“ ‘Let me ask you,’ he said. ‘When you were alive, did you feel you had to give back something for life?’

“ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I did.’

“ ‘I see. And so you are like my old Master with his poetry. But you mustn’t follow his example! Imagine it, Quinn, what I have seen. And there are small things to do. There are loving things.’

“ ‘You think so?’ I asked.

“ ‘I know so,’ he said. ‘But come, let’s go back to the palazzo. I know Petronia is waiting for you.’

“I laughed a short ironic little laugh. ‘That’s comforting,’ I said.

“As we stood to leave the café I stopped and looked at myself intently in the mirrored wall. I looked human enough even to my enhanced vision. And no one in the café had so much as stared at us, except for an occasional pair of pretty girls who had come and gone after their espresso. Human enough. Yes. I was pleased with it. I was magnificently pleased with it.”

CHAPTER 42

42

“WHEN WE RETURNED to the palazzo, which we did by ordinary means, that is, walking, we were told by the young serving girl, who was now frightened out of her wits, that Petronia was in her dressing room and wanted to see me there.

“I found the room entrancing. The entire wall was covered in mirrors, and Petronia sat at a great curve of granite, on a bench that appeared made of the same material, with a velvet cushion on it, while the young Adonis finished her hair.

“She was clad as a man in a buff-colored velvet coat and pants, with a ruffled white shirt that would have looked good in the eighteenth century, I well imagined, and at her throat was a huge rectangular cameo that was crowded with little figures, the whole thing surrounded by diamonds.

“Her hair was pulled straight back from her face, and the boy was plaiting it for her. She had two threads of diamonds running over her head, which as I’ve mentioned was beautifully shaped for this kind of severity, and the two threads of diamonds were being plaited into her hair.

“The room was open to the sea like all the rooms of the palazzo which I had seen, though I think I forgot to mention it with the bath.

“The sky appeared violet to me in spite of the hour, and once again the stars seemed to be moving; in fact the sky appeared to be moving into the room.

“My breath was quite literally taken away from me, not merely by the stars and their various patterns but by the sheer beauty of Petronia in her sharp male clothing, with her bold head once again revealed by the austerity of her pulled-back hair.