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of us together, as most events that had happened before in our lives. This time something was happening only to me. A part of me knew we were an old team, inseparable by a sea. Another part knew that their childhood was ending and that, in a strange way, my childhood was beginning.
    The really precious parts of my life are transportable, not conditionsof geography. Why shouldn’t I go to live on the fringes of an Adriatic lagoon with a blueberry-eyed stranger and leave no trail of biscotti crumbs to find my way back? My house, my fancy car, even my native country were not, by definition, me. My sanctuary, my sentimental self were veteran travelers. And they would go where I would.

    I shake off the reverie and put on the kettle, start my bath, call the café to see if the baker has arrived on time and sober and set Paganini at a gentle volume. The real estate agents will soon be here.
    Rather than racing about to clean the whole house, I opt for the more elemental seduction of crackling fires and the scent of some cinnamon-dusted thing wafting from the oven. Once I have flames leaping in all three hearths, I cut up some three-day-old scone dough left from one of Fernando’s breakfasts, top the little pillows with spice and sugar and great dollops of butter and close the oven door as the bell rings. I greet the throng, which arrives together, despite the storm, as though on divine command. The brigade files past me, tossing coats and scarves onto a divan, revealing their smart mustardy blazers, and, without ceremony, commences inspection. There are eleven agents in all. The restrained murmurs of approvalsoon give way to delighted screams as one opens the door into the pewter-papered guest bath, another looks up at the nineteenth-century Austrian crystal dripping from the living-room ceiling and yet another eases herself down into the coppery velvet plumpness of the wingback chair in front of the kitchen fire.
    â€œWho was your architect?”
    â€œWho did the work on this place?”
    â€œYour decorator must be from Chicago.”
    â€œMy God, this is fabulous,” says the only gentleman among the women. “Why on earth do you want to sell this?”
    â€œI know,” stage-whispers someone else. “It’s so romantic it makes me feel frumpy.”
    â€œYou
are
frumpy,” the gentleman assures her.
    â€œHow can you bear to part with it?” asks another.
    It was clearly my turn to speak. “Well, I’m leaving it because I’m going to marry a Venetian.” Big breath. “I’m going to live in Venice,” I say gently, deliciously, trying out the words. Was that me, was that my voice? The brigade responds with a long silence. When one begins to speak, all of them do.
    â€œHow old are you?”
    â€œHow did you meet this man?”
    â€œIs he a count or something?” asks one, eager to embroider the text.
    Mostly, I think, they want to know if he is rich. To say outright that he is relatively poor would perplex them, nick away at their fantasy, so I opt for a part of the truth. “No, he’s not a count. He’s a banker who looks just like Peter Sellers,” I say.
    â€œOh, honey. Be careful.” It’s the frumpy one speaking. “Have him checked out, I mean, really checked out. Four years ago my friend Isabelle met up with a Neapolitan on Capri, and he almost bamboozled her into a quick marriage until one night she woke up and heard him mooning, whispering into his cell phone from the terrace outside their hotel room. He’d had the nerve to tell her he’d only been saying good-night to his mother.”
    Her story seems some inappropriate cocktail of low-level envy and a genuine desire to protect me. She doesn’t know Fernando, I think. That I don’t know him either seems irrelevant.
    One of them, trying to rescue the more symphonic motif of the tale comes in with, “I’ll bet he has a gorgeous house.