Free The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle Page A

clouds, and flew.
    I told Pierangelo about my horse not long after we met, and he put his arms around me and asked, ‘Where, cara ? Where did you fly to?’ But I told him that back then I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. Anywhere. Just anywhere at all where there weren’t liver-coloured tiles and shag carpets. ‘Closed’ signs nailed to downtown windows. Mountains of frozen slush that lasted till Easter. And Santa Claus pins that sang in the dark.

    â€˜That’s her! That’s the woman from the apartment!’ Billy tweaks my sleeve, but I’m not paying attention. Instead, I’m leaning as far as I can over the parapet of the Ponte Vecchio watching the fish.
    Centuries ago, before the gold merchants who are here today moved in, butchers lined this bridge. Carcasses hung here, and there were those who believed the future could be read in the entrails of the slaughtered animals. For a penny or two you could have intestines thrown down onto the blood-slicked cobbles, and love, death, fortune—your whole life—would be divined by those who knew how to read the patterns. Then, every night at sunset, the offal would be swept up and dumped into the Arno to feed the ancestors of these same fish which, four centuries later, still come and hang just below the clouded green surface of the water, driven by ancient hunger.
    I love the fish. I admire them for gobbling up the future, but Billy, who is definitely more interested in gold than prophecy, thinks my fixation with them is stupid. More than once I’ve told her I’m sorry for them, and that I think they should somehow be rewarded for their persistence. Secretly, I’ve contemplated bringing them a steak. I’ve imagined pulling the pink slab from a bag, allowing it to slither out of its wrapping, and hearing the splash as it hits the water below.
    Billy tweaks me again. ‘It is her!’ she hisses, and I pull myself back from the parapet and turn to see where she’s pointing.
    It’s marginally warmer this evening, and the passeggiata is in full swing. At least half of Florence must be out here, promenading up and down, moving along the box-like fronts of the jewellery stores, inspecting the rows of gold bangles and rings and charms displayed in the brightly lit windows. This is serious business, the viewing and comparing of merchandise, and on a nice night the bridge and the avenue all the way up to the Duomo will be packed solid, full of couples holding hands, tourists and students, and pairs of squat middle-aged ladies in suits and expensive shoes, all of them eating ice cream and examining displays of jewellery and handbags and gloves.
    A woman pushing a bicycle with a little white dog in the basket weaves through the crowd in front of us, momentarily blocking our view, then Billy pulls at the elbow of my sweater.
    â€˜There,’ she hisses, ‘over there. I swear that’s her.’
    And she’s right, it is the woman from the apartment opposite. I know, because I’ve seen her too. In fact, I saw her just yesterday. She was attempting to manoeuvre her way through the security gate under the archway of our building, her child’s empty stroller in one hand and a shopping bag in the other, and she nearly fell down the steps. Standing nearby, I leaned out to help, grabbing the bottom rung of the stroller and lifting it to the sidewalk, and afterwards, as I stepped up and took the edge of the gate before it could swing closed, she thanked me, murmuring the way strangers do. Our eyes met, and I saw the telltale red rims and pink blotches on her cheeks, and knew she’d been crying. Now, she’s pushing the stroller again, but this time her child is in it. A man in an overcoat walks beside her, his hands dug in his pockets.
    The man is handsome, in a saturnine sort of way. He has dark hair and a beaky nose. It’s a face you would call ‘horsey’ if they were poor, but