A bus took me to the Balduina subway station, and I rode a couple trains until I landed at the Barberini stop. I got out there simply because I couldn’t remember seeing the piazza during my last visit. When I got to the top of the subway steps, I chose a cloth-covered table at a restaurant, essentially because it was the first one I saw, and I was bleary and hungry from the overnight flight.

Even though I normally avoided caffeine, I knew I should probably get a cappuccino, something to power through my jet lag. But when in Italy one tries to do what the Italians do, and the Italians don’t drink cappuccino with their midday meal, they drink wine. I ordered a glass of Greco di Tufo.

Then I got out a notebook I had brought with me, opened it to the first page and wrote at the top: Christopher McNeil, Things to Do.

Under that, I wrote:

1. Find Elena, get her to talk

2. Bug Mayburn to find R. J. Ohman, flight instructor. Ask him why Fed instructor needed for McNeil and also what was cause of crash

3. Learn who killed Grandpa Kelvin

4. Find out more about the Rizzato Brothers

I put the pen down and looked up via Veneto, the street that the restaurant faced. It was a wide, stately avenue flanked with regal appartamenti decorated with stone balconies and potted plants. It ended at the Piazza Barberini. A hotel sat at one side of the piazza. Its unimaginative brick front looked more like an American hotel, but surrounding it were stuccoed buildings painted brick-orange, their windows and shutters thrown open. Taxis and scooters and the tiniest of cars zipped around the circular piazza. And not just any scooters. Vespas! Rome wasn’t just the capital city of Italy, it was the capital city of Vespa country. They skirted the fountain and shot up via Veneto. I itched to get my fingers on the handgrips of one of them.

I took my cell phone from my bag and set it on the table, hoping my aunt Elena might call. I had followed Mayburn’s recommendation that I turn on my international service while in the car on the way to the airport, and so my phone worked. Since I didn’t know where she lived I had called Aunt Elena three times since landing in Rome. Each time, the phone was answered with a quick message in Italian. I couldn’t understand whether it was Elena’s voice telling me to leave a message or a recorded message notifying me I had dialed wrong.

I had decided I would keep calling and, meanwhile, forge into the city. If there was one thing I learned on my previous visit to Rome it was how much I didn’t get to see. The treasures, the hidden courtyards, the historic sites-these are endless in Rome. And according to a guidebook I’d picked up, a rash of new musi, galleries and palazzi had opened.

I pulled out that guidebook and flipped through it now, setting my sights on the Barberini Palace, right around the corner from the piazza. I kept studying the book, hoping I could divine the gallery Elena had mentioned, the one where she was working and which she said was close to her heart. The problem was, I didn’t know Elena very well. I didn’t know what moved her heart. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure what moved my own heart these days.

The sight of Alyssa in Sam’s apartment-in Sam’s T-shirt-nagged me, kept showing up in my mind like a neon-lit image. I let that image linger and filled it with more light, because sometimes that chased away the feel of Sam’s farewell embrace.

To get rid of both of them, I perused the menu.

I ordered a pasta I’d never heard of and watched the Sunday foot traffic on the street, hoping in vain that somehow Elena might walk by, fearing that if she did I wouldn’t recognize her.

I looked at my watch. It was early in Chicago, but that was probably the best time to catch Q. He would make me laugh about my whole situation somehow. He would encourage me to enjoy this time.

I called his home phone, at the apartment he shared with his wealthy boyfriend, but their voice mail picked up right away. We’re not in right now, I heard Q’s recorded voice say. In fact, we’re in St. Bart’s, and we’re not checking messages, but leave us one, and we’ll call you when we get back.

I hung up, suddenly wistful at the thought of how much time Q and I used to have together and how our life paths had diverged so sharply. I went back to watching the foot traffic pass my table. The longer I stared at the parade of pedestrians, the more I noticed that Rome was different from when I was here eight years ago. Or maybe it was just the Roman men.

When I was last in Rome, if a reasonably attractive woman stopped on the street to consult a map or much less ate alone at a restaurant, as I was doing, it would invite a torrent of male attention. The men would literally surround you-touching you, shouting come-ons in a desperate mix of Italian and English. It became one of Italy ’s few liabilities.

As I sat near the Piazza Barberini, alone and unap-proached, it was clear things had changed.

My pasta was delivered-green-and-white striped noodles in a mushroom-y broth. Delicious.

I kept eating my pasta and sipping my wine, depressed a bit about the change in the Roman men. Being single for the first time in years, I had envisioned a bevy of male attention that, although largely unwanted, would serve to lift me away from my questions about Sam, from a lingering taste of fear at the back of my throat every time I thought of Dez and Michael.

In fact, most of the men strutted by, not noticing any women. The men were dressed in exquisite fashion, their heads held high. Most of them were in perfect shape, their black hair tousled to perfection. It was almost as if they expected to be watched now, expected that they should be the admired ones. They were preening peacocks, full of bravado, no longer reduced to preying on tourists.

I picked up my phone and called Maggie.

“What courthouse?” she barked into the phone. I could imagine Maggie in her South Loop apartment, her body only a tiny bump in her big bed. “What’s the bond?” Maggie loved to sleep as late as possible, but was constantly awakened by drug clients who often landed in holding cells over the course of the night.

“Sorry, Mags,” I said.

“Hey, just because you’re not working doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t.” A pause. “Well, actually, I was going to be working because of my trial but I got directed verdict on Friday. Which means I’m going back to bed. Call you later.”

“I’m in Rome!” I tossed out before she could hang up.

“What?”

“Yeah, I got here yesterday.”

“You’re kidding me? Did you get a hold of your aunt Elena?”

“Not yet. But I just felt like getting out of town.” And away from Dez and Michael.

“You’re in Rome?”

“Yeah. I’m sitting outside near Piazza Barberini right now.”

“How is it?”

“As beautiful and chaotic as always. You should get on a plane and get over here.”

“Oh, I don’t know. My trial is over, but I’ve got to dig myself out of the mountain I let pile up while I was prepping for it.”

I told her I was staying at the Loyola campus.

“You’re kidding?” she said.

“You have to see it again. C’mon, Mags. How often are we going to get this chance? How often are we both going to be single at the same time? I mean, in a couple of years you might be married with a kid.” Maggie very much wanted a family. It was the husband part of that proposition that was causing her trouble.

“You’re right,” she said, her voice excited. “And we could celebrate your thirtieth.”

“I’ve got a glass of wine in front of me and a spot across the table for you.”

“I’m calling my travel agent.”

“Seriously?”

“I’m going to make this happen. I’m coming to Rome.”