People watched us. They recognized Paolo, and I wondered if anyone recognized me as well, from my small role or my pictures in the magazines, in fashion advertisements. These latter had shown me in the guise of a poet—somewhat ridiculous, wearing long-sleeved, billowing blouses—and the ads included snippets from my imaginary journal. The campaign had been well displayed, and I thought for a second I heard my name whispered. I wondered if Paolo and I would be an item in the gossips tomorrow, if someone here would snap our picture.

“I’ll be having a get-together in a few weeks,” said Paolo.

His eyes stayed fixed on my husband, but he was addressing me, I thought. He wanted to see me again.

The music grew more chaotic. I felt it inside me. The violet light spilled over the small stage and onto the audience. I felt that, too. A couple started making out at a table nearby, showing off. Orsini was watching me and I felt something brush against my knee. I started to look up surreptitiously—to catch the look in Orsini’s eyes—but just as I did so my husband reached down into my lap, curling his hand about my fingers.

3.

I have a tablet here on the Avenida. When I type in my name, the past, imagined or otherwise, rushes back. Pictures of myself on blogs, in news feeds, many taken without my knowledge, from unfamiliar angles, with scarce resemblance. Though some of these women are me, others are falsely labeled.

Isabella . . .

Lying with one cheek pressed to the floor, lips parted, eyes open, glazed like the surface of some forgotten lake. Hair mussed. A dark tendril splitting her forehead, curling across her bruised face.

In the stories of her death, my name is mentioned, and Johnny’s, too. We’re not innocent of everything . . . I don’t pretend that . . . we were typical tourists . . . glamour struck. . . enamored of the surface of things . . . but there were others more brutal.

There had been another man there that night at the Purple Café. Maybe I had noticed him then—sitting in one of those stiffed-back chairs, drinking at one of the tables that lined the rear wall. The Purple was not a large place. Over the course of an evening, the clientele had a chance to look one another over pretty well. It was part of the design of the place, part of the attraction. He was a wide-shouldered man—sharply dressed, with a loose-lipped smile and a black, penetrating glance. He had a receding hairline and wore his hair slicked back. Though I didn’t pay so much attention to him at the time, he saw me. If I’m to believe this little device.

These pictures, these scrawls of light in the dark . . .

The man’s name . . .

Ernesto Lodovico.

A bodyguard in Orsini’s service.

Ordinarily assigned to Isabella.