Free Full of Grace by Dorothea Benton Frank

far from normal. I turned off the television, tiptoed to the bathroom to get him a cold cloth and a glass of water to sip, and tiptoed back.
    “All my good veal wasted!” I said in a whisper.
    The corners of his mouth turned up even though his eyes were closed. “Only a Russo would think about that,” he said.
    “Only a Higgins wouldn’t!”
    I decided to sleep on the couch that night, thinking that if he had the whole bed to himself, he would be more comfortable. But I had the worst night’s sleep I’d had in years. I got hot and pushed off my quilt. Then the air-conditioning kicked in and I got cold. The quilt was on the floor, and by the time I was resituated, I was half-awake. And when I finally slept, I had the strangest dream.
    I was in the car with Michael and we were going over the bridge to Mount Pleasant. The car was going too fast, and when I looked over, Michael was gone. Then the steering wheel was gone. The next thing I knew, the car was falling down to the Cooper River with me in it. I was screaming in the dream and woke up with a jolt, drenched in sweat. What the hell was that all about?

CHAPTER FIVE
R OOM WITH A V IEW
    I n July, it is often said that the only thing that separates Charleston, South Carolina, from the bottom floor of hell is the flapping of a flimsy screen door. May I just say that the poetic souls who say this have yet to visit Sardinia? America understands and embraces air-conditioning. Sardinia, Italy, does not. And it was just as hot and humid.
    The very first thing that struck me about Sardinia was its landscape. As we circled low and around, preparing to land, I felt like I had been thrown back two thousand years. Huge juts of granite, smoothed by millennia of salt and wind, lurched upward from the earth. Some resembled animals and others looked like objects. The landscape was craggy and arid. I would not have been at all surprised to see herds of goats or sheep led by ancient bearded men in long homespun caftans and turbans navigating the scrub growth and sharp pitch of the hills. Sardinia was biblical, exactly as you would imagine the world looked when Abraham walked the earth.
    While I waited at the Olbia Airport for my driver, I perspired, furiously slapped bugs and felt the humidity do its worst on my hair just as if I were in the Lowcountry. I stood for a long while in the sticky morning air, my cartons of work-related materials stacked next to my own luggage. If the driver didn’t show up soon, the extra day I had planned for myself before the arrival of the group would be wasted. My mood became darker. I crinkled my nose at passing workmen who hadn’t bathed with enough vigor and gave pitiless stares to women with wailing children on their hips. I will admit that I recognized I was behaving a bit like a princess. But it had been a long trip and I was overtired and really cranky.
    Finally, the hotel car appeared and I was en route to a cool shower, some breakfast and finalizing the details of the trip, which, when done, would result in a massively improved disposition.
    The slow beginning at the airport was the opposite of my hotel arrival. The courtyard of the Cala di Volpe was cool and serene. From the minute I stepped foot from the car, I knew my troubles were over. Built by the Aga Khan in the early sixties, the hotel was designed as a playground for the very wealthy or those with a certain celebrity. Every detail was unique, especially the floral arrangements all around the lobby and the large chunks of colored glass built into the walls, the sunken lobby bar, the hand-hewn archways of timber—the amount of thought and design that went into each square inch of the property boggled the mind. But that was Italy in general—the food, the architecture, the wine, the art—the whole Italian style of just about any area of living knew no peer. At least in the opinion of this humble Italian girl.
    I took in all these details as the smelling-swell concierge at the