“I thought you might want to take a look while I’m in the apothecary. There’s no need for you to come. Just give me the list.”

“I promised Paolo.”

“I can make sure of the ingredients in a way you can’t. You’ll have your part to play, don’t worry.”

“What part?”

Johnny spoke with his eyes, speaking without saying. Paolo was right about Johnny in that way. All this time, Johnny held on to my wrist. He held it gently and didn’t say anything, but I understood. He knew everything, the same way he always knew everything. He knew what was going on behind the scenes in Rome.

“Sister?”

I didn’t really want to go in. Such places were alien to me. The smells were unfamiliar, the rows of containers: animals ground to power, organs suspended in vitreous fluid, tiny capsules filled with gels packaged halfway around the world, little bottles wrapped in discolored paper.

I gave Johnny the blue piece of paper with the exotic names written in the Emperor’s exotic script.

He let go of my hand.

He kissed me on the lips.

I waited, with the meter running. I stepped outside the car and smoked a cigarette. I was tempted to leave my brother then. To get away, from him and Paolo both. I’d had such chances before, but I didn’t know if I’d have one again. All I had to do was get back in and tell the driver. He’d take me anywhere I wanted. Out to Palm Springs. All the way to Phoenix, if I gave him the money. Across the ocean to Sierra Leone. Instead I walked across the street to look at Isabella’s pink star in the concrete.

––––––––

My husband’s regimen had several aspects. There were the herbs and powders he mixed at mealtimes. The exact proportions of these didn’t stay the same but changed from day to day, from dose to dose, in a manner that had been prescribed beforehand by his practitioner in Rome. As to the exact nature of these ingredients, it was difficult for me to tell. The correspondence between the outer packaging and the lettering on the bottles wasn’t clear. Some containers were hand lettered in Chinese script; others not labeled at all. Of all these various tinctures and powders, the amber bottle concerned Paolo most, because it induced the euphoric effect that eased the pain and made the rest of the regime tolerable.

Orsini held it to the light.

“The color,” he said.

“Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said. “I was just admiring.”