Chapter 4
Rome. Present day.
Rome was washed clean today, and Little took it as a sign that she could not hide forever. Dawn had come early, as it did in May, and remembering how spring paid homage to this city, she decided the jet lag was not worth staying hunched under the blankets.
Sometimes Rome was everybody’s: the historians, the tourists, the archaeologists, the Italians. And not just everybody, but every time. The city was precariously perched, its relationship with ticking moments insubstantial; its centuries past were as important, and seemingly more decisive, than its present. Rome was diaphanous, abstract. What Little set out for that morning was a chance to introduce herself to it again before the day was in full swing, while there was no one in the cobbled streets and the
