Murphy's Law (29 page)

“Well?” he demanded.

Faith tugged on his arm. He’d been standing stock still in the middle of the busy pedestrian street so long people had started flowing around him as naturally as if he’d been a fountain or a bench. As immovable as a rock and twice as thick.

“Come on, Nick. Let’s see if you can walk and talk at the same time.” She pulled at his arm again and he moved forward slowly, like an ocean liner being tugged out of port. “That’s it. One step at a time, left, right, left… See, that’s not so hard.”

He shot her a fulminating look and she grinned as they moved slowly down the steepest part of the gradient, which would take them to the central square. “You gonna tell me who?” he grumbled.

She sighed. “It’s pure speculation, you understand, and I certainly won’t repeat this in front of Dante, and don’t you dare tell him, but…I think Madeleine left me that note.”

“Madeleine…that lanky lady with the beaky nose and gray hair?”

Lanky lady with a beaky nose and gray hair was the best description of Madeleine she had ever heard. “That’s the one, yeah. She’s been acting very strangely these past few days. And she seems to be obsessed with the fact I—well, that things have been going well for me.”

Going well was an understatement. Co-chairing two panels, chairing another one, being asked to submit another paper to
Quantimath,
Leonardo Gori singling her out for special treatment, her friendship with Richard Allen. She was on a roll.

“She’s jealous?”

“Well.” Faith grappled with the unfamiliar yet thrilling thought that someone might be jealous of
her.
“Um, I think so. She has more seniority than I do, she’s on the staff committee and, for some reason, she was in Kane’s good graces. But she isn’t going anywhere with her career and she isn’t—” Faith stopped.
She isn’t as good as I am,
was what she was going to say. It sounded so unlike anything she’d ever say, how could she—

“She isn’t as good as I am,” a strange voice said, and she almost looked around to see who said that outrageously vain thing.

Nick stopped and nodded as if she had stated something obvious. “So she sees someone she thought weak coming up from behind, fast, and holds out the stick to trip them up. Oldest trick in the book.”

Faith blinked. “Well, yes. In a manner of speaking.” She tugged at his arm again. He really had to learn to walk and talk at the same time. “Come on, Nick. We can’t just stand in the middle of the street all afternoon while you ponder the politics of the Southbury Math Department.”

“If it’s old Beak Nose who wrote that note, I can live with it.” Nick started lumbering forward. “She seems harmless enough. It’s the thought of anyone else—”

“Oh, Faith! Do wait for us!” an English voice called out.

Faith turned and saw Richard and Tim scampering down the steepest part of the
Via di Città
.

What a pair,
she thought
, and how utterly un-Italian they look
.
One wildly tall and gangly with a red beard down to the middle of his chest, dressed in cheerfully absurd clothes, a brilliant clown. The other, short and tubby, in a beige shirt and beige shorts, wispy beige hair caught in a thin ponytail, stout beige legs pumping to keep up with Richard.

She couldn’t help it. She glanced to her right at Nick, so tall and broad and perfectly formed. So outrageously handsome, looking so completely at home on an Italian street.

Then she looked back at Tim.

Nick looked as perfect as the buildings surrounding them—an otherworldly, unattainable perfection.

Tim was beige and clumsy. Inept.

That both men had been her lovers struck her as absurd.

Tim had caught her gaze, moving from Nick’s perfect form to himself, to his ugly, bowed legs and as their eyes met she saw a flash of hot anger in Tim’s.

He had caught her comparing him to Nick and had seen that he’d come out wanting. A flash of a moment that changed everything.

How many times had she herself suffered that? Some man talking to her whose eye had been suddenly caught by a beautiful woman walking by and who then politely turned back to her, already bored? And she could clearly read in his eyes that she had been compared and found wanting. That he wanted to be anywhere but here. That he wanted her to disappear off the face of the earth.

It was the way of the world and it was cruel.

Tim had paled and stopped near a storefront. Richard leaned down and Tim craned his neck as he said something to him. Richard nodded his head once and, with one last look at her, Tim veered off into a side street.

I’ve hurt him
, Faith thought sadly.

Richard waved at her and came striding down the street, his red hair damp and wild around his shoulders. “I’m so glad I caught up with you. Leonardo wanted to talk to you. I said I’d seen you and we went out to look for you, but you’d just…left.”

He looked puzzled, as he often did, at the wayward behavior of humans. Faith had been there and then she hadn’t and he couldn’t seem to connect the two. Faith knew he had no sense whatsoever of time, and in his head, she had disappeared in an instant.

“But you’re here now—” He beamed. “—so let’s go. Leonardo’s saving us a place in his contrada. The Eagle. Jolly good name, what?” He laughed, a loud bray. He smacked large, liver-colored lips. “Fabulous food. Leonardo took us to his contrada for the pre-Palio meal last year.” He frowned. “Or was it the year before last? Never mind. Anyway, he said to be sure to bring you with us, if we saw you. So, off we go.”

He had taken her gently by the arm, his huge hand curving easily around her biceps, and had started walking.

Leonardo wanted her at the dinner.

There was an etiquette to conferences.

During the conference itself, all participants were equal. But after the conference, only a select few were invited by the host, it being understood that was where contacts were established. Where careers were made.

And she was being asked to sit with The Chosen.

“What did you think of Kabusaki’s paper? Interesting notion, don’t you think?” Richard pulled her forward and she followed, smiling.

“I think it smacked of some smart undergraduate’s thinking,” Faith said. “Kabusaki has never shown any signs of original thought before.”

Richard threw back his head and brayed to the soft Sienese sky. “Too right, my dear And I know who the undergraduate is and where he lives. Brilliant guy.” He winked at her. “He’ll be invited next year, too, just like you.”

Too. Which meant…Richard Allen thinks I am brilliant.

Or did it? Maybe she was reading too much into what was essentially a casual comment. That was easy to do. Maybe he’d meant—

Faith realized they were walking around the curve of buildings that hid the
Piazza del Campo,
and that she’d left Nick behind. She stopped. Richard stopped, too, and looked back, then looked down at her.

“Do you want that chap to eat with us?” he asked doubtfully. He was speaking to her, but his braying voice carried.

Nick was standing behind them on the slope leading down.

“Nick?” Faith called out. “Do you want to come with us?”

She knew what the situation looked like. Two people politely asking a third—an intruder—to join them.

On the one hand, she’d like to eat with Nick. On the other, this was the last night of the conference and she wanted to network, and it would be hard with him distracting her. Because when he was near her she found it hard to think of others.

Nick swallowed, his throat working up and down visible from a distance. “No,” he called out. “Thanks anyway. I’ll pick you up after the dinner and drive you back.”

“Not to worry,” Richard boomed. “There’s a minibus going back up at midnight.”

Nick’s face suddenly turned predatory. “I’ll pick you up after dinner and drive you back.” In terms of brains, there was no contest between Richard and Nick. In terms of sheer male willpower, there was no contest, either.

“Okay.”

Richard smiled weakly, took her arm again, and moved her along. She had to scamper to keep up with his long legs.

“There’s a thing Leonardo wants to talk to you about. I think you might find it interesting. We’ve been planning this for the past couple of years and now it’s coming to fruition. I’ll be interested to know what you think.”

“Mm.” Faith was barely listening. She craned her neck and saw Nick, still standing in the center of the road, watching them walk away.

He stood looking after them, face hard and set. And damned sexy.

“Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

“Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

“Where’s Nick?” Mike leaned over to shout in his brother’s ear over the noise of the Snails’ happy cheers.

“Over there. Avoiding Serenella Gattini’s breasts.” Dante’s fork speared a slice of boar sausage then pointed to the table set up on the far right of the street. “And brooding.”

Serenella was the contrada vamp. She was doing her best to attract Nick’s attention, all but thrusting her breasts in his face, but Nick wasn’t having any. He was sitting and frowning down at the wine in his glass. Luckily, it was a very good one, a
Vernaccia di San Gimignano
, which, at any other time, would have kept him happy. Certainly capable of appreciating breasts.

Mike grinned. “Brooding? Over that girl Lou keeps calling about? Faith?”

“Yeah. She got a threatening letter this afternoon and it threw Nick for a loop.”

Mike swung his head around, eyes narrowed. “A threatening letter?”

Briefly, Dante filled his brother in. Mike did his best to concentrate, but after a minute or two, he was listening with only half an ear, his eyes wandering over the happy crowd. Now was no time to worry about murder and threats.

Dante couldn’t agree more. He leaned back in his chair at the podium and surveyed his kingdom. And a rich and satisfying one it was, too.

Trestle tables had been set up along the
Via San Marco
and the
Via della Diana
. There were between five and six hundred people sitting at the tables under the red-and-yellow banners of the Snail, the red-and-yellow bandanas of the Snail around their necks, yelling the Snail cheer.

“
Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

“Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

Mike started singing with the crowd, wildly off-key. He was drinking and eating too much, but he could, since his wife Loredana wasn’t around to breathe down his neck and recite his cholesterol count like a chant. Loredana had been born in the Forest
contrada
. Though most of the year Dante thought she was a great sister-in-law, wife and mother, she morphed right into The Enemy come Palio time.

She always stayed at her parents’ house during the last week before the Palio and on the big day itself. Contrada tensions ran too high during the Palio for two people of differing contradas to share a roof. Or a bed.

Which was fine. Loredana’s father, Alberto Conti, was the captain of the Forest contrada this year and would have had no compunctions about using his daughter for espionage.

Loredana would have reported right back to her father about who Mike was seeing and how much was being offered as bribes to other contrada’s jockeys.

The Forest and the Snail had been tepid allies since 1790, but come Palio time, all bets were off. Right now Loredana was sitting down in
Via Franciosa
wearing a bandana with the green-and-orange colors of the Selva, the Forest, screaming her head off.
Se-Se-Selva!

In the years of the Snails’ drought, Loredana had come home five times after a Forest win, looking insufferably smug. That had to end.

Tomorrow.

“
Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

“Chio-chio-chiocciola!”

The chant went up again from a long table full of teenaged girls. The boys of the contrada, pressed into waiter duty, hustled about filling glasses with Chianti and passing out slices of fried polenta from long, steel serving platters.

Dante picked up one of the slices, still hot from the pan, and slipped it into his mouth. It was oily and salty and crunchy and delicious.

The Snail women had been arguing and planning the menu for seven months now. If the fates continued to look kindly upon the Snail, the contrada would be celebrating tomorrow’s victory for the better part of next year.

It would be expensive.

The Palio was probably the only horse race in the world where the victor paid. All the bribes offered were nominal—to be paid up only if the contrada won. The Snail had a huge war chest, built up over the past years of not winning.

Winning the race this year would cost a hell of a lot of money. Everyone knew the Snail wanted a win badly, and had the horse and the jockey to do it, so prices had inflated accordingly. It could cost upwards of a hundred-thousand euros to bribe other jockeys and celebrate the win.

Worth every penny.

Celebrations would last all year. Come September there would be the victory banquet, where the Snail would host over five thousand people. The guest of honor would be Lina, the winning horse, tethered to the podium of notables and fed a special meal of oats and sugar from the traditional pewter platter.

Through the long winter months, there would be more dinners, seminars on the exact details of the short run, with a second-by-second recounting of the glorious event. The school kids of the contrada would paint endless posters which would have pride of place along the San Marco Center’s walls. Old men would reminisce, tears in their rheumy eyes, gnarled hands around a shot glass of grappa.

Snails would walk a little taller for a year. Snail women would become more beautiful, Snail men more dashing. The glorious win would be fodder for conversation a hundred—a thousand—years from now.

The square was alive with the raucous sounds of contrada chants, full-voiced boasts about tomorrow’s certain win. Men and women flirted in the dying evening light. The banners overhead ruffled and snapped in the evening air. The breeze made the candles on the long tables flicker.

Except for the clothes, it was a scene that could have taken place five or fifty or five hundred years ago with the same faces, same chants, same behavior. For almost a thousand years, the people of Siena had been celebrating the days of the Palio exactly as they were now—by eating, drinking, arguing and laughing.