That Winter in Venice

by Ciji Ware

  As the introductions proceeded, Serena Antonelli’s dark eyes held his gaze and he marveled at their intense color. If he had to describe them for a story, he’d call them... molten chocolate. Her ink-black lashes made them seem even darker, and for some strange reason, he had a visceral urge to run like hell from her penetrating, empathetic stare.

  Gesturing with his boarding pass he said, “I’m sorry to say hello-goodbye, everyone, but I’ve got to get to my gate. Can’t miss this plane,” he apologized again, addressing the Antonelli family in general and avoiding Serena’s friendly expression.

  Marielle chimed in, “Hold on a minute, bro! Guess what? You and Serena are on the same flight to JFK! Amazing, right?”

  Serena’s smile broadened. “Marielle just told me that you’re going on to Venice, too. The Air France flight? For an environmental conference, is it?”

  Jack nodded, not sure whether to groan or be glad. “What better place for a get-together on flood waters and climate change than Venice, a city inundated like clockwork every November.”

  “And on through the winter, I’m told,” Serena agreed. She pulled up her left pant leg, revealing a trim ankle sheathed in knee-high rubber boots. “I’ve been duly warned,” she added with a grin.

  Marielle chimed in excitedly, “Serena just told me that she’s going to assist the most celebrated costumer in Italy during Carnival there. Sort of like a two-month Master Class in Mardi Gras, am I right?” she added, turning to her friend for confirmation. “She’ll be there the exact same time you are, Jack. Maybe you should stay on in Venice and go to one of the famous balls they hold there every year?” She turned toward Serena. “Tell him about the one you’re working on. This is such serendipity!”

  Jack was growing more uncomfortable by the second due to his sister’s obvious eagerness that he meet, fall in love with, and marry anyone except his assumed girlfriend.

  Serena flashed him a smile that lit up her amazing dark eyes with glowing enthusiasm.

  “The people I’ll be working for also put on an event each year called—not too surprisingly—Il Ballo di Carnevale,” she said and Jack could tell by her fluid pronunciation that she spoke excellent Italian.

  “Doesn’t that sound fantastic?” Marielle exclaimed.

  Jack was ashamed to admit that what was fantastic on this third day in January was heading out of the country after a holiday season he’d just as soon forget. Meanwhile, Marielle appeared oblivious to her brother’s melancholy musings amidst the hubbub of the crowded airport. She beamed at him encouragingly, and then turned to address Serena.

  “So what’s your seat assignment?” she asked her friend eagerly.

  Serena glanced briefly at Jack, who looked away, and she gave an embarrassed laugh.

  “I’ve got an aisle seat somewhere,” she answered with a shrug. She pointed to the crowds surging through the security zone. “Gosh, this is such a zoo. Jack’s right. We’ve gotta go, everybody.”

  Jack nodded, gave his irrepressible sister a last, swift hug and said a brief farewell to everyone, including Serena. With a wave over his shoulder, he set off for the security gates. He peeled off to the left of the milling hordes, happy that he was in possession of his U.S. State Department-approved Global Entry Pass that also guaranteed him pre-approved security check-in status and a faster line. The newspaper had secured it for him, thanks to his being the publication’s sole remaining globetrotting environmental reporter. He always tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice whenever he apologized to people that the paper only published three times a week now—in his view one of the Picayune’s dumbest post-Katrina management decisions. He’d done his best to adapt to the Digital Age, but the mere thought of having to file five online blogs a week, in addition to his regular in-depth reporting, only darkened his mood today even more.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Serena pause to kiss each family member on both cheeks as she bid farewell to her clan. He flashed his credentials at the TSA minions and hurriedly advanced toward the X-ray machines.

  Then, Jack Durand relaxed. He’d be at the gate and on board the plane long before the stunning Ms. Antonelli traversed the regular security line winding its way at glacial speed through various checkpoints.

  He did not need any more complications in his life, he thought with a touch of regret. Given the situation with soon-to-be Doctor Lauren Hilbert, he certainly had enough facing him as it was.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Mama... honestly, I’ve got to go!” Serena insisted gently, removing her mother’s clinging arms from around her neck.

  “You fly safe, y’hear?” her mother cautioned, and her daughter could see the tears brimming in her eyes. “Let us know when you arrive safely.”

  “I will, Mama,” she replied with studied patience. She turned toward her brother Nicholas. “I’ll text Nick as soon as the plane’s wheels touch down in Venice,” she added with a knowing look in his direction. Her parents both refused to learn how to use their cells phones for anything other than making emergency calls.

  Sarah Antonelli had lost one child due to the cruelty of Mother Nature and her remaining children bore the weight of her constant anxiety that she would somehow lose another. The middle-aged matriarch had been sober for a few years, after a long struggle, and had become hyper-vigilant about all sorts of potential threats to her surviving offspring... terrorists, suicidal pilots, and amorous Italians being merely a few of the many dangers she feared might imperil her eldest daughter’s safety.

  Nick said, “Mama, I’ll make sure you’ll be the first to know Reenie’s living it up in the city she’s named for.”

  Sarah Antonelli cast a sharp glance at her husband and then at Serena.

  “That was your father’s idea to name you after La Serenissima... I wanted to call you Margaret after the matriarch of the Kingsburys of Covington.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” grumbled Cosimo. “We’ve heard that before. My mother, Serena D’Este, was a great lady and she was the one named for Venice, since her people came from there. And, if you’ll remember, Sarah, it was my turn to name a kid.”

  “You named your first-born after yourself,” she retorted. “When we had a girl, Nonna Serena was my mother-in-law! What choice did I have?”

  Before her parents’ bickering could blossom to a full-fledged argument as it so often did these days, Serena blew kisses all around and strode to the end of the line that was slowly snaking toward a battery of X-ray machines. When, twenty minutes later, the woman in front of her flatly refused to be electronically stripped naked, Serena barely could suppress a groan of frustration.

  “I want to be patted down,” the woman insisted loudly. “I’ve already battled cancer. I don’t need a bunch of radiation to give me another dose!”

  The TSA official gave the passenger a pained look and yelled, “Female pat down! Number three station!” to no colleague in particular while Serena nervously glanced at her watch. At the rate she was going, she was going to miss her plane! A vision of Jack Durand sprang to mind. She’d seen him zip through the pre-check line and speculated that he was probably already sipping a highball on board. He’d certainly seemed less than enthusiastic to learn they were on the same plane to New York and then both traveling on to Venice.

  What did I do to offend the guy?

  She recalled Jack’s standoffish manner with a prick of annoyance. Whatever was going on with him, he had made it plain to everybody, including his own sister, that he wasn’t a bit interested in the rather startling coincidence they were two New Orleanians both headed to the same place at the same time, but for wildly differing reasons.

  Hadn’t Marielle called her brother “the elusive” Jack Durand? That was all Serena needed to know about the Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist to be more than happy to give him a wide berth.

  Celebrated... elusive... unobtainable. No more of that in my life!

  Serena frowned and craned her neck to see if a female TSA agent were anywher
e near the vicinity to give the passenger in front of her an electronic once-over.

  Sweat began trickling down between Serena’s breasts, thanks to the bulky turtleneck sweater she was wearing that wouldn’t fit in her suitcase even if she sat on it to try to close the darn thing. She inhaled deeply, reminding herself silently that she’d be glad for its warmth when the plane’s air-conditioning created a deep freeze somewhere over the Atlantic.

  Tapping her right, stocking foot with impatience while her rubber boots made their way on the conveyer belt without her, she glanced over her shoulder at her fellow passengers who all wore scowls at the long delay. She hated having to wear the damn boots on the plane, but there was no way they would fit in her suitcase either.

  Where was that security pat down person, for pity’s sake?

  It was another ten minutes before Serena was beckoned to put her arms over her head and get zapped inside the airport security machine. She dashed to collect her belongings that had piled up at the end of the luggage conveyor belt and headed for her departure gate at a dead run.

  When she got there, a solitary airline agent pointed to her watch.

  “Is your name Antonelli? Sorry, but we gave away your aisle seat assignment five minutes ago. We thought you were a no-show.”

  “The damned TSA!”

  The agent held up her hand and plastered a fake, “Believe me, I’ve heard that before” smile on her face. “But you can still make the flight, if you hurry.” She handed Serena a new boarding pass. “It’s a center seat, but at least you’re on your way to New York.”

  Jack looked up from his seat on the aisle as the last, harried passenger arrived, red-faced and panting from both exhaustion and frustration over nearly missing the flight.

  The seat between him and the passenger on the window was blessedly empty. His fellow traveler had also opened his laptop and had been typing away just as Jack had been for the last twenty minutes. Until now.

  He groaned inwardly. The plane’s door at the front slammed shut, and none other than Serena Antonelli was stomping in his direction in her rubber boots, her glance scanning the seat numbers as she continuously consulted her boarding pass.

  She gave one more look at the number above his head and down at him sitting on the aisle—at which moment their eyes locked. Her lips formed into a straight line and her lids fluttered shut.

  Opening them, she said, “Just your luck. Sorry.”

  “You’re sitting here?” he asked unnecessarily.

  “Sorry,” she repeated with an edge of sarcasm, “but don’t blame me. It took me forty minutes to get through TSA and by the time I arrived at the gate, they’d given away my aisle seat.”

  She glanced around for a place to stow her carry-on wheelie. Every overhead compartment was stuffed to the gills. A flight attendant, noting her dilemma, marched determinedly to her side and declared her bag would have to go in the regular baggage and be claimed at JFK before she headed for her connecting flight to Europe.

  Meanwhile, Jack stood up, balancing his laptop at a precarious angle, to allow her to squeeze into their row. With barely an inch to spare, she stowed her smaller flight bag under the seat in front of her and fastened her seatbelt over her heavy coat consigned to her lap. She sank back, closing her eyes a second time, and ignored him as if he were radioactive.

  Well... maybe I am.

  Serena wished that someone could hit her on the head so she’d be totally unconscious until she landed in New York and could make her escape.

  She’d tried to sleep during the two-and-a-half-hour flight, but ten minutes into it, she was burning up in her hot sweater, despite rebelliously having thrown her anorak on the floor under her feet. She knew without looking that there was nowhere to stash the cable knit pullover, even if she ripped it off and sat in her bra next to the Almighty Jack Durand. Her traveling companion had started tapping on his keyboard the instant he regained his damned aisle seat.

  So what if the guy at the Times-Picayune was considered a God for his searing coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and now, his daily blogs since the paper only published three times a week? He was obviously one of those hotshot journalists full of his own importance and too above-it-all to lower himself making the casual acquaintance of a college chum of his younger sister’s.

  She had only been vaguely aware of Jack Durand’s existence as an upper classman at the engineering school during the time when she and Marielle had been fairly good friends. How he’d ended up as an environmental reporter and a specialist in climate change, the vanishing wetlands, and the perils of rising sea levels to coastal communities like theirs, she had no idea. She doubted that he’d ever set foot in a theater on the Tulane campus, so their paths hadn’t crossed. She’d always hung out with creative types, ignoring even good-looking guys like Jack Durand who had calculators in their shirt pockets.

  Engineers?

  Bor-ing!

  At the end of four years, she and Marielle had pretty much lost touch as their interests had widely diverged... she as a theatre major and Marielle doing pre-vet.

  Her eyes still clamped shut, she heard the drinks cart rattle to a stop beside their row.

  “Something for you, sir?” asked a chirpy flight attendant.

  Even with her lids closed, Serena could tell that Jack Durand’s broad shoulders, chiseled features, and full head of longish brown hair had obviously cheered up this hardworking woman’s workday no end.

  “Bourbon, please, and a small water.”

  Of course he’d drink bourbon. What good ole’ southern boy doesn’t?

  “Your wife is sleeping,” whispered the attendant. “Can I get—”

  “She’s not my wife, but—”

  Serena’s eyes flew open and she said quickly, “I’ll have a spicy tomato juice with a slice of lemon. No vodka.”

  The attendant smiled with satisfaction. Serena speculated the woman had just been checking to see if her handsome passenger was spoken for, despite not wearing a ring on his left hand.

  “Certainly, miss. Here you go.”

  The pert young woman turned to give her warmest smile to Jack.

  “Now, you be sure to let me know if you need anything else, will you, sir?”

  Serena could barely keep from rolling her eyes. Instead, she took a sip out of her plastic cup, set it down on the tray she’d flipped out from the seatback in front of her, and closed her eyes once more.

  It was only another hour and a half flight to JFK and then she’d be rid of the man. Despite their being on the same connecting plane to Europe, those airbuses were huge. What were the odds of them ever being seated next to each other for a second time?

  Zero.

  The serendipity that Marielle noted about her brother, Jack, and Serena being booked on the same flights to Venice stops here, she thought grimly, and pretended to fall asleep.

  Serena Antonelli appeared to be out cold. Jack took another deep draught from his bourbon and water and stared at his computer screen. For the last ten minutes, he’d attempted to absorb the agenda for his conference scheduled to commence in Italy in less than twenty-four hours. He’d checked out a few sessions that might have some new information he could use in his blog, noted the time scheduled for his talk on the disappearing Louisiana wetlands, and chose the field trips he wanted to take, touring various flood-prevention facilities in Venice—both built and under construction—in and around the city of some 150 canals.

  He glanced out the plane’s window at inky darkness as they flew through the night toward New York. Ever since Katrina, he avoided looking out airplane windows during the daytime. It reminded him too much of a few helicopter ride-alongs he’d taken with the U.S. Coast Guard over sections of the city like the Ninth Ward and Lakeview, submerged in ten feet-plus of water in the days following the storm.

  He dared a quick glance to his left at the sister of one of New Orleans’ best known Caucasian victims of the 2005 hurricane: Cosimo Antonelli V, the eldest son of the Cosimo IV
whom Jack had just met at the airport—and the scion of the Antonelli Costume Company. The younger Cosimo had been thirty-years-old that unforgettable year, and about to become a father for the first time.

  The poor guy’s house on 40th Street was one of the first washed away that Monday morning when the 17th Street Canal burst its perimeter and a wall of water engulfed the neighborhood of million dollar homes. One of the newspaper reporters told him the couple had been found at the top of a set of pull-down stairs, obviously trying to get up to their attic when the water thundered through their home.

  Jack reached for a gulp of bourbon and tried to banish the image from his mind. He knew only too well how little the rest of the nation was aware of the destruction of that upscale region, or that nine thousand homes were mortally wounded in the neighborhoods near Lake Pontchartrain, with 42 percent of all deaths in the storm that of white citizens. The predominantly African-American Ninth Ward, with its terrible loss of life and property, was a full-blown tragedy, for sure, but so was Lakeview and other regions of the city that hadn’t received as much media attention during those awful days.

  For a moment, he allowed himself to ponder what the reaction of his own two uncles must have been when they first learned what had happened to the canals flanking Lakeview and saw the devastation on the ground.

  Vincent Durand, a hard-drinking, crusty, retired river barge captain, was never a man likely to dwell very long on any role he and his fellow Levee Board members may have played in the disaster that day.

  On the other hand, Jack’s Uncle Jacques, whose namesake he was, grew very quiet whenever the events in Lakeview came up in conversation. Jacques Durand steadfastly remained mum about what he’d observed as a junior employee in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that had rebuilt the canals back in the Eighties. Jack surmised his elderly uncle knew a lot more than he let on about the chain of circumstances that ultimately resulted in the disaster in many neighborhoods twenty years later.

  “Mistakes were made back then, obviously,” was the most Jacques had ever commented about the tragedy when asked about it by his nephew. “But, Jack, you can’t change the past. You can only try to do your best in the present.”