Ross lifted his pack, slipped into it, then walked to the end of the bridge and west to the arched loggiato of the Uffizi.

The Uffizi’s courtyard was swollen with tourists. Though he had envisioned the inside of the museum a thousand times in his mind, Ross had never considered the transient community that thrived at its gates: the crisp-uniformed carabinieri with their crimson-striped pants, the gypsy beggars with frowning children carried in their arms as props, the tour guides with their frantic faces and closed umbrellas held up like lightning rods, and the sidewalk peddlers from Nigeria and Morocco with their posters and handbags and Taiwan-made trinkets spread out on blankets. The air of the Uffizi courtyard was filled with the babble of a hundred different tongues, like a daily Pentecost descending on the gallery.

A line stretched from the admission door nearly a hundred yards to the end of the building’s long corridor, to the Palazzo Vecchio and its fraudulent David. Ross walked to the less crowded reservation line and waited outside the nylon-roped stanchions that surrounded the entrance. A stocky, barrel-chested Italian, with pocked skin and black, wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail, stood guard at the entrance, clipboard in hand, occasionally calling out to the line the names of those with reservations. Ross stepped up to him.

“Excuse me, signore, I am here to apply for a job.”

The man looked up from his list. “What job?”

“As a tour guide.”

“They hire for all jobs inside. Past the gift shop there is a door.”

The man unhooked the rope and waved Ross on through.

For more than three years he had waited and hoped for this moment, and it filled him with electricity as noticeable as the cool air that met him as he stepped inside. The lobby was crowded as a bus of Japanese tourists congregated in the room while their guide helped them gain admittance. In the room’s center was a glass cubicle with the sign “Biglietti” where four women sat behind Plexiglas with their cash registers and ticket machines, each facing a different direction, watching the crowd with boredom. In the back of the room, under an archway, was a small gift shop where maps and guidebooks were sold.

Past it, around the corner, was a door with a small plaque that read, “Direzione del Museo.” The door was partially open and Ross looked inside. A slender, beak-nosed woman with thick-rimmed eyeglasses sat at a cluttered desk, writing. Her hair was dark, pulled back from her forehead. She glanced up.

“May I help you?” She spoke in clear English slightly bent with a Florentine accent.

“I was sent here to see you.”

“Who sent you?”

“The man outside. He said this is where you were taking applications for tour guide positions.”

She looked at him quizzically. “Come in, please.” Ross stepped inside, laying his pack on the floor. “I do not know why he would say that. We do not hire that way. There is an exam given once a year. It is very competitive. We usually have more than a thousand applicants for the position.”