Siena, Italy
1931
Lapo
Lapo put down the heavy black telephone receiver. They had the only phone in the area. It had cost a fortune to run the line from the nearest exchange just outside Siena through dense forests full of wild boars and giant porcupines and across mosquito-infested swamps to Belsederino, the half-ruined castle he’d bought on a whim. The phone line was physical proof of his fears about moving his American bride to this remote, abandoned property far from everywhere on twisted mountain roads. He’d hoped that slim black wire and its connection to the larger world would keep her happy in this wild place. The whole endeavor was also financial folly, a two-thousand-acre property that hadn’t been farmed in a hundred years. A short time after the real estate deal closed, he had run through all the money his father had left him without making a dent in the work needed to make the place fertile and profitable.
“What’s the matter?” asked Eleanor in English. The day he met her in Florence, she was little more than a girl, a lost tourist in a summer dress with lemons on it. Now she wore tall rubber boots and a pair of his pants held up with baling twine. Somehow, she still looked impossibly gorgeous, though he had to admit the scent of pig manure was at this moment overpowering her French perfume.
“Niente,” he said. “Nothing.” They did this a lot, carrying on one conversation in two languages. When he looked at her, his heart actually hurt, he loved her so much. “Just Giorgio,” he said.
“Your book agent?” Her profile in the fading light was aquiline, her long neck accentuated by her bobbed hair. She still looked like that girl to him, though twelve years had passed since their wedding, and she was now mother to their three children. He had taken this beautiful exotic bird and caged her here in his castle using nothing but bonds of love, like a real-life Papageno. He felt terrible—she deserved a better life, the life of luxury and ease she was born to in Chicago, not the life of a farmer’s wife in a foreign country, hanging frozen diapers by the fireplace in what was little more than an unheated pile of rocks miles from the nearest town.
“What did he say? Did he have news?”
He nodded but didn’t elaborate. A couple of years ago, Lapo had published It’s a Dolce Vita, a novel that was a thinly veiled diary of his and Eleanor’s adventures restoring their run-down property. The comic story of a prosperous Florentine ex-playboy trying to convince the obstreperous Sienese peasants to embrace modern farming techniques, and inevitably getting his comeuppance by falling into pigpens, getting knocked over by sheep, and being stepped on by oxen, was a big hit. His favorite chapter was the scenting contest at a truffle festival, which went awry when a gruff gamekeeper’s tame turkey beat the prize hound of the province’s richest man, upsetting the local social order. It’s a Dolce Vita was a mild success that at least gave them some cash to keep going on the endless renovations of the six falling-down farmhouses that, along with the thousand-year-old castle, made up the Belsederino estate. Though he’d been writing on the side since his school days, Lapo had never won a single literary prize, or really expected to. He wrote to transport people to a pleasant landscape where nothing too awful would happen. And to pay the bills, which multiplied faster than the rabbits who consistently ate anything they tried to grow. He hadn’t told Eleanor the bank was threatening to foreclose. He couldn’t bear to.
“What? Tell me.” She sank down next to the sleeping Labrador on the sofa.
He felt if he said it out loud, it would be real. If he said nothing, it would fade away like a puff of smoke. And maybe it was just a puff of smoke. Maybe it was nothing. “Mussolini just said in a radio interview that Dolce Vita is his favorite book.”
Eleanor’s eyes widened. “Mussolini. As in Benito Mussolini?”
“Our Beloved Leader.”
She jumped up. “Oh, my goodness! That’s wonderful.” She threw her arms around him, and the manure scent got stronger.
“Is it?” he said into her shoulder.
“Of course it is. It’s amazing publicity. It’ll be a number one bestseller. Congratulations!” She kissed his cheek.
“But.”
“No buts. You always do this. Something good happens and you turn it into something to worry about instead of celebrate. You do that thing.”
“What thing?” He knew exactly what she was talking about. A silly old superstition to ward off evil.
“This thing.” She raised her index and little finger and made the sign of the horns.
He grabbed her fingers. “The horns always go down, otherwise it’s unlucky. Caspita.”
She laughed and said, “This calls for a celebration.” She trotted out of the room, and he could hear her boots making the loose tiles clatter in the hallway. The floors shook and sighed in every wind. Maybe if the book did sell well, they could replace the beams, fix the broken windows instead of taping them. She returned with a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a corkscrew.
Lapo was staring out the window at the farmyard below them, where some chickens pecked at the dirt. Maybe they could fence the far pasture, maybe even try grapes in that field on the hill. Dig a new well instead of the one that produced salty, brackish water. “I suppose he’s done some good.”
“He’s done tons of good. I mean, the malaria rates have dropped way down. That’s a lot of lives saved. He’s given this country a sense of pride again. Roosevelt loves him, apparently.”
Lapo frowned. “But the violence…”
“He’s not responsible for everything his supporters do. They love him.”
“They worship him.”
She moved a stack of past-due notices on the table out of the way and set down the glasses. “They’re a little overly loyal.”
“It’s not healthy for the country. People should be able to disagree peacefully. We’re not Neanderthals.”
She worked the corkscrew until there was a satisfying pop. The wine gurgled as she filled two glasses with their own red. “Listen, tonight we’re celebrating.”
He managed to crack a small grin. “We might finally be able to afford all the things other people already have. Like indoor plumbing.”
He loved her so much. He always worried she would awaken from her spell of love, realize she was married to a balding, middle-aged Italian who was a middling writer and a hopeless farmer, and walk away from this godforsaken place like any sane woman would have done years ago.
She raised a glass. “To you. And to wild luxuries like flush toilets.”
He raised his glass. “To Dolce Vita.” He sipped the wine. It wasn’t terrible. With some French oak casks, they might even be able to age it properly and sell it abroad. “I wonder if he’s really read it,” he said.
“Does it matter?”
Behind his back, Lapo made the sign of the horns.
Hollywood
1931
Sally
I may as well have hurled myself onto another planet. I landed in the lap of Patsy Chen—yes, that Patsy Chen—who was on her way home from a frustrating day auditioning for a movie called Dragon’s Lair, a murder mystery. Later I found out she’d wanted the lead, the brainy wife of the detective, but instead was cast in the role she always played: the evil seductress. Or better yet, the evil attempted seductress: she didn’t have to read the script to know that Madame Wong would try to woo the handsome detective but fail and be exposed as a murderous viper.
The red quilted-leather interior of the Pierce-Arrow looked to my panicked eyes like the inside of a casket. I was still clutching my wilted flowers, speechless with terror at the sight of Patsy’s black bobbed hair and sharp row of bangs, arched and plucked eyebrows, those oval eyes lined in black, and her crimson mouth, all set against that famous white-powdered face.
“Are you afraid of me?” she demanded.
I sure was.
“Why? Why are you afraid of me?”
I was too scared to even utter a squeak.
“If you tell me why, I will let you go. If you don’t tell me why, I will … eat you!”
Patsy sounded more impatient than hungry, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I swallowed twice, then found my words.
“You’re Mrs. Fu Manchu!”
There was a long pause as palm trees zipped past the window when I thought for sure she would force poison down my throat or throw me to her dragon, but instead Patsy started laughing. She sat back in the red seat of the Pierce-Arrow and laughed and laughed. I didn’t peg it for a happy laughter, more of an “I knew that cow was going to kick me” kind of laughter. “Where do you want to be dropped off? Where do you live?”
I smiled my best smile and said in my sweetest voice, “I love flowers. Do you like flowers? Which ones are your favorites? Mine are those horn-shaped ones. I don’t know what they’re called, but they’re so pretty. Someday I’m going to live in a house covered with them.”
“Tecoma alata. Flaming bells. That’s what they’re called. My house is covered in them.”
“You don’t talk like Mrs. Fu Manchu.”
“No. In real life I don’t. Are you a girl? You are, aren’t you?”
“I’m sorry I thought you were a bad person.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I think you’re actually very nice.”
Patsy laughed again. “I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just … like everybody else.”
I nodded. Then I pushed my luck. “Do you like ice cream?”
Patsy’s chauffeur offered to toss me out of the moving car, but to my surprise Patsy told him to drive us home. Home. We passed through iron gates and drove up a long circular drive to a golden castle covered with orange flowers overlooking the Pacific. “I’ve never seen the ocean before,” I said. “It’s so flat.”
I followed Patsy through the giant wood-and-metal front door of the house, which was amazing and huge and had archways and red tile floors. I caught glimpses of suits of armor and heavy red-and-yellow-striped curtains and big green velvet sofas. When I ran my hand over the walls of the hallway, they were nubbly like dried mud. In the white tiled kitchen, Patsy’s housekeeper, Aida, made me a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches that were deliciously buttery and gooey and crispy all at once. In between bites, I told them my story.
“I could work for you. Please?” I said, wiping my mouth. I desperately wanted to live in this house, stare out of the huge windows at the flat blue ocean, sleep under wooden beams, and walk on red tile. “I can clean, I can sew, I can take care of little ones. I can work in the garden. I’m really strong.” All this was true.
“She could do the ironing,” said Aida, handing me a dish of chocolate ice cream. “But I’m not taking a pay cut.”
Patsy had a different idea. She grabbed me by my red hair and peered into my face. “Look at you. You’re like an orphan out of Central Casting.”
“Ain’t an orphan,” I said between mouthfuls. “Got a mama and a daddy.” I continued to shovel huge spoonfuls of ice cream into my mouth in case they took it away before I was done.
“It’s not what you are or aren’t, it’s how you look. Which is perfect. I’m going to adopt you,” she said. “I’m going to be your mother. We’ll call you … Sally.”
“That’s not my name.”
“It is now.”
Copyright © 2023 by Christina Lynch
