Eternity Skye

by Liz Newman

  “Did you sneak her out the back door in time?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The car. I know whose car that is. It’s Tazim’s, isn’t it?”

  “Let me explain—”

  “How could you!” Tabitha screamed at the top of her lungs. “All of those nights that I wait for you, while you’re working, in L.A.! I loved you!” She stood up and pounded her fist on the ornate stone rail. Her handbag slipped on her shoulders and clattered down the stairs, the pill bottles spilling out, one falling open and scattering tiny blue pills everywhere. Tabitha fell to her hands and knees and picked up the pills, blowing the sidewalk dirt and lint off each one as she scooped them back into a bottle.

  Jonas knelt and picked up a bottle that rolled at his feet from side to side. “Annie Manny?” he read and asked, “Who is that? This is Suboxone. This is the stuff doctors prescribe to heroin addicts. I see this delivered to the set all the time. Why do you have this?”

  Tabitha wrestled the bottle from him and shoved it into her purse. “I have headaches. If you’d care enough to ask about my life, I have headaches. And no one will help me. These stupid doctors…I’ve had to look elsewhere for help. Don’t you dare judge me when your whore was just in there!”

  “Please stop shouting. People will hear…”

  “I don’t care about the goddamn people! Tazim Belle is a whore! A lousy, filthy whore!” Lights switched on in the front rooms of Tabitha and Jonas’ sprawling estate as dogs barked. “The star of Daylight is a husband stealing whore!”

  “Enough,” Jonas growled. He took her hand and tried to lead her down the steps back to the underground garage.

  “She’s still in there, isn’t she! She’s still in my house!”

  “I need to talk to you alone—”

  “No! I want to see her!” Tabitha ran up the steps to the front door as Jonas sprinted after her, taking two steps at a time in each stride. Tabitha beat him. She threw open the door and flicked on a light switch.

  A shocked crowd huddled by the front window with warm cocktails in their hands. Tuxedoed servers glanced around nervously, unsure of what to do with their trays piled high with delicacies. Several jewelry boxes sat on a gift table, wrapped with red bows, in a fashion trademarked by her favorite jewelry store. Tazim Belle stood at the front of the crowd, in slacks and a beaded blouse, her lips pursed and grim.

  “Happy Birthday, Tabitha,” Nadine murmured. A jazz band struck up a tune as the crowd sung lamely. Their faces kaleidoscoped before Tabitha’s eyes. The medications hit her with another wave. Nadine and every friend she had in the world, along with Jonas’ closest friends and business associates, gawked at her. Except one.

  Jonas removed Tabitha’s handbag from her shoulder as she smiled and smoothed her hair into place. The lilting song wavered away.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. She turned to Jonas. “Thank you.”

  His body stiffened as he gave her a hug, patting her softly on the back.

  “We need to talk,” he whispered into her ear.

  Tabitha turned away from him and addressed the uneasy crowd. “Thank you all for coming.” Tabitha took her purse from Jonas, exiting the front door and walking down the steps, her back bristling with embarrassment. She started her car and backed out of the driveway, the back of her car rising onto the lamp-lit sidewalk. She changed gears, pulled her car forward, backing out successfully this time, and sped away. She could see Jonas in the rearview mirror, walking in the street, his arms and hands held out wide. Before her car turned the corner, she saw Tazim place a supportive hand on Jonas’ shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty

  Skye rolled up the aluminum door to a shed in the back of the garage and surveyed the moped. The rubber handlebars were torn and scratched with flops of rubber dangling here and there, the taillight was broken, and the fender over the front wheel bent into a crooked angle. There goes my deposit. I just bought myself a real fixer-upper. A pale blue ramshackle bicycle leaned against the wall, covered with spider webs, but its frame was straight, and its tires cushioned with air. As enticing as were the villa and Sal, the city of Rome, with its art and its riches, its opulence and its decay, called to her. The bike would afford her reliable transportation, she hoped, without having to rely on hailing a cab.

  Sal crouched on the ground near the sloping driveway, trimming the branches from an olive tree. Giuseppe stood over him, half leaning on a rake, and spoke with animation. Skye translated silently as best she could.

  “I am a changed man now. I have someone else to thank for that,” Sal said as he clipped shards of dead bark.

  “You should embrace the life you are accustomed to.”

  Sal muttered what sounded like profanity.

  A woman, dressed in a long tattered skirt with matted hair, appeared at the gates of the driveway. “Rosas,” she cried plaintively.

  “The flower vendor,” Giuseppe said. He set down his rake and reached his hand into his pocket, walking over to her. Skye slowed her bike down and placed a foot on the ground to steady herself, just out of sight from Sal.

  Giuseppe opened a pedestrian gate, walked through, and handed the flower vendor some coins. She took the money, her lips tight, as Giuseppe asked her a question. The flower vendor fell into his arms and cried.

  Skye propped the rickety bike against a lemon tree and ran toward the sobbing woman and Giuseppe, who held her and tried to comfort her the best he could. “Are you all right?” Skye asked. “Did something happen to you?” She searched the woman for any sign of attack, but her tattered clothes and weathered appearance were due only to poverty. The woman panted in exhaustion.

  “Partirmi,” the woman said as she collapsed on the ground. The roses fell next to her, some of the buds ragged at, like they had been nibbled. Her voice sounded parched. Skye dropped to the ground on her knees, holding the woman’s body as if she were cradling a baby. The woman’s eyes rolled to the back of her head.

  “This woman is starving,” Skye said as she placed her thumb on several areas of the woman’s wrist, frantically searching for the telltale sign of life. “Per favore…portarla alcuno…cibo,” Skye said to Giuseppe, summoning her best Italian.

  “I sorry,” Giuseppe responded to Skye in English. “Signora Luciana no allow me in kitchen.”

  Skye laid the woman’s head down against a trellis covered with fuchsia flowers. “Stay with her. I’ll be right back.” Skye ran into the kitchen and grabbed a loaf of bread, purple globe grapes, a package of thinly sliced cured meat encased in plastic, and a pitcher of water.

  With the groceries in her arms, she flew out the door and past Sal, who looked up at her. Skye ignored him and made her way up the slope to the gates, exiting and finding the woman, vomiting on the ground. The undigested rose petals lay in thick saliva puddles. The wheeled cart holding the bushels of roses stood on the side of the road, yards away where the woman must have lost the strength to push it. Skye’s stomach turned. She took a deep breath and removed her Hermes scarf, placing the food on it before the flower vendor. “Please, eat,” Skye said.

  The woman sobbed and hid her face in her dirty hands.

  “L’orgoglio è inutile. accettare l’aiuto,” Giuseppe whispered to the woman as he patted her on the back.

  “Say that again, please?” Skye asked Giuseppe.

  “He said, ‘Pride is useless. Accept help.’” Sal crouched down and tore the bread apart into bite-sized pieces. He handed the pieces to Skye and she fed them to the flower vendor. Giuseppe wandered back toward the house.

  “What is your name?” Skye asked.

  The woman chewed and washed the food down with the liquid in the pitcher. Sal asked the question again in Italian.

  “Adriana Pedri,” she replied through a hollow whisper. She said another sentence which Sal translated for Skye immediately.

  “She said, ‘Please take as many flowers as you’d like, for your kindness.’ It is not necessary to leave the flowers he
re,” Sal told the woman. “Although it is a very nice offer.”

  “Please ask her to come in and bathe,” Skye said. “And change into some clean clothes.”

  Sal spoke to her in Italian and the woman waved him away. She smiled at Skye. She looked intelligent, and might have even been pretty, save for the dust settled on her blonde hair covering her face like a shroud, and the dry, chapped skin flaking around her lips.

  Sal translated everything for Skye as the woman spoke. Dark clouds overtook the gray skies in the flower vendor’s eyes. “My daughter, she passed away. A week, perhaps a month. I do not remember. She endured a sickly existence, but I prayed for God to keep her with me. He did, for seven years. At the hospital, they threw a white sheet over her head, and I waited hours before the doctors told me what happened. They directed me to an undertaker, and we buried her where the roses grow.” Sal sighed as he spoke the last sentence for the woman. Hours passed as Skye held the woman’s head in her lap. The flower vendor slept, awoke sobbing, and then slept again.

  Giuseppe brought warm water in a bucket and some wash cloths, and Skye ran the damp cloths delicately over the old woman’s face, hair, neck, and hands. When the flower vendor’s tears finally dried on her blanket of straw-colored hair, Sal repeated the invitation to wash up in the house. She shook her head emphatically. Giuseppe handed her a bag filled with tomatoes, lemons, olives, lettuce, and fruit. The woman thanked him and gave Skye the small satchel she carried.

  “For your kindness,” Sal translated.

  “I can’t take this.”

  “Pride is useless. Accept help,” Adriana said. Her mouth curled around the words as she struggled to speak the foreign tongue she rarely ever heard. She turned to Sal and spoke a few words in Italian. Sal nodded.

  “What did she say?” Skye asked.

  “She prefers me to share her words with you later.”

  Skye looked down at her khaki pants, discovering streaks of dirt. She felt her heart pounding in her chest. Adriana reached out her arms and attempted to envelope her in a huge hug. The gray dirt still caked on Adriana’s hair lingered inches away from her face, and Skye fought the urge to push the flower vendor and brush the dirt away. Ash. So synonymous with death; and this woman embracing her wore moist soot. A strong urge to cry overtook Skye. The look of tears and dirt puddles on the woman’s face brought her to a place she felt she might never come back from.

  She exhaled slowly and stepped back. “I’m sorry,” she said, folding her arms. “I…” She shrugged her shoulders.

  “La mia vita è in quella borsa,” Adriana said. “Ora comincio da capo.” She pushed her flower cart down the street, calling out with a little more strength. “Rosas.”

  “Will you tell me what she said?” Skye asked Sal.

  “She says her life is in that bag. When you are ready to embrace her, who you helped so kindly, you may fill it. She leaves you with this bag, and now she will start a new life of her own.”

  “I hope that’s not some kind of gypsy curse,” Skye whispered to Sal when Adriana the flower vendor turned down another dirt road.

  Sal laughed. “We will talk more when you return. Rome awaits you. Arrivederci, Signorina. Ah, excuse me. Miss Skye.”

  After changing her clothes, Skye returned to the rickety bicycle, tilting it upright on its wobbly frame, Skye called out to Giuseppe and Sal. “Would you boys like anything from town?” she said in Italian. They looked around, confused. “Uomini, Men,” Skye rephrased. “Would you like me to bring you back anything?”

  “Nessun ringraziamento lei,” Giuseppe responded.

  Skye hoped that meant no. She honked the bike’s horn and tottered up the sloping path. An hour later she wove her way through tourists and locals amidst the trendy shops on the Via De Corso. Her cell phone rang with a familiar jingle. Kleinstiver.

  “The drafting process for the new show is complete and the crew starts work on the set tomorrow,” Kleinstiver said. She heard muffled voices, shuffling papers, and nails being hammered in the background. “This is a great idea, Skye. You’ve started a real buzz. I need you on air hours after you return, so rest up. You’ve got a great team of writers. Call again only when you’ve set foot on U.S. soil. This is going to be the last vacation you’ll have for a long while. And in case you’re wondering,” he said in the high-pitched nasally voice he reserved only for his closest friends, “I am deliberately ignoring your phone calls. Especially the ones at three in the morning.” They said their goodbyes and Skye pressed the button to disconnect. The blue Roman sky heralded her with its clarity, and she extended her soul to it in jubilation.

  “Vivere per sempre,” she whispered to it, and the spirits of gladiators whispered back. Live forever.

  To celebrate, she purchased two bottles of an earthy, oaky red wine tied with straw and fastened together with twine and a sprig of blue hyacinth flowers. She rode back to the villa with the wine in a wicker basket attached to the front of the bike. A family of spotted brown ducks crossed her path, and she honked the bike horn softly, pleased at the sound of the ducks quacking back as they waddled down the side of the road.

  Skye dressed in the nicest dress she’d brought, for tonight she would celebrate. Seated at the banquet table in the dining room, she and nine empty chairs readied themselves for a feast. Annabelle bustled about in the kitchen. The smells of basil and garlic fried in olive oil wafted out as Annabelle pushed a panel door open, entered and poured Skye a glass of wine. The doors to the garden were open, and Skye viewed the softly lit east side and its balustrade wall of ornamented stone and carved statues. Their alabaster brows furrowed with rigidity, others lost in the throes of passion. Behind her, the piercing glare from another huge oil painting of the Signora Cecilia Luciana bore into her back. Surrounded by the delicious smells of food and fragrant wine, Skye mulled over her principles of restraint. Maybe love is food, in the sense that the stingier I am with my diet, the stingier I am with my heart. The faces of her past lovers flashed before her eyes. The more they want, the less I’ve given, and the less they want, the more I’ve offered. And I’m the one who starves in the end. However, sound or unsound her theory, Skye decided tonight she would stuff herself silly with delicious food and wine. When in Rome.

  Halfway through her second glass, Skye turned to look behind her and toasted the Signora’s diabolical depiction. “To loose women,” she said. “May we always eat well.”

  Annabelle walked in with a giant bowl of soup and a wonderfully dressed insalate. Skye scarfed down every piece of lettuce, every drop of Tuscan soup down to the last white bean, and every bite-sized roll of calamari stuffed with artichoke hearts.

  The beige velvet curtains separating the kitchen from the dining room parted as Annabelle breezed in and placed a plate of cappellini pasta, shiny with oil and dotted with tomatoes, anchovies, and fresh basil and garlic on the table. She gathered up the empty plates, making a clucking noise of pleasure.

  Twirling the pasta around her fork, Skye told herself she would only have a few bites. When she looked down again, the plate epitomized willful gluttony. Her stomach expanded. She shook her swelling feet out of a pair of crocodile patterned pumps. Once again, Annabelle entered the room with a platter of pork chops on a bed of sautéed spinach and garlic. “Secondi Piatti,” she stated proudly. “Mangiare!” she insisted when Skye paused.

  Skye took a bite and chewed. “Delicious,” she managed.

  “Prego.”

  The pork chops were irresistible. Risking gastronomic rebellion, Skye took a few more bites and sat back, satiated. She heard plates clinking in the kitchen and escaped with the rest of the wine before Annabelle could bring out another dish.

  With a portable CD player in one hand and the bottle of wine in the other, Skye lay on a chaise lounge and looked up at the full moon. A deep, heartfelt male voice crooned Italian love songs in the background. She meant to close her eyes just for a moment, but when she awoke, the heavy blanket of night had fallen once again
. A light breeze flowed through the eaves, and the steady whoosh of a cascading fountain sang a melody so inviting she slipped her shoes off. Hitting the button of the CD player, she turned up the music and danced to Italian love songs. A medley played while she leaped and swayed under the moon. As her body tired and she reached the end of her energetic solo performance, a classic ditty sent one last peak of energy through her body as she swayed her hips from side to side. “‘I wanna be Americano…Americano…ra tara tara tara…’” she sang as she twirled over the stone tiles of the garden. “‘Whiskey and soda…’” She hiccupped as her voice lowered to a murmur.

  She paused to take sips of the wine, the taste of butter and cherries flowing smoothly on her tongue. “Mmm…that’s nice.” Her scalp was damp with sweat, and her body began to ache.

  Her thoughts flowed freely now, pooling into her consciousness and being sucked back into her mind and recycling themselves. Blood on her hands, blood on a wedding dress, the safety of Charlie, the encryption of her secrets, skeletons, and lies—destined to color every relationship thereafter.

  “What do peasants dream of?” she once asked her father after he read her a bedtime story.

  “They dream of becoming kings and queens,” her father answered.

  “What do kings and queens dream of?” young Skye asked.

  “Perhaps dreams at night cease for kings and queens. For they became what they became, by having visions.”

  Visions, Skye thought. Nightmares from which one cannot wake. The impish voice inside her head, born of the self-loathing one suffers after becoming the victim of displeasing circumstances, begged her to reveal herself in the warm cloak of night. Skye contemplated placing her head in her hands and sobbing, or screaming, or perhaps smashing the empty bottle of wine against a towering oak tree. What I really must do, her smarmy mind broke in, is use the bathroom. Placing the bottle and wine glass down on a stone seat wall, she trotted to a set of glass double doors and found them locked.