Lassiter had noticed her, or thought he had noticed her (could he be slipping?), a couple of times now. The first had been on a mild February day as he had sneaked out of a private meeting at Cinecittà. She had rounded the corner of the studio on a peacock-blue bicycle, the front wicker basket holding a stack of paper weighted down by a pair of tangled high heels. Her bare feet were peddling fast, and immediately he assumed she was one of the script girls. Or—better yet—an actress, with her wavy raven-black hair and stylish manner.
The second time had been at Peggy Guggenheim’s Carnival party on Mardi Gras a few weeks back. They were both in costume which must have slowed him down—by the time he made the connection, she was gone.
He had not seen her at the studio since. He had certainly not expected to find her here, wandering alone through the Via Sacra. He liked to cut through the Forum as he slipped home from Anita’s apartments, long before the photographers were up. At dawn, the cats had the run of the place and it made him feel positively feral. In his early fifties, he still showed the American athleticism of his lost youth, strolling the sampietrini of Rome’s battered post-war streets with the nimbleness of a man half his age.
When he saw her standing there in her white knotted men’s shirt and bright peasant skirt, pensively taking bites of a maritozzo still in its café wrapper, he wondered if now was the time to say something. In a movie it would have been the perfect moment: minute nineteen out of ninety and the third encounter between the leads.
Then, as with so much in the movie industry, it was taken out of his hands. She turned back to the blue bicycle leaning against a two-thousand-year-old cracked columns, finally noticed him, and walked on past. If she recognized him, she gave no sign of it.
“Mi scusi—”
She wheeled around at his words, wiped a bit of cream from the corner of her lips, and gave a smile that bordered on a smirk. “Don’t strain yourself. I’m a foreigner, too.”
Her words, spoken with an impeccable British accent, made the back of his neck tighten. “Actually, I live here.”
“So do I.”
“I mean I have done, for years.”
“I don’t think that’s what makes someone Italian, do you?”
He saw that she was joking with him in that very contrarian, British manner that he had always found tiring, even in a woman as beautiful as her. He also saw that she was not going to make this easy for him.
“I believe we were both at Peggy’s Carnival bash.”
She pitched the now-empty pastry wrapper into the bicycle basket. “I don’t recall being introduced.”
He extended his hand. “John. John Lassiter. Artemis Productions.”
The sun was slowly rising behind him and she shaded her eyes with her right hand to peer more closely at him.
“The warrior goddess,” was all she replied.
“Among other things.” He quickened his pace ahead of her to reach the bicycle and turn it around in his hands, then motioned for her to proceed as he gentlemanly walked the bike. Noticing the script in the basket next to the crumpled pastry wrap, he tried again. “You’re in Teatro 5, right? Starring in…?”
“Not in. On.” She looked amused by his reaction. “I’m doctoring the script for When All Else Fails.”
“I hear it’s in rough shape.”
“It’s as crumpled as that wrapper.” She laughed wryly. “I appreciate your directness, at least.”
The words at least did not escape him. He had only a few yards of Via Sacra left to make his pitch. “Do you walk through here often?”
She shook her head. “Only for inspiration—and the history, of course. Today is the Ides of March, as you know.”
He did not know. For all his morning-after walks through the Forum, Lassiter was unaware that he had found her standing where Julius Caesar had been cremated following his assassination on that famous datedei . The producer had huge gaps in his education that he had spent a lifetime hiding through almost any means short of actually opening a book.
“Exactly,” was all he said instead.
As they exited onto the pavement alongside the screeching, careening cars of the Via Fori Imperiali. She reached for the bicycle handles and he released them slowly, allowing his taut, tanned arms to brush against hers, pleased that she did not step back as quickly as she could have.
“See you at the studio, Mr. Artemis.”
“Lassiter,” he was pained to have to correct her. But she only smiled, and he realized she was teasing him again. “And you are?”
“Lowry. Vivien.” She ascended the bicycle and sped off, but he noticed she looked back at the corner. He had paced it well enough in the end.
