by Ezra Blake
Chris is still mourning, he supposes, but not the way he used to mourn. Grief comes to him infrequently, in split-second bursts like camera flashes. It’s vast and undifferentiated. He isn’t grieving Joy. He can’t. He only grieves the man who could have loved her.
They arrive at the meeting point at approximately a quarter to ten. Ivan’s watch has a tendency to slow by a minute or so each year, but it was a gift—a gold Cartier Tank, one of the first hundred produced—so he wears it anyway.
“So, how will we recognize him?” Chris is eternally fidgeting with the top button of his linen shirt, opening and closing. Opening. Closing.
“I’ve worked with his father,” Ivan hedges. “I assume they bear some resemblance.”
Chris buries his hands in his pockets as they approach Coffee and Sandwich, the most nondescript coffee shop in Naples. The air is saturated with the scent of espresso and baking bread. Middle-aged Italian men sit at the outdoor tables and gesticulate loudly to each other. The two of them look supremely out of place, but people tend to stare at Ivan wherever he goes—few redheads his age have retained their natural color—so it’s no surprise here.
Herr Latzke is also an outlier. He texts and sips his iced coffee, his skin like bleached cotton in the mid-day sun. He’s petite, the shortest among them by far, with thin wrists and narrow shoulders. He looks far younger than Ivan knows him to be, and for a moment, he second-guesses himself. Perhaps the two of them haven’t met after all. Perhaps there was a secret child, a sperm bank, or some such miracle.
“Excuse me.”
When Latzke sets his smartphone face down on the table and peers over his frameless glasses, the doubt evaporates. His face is squarer but essentially unchanged, and his irises, always so shockingly pale, expand against the painful glare. “Doctor Skinner.”
Ivan sits with no regard to Christopher’s position or disposition. Chris can wander the shop and break glasses for all he cares—this is an event, and he won’t be distracted. “Demoted to surnames,” he muses. “Has it really been that long?”
“You worked hard for your title, Doctor. It would be a shame not to use it.”
“And I suppose you worked hard for yours.” He scans Latzke from the tabletop to the top of his head. “Is it…Severin? Silvan?”
“Stefan.”
“A lovely name.”
“Please tell your friend to sit, Ivan.”
Chris flushes pink and yanks a chair from the adjacent table. “Sorry,” he mutters. Stefan purses his lips, and he adds, “I’m—it’s Chris. Christopher Dour. Hi.”
So much for the alias.
“I hope your flight was without complications,” Ivan interjects, if only to give Chris a moment to pull himself together. “My colleagues’ patients sometime face difficulties, even though—”
“We fly private. There are no complications.”
“Of course.” Ivan takes the hint. “In any case, I don’t believe I’ve seen the jet myself.”
“You will see it soon. It is much faster to reach the compound by flying. We have a suite prepared for you, as a token of gratitude. We understand that an exchange of services is inconvenient, but my father insisted.” His small fingers twitch on the tabletop. “He is eager to work with you again. He says you are aging, and now is the time for structure.”
Ivan laughs loud enough to make Christopher flinch. “Some things never change,” he says. “How is he? Spry as always, I hope?”
“His health is declining. I am transitioning into his role.”
His gaze falls to his lap. He blinks once, composes himself. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he says, “but you’ll make a fine president. I’m glad you’ve chosen succeed him.”
“I was the logical second choice.” Stefan purses his lips and pushes his glasses up his nose. “We can discuss your request now? If our client is happy with your services, we execute our end of the agreement immediately. I assume your taste in demographics has not changed.”
He glances to Christopher, who is staring intently at the table card—an Italian advertisement which he certainly can’t read. “Perhaps you could explain our options more fully.”
“Ah,” Stefan says dully. “For him. I wondered why you would contact me after so many years.”
“Now, Sil—” He clears his throat. “Stefan, I thought we’d moved past this. After university I was—”
“Our organization can find almost any kind of person,” Stefan says, shifting his full attention to Chris, who doesn’t return the favor. “No celebrities. No politicians. You specify the rest.”
Ivan sighs. He was hoping a decade would be long enough for Stefan to let go of his grudge.
“Christopher, this is your decision,” Ivan says dully.
When Chris finally meets his eyes, he looks as though he’s been asked to choose which of his remaining limbs to amputate. “I don’t know,” he says, to Ivan. “Not—nobody innocent, I mean, nobody…normal, nobody with a future. I don’t know what would feel right.”
And there is no point in pressing further; they both know Chris hasn’t thought this through. He’s taken pains to avoid it.
He turns to Stefan. “We’re looking for good health, good English, and no future,” he says. “Bonus points for guilty and abnormal. As for appearance…you know what I like.”
Stefan bites his lip and glances to the side.
“I realize it’s difficult to work with such vague specifications, but if you run into any snags, I’m happy to pay the difference.”
“If you will endure my father’s initiation supper, I doubt he’d charge the difference. He still speaks highly of you. At length.” A sharp glance. “As I am sure you are aware, this job is bait. I guarantee he will ask you to return full-time, but I understand if you must decline. The organization is as stifling as it was when you left, perhaps worse. And you are busy.”
Ivan cocks his head.
What is there to consider, really?
He won’t miss his current post. The research is dull and his colleagues duller—another circle he’s charmed his way into only to realize it was more seductive from the outside. There’s Chris to consider, of course, but Chris has no preference. Ever.
“Nonsense,” he says. “I would be honored to resume membership.”
Stefan’s thin shoulders tense. He clicks his tongue—it’s a habit Ivan has amputated from his own demeanor long ago, but then again, Stefan wouldn’t know that. He rises and slides a slip of paper across the table. “This is the address. I will contact my leads.”
“Stefan, darling, why the rush? Have another coffee. Stay and chat.”
His nose wrinkles and he reddens, which is the point. “I have another appointment,” he says. “We have new recruits en route, and I must coordinate their arrival.”
Ivan grins. “We could meet this evening. Mezedes and wine, perhaps?”
“No thank you,” Stefan says. “We will meet soon.”
The streets of Naples are narrow, ancient and uneven with no traffic laws to speak of. Pedestrians casually step out of the way of the motorbikes careening through the old town. Cesáre Novello lives in Chiaia, a waterfront neighborhood of colorful stucco where property values are forever climbing, and Ivan is not jealous. He loves Florence. He wouldn’t live anywhere else.
“Doctor, um, can you shake his hand first?”
“The greyhound still races without its handler, Christopher.”
He winds his tie around two fingers. “Yeah, but can’t you just…hit me or something? Please? It calms me down.”
“No.” Ivan raps the iron knocker against the door and stands back.
Their client, Cesáre, doesn’t answer—at least, he assumes the blonde, curvy woman in pink lipstick and a robin’s egg dress is not Cesáre. She stands with her lower back arched, thrusting her chest out to an almost comical degree. Ivan is carefully unperturbed.
“Doctor Skinner,” he says, extending his hand. “I’m here for Cesáre Novello.”
> “That’s my husband. I’ll tell him you’re here.” She has a grating California drawl. Her handshake is limp, and she doesn’t extend Chris the courtesy. She turns on the heel of her open-toed pump and beckons them inside.
The interior is chrome and glossy white marble. A chandelier with paper lanterns instead of candles hangs in the foyer, surrounded by a boxy, lopsided ceiling medallion. All the money in the world can’t buy taste.
Cesáre and his wife descend the floating glass staircase—ugly and impractical, but certainly dramatic. “Doctor Skinner,” he says, spreading his arms wide. “So good to meet you.” They shake hands. He’s tall and tan, wearing a suit with unfashionably wide shoulders. His brown scalp is as polished as a waxed apple. “I see you’ve met my lovely wife, Alyssa. This is your assistant?”
“Martin Guerre.”
“A fake name.” Cesáre smirks. “He didn’t look when you said it.”
“So is yours.”
“So it is, my friend, so it is.” He claps Ivan hard on the back. His jovial demeanor is so over-the-top that Ivan has no choice but to interpret it as threatening. “I can’t be too careful, especially after what happened to my last surgeon.”
Ivan sidesteps the touch to examine the single painting in the foyer, a vaguely cubist oil sketch framed on the far wall. In it, a jaundiced woman has been blown to pieces by the sheer force of artistic vogue. Her body parts mingle with a fragmented bicycle. He doesn’t recognize the name on the plaque.
“I won it at an auction in Milan last spring,” Cesáre says. “For a quarter million.”
“It’s an interesting composition.”
“Doctor Skinner, aren’t you going to ask me what happened to my last surgeon?”
“No,” Ivan says. “I thought it impolite.”
“He took a photo of the amputation for his portfolio. My personal security team took him for a nice stroll in the garden.”
“I assure you, Signore Novello, I wouldn’t dream of overstepping professional boundaries. I didn’t even bring my cellphone.”
“That’s what I like to hear!” Another friendly clap on the back, as though he’s trying to pop Ivan’s shoulder out of the socket. “To business, then. Follow me.”
The dining table is a massive slab of raw granite perched atop two steel pyramids. It looks ready to topple over and smash through to the basement. White walls extend two stories up to a white balcony with glass railing, a vaulted white ceiling, and a skylight which must look incongruous from above. It’s all so bland; his only impression is that it must be impossible to keep clean.
Alyssa slips into the kitchen; Cesáre pours wine. He and Ivan make unpleasant small talk about the house while Chris stares at his drink and neglects his conversational duties. Ivan answers every leading question with vague assent. It’s a daring design, yes. The craftsmanship is indeed interesting.
At last, Alyssa returns. She’s pushing an upright wheelchair. “Sorry that took so long,” She says with a bubbly, forced chuckle. “She didn’t want to get out of bed.”
“Doctor Skinner, this is my ward, Monica. Monica, your new surgeon, Ivan Skinner.”
Monica stares through him with dark, mascara-heavy eyes. She’s a tiny thing with a crisp black bob and chapped lips. She wears a black tasseled flapper dress which flops off the edge of the chair. Her legs have been amputated at the hip.
“Forgive her. She’s not fond of strangers.”
Ivan smiles. “I’m sure we won’t be strangers for long.”
“Oh,” she says, drawing the word into two syllables. Her voice is deep and distant, as though she’s half-asleep. “Are you here for my arms?”
Alyssa stands, rattling the silverware, and hurries into the kitchen.
“We should discuss the procedure,” Ivan says, “if you don’t mind.”
“Monica’s left arm. And depending on the quality of the finished product, we might call you back for the right.”
Across the table, Monica crumples in on herself.
“At the shoulder?” Ivan asks.
“At the shoulder. Her biceps are becoming unattractively pronounced, don’t you think? I suspect she’s been exercising when we’re not around.”
At long last, Christopher looks up from his wine. “She needs exercise if you want to keep her so thin,” he says.
“Your appetizer is ready!”
Alyssa sets a bowl of salad on the table and serves them one at a time, starting with her husband. “It’s a salmon Caesar salad,” she says, and giggles. “Since you’re Cesáre today.”
He smacks her hard across the face. She stumbles backward.
“Never discuss my identities with company.”
She blinks several times, pastes on her smile, and resumes forking salad onto their plates. Cesáre turns to face him. “I’m sorry. You know how air-headed American women can be.”
Ivan nods. Perhaps this isn’t the time to mention that salad is not technically an appetizer.
They eat salad and lamb shank in tense silence, and afterward, Cesaré insists on touring the suite alone, so they can discuss numbers. Christopher’s face blanches as though he’s suggested amputations for everyone.
“Relax,” Ivan says, touching the small of his back.
“What do I—”
“Learn from them. Comfort them,” he says. “You can hold your own.”
With Ivan gone, the Novello wives command his attention. Alyssa’s posture has straightened; gone is the ridiculous sex-bomb arch in her spine. They perch on spotless white parlor furniture and pass furtive glances back and forth.
With Ivan gone, he has no choice but to look at Monica: so pale she’s nearly translucent, so thin she’s barely present at all. A shadow of a girl.
And with Ivan gone, Chris falls silent. He has nothing to say.
“So. How long have you been his slave?”
Alyssa is grinning. She relaxes into a slouch, and between the first word and the last, her voice drops from a lively soprano to a dark, syrupy contralto.
“Uh.” Chris thinks for a moment. Is that rude? Is it true? Does it matter? “About a year,” he says. “But he kept me confined a lot of the time, so I lost track.”
She smirks at Monica, who offers a chapped smile in return. “Three years for me. I had a nice tenure-track position teaching cognitive linguistics until I decided to vacation on the Amalfi coast.”
“She stripped, too. Cesáre prefers her stage persona.”
Chris blinks—he wasn’t expecting Monica’s input. “I’m…sorry this is happening to you.”
Monica laughs bitterly. “You’re only one leg up on me.”
“How you can act so nonchalant about this?”
She shrugs. “I’m right handed.”
“My husband has guns all over the city. What else can we do?”
“What about the embassy?”
“No phone,” Alyssa says. “And besides, I’m a citizen by marriage now.” She shakes her head. “He seemed so perfect, so charming…I dropped everything for him. Cut all ties back home.”
“Me too. Even if I made it back I’d have nowhere to go.” Monica says it with a laugh in her voice, like it’s some sort of joke. “I was backpacking alone. I stayed because my hostel friends were protesting the pollution crisis. Did you know there’s a whole town east of here that’s become a dumping ground for toxic waste? This region has twenty percent more cancer than the rest of Italy.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, it does.” Her eyes narrow. “He said he was some industry bigwig. He treated me and my friends to lunch, and it seemed like he was going to help. And it’s like she said,” a glance to Alyssa, “he was charming. Eventually we were meeting one on one. The whole thing went on so long that my tourist visa was going to expire, and that’s when he popped the question.”
“He proposed to you?”
“With a gigantic diamond. It’s somewhere in the sewer now.”
Alyssa rests an affectionate han
d on her shoulder. “I hated her so much for stealing my husband.”
“We were always at each other's throats.”
“Like feral dogs.” Alyssa smiles. “I think that’s what he wanted. I tried to leave him when she moved in, and that’s when I first met his colleagues. That’s also when he started hitting me.”
“That’s terrible.”
They exchange an amused glance. Monica asks, “Doesn’t yours hit you?”
“Not really. Not anymore.”
“Hm.” She purses her lips. “Well, we wouldn’t be telling you this if we thought you could do anything about it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“It gets lonely around here,” Alyssa says, at the same time Monica says, “We’re bored.” They look at each other and laugh.
“I go to social events with my husband a few times a month, but aside from that, we only have each other.”
“There’s no rivalry anymore,” Monica adds. “She takes care of me full time.”
Alyssa says, “She’s the best thing that could have happened to me, except maybe an assassination.”
That gets a smile out of Chris. “Of you, or Cesáre?”
“Either.”
“So what’s stopping you?”
Alyssa’s pink lips purse; she glances to Monica, who meets her gaze. “Well…” she says, “it’s hard to explain.”
“You don’t have to. That’s unfair, sorry, I shouldn’t—”
“No, no. It’s alright.” She smiles faintly. “Life is unfair. People like him end up with money and power and people like us end up—well, like us. That’s nobody’s fault.”
“It’s Cesáre’s fault,” Monica says, scowling.
“But it’s worth staying if somebody needs you. I think—”
Cesáre’s booming voice echoes from the hallway, and both women fall silent. Monica shrinks in on herself. Alyssa arches her back and puts on a sultry pout; it flips to a smile once she’s sure Cesáre has gotten a good look at it. “Hello, dear,” she says.
He grabs Monica by the scruff of her neck and yanks her dress strap off her shoulder, exposing one flat breast. “Here,” he says, making a slicing motion with his finger. “Save the collarbone.”