The days passed. In Verona the points of the steeples and then its domes rose from the mist. The white-coated waiters appeared from the kitchen. Primi, secondi, dolce. They stopped in Arezzo. Frank came back to the table. He had some postcards. Alan was trying to write to his daughter once a week. He never knew what to say: where they were and what they’d seen. Giotto—what would that mean to her?

They sat in the car. Frank was wearing a soft tweed jacket. It was like cashmere—he’d been shopping in Missoni and everywhere, windbreakers, shoes. Schoolgirls in dark skirts were coming through an arch across the street. After a while one came through alone. She stood as if waiting for someone. Alan was studying the map. He felt the engine start. Very slowly they moved forward. The window glided down.

“Scusi, signorina,”he heard Frank say.

She turned. She had pure features and her face was without expression, as if a bird had turned to look, a bird which might suddenly fly away.

Which way, Frank asked her, was the centro, the center of town? She looked one way and then the other. “There,” she said.

“Are you sure?” he said. He turned his head unhurriedly to look more or less in the direction she was pointing.

“ Si,”she said.

They were going to Siena, Frank said. There was silence. Did she know which road went to Siena?

She pointed the other way.

“Alan, you want to give her a ride?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

Two men in white smocks like doctors were working on the wooden doors of the church. They were up on top of some scaffolding. Frank reached back and opened the rear door.

“Do you want to go for a ride?” he asked. He made a little circular motion with his finger.

They drove through the streets in silence. The radio was playing. Nothing was said. Frank glanced at her in the rearview mirror once or twice. It was at the time of a famous murder in Poland, the killing of a priest. Dusk was falling. The lights were coming on in shop windows and evening papers were in the kiosks. The body of the murdered man lay in a long coffin in the upper right corner of the Corriere Della Sera. It was in clean clothes like a worker after a terrible accident.

“Would you like an aperitivo?”Frank asked over his shoulder.

“ No,”she said.

They drove back to the church. He got out for a few minutes with her. His hair was very thin, Alan noticed. Strangely, it made him look younger. They stood talking, then she turned and walked down the street.

“What did you say to her?” Alan asked. He was nervous.

“I asked if she wanted a taxi.”

“We’re headed for trouble.”

“There’s not going to be any trouble,” Frank said.

His room was on the corner. It was large, with a sitting area near the windows. On the wooden floor there were two worn oriental carpets. On a glass cabinet in the bathroom were his hairbrush, lotions, cologne. The towels were a pale green with the name of the hotel in white. She didn’t look at any of that. He had given the portiereforty thousand lire. In Italy the laws were very strict. It was nearly the same hour of the afternoon. He kneeled to take off her shoes.

He had drawn the curtains but light came in around them. At one point she seemed to tremble, her body shuddered. “Are you all right?” he said.

She had closed her eyes.

Later, standing, he saw himself in the mirror. He seemed to have thickened around the waist. He turned so that it was less noticeable. He got into bed again but was too hasty. “Basta,”she finally said.

They went down later and met Alan in a café. It was hard for him to look at them. He began to talk in a foolish way. What was she studying at school, he asked. For God’s sake, Frank said. Well, what did her father do? She didn’t understand.

“What work does he do?”

“Furniture,” she said.

“He sells it?”

“Restauro.”

“In our country, no restauro,”Alan explained. He made a gesture. “Throw it away.”

“I’ve got to start running again,” Frank decided.

The next day was Saturday. He had the portierecall her number and hand him the phone.

“Hello, Eda? It’s Frank.”

“I know.”

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t understand her reply.

“We’re going to Florence. You want to come to Florence?” he said. There was a silence. “Why don’t you come and spend a few days?”

“No,” she said.

“Why not?”

In a quieter voice she said, “How do I explain?”

“You can think of something.”

At a table across the room children were playing cards while three well-dressed women, their mothers, sat and talked. There were cries of excitement as the cards were thrown down.

“Eda?”

She was still there. “ Si,” she said.

In the hills they were burning leaves. The smoke was invisible but they could smell it as they passed through, like the smell from a restaurant or paper mill. It made Frank suddenly remember childhood and country houses, raking the lawn with his father long ago. The green signs began to say Firenze. It started to rain. The wipers swept silently across the glass. Everything was beautiful and dim.

They had dinner in a restaurant of plain rooms, whitewashed, like vaults in a cellar. She looked very young. She looked like a young dog, the white of her eyes was that pure. She said very little and played with a strip of pink paper that had come off the menu.

In the morning they walked aimlessly. The windows displayed things for women who were older, in their thirties at least, silk dresses, bracelets, scarves. In Fendi’s was a beautiful coat, the price beneath in small metal numbers.

“Do you like it?” he asked. “Come on, I’ll buy it for you.”

He wanted to see the coat in the window, he told them inside.

“For the signorina?”

“Yes.”

She seemed uncomprehending. Her face was lost in the fur. He touched her cheek through it.

“You know how much that is?” Alan said. “Four million five hundred thousand.”

“Do you like it?” Frank asked her.

She wore it continually. She watched the football matches on television in it, her legs curled beneath her. The room was in disorder, they hadn’t been out all day.

“What do you say to leaving here?” Alan asked unexpectedly. The announcers were shouting in Italian. “I thought I’d like to see Spoleto.”

“Sure. Where is it?” Frank said. He had his hand on her knee and was rubbing it with the barest movement, as one might a dozing cat.

The countryside was flat and misty. They were leaving the past behind them, unwashed glasses, towels on the bathroom floor. There was a stain on his lapel, Frank noticed in the dining room. He tried to get it off as the headwaiter grated fresh Parmesan over each plate. He dipped the corner of his napkin in water and rubbed the spot. The table was near the doorway, visible from the desk. Eda was fixing an earring.

“Cover it with your napkin,” Alan told him.

“Here, get this off, will you?” he asked Eda.

She scratched at it quickly with her fingernail.

“What am I going to do without her?” Frank said.

“What do you mean, without her?”

“So this is Spoleto,” he said. The spot was gone. “Let’s have some more wine.” He called the waiter. “Senta. Tell him,” he said to Eda.

They laughed and talked about old times, the days when they were getting eight hundred dollars a week and working ten, twelve hours a day. They remembered Weyland and the veins in his nose. The word he always used was “vivid,” testimony a bit too vivid, far too vivid, a rather vivid decor.

They left talking loudly. Eda was close between them in her huge coat. “Alla rovina,”the clerk at the front desk muttered as they reached the street, “alle macerie,”he said, the girl at the switchboard looked over at him, “ alla polvere.”It was something about rubbish and dust.