The Chapel (15 page)

I reread Sam's email. Five or six times, I tapped out a few lines of response and deleted them. I couldn't quite imagine what Mitchell would have wanted me to say about the money. I could imagine what Mitchell would have said, but he wouldn't have wanted me to say that, which is why he'd left it to me to say what had to be said. In a fit of inspiration, I added Rachel's name to the address line and wrote:

Dearest you two—

I miss you, and I miss your father, and among the many hopes and wishes he harbored on your behalf, I know he most wanted you both to thrive and love your lives. And I know it pleased him to think that he could leave you both with evidence of the simple truth that he carried you with him in his mind and heart every day. Your father left you each a bequest of $425,000. My intention is to give you the full amount immediately. When I return to Cambridge, I will put you both in touch with Lawrence Macomber, a longtime friend of your father, who now is a director at the Harvard Management Company. He kindly offered to advise you both on strategies for making the most of this gift.

I know that your father left each of you with much more than a sum of money, but that material is wholly yours to tally and invest as you see fit. The money is another matter. It initially passed into my hands, and I write today to let you know it is on its way to you.

I hit “Save” because I heard a knock at the door. Or I might have hit “Save” because I realized I was about to give away almost a million dollars—and then I heard the knock.

As I opened the door, Ricardo hoisted a silver tray overhead and squeezed past me. He made a beeline for the little desk, which was crammed with my stuff, so he twirled toward the unmade bed. He said nothing. He lowered the tray and got it firmly into both of his hands. It was a full coffee service for two, with two flutes of blood-orange juice and two crème-filled pasty cornets.

“It's beautiful,” I said.

He nodded dismissively, as if that should have gone without saying.

“You'll want to put it down,” I said. I pointed to the bed.

He didn't love that idea. He was staring at the bathroom door.

I knew the sink counter was even less promising than the desk.

“So, so, so. You are one?”

He barked out the English words as if he had just memorized them. I said, “I am one. Why?”

“One,” he said, dubiously, glancing at the two of everything on his tray. “
Uno
,” he added, just so there could be no confusion.

“Yes. One.” He seemed to be accusing me of something. “
Uno.
Why?” I had intended to thank him for the glue, but he was staring at the bathroom door again, as if he suspected I'd secreted in a bunch of freeloaders for breakfast. I bent down to pull the comforter halfway up the bed, and the towel fell off my head, which only heightened my sense of fraudulence. With as much authority as I could muster in a bathrobe and bare feet, I pointed to the bed again. “Here, please.”

While he set down the tray, I went to the desk to dig up my wallet for a tip. I pulled out a five-euro note, but when I turned, Ricardo was backing out of the bathroom, and as he headed out of my room, he slid open the closet door—one last check for unregistered guests—and then he left without another word.

T
HE HOTEL RESTAURANT WAS STILL CROWDED AT EIGHT-THIRTY
, but I spotted an open window table. I didn't sit down immediately for the same reason no one else had claimed that table—the view was blocked by a big man outside, leaning against the granite windowsill. It was T., and though I couldn't hear what he was saying out there, I recognized the timbre of his voice as he chatted with someone beside him whom I couldn't see. He was wearing his blue linen blazer, and I guessed that he had been out all night and his companion—a paramour? Ed?—had kindly led him back to the hotel. I didn't want to go out and intrude into his private nightlife, but when I sat down directly behind him, I felt like J. Edgar Hoover or the mother of a teenager who'd stayed out partying past dawn. Before I could move, T. reached out and took an espresso cup from his invisible acquaintance and noticed me. He turned, his smiling face cleanly shaved, a crisp crimson-and-white pinstripe shirt tucked into a pair of khaki trousers, an espresso cup in either hand. I was impressed that he'd persuaded someone to provide him and his companion with street-side beverage service, but I still thought my breakfast story trumped his.

By the time he appeared in the restaurant, T. had traded the espresso cups for two wood-handled black umbrellas, which he was wielding like canes. He said, “You might be expecting me to sit down.”

“I was just admiring your sticks,” I said.

T. said, “I was thinking a walk might be the thing.” He looked ill at ease, and he was clearly hoping not to have to explain himself.

I grabbed my bag. “I ate two breakfasts earlier,” I said, standing up, “so we're both done here.”

T. handed me an umbrella and headed out of the hotel. He was standing too straight and taking long, purposeful strides, as if he was trying to walk off something—maybe a hangover, maybe a cranky back. Even before we reached the end of Largo Europa, his pace was taking its toll on me. With each hurried step, I could feel my feet skidding forward in my shoes, widening the little holes in my open-toed pumps. Instead of heading left past the post office, he hustled us to the right, and after we'd zigzagged through four crosswalks, the Church of the Eremitani appeared on our left, and I realized we were going to pass the café where I'd picked up a free biscotti after Ed's lecture.

I called out to T., but he was so far ahead he didn't hear me, so I yelled, “Uncle!”

He stopped but didn't turn around.

When I caught up to him, I pointed to the café. “I just want to step in here and put on a sports bra and running shoes.”

T. said, “Forgive me.”

I said, “Buy me something foamy,” and headed inside to the bar. The young waiter had been replaced by his father or an uncle—same smile, same apron, brown mop of hair reduced to a scraggly tonsure of gray curls.

T. ordered two latte macchiatos and something else that made the bartender smile, which turned out to be a blood orange. While the milk steamed, the bartender peeled the orange and then set it on a plate with a paring knife and slid it onto the bar with our beverages.

I said, “
Grazie
.”

He said, “
Prego
.”

T. was awkwardly twisting his torso, attempting to shrug off his coat.

I said, “Are you okay?” T. stiffened. My question had registered as a violation of the terms of conduct for our peculiar friendship. I instantly
regretted my breach of our policy of presumptive intimacy—no questions asked. Hoping to make it clear I didn't need an explanation, I casually reached for the collar and slid the blazer halfway down his arms.

T. said, “I had an odd night.”

I was staring at a thin streak of something dark on his shirt below one of his shoulders, a run of several inches where the crimson pinstripes seemed to have leeched into the white space. It was obviously blood. I said, “I think you may have sprung a leak.”

“That's nothing,” he said.

The bartender disappeared into the little kitchen behind the bar.

I still had one hand on his blazer, and I saw another, darker splotch of blood, about the size of a coat button, right on his spine, and his shirt seemed to be stuck to it. With my free hand, I pinched a bit of the loose pinstripe fabric gathered at his waist, tugged lightly, and felt a release, like tape giving way.

T. said, “Much better.”

I said, “How do you say Band-Aid in Italian?”

“
Grappa
,” T. said and slipped on his jacket. “Thank you. I was rushing earlier so we could walk around the old arena before it rains.” He sipped from his glass and picked up the knife. “During dinner last night, I was treated to a debate about Scrovegni's sincerity.”

I wasn't really interested in what had been served up at a dinner to which I wasn't invited. I drank some coffee and did my best not to think about his back. I just kept telling myself,
He's a doctor, he's a doctor.

After a few silent seconds, T. said, “Enrico Scrovegni specifically dedicated the chapel to the Virgin of Charity.”

“There was only one Blessed Virgin,” I said.

“There are many versions of the Virgin,” T. said.

“One virgin, many virtues. And the greatest of these is charity,” I added, mixing up the Virgin and the Seven Virtues. This felt like an argument in search of a topic.

T. said, “Speaking of the Virgin of Charity, she was the basis of Scrovegni's bid for salvation. Will the Virgin accept Scrovegni's gift of the chapel in exchange for forgiveness?”

Along with a newfound devotion to the Virgin of Charity, T. seemed to have picked up a note of piety during his dinner at the basilica. “It's an age-old question,” I said, hoping to leaven the tone. “Can a man buy his way back into a woman's good graces?”

T. said, “Scripture says it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to pass into heaven.”

I said, “And any woman can tell you that it's easier to buy a new pair of socks than to try to thread a needle and darn them.”

“Ye of little faith,” T. said. He sliced the orange into six ruby-red discs and fanned them out among the bits and streams of bloody juice on the white plate. He held his hand over the plate, palm down, and piously said, “The Blessed Sacrament.” The melodrama of the moment made me queasy. The whole ritual seemed to be connected to the blood on his back that we weren't talking about. And as if the weirdness quotient weren't high enough, the bartender came back bearing a crystal cruet, pulled out the faceted stopper and said, “
Miele di acacia
,” and ceremoniously poured a clear viscous liquid onto the oranges.

“Now,” T. said.

I said, “Now what?”

He pointed to the bartender and said, “Join us.
Si, si, si. Unisciti a noi
.”

They both took hold of a slice and looked at me, their hands still balanced at the edge of the plate, where the pool of bloody juice was glimmering. The bartender nodded, urging me to join them, as if this were some kind of initiation. I smiled and didn't move. The moment was teetering in my imagination between a dare and a Black Mass.

Two young blonde women with backpacks poked their heads in the doorway. They hovered there like hummingbirds or a couple of angels who'd flown in from a Giotto fresco. They smiled and said nothing.

To me, the bartender said, “
Si, signora. Unisciti a noi
.”

T. said, “Trust me.”

I pinched the smallest slice between my fingers. I said, “What is it?”

T. and the bartender popped their slices into their mouths. I followed their lead, feeling the acid bite on my tongue.

T. staggered back a few steps and mumbled, “Jesus Christ.”

The bartender nodded, gleefully chewing away, wiping the bloody juice from his chin with the back of his hand.

I smooshed the slice against the roof of my mouth. Satan didn't show up, but as I tasted the sweetness of honey, I felt an evanescent, smoky aroma filter up into my head. I said, “I can feel it more than taste it.”

We all ate a second slice, and then the bartender urged the newcomers up to the bar and took their orders. T. put the glass stopper back into the cruet and explained that the magic was in the monoflora source of local honeys. This clear nectar had been produced exclusively by bees feasting on the flowers of the acacia tree. While he talked, we sipped our bitter coffee and took turns slicking our fingers across the plate and sucking up what was left of the syrup. When the bartender turned to us from his espresso machine, T. wagged a twenty-euro note.

The bartender said, “
No, no. Troppo
.”

T. said, “
No, no, perfetto
,” and slid the cash under the edge of the white plate.

The bartender smiled and said, “
Grazie.
”

T. said, “
Prego, prego
.”

I said to T., “How do you say
heaven
?”

T. said, “You're the Dante scholar.”

I pointed to the plate and said, “
Paradiso
.”

The bartender said something I didn't understand. As I followed T. out to the street, I asked him to translate.

“He said life is bittersweet.” T. hooked his arm around mine and led us across the street. “Like an orange,” he said. “And then he said you cannot change the nature of things.”

“He said all that?”

“And more,” T. said, leading us off the sidewalk and onto a path hemmed in by rhododendron backed by a stand of gnarly pines. “The Italians have a way of saying a lot of words per word. He also said, ‘You are here now, and this is the time for honeying the bitter fruit.'”

Neither of us said anything for a while.