The Faces of Angels (36 page)

‘ D
O YOU REALLY
think it was her?' Pierangelo asks. ‘Why would she do that?'

‘I don't know. I have no idea.'

It is just past eight in the morning, and I have caught him on his way to work. A car honks in the background and I can hear the rush of traffic as he walks along the street.

‘So you didn't actually see her?'

‘Well, no.'

I'm beginning to wish I hadn't made this call. ‘I didn't open the door,' I add. ‘It was three in the morning.' As if that explains everything. Which, from the sound of his voice, Pierangelo thinks it does.

‘Ah,' he says. Then he adds, ‘Look,
cara
, something woke you up and you got spooked. It happens. As for Billy, the Three Little Maids from School are probably right. Most likely she took off for a few days.' Pierangelo has adopted Kirk's name for the Japanese girls. I told him about lunch yesterday and Mikiko's suggestion.
It's Easter,
I hear Billy saying,
maybe I'll go away for three days and come back again.

‘She could have missed her train coming home and decided to spend in the night in Siena,' Piero says, ‘or Lucca or—'

‘Mantua.' I told him about the postcards too.

‘Yeah, OK, Mantua. Look,' he says, ‘maybe she got sick of Dracula and his bat cape and sushi and ran off with the guy in the mask for a lost weekend. It's been known to happen.'

‘So why doesn't she call?'

‘Why should she? For all she knows you're staying here all week. It's not like you tell her what you're doing all the time,' he points out. ‘She's not your mother.'

I seem to remember telling Billy the same thing relatively recently.

‘Are you sure you're OK?' Pierangelo asks.

‘Yes, I'm fine.' I laugh, but it sounds more like a cackle.

‘Why don't you just come home?' Piero says. ‘I have a meeting in about a minute, and I'm late. But I'm going to finish early. Even the paper packs up on Good Friday. We'll go somewhere.'

‘So, call me when you're done,' I make my cackle voice brisk and businesslike. I'm going up to Settignano this morning,' I add. ‘But I'll be back.'

‘I should hope so.' Pierangelo laughs. ‘OK,
cara
, I'll call you. I have to go.' Another horn blares and I imagine him darting across the street. ‘
Ciao, ciao
,' he shouts.

‘Be careful! I love you,' I shout back, battling the sound of the cars, but the phone's already dead, and I realize too late I didn't even ask him how the football was.

I look at the phone in my hand, feeling like an utter fool. I don't know how long I stood in front of the apartment door last night, convinced there was someone on the other side. It could have been a minute or a half-hour. Eventually, I told myself that if I really thought Billy was standing out there playing some weird hide-and-seek game, I should open the door. Or go and call Pierangelo, who I knew would come over right away, even if it was three in the morning. The idea of doing that and having to explain myself sobered me up pretty fast, and finally I settled for sliding the half-moon hall table under the door knob, wedging it there so if someone tried to come in they'd virtually have to break it in half. I didn't share that part with Pierangelo. Or how I had looked in the closets and under the bed and in the shower. I pull the photo of us out of my back pocket, smooth it out, and look at her. ‘Thanks a ton,' I say. But all Billy does is grin.

I hadn't actually planned to go to Settignano until I realized what a witless wreck I was sounding like, but now it seems quite a good idea. There's a garden up there I've been meaning to visit, and it's going to be a beautiful day. I might even stay for lunch. It's been a while since I did any drawing.

Suddenly energized, I collect my sketchbook and pencils, decide I don't want to take the time to go for pastries, and have one of the rolls from last night with my coffee instead. As I'm putting the bag away, I come face to face with the platter of cold cuts, more than I'll ever eat, so I make two thick sandwiches. Then I add a bottle of water and an orange and put it all in a plastic bag. As I lock the front door and go down the stairs, I remind myself to check next time I'm in the signora's shop and see if she carries dog biscuits. It's silly, but I feel as excited as I used to when I was a little kid and had a special present to bring home from school for Mamaw, a clay ashtray, or autumn leaves ironed between sheets of waxed paper. I close the security gate, drop my keys in my bag, and trot across the street to the little church, bearing my improvised picnic.

But when I get there, the portico is empty. I bite back a pang of disappointment. There are no dog dishes, no duffel bag. In fact, there's no sign that anyone's ever been here, nothing at all but three crimson splashes against the stone; tulip petals curled as tight as babies' fists.

The garden is beautiful, and I stay much longer than I'd planned. I wander from ‘room' to ‘room', through separate mini-gardens walled by high, square-clipped hedges. Water plays in fountains and pools, and the view over Florence from the top terraces is sublime. I start some sketches, and as my hand moves over the page I feel as if I'm getting myself back, as if it's OK to care about landscaping, and the shapes of walls and buildings again. By the time I finally put my pencils away, it's almost two, and I'm starved. I'd thrown the sandwiches out and Pierangelo hasn't called, so I wander into the village where I buy a newspaper, find a trattoria with an outside table and settle down.

I'm on coffee when the bill arrives and my phone cheeps. A text starts, then goes blank: failed connection. I pay and it comes through again.
In Bargello. Meet me.

It's one of Piero's favourite museums, and if I hurry I'll just be able to catch the bus.

Because of the holiday it's crowded, and I have to stand. We swing round corners and lurch into the centre of town, and by the time I get off I'm hot and a little crabby. My phone cheeps while I'm standing in line for my ticket.
Where R U?
I guess he needs to know exactly.
BRgeloticket
, I text back.
U?
But there's no reply, so I switch it off and drop it into my bag. He'll find me.

When I get to the window I find out that the museum is closing at five this afternoon because it's Good Friday. As she takes my money, the girl reminds me I have only an hour. As I cross the courtyard, I look up and see dark sky. Clouds have been gathering all afternoon, and now a sharp squall of rain throws itself against the walls.

The first room is still crowded despite the late hour. I keep a weather eye for Piero, but don't spot him, and am distracted instead by the child Eros perched on his pillar. His baby wings sprout from his back, not yet big enough to carry him into flight, his pudgy legs and arms stretch as he reaches for the sky. I have some talent with pencils and paint, but I can't imagine what it would be like to be able to sculpt, to release faces and figures trapped in stone, ensnare souls in bronze. Most people come here for the Davids, Donatello's long-haired naked boy, and Verrocchio's Roman-skirted youth who stands with the monumental head of Goliath weeping at his feet. But I love some of the odder pieces, the sad-faced Marzocco lion, paw resting on his shield, Donatello's sweet St George, who looks as though he feels faintly sorry for the dragon, and the still marble busts of forgotten young men and women who died five centuries ago in Florence.

I wander into the chapel, look at the ghostly Giotto frescoes, and linger over the strange collections of jewels and daggers and coins trapped below the glass. Billy loved these cases. She said they were the best fleamarket display in the city.

By the time I come back into the main gallery there are fewer people. They've stopped selling tickets now, so those who trickle away are no longer replaced. If Pierangelo is here he's probably up on the third floor, with the displays of armour and weapons. The little boy in him still loves that stuff, lances and pikes, swords and shields. Secretly, I think he believes he's reincarnated, and that in some former life he was a
condottiero
, fighting for the glory of his city. The ragged Baptist, his eyes hungry and crazy-looking from a diet of locusts and honey, stares at me as I walk past him out onto the loggia.

The roof out here is painted with stars. Under them, Giambologna's birds rest on their marble pedestals. The owl leans forward, its eyes beady, something like a scowl on its face. The big hawk digs its talons into bronze earth and twists its neck, beak sharp and ready for prey. Beyond the stone pillars, the rain falls steadily now, muffling noise as a school group clatters down the steps, the teacher stopping to point at the crests of the
Podestàs
, the mayors of Florence who occupied this fortress before they moved to the Palazzo Vecchio. Their shields are mounted on the lower pillars, not feet from where a scaffold once stood beside the fountain. The fact that this was once a prison probably interests the kids a lot more than sculpture. Watching them, I wonder how many people died here and why, what crimes they confessed to, whether they had committed them or not. The children get herded away. Rain slicks the courtyard stones, but for centuries they ran with blood. Crimson, like the glint on the puddles.

I blink. And blink again. But I'm not imagining it. It's there, a shimmering wash of red on the mirror-like surface. It's only on the puddles, so it must be a reflection, from above. And sure enough, when I look up, there, standing in one of the leaded windows on the third floor, is Billy in her red dress.

Her outline is blurry behind the diamond-paned glass. She raises her arm and waves. Startled, I wave back. Then I call out, and realize she'll never hear me.

‘Wait!' I gesture towards the stairway, and hurry down the loggia, making for the long flight of stone steps that leads to the upper floor. She watches me, a column of red, her face nothing but a pale smear behind the rain-streaked glass. Just before I get to the door, I wave again. And she waves back.

My phone doesn't have caller ID for numbers I haven't entered, and since Pierangelo has three phones—any one of which he can be using at any time—my phone sometimes knows him and sometimes doesn't. I just assumed it was him who texted this afternoon, but now I realize it must have been Billy. What she is doing here, and why she is wearing her red party dress, I have no idea, but I'm sure she'll tell me. I reach the top of the last flight and push the door, praying they haven't closed it yet for the night. But it swings under my hand, and I slip through before a guard can come along and stop me.

The glass cases up here hold porcelain, a mishmash collection of figurines, plates on little legs, and cups with etched scenes on them, the sort of stuff I imagine Signora Bardino's house to be full of. They wink under display lights as I trot by, making for the end door that leads to the armour gallery, where Billy had to be standing. Typical of her, I think, not to just call the apartment. Or, for that matter, my cell—using her voice instead of messages. Typical of her to spring surprises. I remember the set of steps at the Belvedere. If, as Henry pointed out, she did things normally, she wouldn't be Billy.

Just as I reach the end of the long cases, the lights go out. Sure enough, it's five p.m. on the dot. I push open the armour-gallery door, and step into twilight.

Life-sized knights ride model horses down the centre of the long room. Dressed for war, their mounts are covered in ornate silver. Embossed faded fabric hangs from their flanks. The knights' visors are down, their shields raised. Long pikes, lethal and tipped with steel, are mounted on the walls, hanging above display cases of swords and hand-to-hand combat knives. Suits of armour stand here and there, hollow, and looking like giants.

‘Billy?' My voice reverberates, bounces off the thick stone walls and echoes back at me. ‘Where are you?'