“At once, sir,” he says back in English. I guess my best Italian is still not going to fool anyactualItalian.
We take our drinks over to one of the standing tables in a corner of the bar, which smells heavily of cigarettes and perfume in the wake of the crowd, and look at each other.
“So what now?” I ask. “Is it dangerous to go back in? If they know who we are, I mean.”
“I’m not sure if they’re the issue,” Luca says.
“What do you mean?”
“While we might be tailing La Contessa, someone else has been tailing us.” He lifts his glass, which I’ve just filled, and clinks it against mine. “Cin cin.”
I can’t return the toast. “What the hell do you mean? Is it—”
“I mean that same persistent young man who got the jump on me at the Colosseum is here tonight at the opera. I saw him down in the stalls.”
Luca looks perfectly calm, but I have to ask. “You’re—you’re sure? You’re not just, you know, seeing things?”
He turns his attention from the bar entrance back to me. “I’m quite sure, angel.” He tilts his head to one side. “You don’t believe me?”
A few months back, during the heights of his paranoia, I might not have. But I would also have been wrong then, as it turns out. Because wewereattacked. And—as much as I like Nick Fontana—hewaslying to us, like Luca kept insisting at the time. And we were being followed in Rome, just as Luca said. After what happened there, I’d rather not take any chances, even if my husbandishallucinating.
But I don’t think he’s hallucinating, which is even worse.
“Of course I believe you,” I tell him. “So we retreat for tonight, back to the palazzo?”
He sighs. “I had the most delicious fantasy of you on your knees for me during the second half, keeping me on edge up until the climactic scene, and then letting me blow down your throat right when the soprano hit the high note.”
“Holy fuck. We can do that.”
He grins. “My desire to keep us alive is slightly stronger than my desire to come in your mouth in public. No; we’ll have to leave that for another time.”
Nervously, I crane my head towards the lobby, but it’s empty now. Everyone’s gone back into the theater proper. “If he wants to get rid of us, why not just, you know, start shooting?”
“Because he wants to make it personal, baby bird. He wants to avenge his brother. He wants to look at me close up when he kills me, to watch the spark leaving me.” I let that pleasant thought trickle down my spine while Luca drains his glass, and then takes my hand. “Let’s see if this bartender can help us.”
We make our way back over to the bar and Luca asks, in Italian, “Is there a way to exit out canal-side from here?”
The bartender obviously thinks better of Luca’s Italian, because he responds in the same. “Not during the performance, sir. You’ll have to go out the front.”
Luca pulls a few euro bills out of his inside jacket pocket, placing them on the bar, and smiles. “Are you sure?”
The barman glances at the cash, does a double take, and puts down the glasses he’s clearing to wipe his hands on a dishtowel.
He takes the money, pockets it, and then comes out from behind the bar. “Follow me.”
The back stairs of La Fenice lead through the now-darkened memorabilia section, with several portraits of Maria Callas, and descriptions of the three major fires the opera house has suffered over the years.
“The phoenix lived up to its name,” I murmur to Luca, stopping to look at one of the photographs from the 1996 devastation.
“Please,signore,” the bartender says anxiously, coming back to hurry us along. “I cannot be away too long.”
And then we both hear it—footsteps following coming closer. The bartender beckons us nervously, standing at the top of a set of enclosed, narrow stairs.
“It’s just down this staircase?” Luca asks the bartender, who nods. “Do I need a key?”
“No, it can be pushed open from the inside, but you cannot re-enter.”
“Then go. We’ll make our own way.”
