The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle Page A

cigarette at him. ‘I told him I only knew a Mrs Dall-o-way, so he went a-way.’
    â€˜Oh very good. Touche-ay.’ Henry raises his glass in a toast.
    I don’t know what they talk about after that, but I don’t talk about anything. I’m too busy wondering how on earth Rinaldo could have figured out where I was. Because it was him. I can feel it. It’s as if thinking about him last night conjured him out of thin air and how I practically expect to look up and see him sitting across the square from us, watching me. Smiling. His smooth round face creased like a baby’s, sure in the knowledge that at any moment I will get up and come towards him, propelled like a sleepwalker, one of those ladies in Bram Stoker’s Dracula , pale and driven and begging for forgiveness.
    By the time we leave the bar, an hour later, I’ve worked myself up into a state of barely suppressed fury. I’m convinced that Rinaldo is following us through the streets, and that at any minute he’ll pop up like some dreadful priest-in-the-box, and I’ll have to explain him to Billy.
    She doesn’t actually say anything as we walk back, but more than once I catch her watching me out of the corner of her eye. When we finally get in, she makes a big deal of asking me what I want to eat, and ignoring me when I say I’m not hungry. She takes her coat off, flings it down and rootles through the fridge, sighing loudly as she takes things out and puts them back again. I was going to ask her more about Rinaldo, but this performance is driving me crazy, so instead I slip into my room and use my new phone to call Pierangelo.
    â€˜ Pronto ,’ he says before it even rings. ‘I was about to call you. I’m on my way home in just a minute.’
    â€˜I knew that,’ I say. ‘I’m psychic.’
    I have never seen his office at the paper, but I imagine him now, leaning back in his chair, one arm behind his head as he talks, and suddenly Rinaldo and Billy and everything else seem ridiculous.
    â€˜What?’ He asks.
    I settle for, ‘I’m hungry.’ Which is actually true, I just didn’t want to give Billy the satisfaction of feeding me.
    Pierangelo laughs. ‘So you pick up the Chinese. I’ll be home in fifteen minutes. I have to go back to Rome in the morning, early. But,’ he adds, ‘that doesn’t mean we can’t watch the football.’
    Football is something of a joke between us. I’m no big fan, admittedly, but Monika banned the watching of matches altogether. No matter how great the club, Real Madrid, Barcelona, even, God forbid, Milan, she decreed it vulgar. As a result, Pierangelo was forced out of the apartment and into the homes of friends, to sports bars, or sometimes even to a hotel, to watch his beloved clubs. Now, he celebrates the absence of La Tiranna , the Tyrant, as he calls her, with orgies of Chinese takeout, beer straight from the can and a lot of obscene cheering. We take it in turns to buy the chow mein and egg rolls.
    A half-hour later, when I arrive and buzz the intercom, nobody answers, so I figure the match has already started and punch in the security code myself. Piero has never actually given me permission to do this, or explicitly told me what it is, but I’m sure he knows I know it. One of the talents you acquire if you grow up around an accountant is an excellent memory for numbers. Mamaw taught me how to read columns of figures the same way she taught me to read books, and all I have to do is look at a sequence once. I still feel a little funny, though, letting myself into his building like this, so to make up for it, when I get out of the elevator on the top floor, I knock on his apartment door.
    There’s no answer, and I don’t hear fans screaming and frantic Italian commentary, or the sound of Piero’s footsteps coming across the living room. Which is weird. Maybe he’s in the bathroom. Maybe he