Jamie, It's Our Dance: A Jamie Paige Thriller

BOCCADORO

The Honorary Pirate

a novel

Burton Anderson

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

BOCCADORO

The Honorary Pirate Copyright © 2007 by Burton Anderson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-0-595-43969-0 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-68696-4 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-0-595-88289-2 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 1

LOVE AND LOATHING ON A TUSCAN ISLAND

Even wine wizards sometimes overdo, and Byron once again had overdone. His plight wasn’t exactly a hangover, in the classic headachy-nauseous-dizzy sense of the term, so much as the desiccated distress endured by what he described half in jest as upper echelon winos.

Pestered by glints of sunlight flitting around his sailboat’s cabin, he’d awoken with his tongue cramped in the trap otherwise esteemed as his palate. Grasping a bottle of mineral water from beside the bunk, he indulged in a copious quaff. But the gush struck his gullet in a cascade of bubbles, cuing him to suck in breath and hold it to fend off the hiccups.

Shit, sputtered Byron, convulsed by a hic as he lurched to the hatch to assess the new day on the island. Forgot to set the goddamn alarm.

But he hadn’t forgotten that the goddamn water tank was empty, meaning he couldn’t flush the toilet and he had to pee something awful. Grappling with hiccups, he shed his grimy nocturnal T-shirt, shimmied into a faded green bathing suit and clambered to the deck to leap with a burst of maniacal energy into the harbor.

As warm urine dissipated in the cool water of early May, he swam a few strokes, glided and plunged, letting the salt assuage his puckered mouth and the chill lift the fog in his cranium. Rising idly from the depths, he noticed a chugging sound like a motor and surfaced to spot a fishing boat bearing upon him with old Capo leaning over the side and wailing something about the Madonna.

Shock seemed to slow the scene’s motion as Byron thrashed arms and legs to elevate himself like a water polo player and slam his hands against the outward curvature of the craft, thrusting himself backwards out of the path of the propeller. He peeked sheepishly over the ripples at the fisherman, who’d cut the motor and kneeled at the stern, raging about drug-crazed foreigners as a grimace of relief twisted a face as weathered as a vintage leather ditty bag.

But Capo wasn’t forgiving. Spirited by the Tuscan genius that edifies the art of swearing, he stood and lambasted Byron in a familiar, almost fatherly, way, addressing him as Bocca, the short version of his local nickname Boccadoro. Then, with a humph, Capo scooped a flying squid from a bucket and flipped it toward his antagonist’s largely submerged head. Byron didn’t flinch as the cepha-lopod, which he identified in flight by its scientific name of Todarodes sagittatus, plopped down at roughly a sardine’s length from his left ear.

Duly chastened, Byron climbed back aboard his boat, shivering slightly despite his Nordic constitution. He felt like a perfect klutz, but at least the hiccups had disappeared, he noticed while rubbing his hair with a damp towel. That’s when he caught sight of Gastone Carrozzone glaring down at him from the deck of the oversized motor yacht moored at the adjacent berth.

"Buon giorno," said Carrozzone, knowing, after witnessing the entire caper, that the greeting would sound sarcastic even if intended in a civil way, which it wasn’t.

Byron scowled but somehow suppressed an urge to fire back a profanity as he descended into the cabin. The sight of the despicable lawyer on his ostentatious yacht lowered his mood another notch as he located the alarm clock, which he’d somehow neglected to set for seven. It showed eight-thirty-three, meaning that Livia’s ferry was due in port in twelve minutes.

Great way to start the fucking day, he congratulated himself, taking a cautious swig of fizzy water from the bottle and rationing the remainder into the basin to hastily brush his teeth, improvise a shave and sponge a minimum of sea salt from what he regarded as vital parts of his body. The mirror revealed that his hair was a hopeless mess, though it shouldn’t have been that way, he grumbled, raking it irritably with a comb.

Byron had decided to spend the night on his boat in Ilio’s harbor rather than ride his motorcycle up the hill to the cottage he’d rented for the summer. He’d retired late with the best intentions of rising in time to give the boat a quick slicking over, fill the water tank and be waiting at the barber shop when it opened at eight. Besides a haircut, he’d anticipated the super shave that Forbici performs in two phases with a mound of brush-whipped lather and a deftly stropped straight razor. Livia liked that because it left his cheeks as smooth as a baby’s bottom for a good twenty-four hours.

The MarIlio ferry was blasting its horn for entry to port as Byron smeared his armpits with deodorant and scrambled into a navy blue knit shirt, orange jogging shorts and tan yacht sneakers, almost new. He leaped from the boat with a sneer directed at Carrozzone and bounded at a purposeful gait along the pier.

On reaching the landing, he realized that he could have saved himself the run that had left him in one of his free-flow morning sweats. The ferry had docked, but it would take a while for Livia to debark with her new car. So he sought out Arcibaldo Brandi, alias Arcipelago or simply Arci, the burly speedboat skipper who boasted that his ancestors were pirates.

Byron weaved his way through the crowd being prodded away from the landing by a heavy cord stretched between whistle-chirping municipal police. He spotted Arcipelago stationed at his usual spot, wearing a captain’s cap and holding a cardboard sign with hand-lettered messages on either side:

FAST VATER TAXI ALL TUSCANY ILAND’S

SCHNELL VASSER TAXI ALLES INSELNS TOSKANEN

The skipper seemed in enviably high spirits considering the quantities of wine and grappa he’d consumed the evening before. Must be that morning Bloody Mary, thought Byron, as he joined Arci’s festive audience of islanders gathered for the first weekend fleecing of the flocks of the 2001 tourist season.

Byron had been attracted to Ilio by its wooded hills and clear waters and the quiet harbor where he’d kept his sailboat for 15 years. He’d finally settled there following his divorce in 1997 in a half-baked bid to get away from it all. Inspired by the local ideal of gleaning sufficient funds from visitors over the summer to take it easy the rest of the year, he’d tried his hand with mixed fortunes as an innkeeper. By now, as one of 1,673 permanent residents, he rated as a sort of honorary islander. Or, as Arci liked to put it, one of us pirates.

They collided in a macho hug like linebackers who’d just sacked a quarterback.

Your pal the viper’s here, boomed Arci, delighted to think he’d be breaking the bad news about Carrozzone. Came in last night with a big new Mercedes and that same ape of a driver.

Don’t I know, said Byron. Saw him on his yacht this morning. Don’t look now, but I’ll bet he’s working on a suntan.

Arci peered across the harbor at the dark figure reclining in a deckchair on the cruiser christened Donna Assunta, reportedly after his mother.

Sooner or later somebody’s gonna accidentally drown that bastard, said Arci in a voice low enough so that his fans couldn’t quite hear.

The sooner the better, said Byron as cars began rolling off the ferry.

Livia arrived at the ramp in her new forest green Land Rover, waving and blowing kisses at him. Byron bolted from the crowd and ducked under the rope, dodging Angelo, the veteran policeman, who whistled furiously but was too busy directing traffic to stop him from scrambling onto the seat beside her.

Welcome back, chef, he greeted her, clamping his lips onto hers with such fervor that her foot slipped off the brake and they almost rammed the camper with Swiss license plates creeping ahead on the landing.

"Cretino, she scolded with that radiant laugh of hers. You’ll never grow up."

" Come sei bella,’" he said, leaning back and admiring her in full.

Fasten your seat belt, she commanded. You sound like a Latin lover.

Latent’s the word, said Byron, laying a hand on her lap. Neat car, by the way. Did you fit in all your stuff?

Almost, she said, as he surveyed the suitcases and cartons piled in the back. Enough to hold me for the summer.

Arci sauntered over and leaned through the open window to plop a kiss onto Livia’s cheek. Ciao, amore, he said with habitual finesse. But tell me something. Why does a gorgeous creature like you keep company with a Yankee ball-buster when you could have a real man like me? He patted his paunch. Look at how much more I have to offer.

Yeah, and one of these days you might even learn to read and write, taunted Byron, pointing at his water taxi sign.

Byron once mentioned the errors to Arci, trying not to sound condescending. The skipper laughed them off, noting that a few years earlier he’d had the messages printed in perfect English and German on plastic-coated placards. But business fell off, so he returned to pidgin on hand-lettered cardboard.

He once explained why. People stop to tell me about the mistakes and next thing you know they’re saying, ‘What the hell, let’s give the idiot a break and take a ride.’ Well, I get them out on the water, telling them about Barbarossa the pirate and the Medici dukes and all those heartbroken ladies who jumped off of cliffs. For an extra fifty thousand [lire] a head, I cruise them out near Montec-risto, telling them the island’s deserted because it’s haunted by the old Count. They eat it up. Sometimes even Germans leave tips.

Livia drove with her usual aplomb through the streets of Ilio Porto, dodging pedestrians, old folks on bicycles and daredevil kids on motor scooters while swerving past vehicles strategically parked to channel traffic into one-way slaloms. Clear of the throng, she accelerated up the hill toward the town of Fortezza.

She’d bought the four-wheel drive vehicle for Ilio’s back roads, typified by the packed dirt mule path that Byron directed her down to the cottage called Cupola after the dome-like boulder dominating the site overlooking the port. It was her first visit to the restored farmhouse built of chunks of granite piled into walls supporting a roof of ruddy-beige cup tiles.

It’s adorable, she said. But lonely. Needs living in.

And lots of outdoor work, added Byron, surveying the stunted olive, fig and lemon trees interspersed with clumps of prickly pear cactus and rows of scraggly grapevines running toward thickets of brush and thorns. The nice thing is we have no neighbors.

Livia parked the car under an umbrella pine and got out to admire the view of the Tuscan Archipelago. Across the water lay the islands of Elba and Giannutri, the Argentario promontory and the Uccellina hills with a sweeping backdrop of the mainland massif of Monte Amiata and the volcanic ranges of Civitella, Cimini and Sabatini extending south along the Italian peninsula almost to Rome.

Byron opened the cottage door and beckoned to her.

Hope there’s running water, she said warily, knowing about limited supplies on an island where it rarely rains from May to September.

Now and then, he teased, pulling her close. Want to do it now or wait till we’re out on the boat?

Both, she said, as he lured her inside.

It was almost eleven when they arrived back at the port and parked the car in front of the building where Byron two years earlier had opened a wine shop called Boccadoro. After decades of ups and downs in wine, as a producer, broker and expert taster, he’d decided at fifty to try his hand at the retail side of the business. He invested what remained of a squandered inheritance on a gamble that he now knew would have flopped had Livia not alighted into his life like an angel to reveal a genius for cooking. Thanks to her, Boccadoro had achieved a reputation as a restaurant, even if Byron refused to regard it as anything more than a wine bar with an auxiliary kitchen.

He released a heavy padlock and raised the roll-up metal shutter in a percussion of scrapes, clatters and bumps, then followed Livia through the dining room with its rustic wooden tables and corner bar into the confines of her kitchen.

Stuffy, she sniffed. Can’t wait to start cooking.

Byron had opened Boccadoro as a bottle shop, taking advantage of the bar license acquired from the previous owner to serve wines by the glass, along with choice cheeses, prosciutto, salami and tidbits of seafood. He knew he lacked the qualities of a model host—business acumen, social grace, patience, tolerance of one’s fellow man—and at times he seemed to go out of his way to prove it. But he’d had the good fortune of hiring Tosca, an indefatigable widow with a cheerful knack for camouflaging all but the proprietor’s most glaring flaws.

Most males on Ilio carried a nickname, often passed down through families for generations. As a newcomer, he was tagged as Boccadoro (golden mouth) for his predilection for wine and food. That sopranome proved useful, since his real name—Byron Keats Blyseth—rendered awkwardly in Italian. To keep things simple, his island friends usually called him Bocca.

Tongue in cheek, he applied his pseudonym to the establishment. As a symbol, he chose the fish prized locally as bocca d’oro after its ample golden oral cavity. A relatively large species, it was known in English as meagre in the Sciaenidae family referred to colloquially as croakers, drums or grunts for the booming frog-like sounds they emit. The Latin-conscious Byron also knew it by its scientific name of Argyrosomus regius. For a sign, he took the bottom of an old wine barrel and had a woodcarver depict the fish’s image highlighted by a gaping mouth of gold with the terms BOCCADORO arched over the top and OSTE-RIA-WINE BAR underneath.

He’d never had the slightest intention of turning the place into a full-fledged eatery until he fell under Livia’s spell over the Christmas-New Year’s holiday of 1999-2000. It took the usual bouts of finagling with Italian bureaucrats to obtain the necessary permits. But, by rushing restorations, they managed to open Boccadoro as a restaurant of sorts the following May, exactly a year earlier.

From mid-autumn to mid-spring, Livia directed public relations for the Milan fashion house of Gian Giacomo della Torre. But from May to September, Ilio’s tourist season, she devoted herself to Byron and Boccadoro.

It was Saturday and the season’s opening was set for Tuesday, so they’d decided to spend a quiet weekend together with a leisurely lunch on the boat before settling in to the cottage. As they set out to shop for food, Byron’s scalp felt so scruffy that he asked if she’d mind if he got a quick haircut.

But I like your hair long, she objected. A shave might be nice, though. You were a bit, how do you say, scratchy this morning.

They conversed in a mix of English and Italian, sometimes switching languages in mid-phrase. She spoke exemplary Tuscan, the mother tongue, free of vernacular extremes. His Italian revealed not so much a foreign accent as a mode of expression inextricable from its American roots. Livia liked to polish her already excellent English on Byron, whose use of his native language after nearly four decades in Europe might have been described as mid-Atlantic were it not so liberally spiced with the dormitory, locker room and beer joint banter of his formative years.

He draped an arm over her neck and shoulders as they walked along the waterfront and off through narrow lanes leading to the compact, neon-lighted shop of Gino Ranieri, popularly known as Forbici for his dexterity with scissors. The barber was just finishing with an elderly client, though two others seemed to be waiting their turns while browsing through assorted literature, mainly gossip magazines and comics, some explicitly pornographic.

"Salve, Gino, Byron greeted him, poking his head through plastic strands draped from the door to keep the flies out. Looks like I’m out of luck."

Come back in a half hour, suggested Forbici with a smile, snipping wayward hairs from the customer’s eyebrows, ears and nose before a final brush of the neck with talcum powder.

Never mind him, interjected Gigi, one of the waiting duo. You go ahead, young man. Eh, Pippo. What the devil have we got to do today? Pippo grunted assent and joined Gigi in gaping at Livia.

Byron, appreciating the fact that in Italy males remain youths (ragazzi or giovanotti) until they approach their death beds, thanked them profusely, adding that at the first opportunity he’d like to offer them a glass of wine at his bar. Forbici ushered him into the chair, draped a red cape over his shoulders and began clipping at a serious pace after being instructed to remove enough to last till August and follow up with a nice shave.

Byron faced a mirror that enabled him to watch Livia in blouse and slit skirt seated on a flimsy plastic chair with her legs crossed trying to concentrate on a gardening journal. Nor could he ignore the reflections of Pippo and Gigi, pretending to be reading while sneaking peeks at Livia and smirking like randy school boys.

At one point Gigi, prodded by his friend, asked Byron if he weren’t that Americano who owned the osteria on the harbor. What’s it called?

Boccadoro, replied Byron, eliciting beams that seemed to shout bingo. Pippo soon exited with a hand over his mouth as if to hold back a sneeze, though hisses of glee arriving all too audibly from the nearby piazzetta beckoned Gigi out to join the fun.

Byron shot a quizzical look at Forbici, who pretended to be too busy clipping to enjoy the scene. The boys returned minutes later, explaining that they’d ducked out for a coffee. Soon Byron spotted Pippo, who seemed to be more or less toothless, making motions with his mouth while holding a newspaper close to his face, apparently convinced that only Gigi could see him.

Livia, after trying gamely to maintain her composure, finally whispered to Byron that she’d run ahead and get some things for lunch. Her departure seemed to deflate the boys’ enthusiasm as they returned to perusing comics.

Forbici finished the shave, patted Byron’s cheeks with a warm towel, and removed the cape with a sweep spoofing a matador, scattering wadded cuttings of graying honey-brown hair over the floor. Byron added a grateful tip to the regular charge, prompting a bow from the barber and approving nods from Pippo and Gigi, who seemed somehow sorry to see him go.

He caught up with Livia at the bakery.

What the hell were those old farts up to? I mean ...

"Well, when Pippo was doing those silly things with his lips after whispering boccadoro to Gigi, I guess he meant that it signified, what do you say, fellatio? You know, with the mouth."

Yeah, I gathered, said Byron. Well, that’s wonderful. B-o-c-c-a-d-o-r-o spells blowjob. Jesus Christ, why didn’t somebody tell me that when I opened the place? And there’s that fish with his mouth open on the sign. So here I am marooned on a goddamn island like Robinson Crusoe with his head up his rectum and the natives calling me a cocksucker behind my back.

Well, I don’t think it’s common usage, Byron, really. No one could empathize like Livia. Anyway, I’ve never heard it before.

No? Well, that’s probably because you don’t hang out with truck drivers.

Gloom was the last thing he’d expected to experience that day, but already he’d suffered a series of setbacks to his customary sense of well-being and it wasn’t even noon. They walked back in silence to find a parking ticket attached to the windshield wiper of her car.

This is the last fucking straw, roared Byron. Well, there is no fucking way that any fucking body is ever gonna pay this fucking ticket. And he ripped the fucking thing up.

Sulking over the indignities, he went inside to the refrigerator and transferred bottles of wine and water into an insulated bag with ice packs, then exited, slamming down the shutter with infantile rage, and pivoted to punish the fish on the sign with a furious poke in the mouth. Rubbing his smarting knuckles, he scanned the piazza with his most devastating High Noon glare. But nobody seemed to be watching. So he grabbed the bag and stormed into the car.

You know something, said Livia, trying to sound unruffled. Tuscans love double entendre. Your friends probably thought you knew. People here really admire you, Byron.

Not everybody, he corrected, crossing his arms and pondering a blotch on his sneakers.

The spell was broken when she purred Boccadoro from deep in her throat and he turned to watch her pucker her lips into an oval and mimic the gesticulations of a sidewalk slut. He snickered in disgust, but soon they were whooping in outraged glee, clutching and pawing each other like giddy kids on a first date.

You’re the greatest thing that ever happened to me, he blurted, recalling for some reason that he’d never said anything of the sort to his ex-wife Anne. But then, if he had, she’d no doubt have scowled at him as if he’d served her a bowl of cold cucumber soup. Unlike Anne, Livia isn’t allergic to cucumbers, he mused, or apparently anything else. Not even the beast in Byron.

"Ti voglio bene, she said, running her fingers over his newly coiffed mane. But, you know something?"

What’s that? he muttered dreamily.

Your hair’s too goddamn short.

The midday sun had soothed the harbor to a summery lull as they strode with their lunch bundles along the pier where the larger yachts of Ilio tied up. Byron’s nine-meter varnished mahogany sailboat, which he’d named Fufluns after the Etruscan god of wine, was the oldest and least imposing craft in the row. But he’d been lucky to get a choice berth years ago and wasn’t about to give it up, whatever the pressure from his odious neighbor.

Livia spotted Carrozzone basking on the deck and asked Byron in a concerned way if he knew about his being there.

Don’t I, dammit, he muttered, glaring at the man that he and Arci called the viper.

Carrozzone, wearing a yellow slip of a bathing suit, reclined on a wooden deckchair, which as a rule he shifted a few degrees every hour or so to always face the sun.

"Buon giorno, signora," said the lawyer in what might have been interpreted as a challenging way as they boarded the boat.

Buondì, said Livia coolly without really looking at him.

They would have cast off immediately, but Byron had to pull the hose over from the end of the pier to fill the water tank and, as usual, it took him a while to get the goddamn engine started. When it did finally kick in, diesel fumes wafted toward Donna Assunta, whose solitary occupant held a towel over his mouth.

Hope the bastard chokes to death, said Byron solemnly, having by no means forgotten that the exhaust system had been among the list of alleged irregularities for which the miserable shit had reported him to the port authorities a year earlier.

As Fufluns gained speed, Byron glanced back to see Carrozzone glaring at them and talking on his cell phone.

He’s like a medusa floating there until something gets close enough to zap, he said, adding that he’d never known anybody quite so repulsive.

Short and slight with a pudgy midriff, Carrozzone trained his thinning dark hair into a bun at the back and affected a menacing look magnified by black sunglasses of a style favored by mafia bosses in the movies. He spoke with a Tuscan accent so pungent that it seemed almost a parody, choking off vowels and hacking up the hard c as a guttural h in a voice that was squawky and mean, like his laugh on the rare occasions that it erupted.

A bachelor of about fifty, Carrozzone cultivated arrogance, shrieking commands at his cringing crew, who, like other lackeys who came aboard from time to time, addressed him as Avvocato. Yet the tough-guy pose, which Byron likened to a pathetic impersonation of Al Pacino, couldn’t cover a shadow of insecurity. The name Carrozzone betrayed the family’s Calabrian origins, a stigma to those Tuscans who regard people from the south with suspicion and disdain. He also had a slightly gimp leg and he must have been at least vaguely aware of his brutal appearance, the reptilian texture of a face pierced by beady eyes and palled by flaccid cheeks onto which he regularly dabbed white ointment.

How did it happen that on an island with no poisonous snakes, I end up with a viper on the next boat? complained Byron. Makes me sick just to look at him.

He is a bit sinister, allowed Livia, who rarely voiced a negative word about anyone. But what does he have against you?

Well, I figure he’s trying to force me out of my slot so he can move in a partner in crime with another boat. The word is he slipped Vasco a pile of money to give up that berth for him last year. Vasco told me he’d been planning to leave anyway, but I don’t believe it. Anyway, the son of a bitch probably figures he can hound me out of here without resorting to a bribe because I’m a stupid American. But it ain’t gonna be that easy.

Did you say partner in crime?

Yep. If you ask me, he chose Ilio as an out-of-the way base for some kind of racket. You know, smuggling guns or drugs or whatever.

You don’t really believe that, do you?

Well, that’s a big, fast boat he’s got there and they take it out at some very odd hours. Also, how do you explain why he’s got the fanciest yacht and villa on Ilio, not to mention the chauffeur-driven cars and God only knows what else he owns back in Prato or wherever he’s from? But why don’t you ask him?

I have no desire to talk to him.

Just kidding. He probably wouldn’t be interested in you either. He’s supposedly gay.

So?

No, I mean, I could care less. Byron shrugged unconvincingly as he lowered the throttle. But it might account for the little turd’s Napoleon complex.

Byron, what are you saying, that Napoleon was gay?

Well, uh, I think I read somewhere that he was a switch-hitter.

A what?

A swi ... You know, sex-wise, went both ways.

You have such peculiar ways of putting things.

Well, what I mean is he’s probably a sadomaso or something like that. Or maybe a pedophile. Yep, that’s it. I’ll bet he’s trafficking in films of dirty old men doing things with kids.

Why don’t we change the subject, she suggested.

Okay, fine. Hey, I don’t know about you, but I could really use a drink of water.

She ducked into the cabin to fetch a plastic bottle from which Byron gulped prodigiously before he cut the engine and prepared to sail. As she rigged the jib he hoisted the mainsail and eased Fufluns into a reach that soon had them racing with the northeasterly breeze called the grecale.

They rounded the northern tip of the island, passing Punto Fenice with its lighthouse atop cliffs of granite. Sails flapped in the lee of the wind as they glided south past the gulf of Terrese and Il Faraglione, a column of volcanic rock rising from the sea at a far more precarious angle than the tower of Pisa.

He gazed at Livia, casually tending the jib and basking on the floorboards in a pink bikini. At forty, the dawn of dumpy-dowdy for many a woman, she flourished with the supple physique of a post-pubescent. He liked to envision her as an Etruscan princess, stately and lithe with chestnut hair draped from an aristocratic head enhanced in profile by a gracefully prominent nose. She cast easy smiles, her lips parting to reveal teeth that glistened like Volterran alabaster as her verdigris eyes peered at him with the mystical mirth of the Mediterranean.

Maybe it was an effect of blind adoration, but he swore that she was free of flaws. Even the creases and specks of her tawny skin seemed to have been bestowed by a benedictory deity. She used little or no makeup, as far as he could tell, and, bless her, no lipstick ever. She was too fond of food and wine for that.

Were you ever Miss Italia? he taunted.

Don’t be silly. You know I don’t have the requisite dimensions. To make the point, she removed her top with a nonchalance reserved for Byron.

Funny, he thought, she’d never dream of flaunting her splendors on one of those beaches where possessors of boobs ranging from the likes of chimpanzees to Holsteins vie for passing glances from strolling Casanovas who’ve abandoned their spouses under parasols to nag the kids and flip through gossip magazines.

He’d known the scene. Anne and Sarah, their now grown daughter, once spent summers on the sandy strands of the Maremma amid mobs so revolting that Byron bought a boat to escape them. Come to think of it, that was probably the beginning of the end, the exploit that pointed him on his crash course toward Livia. He ogled her with a pride of possession swelled by the perception that she was much more than he deserved.

Livia Seianti was born in Livorno and raised in Siena and Florence, earning a degree in foreign languages before becoming an airline hostess and, subsequently, a fashion model. When Byron declared that she easily outclassed any of those strutting flamingos you see on TV, she smiled patiently and admitted: It was good money, if you could put up with being treated like a glorified prostitute. But I couldn’t stand the way they made us walk. You know, placing one foot in front of the other. Totally unnatural.

That career ended at thirty-one, when she married a Venetian nobleman in his late fifties after a courtship that began, believe it or not, at a Carnival masked ball. Life with Conte Alvise Trevisan dalla Motta entailed leisurely commutes between a palazzo on the Rio della Madonnetta in Venice and an office-apartment suite on the Via Brera in Milan, nerve center of the family’s textile industry. The count kept a yacht for cruises on the Adriatic and a Ferrari Testarossa mainly for getaways to a chalet overlooking Cortina d’Ampezzo.

A man of culture and charm, Alvise doted over Livia. Yet, as she once confided to Byron, he seemed to regard her less as a wife than as a favorite daughter, perhaps because his real two were so pompously bitchy. Livia’s fondest memories of the fable were set in the family kitchens, where she revived her youthful joy of cooking.

One day, while skiing in the Dolomites, the count inexplicably deviated from a posted trail and plummeted over a precipice, leaving Livia a childless widow at thirty-seven. Upon learning that Alvise had dissipated the family fortune, she resolved to get a job.

Gian Giacomo della Torre, the fashion designer, asked her to return as a model. She declined, so he created a position for her in public relations. By now, she’d been able to work out a schedule that kept her busy at her base in Milan from October through April, when most of the fashion shows are held, while leaving her free for the tourist season on Ilio.

They sailed close to the high cliffs at Capo Cannone, where eighteenth-century inhabitants of Ilio in an attempt to ward off Saracen marauders mounted a cannon that stands there still. Veering south, they skirted the Fausto promontory, an oddly distinct volcanic appendage to an island of plutonic origin formed when masses of molten granite rose from the sea.

Byron, who was fascinated by place names, talked about the origins of Fausto.

"You’d think it’d mean lucky, as fausto is used in the language, he said. But instead they say it came from infausto, unlucky, because so many men died in the mines there. There’s another version, of course. A couple of centuries ago a hermit named Fausto supposedly built a stone house there. He was into things like communicating with the dead. You know, like Faust, the Goethe character. Well, one morning, people looked and the