Seeing my expression, Janice burst out laughing. “Oh yes, it’s still going on. You don’t believe me? You think people only looked at sheets in the Middle Ages? Wrong! Lest we forget, some cultures still live in the Middle Ages. Think about it: If you’re going back to The-Middle-of-Nowherestan to be married off to some goatherd cousin, but-oops-you’ve already been fooling around with Tom, Harry, and Dick… what do you do? Chances are, your goatherd groom plus in-laws are not gonna be happy that someone else ate the cheese. Solution: You can get fixed in a private clinic. Get everything reinstalled and go through the whole goddamn thing once more, just to please the audience. Or you can simply bring a sneaky little bottle of this to the party. Much cheaper.”
“That,” I protested, “is so far out-”
“You know what I think?” Janice went on, eyes gleaming. “I think they set you up big-time. I think they drugged you-or at least tried to-and were hoping you would be totally out after tripping the light fantastic with Friar Lorenzo and the dream team, so that they could go ahead and fish out the cencio and smear it with this stuff, making it look like good old Romeo had been driving the love-bus into cherry-town.”
I winced, but Janice didn’t seem to notice. “The irony is, of course,” she continued, too absorbed in her own lewd logic to notice my extreme discomfort with the subject and her choice of words, “that they could have saved themselves the whole friggin’ trouble. ’Cause you two went ahead and stuffed the cannelloni anyway. Just like Romeo and Juliet. Shazam! From the ballroom to the balcony to the bed in fifty pages. Tell me, were you trying to break their record?”
She looked at me enthusiastically, clearly hoping for a pat on the head and a cookie for being such a clever girl.
“Is it humanly possible,” I moaned, “to be any more crass than you?”
Janice grinned as if this was the highest praise possible. “Probably not. If it’s poetry you want, crawl back to your bird man.”
I leaned back against the door frame and closed my eyes. Every time Janice referred to Alessandro, even in her unspeakably vulgar way, I had little flashbacks to the night before-some painful, some not-and they kept distracting me from present reality. But if I asked her to stop, she would most certainly do the exact opposite.
“What I don’t understand,” I said, determined to have us both move on and catch up with the big picture, “is why they had the vial in the first place. I mean, if they really wanted to end the curse on the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis, then presumably the last thing they would do would be to fake Romeo and Giulietta’s wedding night. Did they actually think they could fool the Virgin Mary?”
Janice pursed her lips. “You’re right. It doesn’t make sense.”
“As far as I can see,” I went on, “the only one who got fooled-apart from me-was Friar Lorenzo. Or rather, he would have been fooled, if they had used the stuff in the vial.”
“But why the hell would they want to dupe Friar Lorenzo?” Janice threw up her hands. “He’s just an old relic. Unless”-she looked at me, eyebrows raised-“Friar Lorenzo has access to something that they don’t. Something important. Something they want. Such as-?”
I snapped upright. “Romeo and Giulietta’s grave?”
We stared at each other. “I think,” said Janice, nodding slowly, “that’s the connection right there. When we talked about it that night at Maestro Lippi’s, I thought you were crazy. But maybe you’re right. Maybe part of the whole undo-your-sins thing involves the actual grave and the actual statue. How about this… after making sure Romeo and Giulietta finally get together, the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis have to go to the grave and kneel before the statue?”
“But the curse said kneel before the Virgin.”
“So?” Janice shrugged. “Obviously the statue is somewhere close to a statue of the Virgin Mary-the problem is that they don’t know the exact location. Only Friar Lorenzo does. And that’s why they need him.”
We sat for a while in silence, running through the math.
“You know,” I eventually said, fondling the cencio, “I don’t think he knew.”
“Who?”
I glanced at her, heat rising in my cheeks. “You know… him.”
“Oh, come on, Jules!” moaned Janice. “Stop defending the creep. You saw him with Umberto, and”-she tried to soften the edge in her voice, but this was new to her, and she wasn’t very good at it-“he did chase you out the driveway and tell you to give him the book. Of course he knew.”
“But if you are right,” I said, feeling an absurd urge to push back and defend Alessandro, “about all this, then he would have followed the plan and not-you know.”
“Engaged in physical relations?” Janice suggested primly.
“Exactly,” I nodded. “Plus, he would not have been so surprised when Umberto gave him the vial. In fact, he would already have had the vial.”
“Honey!” Janice looked at me over the rim of imaginary glasses, “he broke into your hotel room, he lied to you, and he stole Mom’s book and gave it to Umberto. The guy is scum. And I don’t care if he has all the balls and whistles and knows how to use them, he’s still-excuse my French-a shyster. And as for your oh-so-friendly mobster queen-”
“Speaking of lying to me and breaking into my hotel room,” I said, staring right back at her, “why did you tell me he had trashed my hotel room when it was you all along?”
Janice gasped. “What?”
“Are you going to deny it?” I went on. “That you broke into my room and blamed Alessandro?”
“Hey!” she cried. “He broke in, too, okay! I am your sister! I have a right to know what’s going on-” She stopped herself and looked sheepish. “How did you know?”
“Because he saw you. He thought you were me, crawling down from my own balcony.”
“He thought-?” Janice gaped in disbelief. “Now I’m insulted! Honestly!”
“Janice,” I sighed, frustrated with her for sliding right back into her old sassiness, pulling me along. “You lied to me. Why? After everything that has happened, I would totally understand if you had broken into my room. You thought I was scamming you out of a fortune.”
“Really?” Janice looked at me with budding hope.
I shrugged. “Why don’t we try honesty for a change?”
Swift recoveries were my sister’s specialty. “Excellent,” she smirked, “honesty it is. And now, if you don’t mind”-she wiggled her eyebrows-“I have a few more questions about last night.”
AFTER GETTING SOME provisions from the village store, we spent the rest of the afternoon poking around in the house trying to recognize our childhood things. But it didn’t help that everything was covered in dust and mold, that every piece of textile had holes from some kind of animal, and that there was mouse shit in every possible-and impossible-crevice. Upstairs, the cobwebs were as thick as shower curtains, and when we opened the second-floor shutters to let in some light, more than half of them fell right off their hinges.
“Whoops!” said Janice when a shutter came crashing down on the front step, two feet from the Ducati. “I guess it’s time to date a carpenter.”
“How about a plumber?” I proposed, peeling spiderwebs from my hair. “Or an electrician?”
“You date the electrician,” she shot back. “You need some wiring done.”