by Julie Sarff
Rip them off! My mind screams. Rip off your glasses and throw them to the ground!
“Superman!” I scream, and I daresay this time it is Brandon who is surprised. Being the consummate actor, he quickly recovers. Tactfully he ignores my outburst, which must be a hard thing to do. It must be very strange to have someone yell “Superman” right in your face. The obvious reply would be to ask why on God’s green earth I yelled such a thing. But Brandon doesn’t ask. Instead, to my utter astonishment, he grabs my hand and drops to one knee.
Suddenly the room begins to spin.
“I am on my knees…” he murmurs.
Clearly, I can see that…
“…to ask you to forgive me.”
Unable to contain myself, I yell the name of another superhero.
Brandon pauses briefly. If he is worried that this conversation will go nowhere due to my inability to do anything other than scream things like “Superman” and “Flash,” he doesn’t show it. To be honest, I don’t know why I screamed that second name. My head is being flooded with random thoughts.
What will I do? What will I do if he asks me to explain myself? If forced to explain why I am yelling the names of superheroes, I suppose I will have to say that the first time I yelled the name of a superhero was because Brandon looked very Clark Kentish, but, of course, he doesn’t look like Flash at all; I think I just yelled that as some sort of exclamation like “Holy Buddha!” or “Jiminy Cricket” or “Sargent Pepper!”
“My dearest, Lily,” Brandon begins, “please forgive me. I was such an ass that day I followed you in Arona. Nothing came out right. I wanted to apologize but honestly, everything I said was wrong.”
“I don’t understand…h-how did you know I would be here?” I manage, trying to block the lustful images that keep popping into my head.
Brandon tilts his head, giving me a look that says, “You know how.”
“Rupa, told you!” I exclaim.
“Exactly. You see, these days I am very busy making donations to cat rescues. Of course, that is due to the horrible things the press said about me after the homeless cat fiasco. You’ll be happy to know, I had to make a very large donation to Rupa’s rescue before she would concede to give me any information. She was extremely angry.”
“You bought her off?” I mutter.
“I allowed a wonderful person to continue running an outstanding rescue that saves many lives,” he replies.
“How crafty!”
“Yes. Yes it was.” The smile on Brandon’s face grows even wider. “Look, Lily, if you think you could ever forgive me, then I promise I’ll never allow five months to go by without calling you again.”
Forgive him?
That’s right. He was mean to me. I almost forgot, what with all this holding of my hand and dropping to his knees and all.
But wait a minute. I will never forgive him. I am far too proud. Forget that I have not had sex in a long, long time. I may never have sex again. Forget the image of Brandon ripping off those Clark Kent glasses. I open my mouth to tell him how I will never forgive him, and how the two of us will never be together again, when Brandon does the most amazing thing. He lets go of my hand, reaches into the pocket of his slacks, and pulls out a little velvet sack. With a slow movement, he pulls several glittering objects out of the sack and gently presses them into my palm.
I stare down at them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Nine sparkling gems. Nine gems that look as if they have been cut in a hasty fashion. Nine gems of a very dark blue.
“Th-they can’t be…” I sputter.
Brandon climbs to his feet. “Oh, but I think they are.”
“Where did you get them?”
“That’s a story in and of itself,” he adds with a mysterious raise of his brow.
“Well?”
“Well, you remember that day when you chewed me out in the alley?”
“More like the day you cornered me in an alley. But yes, go on.”
“When I returned home, I was miserable. For a full hour I kept picking up the phone to call you. I wanted to explain how none of this has gone as planned. And it’s true; none of this has gone as planned. It’s a sad fact that despite my success in the acting world, I’ve never been very good when it comes to personal relations. So, you see when I was in the Congo…”
“Wait…what does this have to do with these jewels?” I interrupt.
“Hold on. I’m coming to that. When I was in the Congo, I had a lot of time to reflect on things. And I reflected on the fact that when it comes to personal relations, I have always picked truly horrible women.”
“Oh?”
“Now, don’t take offense,” he says, putting out his hand. “I don’t mean you. I mean Amanda and all my previous relationships. I think that when it comes to women, I am a poor judge of character.”
A strange, low hiss fills the air.
“No, no, no. I don’t mean you. Everything about you amazes me.”
It does?
“You, Lily Bilbury, are the opposite of Hollywood. You are unpretentious, big-hearted and a full-throttle optimist. But I began to think, as I whiled away time in my tent in the Congo, that since I am a poor judge of character, perhaps I should be careful about jumping into another relationship so quickly after the train wreck that was Amanda.”
“I see,” I say, wondering where this whole conversation is going.
“Yes, well, whenever we were in coverage in the jungle, which wasn’t often, I thought a million times about picking up the phone and calling you. But there was this part of me that thought, wait a minute, what am I doing? Is this a rebound relationship? Do I want to be with this woman? After all, sometimes you act a little crazy.”
The low hiss fills the room again, but Brandon remains undaunted. In fact, there is a strange gleam in his eye. He is a man with much to say and nothing is going to stop him now.
“I went back and forth like that for a long time. Thinking about calling you but then not following through. Instead, I always called my agent, Alexandria. I would call her, and I would lay out in detail how she needed to telephone you and tell you the Christmas bonus checks would be coming. I know it’s all strange. I can’t say what I was doing or thinking. It makes no sense— not calling you myself but rather having my agent call for some other trumped-up reason.”
He’s right. It makes no sense. In fact, it’s totally insane. It’s as if he were trying to send me some kind of code.
“Anyway, the long and short of it is I wasn’t sure about us. I needed time to think. But during my last days of filming The African Princess, I knew. I knew I wanted to be with you. And I also knew any woman in her right mind would not be very happy about being ignored for five months. So I hired the world’s most famous tenor to serenade you. I had big plans for my return. I was going to make it all up to you. But, of course, you know the rest.”
Ah, that I do. I stare sadly at the floor.
“I have to admit, when I arrived home and saw you there, with all those cats stuffed in my gym, I thought you were certifiable. All my doubts came flooding back. I’m sorry I acted so badly. What can I say?”
All of a sudden, Brandon grabs me and pulls me in close. He smells so darn good, like lumberjack mixed with aftershave and the salty air of the sea. But for some reason, I seize with fear.
“Lily,” he murmurs, “I decided that I like certifiable. If certifiable comes with a big heart like yours, then that is what I need. I ask you one last time, please forgive me.” His face is so close to mine that I can almost feel the brush of his stubble against my cheek.
“No!” I push him away. “I mean, wait a minute. None of that explains these gems you put in my hand.”
For a second, Brandon looks completely thrown off course. After all, he was leaning in for the kiss and we were so close. We were right there, but I stopped it. Why did I stop it? What’s wrong with me?
“Oh right,” he says, recovering himself. “I was gett
ing to that part. As I was saying, that day that I followed you into the alley…”
“Cornered me in the alley,” I correct, although my voice betrays me, and I am not quite as severe as I would like to be.
“Right, right you are— cornered you. Well, that was an awful day. I was very angry with myself for everything that had gone wrong. I spent the first hour contemplating calling you. Then I decided I needed to do something, make myself busy. So I decided to fix the leaky faucet in the kitchen.”
“Don’t tell me that thing is still dripping?” I ask, wondering why I care. I am standing here quite possibly holding some of the most precious gems in the world. And I have just pushed away the most eligible bachelor in the world. I have shielded myself from his kisses, and now I find myself inquiring about the faucet in Villa Buschi’s kitchen?
I am certifiable.
“It is still dripping,” he says. “I’ve spent a fortune on plumbers, and nobody can get it fixed. So anyway, I decided to get my tools from the garage. But I could never seem to find the right tools. I kept going in and out through the front door, and because I was angry about everything, I kept slamming the door shut. And guess what happened? On my fifth trip to the garage to find the right tool, I slammed the stupid front door so hard that the knocker fell off.”
“Oh no, that ugly gargoyle thing?” I let out a laugh. “That thing is hideous.”
“Yes, it fell to the ground and shattered. And guess what was hidden inside?”
“I don’t believe it…”
“I couldn’t either. How could it be? But when I bent down to pick up the shards of the knocker, all I could do was smile. The gems were scattered among the ruins of that ugly gargoyle. And looking at them caused it all to come back to me; that crazy day when you and Francesca smashed up my Faberge egg looking for the remnants of the French Blue. Yet here they were, lying scattered on my front terrace— nine little diamonds that look to be the exact same color as the Hope.”
“I don’t believe it…”
“Of course, I don’t know for sure that they are the actual remnants of the French Blue. I mean, they could be nine, dark blue, oddly-cut diamonds. But it seems like quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”
I nod slowly.
“I need to send them off to a specialist for examination. That’s the only way we’ll ever really know if they are the remnants. I’ve already arranged for their safe travel to a top gemologist at Harry Winston. If they believe these diamonds are in any way related to the Hope, they will work with the Smithsonian to try to prove it. They explained the technique for dating diamonds over the phone, but I’m afraid I wasn’t listening very closely. I was too excited. You see I took these gems to be a sign.”
Wait a minute. What is he saying? Here at last are the long lost French Blue diamonds, and he’s going to send them away?
“Now, Lily, don’t look like that— with your brow all furrowed. I know what you are thinking, but if these diamonds are related to the Hope then they belong to all of humanity.”
Right, right he is. But there for a moment I actually thought he was giving them to me. And I kind of thought…well, I don’t know what I thought. I mean, he was on his knees, and he was giving me diamonds and well, that does seem like the perfect time to pop the question.
“The thing is, Lily,” Brandon is talking very fast now, “as hard as it is to believe it, I do believe Francesca was right.” He breaks off and stares at me intently.
Yes, I do believe she was. My goodness, it was well over a year ago that Francesca persuaded me to help her search for these diamonds. She said Carlo Buschi talked to her from the beyond and told her of their existence. But we never found anything other than a bunch of useless lira. Now I wonder, how many precious objects did Carlo Buschi buy from antiquity smugglers and squirrel away from the world? Of course, what I hold in my hand could be complete fakes. Carlo Buschi sounds like he was the kind of nut who would pay an outrageous amount of money to acquire nine diamonds without verifying their authenticity.
“So, as I was saying, finding these stones on that day—that day when I was so upset after arguing with you. Well, I took it all as a sign. It’s a sign that you and I should be together…”
“It is?” I ask incredulously.
“It is,” Brandon laughs. “Who else but you would ever believe this whole crazy story?”
Nobody. Nobody would believe it. My goodness, Carlo Buschi must have been a horrible man to have accumulated all these fenced artifacts. And he must be dead, right? Despite Ca’ Buschi’s crazy gardener who told us otherwise, Carlo Buschi must really be dead. How else would Francesca have received the information from the beyond?
It’s all so mind numbing to ponder that I just stare straight ahead. I still can’t believe Brandon is here, in this place, and that he has found the lost diamonds. Abruptly Brandon does something that makes me snap to attention. He sweeps the diamonds out of my hand and places them back in the little velvet bag.
“There,” he says, putting the sack back in his pocket. “I’ll put them in the hotel safe.”
I must look a tad disappointed. But just then Brandon reaches into his other pocket and pulls out a check.
“Here.” He hands it to me. “It’s your Christmas bonus. Very late I know, so I added extra interest.”
He thrusts the piece of paper into my hand, and I unfold it slowly.
“5,000 euro?” I flush with shame. I’m not sure why I thought Brandon was gifting me some priceless diamonds. (That would be terribly romantic wouldn’t it? Especially if it had been accompanied by a wedding proposal.) But a check for 5,000 euros seems seedy, as if it is money for services yet to be rendered.
“I cannot be bought!” I yell. In my ears ring the battle cry of liberated women everywhere. I grab my bag and am ready to race out of The Lipari Luxury B and B by Debi. I will sail on the first boat back to Napoli; I don’t care how many people throw up along the way.
“What? Wait, Lily!” Brandon reaches out a hand to stop me. I shake it off.
“I’m not trying to buy you. It’s money you earned—with interest.”
I throw him a look.
“Alright, it’s true I added a lot of interest, but I know you are having a tough time of it at the ice cream shop.”
Darn Rupa, is there anything she hasn’t told Brandon? I am not some tragic heroine of a 17th century romance novel where my house and home are entailed to some bizarre male cousin and I have to take a job as a governess in order to make ends meet. No, I’m not. I can do it on my own. I turn to leave.
“Wait, don’t go,” Brandon says in a voice so soft and so soothing that I turn back around. Deftly he grabs the check out of my hand. “If it offends you, forget it. I revoke your Christmas bonus.” Brandon rips the check into smithereens. The pieces fall like confetti to the ground. I watch them circle to the ground and then look back up at Brandon. He looks so desperate and so lovely at the same time that I almost laugh.
“Come on, Lily. Give a guy a second chance. Say you’ll forgive me.”
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I must be stone.
“Absolutely.” My lips betray me. “Absolutely,” I murmur again, and in that instant, all is forgiven.
Chapter 10
Let me just say, dear reader, that I cannot tell you what happened next because it is nobody’s business. Oh wait. I can tell you some things. The minute I said, “Absolutely,” Brandon did a bit of his best acting to date and pretended like he was the tenor of Ravenna, re-serenading me right there on the plain tile floor of the lobby. He has a surprisingly clear baritone voice, and I blushed several shades of red. After which, the tenor of Ca’ Buschi showed me into The Lipari Luxury B and B by Debi’s dining room, where he ordered in a delicious meal from the local trattoria. I can also tell you that I saw very little of Lipari that week, and it wasn’t because of the bad weather. Oh, and one more thing I can tell you, a bit of advice actually, you should avoid renting room #5 in The Lipari L
uxury B and B by Debi because the bed is terribly, terribly squeaky.
*****
We spent five days of pure bliss together, chatting by the fire in the living room, ordering take out, and doing things that shall remain unmentioned. Outside a storm raged, but we didn’t mind, we had nowhere to go. Finally, on the sixth day, the sun made an appearance. Brandon and I ventured out to take in the sights of the island. We even visited a lingerie store because, well, I don’t really think anyone needs to know why we visited a lingerie store. That part goes without saying, doesn’t it? Maybe I shouldn’t have even brought it up. Anyway, we spent the whole day peeking in stores, eating fabulous food and looking at the incredible view. That night we stayed out really late drinking spirits and watching the enormous harvest moon climb overhead.
The next morning, I am just waking up, feeling all happy and cozy in this slightly rundown inn, when all of a sudden I hear Brandon racing up the stairs. Turns out, Brandon is a bit of an early bird, and he likes to make me breakfast. But this morning when he rejoins me in guestroom #4, he is not carrying a pancake-laden tray. In fact, he isn’t carrying a tray at all. By the look on his face, all is not well. “Hurry up,” he instructs. “Pack your things. We need to leave for Civita at once.”
I squint up at him, trying to make out his face by the sunlight that streams through the shutters. Today is my last day of vacation. Brandon and I are due to depart Lipari this afternoon. Being the wonderful man he is, and given the newness of our relationship, Brandon is unable to deny me anything. Sweetly he has agreed to accompany me to Civita di Bagnoregio to pick up the two stray cats from Beatta Cavale.
“Why?” I ask sitting straight up in bed. “I thought we were going to leave at noon.”
“I know. Forget that.” He begins throwing his clothes into a suitcase he has thrust open on the bed. “There’s a ferry in thirty minutes. We need to be on it.”
