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Henry said suddenly. And, as if on cue, the other three of us got to our feet, realizing we were hungry too. Then Henry went inside to use the bathroom, and Billy and Kirk indulged in their nightly ritual of haggling about the bill. The Japanese girls were whispering together, their heads bent, trying to decide whether or not they were hungry as well and should come with us, and as a result no one was watching me. So no one saw as I reached for the evening paper and slipped it into my shoulder bag.

    That was several hours ago. Now all of the lights are out, and the arches of the portico are dark loops of shadow in the courtyard below. Over the rooftops I can just see the spine of Santo Spirito, lit up for the night. It is still too chilly for crowds, and the piazza will be empty, chairs piled on the tables of the bars, the branches of the trees nothing but black scribbles against the sulphurous grey of the sky. City cats will be prowling the base of the fountain, picking fights and looking for scraps, and all of it will be watched over by the giant Cyclops eye of the church window. Even in daylight, it’s hard not to feel that eye looking down on you, and when we finally left the bar this evening, I was sure it was watching me, sure it saw as I picked up the paper, and stole the little picture of the dead girl.
    I go back inside and close the French windows. In the kitchen, breadcrumbs are scattered across the polished wooden counter and there is a piece of tomato that will laminate itself onto the top of the stove if someone doesn’t clean it off sometime soon. Two paper napkins are crumpled in a used glass, and a munchkin-sized ice tray has left a pool of milky water in a cereal bowl. The general effect is sluttish, which pleases me. Pierangelo’s kitchen is virtually military in its order, and I have been neat all my life, so coming here and leaving dishes in the sink and clothes dropped on the floor feels like loosening a shoe lace.
    I call goodnight to Billy as I pass her room, and then, even though I get no reply, I lock my door. I don’t want to be interrupted. Hunkering down on the floor, I pull the paper out of my bag and spread the front page out. The print is a little smeared from being folded up and the picture’s crumpled, so I can’t see the girl very well, but I study her anyway. She has long dark hair and slightly slanted eyes. She could be Italian or French or Albanian, or, for that matter, anything. Anyone. It’s impossible to tell. The article says she committed suicide, but it’s not specific. I imagine she jumped from a bridge, or took an overdose and lay down beside the water to die.
    I hold the paper up to the light, lean closer and look at her.
    I shouldn’t be doing this, I know, but I can’t help myself. It’s something I’ve acquired since the accident—that’s how I think of it, incidentally, ‘accident,’ as if being chased and bound and cut was on a par with a car crash. Anyways, since then, I’ve acquired a heightened interest in dead people. It’s not general, of course. I don’t pay too much attention to the casualties of old age or disease. No. The ones who interest me are the ones who are like me but a little less lucky: the by-products of ‘accidents.’
    It started back in Philadelphia, in the months before Piero reappeared. During the nights I didn’t sleep, when I couldn’t reach Benedetta and Eleanora in my dreams, I searched Ty’s ‘accident’ on the internet, and read about others. Perhaps it made me feel less alone, or maybe I believed that reading details in black and white could somehow make something up to him. I couldn’t access what got published at the time here in Florence, which I never saw, thanks to being in hospital, so one of the first things I did after I arrived was go to the library and look up the newspaper articles from Monday, 26 May. I told myself I owed Ty