The Mephisto Club

speak of it, because people will not understand.”
    I say little as we sit down to dinner. The family chatters enough to fill any silence. They talk about what Teddy did at the lake today, what Lily heard while at Lori-Ann’s house. What a nice crop of tomatoes they’ll be harvesting in August.
    When we have finished eating, Uncle Peter says, “Who wants to go into town for ice cream?”
    I am the only one who chooses to stay home.
    I watch from the front door as their car drives away. As soon as it vanishes down the hill, I climb the stairs and walk into my aunt and uncle’s bedroom. I’ve been waiting for the chance to explore it. The room smells like lemon furniture polish. The bed is neatly made, but there are minor touches of disorder—my uncle’s jeans draped over a chair, a few magazines on the nightstand—to confirm that real people live in this room.
    In their bathroom, I open the medicine cabinet and find, along with the usual headache pills and cold capsules, a two-year-old prescription, made out to Dr. Peter Saul:
    “Valium, 5 mg. Take one tablet three times a day as needed for back spasms.”
    There are at least a dozen pills still left in the bottle.
    I return to the bedroom. I open dresser drawers and discover that my aunt’s bra size is 36B, that her underwear is cotton, and that my uncle wears medium jockey shorts. In a bottom drawer, I also find a key. It’s too small for a door. I think I know what it opens.
    Downstairs, in my uncle’s study, I fit the key into a lock, and the cabinet door swings open. On the shelf inside is his handgun. It’s an old one that he inherited from his father, which is the only reason he has not gotten rid of it. He never takes it out; I think he is a little afraid of it.
    I lock the cabinet and return the key to its drawer.
    An hour later, I hear their car pulling into the driveway, and I go downstairs to greet them as they come back into the house.
    Aunt Amy smiles when she sees me. “I’m so sorry you didn’t come with us. Were you terribly bored?”

FOURTEEN
    The squeal of the truck’s air brakes startled Lily Saul awake. She raised her head, groaning at the ache in her neck, and blinked with sleepy eyes at the passing countryside. Dawn was just breaking and the morning mist was a haze of gold over sloping vineyards and dew-laden orchards. She hoped that poor Paolo and Giorgio had passed on to a place this beautiful; if anyone deserved Heaven, they did.
    But I will not be seeing them there. This will be my only chance at Heaven. Here, now. A moment of peace, infinitely sweet because I know it won’t last.
    “You’re awake at last,” the driver said in Italian, dark eyes appraising her. Last night, when he had stopped at the side of the road just outside Florence to offer her a ride, she had not gotten a good look at him. Now, with the morning light slanting into the truck’s cab, she saw coarse features, a jutting brow, and a day’s dark stubble on his jaw. Oh, she could read that look he gave her.
Will we or won’t we, Signorina?
American girls were easy. Give them a lift, offer them a place to stay, and they’ll sleep with you.
    When Hell freezes over,
thought Lily. Not that she
hadn’t
slept with a stranger or two. Or three, when desperate measures were called for. But those men had not been without their charms, and they had offered what she’d sorely needed at the time—not shelter, but the comfort of a man’s arms. The chance to enjoy the brief but lovely delusion that someone could protect her.
    “If you need a place to stay,” the driver said, “I have an apartment, in the city.”
    “Thank you, but no.”
    “You have some place to go?”
    “I have…friends. They’ve offered to let me stay.”
    “Where is their address in Rome? I will drop you off.”
    He knew she was lying. He was testing her.
    “Really,” he said. “It is no trouble.”
    “Just leave me at the train station. They live near there.”
    Again, his gaze raked across her face. She did not like his eyes. She saw meanness there, like the gleam of a coiled snake that could, at any instant, strike.
    Suddenly he gave a shrug, a grin, as if it didn’t matter to him in the least.
    “You have been to Rome before?”
    “Yes.”
    “Your Italian is very good.”
    But not good enough,
she thought.
I open my mouth and they know I’m foreign.
    “How long will you stay in the city?”
    “I don’t know.”
Until it’s no longer safe. Until I can plan my next