I’d seen plenty of photos on television and in the papers. Brian Krumas was as photogenic as John-John or Barack. Still a bachelor at forty-one, he generated plenty of copy in the gossip rags. Which way did he swing? and Who did he swing with? were perennial favorite points of speculation.

The dogs were starting to whine and paw at me: they needed exercise. I asked my cousin if she wanted to run with us and have dinner after, but she said she had a date with a couple of young women from the campaign, it was a chance to start making friends in her new home.

Her phone rang again when I went into my bedroom to change. In the five minutes it took me to get into my shorts and running shoes, she took three more calls. Oh, youth and the cellphone—inseparable in sickness and in health.

She ran downstairs with the dogs as I locked my apartment. When I got to the door, she was kissing Mr. Contreras good-bye, thanking him for tea, it was totally fab meeting him.

“Come over on Sunday,” Contreras suggested. “I’ll barbecue ribs out back. Or are you one of those vegetarians?”

Petra laughed again. “My dad’s in the meat business. He’d disown me and my sisters if any of us stopped eating meat.”

She flew down the walk. Hers was the shiny Nissan Pathfinder I’d squeezed in front of. She bumped my rear fender twice clearing the curb.

When I winced, my neighbor said, “It’s just paint, after all, cookie. And family’s family, and she’s a well-behaved kid. Pretty, too.”

“Drop-dead gorgeous, don’t you mean?”

“She’ll be brushing ’em off with a flyswatter, and I’ll be there to help.” He laughed so hard he started to wheeze.

The dogs and I left him coughing in the middle of the sidewalk. Something about all that young energy made me lighthearted, too.

6 - FIT FOR YOUR HOOF

6

FIT FOR YOUR HOOF

I WOKE NEXT MORNING AT FIVE. I WAS OVER MY JET LAG, but, since getting back, I couldn’t seem to sleep normally. I made an espresso and went out on the little back porch with Peppy, who’d spent the night with me. The sky was bright with the midsummer sunrise. Ten days ago, I’d been watching the sun rise over the Umbrian hills with Morrell, yet both he and Italy felt so remote that they didn’t seem to have been part of my life at all.

The back door on the apartment next to mine opened, and my new neighbor emerged. The unit had stood empty for several months. Mr. Contreras told me a man who played in a band had bought it while I was away, and that the medical resident on the ground floor had worried about whether he would keep everyone up all night with loud music.