by Ciji Ware
CHAPTER 12
Serena stared at the cellphone she had so brusquely disconnected. The caller ID, “JACK DURAND,” disappeared from the screen, leaving her with an unwelcome feeling of bereavement and a sense that she had all but childishly hung up on the guy.
For a moment, she remained standing on the floor below Allegra’s event headquarters where she’d sought some privacy when she’d dialed his mobile phone. With a sigh, she headed back up the flight of stairs to the production office where every desk was occupied and a low, urgent murmur of Italian filled the air.
Allegra called from her office on the floor above, “Serena... can you come up to Purgatory for a moment? Grazie, cara.”
Serena mounted the metal spiral stairs and entered Allegra’s inner sanctum, impressed by the paperwork stacked neatly on her boss’s desk that related to various aspects of producing the ball, designing the costumes—and her employer’s main source of revenue—manufacturing her elegant clothing and women’s accessories for the retail end of her business.
“Would you be free for an early dinner?” asked Allegra, looking up from the mountains of paperwork. “We can go over some things I’ve had on my mind before I forget them,” she said with a wave at the piles on her desk.
The rest of the day went by quickly and just as the doors were opening, the two women were seated at a small, table tucked into the corner of Alle Testiere, an Osteria on Calle del Mondo Nova, ten minutes walk from the events office. Once drinks had been ordered, Serena was astounded when Allegra patted her hand across the white linen tablecloth and asked, “Tell me about our ‘hero’, Signor Durand. He has left Venice, no?”
Serena stared at her water glass, composing a reply. From the day Jack had departed, she had been determined to put their brief idyll behind her “as just one of those things” and immerse herself into the myriad preparations for Carnival and the ball. Thus far, she had been utterly unsuccessful at doing this, but at least she thought no one else had noticed her distress. Try as she might, she’d found herself thinking about Jack every waking hour. It was not a good sign that her highly intuitive employer was asking about him.
“Yes, he left ten days ago,” she managed, finally, her throat tight.
“And you are quite sad, no?” Allegra pressed.
Serena paused and then answered resignedly, “Yes, I am, damn it!”
“Tell me,” Allegra said, her expression one of total sympathy. “I have been where you are... and at least I can offer my sympathy, cara.”
Serena swiftly alluded to the wonderful days she’d spent with the newspaper reporter from her hometown, followed by his abrupt departure.
“And I can tell that you are mystified by that, no?” Allegra asked, observing her quietly.
“More like haunted by how strangely it ended,” she admitted, “but here’s something even stranger,” she added, shaking her head. “I don’t regret a moment of our time together. I’m angry at him—and yet I’m not.”
“He adores you. I could tell the second I saw him calling your name outside the costume shop.”
Serena looked up, confused. “Then why do you suppose he called it off the way he did?”
“Perhaps he didn’t call it off. Is it possible he meant what you just told me he said? That he just needed time to deal with that other woman you mentioned... the dottoressa...?”
“Maybe...” Serena said doubtfully, “but my instinct says that’s not the main or only reason. Before our last dinner, I’d already felt confident he would deal with officially ending his relationship with Lauren Hilbert that had been in a state of disrepair, anyway, for months before we met. No,” she said, shaking her head once more, “there is something else going on and I haven’t a clue what it is.”
She folded her napkin, heaved a sigh, and fought the tears that began to rim her eyes.
“I swore I would not obsess over this whole thing and just look at me!” She cast a worried glance at her dinner companion. “And I don’t want this stupid turn of events to in any way lessen my focus or distract me for why I’ve come to Venice.”
The empathy radiating from Allegra made it even harder for Serena to maintain her composure.
“Feelings are important, too,” Allegra said gently. “Knowing you’ve met your soul mate, Serena, even if you cannot be together, means you’re alive! It means you have heart! You love. You risk. You dream!” She gave a shrug. “Sometimes you win, sometimes not. But if you truly love someone, you never lose. You have that love you felt to keep close to you for all your days. It will keep you warm on the days, like now, when you have to work very hard at the profession you’ve chosen.”
Serena knew instinctively that Allegra was speaking from her own experience, but she hesitated to ask about her mentor’s previous losses in love since she hadn’t volunteered anything further about herself. Allegra offered a rueful smile.
“Never fear. I will be keeping you so busy from now to the night of Il Ballo and its aftermath, that you will forget this Jack Durand for a while—if only for a few weeks. That should help a bit.”
Serena managed a shrug of agreement and immediately felt her spirits raise a notch.
Bless dear Allegra. I will get through this, she reminded herself for the hundredth time.
It was such a relief to have someone to talk to... someone who understood how it felt to have come so close to feeling that she was, at last, in a safe harbor, only to have the boat sink beneath her feet.
Allegra pulled her large, leather-bound notebook from her handbag and made room for it on the restaurant’s table.
“We still have much to do if we are going to be able to create the magic of Carnival in Venice, despite the skies weeping so. Today, I had yet another inspector from yet another department in Venice telephone me.” She handed her companion a slip of paper with several lines of writing. “Can you try again, Serena, to get hold of Maurizio Pigati or Paolo Bronzoni to see if any of them knows who this government man is and what he actually does? And perhaps you can also learn what that young engineer... Stefano?... has to say about the water that continues to seep into the palazzo, despite all our efforts.”
Serena nodded and leaned back in her chair while she waited for Allegra to pay their bill. Then they both donned their rubber boots and heavy jackets and made their way back through the waters that swirled over some of the boardwalks. They caught the vaporetto at the San Marco stop and made the quick trip across the Grand Canal to San Tomà. Soaked to the skin, they finally arrived at the costume construction shop and trudged up the stone steps for a few more hours of work.
As the next day’s pace intensified, Serena routinely checked to make sure she kept her cellphone nearby—and turned on. When it rang, however, she was startled out of deep concentration on the project she’d been working on for more than an hour. Her sudden lunge for her phone, buried beneath papers on the corner of the cutting table, set off a fit of coughing, a residual souvenir of the serious cold she’d been fighting for a week.
“Hello?” she gasped, choking down another spasm.
“Serena? That you, bella?”
Her caller ID announced that Stefano Fabrini had finally responded to her various attempts to contact him.
“Si... where the heck are you, anyway?” she demanded, trying to reign in her irritation after two days of constant telephone and text messages. Fortunately, Jack’s other colleague, Paolo Bronzoni, had returned her call immediately and was scheduled to meet her tomorrow morning.
“I’m in Verona,” Stefano replied cheerfully, “on the mainland.” Serena heard a burst of Italian in the background and music in the distance. “I’m at... my Mamma’s... fixing a leak in her roof. I so apologize, cara, for not—”
Another eruption of muffled, but rapid Italian could be heard, and to Serena’s ears, the speaker definitely did not sound a day over thirty.
“Well,” she replied briskly, “we’ve got more than just a leak to worry about at the palazzo. A full foot of w
ater has come into the bottom floor since last night. Can you come help us? Today?”
“Subito!” Stefano replied instantly. “Would three o’clock this afternoon be suitable? I’ll bring my crew with some pumping equipment and we’ll see what else we can do, okay, cara?” He paused and lowered his voice. “You cannot know how much I look forward to seeing you again.”
Despite not wanting to fall for his smooth talk and long-delayed promises of help, Serena couldn’t help feeling relief that she had been given a reprieve from having to admit to Allegra that Jack’s friends weren’t going to come through for them.
“Are you sure you can get here from Verona by three?” she pressed, growing worried once more that Stefano might not show up on time. “I’ve got so much to do. I’d rather you just give me a realistic estimate of when you can get to the palazzo so I can meet you there and not waste time.”
“It’s a little more than an hour’s drive,” he declared. “Si, si, I can be there by three.” He paused, lowered his voice, and said with a throaty chuckle, “And cara, it will give me nothing but pleasure to see you. Perhaps, afterward, I can take you to dinner?”
Serena made a face at the phone, ignoring his invitation.
“When I couldn’t get you on the phone, I called Paolo Bronzoni and he says he’ll come to the palazzo tomorrow morning, nine o’clock, sharp.”
“Excellent!” Stefano exclaimed. “By then, we’ll have the water pumped out and we can consult with my old colleague what we might do next to keep the water out permanently—or at least until after Il Ballo.”
Appeased somewhat by these words, Serena leaned back in her chair and heaved a sigh, giving a thumbs up to Allegra, who had just walked into the costume shop and had been listening intently to Serena’s side of the conversation that had been in half Italian, half English.
“Okay, then,” Serena said emphatically. “Show up at three and Allegra will definitely consider you the hero of Il Ballo.”
“Ah...” Stefano purred into her ear. “It is your hero I wish to be.”
“Ciao, Signor Fabrini,” she said firmly.
“Ciao, cara,” he echoed, in response to which Serena was sure she heard a young woman’s voice declare, “Bastardo!”
True to his word—and much to Serena’s amazement—Stefano and two burly men with a large piece of machinery she could only assume was the Italian version of a sump pump, were waiting for her when she arrived at the palazzo with the key that Allegra had provided that would let them into the lower floors.
“No Signora Allegra?” Stefano inquired, looking pleased by that fact.
“Mrs. Benedetti is too busy,” Serena replied shortly. “She sent me to handle this.”
“Brava,” he said with a smile and a wink.
Within an hour, the pump had been activated and was droning away, sending the water out an upper window through a long rubber pipe.
Stefano bid his workers adieu and turned to Serena, who was shivering in her coat and blowing her nose into a tissue.
“Cara,” he said with genuine concern. “You have a... a... how you say in English? A testa fredda...?”
“A head cold. Yes, I do, and it’s a doozy.”
“Doozy? What means this word?”
“Really bad,” she translated. “It’s gone to my chest as well. I should get back to work where it’s vaguely warmer than this drafty pile of plaster.”
“No!” he declared, taking her by the arm. “I live only a short distance from here. You will come to my flat. I will make you a hot drink with Amaretto and lemon juice and take care of you.”
“There’s absolutely no need for that,” she protested. “I have piles of work to do and—”
“If you don’t rest and recover, you won’t be able to do any work, cara, and might not even be able to go to Il Ballo. You understand what I’m saying? This... how you say... this very, very wet weather makes a disease of the lungs for people not used to it. Just come with me and get warm for a bit, at least.”
Stefano reached up and felt her forehead with the back of the fingers of his hand.
“Febbre, I think,” he pronounced.
“You think I have a fever?” she asked, alarmed. Serena felt her own forehead. Sure enough, it felt warm to the touch, the only part of her body that was. She couldn’t get any sicker than she was! Allegra was counting on her.
“Si. Let me at least get you something warm to drink before you return to your work.”
“All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “As long as you promise me that your place is truly nearby?”
Despite feeling flushed, she was actually starting to shiver even more in her thick coat and the cashmere scarf wound three times around her neck.
“Si, si. Just a two minute walk.”
“Then, yes, make me something warm to drink, and then I must get back to the atelier,” she insisted. “The sewing ladies will wonder where I’ve gotten to.”
For once, Stefano wasn’t stretching the truth. His flat was a mere one hundred yards beyond a nearby bridge and down a narrow alleyway. Surprisingly, his living quarters were very neat, if spare, except for an unmade brass bed positioned in a corner of the large, principal room. Once Serena had shed her coat and rubber boots, she headed straight for a small sofa on the opposite side of the tall-ceilinged chamber.
“Here, cara,” he said solicitously, handing her a woolen throw, “wrap your beautiful body in this and rest while I make you my special potion.”
Serena sank back on the feathered cushions and pulled the small blanket up under her chin, wondering if her host intended to pour a double dose of spirits in his medicinal offering to render her helpless in the wake of his amorous supplications? Within minutes, Stefano returned with a cup that warmed her hands and smelled deliciously of Amaretto, lemon juice, and honey.
“Drink... drink it all,” he commanded.
She took a sip and judged it contained a reasonable amount of her favorite liqueur, so she did as he bid and drank a good portion in one go. She loved the sensation of the warm liquid sliding soothingly down her scratchy throat.
“Wonderful,” she murmured. Within minutes she felt the lulling effects of both the spirits seeping through her veins and the luxury of being wrapped in a cozy cocoon.
Before she knew it, she was fast asleep.
Jack fought against the depression he always experienced whenever he came to the New Orleans Airport lobby. Once again, he saw in his mind’s eye the canvas stretchers where many frail, elderly citizens of his hometown had breathed their last during Katrina.
It was ten years ago, Durand. Get over it!
The traffic on I-10 had been a bear and he was running late. According to Lauren’s phone text, her plane was already on the ground. He sprinted toward arrivals where travelers on Delta emerged from the security area and paused to catch his breath. A second later, he heard a familiar voice call out.
“Jack! Jack, over here! Finally!”
He turned and took in the sight of Lauren’s nearly white-blond, chin length hair, pulled smoothly off her pale forehead by a black velvet headband. A Burberry trench coat over her arm, she wore trim jet-black slacks topped by a white cotton turtleneck, the perfect choice for a chic, budding young female surgeon who’d just departed from the temperate winter climes in Texas. She swiftly walked to his side.
“Hi, you,” she said, flashing him the coquettish smile she’d perfected as a cheerleader at Tulane.
“Hey... Lauren...” he replied, and felt an acute awkwardness as she embraced him with fervor. Her pale coloring and short stature felt so foreign and were the diametric opposite image of the woman he’d left in Venice. He pulled back from her quickly, asking inanely, “How the heck are you?”
“Better, now, that I see you actually made it here to pick me up.” She smiled at him, dimples winking, and a sure signal that she was in one of her few cheery moods. She linked her arm through his, and added, “C’mon... let’s get out of here so I can tell you
my fabulous news!”
Jack had nearly reached the Garden District turn off of Highway 10 by the time Lauren finished describing to him in great detail the job offer she’d received from the Ochsner Medical Center, along with her enthusiastic plans to move back to New Orleans by the end of April.
“That’s a great achievement,” he said—and meant it. Ochsner’s was on a par with the Cleveland and Mayo clinics and getting a berth there was a definite coup. Even so, the half-expected news filled him with nothing but dread.
Lauren kept up her chatter about the new position she’d been offered as he sped down the off ramp and turned in the direction of the impressive Hilbert house on Poydras Street. His thoughts strayed to his sister, Marielle, wondering what she’d say when she found out what he was about to do. Marielle had never held much affection for the young woman sitting in the passenger seat. In fact, she’d dubbed her “the All-Sorority-Sister-All-The-Time” and avoided her when she could.
Ironically, Marielle, herself, had been the one to introduce them and in their early acquaintance, he’d found in Lauren a rare breed of southern womanhood: a female on a professional path of her own. After her stint as an RN at Charity Hospital before and during Katrina, and her eventual acceptance at med school in Houston, she had become as intensely focused on her medical career as he was on his journalistic one, which had worked well for both of them. They knew a lot of the same people and they’d mostly enjoyed each other’s company as she’d progressed from nurse to med student to intern to hospital resident, residing in Houston ninety percent of the time. However, a palpable, free form tension had slowly built between them the last few years and had ultimately flared into two memorable arguments—one right before Christmas when, in Lauren’s words, they needed to discuss the “What’s Next?” factor. That was the chat that had ended with her leaping out of his car and slamming her front door in his face.
And then there’d been New Year’s Eve...
“Hey,” Lauren said sharply, bringing his thoughts crashing back to the uncomfortable present. She pointed out the window as he pulled up in front of her family home. “I thought we were going straight to your place? I told my parents I’d be arriving Saturday so you and I could—”