In other words, I am toast. I am done. My dream has been murdered right in front of me, and I did nothing to stop it from happening. My carefully curated image, down the drain. No one will see the hours upon hours I dedicated to the job every day, they’ll see the three minutes I spent texting. It won’t matter that I spent every waking hour of my 20s working toward this goal while my friends were starting relationships, marriages, families. I’ll look like a fool in love who cared more about getting a boyfriend than getting the job done. I’ll look like a giggly teenage girl gunning for prom queen, not a competent elected official. I will look weak.
“For what it’s worth, Isabella,” Levi says, lowering his voice so it’s all sultry and ragged—the last remnants of rasp from his cigarette-smoking days making him sound gravelly and Clooney-esque. It really, really, deeply annoys me how my heart swells in response. Levi presses a hand to the side of my head and despite my better judgment, I lean into it. “I thought you made a great congressperson.” I let my eyes land on his and he smiles haphazardly, testing the waters for some kind of truce.
I push his hand away. “But you think you can be a better one.”
Three weeks later Levi Cross defeats me in the general election.
My campaign hosts a victory party at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and I throw up in a bathroom allegedly haunted by the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. The poetry of that is not lost on me even as I vomit up the last of the spicy tuna crispy rice I stress-ate over the last four hours since the polls closed. I make a speech conceding the race 45 minutes later.
“All I know is that the best person to represent this district is the person its people chose,” I say, but it’s bullshit. I’m better for this job than Levi Cross. I care more. I have stronger policy. In the two years since I was first elected, I’ve accomplished a lot of what I promised, but now all anyone was going to remember me for is this.
The media has a field day with my loss. The pundits parse over what went wrong in excruciating detail. The keyboard warriors on social media twist the knife by making jokes that turn into viral memes. Every corner of the internet is plastered with my failure. None of my colleagues want to meet with me, so despite my desire to drown myself in work for whatever time I have left, I mostly spend my last days in DC binge-watchingReal Housewivesalone.
I finish my term in a daze, and by January, my dream is officially dead.
Chapter One
The plane clunks onto the runway and I’m shaken out of my medicated slumber. I look out the window and the outside looks so similar to the dead-grass, industrial-building surroundings of LAX that for a minute I wonder if we were re-routed back to our origin. It’s only when I notice my right leg is asleep that I realize we have been up in the air for the flight’s full 12 hours, and the sleeping pill I took before take-off worked. I turn on my phone and connect to the airport Wi-Fi out of habit, texting my parents that I made it here safely even though it’s the middle of the night in Los Angeles and they’re so irritated with me, I doubt they’re up late with worry.
I don’t blame them. Living with me since the end of my term has been like living with an elder who keeps to her bedchambers, asking for food to be sent up and only periodically coerced out of the house for a few minutes of sunshine. It didn’t make sense to keep my LA apartment when I was first elected, so Imoved back in with them. I was always working when I was home anyway, and I could barely afford my DC apartment as it was. With the private security, the flights back and forth, my wardrobe that was always meticulously critiqued, there was barely enough of my congressional salary left over to afford food, and I didn’t have generational wealth to fall back on like many of my colleagues. But when I moved the last of my stuff out of my minimalist Georgetown studio, the only refuge for the once-great Isabella Rhodes was her mommy and daddy’s house, and that’s where I’ve been hiding myself ever since.
Until now.
My tiny attic bedroom in Beachwood Canyon wasn’t far enough away from my failure; I had to put an ocean between me and my shame.
“Benvenuti a Roma,” the cheery flight attendant says to me as I deplane, and I mutter back some semblance of a “grazie.” I haven’t been to Italy in over a decade—not since a study abroad program in college. It was the social media flashback post from my friend Emma in the program that led to the first spontaneous decision in my entire life. The sensory memory of the dreamy, sunlight-soaked Umbrian town of La Musa came flooding back. Gelato in the afternoon, late nights drinking wine and eating, long walks at dusk, taking in the clifftop views of endless rolling hills of vineyards—a true worry-free existence. A few clicks later, I had a plane ticket and a room in a villa booked.
The university suspended the study abroad program years ago due to budget cuts, so the town that usedto increase its population by a couple dozen college students every summer would instead be filled with aging Italians who, from what I remember, were far removed from American culture. Therefore, completely ignorant to the existence of a certain United States congresswoman—well,formerUnited States congresswoman, once named the future of her party, the rising star of politics, the one to watch, who was now, instead of meeting with the budgetary committee, scraping the bottom of her backpack for a loose almond because she slept through breakfast service.
The name Isabella Rhodes will be meaningless to them. Thank god. I am free to be the woman who lost everything, staring listlessly off into the scenic countryside, willing the powers of the Tuscan sun or whatever to heal all I’ve lost. I’ll eat amazing pasta, I’ll drink great wine, I’ll befriend a wise older local, I’ll have a torrid, no-strings affair with a hot local, and before long, all my previous troubles will fade into the background. Now that I’m in Italy, I’ll never worry about what happened to me in America ever again. I’ll learn the power of distance, of time healing all wounds, of a slower paced life that my culture rejects but I will soon find suits me much better. My perspective on life will change and therefore I will change. I’ll wear great outfits.
Congresswoman Rhodes, who once dreamed of building a better America in which all people can thrive, is dead, and now I’m just Izzy in Italy. Screw making the world a better place. It’s Levi’s problem now.
The drug-induced sleep haze wears off as I chug a piping-hot espresso in the café car on the dusty train from Rome to La Musa. The countryside whips by for close to two hours before I finally see it: a medieval town perched atop a cliff in the middle of rolling green hills of vineyards upon vineyards. The giantduomocathedral with its intersecting arches stands out in the middle of the village, keeping watch. Butterflies swarm in my stomach as the train lurches to a stop at the La Musa station, the first pleasant feeling I can recall in months. I drag my bags off the train in just enough time before it lunges forward, carrying its passengers to more popular destinations like Perugia, Siena, or Florence.
A rickety cable car takes me the rest of the way, up the side of the cliff with the views of the countryside becoming more spectacular as the hills bask in the golden light of the midafternoon sun. I was too young to fully appreciate it when I was 19. Everything was new and exciting then. New experiences were as much of a guarantee as the sun setting and rising every day. My whole future was ahead of me. My dream was my purpose. Now, I know what monotony looks like. I know the grief that comes once the dreaming part is over and reality takes hold.
As I struggle with dragging my four-wheeled suitcase across the cobblestone piazza from the cable car stop at the top of the cliff and to the villa-lined streets that lead to the center of town, I try to find the instructions to my new home. A blank white screen stares back at me when I open my email app. No data, no Wi-Fi. Damn it. I negotiated it all with thewoman advertising a big room in her glorious-looking medieval home on Airbnb. I had launched into hyper-fixation mode so swiftly once the idea to relocate here came to me that it seemed like fate when I saw her post. The rent was cheap, and she seemed eager to find a renter.No one moves here anymore,she’d said, excited to find someone to take the room.
Looking around now, I see what she meant. While the town looks roughly the same as when I was last here, there’s an eeriness in the air as I trudge forward. It feels emptier, sadder than I remember. Shops are closed, no people mill about the winding street. It’s colder than I thought for an early April day too, and I wonder if I packed enough of the right clothes. A frigid breeze cuts through, sending a chill down my spine—maybe this wasn’t fate, maybe it was just a bad decision. I’ve never been spontaneous before; I don’t know why I thought I could start now.
I try to remember where exactly the house is located. I know it was near the center of town, looked yellowish from her photos, was big—every building in La Musa looks different but also that same shade of historic, beautiful, grand. It had a name though, Villa Farentino. I think. A woman, holding a jacket closed with one hand and a bag of groceries in another, approaches as I round the street closer toward the Piazza Duomo in the heart of La Musa. I figure if I can get there, I can knock on doors until I find the right one. “Mi scusi,” I say, and the woman turns toward me, alarmed by the presence of a tall, blond American with a giant suitcase rolling towardher. “Parla inglese?” I ask. She shakes her head no. I planned on using my phone to translate in such situations, but again, no data, no Wi-Fi, damn it. I try to scrape together any remnants of the Italian I haven’t used in over a decade. “Dov’è Villa Farentino?” She smiles, points ahead and answers back in rapid Italian. I catch zero words of what she says but she nods at me and sort of gestures at her groceries in hand to communicate she’s not going to help me further. “Grazie,” I say, though I do not feel thankful.
I keep walking, the wheels of my suitcase clacking harder as the sound of them struggling against the cobblestones echoes down the hill. I reach the clock tower, the second highest structure next to theduomoin town, and stare at its big arms pointing out the time at the top. It’s nearly 4 p.m. and I haven’t eaten since the dinner service last night, or this morning, or whatever time that was in relation to the time it is now. My stomach growls, suddenly activated by the realization of its deprival. Once I find this place and drop my bags off, I’ll venture back out and find something to eat. All of the food is good in La Musa, and I was aware of that when I was 19, but now I have money, a more sophisticated palate, and less fear of carbs. That’s one good thing about your whole life going to shit: You learn that of all your enemies in the world, pasta is not one of them.
I see another person walking toward me on the other side of the street and I excitedly wave at him, hoping he’ll be more helpful than the last lady, but he does not acknowledge me. “Signore!” I call out. Helooks up at me briefly but does not slow down or cross the street. I pull my suitcase, even less malleable when trying to drag it sideways across the cobblestone, and quickly intercept his path so he has to face me.
When I reach him and he finally looks up at me for longer than a second, I’m surprised to find he’s about my age, maybe a little older. He’s dressed in a way that suggests he does his shopping outside of the lone boutique in town, with a fitted blue button-down and gray trousers. His hair is slightly unkempt, like he’s been running his fingers through it all day in distress, a notable flaw in his otherwise perfectly put-together appearance. And he’s handsome. Actually, he’s hot. Even through his shirt I can tell his arms are toned, his sleek physique rounded out with strong shoulders and a sharp jawline. If I weren’t standing close enough to see the pores in the smooth olive skin that surrounds his piercing hazel eyes, I’d be convinced he was one of Michelangelo’s statues. They’re a dime a dozen around here anyway.
“Parla inglese?” I ask. He nods. Helpful. “Oh, thank god. I’m looking for Villa Farentino. Do you know where that is?” Instead of answering, his thick eyebrows arch in the middle of his face as he glares at me. No, not glares, glowers. He’s glowering at me. “Mi dispiace, non parlo italiano. I don’t speak it very well anyway,” I say, trying to show that I’m not some ignorant tourist who came to Italia expecting everyone to speak English. I expected, at the very least, for my phone to translate for me. “Do you understand?” I ask, because he’s still glowering.
“I understand perfectly what you are saying,” he answers back in crystal-clear English, the slightest hint of an English accent behind his Italian one. “What I don’t understand is why you are saying it.”
I do not know what he means by this, but I try again. “I am staying at Villa Farentino. The directions on how to get there are in an email, but my data plan doesn’t cover international travel, so I have no way of accessing it. If you could just point me in the general direction, that would be great.”
His eyes narrow as he sizes me up. Someone this hot scanning my body would be flattering in another circumstance, but it’s more like he’s a security guard doing his best without a metal detector. “That’s not possible,” he says. “Villa Farentino does not rent to strange American women on a soul-searching tour or whatever you’re doing here.”
I laugh because even though he’s insulting me, he’s got me pegged. Plus, it’s much cleverer than I was expecting from this stranger who so far hasn’t cracked anything that so much as resembles a smile. “Well, I guess this forlorn American knows something about your town that you don’t. The woman of the house, Anita, is renting it to me herself.”
