Her legs.
Below a pleated skirt.
Dancing down the steps.
The first thing he saw.
Just to the knees.
He’d been passing the stepped street when they loomed.
Enough to ignite his imagination about what might be above.
Next, her face, its pale complexion, full lips, and light blue eyes, framed by black hair.
What would he say when they came face to face at the base of the cobbled stairway? As possible greetings ran through his head, she slipped on an uneven paving stone. His hand caught, held hers, and guided her safely down. “A miracle,” she said in the cafè, “you were there.”
Up close, a small vertical scar below her left eye and a sharp nose gave her face an unconventional air.
“You were visiting the cathedral,” he said.
Her reply was a tilt of the head.
A waiter approached their table. “May I offer you an aperitif?”
“No thank you, but I’ll sit a while to rest my ankle.”
He mentioned the hot weather and lack of rain. He mentioned the latest book L’Odore della Notte from Camilleri. He mentioned Servillo’s latest film L’Uomo in piu. To only polite murmurs. A few minutes passed. She pushed her chair away from the table. “Thank you again for rescuing me.”
“Will I see you again?” he asked.
She stood, a flutter of the hand, “If fate is kind.”
For Michele “fate” was a parolaccia, a four-letter word. For it was “fate” that a year ago cost him his long-time fiancée Maria when her American cousin Tony visited Rome researching his Italian roots, found one, and convinced her to report with him in Hollywood where he knew, well . . . everyone.
He ordered another drink, trying to decide on his next move. Again, he’d failed to ask a woman her name. Books, movies, the world he could talk about, the personal things, he was Pulcinella.
He finished his drink and walked across the piazza. Distractedly, he bumped into another woman, dressed in black, blond hair tightly permed and topped with a black beret. She said nothing but nodded toward a dark passageway that led away from the piazza. He followed her lead. He entered the passageway. He entered the night. Tall buildings with anonymous doorways followed the twisting narrow passage that admitted no sky. Fortunately, no streets branched off. After twenty minutes, he reached a stream coursing madly toward the Tiber. Too wide to cross, he turned around. He wondered, why did the woman send him off on this fruitless chase? Something to do with the lady who tripped? Nothing to be done this evening but go home.
For supper, he had leftover roast from Sunday lunch with his mother. Like every Sunday, she bought enough meat to feed him for three days, seasoned with her regrets at not having a grandchild. “You’re 35, when?”
Michele returned to the piazza the next afternoon. The same waiter served him an Amaro, and he sat, waiting for the Lady of the Steps, the capitalization reflecting her growing importance. If not her, perhaps the blonde in black would appear. About her he couldn’t decide, an innocent bystander, or a wrong-headed woman with an unhealthy attitude towards men—that fruitless chase. An hour passed, neither woman appeared. He ordered another drink. After he sipped the last drop, he rose and slowly walked to his apartment.
Now day three, he called and excused himself again at the Ministry of Justice. He was a clerk who scheduled cases for the judges. Like other clerks in the government in the time of Il Cavaliere (Silvio Berlusconi) unexplained absences of three or four days were commonplace. Everyone knew Stefano had a second job at the bookstore Feltrinelli and Claudio spent days at the Ministry of Public Works. Michele’s job was not nominally a role of importance, but he had a keen sense of which cases would settle quickly and those that would consume weeks or months of a judge’s time. In addition, he was able to arrange judges’ schedules so they were able to spend supplemental time preparing for their upcoming trials. For these reasons, his apartment was larger than those of his fellow clerks, his wine cellar was well stocked, and his wardrobe was couturier.
He decided to wait for the Lady, not in the cafè, but in the cathedral at the top of the steps. It was not a large cathedral in the heart of Rome, though its bell tower loomed above the ancient building like a watchful guardian. After an hour, he was rewarded. The Lady slipped in the door, looked around, then headed to the confessional. He moved close. He was not above eavesdropping. Initially, he could only distinguish between her whisperings and the priest’s murmurs. Then, the priest cried out, “For the love of Jesus, you did not. Tell me you did not.”
The curtain of the confessional flew open. In a panic, she ran blindly toward the large central door. He followed. She struggled to open it. He pushed it open for her. She burst out. He caught up with her. He guided her down the steps, to the caffè, and sat her down.
“Two whiskeys, please.”
Her sobs became shallower and less frequent.
“Drink.” He held the glass to her lips. She seized it and threw back the liquor.
“Another, please.”
When it had arrived, he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know, I don’t even know your name, I’ve only seen you once. Why were you there today?”
“Like you say, fate.”
She took out a compact and looked at her face. “I’m a mess.” She went inside the caffè. She returned, to his eyes, more enticing than before with a hint of danger, her scar more visible.
“My name is Michele, Michele Bastoni.”
“That is a good name, Michele, my little brother is named Michele.”
“And yours?”
“I think I should be home. Thank you for everything. This is the second time you’ve come to my rescue. Maybe I should call you Arcangelo Michele.”
“Will I see you again?”
“If fate is kind.”
He watched her walk away. Michele ordered another whiskey and flagellated himself. This was the second time they’d met her and still did not know her name, or where she lived, and had no promise that she’d see him again, and there was that word “fate” again. However, would he escape it? And how embarrassing, to be compared to her little brother. Michele knew that his largish nose and ears did not particularly attract women, but he dressed well, Armani. And was well spoken, though better if someone else started the conversation, awkward starting one himself.
He thought about the shouting priest. What had she done to merit that kind of reaction? Whatever it was, it meant trouble and he was probably an idiot to try to get closer to her. Regardless, the legs, the face. Didn’t he have better things to do? But this was an opportunity, no? A lesson he learned early from his mother, and then at the Ministry, you help people, they look on you with favor, and favor could take a number of forms, couldn’t it?
The next morning, a miserable cold spittle slickened the sidewalk and dampened his mood. At his neighborhood cafè, he slipped in the door and occupied himself furling his umbrella. He looked to his usual spot at the far end of the bar, saw her, and was caught between disbelief and dilemma best described as it-is-great-to-see-you-but-will-you-leave-againandwhat-are-you-doing-here.
She caught his hands in hers as he approached and held them tightly. “My guardian angel, Michele. My name is Gina, Gina Rotto.”
He noticed again what had struck him the first time he took her hand on the steps but had been too occupied to put words to, the texture of her skin. It was like touching a rose petal, a dulcet softness.
With the rush of morning patrons drinking coffee and eating rolls, they were crushed against one another at the bar. “They say good things come in threes. Perhaps I can ask one more favor?”
Michele nodded.
“What happened yesterday at the cathedral, you won’t tell anyone?”
“That’s the favor? Of course, I won’t tell.”
She took his arm in her two hands and moved closer, close enough to feel the pressure of her leg against his. “There’s more.There was an important man, a senator. We had become close. When we were together, he had many conversations with other men about new railroads and the companies who got the contracts. Then one day, he said he couldn’t trust me. I knew too much.”
The blonde in the black dress passed the bar and looked in.
“Do you know the woman who walked by?”
“No, why?”
But Michele noticed a slight shudder, a tightening in her face as if the blonde in the black dress might have been following her. She pulled him toward the door saying they needed to go somewhere else to talk. This sense of vulnerability made her even more attractive.
A less popular, seedier bar, featuring pictures of football stars ripped from magazines on the walls and cigarette butts on the floor, but only two other patrons. They sat at a table in the back and hailed the owner for coffee. Gina continued her story. She said a few days after the senator talked to her about trust, two men, shady mob types, ‘escorted’ her to the senator’s apartment. As usual, she snuggled in beside the senator on the sofa, but that day he shoved her away. He said, “I’d been seen with unreliable people.”
“He pushed me so hard I fell off. Then jumped up and ran toward the kitchen.”
“Then what?” Michele asked.
“He followed me in, punched me, I backed away, he came at me, I grabbed a knife, he kept coming, then . . .” Her eyes were wide open, her hands gripping the caffè table so tightly they turned white.
“What?”
“He grabbed at the knife but missed. The knife hit him in the throat.”
Gina covered her face. She put her head down on the table, and after a moment got up, walked slowly, head down, out of the caffè.
Michele watched her leave and sat, thinking. She wanted his help covering up her role in the death of a senator. Their chance meeting in the piazza wasn’t. Of course, it wasn’t. How much did she know about him? And how did she know he could help her? He could, but how did she know it. Who told her? That really didn’t matter now. He’d find out eventually. Because it was not unknown in certain circles that he was able to help people with legal issues. But this was, in his dozen years in the Ministry, the most subtle and artful approach he’d experienced.
* * *
The next afternoon after work, Michele strolled through the piazza on his way home from work, wanting to see Gina, wanting to help her, knowing it would bring him closer to her, not wanting to see her, not wanting to get involved, and of course she was sitting in the caffè. “Buona sera, Michele, you are looking well. I have been thinking . . .” She stood up and kissed his cheeks. “We might find another, more private place to talk.” Gina nodded toward the blonde in black who was walking down the steps. “Follow me.”
She led him in the same direction the blonde in black had indicated the first day. They entered the passageway. They entered the night. But Gina knew which doorknob in which building to turn. They mounted stairs to the top floor of her apartment. The salon was large, decorated in cream and yellow. “Let me show you the rest. I have just finished decorating.”
A small kitchen with copper utensils. A dining room panelled in wood. The bedroom was painted rose with putti fluttering on the ceiling. “You must try the bed.”
“What?”
“No?”
“Seriously, it is so comfortable. I couldn’t believe it myself.”
Michele hesitated, wanted to, wasn’t sure, did she want him to simply test it? He looked at her face, it wasn’t telling him anything. So, he did. He lay down on the bed.
“You’re right, it is.”
Gina lay down beside him and some minutes later confirmed that not only her hand, but her body had the feel of a rose petal.
* * *
Michele walked, not walked, flew as a petal in the wind, up the stairs to his apartment. For the first time, he was not shadowed by the memory of his last visit with Maria, that fateful one after which he carried the diamond ring she’d returned. A stone that though it weighed only two carats, seemed to be two kilos.
* * *
Michele requestioned police files and discovered that the victim in this affair was a very senior Senator Giuseppe Rinaldi whose cause of death had not been revealed. Likely, it would not be, though rumors were ripe. The police had narrowed the suspects in his death to two women, one of whom was Gina Rotta. The files also revealed that the senator’s death had taken place at an apartment rented in the name of the senator’s aide on Via Veneto, that the senator had been stabbed once in the neck and three times in the stomach. It seemed Gina had panicked. The police planned to interview the two suspects next week.
* * *
Antonio Falcone had been promoted to the judiciary nine months earlier. His case load and his new baby prevented him from taking a vacation last year. There was so much work to be done. He told his mother-in-law and wife this was the price of being a new judge. They didn’t find him credulous and pointed out the holidays other new judges had taken. Michele noticed poor Falcone looked increasingly haggard as the weeks went on. Wednesday, Michele phoned to ask if he might speak with the Judge in his office.
Walking to the Judges’ quarter of the Ministry, Michele was certain he saw the woman with tightly permed blond hair in a black dress some yards ahead of him. He ran to catch up, but she turned down a hall, one containing many doors, and by the time he turned the corner she had entered one of them.
Facing the tired Judge Falcone, Michele said, “It is a difficult case, with many angles to consider, not least of which is the place in which the event occurred, the probable time at which it occurred, the age of the esteemed senator, the ages and sex of the suspects, the past histories of the suspects, did I mention the pedigree of the esteemed senator’s wife?”
Judge Falcone nodded at Michele’s incantation without the blink of an eye.
Michele continued, “I have been looking at the judicial calendar and it appears that it may be possible to open up a research week for you in each of the next three months.” With a nod. “The complexity of the cases you will be assigned will require that amount of time, I feel.”
The Judge smiled. “Come to see me tomorrow afternoon after I have had time to think about the investigation of the senator’s murder.”
Michele went to Judge Falcone’s office the following afternoon and was told to come back on Friday, three days later. No explanation was provided. On Friday, Michele found the judge in an expansive mood. “What do you know about Capri in October?”
“Probably the best season, because of the weather and lack of tourists.”
“I have been thinking about the poor Senator Rinaldi. It seems to me that a re-direction of the investigation is in order. There are financial entanglements with the ‘Ndrangheta that pale relative to any possible involvement with young women. It took a bit of time of gather the information.”
“I see,” said Michele. He knew that ‘Ndrangheta had replaced the Mafia as the biggest and most ruthless mob in the country and their prosecution took precedence over nearly all other matters.
Michele looked at the agenda in his lap. “Your calendar seems to open in October and during the holidays in December and January.”
Judge Falcone smiled. Michele smiled.
The next afternoon Michele waited for Gina in the piazza to tell her about Judge Falcone’s decision. And waited, and waited, until the sunset. The woman with blond hair, topped with a black beret came into the piazza from a side street and approached his table. “May I sit?” Michele gestured welcome. “I have news from Gina. She wanted to be here to thank you for the Judge’s decision, but her flight left at five. Judge Falcone decided she should leave the country immediately.”
The first thing that came to Michele’s mind was the expression, Il destino e una bella donna dal cuore freddo. Fate is a beautiful woman with a cold heart. Michele’s face froze. His eyes contracted to slits, his nostrils narrowed, his lips whitened. He had lost Gina.
The woman in black touched his arm. “My name is Capitana Ana Stefano, Undercover Division of the Carabinieri.” She explained that Gina had been placed in the witness protection program. She had given testimony against the ‘Ndrangheta. Michele had been instrumental in accelerating the process and protecting her.
Slowly, Michele lost the downhearted demeanor that greeted the first news of Gina’s departure.
Michele looked at Ana more closely, saw beneath the conservative apparel of an undercover agent, a woman of agreeable shape, plus one with some grace and charm, and perhaps availability.
“May I offer you an aperitif?” he asked.
The attribution for the image is Out of Dreams 15, Original Black & White Collage by Beverly Mills, https://www.studiobeverly.com
