Page 86 of The Pairing

“Is that true?” I ask.

“More or less,” Fabrizio says with a wink.

At a bronze statue of a man on horseback, Fabrizio tells us Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici was so enraged when his chamberlain leaked his plans to marry his mistress that he stabbed him through the heart with a trophy boar spear in the middleof the Palazzo Pitti. We study the sculptures in the Loggia dei Lanzi: Giambologna’s iconicSabine Womanwith her supple, achingly lifelike flesh; a bronze Perseus with the severed head of Medusa so difficult to cast that the goldsmith desperately threw his own kitchen chairs and pans into the furnace for fuel. We learn about Cosimo’s slutty son Francesco in the courtyard of Palazzo Vecchio, frescoed with Austrian landscapes when he married Joanna, archduchess of Austria—something to keep her company while her husband fucked the mistress he’d installed in a palace nearby.

Past the Uffizi Gallery, we cross the Arno via Ponte Vecchio, where men of the Renaissance furtively fucked in back rooms of butcher shops. We visit the palace of Bianca Cappello, the mistress Francesco loved so much he would’ve had his Austrian bride murdered, only for his brother to (allegedly) poison them both. Inside Palazzo Pitti, where most of the Medici family’s art collection still hangs, we see paintings by Lippi and Raphael, and Fabrizio tells us how insatiable desire ruined them both.

It’s all so rich, so warm, so flavorful, that when tour ends at the Boboli Gardens, I feel glutted on Florence. I’m sweating, barely keeping ahold of myself. Theo is pink and shining in the heat. We’re nearly to the place I planned for us.This,finally, isthe moment.

“Well,” Theo says. Fabrizio has dismissed us for the afternoon, leaving us beside a leafy pond with a nude statue of the sea god at its center. “Right back where we started. Sexy Neptune.”

I can’t wait any longer.

“Can I show you something?”

I take us away through winding tunnels of holm oak to a place tucked in the shadow of the palace at the garden’s north corner. It’s quiet and empty, so far out of the way that no other tourists have bothered to find it.

“Holy shit,” Theo says as we draw close, taking off their sunglasses. “What is that?”

“The Buontalenti Grotto.”

It’s a strange, fantastical piece of architecture, its facade half pillared marble and half dripping, flowering concrete stalactites. If a villa could be swallowed whole by enchanted seaweed, or the earth could come alive and take back its sediment, it might look like this.

“I read about it once,” I say. “Francesco Medici commissioned this one.”

“No way, Bianca Cappello’s slutty boyfriend?” Theo says. “The original nepo baby?”

“The very slut,” I say, laughing. “Come on.”

I pull them through the unlatched gate and into the first chamber, where the walls are sculpted like a natural cave, spongy coral and stalagmites and flowering branches bubbling toward the vaulted ceiling. Frescos of nature flow from the open skylight into a second, deeper room with a statue of Paris and Helen in the throes.

“Did Francesco ever sneak Bianca in here to fool around?” Theo asks.

“Oh, almost definitely.”

The third and deepest room of the grotto is round, with painted birds flitting through vines and roses and irises. Its centerpiece is a marble fountain of Venus bathing, sculpted by Giambologna. Like all his women, this Venus was chiseled with pure rapture, the curves of her body fluid and sensuous. If Francesco and Bianca fucked in any of these rooms, it was here.

Theo drifts away to begin a loop around the room’s perimeter, examining the leaves on the walls.

“You know,” they say, “I’ve gotten the impression that the Florentines fuck severely.”

I move in the opposite direction, slipping past Theo near one of the mosaic niches.

“That’s my favorite thing about Renaissance art,” I say. “It’s really about sex.”

“Even when it’s about Jesus?”

“Especiallywhen it’s about Jesus. What better excuse to hang pictures of naked men around your palazzo?” I say. “I think the Renaissance came out of Florencebecauseof sex. Everyone was having it, or wanting it, or trying not to want it so they could be a friar, and it was soaking into everything. It’s the perfect environment for an artistic awakening. Sex is in every beautiful thing that’s ever happened, and every beautiful thing can become sex.”

Theo laughs. “You ever wonder if maybe you take sex too seriously?”

“Honestly, no, I have never wondered if I’m wrong to accept the miracle of tender humanity into my heart,” I say, only half joking.

“The fucking Kierkegaard of cock over here,” Theo replies.

We circle each other around the room, edging closer to the fountain with each pass.

“What is sex to you, then?” I ask.

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