“In any case, I’ll reimburse Bingley.”
“You know, Mr. D’Arcy, I’ve been with three men too.”
I look at her, amazed. “Really?”
“Yeah, but not at the same time,” she replies with a vague tone of regret. “At a certain point, we either learn to choose or life chooses for us, only in the second case we have to take what it gives us and not what we would have chosen.”
34
Elisa
I slink back to the annex with my tail between my legs. Giada is still sleeping, so I won’t wake her for a postmortem—also there’s very little to discuss.
I go to my room, take the note from Michael that I stupidly stowed in my bedside table, tear it into pieces, and throw it in the toilet.
When I flush, instead of feeling relieved, I’m devastated.
35
Michael
I messed up big-time. Intergalactically big. I stare into space, walking around the grounds of the villa, extremely disappointed in myself for not realizing how much I’d messed up my life until it hit me in the face.
I wouldn’t have been able to be in a relationship with either of them: Sheila is too clingy and Danielle is too effusive.
But what I did to them reminded me too much of the worst person I’ve ever known in my life: my brother, George.
Snooty, profiteering, reckless George.
He would have behaved like this and been proud of it. I’m starting to disgust myself.
Plus, I think I’ve completely ruined my chances with Elisa.
I need to talk to Bingley, but he’s already gone. We barely had time to say goodbye.
As I walk, I hope in vain to run into Elisa. I wander aimlessly with my gaze lowered until I see the darkened imprints of two small hands in the concrete walkway. It was the summer of my tenth birthday, and the old count had had the crumbling walkways around the agricultural buildings rebuilt. Elisa and I had waited for the workers to leave after they poured the concrete, and then we pressed our hands into it with all our strength.
It’s so poignant to see the imprints all these years later. This memory immediately unlocks another: I’m behind the old shed, one of the many outbuildings on the grounds, a place forgotten by adults but that Elisa and I, as children, used as a refuge.
I walk around it—it doesn’t seem anyone has kept it up in all these years—until I reach the wooden plank door.
I force the rusty bolt, which no longer glides, but when I manage to open it, it’s as if I’ve entered a portal in time.
Everything is as I remembered it.
Our bikes, the tires now deflated, are tossed in a corner; the out-of-tune guitar and the rickety drums from when we decided to start a band—a cover band of an Italian duo ... Jasmine ... No! Jalisse! And we always sang the same song. The faded tents from when we camped in the garden; our excavation kit from when we pretended to be archaeologists; a pile of old holiday notebooks, with homework we never finished.
And, in the middle of the shed, under a dust-covered tarp, there she is: Mauro’s battered yellow Cinquecento.
He’d gotten it from a scrap dealer, because it wouldn’t go even if you pushed it, and then stored it in the shed, waiting to find the time and money to get it back on the road.
Elisa and I would get in and pretend we were driving to imaginary destinations: One day it was Milan, another Madrid, then New York, then Honolulu, or the moon ...
One summer, I decided I was going to be a mechanic, so I started dismantling it, with Elisa as my assistant. We had no idea what we were doing, but we lost entire afternoons that way.
I cover it up again, overwhelmed by the wave of nostalgia that catches me off guard and, combined with the humiliation of this morning’s scene, destroys me once and for all.
On Monday, just before eleven, I go to the village building department to get a copy of the municipal regulations and documents relating to the estate.
