Athena and the Grand Reveal

“Athena doesn’t need a grand reveal,” Amer said. He did not say: It’s a hustle, it’s a scam. He said: “She’s the real deal.”

“The problem,” Robin said, “is, a, you can’t do it, and, b, you don’t get it.”

“I expected more from the house, after all that,” Amer said. From Minori, a sleepy fishing village about twenty miles up the bay, they’d hitched a ride on a donkey cart and rattled around in the back with a couple of crates of knobbled lemons. When they’d spotted the black gate and the giant sandstone urns, they’d hopped off and below a tangle of vines, found a worn marble plaque etched in gold: la rondinaia. They’d climbed 324 narrow steps between tall rows of cypresses and this was the house: a simple, single-story, stucco thing. If it was old, Amer couldn’t tell. “They must have pots of money,” he said. “With her at the Getty and him in finance. I expected an infinity pool.”

Read more of Athena and the Grand Reveal in The Southern Review.