La Casa del Diavolo

i Dear A. — Nailing crockery to the walls was not something I ever understood, but Simonetta’s maiolica falls, like this sideboard, painted wood, under the enchantment of a freehand look — a curling script, a loose grape tendril, the forms that hecatomb smoke took purling to a Roman god’s nostril    ... Because geranium is crinkled in the spillage from the wishing well, now outdated and backfilled, this whole place evinces the nature of a souvenir plate. Another tell: the mosquito flourish in its signature. ii The rustic bicycle, like a pen that spent its ink, wrote an invisible sentence to the ramparts and back, now and again rolling through the arches of an aqueduct dowsing with its sixth sense across the hillsides. Locals tucked plastic water bottles under spouts chiseled into lions’ pouts stationed at intervals, like shrines. Their cars idled while they stooped, and on Sundays even formed lines. They trust this water more, Lorenzo whooped, than what comes out of their taps? The sources snake beneath the maps. iii The little terrier Amore, they warned me, had eaten the seat belts; so there I was, my friend, fearing whiplash in the back seat (no headrest either!), in all respects afloat — Simonetta on alert for signs of gallantry, like the wives of those diminished Casanovas who dream they’ve merely grown discreet. And the dissertation she once wrote on courtesan-poetesses, fancying herself of that ilk (“Like me!” — a phrase she’d strew among her compliments) gathers dust on a shelf. When I think of Boccherini’s metacarpals interred beneath the soppressata marbles of the duomo, I think:Casa del Diavolo. Those two.