“Don’t worry. I’ll fly out to see you.”

“In Italy?”

“I’ll visit you in Rome.”

“His apartment is small.”

“We can walk the Spanish Steps.”

“Not right away.”

“Pardon?”

I could hear in her voice the flat, sad sound of the midwestern town where she’d grown up.

“As soon as we get settled.”

“I’m not planning to move in with you.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I want you to come. I miss you already.”

Maybe everyone feels this way after the fact, I don’t know. Truth was I didn’t miss her, at least not as much as I should have. Rather I felt her disappear into that empty space inside me, in the dark hollows, in one of her tight-fitting dresses that flattered her figure. Then one day my brother stopped by Frank’s place in Rome, on the Campo de’ Fiori, to tell me she’d died in a car accident along the Biloxi coast. She had been riding in a convertible with the top down, in the passenger seat, her latest husband behind the wheel.

“It’s just us now,” Johnny said.

“Poor Mama.”

I didn’t cry, not then. Johnny let loose and I petted him. He put his head against my chest. I stroked his hair. He could be very sweet, and I comforted him the best I could.

––––––––

I should have stepped away then—from Paolo and my brother, that night at the Purple Café—but people at the tables nearby were cutting glances in our direction and bending their heads toward one another, whispering. Paolo Orsini attracted attention. He was a good-looking man whose face was often in the news, and in the scandal sheets, too. Much of the attraction had to do with the fact he was married to Isabella.

Maybe that attracted me, too.

Isabella was an actress, famous for her dark-eyed pout, her round cheeks, her role as the ingenue once upon a time, stumbling about the ruins in a tattered dress. She was older now, but her allure hadn’t faded. She might no longer appear in American films, and Italian directors, too, might have abandoned her for younger stars, but the Italians themselves clung to her. At the same time, the tabloids relished Paolo’s inconstancies.

The marriage was on the skids.

Paolo was a gigolo and a brute.

He had taken control of Isabella’s estate, owned an interest in an online casino, and played silent partner in a construction firm controlled by the Mafia.

The truth of such stories was hard to know. The details of his life with Isabella were often contradictory.

“Over here—a table,” said Johnny.