael applied to all organized sports, a way to convert the natural human desire to fight into play and pageantry. He had no patience for a fake war when he was fighting a real one.
Without looking at the menu, Rodolfo ordered a plate of pici cacio e pepe and a glass of red wine. Michael did the same.
“What is the Confagricoltura?” Michael asked as the waiter brought their wine.
“To understand this you must understand the history of farming in Italy,” Rodolfo said.
This was not an uncommon way of beginning a conversation, Michael had learned. Italians always wanted to give you the big picture, and every single one of them, right down to the mechanic who had repaired the Fairlane and had knowledgeably discussed the Battle of Montaperti in 1260 and the origins of Siena’s rivalry with Florence, seemed to have a passion for history and be able to quote Dante from memory. It was hard for Michael to picture a random gas station attendant in Missouri (or a university student in New Haven) describing the details of British bureaucracy in pre-Revolutionary America or quoting Chaucer at length. Rodolfo proceeded to give Michael an overview that touched lightly on the Etruscans and Romans, moved to the 1500s with Cosimo de Medici and the growth of cities, the expansion of feudalism into the surrounding countryside, the rise of mezzadria, or sharecropping, the bonifica, or improvements to the canals in the Maremma under Mussolini, and eventually, as they finished their pasta and the waiter poured them each a second glass of wine and brought out trays of eggplant and zucchini, as well as a pair of tender pork cutlets, outlined the postwar organization of unions and chambers of commerce that regulated the current agricultural system.
Michael was fairly sure he would remember none of this tomorrow, especially since the entire time Rodolfo was talking, Michael was trying to figure out how to genially convince him to write an article that would spread malicious rumors about Ugo Rosini, and also perhaps to say something nice about Ambassador Luce, to please Duncan.
“Sad about Mayor Manganelli,” Michael said.
“This insanity with the cars,” Rodolfo said. “Before the war you were happy if you had a bicycle. Now everyone has a car but no one is competent to drive one. We should stick with horses.”
“Who do you think will be elected in November?”
Rodolfo shrugged. “The priests will encourage one side, and the unions the other. But probably people will vote for who their fathers voted for. What did you think of Vestri?”
Michael was cautious. “I don’t know enough about him. But Siena’s growing fast. We’re having these same issues in American towns, the postwar boom. It’s important to pick leaders who understand how to navigate expansion, who give business owners room to grow.”
Rodolfo sighed and lit a cigarette. He leaned back in his chair.
“You must understand. Italians are resistant to being governed. Every invading force has thought ‘these people do not even fight us.’ But eventually we throw them off because we do fight, just not openly, because this is suicide. We subvert, we evade, we undermine. This is something that is frustrating, but is also beautiful, like the way insects consume a corpse. Unlike Americans, we believe that every politician is corrupt. Every law is to be circumvented. We are startled when we meet someone who is truly good. Like your wife.”
“Scottie?”
“She is looking for this boy. The police made a show of it, but they have moved on to other things. She will not stop, will she?”
“I don’t know about that. She’s in Florence shopping today. The only thing she’s hunting is a bamboo bag at Gucci.” Michael rolled his eyes.
Rodolfo laughed and shook his head. “Gucci? I bet she’s tracking down Gordon.”
“Gordon?”
“I told her the other night that Robertino posed for Lord Sebastian Gordon. Gordon works for Gucci. She has probably gone to talk to him. Under cover of shopping.” He laughed again, as Michael’s stomach churned.
“And Robertino is of no benefit to her. He is not her child. But she devotes herself to this, because it is right, and because no one else is doing it. This shames us, because we all wish to be this way, like the heroes in comic books.”
Somehow it didn’t seem like the right moment to offer money in exchange for an article suggesting that the left had bumped off Manganelli.
“Yes,” Michael said. “She is an innocent.”
Rodolfo took a drag on his cigarette and looked at Michael. “No, I do not agree. Two nights ago she was practically throwing punches. She is very vispa.” While Michael smiled, agreeing that Scottie was “spirited,” Rodolfo added, lowering his voice, “Listen, you mentioned Manganelli’s death.”
“Yes?”
“I heard something the other day. A rumor. It may explain why no one is buying your tractors.”
It was true. No one had come to buy a tractor this week. Brigante, who was selling one a day, was crowing about it.
“What?”
“That Manganelli’s death was not an accident. That the CIA was behind it.”
Michael’s jaw dropped.
“I know, it sounds crazy. But you would be surprised. It would not be the first time that a foreign power decided to intervene in Italian politics.”
Michael blinked. “But … no offense, Siena is a very small town. As we say, there are bigger fish to fry.”
“True. But if you wanted to decapitate the Communist Party, this would be the place to start.”
Did he know? Michael told himself to breathe. “Manganelli wasn’t a Communist.”
“No, but he was friendly to them. He was talking about working with all of the parties to move Siena forward in a way that honored the past but also advanced quality of life for all. He was friendly to the unions, and like Rosini was resistant to some key developers. American developers.”
“American developers?” This was the first Michael had heard of it. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know. But I know Vestri will practically suck their dicks. He’s from the far right wing of the Catholics, one step away from fascism. Anyway, I know that probably you have not sold many tractors, and I thought you should know why, that it’s not personal.”
“Thank you for telling me. I can assure you the rumor is not true.”
“Can you? How?”
“That’s not how Americans behave,” said Michael, amazed by his own flat tone. “Oh, I have a scoop for you,” he added. “Heard it through the grapevine at Ford in Rome the other day. Ambassador Luce will attend the August Palio.”
Rodolfo’s eyebrows went up. “Really? That is news. What an honor for our little city.” He downed a coffee that the waiter had brought without being asked and stood up to leave. “Arrivederci,” he said, and strode off.
Michael drank his coffee. He paid the bill and was halfway across the piazza before he heard a yell.
“Signore!”
He turned, and the waiter was holding up his briefcase.
11.
They got lost on the winding gravel roads on the way to the villa. Carlo apologized profusely, said he felt all turned around. She nodded.
This spell they had over each other … What did it mean? Was it the kind of thing you tried to perpetuate? Or was it a dream they would wake from? They could never be together. Her confidence that she was doing the right thing by hunting down Gordon was evaporating, and she was hot and crabby and anxious. She no longer felt beautiful or sexual, but rather hot and bloated and uncomfortable. She was dying to get out of her girdle. Most of the makeup that she had carefully reapplied in a small dusty mirror in the shop seemed to have ended up on her gloves after wiping the sweat off her face. She felt slightly sickened at the memory of how she had wrenched her clothing aside in her haste to feel Carlo inside her, how frantic she was, grabbing him, desperate, clawing at him to pull him deeper and deeper inside herself, rubbing her breasts against him. She and Carlo had rutted like animals. That wasn’t romance. There was something wrong with her, she thought. Michael’s urges were so tidy, so controlled. They made love without even wrinkling the sheets.
She’d made Carlo pull over at one of the roadside gas stations so she could do some respackling on her cosmetics and relieve herself, but the toilet was just a hole in the floor, and the room was filled with the buzz of flies. God in heaven, what had she become? She stank of desire and betrayal, so she had sprayed herself with more perfume, which was now turning her stomach. Yet she wanted Carlo again.
Finally, after they had driven up a long, cypress-lined, rutted gravel road that switchbacked between fields of golden sunflowers closing tight for the night, what Carlo had described as “a pink monstrosity” had indeed appeared in their headlights: a large pink-and-mustard-colored villa with graceful arches revealing a loggia, a Grecian triangular pediment held up by columns, two stories of green shuttered windows lit up, and a row of darkened small barred circular windows just below a cornice guarded by Greek statues and topped with a shield bearing a huge crest of arms.
It was a far cry from the tumbledown farmhouses they’d passed on the way, a skinny dog or two growling beneath a laundry line, ageless blank-eyed women gazing from under headscarves as they pruned grapes in the waning daylight.
A wide drive of pea gravel took them up to the front of the villa. As she got closer, Scottie could see even in the fading daylight that the old building’s glamour was a little tattered. Ivy was pulling at the stucco, which had crumbled away in places to reveal stones beneath. The paint was worn through and showed the many layers of color that had been applied over the years.
“Faded glory,” said a very tall man with a long nose that seemed to precede him as he appeared around the corner. Unmistakably English. The man, in his late thirties she guessed, wore a perfectly cut white linen suit, a polka-dotted pale blue handkerchief in the breast pocket, and held a martini glass. With his slicked-back hair, he looked like a film star, Scottie decided. But there was something else. Something about him made her uncomfortable.
“Lord Sebastian Gordon,” said Carlo as the man air-kissed him and her and kept talking as if they were continuing a conversation in midstream.
“I suppose decay happens to the best of us. The place was built by the Medicis in the 1400s, and made its way through the usual accidents of inheritance down to my dear departed mother,” Gordon said. “I blame you for that,” he said, turning to Scottie. Seeing her confused look, he pointed to the ivy. “It’s called vite americana. An import from your neck of the woods. Virginia creeper. The Italians went mad for it in the last century before they realized it’s beautiful but destructive. Gets into every crack and crevice. Someday it will tear the whole place down. Invasive species, you Yanks. We’re all around back,” he said. “By the pool. Follow me.” He walked around the side of the villa through a gate in the hedge.
“He didn’t even ask us why we were here,” said Scottie. “And how did he know I was an American?”
Carlo shrugged. They followed Gordon into the garden, their feet crunching on the gravel. Ecco, on his leash, lunged ahead of Scottie.
The man was so … theatrical. She didn’t know what to make of him.
“Just a few friends,” Gordon said as they caught up to him, waving to a scattered group of forty or fifty people spread out around a pool and gardens.
Scottie heard a quick “Carlo! Amore mio!” and saw Franca coming toward them. Oh God, she thought. How can I face her? Franca was in a long pale green gown. Her red hair was undone, and wild. She swayed a little, drunk, and stared hard at Scottie in a way that chilled her, then put her arm through Carlo’s. “I must speak with you,” she said to him. “You don’t mind?” she said to Scottie in English, her eyes dark and fiery. She seemed agitated.
“Of course not,” said Scottie, backing away. It was all, all, all wrong.
As Scottie watched them go into the villa, Gordon took her hand and stared into her eyes. “Gorgeous,” he went on. “Just stunning. My God, you’re a Neroccio in the flesh.”
“A what?”
“Neroccio di Bartolomeo de’ Landi,” said Lord Sebastian. “You must go straight to the Pinacoteca in Siena and see the Madonna and Child Between St. Jerome and St. Bernard. It will be like looking in a mirror, my dear. Now make yourself at home.”
“Wait,” said Scottie before he could disappear like the Cheshire Cat again. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but I understand you know the boy who’s been teaching me Italian, Robertino Banchi.”
“Very upsetting,” he said smoothly. “I was in England and have just returned to hear how he’s simply disappeared into thin air. This country is sinking into anarchy. I’m afraid it’s up to us to find him. The police are hopeless.”
“Yes,” she said, surprised. “I completely agree.” It was such a relief to meet someone who didn’t tell her to back off or not to worry, even though this man was downright odd.
“Must mingle,” he said. “Let’s talk more later, shall we?”
12.
Michael debated with himself as he headed back to the office. He definitely didn’t want Scottie embroiling Ambassador Luce’s friends in this mess. It was unnerving to think Gordon knew the boy. But that was Italy. Everyone knew each other.
And then, out of the blue, Gordon himself called, introducing himself as a friend of Luce’s. Michael was unnerved by the coincidence—in the Agency, they taught you there are no coincidences. The phone cord stretched as he reached for his box of Benzedrine.
To Michael’s surprise, Gordon invited him to the villa for a party. “Lots of people you should meet,” he said casually. “All the expats worth knowing. A very pretty girl I think you’ll like.” A good spy would go, Michael thought, though Gordon’s unctuous tone gave him the creeps. He half wondered if the Brit had Robertino tied up with heavy velvet rope in some upstairs bedroom, drugged with opium perhaps, a party game gone wrong. These decadent Brits, he wouldn’t put anything past them. At least the Americans saw other nations as potential markets to exploit. The Brits saw them as animals.
13.
Carlo had completely disappeared with Franca. Scottie felt stung and unreasonably angry. God, it was all so fraught, so tangled with the past. Italy was not carefree and sexy like they made it seem in Roman Holiday. It was dense and mysterious and dangerous and confusing. Scottie had dived into an azure sea on a sunny day, only to find her feet caught in a centuries-old fishing net that was pulling her down into cold, dark depths.
Cicadas hummed. She felt self-conscious at the sight of people talking and laughing in small groups around a long pool with floating candles in it. Even though the sun was down, the heat was still stifling, yet everyone looked crisp and cool and stylish. She was dripping with sweat. How did they do it, she wondered. There was some trick she had never learned. People turned to look at her as she wandered through the crowd with Ecco, but no one introduced themselves. She could hear English, and Spanish, and French.
A very handsome liveried waiter with huge dark eyes and curly black hair handed her a martini. Scottie took one sip and felt faint.
“Let’s walk around a little,” she said to Ecco.
What had once been formal gardens were overgrown. Stones were falling out of the walls, and large clusters of caper plants had filled the gaps. At the far end of the garden was an entrance to what looked like a cave. A grotto, she remembered they were called.
She rounded another corner and came upon a huge bronze fountain of a leering man. Neptune, she decided, from the ocean motif. Neptune was large and vulgar, covered with moss and waving his trident over carved little boys with fishtails who were spitting water. But the worst of it was a mermaid, sitting, her back against Neptune’s leg, gazing down at herself as she cupped each breast in a firm hand, water spouting from the nipples. The statue was leaning back—her fishtail was split in two, and she sat astride a dolphin, a clamshell covering her private parts.
“Gives new meaning to the word ‘brazen.’” She turned, and there was Gordon again, now followed by a waiter carrying a tray with glasses of Campari and soda. Gordon nodded at the mermaid. “The Medicis were a very naughty bunch. They shared the favors of poor little Simonetta Vespucci, then rewarded her by having her body paraded through the streets of Florence after her death, with a proclamation that read ‘Beauty is dead.’ And of course she was the model for Botticelli’s Venus. I do prefer a natural beauty,” he said, examining her much more closely than she would have liked. “It shows real confidence to face the world as you are, doesn’t it?” Scottie could hardly absorb this before he was taking her by the arm. “I must introduce you to everyone.”
“Robertino—”
“Yes, utterly delightful young lad. Though hard to get him to sit still. My painting of him as Hermes is rather a blur.”
“You said you were away, but you do know he’s been missing for a week now? I’m very worried. His mother is dead.”
“Worrisome indeed. I talked to the police myself this morning about the boy. They seemed to have no clue where he’s gone. I dearly hope his disappearance is not connected to his mother’s death. Her lifestyle was both risqué and risky, after all. And then there’s all this business about the horse.”
“What horse? From the contrada? Ondina?”
“No. Someone at the stable where he worked was mistreating a horse.”
“Camelia?”
“I don’t know the horse’s name. Robertino didn’t like it, and told the man off. The chap didn’t take it very well, and continued to beat the horse, and now the horse has disappeared.”
“Before or after Robertino did?”
“Same time, I think.”
“But that’s wonderful!” said Scottie, Ecco pricking his ears and wagging his tail at her change in tone. “He’s not kidnapped or dead, he’s run off with the horse!” She could see him in her mind, galloping across the countryside.
“I thought so, too. But if he’s stolen the horse, he could go to jail. He might be wiser to stay hidden, or go somewhere else and start over.”
“He wouldn’t leave his grandfather,” said Scottie. “And it’s awfully strange that he’d miss the Palio. You’d think he’d have stashed the horse and reappeared, acting innocent. That’s what I’d do.”
Gordon smiled at her. “Yes. Well, he’s a resourceful young fellow, and I’m hoping for the best.”
“Have you seen Carlo Chigi Piccolomini?” she asked Gordon. “He’s my ride and I’ve lost track of him.” She didn’t mention Franca, couldn’t say her name out loud.
Instead of answering, Gordon waved over a woman. “Julie, darling, come meet a fellow American.”
The elegantly dressed woman came closer. “Oh yes,” she said. “I remember you. You’re Michael Messina’s wife.”
The night before the Palio. “Of course,” said Scottie. “I’m sorry. You’re married to a friend of Michael’s from Yale, right?”
“Yale. Hmmm.” said Julie. “We do have a lot in common, don’t we? Good-bye, Sebastian.”
Scottie heard Gordon chuckle as he moved off.
“You came with Carlo Chigi Piccolomini,” said Julie.
“He’s our landlord,” said Scottie.
“Quite the dark history there.” Julie gave her a knowing smile as Gordon melted into the boxwood labyrinth.
“You mean about their son? Yes. So sad.” Scottie was cautious.
“I don’t know about you,” Julie said, “but I’ve been shopping in Florence all day and I’m exhausted.” She waved to a waiter and directed him to move a couple of chairs together. “I need a drink with ice, and I bet you do, too. Due, per favore,” she barked at the waiter. “Con ghiaccio.”
“Ice, really? I haven’t seen any since leaving New York,” Scottie sighed, sinking down into the flamingo pink chair. “Are you visiting Italy? Your Italian is good.”
“My husband and I live in Rome. We met Sebastian there. He’s such a sweetie. I love those old queers, don’t you?”
Scottie was a little shocked at this, but now that she thought about it, it made sense that Gordon was a homosexual. That would explain the theatrical behavior. She suspected her riding coach Mr. Perry was a homosexual, though she had never said that to anyone. Mostly it was based on the fact that unlike the other men she had met, he was not predatory, and his interest in her felt nonsexual. Occasionally at Vassar the girls described certain men as “light in the loafers” or “fairies,” and some of the female professors were, yes, rather exceptionally close friends, but despite her perspicuity about animals, Scottie was oddly uncurious about her fellow humans’ private lives, and she disliked idle gossip of the sort this woman Julie clearly traded in. Still, it was nice to talk to an American.
“Gordon has blocks of ice delivered from Florence,” Julie said, nimbly lighting a cigarette and offering Scottie one, which she declined. “I think a poor little donkey carries it the whole way.”
“Is your husband here, too?”
“No,” Julie laughed. “Though he’d fit right in. He’s always working. Michael, too, I bet?”
“Yes.”
“We learn to get by on our own, don’t we? And to make friends.” She gave the word a special emphasis that Scottie ignored.
“Yes.”
Julie petted Ecco. “You’re smart to have a dog. He’s adorable. You should let him go. I’m sure he won’t run off.”
Scottie unleashed Ecco, who promptly dived into the pool, climbed out again, and shook himself, making two women standing near the steps screech.
“Oh goodness,” said Scottie, cringing and sinking down in her chair, though really she enjoyed shaking things up a little, and seeing Ecco have fun. She hoped this wasn’t the moment when Carlo reappeared, or Franca.
Julie laughed. “Being good gets you nowhere in Italy, and he knows it. In this culture they value furbizia.”
“Furbo, like ‘sly’?”
“Very good. You’ve seen this already, I’m sure, or you will soon. Italians are always looking for the shortcut, and they admire the one who finds it, not the one who follows ‘proper channels.’”
“Probably because things were so hard during the war.”
“Maybe, but I think it goes back further than that. Don’t you think it’s their character?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I like Italians.” The way she said it, she was saying more than that. “Italy has been ruled by so many people: the German tribes, the Bourbons, Napoleon, the Austrians, even before Il Duce and his pal Adolf came along. Someone is always trying to tell them what to do, so they find ways to smile and smile but also to do exactly as they please. And now they’re the unofficial western front of the Cold War, a chessboard for two empires. Look,” she said, pointing to where the dog was being petted and hand-fed shrimp by the same women he had just splashed. “All is forgiven.”
“You know a lot about Italy.”
“I have a lot of time on my hands.”
Scottie nodded. “Me, too. Does your husband also work for Ford?”
Julie smiled. “He’s at the State Department.”
“Oh. How exciting. So he works with Ambassador Luce?”
“Yes. Clare’s quite an interesting woman.”
“I wish Michael would take me to Rome with him sometimes. He’s always there and I’m stuck here. I like Siena, but … Rome.”
“You really must press him harder on that. He and Duncan are such pals. They’re always out together.”
Scottie was surprised to hear this. Michael always said his trips to Rome were all business.
“I should probably look for Carlo. And Franca,” she said.
“I hear he’s such a nice man, for a Fascist.”
Scottie paused. “What do you mean?”
“Well, people don’t like to talk about the war, but given his age and position you must have figured out that Carlo was in the army, of course.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t hold that against him.”
“No, of course not. And what’s done is done.”
There were things Julie was not saying, and Scottie felt irritated with her. “Do you miss home?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Desperately,” said Julie. “I can’t wait to get pregnant again so I have an excuse to abandon Duncan and go home for a long stretch.”
“You have children?”
“Yes. Two. And you—” Julie looked at her appraisingly. “You’re pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not thinking of delivering here, I hope?”
“Children are born here every day.”
“Yes, but it’s such a good excuse to get away.”
“I don’t think I want to get away. I like it here. And Michael would miss me.”
Julie looked at her, took a drag on her cigarette and put it out. “Yes, of course,” she said.
“And there’s a boy, a friend of mine who’s gone missing. I’m looking for him.”
Julie raised her eyebrows and said nothing. Her makeup was done like Scottie’s, in the latest style. Seeing it on another face, Scottie saw how hard and cruel it made her look, the black-edged eyes, the blood red lips. She looked around at the partygoers.
“You’re watching everyone,” said Julie at last.
Scottie laughed. “A bad habit.” She had learned to evaluate people at age fourteen as an outsider from the West arriving at boarding school. Tonight she was watching for Carlo, of course, but also making a list in her head, assessing the party guests the way she did a paddock full of horses at an auction, imagining Robertino in their midst. Most people couldn’t see more than the color of a horse, and barely noticed what sex it was. She had known a polo player who referred to his “gelding” for six months before Scottie pointed out it was a mare. Scottie could tell from the flick of an ear, the twitch of a shoulder muscle, the slant of a haunch exactly what a horse was thinking, and what it was capable of. Humans weren’t all that different when you bothered to look closely. She pointed out for Julie the two screeching women, Americans, mid-twenties, insecure, standing up to show off their figures. “Actresses, don’t you think?” Julie laughed and agreed. Three men smoking in the corner.
“Furtive,” said Julie.
“Businessmen.”
They spotted a couple of teens with greased-up hair, looking for sex. An older overweight couple in expensive clothing: Scottie described the woman as an “alpha mare,” while Julie said her submissive husband was perhaps a poet. A small flock of blank-eyed, gazelle-like women: models, definitely models. A man in dark glasses smoking a cigar. Sex again, they both declared. A Frenchwoman and her younger escort, talking loudly. Artists.
They were giggling together like schoolgirls.
“I’ve missed this,” Scottie said. “Having a girlfriend to talk to.”
“Me, too,” said Julie.
Scottie reached for another Campari from a passing tray and held the glass to her cheek. I can’t lose focus, she thought.
She kicked off her shoes and rolled down her stockings. She sat on the edge of the pool and put her feet in the green water. No one seemed to care. Everyone was talking a little louder, leaning a little closer, smoking a little faster. Scottie saw the Frenchwoman head toward the grotto. A cloud of cigarette smoke formed coils over the pool.
She felt a movement inside her belly. It startled her until she realized what it was.
“My baby just moved,” she said in wonder.
Julie slid down next to her, put her hand on Scottie’s belly. “A kicker,” she said. “Fasten your seat belt.”
A large orange carp surfaced and nibbled at Scottie’s painted pink toes.
In that moment, she decided that whatever this was with Carlo, it should end before it went any further. The appearance of Franca, no matter how malevolent she acted toward Scottie, was a blessing. And Julie—an American breath of fresh air, of good sense, a reminder of who she was. What Scottie wanted wasn’t an affair with Carlo, it was a happy marriage to Michael. She wanted Michael to love her. She wanted them to be a family, to love each other and raise the child together. Things had gone terribly astray, but she could put them right again.
“Come with me,” Julie said, getting to her feet. “This might shock you. But I think you should see it anyway.”
“I’m pretty unshockable,” she said.
“That’s what I thought. But I didn’t have me there for moral support.”
Both of them barefoot, Julie took Scottie’s hand in hers and led her through the boxwood labyrinth to the grotto.
Scottie followed Julie down the steps into the darkness, where they found two men, their white sport shirts unbuttoned, their faces lit by a torch burning in an iron sconce shaped like a dragon’s head. One man was on his knees, the other standing, facing him, leaning back against the stone wall. Scottie, behind Julie, stopped and stared, while Julie studied her face intently. The man on his knees had turned to look at the two women, the other man’s large erect penis in his hand. In the torchlight, the chin of the kneeling man glistened, and so did the sweat on the chest of the other, whose eyes were closed. As they stood there, very still, the standing man moaned a little and thrust his hips forward.
14.
At least the villa was cool inside, the moonlight filtering between the uneven slats of the heavy green shutters. Gordon had strongarmed Michael into a lively poker game inside.
“Straight,” said Gordon with a smirk, laying down his cards. “Have you seen my grotto?”
Michael disliked his type of queen. That kind of behavior made straight people uncomfortable and gave homosexuals a bad name. It smacked of decadence and libertinism. It was the kind of thing people laughed at on a movie screen—Edward Everett Horton playing with dollies, or Cary Grant in a frilly robe—but condemned in real life. The Brits—they all seemed a little gay to him. But why couldn’t Gordon keep that kind of thing behind closed doors, like the rest of them did?
Still, Michael had always wanted to see a Renaissance-era grotto, so he followed Gordon’s directions, past the pool, through the labyrinth and down a set of stairs. Two women were silhouetted in the flickering torchlight, partially blocking his view of …
“Scottie. Scottie?!” Scottie was here, here. standing on the steps of the grotto, watching … watching.
“She deserves to know,” said a voice, and Michael focused on the other woman.
Julie walked past him up the stairs and disappeared.
15.
Michael grabbed Scottie’s arm hard and dragged her out, up the stone stairs. Her feet slipped, but he roughly pulled her until they were back in the garden again.
“Wait,” Scottie said.
“The car is this way,” said Michael.
“I have to find my shoes. I have to tell Carlo I’m leaving with you. And Ecco—we can’t leave the dog, Michael. Stop, you’re hurting me.” She pulled away from his grasp, and he turned on her.
“I thought you were—where is the marchese?”
“I don’t know. He disappeared. His wife was … ill.” She was furious with Carlo, she realized, but when Michael frowned, she added quickly, “I made him bring me here. I wanted information about Robertino.” A flashing series of images coalesced in Scottie’s mind, setting off a feeling of unease in her. “But Michael. Why are you here?”
“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said, casting his eyes downward. “I should have told you before, but I couldn’t.”
“What?”
He paused, glanced around, then said, “I work for the CIA.” The words hung in the air before them, erasing ugly images from Scottie’s mind.
“You do?”
“I’m here in Italy to get information on Communists. Information we can use against them to help our side.”
And then she kissed him. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, deep and hard on the mouth. She held him tight, and then slipped a hand down and ran it over the front of his pants.
“A spy,” she said. “You could have told me.”