I walked another half block, stopped to glance into a bar, then started walking again, faster. When I next stopped, it was a tabacchi shop where I looked in the window and spotted the green tin of La Paz tobacco, my great-grandfather’s brand. I caught my reflection in the glass too, then another one coming up behind me.

45

“I hoped I’d catch you.” Alex said, slightly out of breath as if she’d been running.

“Catch me?”

“Chiara said you’d just left.” She studied me a moment. “Are you all right?”

I told her I was fine and asked if she wanted to get coffee or something to eat, had almost said a drink. If I continued to steal things, I would have to go to a meeting, and soon.

Alex said, “Sure,” slipped her arm through mine, and we headed in the opposite direction while she talked about getting her sublet in order, the sun beginning to fade. We walked several blocks and ended up in the Piazza della Signoria, the large expansive square dominated by the fortress-like Palazzo Vecchio, people taking turns having their picture taken with Michelangelo’s oversized statue of David.

“Don’t they know it’s a copy?” I said, the idea of forgery very much on my mind.

Alex shrugged like she didn’t care and wandered over to the Fountain of Neptune, the marble sea god surrounded by cherubs and mermaids. Even in winter, the fountain was going strong. From my angle, it looked like Neptune was taking a leak—and I said so.

“Classy,” Alex said but laughed, then tugged me away, spray from the fountain getting us both wet. She stopped to read a small plaque, in Italian, and asked me to help translate. It was about the Renaissance monk Savonarola, who had preached repentance like some medieval Billy Graham. It explained how he’d been hanged and burned right there in the square. I suggested it was a fitting end for a guy who tried to control people’s lives, burned books and anything else he considered blasphemous or vain, including a lot of great paintings—Botticelli and Michelangelo among them.

“He deserved worse!” Alex snapped.

“What’s worse than being burned alive?”

“Some people just deserve to—” She stopped, wrapped her arms around her torso, and shivered.

I put my arm over her shoulder, but she shrugged me off as if I had just made it worse, whatever it was. I backed away, hands up, “Sorry,” I said, a little surprised, a little hurt.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “It was a chill, that’s all—from the fountain’s spray—and I didn’t want to get you wet.”

“I’m already wet,” I said and told her it was okay. But what had set her off? What had I done that was so bad?

At the edge of the square, I got that feeling again. Ha un amico a Firenze? I glanced over my shoulder, but there was no one lurking nearby.

Alex, in a better mood now, took my hand, said she wanted to see the Duomo square at night, and I was happy to leave this piazza for another.