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Dedication

For JAS

and from her

LFF

and from them

CFF

Eccoci qua

Epigraph

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

—Mark Strand, “Keeping Things Whole”

I thought I knew you. Then I learned that I did not. I thought I knew myself. I now know I have a lot more to learn.

If I start to speak about the drugs, the drink, my mind, the way my emotions were stirred by everything that I discovered in the middle of that brutal night, I’ll try to explain myself, and I can’t do that, not now.

Nor can I see you right now, or speak to you. I have to go away. Please don’t come find me. Please.

Ten Months Earlier

Andrew Weissman’s heart was pounding. He heard it, the roar and pulse of it, in his ears. He could almost feel the blood juicing through his body, propelling him forward. When he realized that there were only three more bridges before he had to turn away from the Arno, he made one last push. He dug down into himself, past the fatigue, past the thirst and the heat, to see what he could find. He shot forward, a body hurtling through time, slicing through the soupy air, flying.

After the second bridge he began to slow down, and the sweat came up profusely. Somehow his body knew, as he was closing in on the end of a run, that it was okay to cut free, to liquefy. When he reached the last bridge, he slowed down even further, relaxing into an easy jog that carried him all the way into the lobby of a palazzo on the left-hand side of the via Tornabuoni. Just as the elevator door was about to close, he slipped in.

A woman stood in the corner of the cab. She had long spilling golden hair and skin so translucent that it might have been made of paper. She was holding a large padded envelope, its flap ripped open. On top of the envelope were the first of what appeared to be a thick stack of typewritten pages. Her eyes were racing across the print on them at a fierce, unbroken pace.

In his saturated shirt and shorts Andrew sank into the opposite corner and watched her. She didn’t once look up from the page, not even when the door opened again upstairs. She continued to read as she stepped out of the elevator.

A sheet slipped out of her grasp and floated to the ground.

“Wait,” Andrew said.