We started moving, the three of us, toward a table my brother had found in another corner of the room, and as we moved I felt myself stepping into some old-fashioned world—full of glamour and gossip, striped beach chairs and cocoa lotion and mint drinks in tall glasses. Gangsters in swimming trunks and sunglasses.

Johnny winked at me.

My brother had curly hair and soft eyes. Because of those eyes, he could communicate inexpressible things with a nod of his head. Though my brother had his flaws, he watched out for me. We had that bond. I looked where he was looking and saw Frank Paris making his way across the room. Frank hadn’t spotted us yet. The way he walked, his posture, you could tell Frank was American. He wore a white shirt open at the collar, and jeans. He was a vigorous man but these last months that vigor had started to fade. He’d been drinking more, slipping into old habits, gambling.

His face still held that wry smile.

I made room for him at the table.

“What kept you?”

“Correspondence.”

“Business?” my brother asked. His eyes met mine. Johnny knew about Frank’s money problems.

“An old friend,” Frank said. “E-mail. That’s all.”

“I hear you are a famous writer,” Paolo said. “Your brother-in-law has told me all about you.”

When he was younger, Frank had written a novel about a young man who ruined himself gambling on horses. It was a book of an autobiographical nature, neglected in America but adored by the French, who’d made it into a movie that had a lingering reputation. The interest in horses was something Paolo and Frank shared. Paolo kept a small stable outside his villa in Florence and owned a stallion who had run in the Palio di Siena a few years earlier.

“The stallion is a handsome animal,” Paolo said. “You should see him.”

“I’d like to ride him.”

Paolo hesitated. “He can be hard to handle.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Frank. He grew up around horses,” said Johnny. He often flattered Frank a little too much, overdoing it. “And anyway, he’s quite the famous writer.”.

“Just the one book,” said Frank.

“And influential with the Roman clergy.”

“Hardly,” said Frank.

“What do you mean?” asked Paolo.

“Cardinal Whiting is his uncle.”

“Well, then, perhaps he will make me pope,” said Paolo.

We laughed then, and Frank Paris laughed too—though uncomfortably, since his uncle was an embarrassment to him, a public moralizer, influential in certain circles but with a worldview inimical to his own.