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strange.
        
Really?
        
When he left, I saw him walking back and forth between the cypresses at the top of the driveway. Big long steps.
        
Interesting.
        
Worrying. It must be the heat.
        
No, it means he's worked it out. Signora?
        
The cypresses taper toward the top of the driveway.
        
Taper?
        
The two rows narrow as you approach the villa—to increase the sense of perspective.
        
I didn't know.
        
That's because I don't tell anyone.
        
Why not?
        
To see if they notice. Only two people have ever noticed. Three now.
        
And the other two?
        
Both dead.
        
Let's hope for the Englishman's sake there's no connection.
        
You know, Maria, you really can be quite amusing when you want to be
.
     

        ADAM WAS AWAKENED BY A DULL BUT PERSISTENT PRESSURE in his right buttock. His fingers searched out the offending object but couldn't make sense of it. He opened his eyes and peered at an unopened bottle of mineral water. Overhead, the blades of the ceiling fan struggled to generate a downdraft. He was flat on his back on the bed, fully clothed still, and the wall lights were ablaze, unbearably bright.
        He swung his legs off the bed and made unsteadily for the switch beside the door. The beat in his temples informed him that he'd drunk too much the night before. And then he remembered why.
        He searched the tangle of memories for irredeemable behavior.
        Nothing. No. He was in the clear.
        He pushed open the shutters, allowing the soft dawn light to wash into the room.
        Unscrewing the cap of the mineral water bottle, he downed half the tepid contents without drawing breath. He hadn't registered it before, but there was a tinted print on the wall above the bed—a garish depiction of Christ in some rocky landscape, two fingers raised in benediction. Presumably the artist had gone for a beatific expression, but the Son of God was glancing down with what appeared to be the weary look of someone who has seen it all before—as if nothing that unfolded on the mattress below could ever surprise him. He might even have been a judge scoring a lackluster performance: two-out-of-five for effort.
        Harry, thought Adam. Why Harry? Why now? And why hadn't he, Adam, said no?
        The only consolation was that when Signora Fanelli had come to his room just before dinner with the news that 'Arry was on the telephone, he had assumed the worst, that their mother or father had suffered some terrible fate. As it turned out, the news was only marginally less calamitous. Harry was coming to visit.
        Reason had quickly stemmed the trickle of loneliness that welcomed the idea.
        "Why, Harry?" Adam had demanded.
        "Because you're my baby brother."
        "You mean you couldn't make my farewell dinner in Purley, but Italy's not a problem?"
        "I don't do farewell dinners in Purley, not when I'm in Sheffield."
        "What were you doing in Sheffield?"
        "None of your business. Anyway, what's the fuss—I phoned, didn't I?"
        "No, as it happens."
        "Well, I meant to."
        Of course, Harry couldn't say when he'd be arriving or leaving—"For God's sake, Adam, what am I, a fucking train timetable?"—only that he had things to do in Italy and that he'd fit Adam in along the way.
        Fortunately, this time he'd be on his own, unlike his last impromptu visit. Harry had shown up in Cambridge earlier in the year with a fellow sculptor from Corsham in tow, a garrulous Scotsman with child-bearing hips and a face like a bag of wrenches. Finn Duggan had taken an instant and very vocal dislike to the university and all associated with it. Leaping to his feet in the Baron of Beef on the first evening, he had challenged all the "snotty wee shites" present to drink him under the table. A mousey astrophysicist from Trinity Hall had duly obliged,