The Unexpected Waltz Read Online Free PDF Page B

around his sternum, and the toes of his left foot were unfinished.
    “He’s subtle,” Elyse said. “What makes him human is that he’s not too smooth.”
    “I know,” I said. “In fact, the closer you get, the wonkier he seems. When you really stare at him, his hands are too big and his feet are too big. His whole head is too big.”
    “He looked perfectly proportional from the end of the hall,” Elyse said, rubbing the back of her neck. “Of course, art changes depending on where you’re standing.” So we stood up and walked out of the dome, linked arms, and began to approach David from different angles. There are paintings and statuary all around him in the Accademia. Wonderful things, I’m sure, and priceless, but none of the tourists seemed to look at any of them. David was the star.
    Elyse and I walked toward him from the north and east and south and west and finally ended up back on the same bench where we had started.
    “The man on the pedestal,” Elyse said softly.
    “He’s afraid of something,” I said.
    Elyse shook her head. “Not afraid, just wary. He’s looking at Goliath.”
    “His penis is kind of small,” I said. “Considering the rest of him.”
    “Well,” Elyse said slowly. “It’s not like it’s erect, is it?” We sat in silence, contemplating this. We were young then, and pretty. I’m not sure either of us had ever seen a penis that wasn’t erect.
    “Even so,” she finally said. “You’re right, it doesn’t look promising. And there’s something weird about his pubic hair.”
    “Way too perfect. Like it’s been brushed and styled with a blow-dryer.” We got the giggles and they rang through the dome.
    “I like The Prisoners better,” I said.
    “Yeah,” said Elyse. “Me too.”
    “But you were right,” I admitted. “We really didn’t need the headsets.”
    As we were leaving, Elyse asked someone to take our picture. Just a quick snapshot with one of our cheap cameras. At some point through the years I had it blown up and framed, and it’s my all-time favorite photograph of us, which is why I keep it here in the kitchen, even though it’s faded to gold and gone a little fuzzy. It’s the image of two girls caught at the end of something, although of course we didn’t know that at the time. Elyse had handed the camera to some cute young guy in the crowd. An American student, like us, just one more boy who’d be going home at the end of the summer, just one more boy wandering through Paris and Amsterdam and Rome. When we asked if he spoke English, he’d dropped his headset down his neck and said, “A little bit. I’m from Pittsburgh.” Everyone laughed and of course we’d decided the next logical step was to find a café and a cheap bottle of wine. When he lifted the camera to his face, he told us to say “Parmesan.”
    Kind of funny. At least he was trying. Elyse and I exchanged one of our glances. Mine, I thought to her. This one is mine.
    In the picture Elyse and I are standing in the bright dome of the Accademia. We’re both wearing jeans and T-shirts. Our backpacks lie at our feet. Elyse must have just released her hair from its braid, because it’s expanded around her head like a low halo, and I’ve pushed my sunglasses back and am smiling broadly, so broadly that my eyes have squinted down to nothing. You can’t see much of David at all, there’s the irony, but Daniel’s shadow falls between us on the floor. He is crouched and bent with his arms all akimbo and his shadow looks like the passing of some great bird, an albatross or an eagle. It was the summer just before we both turned twenty. Before life began to chip away at us like a sculptor into marble, reducing us from endless unformed possibility into the women we would ultimately become.

CHAPTER FOUR
    H ER NAME'S CAROLINA," the client coordinator says. “And get this. Her sisters are named Virginia and Georgia.”
    In a split second this woman’s whole life flashes before my