Ermanno. Ermanno, there at Il Sotto Abbasso.
I remembered the last time I’d seen him, staring at me from the dark end of the hall as I stood before Sri Putra’s door. Of course he’d read the note I’d found, too. It couldn’t have been hard to guess when I’d come, with the club open only on Sunday nights. Did he think I’d have the keris with me here of all places? What did he want?
“Ne suona un’altra?” the pianist asked.
I remembered myself and where I was, what I wore. Though part of me ached to play another song, I could never do it now. Not with that man boring holes into me, drifting closer to the stage, his smile widening as my questions mounted.
“Non posso.” I set the sax on the piano and shook my head. “Grazie, grazie, grazie!”
Most people made room for me when I stepped down. I tried to be gracious, thank the strangers who spoke words of gratitude and praise, but I had only one thing on my mind.
Ermanno bowed in mocking surprise when I stopped before him. “What luck to see you!” he said. “I have wanted to talk with you again about the keris. I must say, you look lovely.” He acknowledged my outfit with two theatrically unfurling hands—a jester’s gesture. Maybe he’d been hiding behind a painting at Borghese Gallery after all.
“This has nothing to do with luck and you know it. I don’t know what your game is, but I thought you should know that the keris is gone.”
His mask cracked. “Gone?”
“Yes,” I said, deciding in that moment the exact words I’d need to speak to put an unequivocal end to his interest in me and my blade. “I sold it.”
I’d seen anger before, but never anything like the metamorphosis of Ermanno’s expression. He bared his teeth, clamped them together. His lips paled and brows formed a stark black line. His face turned the color a person devoid of oxygen might turn just before death, a sickly purple. Black eyes grew larger as he craned close, his animated hands balled into fists.
Move.
My fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and flight won; I bolted, losing myself in the crowd, heading for the door. When someone grabbed my shoulder, I spun around, ready to defend myself. Not Ermanno. Noel. I threw my arms around him, scanning the crowd, but the Italian had disappeared. This was no credit to magic, just the cunning skill of a stalker, a sneaker, and a schemer; no doubt Ermanno knew how to use shadow to his best advantage. And whether my certainty was normal human instinct or not, I knew that—even as enraged as he’d been—Ermanno wouldn’t show himself again in this place, not with my friend near.
“You’re shaking,” Noel said.
“Jacked on adrenaline,” I told him, which was true enough.
I didn’t question his fortuitous reappearance, just let him lead me out, up the stairs and through the doors, his hand secure over mine. He hadn’t seen the Italian, that much was clear, and I didn’t want to get into another argument about my safety. Not now, when Noel and I had a chance to resolve our angry words. Not when he’d seen me with the saxophone, stripped bare in a way he could never have anticipated. He’d have questions, and I was ready for them. What a surprise to be so relieved that he knew the truth.
The promise of rain pricked my Castinian senses when we stepped outside. “I want to explain this to you,” I began.
“Let’s just walk,” Noel said, his expression an incomprehensible muddle.
“All right.”
“I can write backward and upside down,” he said a minute later. “Have I ever mentioned that?”
“No. No, I don’t think so.”
The sky let loose on us then, and by the time we reached our hotel, we were beyond drenched. I was grateful the lobby was empty when we stepped inside, because I couldn’t imagine what I looked like in Noel’s sopping coat and my skimpy outfit. I’d known wearing it would invite disaster, just not a hundred shades of it.
I crossed my arms over my chest as the elevator began its ascent. “I really do want to talk about this,” I said through my shivers. “Tonight.”
“Hot shower first,” he said. “Then talk.” He pulled his drenched silk shirt away from his chest.
I wanted to say something about sweet dreams and kisses, but before I could form the words, the door opened and Noel stepped out without looking back. I knew then my worries were anything but behind me.
Out of Time
Castine, Maine
LATE OCTOBER 2000
Moira and Maeve are sixteen
Soon it will be over, Moira thought. It will be done. Her body stiffened as Ian kissed her neck and put his hand under her shirt to feel a breast.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“Yes,” she said.
He kissed her, but her lips felt tight and hard; she couldn’t seem to help it. Hurry.
Leaves crackled under the blanket when he rolled onto his back. The half-moon leaked enough light to reveal his scowl.
“I’m sorry.” She rearranged her shirt and sat up.
“You’re just not into it.”
Fear of Maeve sensing her emotions would ruin this experience, Moira knew; she’d blocked so much and so hard that she wouldn’t let herself feel anything at all. And that was wrong. Because for all she felt anxious about this night and how it would change her and her life, she wanted to make love with Ian. She wanted to do this for him and for herself. She touched his cheek. “Sorry, I’m just nervous.”
“Maeve Leahy is never nervous.”
The words broke her. She stretched out and lay atop him. “You’re right. I forgot, for a second, who I was.”
She opened, felt all: his hands on her, his mouth, the rush of emotion at her core, the rise of desire.
“Touch me,” he said, and she put her hand along the seam of his jeans. He moaned and unzipped them himself, then kicked them off as Moira stripped her own clothes.
They were two naked people then, on a blanket in the leaves in the woods. Ian’s face hovered over her as he kissed her mouth. There was pain as he pushed inside. When he stopped and rested his lips on hers, Moira felt they shared the same breath.
“I lied.” He lifted his face so that their eyes locked as tightly as their bodies. “I’ve never done this before.”
Moira smiled and her eyes teared.
“Are you okay? Does it hurt?”
“A little,” she said. “But I’m still glad.”
“I love you, Maeve.”
“I love you, Ian.”
The reality of her situation pierced Moira like never before. She loved Ian Bronya. She, sixteen and a virgin until that moment; she, of Liszt and Jane Eyre and the garden; she, Moira Leahy. And he loved Her of the pirate dreams and golden notes; Her of bravery and risk, of football tackling and blood-sister making and avventura; Her, Maeve.
Moira couldn’t compete with that. She never could.
But maybe she didn’t have to. Other things bound people together. What could possibly unite them more than making love? Maybe, someday, they’d even become a family.
She gripped Ian’s shoulders and closed her eyes. She thought of sperm, of eggs splitting into equal parts; of ham cooking on a Sunday morning and eggs breaking over a bowl, their yolks dripping thick and sizzling in the pan; of eggs in a robin’s nest, blue and speckled and full of hatchlings who’d pecked away at the hard curve of their existence, hoping for just a glimpse of sky.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
APPRENTICE
I don’t know why I went back, but there I was in Il Sotto Abbasso, the under down. I must’ve died somewhere along the way, because I was just a skull, all bone and eyeholes, sitting on a shelf beside a fleet of other heads. While my cranium comrades had bright lights flickering in their open mouths, though, my closed one held only a weakling flame.
Water flowed like a river beneath a door bearing the bloodstained X mark of a Jolly Roger. There was death here. There was death. The keris appeared below me in the swirl, and then Ermanno was there, staring up at me with his flawless smile. I understood his
intent: to destroy my keris himself if the water didn’t do it first.
I struggled until my skull tipped into the subterranean sea. Bone cracked against blade. My flame all but extinguished. The other skulls popped and jumped above me, their candlelight scorching the ceiling. One by one, they disappeared, until I was left alone with my paltry light and the bull-like sound of Ermanno’s breathing.
My light would go out soon. I would go out soon. And then the world shifted, the scene changed.
My skull rolled down a hill, hit hard against compacted mud. I heard the spatter of water above me, the swirl of it below, then a strident horn. I screamed.
The moon stared at me through my Roman window as I sat up in bed. Life. Real. I hoped so, anyway.
The door between my room and Noel’s opened and light flooded in.
“Christ! Are you all right?” he asked. “Are you being murdered or something?”
“No.”
“No, you’re not all right?”
I squinted up at him and tried to think sense. “I mean, no, I’m not being murdered, and yes, I’m all right. Just another dream. What happened?”
“No idea. I just got out of the shower a while ago.”
That’s right. Noel and I were going to talk. I remembered showering, then thinking I’d lie down for just a minute. I felt my hair, still wet, and knew I hadn’t been out for long. I wish I’d been under the covers, though. My teeth chattered.
“Are you sick?” he asked.
“Just cold.” Chilled to the bone. “I owe you an apology.”
“Let’s sort it out tomorrow. Sleep now.”
“I can’t. Tonight was a disaster.”
“No.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t. I know something now, for sure. You’re the red woman, Maeve Leahy. I thought you were, deep down.”
The red woman. The flesh along the back of my throat tickled.
“You were amazing,” he said. “Why do you hide your talent?”
“I’m not hiding it. I just don’t play anymore.” I pulled the blanket up and over my legs. “Music is part of another life. Another Maeve.” The Before Maeve.
“What happened?”
“It’s complicated.” How much more of my lack of disclosure would he take? What, exactly, did I owe him? “Come here,” I said. “There’s a glare.”
He stepped up so I could look him in the eye. He’d changed into jeans and a soft blue sweater.
“Noel, I really am sorry. I said a lot I shouldn’t have, especially about you and your mom. I’m not one to judge in that area. My mother and I barely speak.”
“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry if what I said hurt you, too, but I’m not sorry tonight happened. It was … liberating.”
I remembered how fast he’d left me when those elevator doors opened. “Will you go back to Paris now?” I asked, steeling myself for a blow. “Find a beautiful woman and have an affair?”
“That’s not what I want,” he said. “You know what I want. The problem is, I never know what you want and I’m sick of searching for smoke signals over this.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, that’s the easy way out. This time I want you to say it. Tell me what you want.”
I dug my fingers into the blanket and leaped. “You might’ve decided that you’re out of patience for whatever we are or could be, that it’s not worth it. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to try. But I’d like it if …” I hugged my knees to my chest, tried not to shake.
His brows hunkered low. “If you think you owe me—”
“It’s not about owing anyone anything, Noel. I liked our kiss.” The words came out slush-tumble, shy and vulnerable, a truth spoken without the aid of a cold stone mouth while remembering the warmth of his real one. “I liked it very much.”
“But?” he asked quietly.
“I need time to get used to this. You might think I’ve had enough time, all the time in the world, too much time, time after time, and I’m not trying to be a tease, I’m just … I’m just …”
“Familiar words, just, just,” he said. “I picked them apart more ways that you can guess. Just, just, it’s not personal. Just, just, wait for me. Just, just, I’ll never be ready. Just, just, I’m not into you, but I’ll spare your feelings.”
I flinched. “It was never that. I mean, I’d never want to hurt you, but there was more. I wasn’t only trying to be nice.”
“That word, nice. I hate it. Nice has carved my guts up.”
The room fan shut off, and my words sounded loud in the newborn quiet. “Then maybe you’re right to stay away from me.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
He hesitated, then sat on the end of my bed. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
“You mean in the French class I kicked your butt in?”
He smiled back at me. “That one. I sat beside you because you were the most gorgeous creature there.”
I snorted. “You’ll look good in glasses. Some wire rims—”
“You’re the one who needs her eyes examined. But here’s what you didn’t know. I’d seen you before.”
“When?”
“That summer—your first, I think. You sat in the music room with headphones, your eyes closed and the most complex expression on your face. You were crying. Not sobbing, just tears leaking out of you, just …”
I remembered that occasion, because I’d visited the music room only once. Liszt had played through those headphones, and I’d cried for hours, envisioning Moira as she’d wanted to be. The experience landed me in the ER with the only migraine I’ve ever had and Kit hovering, so worried that even she threw up.
My relationship with music changed after that. Already it’d been months since music had come to me as a new song, since I’d sunk my saxophone in the bay. I recognized then that music might be poison for me. And while I knew melody and song would always be there—in stores and in elevators, on TV and blaring through other students’ earphones—I wouldn’t immerse myself in it if I could help it.
Not long after that, sounds churned in me again; but it wasn’t my music, the music I’d once heard on the wind. These notes were piano, and I felt them like thorns thrust in my temples. I shut my mind against them, the same way I used to block my sister. It drained me in the same way, too.
“That was a complicated time,” I said on a shiver.
“I thought it might be. What I’m trying to say, Maeve, is that I’m not afraid of your complexity. Just the opposite. But I can’t deny my complexity anymore. I’m more than a nice guy. I’m a man who’s attracted to you.” His voice lowered. “I’m a man who wants you.”
I pulled the covers higher, then realized he might read that the wrong way—or the right way—and put them down a little. Frankly, I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. His lips twisted as he watched me.
“Do you get these nightmares at home?” he asked.
I nodded, relieved at the turn of subject. “They’ve been worse lately. More intense.”
“Do you think they’re tied with that daydream, for lack of a better word? You know, with the bus?”
“Maybe.” I wove my fingers together and stared at my blanket-cloaked knees. “Kit wants to open my cranium and make sure everything’s properly oiled, all gears in place, you know. The complexity you mentioned, there might be more to that than you bargained for. Things happen with me, crazy things sometimes. I’m pretty much a mess.”
“I’ve always liked a good mess.”
I raised my eyes to see that his emanated sincerity. How many times had I walked into his studio to find him in madman mode? Sketching. Painting. Sculpting. Paint all over his hands. Why had I wasted so much time?
“Still cold?” he asked as my molars rattled together.
“Freezing.”
“Do you trust me?”
I paused. “Yes.”
“Then lie down. Come on,” he said when my eyes wide
ned.
I did, though my heart skittered like a live fish on the bottom of a boat. He walked away, and the light cut out from the other room. He returned with blankets, put them over me, around me. I felt a depression on the bed.
“Noel?”
“Trust. Show that you can.” He urged me onto my side, then lay behind me. Though covers clumped between us, he wrapped an arm around my middle. I shifted, shook.
“Kit told me about shivers and fevers once,” he said.
“I’m not sick.”
“She said you shiver when your body needs to raise its core temperature. With a fever, the body needs to cool down, but because of the sickness, signals get crossed and the message is that the body’s too cold. Effed-up signals equal shivers, see?”
“But I don’t have a fever. I’m not sick. I’m freezing.”
“Yes, we’ve already established that.” He rubbed a hand over my arm. “Tell me more about these dreams.”
I told him about the ever-present door and water. I even mentioned Ermanno’s role in my most recent nightmare. Mistake.
“Guy’s getting to you, Maeve. You need to stay away from those apartments.”
Any thoughts I’d had about revealing Ermanno’s actual presence at the jazz club vanished at the tone of Noel’s voice, the way his arms spasmed around me. A fantasy duel was one thing, but helpless damsel in distress was not a role I’d ever be comfortable with in reality.
To derail him, I talked more about my dream, added each remembered detail—which ended up derailing me, too.
“Being left by all those other skulls wasn’t what bothered me so much.” I stared into the darkness. “This will sound dumb.”
“Go ahead and sound dumb. I’m too tired to notice.”
“I had no light. It was like something Garrick said once about soul bonds—”
“Here we go.”
“—and my soul was smothered. I had no soul.”
“You’re right, it’s dumb. You definitely have soul.”
The Last Will of Moira Leahy Page 19