Page 40 of Casanova LLC

I wanted to feel her laugh. I wanted to touch those cheeks and absorb the heat coming from them, from her chest, and play with that spot under her jaw as I felt her throat pulse with laughter.

But that wasn’t for tonight. Especially after she yawned and said she was ready to go upstairs.

I led her through the sala, out the doors, and up the stairs. When we got to the first landing, she turned around, a step above me. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” An external promise and an internal regret.

She smiled shyly.

She went into her room.

I went upstairs to make arrangements for tomorrow night.

For the orgy.

For what Claire wanted.

Claire

I woke up to a text message from Alessandro telling me that something was waiting outside the apartment door.

I couldn’t believe I’d slept straight through the night. I’d been sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all, but I’d staggered into the bathroom, washed my flushed face with hands that didn’t feel like they belonged to me, let my dress fall to the floor, and crawled into the cloud of a bed with every intention of getting up in a minute and putting on pajamas. Nine hours later...

Maybe it was jet lag, maybe it was him, but maybes aside, I’d had the soundest sleep in a year.

I threw on the plum silk robe and opened the door to find a tray sitting on a sideboard in the hall: a French press of coffee with cream, a flaky croissant, two deviled eggs, a sliced orange, and a bowl of granola with yogurt, raw honey on the side. And a rose for good measure. It looked like a still life. I carried it in, set it on the window seat, and sat cross-legged before it. I poured myself some coffee and looked out at the morning sun on the Grand Canal. The coffee was especially fragrant and the light that washed over the water was worthy of a Monet. Everything was heightened here. Including me. I felt like a different person and it was a person I wanted to be.

I texted him thank you and he responded immediately, as if he had been waiting with thumbs poised: Be ready in an hour. And good morning. I couldn’t resist replying: How ready and for what? He came right back with: We’re sightseeing this morning. (Actual sightseeing. Get your mind out of the gutter.) Followed immediately by: Panties optional. Like a teenager, I smiled all the way through breakfast, and getting dressed, and opening the door, and eagerly skipping down the steps.

He was waiting at the bottom of the staircase and that butterfly from Raines Law Room took startled flight in my stomach at the sight of him—one booted foot on the bottom stair, one hand on the stone banister, herringbone peacoat, cashmere scarf the color of his eyes, hair damp from a shower.

He greeted me with a kiss on both cheeks, hands cupping my hips. Then squeezed them. And then a smile. A smile of promise and possibility. “Do you feel all right?”

“Yes! Why?”

“You look flushed.”

I cursed my British coloring. It made me so easily readable, a walking mood ring. I looked down at our feet and whirled my hand. “Oh, that’s just—I took a really hot shower.”

“Ah. I’ve only taken cold ones since you arrived.”

He said it so simply, no Casanova smolder, no lascivious affect. And it was all the hotter for its unembellished honestly.

He spun away and led me out through the walled garden, through an intricate iron gate, and into a small alley. Which eventually led to a slightly larger one, and then a properly larger one, and then into a small piazza. The neighborhood was still morning quiet, the sound of seagulls only occasionally interrupted by doors closing and water lapping as boats cut gently down canals.

He started the morning with a before-opening-hours tour of a squero, the oldest gondola workshop in Venice. I asked many questions of the two elderly woodworkers, Francesco and Lorenzo. They spoke only Italian, but their words were driven by such feeling for their history, their craft, that I felt I understood them before Alessandro translated. I could have stayed for days. I could have apprenticed there for years and been happy.

As we were leaving, Lorenzo asked us to wait. He went to his workbench and returned with a miniature carved forcola. It was deep blackish-brown in color and had a mirrored finish. He explained that it was ebony. A very dense wood. So dense in fact, that it would sink in water. He placed it in my hand, and before he let go, he told me how each forcola was made specifically for a gondoliere and that it had hidden powers. How there was a name for every section of it. How each section corresponded to different parts of the human body. How the gondoliere would maneuver through the twists and turns of the canals by working his oar in the different parts of the forcola.

How without this relationship, you go nowhere. How this was life as Lorenzo saw it.

Alessandro had translated all of this with a small smile on his face, eyes bouncing between the man and the carved ebony in my hand. When he was done, I moved to hand it back to him, but he shook his head. He curled my fingers around it and his hands around my fingers. Eyes wet with age, he looked solidly into mine and said, “Questa forcola è molto difficile da rompere. Come un buon cuore. Il tuo.” Then he gently squeezed my fingers and smiled a smile that had lived a very long, very joyful, very hard, very honorable life.

Alessandro was motionless. He simply stared at Lorenzo until he released me and returned to his work.

After a moment, he blinked, and turned to face me.

“He said, this forcola is very difficult to break. Like a good heart. Yours.”

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