The Villa(15)
I take that in, gathering up a couple of plates from the cabinets and walking over to the pretty little kitchen table, draped in a floral tablecloth. “Do you think, like, her mom or her grandmother was here when—”
Chess lifts a finger. “Remember,” she warns me. “Only four more chances to mention it, do you really want to waste two in one day?”
I grin, shaking my head, and finish setting the table.
We feast on the asparagus, cooked with lemon and olive oil, and the chicken and potatoes, the gravy somehow rich and vibrant all at once, all of it washed down with cold glasses of the Orvieto wine the region is famous for. It’s sweeter than I normally drink, but it tastes like summer, and by the time I get up from the table, I’m fuller than I have been in ages, and also more than a little tipsy.
Chess is, too, giggling as she tucks a bottle of limoncello under one arm, two tiny glasses pinched between her fingers, and makes a sweeping gesture toward the door into the hallway.
“Come, let us retire to the drawing room,” she says, putting on an overly posh, old-world voice, and I follow behind her, trying not to bump into things. The sun has gone down, and while there are lamps on in the main sitting room we pass, the hall itself is shrouded in shadows.
Chess stops in front of a set of double doors, pushing them open with one elbow. I fumble for the light switch, but as she sets down the limoncello and the glasses, she makes a tsk-tsk noise at me.
“Uh-uh. Hold on.”
There’s the flick of a lighter, and suddenly a warm pool of light springs up from a tall chest of drawers just by the door. A fat candle in a metal holder splutters, and I watch as Chess goes around the room, lighting more candles. Two more thick pillars are on the mantel just over the fireplace, their light reflected in a gilded mirror, and then a few tea lights on the low table in front of the sofa.
Finally, for the pièce de résistance, she lights a massive candelabra, crystals dripping off of it, making a soft clinking sound as she hefts it on top of a long, low shelf.
I remember seeing this room during Chess’s grand tour, but in the afternoon light, it had been unremarkable—a smaller sitting room, slightly overstuffed with furniture, not as pretty as the main salon, its windows facing the front of the house rather than the prettier view out back.
But now, lit by flickering candlelight, the space is transformed. It feels intimate, but also glamorous, and more than a little mysterious. The rug underfoot is a little threadbare, the hardwood floors scuffed, but I like how worn in it feels. There’s something about the drooping sofa with its tasseled cushions, and the matching wingback chairs done in gold velvet, bald patches showing in spots. It feels like this room has seen some things.
“This,” Chess says, crossing over to another little cabinet, “is my favorite room in the house. It’s creepy, right?”
I laugh, sinking into one of the chairs, wiggling my toes against the rug. “Only you would be, like, ‘this is creepy, it’s my fave.’”
She throws a smile over her shoulder as she lifts the lid of a fairly decrepit-looking record player. “Fair, but you’re the one who writes murder books,” she reminds me. “So, I thought you’d appreciate an appropriately Gothic hangout on your first night.”
Once again, Chess gets me in a way that no one else does. I like that the house can have these different faces, cozy and soft in the day, a little spooky and grand at night.
Or maybe I’m just more drunk than I thought.
There’s a wooden crate next to the cabinet, and Chess riffles through it now, finally pulling out an album I can’t quite make out. Its cover looks green and faded in the dim light.
“This is very old school,” I tell her. “Very freshman year. You didn’t bring pot, did you?”
Chess snorts at that, taking the album from its sleeve. “I wish. The best I can offer is some CBD oil that tastes like lavender. I’m supposed to be trying it out for the store.”
“Store?”
She places the album on the turntable and lifts the arm. “Yeah, Team Chess is thinking of branching out with our retail arm. We sell the books and some merch on the website, but it might be nice to have little pop-up stores. Maybe eventually some permanent brick-and-mortar places, you know?”
I don’t know, and moments like this are a cold splash of water on my nostalgic musings about how close we are. Her life is so different than mine it’s like we’re practically different species at this point, but I nod anyway.
There’s a hiss as needle meets record, a pause, and then the opening notes of a song I vaguely recognize.
“What is this?” I ask, and Chess hands me the album cover.
There’s a woman on the front of it, sitting on a padded bench, a white guitar in her hands. She’s leaning over, turned a little to her right, and her dark curly hair almost obscures her face. Across the top of the cover is the word “Aestas,” written in a gentle, curling font.
“That’s why they call the place Villa Aestas now,” Chess tells me. “It used to be—”
“Villa Rosato,” I finish. “I saw that when I was googling.”
Chess takes the album cover back, tossing it to the nearby table. “Right. Anyway, Lara Larchmont apparently wrote a lot of this album here, so they decided to rename the villa in honor of it. Do you know that damn thing sold like twenty million copies? And it’s good,” she adds, gesturing back toward the record player, “but I’d make an actual deal with Satan to sell twenty million copies of anything.”