The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle Read Free Book Online

and pale risen welts. Sometimes he bends down to kiss one of the ridges, as if it’s a landmark on a map he loves.
    With the exception of doctors and nurses, whom I could not avoid, no one else has ever been permitted to even see the secret calligraphy embossed on my skin, much less touch it. Most of the time I wear turtlenecks, and when I don’t, I keep collars buttoned. Sometimes I wind scarves over and over around my neck. And on the very rare occasions when I slip up, or when I’m forced into a position where someone gets a glimpse, I mumble about an accident. I give the distinct impression of twisted metal and shattered glass.
    â€˜You changed your hair.’ We are finally getting out of bed, driven by hunger of the more banal kind, and I watch in the bedroom mirror as he runs his hands through my tiger stripes. They’re bronze and copper, with one deep pink streak on the left side. Our eyes meet in the glass, mine an intermediate hazel, his the peculiar pale bluish-green one sees occasionally in this part of Italy, bits of luminous glass set in the severe, almost hawk-like cast of his features. ‘It looks great,’ he says. ‘I love it, Mrs Warren.’
    â€˜Who’s she?’ I ask. ‘Your other lover?’
    â€˜Yeah,’ Piero replies, ‘a lady I knew once. No one you need to worry about. You don’t even look like her.’

    In the kitchen, I lean on the counter, rolling a lemon back and forth across the bright stainless-steel surface while Pierangelo pulls the cork on the Brunello and pours us each a glass. His apartment is almost directly across the river from Billy’s and mine, and although it’s also in an old palazzo, the similarities end there. From our leprous gilded mirrors to the silk counterpanes and massive beds it’s clear, to me at least, that Signora Bardino’s eye for design comes pretty much directly from The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and The Leopard . Pierangelo and, I assume, Monika, on the other hand, are distinctly ‘New Europe.’
    The ceilings here are as high and the windows as symmetrical as those of the apartment Billy and I live in, but instead of marble, Piero’s floors are stripped pale wood. Natural-linen blinds hang in place of our armour-plated ones, and the lighting is so recessed it’s virtually invisible. Large Rothko-like canvases cover bright white walls whose plaster is smooth and silky. Even the lemon pots on the roof terrace are not the regulation terra-cotta, but cylinders of stainless steel. The trees themselves are studded with tiny lights that glitter in the leaves like Dante’s stars.
    Pierangelo cooks to relax and his kitchen is outfitted with glass-fronted cabinets, magnetic racks of knives, and gadgets. Centre stage is a six-burner gas range I’ve seen him stroke as lovingly as other middle-aged men stroke sports cars. The results of his meticulous preparations are almost disturbingly perfect, which I tease him about. I’ve threatened to get a measuring tape and make sure his cubes of zucchini are exactly symmetrical, or, worse, to make dinner myself, which would almost certainly involve spilling things.
    At the moment, he’s concentrating completely on slivering the tiniest carrots I have ever seen. The tip of his knife flashes up and down, and I know better than to interrupt. Instead, I occupy myself with a game I play called How many traces of Monika are left here? I’ve yet to find anything as concrete as a piece of clothing—an old bra at the back of a laundry basket, or a shoe. Not even a half-used lipstick. If I didn’t know better, I’d sometimes think she never existed. Now, I slide open the drawer that holds the phone books to see if there’s anything lurking, and hit gold dust almost right away. Underneath a set of manuals for the dishwasher and the dryer, there’s an old Catholic calendar, one of those gory ones with all the saints