Comprehension dawned. "It's not about the kiss. It's personal."
"How much more personal--"
"Later, all right?" I took a step backward, upward. I still heard the lush's massacre too well.
"What about now? Now sounds pretty damned good to me." Frustration threaded through his voice. It rushed through me, too--like water in my lungs, through the heart of my sax--as more laughter rose from below. "Why can't you open a little, Maeve? Say what's in your head. Trust me."
"Like you trust me?"
"What do mean by--"
"Just what I said--you don't trust me." I clung to this line, desperate, and pursued it, let anger fill me up as I took another step back. "You don't contact me for months, you say nothing! Why don't you send those letters to the investigator? Why won't you read them? Why don't you want to find your mother?"
"What has this got to do with that?"
"You're avoiding talking about it or taking any action."
"I'm avoiding?"
"You still hate her," I said, four steps away now. "Maybe you don't want to hear what she has to say, but you might be able to fix things! Don't be a coward!"
His chin jerked as if struck, but it was too late now to call the words back. "Tell me you've never run from anything, Maeve. Christ, you're running now, look at you go!"
"Maybe I am. But you ... you don't even know what you're running from. You don't know what your mother ran from."
"She ran from me."
"And now you're running from her!"
"No, I'm running from you!"
My foot froze midair. From me? The possibility exploded in me, fused together incongruent bits and settled them into sense: Noel's lack of contact over so many months, his distant behavior since my arrival in Rome, the sense that I'd hampered him with my keris business. He didn't want me here. He didn't want me because--
"You didn't leave Betheny to find your mother at all." My voice was a rasp. "You left to get away from me."
His jaw worked.
"Tell me. Tell me the truth!"
"Fine, the truth! I needed solid ground, and you're anything but that. What would you have me believe? The look in your eyes when you think I'm not paying attention or your body language when you know I am?" He laughed without humor. "I wanted an affair with a beautiful woman to get you out of my blood, but I couldn't even do that. And then you came here, across an ocean, like a ghost on the trail of her favorite tormentee!"
His expression grew cracked and raw. And then he took the steps, two at a time, near me, past me. I ran after him, tangled my fingers in his shirt until he stopped. He emanated heat.
"Let go, Maeve," he said, quiet now. "You're just another woman who doesn't give a damn."
"That's not true."
He turned, looming over me. "It bloody well is true. I want you exorcised." Long dark strands stuck out between his fingers as he snatched at his hair, and I thought of the skeletons near the ceiling, thought of them falling on my head. "I want to be free of this. And I don't want to love you anymore, Maeve Leahy," he said, quiet and solemn like a prayer.
Love me? I couldn't quite wrap my brain around it. Love me? My fingers loosened. I tried to make words and couldn't.
Stop. Stop him.
Noel had pulled away and disappeared up the stairs, while below sounds of torture seemed to grow louder by the second. I put my hands over my ears and still the noise thrummed in my veins and kicked my heart offbeat.
Take control.
I couldn't stand it anymore.
Fix that much.
I hovered with my foot in the air for several seconds before I followed the impulse and returned to the under down.
DO IT.
I had no desire to resist the summons, and I had a great need for release, for communion. I found my way to the stage. The pianist's eyes widened. Was I a maniac? Definitely.
I approached the sax player, his eyes red and bleary, his cheeks puffed like an obese squirrel's. He was also huge, much taller than he'd looked from the floor. But I felt tall myself just then, in my red spiked heels.
"Don't drink and jive," I said, and stripped him of his sax. "You obviously don't have a permit to play that thing."
"Sc-c-cusi?" he bumbled back.
"Sleep it off," I said, and he chose that moment to pass out on the floor. I spied a case full of fresh reeds.
The other instrumentalists faltered to a halt.
"Grazie a Dio," muttered the bass player in thanks.
"Yeah." The drummer squinted up at me. "You a player?"
Me, I'd just comprehended that I had a sax in my hands and a reed in my mouth. Oh, good heavenly danger. What should I do?
You know what to do.
Reed in place. Tighten ligature. I committed my lips to a musician's kiss I'd missed more than I'd realized. I bent my knees, arched my back, and let loose all my frustrated desires. Though I should've been cautious after nearly a decade of abstinence, my fingers bounded over the keys with all the assuredness I'd ever possessed.
And it felt like home.
I LOST MYSELF to the music for long and blissful minutes. Applause filled the room in the end, which you might think would've filled me, too, but it didn't. Less than two beats after I lowered my arms, I recognized a familiar face in the crowd.
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 s
earching 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 ..."
The Last Will of Moira Leahy: A Novel Page 18
