Delia woke to the aroma of dark coffee and the ringing of bells in the tower above her. She rolled over on the bed and looked through the open window across the stonework and painted rooftops to the sea beyond.

The shutters were peeling and the broken hinge on one side framed her view at an odd angle as if there were too many sides to a painting. She sighed and pulled the thin sheets over her legs, and watched a sailing ship cross bare blue horizon from the headland at Porticciolo, out toward the open sea and beyond.

After a while, she shifted on the bed and put an old down pillow under her head and listened to the sounds on the street below her. Bicycles rattled on the cobblestones, and old wooden wheels rolled with random thuds as the fisherman hauled their catch in wrecked carts to the market at top of the hill. Voices, slow and deep murmured as they greeted the women in the doorways who replied to each other in shrieks, ignoring the old men passing between them, bent to their day.

Delia smiled to herself and then rolled off the bed and stood naked in the light by the open window. She stretched her arms above her stood on her tiptoes pulling herself taut and then releasing and shivering with pleasure she bent to touch her toes.

Awake now, she took the bread and a slice of salami from the plate on the dresser where they’d been since the night before and chewed her way through her breakfast.

She lifted a light cotton dress from the back of the only chair in the room and slipped into it, passing the bread from one hand to the other as she pulled the thin material over her head and let it slip over her skin. She stepped to the window and lit a cigarette and drew deeply from it. The ship with its mainsail strained passed out of sight as she smoked.

Above the bed, on the huge dark cross hung the crucified Christ, his slumped white body disagreeing with the simple oak beams. She looked away, as she always did from the old icon to the younger more alive body of the young man on the bed below. Brown in the places she could see and white where she couldn’t, his shoulders bulged even in sleep. The muscle on his arm was made huge by the edge of the bed where it hung down to the tiled floor and the pile of heavy workman’s clothes.

Her lips parted a touch and she ran her tongue along them tasting the salt of the salami and the heavy aroma of coffee wafting again through her open window. She knew Maria would be roasting the second batch of beans already, ready to take to the top of the hill to sell to the tourists. Boatloads of them would make the journey to the island and then the long climb to the monastery to look back across the bay from where they came.

She knelt by the bed quickly and placed her head on her joined hands. She prayed for forgiveness for sins even as she smiled at the pleasures she’d enjoyed in the many small hours of the night before.

Maria would be soon losing her patience; a novice could not ignore her chores for two days in a row, even if she was a favourite. And the coffee drew her as if she were on a silk rope toward a masked ball.

With a last glance across the old village to the clear blue bay, she slapped the young man’s behind and grabbed her cowl from the floor.

She bundled his clothes to him as she pushed him through her door with a kiss on the cheek and a squeeze of his almost soft manhood.

“A Domani.” she winked and pulled her scapula over her head.

Skipping down the tiny wooden staircase she tied her belt and adjusted her veil.

At the stone portico she paused and closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. The heady scent of coffee, shipped from the hills beyond where the empty sail ship sailed, filled her for the day. She stroked a crease from her habit and rolled heavy rosary beads in her fingers and pushed open the door.

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