“No,” Sandro said, shaking his head sadly. “I will love Simonetta until the day I die.”
“My parents said that, too,” Maisie said, losing her patience with Sandro’s overly romantic notions. “They promised to love each other in sickness and in health, for better or worse. But instead, they fell out of love and got divorced.”
“This is terrible, Maisie!” Sandro said, jumping to his feet. His eyes glowed with great passion. “Something is wrong with what you say. Love is endless. Love is . . . eternal!”
“Then how do you explain my parents?” she said, equally passionate.
“They didn’t love each other in the first place,” Sandro said firmly. “That is the only explanation.”
“They held hands all the time!” Maisie said, her hands on her hips as if she were preparing for a fight. “They sang together!”
Sandro pulled her hands from her hips and held them in his calloused ones.
“You must not do this,” he said, looking her right in the eyes. “You must believe in love, and you must believe that no matter what happened to your parents, love is eternal.”
Maisie opened her mouth to protest, but stopped. This sounded very much like a lesson, like something she and Felix needed to know. Was the seal of the giglio meant for Sandro Botticelli?
She freed her hands from his and reached into her pocket, pulling out the gold seal.
“Sandro,” she said, opening one of his hands and placing the seal in it, “this is for you.”
Puzzled, he looked down at what she’d placed in his hand.
“What is this?” he asked.
“For letters,” Maisie said. “You know, you drip hot wax on the back and then stamp it with this seal.”
Sandro held the seal up closer to better examine it.
“Why would I want this?” he asked finally.
“That’s the symbol of Florence,” Maisie explained.
“I know what it is,” he said. “I just don’t need it.”
He handed it back to her.
Maisie hesitated. If Sandro didn’t want it, then it wasn’t intended for him.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said.
Resigned, Maisie put the seal back in her pocket.
“Shall we walk some more?” Sandro suggested.
“What about Simonetta?”
“She won’t appear again, I’m afraid. I’m lucky if I glimpse her once. Twice? Impossible.”
“Seriously,” Maisie said as they continued along the Arno River, “you need to find a different girlfriend. Someone who isn’t married, for example.”
Sandro shrugged. “A heart doesn’t take advice.”
Maisie thought about how her mother wouldn’t listen to reason about Bruce Fishbaum, and how her father almost married Agatha the Great, and how neither of them would take her advice to get married again—to each other.
“That’s true,” Maisie admitted.
From deep inside her stomach, a hungry growl made its way out and into the night.
“Oops,” Maisie said. “I guess I haven’t eaten in a long time.”
“But why didn’t you say so?” Sandro said. “Right here we can stop and have some meat and cheese.”
He pointed to a busy shop across the street.
“The owner is my good friend Pasquale. He will let us taste a little of this, a little of that.”
“I’d like a lot of something,” Maisie said, which made Sandro laugh.
Inside, the shop stank of cheese, the kind her father liked, but no one else did. She wrinkled her nose, trying not to show her disgust.
A short fat man came from around a counter of cheeses and dried meats, grinning at the sight of Sandro.
The two men hugged and gushed for so long that Maisie had to clear her throat to remind them she was there.
Sandro introduced her to Pasquale, who hugged her and gushed at her for so long that she finally said, “Nice to meet you, too,” very loudly, and then, “Sandro said you might have some snacks?”
“Ah!” Pasquale said happily. “A hungry girl!”
He went back around the counter, saying in a singsong voice, “A hungry girl, a hungry girl, Pasquale loves a hungry girl.”
Maisie stood on tiptoe to watch as he sliced and chopped salami and cheeses of all kinds, whistling as he placed them on a big round plate with olives and hunks of bread.
“Taste! Taste!” Pasquale said when he was done, holding the plate out to Maisie and Sandro.
She eyed the cheese, wanting to avoid the smelliest, and stuck to the salami instead. She had never seen so many different kinds of salami. There were small discs, hard red slices, softer large ones, and one studded with what looked like seeds. And each kind tasted different—salty, sharp, spicy, and even like licorice.
Sandro and Pasquale laughed as they watched her eat.
“May I have one tiny piece of salami?” Sandro teased her.
Reluctantly she let him have a few pieces, and some cheese and olives, too.