“Poor lady,” said Weezy. “Can you imagine her driving over the mountains all that way and what must have taken place between them? You can just bet he must have rejected her—in some nice, smooth, Italian-men’s-style way, but rejection all the same. She should have told me; I’d have helped her.”

The light of sunset had faded in the room and Weezy moved to turn on a lamp.

“What’s going to become of us?” Tina asked with a quaver in her voice that made Weezy look over at her.

“We’ll just go our own ways, I suppose,” Weezy said offhandedly. “You can just stay put in graduate school; that’s safe enough. That can be your family, your womb.”

“My family? My womb?” Tina repeated. “Oh, God, Weezy, why did you say that? Jesus, Weezy, I think I’m pregnant.”

36. Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-six

Tina put down her copy of Il Messaggero and looked about her. Her view of Piazza Navona allayed the anxiety she felt about her coming appointment with Angela. Two women passed her table at the caffè; they were old, old, bent over, and they walked arm-in-arm chatting like two schoolgirls. Then a cigarette vendor with his contraband American brands came and approached her.

“Buon giorno, signorina,” he said pleasantly.

Tina let herself relish the civility and charm of the Mediterranean huckster, so unlike the American sell of whatever. Here you were greeted with a proper salutation before any business was thought of. In fact, “Bella giornata,” the smiling man continued. “A nice day and here’s a good buy to go with it. Look—three packs for a thousand lire.”

Tina bought the three packs just for the enjoyment of the exchange. She’d give them to Weezy. As the man smiled and pocketed the thousand-lire bill, he said he could tell she was una ragazza profonda e sensibile. Italians, she thought, always said things like that after a one-minute acquaintance. It used to make Tina shudder with impatience at their shallowness but now she didn’t mind.

The cigarette man ambled over to other tables and the parade in the piazza went on: marketing housewives, tourists, vendors, nannies and babies, beggars, dealers, faggots, touts, feminists, schoolchildren, duchesses, lawyers, whores, petty clerks, and pimps, crossing and re-crossing the elliptical piazza, the old racecourse of emperors, on their errands.

The baroque facade of Sant’Agnese in Agonia undulated in the warm air; the phallic fountains thrust themselves upward in awesome jets. Tina ordered her breakfast: a cappuccino with a sprinkle of cocoa on the froth and a grilled Würstel on a bun. She sat in the sun, loving its warmth on her bare arms and legs. She let her mind empty as her eyes swung round the ellipse just as they were meant to, circling the excrescences of rococo exuberance, moving and skimming like the swallows at dusk.