a pair of snug Levi’s, and a baggy black sweater. His dark hair curled near the nape of his neck and was more untidy than she remembered it. But the piratical gold earring was still in his left ear, and the bruised, sensuous mouth had not changed. She remembered how his lips felt against the inside of her elbow, the pinpricks of pleasure, the half-drunk sense of simultaneously dropping into the center of her body and lifting out of it.
“Why are you here?”
“I saw your husband on TV.”
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“I watched you leave your house.”
“How dare you spy on me?”
“I’m really sorry about the dog. Is it okay?” He added, “I worry about you, Danita.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s your name.”
“No one calls me Danita.” Except her grandmother. It was a memory of the old life, the life before she met David and began to live as normal people did.
“I’m glad the dog’s okay.”
For a few moments she had forgotten the terrible afternoon and night just past. Now the fear and panicky confusion, the tactless policeman, and her argument with David rushed back at her with the power of a flash flood.
He put his hands on her arms, and she jerked away. “Don’t be mad, Dana.”
“What do you expect me to be?”
“Just listen to me, okay?”
“What’s the point? We’ve been over this a dozen times.”
“No, I’ve got something new to say.” His face was bright with conviction. “Where can we sit?”
“Say what you have to say, Micah.” There would be no sitting down, no getting comfortable.
He laughed as if he read her mind. By the light of the street lamp outside the store Dana saw his blue-black eyes crinkle with amusement. “I’ve got this friend, he owns a great little house on the beach down in Mexico south of Ensenada, and he wants to sell it to me.” As he talked, he walked back and forth between the rows of bookshelves, letting his fingers trail along the spines. His nervous energy filled the store, crackled through the bookshelves and along the countertops like heat lightning.
“You could come down sometimes. It’s only a couple hours’ drive, and David’d never have to know.” He grinned at her. “I’ll stay out of the way; you won’t have to worry about me.” Another grin. “I’ll be a good boy.”
Groaning, she slumped onto the stairs and rested her head in her hands.
“Dana, I’ve had time to think. I was way out of line before. I know that. But you’re important to me.”
He crouched before her, taking her hands.
“My beautiful Dana, I don’t want you to suffer.”
His back was to the window, his face in shadow; but a gray dawn light had begun to fill the store, and as he spoke she watched his mouth, wanting to trace the sulky outline of his lips with her fingertips.
She spoke to break the spell. “What about Lexy?”
“Forget my sister. Think about what I said.”
“She loves you, and she worries, and you won’t answer her phone calls.”
His lips pinched in irritation. “I’ll call her, okay? Okay?” He stood up and paced in front of her.
Dana felt her will strengthen.
“You never should have come back here.”
“I want to be near you.”
“Go back to Italy. You had a good life.”
“First say you’ll think about Mexico,” he said.
“No, I won’t.” He was not a python. There was no lightning. “I told you, Micah. My life is in San Diego with David and Bailey. You can’t be part of it.”
She stood and pulled her back and shoulders straight. “I want you to go.”
“What’s wrong? Why did you change?” His question was almost a whine.
“This is a pointless conversation.”
She expected him to argue with her, but instead he walked to the door. With his hand on the knob he said, “I love you. You either don’t know what that means or you’re fooling yourself. Either way . . .” He pressed his fist against his chest. “The pain, Dana, I can’t stand it.”
He waited, but she refused to speak. If she did not respond to his drama, he would leave.
“Okay, I’ll leave, but don’t tell me to go back to Italy. I’m not gonna do it until you come with me. In the meantime, if you want to see me, I’m living in that apartment house on Fourth and Spruce, second floor front.”
And then he was gone, and it was as if a tornado had passed, sucking the air from the bookstore, leaving Dana with a bruised pain in her chest. She sat on the stairs again and by the gray light of dawn stared into the grain of the wood as if she hoped to read a message there.
Chapter 8
Florence
In January David had received a large bonus check, the first in Cabot and Klinger’s history. He endorsed it over to Dana and told her to buy a ticket to Italy. No one got a Ph.D. in art history just thumbing through picture books, he’d said. She was both excited and fearful at the prospect of traveling alone. If she left her family for her own pleasure, fate might choose that time to punish her for being careless with what she had never deserved to have in the first place. She fretted about accidents, earthquakes, epidemics, and terrorists.
David said she was sweet and superstitious, but with the assistance of Phillips Academy and Guadalupe he would manage just fine. She had never been anywhere. Before she went to school in Ohio, she had not ventured farther from home than Los Angeles. She told Lexy she wished they’d used the bonus for a new roof.
“It’s Europe,” Lexy said. “And Italy’s practically the cradle of civilization. You’ll get there and you won’t want to come back. But you do need some backup, and I’ve got just the thing. My brother’d love to show you around. He’s been in Florence almost ten years. He’s practically a native. Plus he’s an artist. That can’t hurt.”
Dana did not want anyone to see what a klutz she was sure to be without David.
“He speaks the language—didn’t you just tell me you’re worried about not speaking Italian? He’ll love you because he loves me.”
Lexy persevered, and Dana gave in and let her call Micah.
“You have a right to have fun, Dana. Go for it.”
David said almost the same thing when he saw her off at Lindberg Field. Friends and people she barely knew told her to have fun. It offended her, the way they tossed the word out—as if fun was a universal concept everyone but she understood. She did not remember playing games with the kids she grew up with. She had never owned a doll and never wanted one. Dana had been a loner, a quiet and bookish kid who’d had part-time jobs from the time she was eleven. The first “fun” time she actually remembered having was with David at the circus in Cincinnati. Even the barista at Bella Luna, the one with five rings in her left nostril, told her to relax and have fun. As if it were that easy. Just a wish and a click of the ruby slippers and she would be able to cast off the careful habits of a lifetime. Take some risks, Lexy told her. Life isn’t about being safe all the time.
After three hours in the Atlanta airport and dinner thousands of feet over the gray Atlantic, she swallowed a sleeping pill, then until she fell asleep made lists in her head: places she wanted to visit,