One Italian Summer(25)

“It’s such a long shot,” she says. She places her hands on her hips and shrugs.

“Tell me.”

“I’m working on a design for the Sirenuse.” She puts a hand on her face. “Remo told me they’re remodeling the hotel, and I decided on a whim to submit a proposal. They have all these really famous people from Rome and Milan presenting. I don’t know, it’s silly…”

The Sirenuse is the nicest hotel in Positano, and it has the price tag to match. When my mother and I thought about going, it was seventeen hundred dollars a night.

She told me it was gorgeous, though.

“I didn’t know that,” I say.

“We just met! But no one does, really. Design is kind of a passion project of mine. I was an art history major, and I work in a gallery now, but it is—it’s not really what I want to do. I want to design interiors. This hotel would be a dream.”

She doesn’t know yet, I think. She doesn’t know that she’ll do it.

I think about walking into my mother’s office at home in Brentwood. The floor was soft white carpeting, and there were all sorts of movie posters framed on the walls—like she wasn’t a decorator but instead a producer. They were films whose sets she loved. “Your home is your set” is a thing she’d often tell clients. I knew what she meant. That the homes in movies have to work—they have to show the audience who these characters are; they have to be revealing. She wanted people’s homes to be reflections of them. She wanted you to be able to walk inside and say “No one else but Carol Silver could possibly live here.”

“I’ve heard it’s beautiful,” I say.

She nods. “I stayed there when I came with my parents so many years ago. I never forgot that place.”

“I can see why,” I say.

She smiles. “So anyway, I should get going. But thank you for the major exercise. It completely cleared my head. I need to remember that!” She turns and walks off before I can stop her. “See you later!” she calls over her shoulder.

I watch her disappear down the steeply descending staircase. I am watching her becoming, I think. Here she is, at the start.





Chapter Twelve


I’m a sweaty mess and nearing dehydration when I get back to the lobby. Marco is gone, but Carlo is at the desk.

“Hot morning,” he says. “Water?”

“Yes, please.”

He hands me a bottle, and I down it in one long swig.

“Thanks, Carlo.”

I turn to head upstairs, and he calls after me.

“You have a message, Ms. Silver,” he says.

My first thought is my mother. Not Carol, not the woman I just left on the stairs, but my mom. That she’s at home, arranging flowers and sending me a telegraph all the way to Italy: How is the shopping? Buy me something for the house, I miss you. Xx.

But of course there are no such things as telegraphs anymore, to start.

The second is Eric.

“Oh?” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “A gentleman named Adam who is a guest here wanted to know if you were free for lunch.”

I laugh. It comes out like a snort. Carlo notices.

“Thank you,” I say. “I’ll track him down.”

I take the stairs up to the restaurant, where breakfast is in full swing. Nika is talking to a well-dressed couple in their sixties. They look French, impeccably matched up in white linen.

“Look who it is!”

Adam is bright and cheerful this morning, in striped swim trunks and a gray T-shirt. His hands are empty, and I glance over to see his room key perched on his usual table.

“Hey,” I say. “I just got your message.”

He looks me over. “You look worked.”

“I am,” I say. “I did the stairs this morning.”

I feel my body, alive. The blood pumping through my veins, the sweat on the back of my neck, the heat from the exertion and sun. It feels good.

“Did you enjoy it?”

I smile, thinking of Carol, her head back, the ocean below us. “Yes. You can join me tomorrow if you think you can keep up.”

A man in a Hawaiian shirt balancing a plate of eggs and sausage walks by, speaking fast Italian. “But now I’m going to eat all the watermelon on this table.”

Adam cocks his head to the buffet. “Want company?”

He’s squinting at me, his hand over his forehead like a visor, blocking the sun. “Sure,” I say.

I ignore his recommendations. Today, I go for everything, the whole spread, like I’m on a cruise ship or in Vegas. I don’t hold back. Two plates. One with fruit, pastries, and a yogurt parfait. The other with scrambled eggs, potatoes, and bacon. I sit them both down across from Adam, who is back at the table sipping coffee.

He looks up at me, impressed.

“Now we’re talking,” he says.

I plunk into the seat, down another glass of water, and then start on the fruit. I eat with a voraciousness I can’t remember. The watermelon is sweet, the eggs are creamy, and the bacon is crisp and salty.

When my mother got sick, food immediately tasted like cardboard. One day I was coveting the salt and sweet of pad Thai from Luv2eat on Sunset, the next I was force-feeding myself a piece of toast after my stomach had gone unaccompanied for eight hours. Food had lost all sensation, all meaning.