Blood Orange. Drusilla Campbell
home.
Micah met her at the airport brandishing his ridiculous and embarrassing sign, shocking pink, with her name in black Old English letters eighteen inches high. At the entrance to the four-star hotel where David had insisted she make reservations because it was only two blocks from the Uffizi Gallery, Micah had parked at an angle between a BMW and a Renault. He sprang from the car, grabbed her bags, and handed them to a bellman. Another uniformed person opened her door and put a gloved hand under her elbow. Her head spun and her knees almost buckled. She’d barely slept in the last thirty-six hours. And eaten virtually nothing. She leaned against the desk for support as she signed the register and gave the clerk her passport.
As she followed the bellman to the elevator, Micah said, “I’ll wait down here.”
For what?
“If you go to sleep now, you won’t wake—”
“Until I’m totally rested. That’s the whole idea.” She barely contained her annoyance. She did not want to offend Lexy’s brother, but she knew what she needed. Her body was shouting that if she did not sleep, she would die.
They stood at the elevator while the bellman held it open. Micah said something to him in Italian, the man stepped into the elevator alone, and the doors slid shut.
“What did you say to him? I need to—”
“He’s putting the stuff in your room.”
She jingled her room key in front of him. “He can’t get in.”
“He’s got a passkey.”
She slammed the heel of her hand on the up button of the elevator.
Micah said, “It’s just past five here. You need to keep moving until at least ten.”
She leaned her forehead against the wall.
“I know some people, they got here about the same time as you and went right to bed. They woke up at one-thirty in the morning. Screwed their whole day.”
The elevator appeared to have taken up residence on the third floor. She imagined the bellman going through her suitcase and finding the emergency five hundred dollars David had tucked in the pocket of her slacks.
“You can’t give in to jet lag,” Micah said, grinning. “It’s the physical equivalent of terrorism.”
She sighed. “Can I at least have a shower?”
“But don’t lie down.”
“Generally, I shower on my feet.”
“You’re done for if you lie down.”
The elevator door opened. The bellman stepped out, and she stepped in.
“If I’m not down in thirty minutes . . .”
“I’ll come get you.”
“Ring my room.”
“I’ll pound on the door.”
In the early twilight the Arno was a satiny olive-green. It lay to their right across a narrow cobbled street jammed with cars and motor scooters that filled the air with noise and stinking black exhaust. Micah told her, “If you know where the river is, you can’t get lost in Florence. Not in the Old City.” He pointed across the river to a red-tiled palazzo of pale gold stucco. “That’s where I live, the place that looks like it’s falling into the river, which it almost is. I rent the top floor from the princess who owns it.”
“A real princess?”
“Italy’s got hundreds of ’em. Mine’s eighty and poor as a peasant.”
He steered her out of the traffic onto a cobbled street wide enough for one car and stopped a block up in front of a shop selling upscale souvenirs of the city.
“That’s me,” he said, pointing to the elegantly precise pen-and-ink rendering of a Florentine skyline displayed in the window.
Dana was surprised by how good it was.
“One of these pays the rent,” he said. “I generally sell a couple a month. More during the summer.”
“I want to buy it and take it home.”
“Nah, it’s way overpriced. I’ll give you one.”
They followed the narrow street. As they stepped into the Piazza della Signoria Dana’s knees went suddenly weak. She cried out inadvertently, surprising herself. There before her were the statues she had seen in books: the immense figure of Neptune rising from the sea, and Duke Cosimo astride a beautiful figure of a horse. No matter how fine the reproduction in a book, nothing could have prepared her for the size and life that emanated from the actual statues. She forgot about having fun, about David and Bailey.
In front of the reproduction of Michelangelo’s David, Micah said, “I’ll take you to see the original in the Academia. It’s amazing, of course, practically a shrine, with camera Nazis all over the place and everyone telling you to be quiet if you raise your voice above a whisper.” He looked disgusted. “I actually like this one out here better, even if it isn’t the original. The David was meant to be public art, exposed to life. I understand all the practicalities, but I don’t like it when people treat art like it’s . . . holy. Mostly Italy doesn’t do that.”
They walked back toward the Arno through the imposing colonnade of the Uffizi Palace Gallery. “I love this city,” he said. “Everywhere I look I see something beautiful.”
His words awakened her. Until that moment she had been seeing Micah as Lexy’s eccentric and impertinent little brother, as a wild driver and a source of restless energy who would not let her sleep. But in the amber twilight of the colonnade she shed her resistance like a snake its tired skin. She saw that he was like an angel in a Renaissance painting, with his dark and curly, untidy hair, his large blue-black eyes and sensual, sulky mouth. Micah’s high energy and enthusiasm had made him seem boyish at first, but in the half shadows she could see the sadness in his face. The lines around his eyes had not come from laughing. She felt an instant empathy, and vaguely remembered Lexy saying her brother suffered from depression and had been unhappy as a boy. Happiness and grief were both written in his face along with something renegade she could not classify. As she stared at him, half mesmerized by the contrasts, she lost her footing and stumbled. He steadied her with his hand on the small of her back. His touch excited her, and she jerked away. She had not been prepared for that.
They crossed the Arno at the Ponte Vecchio, where most of the gold- and silversmiths had closed their shops for the night. It was the middle of the week and not quite tourist season. Though there was plenty of foot traffic on the ancient bridge, it did not feel crowded to Dana. They walked up the hill past the hideous facade of the Pitti Palace until they came to the little Piazza Santo Spirito and a first-floor restaurant just large enough for six tables. Micah had to duck his head as they walked in. He was perhaps six-three or four and slender; but he moved like an athlete, which surprised Dana. Jock-artist was not a common type. David was smart, but he had no interest in art.
Micah and the owner, Paolo, played together on a recreational soccer team; they greeted each other with an embrace. Their conversation was incomprehensible to Dana, but she guessed the subject was soccer because the body language of men talking sports is much the same in any country. The heads turn from side to side, the shoulders and arms pump.
At dinner Dana and Micah talked about the city and art, and she went on about her thesis topic until she felt she had to apologize for talking so much. He said he was interested and asked more questions, informed questions that started her off again. Explaining, explaining: her thesis had never seemed more real than it did that night. It was thrilling to be in Florence on her own, talking art, without Bailey tugging on her, or David looking at his watch, never telling her where to go exactly but always with his hand on her elbow steering and supporting like she might fall over if he did not hold her up. She felt guilty for her thoughts.
It was after eleven and cold when they left Paolo’s