Page 131 of Casanova LLC

I could have Claire, my brain screamed.

“Have it! You care for your painting the way I care for the palazzo. That is what we do with our love. You will excuse me, but I need a refill.” He walked back towards the bedroom.

I looked out the window. Thinking about the fragments of conversation we just had and how they added up to a better understanding of each other. Of ourselves.

But, unfortunately, the hangnail remained.

* * *

Two days later, as Jacopo and I were working on his ever-problematic sailboat (electrical this time), my sister called. She announced she’d had a delivery and I, distracted by stripping wires with a needle-nose plier in lieu of wire strippers, phone wedged against my neck, said, “The baby came early?! Are you okay?” She called me a dork and told me to chill. An actual delivery. A big wooden crate that required four guys to bring it into her living room. She’d thought it was the play fort they’d ordered for the kids, but it had my name on it.

I asked her to open it, no idea what it could be, and she put me on speakerphone. I waited while Luna and Lucca “helped” her crowbar the crate apart.

She told me it was art. Art? What kind of art?

Paintings.

I gave Jacopo the pliers. Turned my full attention to my sister. “How many paintings?”

She took a moment to count before replying: twelve.

My heart began pounding. I asked her for the return address. Some gallery in SoHo.

“Which one, Liv?”

The one.

I could barely ask the next question. “Is there a card, a note, anything?”

She dug in the box. Then I heard paper being unfolded.

My sister said there was no signature. Like I needed a signature. All the note said was:

Now you’re whole.

I didn’t have time to metabolize this, because Lucca grabbed the phone and excitedly told me the story of how the delivery men got the crate through the door. I listened and slowly drifted out of the cabin, upstairs, to the deck.

I was feeling woozy, even though we were tied to the dock.

I needed to see the horizon, even though I wasn’t going anywhere.

I inhaled the sunset-air in through my nose, out through my mouth. And again. Quietly, for Lucca’s sake.

Then he asked who painted the paintings.

I told him me, I did, a long time ago.

He asked: are you a painter?

Yes, I told him. I am.

He asked if I’d always wanted to be a painter. Did I want to be a painter when I was a kid?

Yes, I said again.

Then I asked him what he wanted to be.

Yesterday, he wanted to be a fireman. But now he was thinking he wanted to deliver boxes. Because then he could be like Santa Claus, bringing people things that made them happy.

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