Kingsley took the small wrapped bundle out of his pocket and tore off the paper as they crunched through the hard-packed snow.
“Very fitting,” Kingsley said. “I gave him socks. He gave me insoles.”
They were the high-tech gel insoles that runners put inside their shoes. Søren went through a dozen pairs of them a year. A gift as meaningless as socks.
“You don’t get it?” Nora asked. “It’s a pun. Like when I gave him the little hart, the deer toy? I gave him my heart for Christmas. Søren gave you his soul.”
“You’re overthinking it,” Kingsley said.
“Søren wouldn’t give you insoles just to give you insoles. You hate jogging.”
“He wouldn’t give me his ‘soul’ either. That belongs to God,” he said.
“Supposedly so does his body.”
“Touché,” Kingsley said, though he wasn’t convinced at all there was a double meaning to the gift, no matter what Nora said. Juliette had certainly warned Søren he was getting nothing but socks for Christmas from Kingsley, and so Søren had returned the gift in kind. Which was fine. What else did Kingsley want or need after falling asleep with his chest pressed to Søren’s back, his arm around him last night? Nothing. Not even Søren’s soul.
Or his insoles.
As they reached the car, Nora started to open the driver’s-side door. Kingsley stopped her for one more coffee-flavored kiss.
“Mistletoe drill?” she asked when the kiss ended.
Kingsley looked around them. The bright morning sun had turned the snowy streets into glittering diamonds. The trees were all tipped in white like they’d been frosted with sugar. With or without Søren’s soul in his pocket, it was the most beautiful Christmas morning he’d ever seen.
“No,” he said. “Just…merry Christmas, Maîtresse.”
“It was a good night, wasn’t it?” she asked as they drove away.
“More fun than a Santa Claus gangbang,” Kingsley said. “I almost forgot why we fight with him all the time.”
“Me, too,” she said. “But don’t worry, any minute now he’ll remind us.”
They drove on a while in silence before Nora broke it with a child’s wish.
“Too bad it can’t be Christmas every day.”
Now playing: “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon
Poinsettia
Poinsettia
Author’s Note: This story takes place when Søren was twenty years old and in seminary.
Rome, Italy
Magdalena sat in the window of her parlor smoking a cigarette and balancing her antique walnut writing lap desk on her thigh. She wasn’t writing, although she should have been. The letters had been piling up for weeks—invitations, assignations, a letter or two from an old friend… Tonight would be a perfect night to catch up on correspondence as she was alone and the house was closed up. Alone on purpose, of course. The notorious and exalted Signora Magdalena did not sleep alone except by choice.
And it had been her choice, she reminded herself. She could have had company if she’d wanted it. Magdalena had told her girls the same lie she told them every Christmas season: I don’t keep Christmas and never have. Run along home. I want to do nothing but sleep for the next two days. If I see you at the house before the twenty-sixth, you’re fired. Then she’d slip them two million lira each as a holiday bonus and shoo them off. She’d told Giovanni and Alessandro, her two most devoted paramours, they must leave her alone because she was tiring of them. A tiny untruth as she liked them both, but when one slept with masochists, one must be cruel as a rule. Kindness was always the exception.
Lies, lies, all lies. The truth was, Magdalena missed celebrating Christmas. But she was a madam—a notorious madam at that, if one believed the ribald verses scrawled on the sides of buildings—and a madam had to remain aloof, tough, an object of fear and respect. If her girls—loyal to a fault—knew she spent Christmas alone just so they could be with whatever friends or families they had left, they might stay with her out of pity. Or, God forbid, beg her to join them at their grandfather’s or grandmother’s or mother’s house. No. Magdalena couldn’t allow that to happen. Better to simply sleep for two days, eat dinner alone on Christmas Eve, and catch up on all the correspondence she’d been putting off since September. But this part wasn’t a lie—if any one of her girls showed up between now and the twenty-sixth, Magdalena would fire her.
It certainly sounded like someone was getting fired tonight.
Or, in the case of an intruder, murdered.
Magdalena quietly laid her writing desk aside and crushed out her cigarette in the ebony ashtray. Taking the fireplace poker in hand, she crept down the dark hall from the parlor to the sunken kitchen where she’d heard the creaking of the floorboards under what she assumed were human feet. The house was old—three centuries old—and it creaked like an old man getting out of bed in the morning. While on the outside the house appeared to be nothing but a crumbling old villa—yellow plaster, peeling green wood shutters, chipped marble door frames—inside she’d remodeled it to resemble the love child of a palazzo and a bordello. But for all the work she’d had done on the house inside, Magdalena never fixed her creaking floors. She considered them a security system. No one could take a step in this house without her hearing it. And whoever was in the house was taking a lot of steps in her kitchen.
Their last steps.
Magdalena kept to the left side of the staircase as that was the quiet side. Her heart raced more from excitement than fear. Perhaps it wasn’t excitement. Considering her trade, perhaps it was blood lust.
The lights were off in the kitchen, but there was a soft glow coming from inside the open refrigerator. Somebody was rummaging through it, blocked from her view by the fridge door. Breathing deeply to calm herself, she raised the fireplace poker over her head and stepped into the sunken kitchen—
“You have an entire rack of lamb in here,” came a voice from inside the refrigerator. “I didn’t think you ate mutton.”
Magdalena groaned and lowered her poker. “I don’t, but Antonia is teaching herself to cook. And what are you doing here?” she demanded. “It’s past your bedtime.”
“Eating.”
“Do they not feed you at the Gregorianum?”
“What they feed us should not be called ‘food.’ What it should be called is a word that should not be used in polite company.”
“Good thing you’re in my company then.”
Her intruder closed the refrigerator door as Magdalena flipped on the kitchen lights. He had a bowl of her leftover penne alla primavera from last night in his hand, a bunch of pale green grapes hanging from between his fingers, and her last annurche apple clutched between his teeth.
“Now I remember why I didn’t want children. You boys eat your mothers out of house and home,” she said, shaking her head.
He sat down on the bench at her rough wood kitchen table, took a loud bite out of the apple, swallowed, and set it next to his bowl. Half the apple was already gone. He’d bitten all the way to the core.
“Are you a boy or a wolf?” she asked.
“Do you have a fork?”
“Would you prefer a shovel?” She crossed her arms over her chest. She hadn’t been expecting company so she wore only her favorite black slip and black silk robe. Hardly attire for mixed company. Not that her “guest” seemed interested in her attire at all. He had eyes only for her food.
“A fork will do.”
With a sigh, Magdalena opened a drawer, took out a fork and held it out to him. He reached across the table to take it from her, and she pulled it back at the last second.
“Tease,” he said.
“Say ‘please.’ ”
“Why are you so mean to me?”
“Someone has to be.”
“I don’t deserve it.” Marcus gave her an innocent look. She didn’t buy it for one second.
She smiled at him and softly whispered, “We both know you deserve it.”
Wisely, he chose not to argue.
“Please,” he said.
“Good, Bambi.” She gave him the fork.
He glared at her. Such a glare, it would have scared anyone on the planet, anyone but her.
“You’re cute when you’re murderous,” she said.
“Why must you insist on calling me Bambi?” he asked.
Magdalena leaned across the table and pinched his cheek. “Because you’re my little baby priest, Bambino. And you won’t let me call you Marcus, so Bambi it is.”
“You are the most evil woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.”
“So far.”
“Don’t do that.”
“You’re going love this girl. She’s more vicious than I am,” Magdalena said with her best evil grin, the one she reserved just for her baby priest.
“ ‘She’ does not exist.”
“Oh, she exists. She’s going to ruin you and you’re going to thank her for it.” She clapped her hands in fiendish glee. “I can’t wait for you to meet her.”
“If you are right, I’ll eat my collar. But as you didn’t know it was me in your kitchen tonight, forgive me if I don’t buy stock in your psychic abilities.”
She shrugged. “They come and go.”
“Will Antonia mind—”
“If you touch her lamb, she’ll break your arm. You know she will and you know I’m speaking literally. She’s put men in the hospital for less.”
“I knew I liked her for a reason.”
“Eat your pasta. I’ll open the wine. Oh no, I forgot. You’re not old enough to drink.”
“I am.”
“Not in America.”
“We’re in Rome. We do as the Romans do, remember?”
“The Romans crucified Christians. Good thing I have a cross with your name on it.”
There was that glare again. She made it her personal mission in life to make this young man glare at her as much as humanly possible.
“Open the wine,” he said. Then he added, “Please. I did turn twenty-three days ago.”
“Did you? Aww…my little Bambi is growing up.” Magdalena pretended to wipe a tear from her eyes. She placed a glass of Brunello in front of him on the table and kissed the top of his golden blond head. “I’ll get my special books from my room. I think it’s time you learned about the birds and the bees.”
“You’re ruining my appetite, Magda.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. Sex is a very beautiful act between a woman and a man’s wallet.”
He pushed the bowl of penne away. But not out of disgust with her. He’d already finished eating it.
“My God, you were hungry.”
“I’m a growing boy, remember.”
“I know you are. Go and stand in the doorway.”
He gave her the sort of stare that could flatten a weaker woman than she. “Do I have to?”
She raised her chin.
“Fine.” Marcus walked to the kitchen doorway and stood with his back to the frame. From a drawer, Magdalena pulled out a pencil and a ruler. She placed the ruler on top of Marcus’s head and made a mark on the doorframe.
“Well?”
“You’ve only grown half a centimeter in the last two months,” she said. “For a grand total of 193-and-a-half centimeters, which is probably where you’ll stay.”
“That half centimeter makes me half a centimeter taller than my father. He’ll be thrilled I’m taller than he is. And by ‘thrilled’ I mean he’ll hate me more than ever.” He grinned as he said this, but it wasn’t a happy sort of grin. More a grin and a grimace.
“I’ll keep feeding you, then, if only to spite your father. No one enjoys torturing bad parents more than I do. Have you heard from him recently?”
“He sent me a letter calling me an ingrate, a degenerate, and a disgrace to the family name. Oh, and he told me I had to get married or he’s cutting me off.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I reminded him that I’m under a vow of poverty so I have, in effect, cut myself off. Also, I told him that considering he’s a rapist who preyed on young women and children, I was quite pleased to know I disgraced his name. I wrote this in his Christmas card.”
“Happy Christmas indeed. You’ve earned this.”
She handed him his wine glass. It looked small in his hands. He had massive hands, large as Michelangelo’s David and as well-sculpted.
“Thank you. And thank you for second dinner.”
“If you keep eating like this, I’m going to start charging you,” she said, pointing the wine bottle at him before uncorking it again.
“Vow of poverty.”
“I accept several forms of currency,” she reminded him.
“Vow of chastity.”
“There are no free meals in this house,” she said.
“I brought you a gift. Does that count as payment?”
“A gift?”
“Two gifts, actually,” he said. “One is there.” He pointed at the kitchen counter. “The other is coming later.”
Magdalena turned to find a potted poinsettia on her counter, blooming hugely with bright red leaves.
“How lovely,” she said, smiling and stroking one graceful leaf. “My mother always called these Christmas Stars. Where did you get it?”
“I took it from the Motherhouse. A wealthy patron sent a hundred. They won’t miss one.”
“Took it from where in the Motherhouse?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at Marcus, who didn’t meet her eyes.
“I might have taken it from the chapel altar.”
“You stole the poinsettia off the altar in the chapel at the Jesuit Motherhouse to give to the madam of a brothel?”
“I’m simply relocating it.”
“Knowing you, I’m surprised you didn’t eat it. Come to the parlor, Bambi. This will look darling on my side table.”
She picked up the bright red poinsettia in one hand and her wine glass in the other, and started toward the downstairs parlor.
“You never ask, do you?” He followed her with his wine glass in his right hand, the wine bottle in the left. “You only give orders.”
“You think I’m controlling?”
“Commanding,” he said. “People want to obey you. Not me, of course. But I like studying you to see how you do it.”
“People want to obey anyone. If you act like you’re in charge, people will follow your orders simply out of relief that someone else is leading the way. It’s easier to follow than to lead. Leading takes courage, which is why so few people want to do it.”
“I want to lead.”
“You want to be a dictator.”
“I don’t deny it,” he said as they entered the parlor. He switched on the crystal table lamp and she set her poinsettia next to it. “If you know you’re better at leading than others, why not take charge?”
“People like leaders,” she said. “They do not like tyrants.”
“I can be a benevolent dictator, can’t I?” He set his wine glass down on the end table and went to work on her fireplace.
“You’re already a dictator. Now let’s work on the benevolent part.”
“I am benevolent,” he said. “I brought you a poinsettia.”
“Yes, and I’m highly suspicious of the gesture.”
“I was attempting to be kind.”
“Is this Father Ballard’s doing again?”
“It might be,” he said, crouching in front of the gray marble fireplace. He lit the tinder under the log and carefully coaxed a fire into life. She watched him as he worked, intent and calm and capable. She always left the men’s work to the men in the house. Only thing they were good for, in her opinion. That and the money they spent here.
“What was his assignment for you this week?”
“He told me to give someone a Christmas gift, someone Christ would give a gift to. He said if I act like a human being, I might eventually turn into one.”
“Fake it unt
il you make it? I believe that’s what you Americans say.”
“I told Father Ballard to keep his expectations low. He said they couldn’t possibly get any lower where I was concerned.”
Magdalena laughed as she sat on the love seat and tucked her feet under her robe. “I wish I could meet your confessor. Father Ballard sounds like my sort of man.”
“He’s trying to teach me to have Christ-like compassion for my fellow man.”
“How is that proceeding?”
Marcus stared into the fire. “I loathe my fellow man.”
“Carving you into a human being is proving to be one of the labors of Hercules. But we’ll get there, Father Ballard and I. And when I’m done sculpting you, I’ll put you on my mantel.”
“Is that what this is? Sculpting?”
“You are a work in progress, my dear. I just need to sand down a few more rough edges. Then you’ll be perfect.”
“I have no rough edges.”
“You scare Bianca.”
“Then Bianca is a coward.”
“Bianca is a sadist and her father’s a capo in the Sicilian mafia. And yet you terrify her.”
“Why do I terrify Bianca?” He lit a match and let it burn all the way down to his fingertips. He didn’t blow it out, even as it singed him. All the while, he watched dispassionately like an alien performing a procedure to study human reactions to pain. When the match finally burned out, he flicked it into the quietly roaring fire.
“I can’t imagine,” she said.
He stood up and faced the fireplace, testing the heat and adjusting the damper. As usual, he was clad in all black tonight—black trousers, black clerical shirt, black jacket. No white collar. He rarely wore the collar in her presence. She almost wished he would—the hollow of his throat was an object of preoccupation for her. She’d already promised herself she wouldn’t sleep with him…although she did love to flirt with him. He really wasn’t her type despite his undeniable appeal. He needed to put on a few pounds to flesh out his tall frame. He had a trim waist and hips and broader shoulders than a priest would ever need. And she did love a blond. Blond men were so rare in Rome. He had a lock of hair that would fall over his right eye after he’d exerted himself with Caterina, the one girl in the house brave enough or stupid enough to play with him in his darker moods. Magdalena tried to convince herself she let Marcus into her home and her life because she found him attractive. She did, but that wasn’t why. Usually male sadists repelled her. It wasn’t personal. Like repelled like—she and Marcus were two north ends of a magnet. But while Marcus was a sadist, he was still nothing more than boy. He wasn’t competition, nor was he a threat. He submitted to her not as a slave to a Mistress, but as a student to a teacher. Better he learn from her than on his own. An untrained boy of his strength and intensity with that level of sadism could kill someone by accident.
Winter Tales Page 16