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painted an immaculate rosy pink with dark green trim. I studied the names next to the six buzzers. There was no one I knew. I stepped back and peered up at the top floor with its tall shuttered windows and minuscule iron Juliet balcony. I used to hang over the edge of that balcony rail, looking out for Jon-Boy, waiting for him to come home for his dinner. Sometimes he did and I was happy, and sometimes he didn’t and then I would sit on that balcony and eat my sandwich alone, waiting. Which now I recalled, surprised, was more often than not. I always seemed to be waiting for Jon-Boy.
    I’d eaten many spaghetti dinners at my “grandmother’s,” hauled off my Juliet balcony by one or other of them, clucking angrily in Italian, too rapid for me to understand, though I knew it was about how bad Jon-Boy was to leave me alone. Again. And how many times had Jon-Boy finally come looking for me, smiling his easy smile, golden-brown eyes a-twinkle, agreeing with all their criticisms.
    “Bene, bene,”
he’d say. “
Sì la piccolina è mio tesoro, mia bambina
. . . .
Sì è una preciosa, chiaramente, signora, ed io I’adoro. . . . Va bene,
and here I am to collect her.”
    He would charm them into reluctant smiles as I—the
tesoro,
the “treasure”—was handed back into my erring papa’s loving care. And I would laugh because I knew he meant all those things and that he would always come back and that he would always guard me with his life.
    Now, though, a tabby cat gazed calmly back down at me from my Juliet balcony, looking as if he owned the place. Andof course, now he did. There was no trace of me or Jon-Boy left here.
    I emerged onto the sunny piazza, relieved to find that at least the newsstand was still there, and the flower stall. The Pizzeria Vesuvio, with surely the best pizza in all of Rome, was still on the corner too, and most important of all, so was the Bar Marchetti, though now it was all glossed up with a shine of dark red paint and smart white
ombrellini
shading its outdoor tables.
    I checked the newsstand but the vendor was a young man with disinterested eyes for an American tourist. A much younger woman had replaced the flower seller Adriana, and when I asked after her the woman merely shrugged her shoulders; she knew no one around here. For old times’ sake I bought a pink carnation and tucked it into my hair, then walked apprehensively into the Bar Marchetti.
    The men standing at the bar, some business suited, some in workmen’s clothes, eyed me speculatively, the way Italian men always do, and I smiled and elbowed my way expertly through with a pleasant
“scusi, scusi, permesso.”
    There was a young man behind the bar, not Angelo. He flicked me a brief glance as he wiped the portion of the tiled counter in front of me and said,
“Signora?”
    “Cappuccino, per piacere,”
I said,
“e un cornetto.”
    He lifted a brow and threw me a skeptical look because no Italian would ever dream of drinking cappuccino after eleven A.M . and
cornetti
were eaten only at breakfast.
    Glancing round, I saw that changes had been made. The cappuccino machine looked to be the latest large model and the bar had been expanded with tall stand-up tables. The menu chalked on a big board behind the bar now included a “pasta of the day” and salads, as well as soup and wonderful
panini
piled high with ham and salami, and mortadella and fontina and pecorino. The tables outside had always been half-empty because it cost more to sit while you ate. Now they were filled with tourists willing to pay more to rest their city-weary feet, and I smiled hearing that familiar screech of iron-legged chairs on paving stone.
    A second man, younger than the first and with a waiter’s white apron swathed around his middle, dashed back and forth bearing carafes of wine and enormous sandwiches. The young man behind the counter slid my cappuccino toward me. Eyes closed, I inhaled the familiar aroma of fresh coffee. Then I took a sip