Instead it was an elegant, brightly-lit place on the main shopping street which, during much of the year, was filled with people eating ice cream. Gelato was a year-round snack food everywhere in Italy, but with the arrival of cold weather in Volterra the flavor options in this shop had been greatly reduced. There were not enough tourists in the city during the fall and winter months to justify keeping more than a dozen basic choices behind the glass counter, leaving the display case only half filled with ice cream. In the extra space, colorful boxes of candy stacked up into small mountains of sweets, surrounded by plates of cakes and cookies, their other specialty. The fresh baked goods filled the room with warm sweetness deliciously mixed with scents from a shiny espresso machine, reminding Rick why the word in Italian for a fragrant aroma was profumo. After taking a few steps into the bar he spotted the curator sitting at a small table reading a newspaper. Zerbino’s suit was similar to the one he had worn at the museum, perhaps even the very same, but without the vest.
