Stone Barrington 06-11

Eduardo pretty much as if he were the Pope. Stone was introduced to each of them, but the flood of Italian names passed him by.
    “Who are these people?” he asked Dolce.
    “Distant relatives and business acquaintances,” she replied tersely.
    Stone could not see any family resemblance. “Who are these people?” he asked Dino, when he had a chance.
    “I can’t prove it,” Dino said, “but my guess is you’d have a real problem placing a bet, buying a whore, or getting a fix anywhere in Italy right now.”
    “Come on, Dino.”
    “You’ll notice that, although there’s a band and lots of food, there’s no photographer?”
    Stone looked around and couldn’t see a camera in anybody’s hands.
    “My guess is, the wedding pictures will be taken Monday, at the church, and that none of these people will be there, which is okay with me. I certainly don’t want to be photographed with any of them.”

    It was late afternoon before they returned to the palazzo. Stone was told to be downstairs at eight for cocktails, then he was allowed to stagger to his room, strip, and fall facedown on the bed, until he was shaken awake by a servant and told to dress. He’d had the bad dream again, but he still couldn’t remember it.
    Aunt Rosaria had prepared what Stone assumed was their wedding dinner. They ate sumptuously, then adjourned early, everyone being tired from the day’s festivities.
    “Sleep as late as you like,” Eduardo said to the group. “Mass is at eleven tomorrow morning.”
    Each retired to his own room. Stone, having had a three-hour nap, was not yet sleepy; he changed into a sweater and decided to go for a walk.
    He was almost immediately lost. There was a dearth of signs pointing to anywhere, except St. Mark’s Square, and he didn’t want to go there. Instead, he just wandered.
    An hour later, he found himself approaching what he recognized from photographs as the Rialto Bridge. As he climbed its arc, a woman’s head appeared from the opposite direction, rising as she walked backward toward him, apparently talking to someone following her. Immediately, Stone knew her.
    The shining hair, the slim figure, the elegant clothes, the shape of her calves. It was Arrington. His heart did strange things in his chest, and he was suddenly overcome with the unexpected thrill of seeing her. Then he remembered that she was now Mrs. Vance Calder, of Los Angeles, Malibu, and Palm Springs, that she had borne Vance’s child, and that he had sworn her off for life.
    Stone was struck heavily by the fact that his reaction to seeing her was not appropriate for a man who would be married on the morrow, and he was suddenly flooded with what had been pent-up doubts about marrying Dolce. In a second, every reservation he had ever had about marriage, in general, and Dolce, in particular, swept over him, filling him with a sickening panic.
    On Arrington came, still walking backward, talking and laughing with someone who was still climbing the other side of the bridge, probably Vance Calder. Stone recovered quickly enough to place himself in her path, so that she would bump into him. She would be surprised, they would laugh, Vance would greet him warmly, and they would congratulate him, on hearing of his plans.
    She ran into him harder than he had anticipated, jarring them both. Then she turned, and she wasn’t Arrington. She was American, younger, not as beautiful; the man following her up the bridge was young, too, and beefy.
    “I’m awfully sorry,” Stone said to her.
    Her young man arrived. “You did that on purpose.”
    “I apologize,” Stone said. “I thought the lady was someone I knew.”
    “Yeah, sure,” the young man said, advancing toward Stone.
    “Don’t,” the girl said, grabbing at his arm. “He apologized; let it go.”
    The man hesitated, then turned and followed the woman down the bridge.
    Stone was embarrassed, but more important, he found himself depressed that the woman had not been Arrington. He stood at the top of the bridge, leaning against the stone railing, looking down the canal, wondering if the universe had just sent him a message.

Five

    S TONE WAS HAVING THE UNPLEASANT DREAM AGAIN, AND in it, someone was knocking loudly on a door. Then someone was shaking him, and he woke up this time, remembering that Arrington had been in the dream.
    A servant was bending over him. “Signore Bianchi asks that you come to the library at once,” the man said. “It is not necessary to