“Who are you talking about?”
“Your new buddy, Ermanno. He stole my wallet.”
“Wait, wait, back up. You saw him at the apartment? He was there when you took the note? What happened?”
“I went to the apartment after I bought the tarts,” he said, hard-focused on the counter. “I’ll bet he followed me when I left. Or maybe he took it right there, in the hall.”
“Did you two argue?”
“No, I never saw him. But the hall was full of people, kids showing off their presents, that sort of thing. He could’ve been anywhere. He seems to be everywhere at once.”
I wanted to shake him. “Seriously, Noel, do you hear yourself? You were in a hall full of kids and maybe one of them did take your wallet, yet you blame Ermanno—someone you didn’t see. Why? Because he can appear out of thin air, thanks to his astounding skill in dark magic?”
Giovanni made a sign of the cross.
“Listen.” Noel gripped my shoulders. “Who knew we were staying here? Kit, my grandfather, and him—this Ermanno.”
I remembered the information Noel left on Putra’s door that first day, the information Ermanno had seen. Maybe Ermanno had taken it. But there were a hundred better, more rational explanations. “You probably had a card in your wallet with the hotel’s address.”
“No. I kept details about your flight and the hotel information in an inside pocket. Here.” He opened his jacket, pulled out a paper, and waved it in my face.
I tried reasoning with him. “You probably dropped your wallet just outside the hotel and someone brought it back in.”
“After sitting on it for two days? No. Everything was returned. My cards. The key to my flat in Paris. My euros and traveler’s checks. The only thing missing is your photograph. How many coincidences can there be?”
“I think you’re a little obsessed over trying to find fault with the keris and with Sri Putra and Ermanno. Really,” I said when he glared at me. “It’s not healthy. In fact, it’s a little paranoid.” He deserved the dig.
I turned to Giovanni, who’d just placed a handful of fallen euros on the counter. “Giovanni, how far is Villa Borghese?”
“Christ all-freaking mighty,” Noel said. “Now?”
“Yes,” I said. “Villa Borghese now, and tomorrow night Il Sotto Abbasso. I’ll go with or without you.”
His eyes lost a little of their spark. Despite everything—my anger and his questionable behavior—I knew he meant well. I gentled my tone.
“I read about a gallery in Villa Borghese. Let’s go look at beautiful things and try to unravel this mystery. It’s not like Ermanno will be hiding out behind a painting with his sledge.”
Giovanni looked between us. “There is the gallery and also a museum. There is much to see.”
“Can we walk?” I asked. “I have a thing against cabbies who try to match the speed of light.”
Giovanni shot Noel an apologetic look. “There is the bus.”
THE CLOUDLESS DAY seemed ideal for a visit to Borghese Park, and it would’ve been if not for the tension between Noel and me. We ate pizza in near silence. Walked to the bus in absolute silence. Took our seats among people who chatted about the holiday and the museum and where they would eat dinner. The couple before us kissed.
I leaned against a rattling window and stared out. We traveled a grand avenue, past headless statues, and some who’d kept their heads over hundreds of years. When we arrived, we debarked and purchased admission into the gallery for later that day. There was time, we were told by an attendant, to visit the National Etruscan Museum if we so desired. Noel said he’d like to go, which I took for progress.
A bunch of us headed up hills, then down again to reach Villa Giulia and the National Etruscan Museum. I couldn’t contain my excitement. I don’t know if my poppy ever went to Rome, but his enthusiasm for artifacts had rubbed off on me as I grew, and I wanted to see what the Etruscans—who predated the Romans and whose language predated Latin—had left behind.
Once inside, our group divided, some going straightaway to see the reconstructed temple and famous Nymphaeum on display in the courtyard, while others decided to walk the halls first, as Noel and I did. We stopped to take in the various coffers, vases and terra-cotta sculptures, even a surprisingly well-preserved sarcophagus of a married couple—their facial features clear and smiles broad, despite being over twenty-six hundred years old.
“I wonder if they’ll ever decipher it,” Noel said when we stepped before a display of three golden tablets. The writings, Etruscan and Phoenician, provided one of the rare clues in existence about the Etruscan language. The lettering had always looked backward to me, though, like words viewed in a mirror.
“I doubt it,” I said. “That language died over two thousand years ago, and there are so many variables—regional dialects, phonetic spellings, abbreviations.”
“A lost language.” Noel’s tone was thoughtful. I would’ve asked what was on his mind, but my head filled just then with long-buried sounds.
Vinah way pleshee myna.
I flashed to a time barely within memory’s grasp—a day when I stumbled with pudge-toddle feet over rocks on the beach beside my sister. I could hear my mother call behind us, “Slow down, girls. Be careful.” Moira tittered in her hand and I held tight to her other one. We ran.
Vinah way pleshee myna.
I could not recall what the words meant, but I knew without doubt they were from our language, the language my mother had called Trying Twin. We’d forgotten it by age six.
I suppose I had more knowledge than most about lost languages, and lost people. But that day in Villa Borghese marked the first time that I seriously wondered if I’d lost myself—not just my music or my sister or a mother who’d call on Christmas. Me. I feared I’d lost my essence, that it was so far gone in the wrong direction that I’d never get it back.
WE ARRIVED AT the Borghese Gallery at our appointed time and went inside. I appreciated the vivid artwork, the sculptures, the essential dedication needed to accrue all of that splendor in one place. Noel, though, was enraptured. I couldn’t tear my eyes from him as he touched, examined, even sketched in the book I’d given him. His brows crushed and lips pursed as he honed in on particulars. I thought his eyes might’ve misted once.
He was a beautiful man, I acknowledged, as sculpted as anything around us. I don’t know why I found it so difficult to admit that I was simply and strongly attracted to him, and probably always had been. For that moment it was enough to know that I admired his spirit and liked being with him—maybe because he was an artist, as I’d once been, maybe because I fed off his passion in some nameless way. Or maybe just because he was fine.
“Christ, here’s a classic. Look at that press of flesh. So bloody real.”
I turned toward the statue he admired. A man’s hand on a woman’s thigh, dug deep in her flesh. Yes, that did seem real. But the woman didn’t want his attentions. She fought him. Suddenly, my lungs felt heavy. Like marble.
“Maeve, you okay?” I’m not sure what he saw in my face, but the joy in his eyes vanished as, somewhere, a crow cawed.
I ran. People stared at me, scowled at such improper conduct inside a renowned art gallery. I kept on, escaped out the door, down the stairs, onto the pavement. The cawing bird flew above me. The bus drew near.
A dream, I realized, almost with relief; I was dreaming again. I didn’t remember falling asleep or where I’d lain my head, but I knew the keris would be in my hand soon, ready for a fight. I looked for the little girl with the red hair.
Another bleat, another caw, and then a force hit and my lungs emptied as I landed on the grass. I opened my eyes to Noel, his body pinned over mine. I felt the heat of him, his hard breath as he clasped me close, and a chill air where my silk blouse had opened.
“Get off me!” I pounded at his chest. “Get off!”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he hollered into my face. His was red, raging. “You almost
died just now! You almost died!”
I heard, as if from a great distance, the fading sound of a horn and realized the bus had just passed, that I had—truly, not just in some dream world—almost been killed. That I’d almost let it happen.
And just beyond Noel’s shoulder, I saw the wave of a black wing as the bird flew away.
I CALLED KIT that night and left a message on her voice mail. Something incoherent. I needed a doctor, needed my brain checked because something was very, very wrong with me, because I’d started dreaming during the day with open eyes fastened against reality.
I stared at the mirror after I hung up. “I’m not crazy,” I informed my reflection. “I refuse to be crazy.” The woman in the glass nodded in agreement.
I couldn’t bring myself to answer Kit’s call hours later, just listened to the message once the light on my room phone blinked. “The doctor I told you about can get you in as soon as you’re back,” she said. “I wish you’d told me more about what happened. Was it a flashback? I told you it could be PTSD, I told you that might be it.” I heard the frantic worry in her voice. “You should come home now. Call me back.”
The sun set and still I sat alone in my room, sustained by panettone and Italian soap operas. Noel knocked on my door with less frequency as the hours passed—“Come on, Maeve, I know you’re there”—but I didn’t answer. How could I explain my actions when even I didn’t understand them?
Instead, I retrieved the keris from the safe and did something that might seem truly mad. I placed the blade on the other side of my bed—on the other bed, really—then crawled under the covers on my side and turned off the light.
That moment marked a turning point for me, though I wouldn’t know it until later. Still, ramshackle as I felt then, I sensed an unloosing as the part of me that should’ve been keeping guard, looking out for my best interests, suddenly disappeared. Poof. Like magic.
A NEW SONG debuted the next morning. Very, well, piratey. Alvilda would’ve approved. And it became the perfect antidote to the gale that had whipped my emotions around the previous day.
I called Kit and left a message: “Sorry about the confusion. I feel fine. Better than fine. It was just a bad day. Don’t worry.” If self-determination counted for anything, I would make those words true. I grabbed my coat and left before she could phone back and yell at me.
The heavy drape of yeast and sweet spice enticed me into a nearby eatery, where I sat at a table for two. I devoured a Danish and three cups of espresso, and read a newspaper full of articles on football scandals and fashion and commerce, soaking up culture as my sister would’ve a good passage of Jane Eyre.
Moira.
The thought of her steeped in me, and I let it. She would’ve loved Rome. The people. The language. She would’ve noticed things like plants and the color of people’s front doors. She would’ve noticed babies in carriages and stopped to coo at them. She would’ve enjoyed gelato.
After breakfast, I purchased a disposable camera and took pictures. Of plants and babies and front doors, and a woman hanging laundry on a line.
I RETURNED THAT AFTERNOON TO FIND A NOTE TAPED TO MY DOOR.
Where are you?!?
—N
I pulled it off and knocked on Noel’s door there in the hall. “You’re behind the times,” I bellowed through the wood. “Nails are the latest rage.”
No response. Maybe he’d left for dinner.
Back in my room, I pulled off my coat, set it on the bed. Stared at the other side. Realized. The keris wasn’t there. Had I seen it that morning as I’d swaggered around to Alvilda music? Worst-case scenarios stampeded into my imagination—a greedy maid, the bartender who’d noticed it that first day, Noel trying to prove a point. But when I rounded the end of the bed, I found the keris on the floor, in the slight gap between my two mattresses. Warmth traveled my arm when I picked it up.
Room temperature, my ass.
That’s when I heard something in the other room. Shuffling sounds. People noises. Noel. Ignoring me. I knocked on his door.
“I hear you breathing.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he called back. “Just wait.”
Wait? I squared my shoulders, the keris still in my hand. Alvilda wouldn’t wait for some guy. In fact, Alvilda wouldn’t knock. I turned the handle between our rooms. It gave way. And there, with a towel around his waist, stood my bonny friend.
“Christ,” he said. Water rivulets streamed down his face. “I said ‘wait,’ not ‘come in.’”
“Oops. Sorry.” Every bit of me went hot, and I knew it had nothing to do with the keris or the temperature of the room. I stared at his eyes, tried to pretend he wore more than a scrap of cotton terry, though my peripheral vision took comprehensive notes on his toned body and scatter of chest hair. If I’d had any functioning brain cells, I would’ve slunk back into my room. As it was, it took a vast effort to pull my gaze off him. That’s when I saw the big envelope on the floor near his door. “Look!” I picked it up. “Another FedEx from Garrick!”
“Another?”
Ah, hell. “That time Jakes called, I needed something to write with so I opened your drawer and saw the FedEx, and I noticed that it was from Garrick, but I didn’t open it even though it might’ve been important. Have you opened it yet?”
“No.” He stepped so close I could smell the soap on his skin, and then he took the envelope from me and tossed it onto his bed.
My non-keris-holding hand jangled in his face. “But … but, what are they?”
“Packages from my grandfather.”
“We’ve established that. Why haven’t you opened them?”
“Let’s say I won’t grasp the language. It’s lost to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s no reason you should. Now are you going to let me get dressed?”
“I don’t think I will. Frankly, I’ve had enough of your bad moods.” And then, because three cups of espresso does things to a person, I lifted the sheathed keris and put my hand on my hip. “En guard, scurvy dog!”
“You have me at a disadvantage,” he said, right before reaching behind him at lightning speed. I barely registered a flash of white when the pillow hit me in the face and dropped artlessly to the floor.
“Grab your sketchbook. There’s an inspiration for you.” I looked at the keris, which now pointed toward the floor as well. “The impotent sparrist.” I snorted. He chuckled. “Not that I don’t know how to wield this thing,” I continued, waving the keris. “I mean, let’s be clear.”
“Cute.”
“I am, aren’t I? So cute you’ll explain those packages.”
“Persistent as a bloodthirsty mosquito.” He pushed wet hair out of his face.
I made a high-pitched mosquitoesque sound.
“After you told my grandfather that I came here to find my mother—”
“I didn’t exactly tell him—”
“—he sent some of her old letters. He thought there might be a clue in them to help an investigation. Problem was, I didn’t have an investigator. So he hired Jakes.”
“But why didn’t you have—”
“Now Jakes is harassing me to turn over the letters so he can analyze the hell out of them,” he said. “But I won’t give them to him until I’ve read them. And I won’t read them.”
“Why not read them? Why not give them to the investigator?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. I thought his towel might fall, but it must’ve been superglued in place.
“You know why this is crap? I don’t need her. I don’t even think about her.”
None of this made sense.
“Then what’s all this for?” I asked. “Why come so far, spend all this time and money on finding someone you don’t even think about?” He didn’t answer, just turned his wet back on me. Any respectable person would give him some privacy, leave him alone to dry off and dress. I stepped a little closer. “You’ve become a real stub of companio
nability, you know.”
“You almost died.” He struck at the last word like a gong.
I wanted to reach out and touch him, but didn’t. “It was a mistake. Can’t you just let it go?”
“What? The image of you nearly flattened by a bus?”
“A bloody bus,” I said, trying to lighten the moment.
“It would’ve been bloody.”
“I lost my head for a second.”
“You might’ve lost it forever. Christ.”
“Noel, I—” I strode around his still form, looked him in the eye. “It was like a dream,” I said. “I was out of it.”
“If that’s true—” He grunted. “You should see a doctor.”
“Now you sound like Kit.”
“Good. Kit’s a smart woman. Listen to her.”
“I feel great today.” I tried for a smile, but his glower sapped the will from my lips.
“You walked in front of a bus,” he said. “Tell me how this is a good thing.”
“Right. And you saved my life.”
“Not that you need rescuing. Isn’t that how it is?”
“Not that I do, generally speaking, but you came in handy just then.” My voice softened. “Thank you for being there.”
He regarded me for a long moment. “Giovanni wants us ready around eleven.”
I’d forgotten. The club. My outfit. “We don’t have to go,” I said. “If you’d rather—”
“He took the night off to help us.” Words spoken slowly, enunciated crisply.
“All right, all right,” I said.
I’d just crossed the threshold to my room when I was struck in the back of the head with a damp towel. The door thumped closed behind me.
I turned, put my hand to the door, and envisioned Noel on the other side. The keris flared hot in my hand. My vision blurred. I leaned against the settee, let the blade fall onto a pillow.
Color and focus came back slowly as a fine film of sweat formed on my upper lip. There was risk and then there was stupidity. I wouldn’t wear that outfit. I just wouldn’t.
Out of Time
The Last Will of Moira Leahy Page 17
