That Winter in Venice

by Ciji Ware

  At this moment, it felt to Jack as if he were soaring again through dark space with pinpricks of crystal lights on every side, and after the heavens exploded as they were destined to, the two of them lay quietly in each other’s arms, sleek with perspiration.

  At length, Jack said softly, “After we have our lunch, I’ll drop you at your house, if that’s all right.”

  Their faces inches apart, Serena gazed at him, making no response, as if she were well schooled in not ever showing disappointment. The afternoon light fell in narrow shafts through the half opened shutters in Jack’s high-ceiling bedroom. The airy space suddenly reminded him of the expansive room at Ca’Arco Antico where they had made love with the waters of Venice lapping against stone foundations a block away.

  Finally she murmured a neutral, “Okay.”

  “I’d much rather stay right here,” he assured her.

  “But you’re not going to do that because... ?”

  “Because I’ve got to drive down to Venice later this afternoon. Isn’t it strange?” he said, smoothing a strand of chestnut hair off her damp forehead. “I’m going to Venice, Louisiana, that insane tiny town near the mouth of the Mississippi.”

  “I’ve never been there.”

  “Basically, it’s perched in a swamp that’s disappearing, acres in a single day.”

  “Why go there, then, if there’s not much to see?”

  He sensed a tension building between them. He could tell she was doing her best to sound like he was free to do as he pleased, but he wasn’t fooled. This was old stuff. His job versus his life.

  “I’m meeting with some fisherman early tomorrow morning who want to show me the latest ravages of the erosion cutting into what’s left of the wetlands and barrier islands down there. It’s so damn similar to what’s happening in the Venice Lagoon, it drives me crazy!”

  Serena laid her hand on his arm and her expression cleared. She leaned forward and kissed him on the nose.

  “Now that I know about this stuff you’ve told me, it drives me crazy, too,” she said. “The parallels between Venice, Italy and New Orleans are amazing. Going down to Venice, Louisiana sounds like it might make a good addition to your story.”

  Jack sank back on his pillow and closed his eyes as a wave of relief washed over him. She understood his world like no one else ever had and could act like a grown-up, even when it meant he’d have to leave for a while. He opened his eyes and leaned toward her.

  “Thanks for saying that,” he said, lightly strafing his fingers along her jaw line. “There are so many moving parts to this story, Serena... and every single fact will have to be triple-checked and lawyered to the Nth degree. You know, don’t you, that if it weren’t for this friggin’ albatross I’ve saddled myself with, I’d never leave you today.”

  “I know... now” she replied quietly. “When you tell me what’s going on with you, like you just did, I totally get it. And anyway, I have to show up at my family’s place, sometime, so this actually works out fine.” She threw aside the bedcovers, adding, “How about you put the gumbo on the stove, and while it’s warming up, I’ll turn on the shower?”

  Without the slightest embarrassment, she walked stark naked down the hallway.

  Jack, likewise bare-assed, headed for his small kitchen where he set the pot on low as he heard the taps go on in the shower. Moments later, he padded in bare feet toward the bathroom, unable to recall when he’d ever felt this good.

  Serena’s family welcomed her home with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Her mother had burst into tears at the sight of her standing at the front door, surrounded by her suitcases where the cab driver had deposited them. For several more minutes, Sarah Antonelli had sobbed her relief that her daughter had miraculously made it home safely from a trip she had considered dangerous in the extreme.

  “I figured out that you had at least twelve takeoffs and landings flying to Venice and back,” her mother said, pressing her ready handkerchief to her eyes, “to say nothing of a country filled with Mafia hit men, street thieves, and Italian lotharios!”

  “Only one lothario, Mama,” Serena assured her, reaching for a paper napkin from the holder on the kitchen counter to dab the continuing moisture filling her mother’s eyes.

  “I knew it!” Sarah exclaimed.

  “Trust me, Signor Stefano Fabrini was pretty harmless.”

  “He doesn’t sound harmless,” her mother insisted stubbornly.

  Jack had offered to drive Serena home, but she figured it was best to introduce the momentous changes in her life gradually to her family and especially her mother.

  Her sister Flavia was her usual moody, uncommunicative self, waving her hellos with a pair of ear-buds stuffed in her head and a perfunctory kiss on Serena’s cheek. Within minutes of her older sister’s arrival, she’d slipped back into her room upstairs.

  Cosimo Antonelli seemed happy enough to have his eldest daughter safely back home, but scowled the minute his surviving son, Nicholas, walked through the door at the end of another work day at Antonelli’s Costume Company. Nick held out his arms wide before enfolding his returning sibling with effusive hugs and kisses. He ignored his father’s dark looks and drew Serena into the sitting room, wanting to know every detail of what she’d seen and done during her apprenticeship in Venice.

  “Gus and I nearly went crazy without your help during Mardi Gras,” he declared, referring to his partner, Gus LeMoyne, who now, Nick revealed quietly, had assumed responsibility for managing the small staff while Nick ran the business side of the operation.

  He closed the door and lowered his voice.

  “Flavia was a total pain, as usual, refusing to do anything but the usual scut work... but at least we’ve survived another year and I can’t wait to hear about how you think we can up our game. Somehow, we’ve got to make this family enterprise into something that can actually support us all.”

  She squeezed both his hands. “And I have a plan to do just that!”

  “Fabulous! While you were away, I put the books on Quicken—finally—and not before a big ole’ fight with Daddy. He just wouldn’t accept the truth that despite a killing amount of hard work, we barely broke even this year, Reenie.”

  Serena reached out and gave him a bear hug.

  “I know the last weeks were probably horrible for you and Gus, but I promise, my absence will be worth it. I’ve got so many projects that will make us money, it’s going to take days to tell you about them all! And wait till you see the great stuff I managed to get through U.S. Customs in New York!” she chortled, excited by the prospect of infusing their business with new ideas that would hopefully get them back on track. “Yards and yards of Fortuny fabrics—and at a nice price, thanks to Allegra’s influence and charge account! I paid her back with the overtime I’d put in on everything I worked on, there.”

  “Wow,” Nick replied with admiration.

  She paused and then lowered her voice as Nick had done.

  “But what about Daddy? Is he even going into work anymore? Mama said he just mostly mopes around here and she declared loudly so he could hear that he’s been hell to live with while I’ve been gone.”

  “Well, blessed be that Gus and I have made the third floor at the shop into a very nice apartment for ourselves so I don’t have to deal with his bad temper unless he deigns to come into the office, which he hardly ever does anymore.”

  “Oh, man,” she groaned.

  “He tells everyone he’s been given a ‘forced retirement by my own children,’” Nick said with a scowl that matched the one Serena had seen Cosimo bestow earlier that day when her brother walked into the family home.

  “So you’re living at work?” she asked. “Lucky you.”

  “Well, think about this,” Nick offered with a sly grin. “There’s still enough space left to build out another one-bedroom apartment on the third floor, if you ever want it. As for me, I just couldn’t take Coz’s nasty remarks about how disappointed he was with a son who liked me
n better than women and—well... you can just imagine the things he said over the last two months. Especially since you weren’t here to keep his mouth vaguely under control.”

  “Oh, Nicky... I’m so sorry,” Serena said, reaching across the sofa to touch his sleeve. “I expect, given the nuns who brought him up and rapped his knuckles all those years, his views on gays are pounded into his DNA by now. But, you know my mantra: ‘acceptance of the way things are is the key to happiness’—and then plan from there. We have to just accept—not like, mind you—that’s how he feels.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Nick attempted to joke.

  “Want to make a pact to ignore the mean things Daddy says, and just move forward? Let’s keep putting one foot in front of the other and see if the surviving Antonellis can keep the place afloat.”

  “Sweet Louisiana, I hope so,” Nick replied with a discouraged shake of his head. “I figure we can give it two or three more years to see if we can make a genuine comeback with this family business of ours. Frankly, a lot of days, I seriously have my doubts.”

  “Keep the faith, bro!” Serena exhorted, and then gave a shrug that acknowledged their father was making an already difficult task a hundred times more difficult. “And besides, what else are we fit to do to make a living here in the Bayou State?”

  Nick threw back his head and laughed.

  “Not much, that’s for damn sure. Of course, you could always marry a Yankee with some big bucks to help us out! They’re down here buying everything in sight in the Quarter.”

  “Trust me. There are no Yankees on the horizon in my life.”

  Serena thought about Jack and was sorely tempted to tell Nick how she was literally bursting with happiness. She longed to describe everything about their amazing meet-up on the plane to Venice and their love affair that bloomed despite Jack’s former girlfriend and the hideous weather that rained down on them in Italy during the entire time they were there. But then, she figured she’d indulge in that pleasure when she wasn’t sitting under her family’s roof with ears most likely pressed against the living room door.

  “Are you over jet lag yet?” he asked. “How soon will you feel like coming back to work?”

  “I just got home!” she protested, and almost laughed at how little sleep she and Jack had gotten in her first twenty-four hours in New Orleans. “I might just have to grab some shut-eye at my drafting table around four o’clock, but how about I come back to work tomorrow morning, bright and early?”

  Nick pulled her against his chest in another show of brotherly affection.

  “Serena Antonelli, I knew there was a reason I wanted you as a full partner in this crazy enterprise we’ve got going.”

  “I’m your sis, remember?” she shot back with mock indignation. “It’s in the company by-laws. You don’t have a choice!” She gave his chin a gentle fist bump. “You can’t get rid of me!”

  Nick put his hands together as if in prayer, his eyes rolling skyward.

  “Thank you, Jesus!”

  Serena kept her promise to quickly launch a number of projects at Antonelli’s costumes that she prayed would help their post-Mardi Gras sagging bottom line. The most important, in her view, was her campaign to recruit some of the sixty-odd krewes in New Orleans to reconsider sending away to China for the raft of regalia they would need for next year’s parades and private celebrations. Her immediate goal was to persuade them to outfit their members, instead, from Antonelli’s, a move that could boost the firm’s income enormously.

  In fact, springtime was the season the leaders of the various Mardi Gras social clubs decided on the next year’s theme—always a closely guarded secret from their competitors. In view of this, Serena’s first plan of action was to create a series of highly elaborate costumes based on the sketches that Allegra had given as her “going away” present. She was determined to make them stunning and elaborate examples of the higher art of historically accurate and/or fanciful attire. Even her younger sister, Flavia, showed a spark of interest when Serena recruited her to do the elaborate beadwork—and demonstrated some of sewing techniques she’d learned in the San Tomà workshop under Rosa’s tutelage.

  The most spectacular of her creations were featured in elaborate window displays at the front of the store. In addition, two rows of dressed mannequins from the best of their existing stock of costumes greeted customers upon their arrival at the shop and provided a path on their clients’ way to the private consultation rooms where the Antonelli staff met with potential clients.

  “Wowser, Serena!” enthused Etheline, their receptionist, as the installation was set up to the right of the front desk. “These new costumes totally rock!”

  Much to Serena’s surprise—and to the delight of Nick and Gus—secretaries and other workers in the Central Business District walking by the shop began to gather outside the windows during the noontime hour. Before April was out and Quarter Fest was in full swing, two chairmen of medium-sized krewes had decided to have Antonelli’s Costume Company execute their ideas for the coming Mardi Gras season.

  “Way to go!” Jack exalted at dinner a few night’s later at Corlis and King’s when she mentioned her amazement at the crowds that now gawked at their windows every day.

  Jack’s longtime friends now automatically included his declared ladylove in every invitation extended to him—having given Serena their stamp of approval in other obvious ways as well.

  “How amazing,” Corlis congratulated her. “You know, those costumes would offer some great visuals for a TV business story. WJAZ could do a piece about the post-Katrina rebirth of Antonelli’s, now that their top designer has returned from working during Venice Carnevale, she mused. “We could show our viewers that the younger generation has taken up the reins, blah, blah, blah.”

  “That’s journalese for ‘the rest of the story,’” Jack informed her as a good-humored aside.

  “Love the blah, blah, blah part,” Serena joked, but then grew somber. “But, I don’t know...” she continued, her voice full of doubt. “That’s an angle sure to give my poor brother, Nick, heartburn in terms of my dad, who frankly isn’t too happy about turning over those reins.” She heaved an audible sigh and thanked Corlis for her suggestion. Now that she’d been home a few weeks, she considered her a wonderful new friend whom she had grown fonder of each time they met. “And what I just said about my dad? That’s off-the-record, of course,” she added, deadpan.

  “But it’s true, isn’t it?” Corlis insisted. “You are, in fact, trying to re-launch your business, and you and Nick are the ones doing it?”

  “And his partner, Gus LeMoyne,” Serena reminded them. She shook her head in a rare show of discouragement. “And that’s another true fact guaranteed to drive Cosimo Antonelli, The Fourth, right around the twist.”

  “Well, if you don’t want me to send a crew...”

  Jack intervened, “Look, Serena, if you’re drawing crowds in the CBD, some other media outlet, including the T-P or The Advocate, will get wind of this, ’cause the story is a natural! I say, better let Corlis do it, first, so anyone else who piles in later will get most of their facts right, based on the segment she produces. Unfortunately, that’s the way it works in our biz, these days.”

  Serena cast her hostess a plaintive glance.

  “It’s really nice of you to even consider doing a piece about Antonelli’s and—”

  “Nice, sh-mice,” Corlis interrupted with a wave of her hand. “I agree with Jack. It’s a great local story, and besides, I love costumes, as you can probably tell by now. And any new angle about Mardi Gras—New Orleans’ hallowed moneymaker—is bound to go down well with my boss, to say nothing of the advertisers on WJAZ. And besides,” she added with a grin, “it sure would be a nice break for me to cover a story that was fun and kept me out of hot water for a change.”

  “Well... a little public notice of what we’re trying to accomplish at this hundred-and-fifty-year-old company would be great in terms of letting the
krewes consider ‘buying local’,” Serena agreed.

  “And that’s another reason why it’d make a good piece,” King interjected. “Any time we can show the world New Orleans is still on the map for locals, the better it is for preserving the place. We’ve been invaded by folks bent on gentrification at a bargain price, and all they really do is use this city as a second home or pure party town.”

  After a brief pause, Serena nodded her agreement.

  “Okay,” Corlis declared. “It’s settled, then. How about if I come by tomorrow with a crew around eleven-thirty? I can see if the shop’s lookie-loos were just a fluke last week, or if it’s becoming a genuine ‘happening’ down there.” Serena’s hostess picked up the coffee pot from the sideboard, and refilled her guests’ cups. “I can’t promise my assignment editor will go for this—or if the piece will even pan out, Serena—but it’s worth a shot, don’t you think?”

  “Definitely,” she replied, nodding her head more vigorously to show her appreciation. If Allegra were here, Serena thought, she’d be jumping for joy over the possibility of a story that was bound to drive more business to a costumer’s door. “And thank y’all for urging me to see beyond the bumps in the road when it comes to family businesses.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “What?” Jack asked, quick, as always, to pick up on her mood.

  “Well... it seems my brother Nick moved out of the house while I was away—given the friction that exists between my father and him.”

  “Where’d he end up?” Jack asked, curious.

  “He and Gus have built a nice apartment on the third floor at the shop to keep peace in the Antonelli household. What they did in two months’ time is inspiring! I’m nearly a thirty-five-year-old woman, for pity’s sake, and I’m seriously thinking of taking the square footage that’s left and creating my own little nest up there.”

  “Well, that’s an idea,” Corlis said with a quick glance in Jack’s direction.

  Serena heaved another small sigh. “Our father is having a hard adjustment both to the idea of his gay son being with a live-in partner, as well as this changing-of-the-guard business at Antonelli’s. I truly understand it can’t be easy for him... but living at home at my age isn’t easy either, and apparently, it’s been brutally rough on poor Nick.”