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Fresh off the tarmac, she can already tell that Rome is a city caught and captured in moments of time – crumbling marble colonnades and fountains depicting gods in whom no one believes any more, remnants from an age of empires and emperors; Renaissance cathedrals with soaring spires and domes coated in fine gold leaf and statues in squares which portray Biblical figures whose names the vast majority of people no longer know; avenues busy like Piccadilly Circus during tourist season and back alleys full of homeless camps and drug addicts – this is the same as London, or New York, or Paris, but none of those come with the history of Rome, the intoxicating atmosphere of the Mediterranean air. Fresh off the tarmac, Clara inhales, and smiles. What is the old saying – don't mix business with pleasure? Ah, well, she never was very good at following the rules.
*****
Alone in the comfort of her hotel room – suite, actually, at the St. Regis Rome – Clara luxuriates and goes over her plan. It's a simple con, really, but ambitious – she hasn't gotten to where she is by performing Three-Card Montes on street corners for tourists, after all. No, one has to take real risks to make real money in this line of work. She perches on the edge on the Queen-sized feather bed and empties the sparse contents of her purse onto the duvet. She likes to travel light, both for convenience and because she fancies herself a bit of an explorer, a la Nellie Bly – now there was a woman – and all her bag contains is her phone, a pack of spearmint gum, a well-worn paperback copy of Emma, and a plain but well-made leather wallet. She smiles wryly upon opening the last, which holds an American driver's license giving her name as Jennifer Van Buren and her birthplace as New York state. As if. She tries the name out in her best American accent, feeling foolish as she forms the blunt syllables. She sounds like a bloody patsy socialite, she thinks – which is, of course, what she's supposed to sound like, but she still wrinkles her nose at herself in the full-length mirror beside the bed. Neatly, she replaces all the items but the phone in her purse and sets the purse itself on the bedside table. She unlocks the phone with several deft taps of her cherry-red nails, loving as always the click of her manicure on the glass screen. She has a busy day ahead of her tomorrow, but right now she feels like a quality glass of wine and a tourist adventure in a city whose history is so grand even she cannot resist its temptation.
*****
Clara arrives at the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Barberini Palace at ten o'clock for her eleven o'clock appointment – it never hurts to be early, she's found. Makes you look professional. She flashes her ID at the gallery's entrance and a man leads her to the curator's office and instructs her to take a seat in the waiting area.
Once seated, Clara looks around. The space she's in is quite lovely for a waiting area, with half a dozen reasonably comfortable chairs and long, narrow windows that let in streams of sunlight. At the other end of the space is a desk, at which a woman sits typing. Clara observes her curiously. She's Hollywood ugly, with thick-framed glasses and a ponytail and a homemade-looking wool scarf and a serious, focused expression, but behind the cliches, Clara thinks, she's really quite attractive. Clara sidles over to the desk. The woman looks up. “Hello,” she says, in Italian. Then something with the word help in it that Clara assumes is “may I help you?”.
“Er, non parlo Italiano,” Clara says. “Sono Americano?”
“Oh,” the secretary says, in English, sounding relieved. “Oh. Well, er, can I help you?”
“No, I'm good, thanks,” Clara replies. “I'm just waiting for Mister Lugitani.” She pulls out her ID and flashes it at the secretary. “Jennifer Van Buren. I have an appointment with him.”
The secretary presses a few buttons, then nods. “You're here early,” she says. She looks at Clara briefly and goes back to her computer. “Why don't you take a seat?”
“Fancied a chat,” Clara says. She leans over to rest her elbows on the desk. “You're not Italian, are you? You don't sound it.”
“No,” the secretary says. “I'm just a student, I'm interning here. I'm from Britain, originally.”
Clara tries to think of something American to say, and settles on the first question which occurs to her, which is “Britain? Really? Have you met the Queen, then?”
The secretary looks at her with confusion. “No...”
“Shame.” Clara pouts.
“Have you met the President?”
“No...” Clara says, then realizes what the secretary has done, and laughs. “I see what you did there,” she says.
The secretary offers her a small, awkward smile. It's endearing, Clara thinks. “I'm Osgood, by the way.” Subconsciously, Clara's fingers, which have been tapping out a onetwothreefour rhythm on the wooden surface of the desk, slow. She flexes her thumb. Osgood watches her hands- slightly transfixed, Clara thinks, by the motion. Clara smiles to herself. She'll have this woman transfixed by the motion of her hands again tonight. She was planning on catching a late flight back to London, but Clara makes no plans that can't be changed on a whim for a pretty girl.
“Osgood,” she repeats. “Strange name.” “It's my surname.” Osgood looks down at her keyboard. “I don't like my given name, and I don't use it.”
“Me either,” Clara says. It's a lie- she loves her name, Clara, or at least she did in Blackpool- but she rolls with it. “Everyone just calls me Jenny.”
“Well, Jenny, I should get back to work. Please, take a seat. If you need something to do, I have some art magazines in my bag you could read.”
“In English?” Clara asks.
“Some of them are.”
“I think I will, thanks.”
Osgood rifles through her bag and pulls out a magazine and Clara takes it and sit down. She flips idly through the pages, only half reading some article about a newly discovered Van Gogh that she supposes should be utterly fascinating to the socialite art collector she claims to be. Clara examines her nails and checks her watch – only ten fifteen. She looks back up at Osgood, and, on a whim, smiles at her and speaks. “Fancy a stroll around the gallery? I've got forty-five minutes to kill, and you can't possibly be doing anything all that interesting on that computer of yours.”
“I've got work,” Osgood says. She's still frowning at her screen, but Clara notices her eyes glimmering a little, and she smiles to herself.
“Alright, I'll go admire the artwork alone, then,” Clara says. “I'll be back shortly.”
“Alright,” Osgood says.
Clara walks back out into the museum to bide her time.
*****
She returns to the the curator's office exactly forty minutes later and follows Mister Lugitani to his office, winking at Osgood as she passes the other woman's desk. Osgood bites her lip and gives Clara an adorable half-smile, and Clara promptly updates her mental itinerary. There may or may not be a step between “con this damn gallery for all it's worth” and “catch the next flight back to blasted London”, depending on how this all goes, and if her name is Clara Oswald – which, despite much debate, it is, fully and legally – they'll go excellently.
*****
Clara leaves Mister Lugitani's office at half past noon, a spring in her step from the victory she's just achieved. On her way out of, she stops by Osgood's desk again.
“Hey, when d'you get off work?”
“Why do you ask?” Osgood asks, a little cautiously. She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
Clara leans over and rests her elbows on the edge of Osgood's desk. “Because,” she says, grinning slyly, “I'd like to take you out once you get off work.”
“So you were flirting with me.”
“Why wouldn't I be?” Clara flashes Osgood her winningest smile, red lips and white teeth and fluttering eyelashes.
“So,” she says, “what do you say? Dinner and drinks?”
Osgood grins and blushes in a way Clara finds thoroughly endearing. “I get off at six,” she says.
“Brilliant. I'll pick you up.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Clara winks at Osgood and blows a kiss – a bit melodramatic an expression of interest, she thinks, but isn't that the American way? – and Osgood grins at her. “See you later.”
“Later,” Clara agrees, then turns on her sleek black heel. As she exits Barberini Palace, she commends herself on her good sense in keeping her plans flexible - she meets too many beautiful women in this line of work to set anything in stone, and Osgood is certainly no exception to her rule.