Isabella said nothing. She picked up the case and went into the closet. She rummaged around. Then I remembered the other part of the dream. A pair of hands. Reaching up from the ground, pulling me by the legs, grabbing, pulling me under, back into the land of the yellow cups.

Isabella emerged from the closet.

I held Paolo’s hand under the covers. He started to speak, but I squeezed his fingers, afraid of what might happen. There was a sharp intake of breath, and Isabella paused. She didn’t look at us. She stepped over the dress and went out the door.

“She’ll tell my husband.”

“She doesn’t know he’s here.”

“She’ll ruin me.”

“No,” he said. “It’s me she wants to ruin.”

He kissed me then. I kissed him back.

“But first there’s this business in New York. The perfume shoot. And an article in Vanity Fair.”

“Are you going?”

“It’s expected.”

I told him about my dream then. About the hands pulling me under.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “About your husband. Or Isabella.”

“No?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll protect you.”

We made love again, more fiercely than before.

––––––––

That morning, I walked home through the square where I’d gotten lost last night: past a woman selling bread, children kicking a rag ball. It seemed remote now, my fear from the night before, of Lodovico, of the silly dogs. At my building the landlady saw me return up the stairs alone, disheveled. Frank Paris was still at Orsini’s, probably in one of the guest rooms, sleeping off his evening.

He came home later, sheepish and embarrassed.

He expected me to upbraid him, but instead I was more attentive to him, and a bit submissive, as if delivering on my brother’s promise that I would become more dedicated if only he would assert himself.

That same evening, Frank went out with Johnny again. It was my brother’s idea—and had something to do with the changing odds on one of the races leading up to the Palio. Not too long after they had gone, someone knocked on my door.

It was Orsini.

He fell to his knees and buried his head in my skirt, there in the open doorway. He kissed me between the legs

“My jewel,” he said.

I heard footsteps on the staircase below and got a glimpse of my landlady’s head as she climbed. I tried to shush Paolo, but he kept muttering over and over, kissing me as he muttered. Telling me how he had to leave the next morning with his wife for New York but needed to see me first. To touch me. To feel my body against his.

I let him in.

Three days later, Isabella was dead.

PART TWO

11.