The Gilder Read Online Free Page A

pearls, somehow managed to look down at Marina from her seat behind the desk, informing her that she couldn’t “just appear” during school hours without an appointment, and that the school was not “in the habit” of providing real estate leads to transients. Marina tried to explain that she was not a transient, that she had moved to Florence and would be studying and then working here, but the woman only pursed her lips tighter and invited Marina to “vacate the premises.”
    After standing at the bus stop for fifteen minutes, Marina decided to walk back to the center of town. Scuffing the heels of her boots along the pavement, she thought of all the things she should have said to the bitch in pearls, but it didn’t help. Her early-morning conviction began to wane. Perhaps she’d made a big fat mistake in coming to Florence. Her words, “moved to Florence” and “working here,” dogged her footsteps. Did she really have any idea what she was doing? Was she a fool for not going to graduate school or getting a teaching job at some prep school? But she didn’t want to teach. She wanted to work with her hands. Sure, she’d stumbled onto the idea of gilding, but she knew it was right from the first time Professor Campione mentioned it. It fit with everything she loved—art, history, the feel of a tool in her hand, the way wood yielded, curling into the blade of her carving knife—and the idea of restoration, of taking something that was damaged and restoring its beauty, thrilled her. Was there any better place for her to be right now? Her steps lengthened to a stride as she reached the bottom of the hill and started back along the river toward the town center. She would find an apartment, if not today, then tomorrow. Today, she vowed, she would eat a proper meal, on her own, in a restaurant, something she had thus far avoided by eating piecemeal from coffee bars and cafeterias.
    She crossed the river at the Ponte Vecchio, taking her time, perusing the windows of the jewelry stores that lined both sides of the bridge. The shops, cantilevered out over the river, were barely large enough to hold two or three people. One shop had a large selection of cameos in the window. As a child, she had coveted her grandmother’s cameo that lay buried in her mother’s jewelry box under the cool, clean lines of modern pieces. She remembered with Braille-like accuracy the lines of the patrician profile, the delicate filigree frame. It reminded her that she should call her parents on the off chance they were wondering how she was doing. That wasn’t fair. Of course they’d be wondering how she was doing. Although, her mother’s initial reaction to her proposed trip had been matter-of-fact and she’d never acknowledged that she’d broken her promise to Marina, her encouragement had been unwavering, and as the plans unfolded, her excitement had been genuine. Marina’s father, too, had come out of his study long enough on a number of occasions to listen and murmur appreciatively.
    Long ago, when her parents weren’t looking, and they weren’t, she had created a life for herself within the shadow of their lives and had grown accustomed to her own company. In retrospect, she considered herself lucky to have been naturally suited to a solitary life; had she been a needy child, she might not have survived so well. She understood that her parents’ attention spans for anything outside their worlds of contemporary art or mathematical equations was limited, and had mastered the art of condensing her needs into as few words as possible for fear of losing their focus before she was finished. Yes, she must call them.
    At the center of the bridge, Marina stopped to watch a street artist draw caricatures for a group of giggling French girls. Then she proceeded through the loggia of the Uffizi Gallery, turning once again toward Santa Croce, where she remembered seeing a number of small restaurants in the warren of streets around the