Eva Maria smiled graciously, like a queen receiving a compliment. “He is right. You have to feel it”-she reached out and touched a hand to my chest-“in here.” Coming from anyone else, the gesture would have seemed wildly inappropriate, but Eva Maria was the kind of person who could pull it off.
While the flight attendant poured us both another glass of champagne, my new friend told me more about Siena, “so you don’t get yourself into trouble,” she winked. “Tourists always get themselves into trouble. They don’t realize that Siena is not just Siena, but seventeen different neighborhoods-or, contrade-within the city that all have their own territory, their own magistrates, and their own coat of arms.” Eva Maria touched her glass to mine, conspiratorially. “If you are in doubt, you can always look up at the corners of the houses. The little porcelain signs will tell you what contrada you are in. Now, your own family, the Tolomeis, belong in the contrada of the Owl and your allies are the Eagle and the Porcupine and… I forget the others. To the people of Siena, these contrade, these neighborhoods, are what life is all about; they are your friends, your community, your allies, and also your rivals. Every day of the year.”
“So, my contrada is the Owl,” I said, amused because Umberto had occasionally called me a scowly owl when I was being moody. “What is your own contrada?”
For the first time since we had begun our long conversation, Eva Maria looked away, distressed by my question. “I do not have one,” she said, dismissively. “My family was banished from Siena many hundred years ago.”
LONG BEFORE WE LANDED in Florence, Eva Maria began insisting on giving me a ride to Siena. It was right on the way to her home in Val d’Orcia, she explained, and really no trouble at all. I told her that I did not mind taking the bus, but she was clearly not someone who believed in public transportation. “Dio santo!” she exclaimed, when I kept declining her kind offer, “why do you want to wait for a bus that never shows up, when you can come with me and have a very comfortable ride in my godson’s new car?” Seeing that she almost had me, she smiled charmingly and leaned in for the clincher. “Giulietta, I will be so disappointed if we cannot continue our lovely conversation a bit longer.”
And so we walked through customs arm in arm; while the officer barely looked at my passport, he did look twice at Eva Maria’s cleavage. Later, when I was filling out a sheaf of candy-colored forms to report my luggage missing, Eva Maria stood next to me, tapping the floor with her Gucci pump until the baggage clerk had sworn an oath that he would personally recover my two suitcases from wherever they had gone in the world, and-regardless of the hour-drive directly to Siena to deliver them at Hotel Chiusarelli, the address of which Eva Maria all but wrote out in lipstick and tucked into his pocket.
“You see, Giulietta,” she explained as we walked out of the airport together, bringing with us nothing but her minuscule carry-on, “it is fifty percent what they see, and fifty percent what they think they see. Ah-!” She waved excitedly at a black sedan idling in the fire lane. “There he is! Nice car, no?” She elbowed me with a wink. “It is the new model.”
“Oh, really?” I said politely. Cars had never been a passion of mine, primarily because they usually came with a guy attached. Undoubtedly, Janice could have told me the exact name and model of the vehicle in question, and that it was on her to-do list to make love to the owner of one while parked on a scenic spot along the Amalfi Coast. Needless to say, her to-do list was radically different from mine.
Not too offended by my lack of enthusiasm, Eva Maria pulled me even closer to whisper into my ear, “Don’t say anything, I want this to be a surprise! Oh, look… isn’t he handsome?” She giggled delightedly and steered us both towards the man getting out of the car. “Ciao, Sandro!”
The man came around the car to greet us. “Ciao, Madrina!” He kissed his godmother on both cheeks and did not seem to mind her running an admiring claw through his dark hair. “Bentornata.”
Eva Maria was right. Not only was her godson sinfully easy on the eyes, he was also dressed to kill, and although I was hardly an authority on female behavior, I suspected he never lacked willing victims.
“Alessandro, I want you to meet someone.” Eva Maria had a hard time curbing her excitement. “This is my new friend. We met on the plane. Her name is Giulietta Tolomei. Can you believe it?”
Alessandro turned to look at me with eyes the color of dried rosemary, eyes that would have made Janice rumba through the house in her underwear, crooning into a hairbrush microphone.
“Ciao!” I said, wondering if he was going to kiss me, too.
But he wasn’t. Alessandro looked at my braids, my baggy shorts, and my flip-flops, before he finally wrung out a smile and said something in Italian that I didn’t understand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t-”
As soon as he realized that, on top of my frumpy appearance I did not even speak Italian, Eva Maria’s godson lost all interest in me. Rather than translating what he had said, he merely asked, “No luggage?”
“Tons. But apparently, it all went to Verona.”
Moments later I was sitting in the backseat of his car next to Eva Maria, fast-forwarding through the splendors of Florence. As soon as I had convinced myself that Alessandro’s brooding silence was nothing but a consequence of poor English skills-but why should I even care?-I felt a new kind of excitement bubble up inside me. Here I was, back in the country that had spat me out twice, successfully infiltrating the happening class. I couldn’t wait to call Umberto and tell him all about it.
“So, Giulietta,” said Eva Maria, at last leaning back in comfort, “I would be careful and not tell… too many people who you are.”
“Me?” I nearly laughed. “But I am nobody!”
“Nobody? You are a Tolomei!”
“You just told me that the Tolomeis lived a long time ago.”
Eva Maria touched an index finger to my nose. “Don’t underestimate the power of events that happened a long time ago. That is the tragic flaw of modern man. I advise you, as someone from the New World: Listen more, and speak less. This is where your soul was born. Believe me, Giulietta, there will be people here to whom you are someone.”
I glanced at the rearview mirror to find Alessandro looking at me with narrow eyes. English skills or no, he clearly did not share his godmother’s fascination with my person, but was too disciplined to voice his own thoughts. And so he tolerated my presence in his car for as long as I did not step outside the proper boundaries of humility and gratitude.
“Your family, the Tolomeis,” Eva Maria went on, oblivious to the bad vibes, “was one of the richest, most powerful families in all of Siena history. They were private bankers, you see, and they were always at war with us, the Salimbenis, to prove who had more influence in the city. Their feud was so bad that they burnt down each other’s houses-and killed each other’s children in their beds-back in the Middle Ages.”
“They were enemies?” I asked, stupidly.
“Oh yes! The worst kind! Do you believe in destiny?” Eva Maria put a hand on top of mine and gave it a squeeze. “I do. Our two households, the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis, had an ancient grudge, a bloody grudge… If we were in the Middle Ages, we would be at each other’s throats. Like the Capulets and the Montagues in Romeo and Juliet.” She looked at me meaningfully. “Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Siena, where we lay our scene-do you know that play?” When I merely nodded, too overwhelmed to speak, she patted my hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry, I am confident that you and I, with our new friendship, will at last bury their strife. And this is why”-she turned abruptly in her seat-“Sandro! I am counting on you to make sure Giulietta is safe in Siena. Did you hear me?”