Page 29 of Palazzo
“Oh. I guess I got that wrong.” The assistant shrugged with a grin. “I thought he was the buyer.”
“No, just the front man.”
“Why did he need a front man? Is he a drug dealer or something?”
“Some people just like that, if they’re famous, or private, or very rich,” Cosima explained to her.
“He must be very rich. He paid a lot for it. Francesca said you were very lucky,” she repeated. Cosima nodded, she’d had enough of the conversation. She thanked the girl for coming and they left.
The sisters were both quiet on the boat ride to where they could catch a cab to the airport a little while later. They had come to do what they said they would do, say goodbye to their family’s palazzo and all the history that went with it. Cosima thought of what Gian Battista had said. He didn’t need to see it again. He had his memories. That seemed to be true about a lot of things in life. She thought about him too on the flight back to Rome. She was seeing him the next day for lunch.
—
When Gian Battista walked into the restaurant the next day, he looked as tall and handsome and strong as ever. She thought he looked thinner, and she noticed that he looked older. Time was catching up with him. But he was still a remarkable man. He kissed her on the cheek and sat down across from her. They were at one of their favorite little tucked-away restaurants that he loved, and he held hands with her all through lunch. He was in good spirits, and asked her about the palazzo.
“So did you kiss it goodbye?” he asked her with a smile.
“I did. But you’re right. I have all the memories.”
“That’s all that matters. If you have the memories, you have them forever. They never leave you. People leave, the memories don’t. You can’t lose them.”
“I always thought of my mother coming down the grand staircase in an evening gown, with my father in a dinner jacket or white tie and tails next to her.”
“So did I,” he admitted, and looked nostalgic for a moment.
He asked if she had heard from Luca and she said she hadn’t, buthe had signed the consent to sell the palazzo. He was going to make a lot of money from his share of the sale.
“Maybe he’ll wake up and finally grow up in prison. It’s a shame it had to come to that,” Gian Battista said, and changed the subject.
She had been surprised to find that she didn’t miss her brother. It was a relief not to have to worry about him and what he was up to. His lawyer had told her that Luca was selling his house on the Via Appia Antica. He had never liked it anyway, and he wanted a fresh start when he came out. She hoped it was a good sign. Or maybe he just wanted the money, but he would have plenty now with the sale of the palazzo. It had been insane of him to attempt the insurance scam. He had more than enough with the sale of the house, but he’d been greedy and always wanted more. Dishonest schemes always came to mind easily for him, more than honest ones. He didn’t know how to be an honest man, and didn’t want to.
They talked about a number of subjects during lunch and stayed at the table longer than usual. Gian Battista told Cosima openly that he loved her, which he hadn’t done in a while, and she told him she loved him too. That had never changed, and she knew it never would.
“How’s your friend in Paris? The honorable one who wouldn’t buy Luca’s shares in the business?”
“He’s fine. We’re going to do a collaboration as an experiment, and he’s helping Allegra try out a line of her own. She’s over the moon about it, and she appears to be in love with his son.”
“Not the one in prison, I hope.”
“No, the other one. He’s an artist and seems like a nice boy.” They touched on every subject and at the end of lunch she thought helooked particularly tired. He wasn’t very old, only seventy-two now, but she had thought he seemed tired for a while. She wondered if he had missed her as much as she missed him. She had never gotten over him and thought she never would. Their separation wasn’t as painful now. She had gotten used to it, she still missed him, but she knew he was never far away if she needed him.
He held her in his arms for a long moment when they left the restaurant, and he smiled as he looked into her eyes. Everything about him was so familiar. Being with him was like coming home.
“My beautiful girl,” he said softly to her. “You always make me so happy and so proud of you. Your parents would have been too. I want you to be happy. Don’t work too hard. You need to have fun too.”
“It’s never been as much fun as when I was with you.”
“That’s not right,” he said, frowning. “I’m an old man, you’re a child.” But she didn’t feel like a child. She always felt like a woman with him. His woman. He kissed her one last time and then put her in a cab to take her back to her office. They had lingered for a long time over lunch. She sent him a text from the cab, thanking him for lunch and telling him again that she loved him.
He waved as her cab drove away, and stood smiling on the sidewalk, and as soon as she was gone, he turned and walked down the street, with tears running down his cheeks.
Chapter 12
Cosima never read the newspaper in the morning. She hated to start the day off with bad news. Her secretary laid them out for her on the coffee table in her office, so she could choose which ones she wanted to read during the day, when she had time during a break. The international edition ofThe New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Corriere della Sera,and the LondonFinancial Times.She readThe Business of FashionandWomen’s Wear Dailyonline for news of the fashion world. Two days after she had lunch with Gian Battista, she was surprised to seeCorriere della Seraneatly folded on her desk when she got to work. His photograph was on the front page. She was startled when she saw it, and then her heart skipped a beat. She sat down at her desk, quickly unfolded the paper, and read the news. He had died at seven the night before, at his home, the newspaper said. He had died the day after she saw him. She realized instantly that he had known. He had been saying goodbye to her and she didn’t suspect it, when he told her he loved her and kissed her on thesidewalk and told her memories were all that mattered. He had known it was coming when he invited her to lunch, and had lived long enough to see her. She got up and locked the door to her office, and sobbed as she read the article, as though it was a message to her.
The headline read, “Gian Battista di San Martino, attorney, political influencer, advisor to presidents and popes for forty years.” It listed his many accomplishments, the many heads of state he had counseled, the boards he had been on, the countless awards he had received. He had achieved so many things in his lifetime, there was barely room enough for it in the article. The photograph was fairly recent, and even in his seventies he had been a strikingly handsome man.
The article said that he was survived by his widow, Maria Grazia Sant’Angelo di San Martino, to whom he had been married for fifty-one years. It didn’t say that she was a cold, unpleasant woman he had been bitterly unhappy with for the entire time, or that Cosima had been the joy and the hope in his life, as he had told her so often, but she knew it more than ever now.
