Breathing Room

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  She took a cleansing breath, settled back in her chair, and reached inside herself for contentment.

  It wasn’t there.

  “Signora!”

  The cheery voice belonged to a young man coming her way through the garden. He was in his late twenties or early thirties, and slender. Another handsome Italian. As he came closer, she saw liquid brown eyes, silky black hair caught back in a low ponytail, and a long, beautifully shaped nose.

  “Signora Favor, I am Vittorio.” He introduced himself expansively, as if his name alone should bring her pleasure.

  She smiled and returned his greeting.

  “May I join you?” His accent indicated he’d learned his elegant, lightly accented English from British teachers instead of American ones.

  “Of course. Would you like some wine?”

  “Ah, I would love some.”

  He stopped her as she began to rise. “I’ve been here many times,” he said. “I’ll get it. Sit and enjoy the view.”

  He returned in less than a minute with the bottle and a glass. “A beautiful day.” A cat rubbed against him as he settled at the end of the table. “But then, all our Tuscan days are beautiful, are they not?”

  “It seems that way.”

  “And you are enjoying your visit?”

  “Very much. But it’s more than a visit. I’ll be staying here for several months.”

  Unlike Giulia Chiara, Anna Vesto, and the dour Marta, he looked delighted with the news. “So many Americans, they come on their tour buses for a day, then leave. How can one experience Tuscany like that?”

  It was hard to ignore so much enthusiasm, and she smiled. “One cannot.”

  “You have not yet tried our pecorino.” He dipped the spoon on her plate into the honey pot and drizzled a dab on her wedge of cheese. “Now you will be a proper Tuscan.”

  He looked so eager that she didn’t have the heart to disappoint him, even though she suspected he’d been sent here to dislodge her. She took a bite and discovered the snap of the cheese and the honey’s sweetness made them perfect companions. “Delicious.”

  “The Tuscan cuisine is the best in the world. Ribollita, panzanella, wild boar sausage, fagioli with sage, Florentine tripe—”

  “I think I’ll take a pass on the tripe.”

  “Take a pass?”

  “Avoid.”

  “Ah, yes. We eat perhaps more of the animal here than you do in the States.”

  She smiled. They began chatting about the cuisine as well as local attractions. Had she been to Pisa yet? What about Volterra? She must tour some of the wineries in the Chianti region. As for Siena . . . its Piazza del Campo was the most beautiful in Italy. Did she know about the Palio, the horse races that took place each summer in the Campo itself? And the towered city of San Gimignano was not to be missed. Had she seen it yet?

  She had not.

  “I will show you everything.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “But I am a professional guide. I do tours all over Tuscany and Umbria. Group and private. Walking tours, cooking tours, wine tours. Did no one offer you my services?”

  “They’ve been too busy trying to evict me.”

  “Ah, yes. The sewer. It’s true you didn’t come at the best time, but there is much to see nearby, and I will take you sight-seeing during the day so you can escape the dirt and the noise.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I’m afraid I can’t afford a private guide.”

  “No, no.” An elegant gesture of dismissal. “We will go only when I have no other clients, a gesture of friendship. I will show you all the places you cannot find on your own. You will not have to worry about driving on strange roads, and I will translate for you. A very good bargain, you will see.”

  An extraordinary bargain. One, coincidentally, that would get her out of the farmhouse. “I couldn’t possibly impose on you like that.”

  “But it is not an imposition. You can pay for the petrol, yes?”

  Just then Marta emerged from the room at the back. She snapped off a few sprigs from a basil plant and carried them into the kitchen.

  He took a sip of his Chianti. “I have tomorrow free. Would you like to go to Siena first? Or perhaps Monteriggioni. An exquisite little town. Dante writes of it in the Inferno.”

  Her skin prickled at the name. But Dante the gigolo didn’t exist, only Lorenzo Gage, a playboy movie star who’d been her partner in shame. Now that she’d met him, she didn’t find it hard to believe that he’d driven Karli Swenson to suicide. Isabel was going to do her best to make sure she never saw him again.

  “Actually, I’ve come here to work, and I need to get started tomorrow.”

  “Work? This is too bad. Still, we must all do what we have to.” He smiled good-naturedly, finished his wine, then jotted a phone number on a piece of paper he pulled from his pocket. “If you need anything at all, you will call me.”

  “Thank you.”

  He gave her a dazzling smile, then a wave as he walked away. As least he was prepared to dislodge her with charm, or maybe she was being too suspicious. She fetched her copy of Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi but ended up reading her travel guide instead. Tomorrow would be soon enough to reinvent her career.

  It had begun to grow dark by the time she went inside, and fragrant smells filled the kitchen. She entered just as Marta placed a bowl filled with a hearty-looking soup on a tray covered in snowy linen. The tray also held a glass of Isabel’s Chianti, judging by the bottle next to it, as well as a serving of sliced red tomatoes garnished with dark, wrinkled olives and a crusty slab of bread. Any hopes Isabel had that the food might be intended for her faded, however, as Marta walked out the door with it. One of these days, Isabel really should learn how to cook.

  She slept well that night, and the next morning she awakened at eight instead of six as she’d intended. She jumped out of bed and hurried to the bathroom. Now she’d have to cut her prayer and meditation session short or she’d never be able to catch up with her schedule. She turned on the faucet to splash her face, but the water refused to warm up. She hurried downstairs and tested the sink. It was the same. She searched for Marta so she could tell her they had no hot water, but the garden was empty. She finally located the card Giulia Chiara had left.

  “Yes, yes,” Giulia said when Isabel reached her. “Is very difficult for you to stay there while so much work must be done. At the house in town you will not have to worry about such things.”

  “I’m not moving to town,” Isabel said firmly. “I spoke with . . . the owner yesterday. Would you please do your best to have the water fixed as soon as possible?”

  “I will see what I can do,” Giulia said, with obvious reluctance.

  Casalleone had an old Roman wall, a church bell that rang on the half hour, and children everywhere. They called out to one another in the playgrounds and romped next to their mothers along the narrow cobbled streets that wound in a maze. Isabel drew out Giulia’s card and checked the address against the sign. Although the street name was similar, it wasn’t the same.

  A day had passed since she’d talked to the real-estate agent, and she still had no hot water. She’d called Anna Vesto, but the housekeeper had pretended not to understand English and hung up. Marta seemed oblivious to the problem. According to Isabel’s schedule, she should be writing now, but the issue with the water had distracted her. Besides, she had nothing to write. Although she usually thrived on self-discipline, she’d gotten up late again this morning, she hadn’t meditated, and the only words she’d written in two days had been notes to friends.

  She approached a young woman who was walking across the village’s small piazza with a toddler in hand. “Scusi, signora.” She held out Giulia’s card. “Can you tell me where the Via San Lino is?”

  The woman picked up her child and hurried away.

  “Well, excuu-se me.” She frowned and headed toward a middle-aged man in a ratty sport coat with elbow patches. “Scusi, signore. I’m loo
king for the Via San Lino.”

  He took Giulia’s card, studied it for a moment, then studied Isabel. With something that sounded like a curse, he pocketed the card and stomped away.

  “Hey!”

  The next person gave her a “non parlo inglese” when she asked the location of the Via San Lino, but then a beefy young man in a yellow T-shirt offered directions. Unfortunately, they were so complicated that she ended up at an abandoned warehouse on a dead-end street.

  She decided to find the grocery store with the friendly clerk that she’d visited yesterday. On the way toward the piazza, she passed a shoe store and a profumeria that sold cosmetics. Lace curtains draped the windows of the houses that lined the street, and laundry hung on lines overhead. “Italian dryers,” the travel guide had called the clotheslines. Because power was so expensive, families didn’t have electric dryers.

  Her nose led her into a tiny bakery, where she bought a fig tart from a rude girl with purple hair. When she came out, she gazed up at the sky. The high, fluffy clouds looked as though they should be printed on blue flannel pajamas. It was a beautiful day, and she wouldn’t let even a hundred surly Italians spoil it for her.

  She was on her way up the cobbled hill toward the grocery when she spotted a newsstand with racks of postcards displaying vineyards, splashy fields of sunflowers, and charming Tuscan towns. As she stopped to choose a few, she noticed that several of the postcards depicted Michelangelo’s David, or at least a significant part of him. The statue’s marble penis stared back at her, both front and side views. She pulled one from the rack to examine it more closely. He seemed a little shortchanged in the genitalia department.

  “Have you already forgotten what one looks like, my child?”

  She spun around and found herself staring into a pair of ancient steel-framed eyeglasses. They belonged to a tall, black-robed priest with a bushy, dark mustache. He was an exceptionally ugly man, not because of the mustache, although that was unsightly enough, but because of a jagged red scar that drew the skin so tightly along his cheekbone it pulled down the corner of one silver-blue eye.

  One very familiar silver-blue eye.

  7

  Isabel resisted the urge to shove the postcard back into the rack. “I was just comparing this with something similar I saw recently. The one on the statue is so much more impressive.” Oh, now, that was a lie.

  The sun glimmered off the lenses of his glasses as he smiled. “There are some pornographic calendars on that back rack, in case you’re interested.”

  “I’m not.” She replaced the postcard and set off up the hill.

  He fell into step beside her, moving as gracefully in the long robes as if he wore them every day, but then Lorenzo Gage was accustomed to being in costume. “If you want to confess your sins, I’m all ears,” he said.

  “Go find some schoolboys to molest.”

  “Sharp tongue this morning, Fifi. That’ll be a hundred Hail Marys for insulting a man of God.”

  “I’m reporting you, Mr. Gage. It’s against the law in Italy to impersonate a priest.” She spotted a harried young mother emerging from a shop with a set of twins in hand and called out to her.

  “Signora! This man isn’t a priest! He’s Lorenzo Gage, the American movie star.”

  The woman looked at Isabel as if she were the lunatic, snatched up her children, and hurried away.

  “Nice going. You probably traumatized those kids for life.”

  “If it’s not against the law, it should be. That mustache looks like a tarantula died on your lip. And don’t you think the scar’s a little over the top?”

  “As long as it lets me move around freely, I don’t really care.”

  “If you want anonymity, why don’t you just stay at home?”

  “Because I was born a wanderin’ man.”

  She inspected him more closely. “You were armed the last time I saw you. Any weapons underneath that robe?”

  “Not if you don’t count the explosives taped to my chest.”

  “I saw that movie. It was awful. That whole scene was just an excuse to glorify violence and show off your muscles.”

  “Yet it grossed a hundred and fifty million.”

  “Proving my theory about the taste of the American public.”

  “People who live in glass houses, Dr. Favor . . .”

  So he’d figured out who she was.

  He pushed the steel-framed glasses up on his perfect nose. “I don’t pay much attention to the self-help movement, but even I’ve heard of you. Is the doctorate real or phony?”

  “I have a very real Ph.D. in psychology, which qualifies me to make a fairly accurate diagnosis: You’re a jerk. Now, leave me alone.”

  “Okay, now I’m getting pissed.” He lengthened his stride. “I didn’t attack you that night, and I’m not apologizing.”

  “You pretended to be a gigolo!”

  “Only in your vivid imagination.”

  “You spoke Italian.”

  “You spoke French.”

  “Go away. No, wait.” She rounded on him. “You’re my landlord, and I want my hot water back.”

  He bowed to a pair of old women strolling arm in arm, then blessed them with the sign of the cross, something she was fairly certain would keep him locked in purgatory for an extra millennium or so. She realized she was standing there watching, which made her an accessory, and she started walking again. Unfortunately, so did he.

  “Why don’t you have any hot water?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. And your employees aren’t doing anything about it.”

  “This is Italy. Things take time.”

  “Just fix it.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” He rubbed the phony scar on his cheek. “Dr. Isabel Favor . . . Hard to believe I’ve been to bed with America’s New Age guardian of virtue.”

  “I’m not New Age. I’m an old-fashioned moralist, which is why I find what I did with you so repugnant. But instead of dwelling on it, I’m going to chalk it up to trauma and try to forgive myself.”

  “Your fiancé dumped you, and your career hit the skids. That qualifies you for forgiveness. But you really shouldn’t have cheated on your taxes.”

  “My accountant’s the cheat.”

  “You’d think somebody with a Ph.D. in psychology would be smarter about the people she hires.”

  “You’d think. But as you might have noticed, I’ve developed a black hole when it comes to people smarts.”

  His chuckle had a diabolic edge. “Do you let a lot of men pick you up?”

  “Go away.”

  “I’m not being judgmental, you understand. Just curious.” He blinked his good eye as they came out of the shady street into the piazza.

  “I’ve never let a man pick me up. Never! I was just—I was crazy that night. If I picked up some awful disease from you . . .”

  “I had a cold a couple of weeks ago, but other than that . . .”

  “Don’t be cute. I saw that charming quote of yours. By your own admission, you’ve— Let’s see, how did you put it? ‘Screwed over five hundred women’? Even assuming some degree of exaggeration, you’re a high-risk sex partner.”

  “That quote’s not even close to accurate.”

  “You didn’t say it?”

  “Now, see, there you’ve got me.”

  She shot him what she hoped was a withering glare, but since she didn’t have much practice with that sort of thing, it probably fell short.

  He blessed a cat that strolled by. “I was a young actor trying to stir up a little publicity when I gave a reporter that quote. Hey, a guy’s got to make a living.”

  She itched to ask how many women there’d really been, and the only way she managed to restrain herself was to speed up her pace.

  “A hundred max.”

  “I didn’t ask,” she retorted. “And that’s disgusting.”

  “I was kidding. Even I’m not that promiscuous. You guru people have no sense of humor.”

&n
bsp; “I’m not a guru people, and I happen to have a very well developed sense of humor. Why else would I still be talking to you?”

  “If you don’t want to be judged by what happened that night, you shouldn’t judge me that way either.” He grabbed her sack and poked inside it. “What’s this?”

  “A tart. And it’s mine. Hey!” She watched him take a big bite.

  “Good.” He spoke with his mouth full. “Like a juicy Fig Newton. Want some?”

  “No thank you. Feel free to help yourself.”

  “Your loss.” He demolished the tart. “Food never tastes as good in the States as it does here. Have you noticed that yet?” She had, but she’d reached the grocery, and she ignored him.

  He didn’t follow her inside. Instead, she watched through the window as he knelt to stroke the ancient dog who ambled down the step to greet him. The friendly clerk of the honey pot was nowhere in sight. In her place stood an older man wearing a butcher’s apron. He glared at her as she handed over the list she’d made with the aid of an Italian dictionary. She realized that the only friendly person she’d encountered all day was Lorenzo Gage. A terrifying thought.

  He was leaning against the side of the building reading an Italian newspaper when she came out. He tucked it under his arm and reached for her grocery sacks.

  “No way. You’ll just eat everything.” She headed for the side street where she’d left her car.

  “I should evict you.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “For being—what’s the word?—oh, yeah . . . bitchy.”

  “Only to you.” She raised her voice toward a man taking the sun on a bench. “Signore! This man isn’t a priest. He’s—”

  Gage grabbed her groceries and said something in Italian to the man, who clucked his tongue at her.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That you’re either a pyromaniac or a pickpocket. I always get those words mixed up.”

  “You’re not funny.” Actually, he was, and if he’d been anyone else, she would have laughed. “Why are you stalking me? I’m sure there are dozens of needy women in town who’d love your company.” A dapper man in the doorway of a Foto shop stared at her.