The key chain was a plastic lamination stenciled with the skyline of Manhattan. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it before, but there it was, shaped like an apple, bright red and engraved with the initials:

NYC

He was on the scooter, straddling the seat.

“You were in New York?”

“It’s just a souvenir.”

––––––––

I lingered in the Campo, watching the tourists. I envied them, but I knew how it was. You looked down some alley and imagined yourself walking into some other life. But it didn’t happen. You were still yourself, standing in the same heat, restless, a little bored, damp under the arms, with that same sticky feeling between your legs. The heat rose up from the pavement, up under my skirt. I went inside to get away from the heat, but it was worse. I climbed the stairs and found Frank, his shirt off. He was on the phone, talking to Johnny. And I remembered those hands in my dream, pulling me under.

––––––––

They arrived at the stables later than intended and headed up along the ridge overlooking the stone villas and the yellowing fields. The heat was rising, and Johnny rode the stallion. It wasn’t what Frank had wanted, but Johnny insisted. He had experience with the animal, and the stallion was always high-strung first thing out of the barn.

“I’ll give you a shot at him later,” Johnny said. “Farther along.”

“I can handle him.”

They took it easy, stopping every now and again to get a look at San Gimignano, the old hill town across the ridge, sandstone towers and medieval walls off in the jagged distance.

How I know all this . . . how the hills looked, and what happened that afternoon . . . How I know . . . I came up from Rome after the accident and walked the trail along with Johnny and two Italian men. The Italians thought it might be hard for me, but I walked it anyway, so I could see what Frank had seen: the landscape with its gridded fields, its wild reserves and gravel roads.

I saw Frank swaying in the saddle, peering out at Tuscany, woozy in the awful heat, sensing as he always did the blackness at the center of everything, just as he sensed it in me. He was hungover, needing sleep. The insects buzzed like crazy. It induced amnesia, that noise. It made it seem like you were an insect yourself, a million insects, voracious in the grass. Tuscany spread out front of us, beautiful, ancient. The landscape had a runic quality, like a puzzle waiting to be solved.

“It was pretty hellish,” Johnny said.

The older of the two Italians was a local rancher who’d brought us up here in his four-wheel drive via the gravel road. The younger one was an officer in the local Carabinieri who had a report to file. They both knew Paolo Orsini. Everyone up this way did, and many were indebted in some manner.