Meet Me in Venice Read Free

sadly, she might enjoy it more if she ever found a soul mate.
    She let herself into the courtyard and climbed the steps to the sixteenth-century stone apartment “over the shop.” Her home was a cozy refuge in winter, and in summer, with the tall windows flung open to the breeze, it was a cool city space filled with sunlight and the sound of the birds nesting in the paulownia tree.
    The phone was ringing and she galloped across the room and grabbed it with a breathy “Hello.”
    “Hi, sweets, it’s me.”
    Her best friend Daria’s loud Boston twang bounced in her ear and she held the phone away with an exasperated frown.
    “Isn’t it a bit early for you to be calling?” she asked, trying to calculate the time difference.
    “Yeah, well Super-Kid’s been up all night. Presh, what are you supposed to do when your three-year-old has bad dreams? Take her to a shrink?”
    Preshy laughed. “Stop feeding her soft drinks and candy, I’d think. Anyway, it’s a cheaper solution than a shrink. And besides, I don’t think she has enough vocabulary yet to talk to a psychiatrist.”
    She was grinning as she said it, joking around as they always did. Daria’s three-year-old’s name was Lauren, but she’d always been known as Super-Kid, and she was Preshy’s goddaughter.Daria was married to a physics professor, Tom, and she was always on to Preshy about finding “the right one.” Today was no exception.
    “So, it’s Saturday,” Daria began. “What are you going to do tonight?”
    “Oh, you know, Daria, I’m tired. It’s been a long week. I drove over to Brussels for the antiques fair there, and then when I got back my assistant went down with the flu—though personally I’m inclined to believe it’s a ‘man’ kind of flu.”
    “Hmm, pity it wasn’t you,” Daria said smartly. “You could use a bit of a ‘man-flu’ yourself, Presh. I mean, how can a gal who looks like you, who is . . . well who is
you,
be staying home alone on Saturday night in Paris?”
    “Because I want to, Daria. There’s a gallery opening I could go to, right down the street, but I simply can’t be bothered with the white wine and chatting with the artist, and besides I don’t like his work. And I’m too tired for a movie.”
    “You’ve got to get a life, Presh,” Daria said sternly. “Remember, we only get to go around once. Why not come on over here and let me introduce you to some nice tenured professor? You’d make an ideal academic’s wife.”
    “Me?
Oh yeah, sure. And he’d live in Boston and I’d live in Paris. Makes for a great marriage, huh?”
    “Then have Sylvie set you up with someone.”
    Sylvie was their other “best friend.” She was French, a chef who’d opened her own successful bistrot, Verlaine, a couple of years ago, and who was also so caught up in her work she had no time to meet men.
    “Sylvie only knows other chefs, and with their hours who needs that? ‘ Preshy replied. “Anyhow, did you ever stop to think I might be quite happy just as I am? I don’t want any changes; I don’t have time for them. I have my life, I go out when I want . . .”
    “With, whom?”
Daria said, leaving her no loopholes, but Preshy just laughed.
    “I mean it, sweets,” Daria said with an exasperated sigh, “just leave the shop in charge of the ‘man-flu’ assistant for a week and come on over here. I promise we’ll show you a good time.”
    Preshy said she’d think about it and they chatted for a while longer. When she rang off, she went to the shelf and looked at the silver-framed photo of the three best friends, aged eighteen.
    Daria was in the middle, her long straight blond hair floating on the sea breeze, long slim legs firmly planted, steady blue eyes smiling as usual. Preppie personified in shorts and a polo shirt.
    Sylvie was on the left, with a glossy black gamine haircut and solemn dark eyes, plump even then because she was working that summer in a local restaurant and was always tasting the