He scowls. “You’re an only child?” His tone makes it sound like it’s a personality flaw and not the result of having parents who waited until their early 40s to have children.
“Which one’s your room?” I ask, pointing at the row of doors.
Benito stares at me for a moment then points to the door next to mine.
I laugh. “This is so great. We can stay up late and gossip together.” Benito sighs and leaves the bathroom. I put my bag of toiletries down on the counter and follow him. “We can play truth or dare and make prank calls.” He’s fully ignoring me. “Oh wait, what should I do if I want to bring a guy home? Put a sock on the doorknob?”
He turns back to face me. “Is that a euphemism?”
“No,” I say, blushing a little bit. “It’s a thing. Like, roommates put socks on the door to let the others know they have someone over—” The first smile I’ve seen from Benito cracks across his face. “Oh, you know what I’m talking about.”
He nods. “I don’t think you’ll need a sock. There are no single men in La Musa other than Alfredo, who runs the meat market, but he’s pushing 90.”
“He sounds hot,” I say. Benito rubs his lips together, suppressing another grin. “Don’t worry. I’ll leave you alone,” I say seriously. “You’ll barely know I’m here.”
“I doubt that,” Benito says.
“No, seriously, I’m low maintenance,” I lie, but I’m trying. I want to be breezy and carefree. I will be breezy and carefree. “If I have any questions or concerns, I will take them to your mother.”
“I suppose as the mayor of La Musa, I should say you should bring them to me, but that’s fine,” he says.
I look at him for a moment. “You’re the mayor?”
Benito sighs, tapping on the edge of his door. “Yes. I am newly elected.”
The air leaves my lungs at the mere mention of the e-word. Even Benito, who has all the charm of a doorknob sock, can win an election. “Oh,” is all I can get out.
He watches me for a moment like he’s waiting for me to barb him for his job, but I am temporarily paralyzed. And nauseous. “I’ll leave you to get settled, then,” he says, opening the door of his room and quickly shutting himself inside.
I unpack while listening to a podcast aboutReal Housewivesso my brain doesn’t have room to wander. I’m settled and connected to the snail’s pace Wi-Fi by 8 p.m. I could venture out, I suppose, but to where? Everything is closed, and even then, I’m too jet-lagged to fight my way through a conversation with my spotty Italian, but I’m also too wired to wind down for the night. I look at my e-reader that holds the digital stack of books I downloaded before the flight. When was the last time I even read something for fun?
My phone lights up with a FaceTime call from Marisol.
“Hello?”
“Bitch,” Marisol starts, as she is wont to do, “you arenotpulling a Diane Lane and going allUnder the Tuscan Sunon me.”
I collapse face-first onto the bed, using a pillow to prop up my head and leaning the phone against the headboard. “Well. . . technically I’m in Umbria.”
“You are not actually in Italy.” She’s blurry on the screen and I can’t tell if it’s my internet or her chaotic need to constantly be on the move.
“Mari, sit down, you’re making me nauseous,” I reply when I see her stirring something in the background.
“Fine.” She obliges, sitting at her kitchen table, the orange-and-pink desert sunrise visible in the window behind her. Marisol represents Arizona’s Second Congressional District in Tucson. We met on day one of new House member orientation. Marisol, with her undercut hairstyle, nose ring, and tattoos, marched up to me in my pale pink suit and beachy blond waves and proclaimed we’d be the least palatable new members to our older, establishment colleagues, so we ought to be allies. She was right. “What are you doing in Italy?” she asks. “Last I heard you were ‘refocusing your efforts on changing politics at a local level.’”
That was the company line with the press when I left DC. Fortunately, Marisol knows it’s bullshit. “Wearing sundresses and comically large hats,” I say. “Learning how to make pasta from scratch, seeing the sites with a hot tour guide, erasing all remnants of The Hopeful Person Formerly Known as Isabella Rhodes.”
“You’re not like—” Marisol leans into the phone and lowers her voice. “Offing yourself, right?”
“Jesus, Mari, no!” I sigh. “I’m going to change. I’m going to be different. My whole life was about the dream, and now the dream is dead. I’m over all the bullshit we put up with and completely disenfranchised with the myth of meritocracy. The myth ofdemocracy.”
“Hey now, be careful what you say. I’m a United States congressperson and I could put you on a list.”
“Please exile me. It’d be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Marisol smiles—she’s one of those people who is stoic and expressionless 99% of the time, so it feels like a gift to get even the slightest of chuckles out of her. “Sounds like you don’t need the help. By the way, I met lover boy yesterday. He’s the absolute worst.”
My stomach churns at the mention of Levi.Levi. I wonder what he’s doing right now. Did he keep any of my staff? Did he rearrange the furniture in my office? Is he watering the snake plant my predecessor gifted me that I left behind as a gesture of goodwill I now regret? “How did he look?”
