by Diana Cachey
“I said I promise you will like it. Why don’t you believe me, Barbara?”
Louisa had always said, in dealing with the criminals in her world and career, “Never believe a killer.”
Was Massimo a killer?
“Yes, I am.”
“What?”
“A killer. I have killed before. I will kill again.”
She almost fainted.
“Not tonight,” he told her, “tonight only love.”
She wanted to vomit. She wanted to run. But there was no way for her to do either of those things. She was captive.
“Come. Dress with me. It’s romantic,” he said.
To you maybe, you psycho.
“Barbara, I am not going to kill you. Kill you in another way perhaps. I have not killed a woman. I might not ever kill one.”
Little consolation to the dead.
“I say to you a thing I never say before. Who I kill, should be dead. Is simple.”
Suddenly, she remembered he worked for law enforcement but she’d seen enough television shows and movies to know that this meant nothing about his ethics or sanity. He could be dirty. He could be crazy. Even in law enforcement. Hell, especially in law enforcement. Still, she was now less afraid of, and more intrigued by, his terrifying look.
“I kill only criminals. Relax.”
Now you tell me? After you scare the shit outta me?
She slumped down and sat on the stairs and began to weep.
“Cara, mi scusi. I toy with you. Is not correct.”
Not correct? You big fucking bully, I hate you, she thought and almost said.
“Say it. Say what you are thinking. I don’t want secrets between us.”
She stood and climbed two steps up so they were eye-to-eye. She spoke in a calm tone with medium volume but spit flew in his face and her face was red as the brocade blanket they made love under.
“I hate your fucking guts. Take me home. Now.”
“No, no,” said Massimo.
As he continued to ignored her demands and refused to let her depart his palazzo, she considered yelling this time but all her strength had left at once. She fell back down onto the steps and wept again.
“Barbara, we must stop running.”
Running? I’m stuck here, she thought. Still, she didn’t speak. She only wept.
“Humans, we are not perfect,” he said, “we make mistakes. I say I am sorry. Please don’t go.”
Please don’t go?
She’d told him to take her home, how could she get home? He asked her not to go? As if it was her choice? What had changed in him?
Please don’t go?
She finally spoke, or rather screamed. “I don’t understand, Massimo, why do you confuse me?”
She waited, baffled by it all.
“Nothing has changed but the words,” he tried to explain. “I use the right words this time?” His charming smile gazed down upon her.
Nothing had changed but his words.
Could he simply have misspoken, used improper English? It is bad enough that men can be stupid and tactless using the same native tongue, but add in the language barrier, you have a mess.
“Let’s dress,” she said offering her hand to him.
“Yes,” he said taking her hand like a prince at court.
She noticed he was still naked and had been like that, completely nude, the entire time. Nothing had changed but the words.
“Let’s dress,” she repeated while they ascended a massive oak stairway.
“Let’s dress.” He bowed his head.
She thought he maybe even curtsied.
She was exhausted. Even with the lust this man could conjure up in her with a wave of his hand or a shake of his head, she didn’t think she could do anymore passionate antics, positions, lying down, standing or kneeling. If her head hit a pillow, she would be out. She wanted her head to hit a pillow. Soon.
She didn’t think she could have even one more second of sex with this man.
She was wrong.
“Let’s dress,” he said again.
They entered the impressive chamber of his four-poster bed. As massive as the bed was, it only filled a quarter of the room, maybe less. Suits of armor stood at both sides of the door and Murano glass chandeliers hung from the wood-beamed ceiling. An intricately carved wardrobe lined one entire wall and another side area held two chairs, two side tables, a coffee table, Victorian sofa and wrought iron and hand-blown glass lamps.
Next to the bed, sat two leather chairs draped with fur blankets. Tossed about the elaborate mosaic marble floors were Persian rugs and sheepskins. Original paintings -- created by God only knows who and worth God knows how much -- covered the dark paneled walls.
She glimpsed a door that led to another room. She pointed to the door.
“What’s in there?”
“Would you like to see our bathroom?”
“Umm, mmm, of course,” she said, although was still unsure of him.
The bathroom, at least half the size of the huge bedroom, held a marble tub as long as he was tall, twice as wide. Draped in sheer red curtains, which were pulled back and hooked with tassels the size of fists, the tub’s invite was seductive yet soothing.
Small dim lights scattered the mirrored ceiling above the bath. The lights changed from blue to pink, yellow, green, orange and back to blue. More like a pool than a tub, its brass and ivory fixtures poured out huge waterfalls at both ends.
Next to the tub, a door led to a steam bath and next to the steam bath was a grated wood stand that held a bucket with a long chain, so you could stand under it after a steam and splash down a bucket of cold water.
Every inch of everything in the room was covered in many colors of marble — floors, walls, basins. Anything that wasn’t marble was mirrored with bevelled or etched glass. Mirrors also lined the walls behind the wash basin and the pool-tub.
A gold-framed full length mirror hung above the bidet. She stared into it.
“I put it here for the day you arrive,” he told her.
“For me?”
“I want to watch you wash yourself while I stand behind you, if you will allow it. I hope.”
That was presumptuous of him. Yet, so sexy. She turned right to him.
“Do it,” she said.
“What?”
“Watch me.”
She sat on the bidet, facing the water faucet and mirror, but didn’t wash herself. She just looked at him and smiled. Then laughed.
They both roared with laughter. She looked silly. She looked sexy. She looked submissive. He stood behind her naked, looking the same.
People in love look silly when they see their true selves in the middle of it all.
They left the bathroom and she assumed he would now “dress her.”
He didn’t.
First, he instructed her to select a dress from a wardrobe that was full of Venetian historical costumes. Too many from which to choose. She couldn’t decide.
“Try a few. They will all fit you.”
Has he gone out and bought me a whole slew of costumes?
Finally she settled on a yellow gown trimmed in royal blue lace with a powder blue vest.
“The colors of San Marco,” he remarked as he watched her put it on.
“San Marco it is,” she said.
He began to lace up its corseted back and pressed up against her.
“I must wait for you to complete the dress, you know, with mask and hat,” he said. “But it is very difficult for me to wait.”
Being naked, his difficulty was obvious and in full view. He laced up the bodice from behind, breathing heavily into her ears, pressing his difficulty further into the satin skirt.
She pulled away from him and walked over to the closet, from which she plucked out a mask and hat. She placed the royal blue, three cornered hat with large yellow plumes on her head. She set her gold glittered mask onto her face and asked him to tie the back. She turned to front him and peered
out through the mask.
He threw her backwards onto the bed, flung the skirt up, dropped to his knees and shoved his head under the skirt. The full gown fell back over his head.
We have the whole night ahead of us, she thought, as her head hit the pillowy mattress but she didn’t fall asleep.
“There are so many costumes,” she said with the feathers on her mask fluttering and her hat strewn across the room.
“Mmm hmmm,” he responded.
She didn’t know if it was a sound of agreement or of deliciousness.
Either way, the night was young again.
With hat high on head, the fur-topped Louisa walked with her newfound patron saint, her personal, powerful guide, San Martino. Or was it San Marco? Her saintly ghosts had already provided a sexy Buranese man and a new hat. She might want to make better friends with the ghosts and saints.
Where to next? Louisa pondered.
A church bell rang, she looked up and couldn’t believe what she saw.
She had wandered over to Campo San Antonin, Saint Anthony’s field. Another patron saint?
She laughed at the coincidence and tried to recall what Antonin, the beauty from Burano, had told her. She remembered the fishing boat she’d seen from the window but had been much distracted by Antonin’s encompassing, uncompromising embrace.
The embrace. The embrace. The hands. His lips. She tried to think about something, anything, other than Antonin. The fishing boat. Boats?
Where would I find boats on this multitude of islands, besides everywhere?
A boat was a terrible clue.
You may end up in San Francisco soon if you don’t be careful. Pay attention to where you are, Louisa reminded herself. I need a sign. A sign. Give me a sign.
The biggest, actual sign near her announced the presence of the church of Saint Anthony. Her new patron saint?
She remembered this one, her very own Tony, with his hand wrapped around her, caressing her jean spot, her G spot. The other hand, where was it? He had pointed to the boy. A very sick boy.
Louisa turned in circles looking for another sign but bumped into a woman with a baby stroller.
Baby and stroller, the two newest accessories for young beautiful Italian women, thought Louisa.
A high-end baby stroller stood at Louisa’s feet and it held the cherub offspring, with its rosy round cheeks and doe eyes framed by the hood of a six hundred euro Mont Cler parka. The cherub wore it with the gloss of full-page fashion-mag ad.
“Mi scusi,” said Louisa apologizing.
“E niente,” the mamma replied.
It was very unlike a young Venetian woman, especially one in designer spiked-heel boots who had given birth to a very expensive baby, to think it ‘was nothing’ for a blonde American woman to run into her trendy accessories. However, when Louisa looked closer she knew why.
The woman’s thick mascara ran down her cheeks in black rivers of tears.
“Sono perso, sono perso. Mi dispiace. Ospedale? Dove? Dove siamo,” asked the new mamma’s lush red lips.
With cherub in tow, lost, confused and crying in the San Francisco twilight zone, she searched for the hospital on one of the harshest winter days. She moved those ruby lips to plead, nicely, for Louisa’s help.
“Ah,” said Louisa.
Sick baby, the hospital and desperation for the Venetian mamma. A very sick boy, another sign for Louisa.
Louisa calmed the young woman as best she could then tried to simplify her instructions for the complicated route to the hospital.
The Venice hospital — more like an absurd theatre stage set than a hospital — was filled with columns of multi-colored marble, high-ceilings and long corridors surrounded by either brick or concrete walls that boasted elaborate basreliefs of saints, Christ, or rich and famous Venetians. Its towering statues stared at the crazy, screaming Venetians scattered about the draft and fascinating yet dismal building. It was a hospital full of ancient tombs, a mausoleum.
The woman whimpered when she heard Louisa’s lengthy directions to the hospital. Louisa knew the route could most definitely result in walking full circle back to San Francisco with one false turn.
So Louisa offered to accompany the mamma and her fashion-mag bundle of baby to the hospital. In the vaporetto.
Upon boarding the boat at Arsenale, the young mamma soon went back to being her spoiled self. On a boat packed with locals, Louisa was no longer of any use to her. She neither thanked nor glanced at Louisa again and instead found a seat where everyone could dote on her cherub baby while she ignored them all and reapplied her make-up.
Being more concerned with the safety of mamma and baby than with her own mission, Louisa missed the biggest clue of all: the naval yard. Its huge lions flanked the opening to Arsenale, where many boats of countless varieties had sat, sank or sailed for centuries.
With fur hat warmth and flamed by thoughts of her encounter with Antonin in the thrift shop, which Louisa now thought of as her fantasy with Tony in the attic, she sat in her usual seat outside with the smokers. She smiled and tanned what little face remained exposed through sunglasses and her scarfed, wrapped head. There, her heated, heavy breathing soon filled her lungs with diesel exhaust and second-hand smoke.
Devoid of clues, cherubs or chants regarding the deaths of the glassmakers, Louisa’s mind began to finish that sex scene with Tony in the attic. During the boat ride, she conjured up another ride -- an imaginary ride with Antonin over cashmere piles and wooden floors in a dusty thrift shop. They romped and crashed against every nook and cranny of the crowded, cramped, closet of a store.
In her mind, he ripped off her jeans, blouse, everything but lingerie and heels, which presented no hinderance to any position. He pulled coats and sweaters upon them, wiggled over her and under her, covered her mouth to muffle moans. In her fantasy, he made more than love, he made mouth, neck, ears, back, arms, belly, breasts, legs and in between tickle and shiver then go numb.
After her mind finished the attic scene, Louisa asked the man next to her on the public boat for a smoke. Her post-fantasy sex smoke.
When tobacco always tastes better than tobacco.
Louisa soon turned to see an island across the water, the San Michele cemetery, where she could go to find more clues. There were sure to be plenty of ghosts on an island full of tombs but there were no boats inside the graveyard. She needed to look for boats. Antonin’s terrible clue — the boats.
Not any boat would do, she wanted to find some special sign of them. So when the vaporetto passed the entrance to San Pietro and Louisa turned her back to the cemetery, she saw it — her eyes widened — an arsenal of boats. With its protective brick wall, a high fortress of great stature difficult to miss, the Venetian naval facility known as Arsenale was full of boats, sailors and ships of all sizes.
A frail woman fidgeted on the dock.
“I’m certain ghosts are real and some ghosts are saints in Italian churches,” said the old woman when Louisa disembarked outside the medieval naval yard.
Louisa looked past her, certain she’d misunderstood the Italian or Venetian dialect, whichever it was the woman had spoken. Could a stranger know about Louisa’s connection to ghosts?
“Those ghosts, those saints, live in Italian churches,” repeated the petite woman whose body slumped.
Instead of responding, Louisa pulled a few long hairs out from under her hat to frame her face. It was more a gesture of nervousness than an attempt to wear the hat better, although several men heading for the boat approved of her hair twirling habit with their smiling eyes.
The woman grabbed Louisa’s hand to pull her out of the way of one of the men entering the pontoon dock for the public boat. The man had just passed through a gate at the Arsenal. He boarded the vaporetto.
The woman nodded at him. She grimaced.
“I hate them,” said the woman.
“Who?”
“That man. Those men.”
“Why?”
“W
hen I feed the cats here, they yell,” she spit.
“Cats?”
The woman nodded. “But when they kill animals or even people, I say nothing.” She laughed.
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean? Saints or killers?”
“Killers,” said Louisa.
“First, I tell you saints. Saints are ghosts that lie in cold, dark tombs in old, damp churches.”
“Ghosts?”
The woman shook her head feverishly, lips curled down.
Well, I’ll be damned. She did say ghosts. Saints are ghosts, of course.
Louisa then asked herself a question — or was she asking a spirit, something that was becoming part of her working mind? She seemed to be developing an intuition of sorts, one that only worked if she directly asked it for help.
Are you here to help me? Louisa a asked herself as if trying to access the intuition. She wanted to ask the woman this too but stayed silent to test the odd workings of her new, saintly connection.
The woman nodded.
Then, like another older woman Louisa’s had been led to, Madame De Carlo of Paris, this woman at Arsenale began to tell a tall tale. But, unlike the Parisian, this Venetian did not speak in riddles. She spoke Venetian dialect, a riddle itself.
Her words at first made no sense to Louisa. She repeated each phrase in English, not very good English, but Louisa understood. Between the two translations, Louisa understood. Maybe this was another miracle?
The elder’s tale began:
“As strange as it seems, this is my true experience and I want to share it with you. It happened in Padua where St. Anthony’s body lays, who, along with St. Catherine of Siena, performed more miracles on record than any person other than Jesus. I also had an intense experience at the Basilica in Rome where St. Catherine’s tomb is located; another story.
Jesus appeared to both these saints after his death; there’s recorded proof of those facts.”
“In the Basilica of Padua, everyone puts their hand on St. Anthony’s marble tomb to pray. My friend put her hand on his tomb while I closed my eyes and waited to touch it.”
Louisa also closed her eyes in order to imagine the scene. She waited. The woman grabbed Louisa’s hand then continued.