That Winter in Venice

by Ciji Ware

  A long pause ensued and Serena blushed scarlet when she noticed that Corlis, again, was looking directly at Jack as if he and his Julia Street living quarters were the answer to Serena’s housing dilemma. Hinting that she wanted to move in with Jack had not at all been her intention when she raised the subject of housing, and she was more than slightly mortified to see that Jack stared at his coffee cup and remained silent.

  To cover the awkward moment, Serena quickly rose from her dining room chair and said brightly, “Let me help you clear the table. We’ve all got a busy week ahead and I told Nick I’d meet him first thing in the morning to bring him up to date on our latest orders... which, as I said, are coming in nicely, thank the Baby Jesus.”

  Less than ten minutes later, Jack backed out of the Duvallons’ precious off-street parking spot inside the courtyard enclosed by fanciful wrought-iron gates. After a pause for on-coming traffic, he pulled onto Dauphine Street.

  “I’m glad you gave the go-ahead for Corlis to do a story about Antonelli’s,” he said, heading for Canal Street on the other side of the French Quarter.

  “I am too,” she replied, stealing a glance across the front seat. “I’ll have to warn Daddy to be at the shop so Corlis can talk about the ‘generations’ as she mentioned, but I won’t tell him exactly what the thrust of the story is. He’ll complain afterward, but I know the rest of us will love it, and I’m sure it will be good for business, which is the main point.”

  When Jack pulled up in front of his Julia Street flat, he turned off the ignition and looked over at Serena.

  “I’m going to have to go into radio silence for a little while,” he announced in a subdued tone of voice.

  Given his lack of response at the Duvallon’s table when the matter of housing came up, Serena took Jack’s latest announcement as an early warning signal, rather like an alert that a hurricane might be coming her way.

  “Going into ‘radio silence’? What does that mean... exactly?”

  Serena suddenly wondered if the old Jack had just resurfaced and he was about to become Mr. Elusive for the first time in months. In what could turn out to be a moment of colossal irony, just that week she’d finally broken it to her mother—who subsequently told her father—that Jack Durand, the newspaper reporter her family had met at the airport the day she left for Venice, had become the new man in her life. She’d even had the temerity to say that she’d brook no negative comments if she chose to spend the night with him. Her mother nervously asked her if it was “serious between you two?” Serena had smiled a wee bit smugly and had replied, “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  Meanwhile, Jack was staring out his windshield at the balcony of his flat in the row of brick, landmarked buildings that fronted an entire block of Julia Street.

  Finally, he answered, “Radio silence just means that this week I’m tackling a raft of very dicey interviews for the Katrina series.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  Jack continued without a pause, “Tomorrow I’ll be up in the capitol grilling some politicos about past policies. After that, I have to talk my way into the Army Corps of Engineers’ headquarters where I remain rather unpopular after the last big hurricane stories I did. Next up is driving down river to talk to the Coast Guard. Then there are some new levee czars I have to track down, and then, hopefully, I’ll nail some retired hydraulic engineers and—”

  “I get it, I get it!” Serena interrupted, unable to mask her irritation at the lineup of excuses he had marshaled to say he was going off the grid.

  On one hand, she completely understood he would be buried in work in order to get the stories done by the August 29th deadline. Even so, his long litany of To Do’s sounded to her rather like a case of “He doth protest too much.”

  “Serena?” Jack’s expression had become unreadable.

  “No need to provide me with a laundry list,” she declared. “Just say it: what you’re telling me is that we won’t be seeing each other much, right?”

  She knew a brush off when she heard one.

  “Now don’t be looking at me that way, Serena!” Jack demanded. “This is about the way I have to report a story that’s this big and this important. It’s not about us! Man, sometimes I think you’re the one with the PTSD.”

  Shocked by this accusation she shot back, “What are you talking about? I wasn’t even here for Katrina, remember?”

  “I’m not talking about the storm. I’m talking about Las Vegas.”

  “What does that crack mean?” she exclaimed, sensing a vein in her neck had begun to throb.

  “You know what it means... that you think I’m pulling away from you.”

  “Well, aren’t you?” she accused. “You suddenly tell me you’re about to do your usual disappearing act, now that I’m home and after you made absolutely no comment about my eventually wanting to move out of my family’s place. What am I supposed to think?”

  Jack stared at her across the car with a puzzled expression and then he said quietly, “Do you know what I really wanted to say at dinner when you mentioned you might create an apartment for yourself on the third floor of the shop?”

  “No, what?” she snapped. “‘Great idea?’”

  “Now, there you go again,” he said, leaning toward her to seize her hand, but she pulled away. Undeterred, he continued, “I wanted to say, ‘Hold it right there, Ms. Antonelli! No need to hire a carpenter. I want you to come live with me. On Julia Street.’” He pointed through the windshield. “Right there, on the second floor.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say that?” she challenged. “Your silence was totally embarrassing.”

  Jack paused and inhaled deeply.

  “’Cause I can’t say that I want us to live together... to be together to anybody but you. Not yet, anyway.”

  “And why is that?” she demanded, unable to hide her exasperation. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to move in with Jack without feeling more confident that their relationship wouldn’t be an on-again, off-again nightmare like she’d had with Marco in Las Vegas—and Jack had had with Lauren Hilbert.

  Jack replied in a weary tone, “Until I’m out the other side of reporting this frigging story, I’ve got to just keep putting one foot in front of the other while I keep my mouth shut.”

  “But why does that prevent you from telling me what’s going on with you?”

  “I just did tell you and it made you angry.”

  Serena was brought up short by his convoluted statement.

  “You gave me your travel itinerary,” she retorted. “What’s making me angry is knowing that you only have told me part of what’s really going on. I just know that you’re leaving out something important. And by the way, Jack,” she added parenthetically, “I’m not even sure I would move in with you as an alternative to having my own place at the shop.”

  Jack grasped the steering wheel and said, “You wouldn’t?”

  “Not until I understand the reasons for how you behaved just now in front of Corlis and King—your best friends! You went into radio silence with all of us around the table when our discussion brushed against the subject of our future together. You’re not fooling me, Jack. There’s still a missing piece!”

  CHAPTER 19

  Jack inhaled deeply, looking as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and turned toward Serena who remained sitting stiffly in the passenger seat.

  “I’ve never asked a woman to live with me,” he said in a low voice, “and it’s all I want to do at this moment.” With a nod toward his front door, he added, “I’d like nothing better than to have us go up those stairs, carry you over the threshold, and start a life together.”

  Serena stared across the car in shock.

  Had Jack Durand just proposed they get married, or at the very least, declare to the world they were officially a couple?

  Not exactly, Serena judged. What he’d just said to her held too many qualifiers and was the opposite of how he’d behaved at the Duvallons twenty
minutes earlier. Even so, she felt her heart soften and reached out to grasp the hand she’d rejected a few moments earlier.

  “Oh, Jack... what is it? What’s holding you back? Just tell me.”

  He turned and held her gaze, a look of abject misery invading his eyes.

  “The part that’s missing, as you put it, is that I-I’m dealing with something within my own family that also may involve the story. The rules I live under as a journalist say I can’t tell you—or anybody else except my editor—about it right now. I have to work through all the issues... confirm all the facts as best I can. But you have my word that I’ll explain every single background detail once the story hits the newsstands.”

  “I know you’re trying to tell me something that will put my mind at ease,” Serena said softly, “but I still don’t get it.”

  Jack nodded. “I know it all must sound very mysterious and convoluted, but I hope you can tell how much I mean what I’m saying. I want us to live together. It’s just that I can’t ask you to do that right now—publicly or privately. In fact, I can’t even elaborate any more about it than that, period. This hairball of competing interests is all I ever think about—except you.”

  At length, Serena lifted both hands and framed his face, the stubble on his jaw line pressing against her palms. This was a far different response than Jack once gave her when they sat at dinner at the Danieli in Venice. She ducked her head, kissed him gently on the lips, and then offered a sad smile.

  “Other than wrestling with my own crazy family and plotting the great comeback at Antonelli’s, you’re all I ever think about, either.” She paused, and then asked, “Shall we go upstairs?”

  “So you won’t build yourself an apartment, right?” he asked, his brow furrowed.

  She tempered her next words by bestowing another feathery kiss on his lips.

  “It’s probably a very good idea if we slowed this train down a bit,” she suggested.

  “Damn it, Serena... that’s pretty much the opposite of what I want!”

  Then, why didn’t you say in front of Corlis and King that you wanted me to live with you? she demanded silently. The mixed signals he’d been sending out tonight were driving her nuts!

  But instead of voicing those thoughts, some instinct for self-preservation prompted her to say instead, “Look, Jack... let’s be logical. Clearly, we both have a lot of family and professional stuff to work through right now... so... it’s probably good that we each have our own place, wherever it’s located. If this is going to make sense for us for the long term, we can afford to slow down and take some of the pressure off.”

  Jack shot her a doubtful look, and Serena could tell his reporter’s mind was considering every word she said—and how she said it. In the next second, the thought came to her that she either had to trust this man that he truly had her welfare at heart—as well as his own—or break off the relationship right now. She took a deep breath, wondering if this was Las Vegas all over again... or something new and wonderful? In her mind’s eye she could see the whirling blur of a roulette wheel she’d passed when she walked through the hotel’s casino every night on her way to the theater to perform her backstage duties for Marco’s Cirque de Roma show.

  She decided to bet every last chip.

  “It’s okay, Jack,” she reassured him quietly. “Share all the behind-the-scenes details with me when you can—or when you’re ready.”

  Relief flooded his handsome features and he pulled her roughly against his chest so that she found herself virtually sprawled across the car’s front seat. His lips slanted over hers and he kissed her with the intensity of a drowning man who clung to the hope of finding safe harbor.

  “Hey, scribe,” she gasped when he finally released her. “Look how we’re steaming up the windows.”

  His eyes were smoke signals telling her they’d be in his four-poster bed as soon as he could reach for the door handle and help her out of the car. Without further conversation, they exited the cramped space. Jack swiftly seized her hand, hustled her through the front door, and up the stairs to his flat.

  A single lamp illuminated the high-ceilinged bedroom, leaving the tall, mahogany highboy and marble fireplace in shadow. A look of hunger tinged with desperation invaded Jack’s expression as he took her in his arms and then slowly began removing her clothing, piece by piece.

  “Oh, baby... just look at you,” he murmured, pushing her gently onto his bed. “My Serenissima...”

  She watched, riveted by the view, as he speedily removed his own clothes and leaned a naked knee on the mattress, hovering above her for a long moment before lowering his lean body next to hers, facing her nose to nose.

  “Signorina Antonelli,” he whispered, “La Contessa of Julia Street.”

  Arching an eyebrow she whispered back, “Not yet... but maybe some day, Giovanni.”

  During the next three weeks, Jack was in and out of New Orleans reporting his story, while Serena kept busy consulting with clients and creating costumes from Allegra’s sketches and her own. He regularly kept in touch by text or phone and Serena decided that, for now, she’d have to be satisfied that Jack had told her all he could about his newspaper assignment and some bizarre connection involving the Durands.

  For Jack’s part, he finally told his sister Sylvia that she could let his family know he’d officially broken up with Lauren. Even so, he had yet to introduce the new woman in his life to other members of his family besides his sister, Marielle—nor had Serena brought him home to meet her clan.

  Before going public beyond their close friendship with the Duvallons, Serena had determined it was probably best to put some time and distance between the love they’d declared for each other and his ending his relationship with the woman he’d kept company with for nearly a decade. Serena’s other reason for keeping their respective families in the dark was Jack’s current project for the Times-Picayune.

  For several days she’d turned over in her mind the fact that Jack’s father and two uncles had been involved in various professions having to do with water... his father working as an hydraulic engineer at the French Quarter pumping stations, she remembered him saying once, and one of his uncles having been a barge captain until he’d been injured on the job and retired.

  She thought, suddenly, of the scandals Jack had related about public monies stolen from the Venetian MOSE water gates project. Was he worried that his own family might have somehow been “on the take” or involved in well-known cases of governmental bribery and fraud in the “Third World State of Louisiana?”

  But what families with a history of many generations in New Orleans didn’t have a scandal or two in their closets, she mused? Lord only knew what Cosimo Antonelli or his forebears might have done over the years running the family costume company in the Central Business District. How had the various generations of Cosimos dealt with demands associated with building permits, police protection, and wily competitors? Jack should have surmised that she certainly wasn’t one to throw any stones.

  The one thing she knew for certain about Jack as a journalist was that he was rock solid honest. What still had her worried, however, were the undisclosed reasons that this mysterious link between his family and the story he had agreed to write obviously troubled him deeply.

  As it turned out, Corlis McCullough’s TV piece for WJAZ about the “Rebirth of Antonelli’s Costume Company” resulted in a colorful video profile of Serena Antonelli describing her time in Venice studying under the celebrated Allegra Benedetti. Corlis’ narration focused on “New Orleans’ talented master designer’s plans to incorporate Italian-style carnival fashions in her newest elaborate and elegant creations for the company’s local and national clients.”

  Much to Serena’s relief, the fact that younger members of the Antonelli family were assuming more responsibility for managing the company’s post-Katrina rebirth was only mentioned in a single sentence.

  The next thing the Antonelli clan knew—and unbeknownst even to
Jack—the Times-Picayune fashion editor saw WJAZ-TV’s story and immediately initiated a large, pictorial spread about the glittering new “elegant and authentic” costumes now available to rent, or to be commissioned at the family-owned enterprise.

  “I’ll just bet that Cosimo nearly blew a gasket when he saw that ‘reborn’ part on TV and the emphasis in the print piece on everything new we’re trying to do around here,” Gus commented dryly as he tacked a copy of the article on the company bulletin board in the employees’ lounge.

  Sipping from a cup of Café du Monde’s brand of dark roast coffee laced with chicory, Serena grinned and replied, “Well, he grunted that Antonelli’s had been alive for more than a century and didn’t need ‘birthin’ no new babies’ in his opinion, but I think he was actually pretty happy with all the notice we’re getting. He liked Corlis’ story on WJAZ the best, though, ’cause it showed him at the head of the conference table when she did the voice-over section about the history of the firm.”

  The best news was that the phone soon started ringing off the hook with various krewe captains wanting to make appointments to see what the fuss was all about. At lunch at Felix’s Oyster Bar on Royal Street celebrating Jack’s return to New Orleans after another week away, Serena explained she’d had a hard sell convincing potential clients “that the higher prices Antonelli’s has to charge to achieve the quality that will make the costumes stand out is a better choice than ordering from Asia—and never being sure what the packages are going to contain when they arrive.”

  “And how are you doing on that score?” Jack asked, as a dozen char-grilled oysters arrived, still sizzling on the platter. “Convincing the krewes to patronize you, I mean?”

  Serena shrugged. “I win some and lose some, but I’ve persuaded a few big fish to see things the Antonelli way and place large orders.”