obvious. Opal merely nodded. “You clean out the apartment?”
Really, he was beneath contempt. But Opal merely nodded again. What was his name? Some name unknown in Indiana. Aiello. That was it. But she didn’t know if it was his first name or his last. Well, she didn’t have to speak to the brute.
“I gotta get those keys back,” Aiello told her. Wordlessly Opal reached into her bag and handed them to him.
“Ya might wanna take a cab, what with all that luggage and all.”
He didn’t even offer to help her, but Opal was not surprised. She just kept sliding the bags toward the front door.
“And you might wanna clean out the mailbox,” he continued, in his very limited attempt to be helpful.
“Mailbox?” Opal asked. “Where is the mailbox?” She imagined a row of rural tin canisters on posts, each with its little flag raised or lowered, but surely they didn’t have mailboxes like that here. Aiello shrugged and with a twitch of his shoulder indicated the tarnished brass fronts inserted into the wall behind him. The whole affair looked like the grates of a heat register to Opal.
“These are the mailboxes,” he said. “Hers was number two.”
“How do you open them?” Opal asked. “With the key, the little key.”
“Oh, yes, one of the ones you’ve just taken,” Opal said coolly.
Aiello shrugged and handed the keys back to her. “There’s a lot of stuff in there,” he said, looking through the grate.
With a sigh. Opal took the key chain and turned to the boxes. She inserted the smaller key into the round keyhole at the bottom of the box but could not get it to turn.
“Sometimes they’re a little tricky,” Aiello said. “Ya gotta dick around with it.” He stopped, embarrassed “I. mean ya have to screw around with it.” He felt the inadequacy of his correction. “You know,” he said, exasperated. “You know what I mean.”
Opal pushed the key in a little deeper, but it still wouldn’t turn, so she pulled it out a bit, jiggled it, and found the place where it began to rotate, what was it with New York City locks? None of them seemed cooperative. Finally, the key turned 180 degrees. She felt the lock disengage, and by pulling on the key itself, she lifted the front of the box.
A couple of envelopes fell onto the dirty tiled floor. There was also some kind of newsprint circular and two magazines. The Writer and Poets & Writers, but both of them were badly bent and torn because the major space in the box was taken up by a large jiffy bag, a huge padded envelope sealed with packing tape. It was wedged into the box so tightly that Opal, her hands shaking, couldn’t pull it free.
“Here. Let me.” Aiello pulled out the heavy package, tearing the wrapper and then handing it to Opal. He turned back to extricate the other mail and pick up the pieces that had fallen. But Opal didn’t care about any of that. Right there, right there in the dirty, dark hallway, she tore into the big envelope and pulled out the manuscript inside. It was like being a midwife at a birth. Opal let the caul drop to the floor, exposing the gift inside. She voraciously read the cover letter.
Dear Ms. O’Neal,
In going through our files, we have found this photocopy of your submission from last year and, although I see in my records that we returned the original to you, I thought you might want to have this copy.
Opal didn’t bother to look at the signature. Instead she tore the letter off the pile and looked. Yes! There was the title page. The Duplicity of Men by Terry O’Neal. The manuscript! Terry may not have meant to leave it behind, but here it was. Opal clutched it to her chest, a prize far more exciting, far more precious, than buried treasure or a winning lottery ticket. She could resubmit it. She would resubmit it, and she would get these jaspers in New York to pay attention. She didn’t care if they’d said no to Terry, or even to Doris Lessing. She would get them to read and publish her daughter’s masterpiece. Terry would not have lived her life in vain after all. Opal hadn’t misled her. And she would prove it. While the publishers may have ignored Terry in life, they would acknowledge her now. Though Terry may have lived in obscurity, in death she would be known.
“It’s something good?” Aiello asked. And, to his astonishment, the middle-aged woman kissed him.
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation.
—Graham Greene
Camilla returned to Firenze with her finished manuscript and the promise from Frederick Ashton that he would look her up. She had a tour to meet, and good docent that she was, she arrived early and crossed the Piazza della Repubblica at a slower-than-usual pace. She never enjoyed the moments before she met a new group. Some groups were very pleasant, eager to learn what she knew and as delighted by the city as she was. But others never seemed to coalesce or were made up of difficult or apparently stupid individuals who were either too shy or too uninterested to respond to her. She hoped she didn’t have one of those on her hands. It would be so dispiriting just now when Camilla was pleased with herself, with her book, and with her new friend.
And then, almost at the door to the Hotel Excelsior, she saw Gianfranco. He was walking along the far side of the square with an older woman—perhaps his mother or his aunt. He was walking in her direction, facing her, but then he turned. Camilla was almost certain that he had seen her and, though it was he who should be ashamed, she felt her own face redden.
Gianfranco’s family were well-off but certainly not among the oldest of Florentine families. They owned several hotels. Not the enormous ones, or the very best, like the Excelsior, but they were large enough and good enough to keep the family comfortable. His father was a judge, and Gianfranco himself was an avvocato. He would probably, in the fullness of time, be a judge as well. In the meanwhile, he spent as little time in the office as he could get away with and quite a bit of time in the bars and cafés of Firenze.
He had the dark good looks of an Italian film star—his features a little less regular than an American hero’s but still incredibly attractive. Camilla had been surprised when he approached her at one of the few Florentine parties she had been invited to. Gianfranco had seduced her with his charm, his attentiveness, and his good looks, but while she had taken all of that as a sign of romantic and perhaps marital interest, he had meant it as the almost formal announcement of his interest in her—as a mistress. And only as a mistress. I have been stupid, Camilla thought. It was only after she had been dazzled by him, after she had slept with him, that she had realized her mistake. She thought they were in love, but he had laughed when she had asked about meeting his family. “Whatever for?” he had said, and she had realized that the rules of the game were very different among his class. Here you romanced a mistress while you married into the best family you could possibly manage. Rather like England, but Englishmen often omitted the bother of a mistress altogether.
Realizing her mistake, Camilla had tried to break up with him, but he was always so sweet, so sexual, and so clearly astonished by her pain. He cried with her and called her “tesauro.” His treasure. And she—who had never been anybody’s treasure—was touched, and found it impossible to go back to the emptiness of her life before she slept in his arms.
But
