30

“So you’re really not going to allow me to make you one of my perfect Negronis?” Enrico asked her as they entered the lobby of the hotel where she was staying. Instinctively she looked around to see if any members of the flight crew were present. None were. The lobby was so small compared to the Royal Phoenician—more living room than ballroom—the ceilings low and the decor modest. She noted the faux Renaissance tapestries on the walls and the fainting couch where she had sat that afternoon.

“I’m not,” she said, though she glanced longingly at the bar as they approached the elevators, her ears alive to the clink of glasses and laughter and the music that occasionally bubbled up and over the bacchanal.

They had eaten dinner at a romantic trattoria with brick walls and lit candles in wrought-iron chandeliers where he was friends with the sous chef, and so they ate like royalty for almost nothing, which was about what they had for a budget. She had never had a panzanella salad so good, each tomato a different shade of orange or red. The house wines were excellent, Enrico told her, but Cassie insisted that she wasn’t going to drink, and so Enrico didn’t either. She sat with her back to the wall and sipped sparkling water, and stared at the entrance to the restaurant. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. She wasn’t sure who she was looking for. She didn’t honestly believe that Miranda—or someone—would appear in the dining room, but after Fiumicino she wasn’t willing to sit with her back to the door.

It had been a lovely evening, though it had been and (she told herself) would be almost stoic in its denial: no booze, no sex. She was bringing him upstairs to her room so he could hand her the gun. The fact was that she knew more about firearms than he did. But he didn’t dare bring out the Beretta at the restaurant, and so they had agreed they would retreat to her hotel room so he could give it to her there. She’d been clear that they weren’t going to have sex, but she knew that he nevertheless remained hopeful. He was charming beyond his years; he was as unaccustomed to someone saying no as she was to saying it.

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When they got to her room, she saw that the square red light on the desk phone was blinking. Instantly her anxiety rose. Enrico stood patiently by the window, his back to her as he stood bordered by the drapes, while she picked up the receiver and listened. It turned out that she had two messages.

“Hey, there. It’s Makayla. I’m just checking in. How did I not think to get your cell? I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Do you still want to have that drink? Do you feel up to joining some of us for dinner, maybe? I’m in room seven-thirteen. It’s a little before five.”

She made a mental note of the other flight attendant’s room number and then listened to the second message:

“Hi, Cassie, it’s me again. Makayla. Some of us are meeting in the lobby at seven thirty. Join us if you’d like. No pressure. Maybe text me when you wake up or get back from wherever you are,” she said, and this time she left her cell number. Cassie wrote it down and texted back that she was sorry she hadn’t gotten the messages. She wrote that she had gone for a long walk, but now she was back in her hotel room and she was fine. She was in for the night. She thanked her.

“Everything is okay?” asked Enrico.

“It is. That was just another member of the crew wanting to be reassured that I was safely back in my room.”

“Good.”

He picked up the paperback Tolstoy on the nightstand beside the hotel’s digital clock. “Did you ever read Carlo Levi?”

“No.”

“You should—if you like Tolstoy. He wrote beautifully about Italian peasants. My people, once. He had a soul like Tolstoy. ‘The future has an ancient heart.’ I think I have that right.”

“Thank you. I don’t expect I’ll find him with the paperbacks at the airport.”

“Look for him—when you’re home,” he said, and somehow his tone made the idea of home sound to her like an unattainable dream: a port she would not see again. Still, Enrico smiled and sat on the foot of the bed. He patted the mattress beside him, beckoning her. The bed was the unmade mess she had left it after her afternoon nap. She joined him there and he pulled out the handgun. He gave it to her and then reached into his front pants pocket for the bullets.

The gun was heavier than she expected, but she liked its simple solidity. Its heft. It actually felt sturdier than a rifle. And the smell—metallic, machinelike—instantly brought her back to the high school classroom those early autumn afternoons when she had taken the hunter safety course and been taught by a retired state trooper the three different types of magazines (tubular, box, floor plate with a hinge), and where the gunpowder sits inside a cartridge. Then she was back in the woods, with a whole other set of memories: the aroma of autumnal cold. Wet leaves as they began to merge with the mud. Decomposing trees. Damp clothes.

She thought of her father’s breath, beery, when he would point out the deer tracks in the soft earth or the deer scat in the midst of the leaves just off the thin path.

The Beretta was a compact 92, all black. She ejected the magazine to make sure it was empty. She racked back the chamber to make sure there was no bullet in there, either.

“The bullets are so little,” Enrico said. He poured four of them into her hand and rolled a fifth between his forefinger and thumb. She took it from him. “The gun will hold all five of them?”

She examined the magazine. “Yes. This magazine probably holds three times that many rounds.”

He shook his head. “I should have stolen more bullets.”

“God, no.”

Loading the magazine, she thought, was like loading a Pez candy dispenser one little sugar brick at a time. When she had the cartridges inside the clip, she used the heel of her hand to tap the clip back into the handle. She hoped she had done everything right. Then she placed it on the nightstand next to the telephone. She didn’t want to get comfortable with the grip while he was there beside her on the bed. She wanted to do that when she was alone.

“So what do we do now?” he asked.

They had bought a large metal tin of Perugia chocolates on the way back to the hotel. The plan was that in the morning when she and the rest of the flight crew checked out, she was going to leave the tin for him with a friend of his who was scheduled to be manning the reception desk. The gun would be at the bottom, unloaded, beneath the chocolates.

“I’m going to thank you and escort you to the door.”

“And eat the chocolates?”

She smiled at him. He was adorable. The perfect toy. “I’ll make a dent in the box, maybe. There has to be room for the gun, right?”

“And you’ll try to get some sleep?” he asked.

“I guess. If someone wanted to kill me, they had every chance this afternoon and this evening.”

He took her hand in both of his and gazed at her. His eyes looked sleepy in the hotel room light. “But you’re scared. You wanted a gun.”

“I’m a heck of a lot less scared now.”

“But tomorrow? And the day after tomorrow? And the day after that? What is your plan?”

She lifted his fingers to her mouth and kissed them once. Then she kissed them a second time. “I don’t have a plan,” she answered. “I wish I did, but I don’t.” The truth was, she had been living almost hour to hour since she had woken up in Dubai and found Alex Sokolov dead. First she just wanted to get away from the corpse and the likelihood of prison and reach Charles de Gaulle. Then she just wanted to land in America. Then she just wanted to find a lawyer. Then she just wanted to survive the FBI. Then. Then. Then…

But she couldn’t tell him any of that because Enrico believed—or at least was pretending to believe—that Alex Sokolov had been alive when she had left the hotel room.

“Well, I have a plan,” he said, his eyebrows raised, his face playful.

She shook her head.

“I’m not thinking what you think I am,” he said.

“You’re thinking you’re so handsome that I’m going to fall under your spell. Well, you are that handsome, and I am under your spell. But I’m trying to do better. To be better. So, please don’t tempt me anymore because I’m really not known for my willpower.”

“No. I’m thinking that we turn on the TV and play video games or watch movies. I’m thinking that I call downstairs for a pot of coffee—for me.”

“I can’t allow that. I told you, I don’t want you to take that risk.”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

“I already talked to security. I told them the Cart Tart Killer is staying here and newspaper and TV people might try to sneak upstairs. They are going to be extra watchful in the lobby.”

She sat back and appraised him. “Wow. You’re good.”

“You’re impressed?”

“I am.”

He picked up the gun and held it by the grip. “And we have this. If we stay together and watch TV and play games? There’s no one in the world who can hurt us tonight.”

She took the gun from him. She worried that he might accidentally discharge it. “I wish that were true. But it’s not.” Then she stood and with her free hand led him to his feet. She walked him to the door.

“The chocolate box will be downstairs in the morning with your uncle’s Beretta,” she told him.

“Text me,” he said.

“I will.”

“And I will see you next week?”

“Yes, absolutely,” she said, though she didn’t believe it. She had a feeling she’d never see him again. Then she kissed him chastely on the cheek, thanked him once more, and said good night. When he was gone, she thought of what her lawyer had suggested and dead-bolted the door.

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After he had left, she sat in the chair and turned so she was facing the door and practiced holding the Beretta with two hands. She closed one eye and stared through the sight, aiming at the peephole in the door one moment and at the handle the next. She flipped the safety on and off.

It was late here in Rome but nearing dinnertime in Manhattan. She texted Ani to see if there was news. Ani texted back that there wasn’t. She texted her sister that she was sorry she had caused her so much worry—not just now, but over the years—and she told her she loved her. She texted her friend Gillian to thank her for all of the times she had brought her home and held back her hair while she vomited into the toilet. No, toilets. Plural. There had been toilets in bars, toilets in clubs, toilets in other people’s homes. She texted Paula to keep her shirt on, a joke they shared about how impatiently they drank when they were together and how one or the other would often wind up with her shirt off those nights. Cassie recalled holding back Paula’s hair exactly the way Gillian had held back hers. She texted Megan to please wave to the Brandenburg Gate for her. She added how much she had always enjoyed flying with her. She put the words “filet mignon” with a hashtag after the text, a reference to the time that Megan was serving a particularly despicable, angry bore in first class. He had knocked his entrée, the filet mignon, onto the cabin floor, and complained bitterly as if it were Megan’s fault. She had told him with a sincere smile, “Good thing we have extras.” Then she had brought the piece of meat to the lav, rinsed it off with the undrinkable water there, reheated it, and returned it to him on his plate.

And she texted Buckley the answer to his most recent question:

What’s the difference between a Pop Tart and a Cart Tart? They’re both sweet and they both get toasted, but a Cart Tart’s not nearly as good for you.

She hoped her small joke would make him smile, but the truth of it made her cringe. It wasn’t merely the acknowledgment of her drinking; it was the reality that she was poisonous; she always risked diminishing the people she loved or might someday love. Too often she forced them to make the same bad choices she did or she forced them from her life. Best case, she forced them to care for her. Today, though sober, she had gotten a kind young man to steal a gun from his uncle for her. She had needed Makayla to bring her to the hotel after she was pepper-sprayed. And she had attacked a strange woman at an international airport.

She wrote Buckley a second text.

When I sent you that text (above), I meant it as a joke. But you need to know, Buckley, that it’s true, too. It’s the truest thing I have ever said. I’m not good for you. I’m not good for anyone. It’s not just the lies or the fact I’m a drunk, it’s who I am. It’s what I am. So…don’t ever wait for me. Don’t expect anything of me. I will only disappoint you and I know you deserve better. And that, also, is true.

Would he understand this was good-bye? Perhaps not.

But he would when she ignored his next text and the text after that, either because she was doing what was right or because she was dead.

Finally she turned on the television and found the stations from America. She sat against the headboard with the handgun beside her and watched an old sitcom about brilliant young physicists who were socially awkward. She was going to watch anything but the news.

She was just starting to doze off when she was awakened by the deafening, shrill, high-pitched wail of the hotel fire alarm.