Shakespeare once said: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
I am a never ending dream.
I am worse than a nobody.
I am anothing.
Ironically, this sense of nothingness creates restlessness. Sitting still, not doing anything . . . it is a slow spreading poison.
I am decidedly not a spirit at rest. I grasp for any sense of import, a goal that would give my life—half-formed and half-lived as it is—meaning.
To that end, this particular afternoon, I pushed myself into the wall between the stairwell and outside entrance to the palazzo where I ‘lived’ in central Florence.
The density of the hard stone slid through me. It wasn’t uncomfortable. There was no real sensation, I supposed. Just darkness and the knowledge that I wasina wall, which was instinctively unnerving and slightly panic-inducing. But hiding in the wall was a necessity. How else was I to covertly observe the man and woman on the other side?
“I told you, Gianni, I’m so done with this. You were texting your ex during lunch.” Chiara’s staccato Italian carried through the dark of the stone wall, muffled but clear.
Watching over Chiara D’Angelo had become my life’s purpose. I was her self-appointed guardian angel of sorts.
Chiara was my house mate, teacher of all things modern and Kate to my Petruchio. Though I hadn’t decided if she and I were engaged in a Shakespearean comedy or tragedy. Time would tell.
I inched closer to the outside edge of the stone wall, all the while diligently ignoring the stern Regency-gentleman voice in my head clamoring that lords did not hide in walls to spy on unmarried women.
“Woman! Stop being so paranoid. She was just asking a question about my mom.” That voice belonged to Gianni, Chiara’s latest ‘manwhore fiasco’—her descriptor, not mine.
I would describe Gianni as a rakehell of the first order with pockets to let, but that was my inner nineteenth century British nobleman speaking.
Chiara snorted. Keys jangled.
That same restlessness driving me, I moved up the wall, making sure I was well above their heads. I angled my forehead and pushed my right eye out of the stone so I could see. In my short tenure as a ghost, I had realized that people rarely glanced upward, allowing me to hide in plain sight.
I looked down on the scene.
The main door into the palazzo rested inside an arched corridor which ran the breadth of the building from the street to the courtyard behind.
Chiara stood with her back to the door, keys loose in her hands. I could only see the top of her sleek, dark hair and the tapping of one red, stylishly-clad foot.
A man leaned over her. A shockingly handsome man with copious amounts of precisely coiffed hair. Outward perfection was Gianni’s one and only selling point. Why a perceptive, intelligent woman like Chiara bought it, I would never understand.
“Please, Gianni, I’m hardly that stupid,” Chiara scoffed. “You were asking her what she was doing later on.”
“What? Not even. Again, you’re being paranoid, Chiara.” He trilled her name in Italian staccato, rolling the ‘r’ until it almost sounded like a ‘d’—Kee-AHR-uh.
“Uh, hello? No, I’m not. I checked when you went to the bathroom.”
Gianni’s head reared up, brows frowning. “Youwhat?! You looked at my phone?”
“Of course I checked your phone.” Chiara threw up her hands. “You left it on the table. It was like youwantedme to look. Classic subliminal messaging.”
“That’s a total invasion of my privacy!”
“Not if you leave your phone lying around it’s not!”
“You’re crazy, woman. Like . . . seriously messed.”
In Gianni’s defense, Chiarawasa wee bit nutty. Generally her personality quirks fell into the cute and harmless category, but every now and again, they overspilled the banks and flowed into the Fields of Psychosis.
“Don’t you even start with me, Gianni. Looking at your phone was simply payback,” she snapped. “I know you were the one who took that hundred euros from my purse.”
