Pasta Imperfect - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,33

chicken wire. It was kind of like standing on the top tier of a wedding cake and being protected by a border of decorative frosting. Three hundred and forty feet below me, Florence lay in miniature, a jumble of brown and gray buildings squished helter-skelter beneath red terra-cotta roofs -- like a third-grade plaster of Paris experiment that someone had accidentally sat on. Flanking the perimeter of the city, a forest of spired trees and lush Tuscan greenery spread toward the surrounding hills and disappeared beneath a cloud of what looked like California smog. Beyond the smog, to the north and west, I imagined vineyards and villas, hill towns and sunflowers, olive groves and...

"And another thing," Jackie gasped into her tape recorder, "if you have old folks on your tour, don't drag them up here, or they'll all be collapsing from exhaustion and you'll have to have them airlifted down." She stood near me, backed against one of the ornate columned arches that winged outward from the cupola. "Say, Emily, I've been thinking. Should we have a secret code or a password or something?"

I focused on the panorama before me, a stiff wind forcing me to hold my camera steady. The roofs. The forest. A little smog for atmosphere. CLICK. "We're keeping track of suspicious people, Jack, not launching nuclear missiles." I refocused on the bell tower that rose candlestick straight to my left. CLICK. "We don't need secret codes."

A snort of disgust behind me. "No disguises. No secret codes. No passwords. If you don't mind my saying so, Emily, you run a pretty rinky-dink surveillance operation."

"I never would have come up here if I'd known this was going to happen," I heard a familiar voice complain from somewhere nearby. "Are you sure you don't need some help up, Barbro?"

My heart slammed against my rib cage with a sickening thud. Barbro? My Barbro? Oh, no. Had she fallen down? Broken her hip? Shattered a vertebra? Didn't she realize we were 340 feet up? Oh, God. With my heart in my mouth, I raced through four archways to the south side of the gallery. There, facedown on the terrace, lying in a splash of sunlight beside a plastic sack stamped with the words Farmacia Comunale, I found Barbro Severid. "Oh, my God!" Don't be dead. Please, don't be dead. Reverting to CPR mode, I dropped to my knees and flipped her over like a burger.

Click clack click clack click. "Would it have hurt for you to mention you were leaving?" Jackie scolded as she ran to join me.

Barbro's eyes were open, her pupils fixed. "You're going to be fine," I chattered over her as I tested for a pulse in her throat. My hands were sweaty. My fingers shook. "The climb must have been too much for her. I CAN'T FIND A PULSE!" I cried at Jack.

Barbro sat up suddenly. "Are you sure?"

"EHH!" I screamed.

She pressed her fingertips to the side of her throat and began to search herself. "Don't worry, dear. It must be here."

"My goodness," Britha cried as she shuffled into view. "What's all this commotion? What are you doing to my sister?"

"Emily can't find a pulse!" Jackie wailed. "Stand back. She's about to start CPR."

"Where'd it go?" Barbro sputtered, testing her throat. "Don't know, don't know." Shrugging, she thrust her hand onto my lap. "I insist. Try my wrist."

"Hurry up, Emily," Jackie prodded. "She could be dead."

"SHE'S NOT DEAD! She's sitting up!"

"You can't go by that! It could be a delayed muscle reaction."

"Look, Barbro," Britha said, circling around me. She opened her palm for all of us to see. "I found it. It must have ricocheted off the bottom of the railing and landed behind that column over there. But it's broken." She held up a clip-on earring that was a whorl of multicolored blue beads. "Brand-new. Isn't that a shame?" She wiggled the metal clip in the air to show how it was dangling like a loose tooth. "I guess we'll just have to look for new ones."

I regarded Britha curiously. "You mean, she didn't collapse from exhaustion?"

"Barbro collapse? Goodness, no. She was helping me locate my earring. She's very eagle-eyed. And quite thorough." Britha touched her hand to her ear and massaged the naked lobe. "But I do feel undressed without my earring. We always wear earrings to finish off our outfits, don't we, Barbro?"

"We always do. That's true, that's true."

Jackie nudged my leg with her foot and when I peered up, she slanted an odd