Chapter Sixteen
Giac and I return to La Musa around dusk.
He parks his aunt’s car at her apartment and walks me home.
The streets are uncharacteristically full of tourists, and an unsettling feeling takes over as I notice most of them are American.
We’re nearly to my house when I see a man wearing a Women Eat T-shirt walking right toward us.
A knot tightens in my throat. It’s happening. I’m about to be recognized.
My stomach drops. This is the moment I have been dreading. My head is fogged from the memory of last night plus the exhaustion of the whirlwind trip, and I wasn’t thinking clearly. I let my guard down and willfully walked down a street full of Americans without a disguise.
“Hi,” I say, when he’s mere inches from me—his big eyes glow as he takes me in and my nerves ease. I am safe. He likes me.
“So, you’re really here, huh?” he asks, and I realize he’s clutching his phone, maybe even filming this entire encounter.
A smack of familiarity of my old life hits me and it’s strangely comforting to slide back into this role.
“I’m backpacking through Europe and rearranged my travels to come here after I saw the news about you. ”
I plaster on my best affable politician smile. “Well, it’s gorgeous here, don’t you think?”
He laughs louder than what seems natural, especially because I did not say anything remotely funny. “I figured if it’s amazing enough that Isabella Rhodes freaking lives there, I should check it out.”
I watch myself place a gentle hand on his forearm. “Well, I hope you enjoy La Musa,” I say. “It was nice to meet you—”
“Charlie.” He scoots closer to me. “Could I get a picture with you?”
I look to Giac, who graciously offers out his hand for Charlie’s phone.
I slap on a smile and put my arm around Charlie. “Of course.”
“You banged the mayor?” I see Marisol’s eyes go wide. Congress is recessed, so she’s back in Tucson, lying in an inner tube in her in-laws’ pool to beat the desert late-May heat, no doubt multitasking in some other way I can’t discern offscreen.
“Don’t say that so loudly,” I say. “I’ll remind you I’m living at his very Catholic mother’s house.”
“And ya banged anyway.” She tilts the phone down so I can see her fidget with her nose ring. “Jennings is going to freak when I tell him.”
I feel a pang of guilt at the mention of Congressman Jennings.
Nick was like a workplace big brother to me.
He was among those to reach out when the news broke and among those I ignored.
On my first trip back to DC after my loss, he didn’t say anything, he just wordlessly handed me an everything bagel with lox from my favorite place on Fairfax when I boarded his jet.
I grimace at Marisol. “You’re keeping Congress briefed on my sex life? ”
“He’s fully convinced you’ve lost it, so I’m letting him know you’re out there living your best life.” I hear a splash and Marisol’s out of the tube, wading over to the side of the pool. “I showed him a photo of Benito and he approves, FYI.”
“How are you on the Select Committee of Intelligence when you can’t keep a single secret?” I ask.
“It’s because I’m keeping national security secrets that I must gossip about everything else to get it all out of my system,” Marisol says. “You’re keeping America safer by banging the mayor.”
I sigh. “At least I’m still helping in some way.
” An unpleasant pang of FOMO strikes through me.
It’s unexpected. Why should I feel jealous of Marisol’s congressional responsibilities when I’m banging the mayor?
“There’s a lot going on with the town, with his family, who knows if it’ll even work out. ”
“Ugh.” Marisol rolls her eyes again. “Can’t one thing be fun, Izzy? Can’t you not overthink on this particular matter?”
I consider. I wish it were that simple. “No.”
“I hate you.” She sets her phone down so I’m looking up at the bright, blue sky.
I hear another splash and she returns to the screen with wet hair.
“You would move to Italy under the guise of giving up your tumultuous career path only to latch on to the first man you find who just so happens to have messy drama.”
It stings a little to hear it put like that, but then again, Marisol always has a way of succinctly giving the truth—and if it sounds cruel, that’s on the truth of the matter, not her. “I guess I did trade one version of complicated for the other.”
“You really did.” She almost smiles. “At least this version has cunnilingus.”
“Please do not use the word ‘cunnilingus’ when you recap this conversation during your next filibuster.”
She ignores me. “I can see the headlines now: Rhodes Quits U.S. politics to Become Italian Politician’s Wife.”
I cringe. The last thing I want is for the media to catch wind of me and Benito. “I’m not going to be anyone’s wife. And Benito’s not a quote, unquote, ‘politician.’ He became the mayor of La Musa to help out his mom.”
Marisol shakes her head to the side, seemingly to get water out of her ear. “Are you sure about that? He worked for a lord in the British House of Commons for years.”
I rack my brain trying to remember the conversation where we discussed this. “Did I tell you that?”
She avoids answering and I decide I don’t want to know the details. Reasonable doubt and all that. “You claim to have left it all behind and yet end up banging the one guy in your Podunk Umbrian town with similar aspirations to your old ones.”
“It’s not like that.”
“How did you leave things?” Marisol asks, breezing past my denial. I don’t know how to answer in a way that will satisfy her. We didn’t leave things in any particular way. An alarm goes off on her phone and startles us both. “Shit, I have to go. I’m making birria for Jenny’s parents.”
“While you’re in the pool?” I ask. Marisol shrugs and hangs up.
I exhale relief that I don’t have to explain where Benito and I stand.
I don’t even know. He and the rest of his family aren’t returning to La Musa until later this week.
It seems like there will be more of last night in our future, but how does that work, exactly, with the fissure in his family?
Maybe Benito’s right, and it’s not for me to worry about.
Until then, I’ll count down the minutes until his body is on mine again.
*
I’m approached three more times by Wednesday. The first is an older couple from Vermont. They’re doing a wine tour of Italy and stopped in La Musa to try the local rosso. They remind me of my parents: retired, laid back, inexplicably proud of me—they offer to buy me dinner, but I politely decline.
The next is a group of three women in their 20s from New York. They’re renting a villa outside Florence and made a trip to La Musa for the day specifically because of me. I take a photo with them outside La Musa’s duomo.
The third is while I’m having coffee with Valeria. She’s thanking me for my help, as groups of tourists have already been stopping in the wine shop. She tells me she feels confident the turnaround will be enough to deter Raffaello, but the pit in my stomach tells me it’s not.
A kid who can’t be more than 13 runs up to our table at Caffè del Duomo. “Isabella Rhodes, you’re my idol,” she says, grinning with a mouthful of braces.
I sit up a little straighter. “You’re so sweet.”
“I want to be a politician just like you,” she beams.
A prickle runs down my spine. “Well, I wouldn’t say I’m a politician anymore, but thank you.”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. You’re still my favorite—” She pauses and scrunches her nose, causing her glasses to push farther up her face. “What would you call yourself now?”
I take a moment. How do I define myself? Wine drinker? Pasta eater? The girl who’s banging the mayor? “Nowadays I’m just Izzy.”
She looks off up at the sky as she contemplates. “I lost my election to be student council president,” she says. “So I guess I’m just Daisy.”
My insides warm. She’s adorable. “Being Daisy is the best thing you can be. Any label you put in front of your name is just an extra set of letters.” Daisy beams but I feel a strike of guilt rush through me.
If someone had told me that when I was Daisy’s age, I would’ve thought they were insane.
All my life, I never thought I’d settle for anything less than the ultimate dream.
Daisy poses for a photo with me and walks back to her parents.
We finish up our coffee and I head home.
It’s hot today, and my room has been baking in the afternoon sun.
I fling a window open to let in the evening breeze.
The light drips through and it’s that deep orangish yellow that only happens on the clearest of days, and the smell of blooming olive trees wafts through.
It’s peaceful here, even with the threat of recognition at every corner. It’s beautiful.
I collapse onto my bed and thumb through my phone.
I still have hundreds of unread texts and I’ve gotten so used to the little red number at the bottom of the screen that I don’t even see it.
There’s a news alert about a bill that’s just been passed in the House.
I’ve avoided current events for months, but it piques my interest and I open it: Congress Passes Tax Breaks for Top 1% of Earners.
I sigh. Damn it. This was a campaign promise the other side ran on and now it’s headed to the Senate, where our party holds only a slim lead.
I can’t help but think that I somehow could’ve put a stop to it.
Levi, to his credit, was a “no” vote, but maybe if I’d won it would’ve set off a chain of events that didn’t allow for this to happen.
Or Marisol and I would team up and do a double press on our most amenable opponents.
I was good at using words to get what I wanted, whether it was an impassioned speech on the floor or a Sunday morning talk show—the famous Rhodes Rhetoric won me a lot of favors.