Desdemona, Tag Cavello [classic literature list TXT] 📗

apologies in equal measure. Yes, he found her to be an interesting woman, but not like that, or not like how she seemed to ascertain; not that she wasn’t interesting in that way, not at all, but he loved Sunny, he belonged to Sunny, he would never—

Hadria cut him off with a laugh. “It’s all right, Dante. I know precisely what you’re trying to say.”

“Thank you,” Dante gushed. “That makes one of us, at least.”

At this the small woman laughed some more, glancing in opposite directions, perhaps as a way to reassure herself that no one was looking. Once she saw that they were still alone, she looked at Dante and asked:

“Would you like to time how long I can hold my breath underwater? I’ve been trying to reach one minute but haven’t quite been able to.”

“Sure,” Dante said. “No problem.”

“I have a watch in my bag. Let me get it.”

Hadria rose and walked, pixie-like, to the next table, where she rummaged briefly through a large bag and came up with a pink wrist-watch. After pressing a few of its beeping buttons, she handed the watch to Dante. Its green display showed a row of zeroes. Next to them was a button marked START.

Hadria walked to the edge of the pool. After a brief glance into its depths, she dove in. Dante admired how her reedy frame barely disturbed the water. Seconds later she surfaced by the ladder, refreshing her lungs.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but I’d like to try this without a top.”

Dante’s eyes widened as Hadria reached behind herself, untied the top of her bathing suit, and lay it on the tiles.

“I’ll get a much deeper breath this way,” she then explained, “and also be more relaxed while holding it in.”

She didn’t wait for Dante to offer an opinion on the matter. Instead, her chest began to rise with a number of heavy practice breaths.

“Ahhhhhh! Phew!” Hadria plumed, over and over. “Ahhhhh! Phew!”

Unable to help himself, Dante peered through the water. It wasn’t rippling quite enough to conceal Hadria’s small, tight breasts. Her nipples, sharp with cold moisture, were like tiny white beads. Beneath them Dante could make out the bones of Hadria’s ribcage. For the time being at least, they were perky with moving air. Yet listening to the woman breathe, Dante could tell her lung capacity was small. Try as she might, Hadria’s chest just didn’t hold very much of what one needed to last long underwater.

“Ready?” she asked, and in a moment Dante realized she wasn’t talking to him, but to herself. “Ready,” she answered.

Her eyes jumped to Dante. Raising the watch to show that he, too, was ready, Dante gave her a nod. Then Hadria drew a final, deep breath, and slipped below the surface.

∞

When it was over, she asked if Dante wouldn’t mind carrying the large bag back to her room. He obliged readily, seeing how the woman’s chest still heaved from its prior exertion. Thanking him, Hadria put on a robe and they walked to the elevators.

Her room was on the sixth floor, in the middle of a dark hallway with carpeting so brown and thick Dante thought he could almost mistake it for a river of sludge. Certainly that couldn’t be the analogy guests of the Consorcia were meant to make, but here it was.

They went into Hadria’s room. She clicked on the light. Red carpeting decorated with yellow flowers sprang into view. The air smelled of lemon, as if the flowers might be real. From the wall jutted a double bed. Next to that, a desk and phone. In front of the bed stood a large entertainment table, complete with television and radio. All in all it was, Dante thought, a basic hotel room. Basic, that was, but for its occupant.

“You can put the bag on the bed,” Hadria told him, “then come into the bathroom with me.”

This last caused Dante’s eyes to widen. He looked at her, awaiting further explanation. She’d none to give. She draped her robe over a chair and disappeared into the bathroom without a word.

Dante put her bag on the mattress. The bathroom door hung wide open. Golden light spilled from inside. Briefly, Dante considered simply leaving—of running out to the muddy hallway and away from Hadria forever. But then her voice came into the room, shocking him further with its words.

“You know Sunny’s a virgin, yes?” Hadria called. “She’s frightened. You know…of being with a boy.”

“I guess she would be,” Dante did his very best to reply. His feet remained stuck at the foot of the bed. Indeed, even if he could get them to move, he wasn’t sure at the moment where he wanted to go.

“But then she met you,” continued Hadria, “and felt perfectly at ease. You were like a friend she once knew a long time ago, come back from a hidden grave in the wood.”

Dante thought those words strange indeed. Hearing them brought a chill to his spine. He watched a shadow move across the bathroom light, nearly eclipsing it in full. This too was odd, as he’d noticed earlier the light mounted on the ceiling, and Hadria’s stature was small. But then the shadow was gone, and Hadria began talking again.

“It’s so natural,” she said. “Never once have you made Sunny feel skittish or hesitant. She’s already told me she wouldn’t mind being married to you. Isn’t that beautiful?”

Dante’s befuddlement at the older woman’s mannerisms continued. She didn’t call him out on it, or let his awkwardness fester. Instead she invited him, quite politely, to join her in the shower, so that she might wash with an extra pair of hands on her back.

Still frightened but far too curious now for flight, Dante approached the doorway. From inside came the squeak of a handle turning, followed by the sound of flowing water. When he peered round the frame he saw Hadria in the shower, fully naked. Her back was to him, yet still, when she arched her neck to let the water flow down her chest, he was able to see the shape of her ribcage, which hadn’t held quite enough air to maintain a sixty second breath-hold underwater. The urge to touch it—to touch her—became nearly overpowering. As cool air from the sea fans a spark to a flame, luring it to rage before Selene’s tide, so the woman excited Dante, and it was all he could do not to enter the room. Only the thought of hurting Sunny held him in check.

“I know you’re there,” Hadria said, not bothering to look over her shoulder. “Come inside. I could use your help. Sunny too.”

“Sunny?” Dante managed.

Now Hadria did look. “She’s a virgin, Dante, but she doesn’t want both of you to be. Not for her first time. She wants you confident and in control. That’s why you’re here tonight. To learn confidence and control.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“She most certainly did. Now get undressed. I’ll show you exactly what you need to do. We’ll go nice and slow.”

With that, Hadria went back to washing herself. It was as if she knew Dante would eventually do as he was told. And less than a minute later, he did.

“Good,” Hadria said, as Dante stepped into the shower. “Very good. Now I want you to just…do what comes natural. Okay? Do what comes natural.”

“But you said you would show me—“

“Shhh. I will. I will.”

∞

At midnight came the explosion of pyrotechnics. Flowers of fire, large as a football stadium, burst over the lakefront, throwing fitful light upon Cleveland’s many knifelike towers, forlorn steel bridges, and grotesque offerings of abstract park art. Dante and Hadria watched from her window. Each of them drank a glass of wine.

“Happy New Year,” she said, smiling up from his shoulder.

“Happy New Year, Hadria,” Dante said.

He felt ever so much more comfortable now in her proximity, a fact which stood to reason. He didn’t even mind that they were both still quite naked, though she’d pulled the curtain wide for the show.

They watched until the fireworks ended. At the fading of the final rocket, Hadria’s room fell into a blackness almost pitch. All Dante could see, by the faint glow of downtown, were her eyes, which suddenly looked too green and too bright. They blinked at him in a cat-like, predatory way. Uneasiness began to creep back into his chest, until Hadria spoke with a voice gentle and warm as any he’d heard from the kindest of giving souls.

“Take what you’ve learned tonight back to Sunny,” she said. “She’ll be so relieved by your ability to take charge. When she’s ready, of course.”

Not long after, Dante dressed and left the room to return to his own on the ninth floor. Upon unlocking the door, he found it empty, the curtains closed, the beds unused. By then it was nearing one in the morning, but his father had already warned that he would probably have the whole night to himself.

Not that it mattered. Dante had rung in 1993 in the best possible way any man could. The only thing left to do now was sleep. He brushed his teeth, put on a pair of pajamas, and lay down on the bed.

Blinking blearily at the ceiling, he tried to imagine doing with Sunny what he’d done with Hadria. It took very little effort. Tired though his body was, his mind still seemed eager for play, so it was to Sunny’s high, devious laughter that he finally fell asleep, and dreamed of iridescent fire in black skies cold with a coming storm.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: For Dukey

Happiness came from an unlikely source, breaking the groove of an elder’s course.

 

The farmer, who’d introduced himself as John Huntley, stood with his hands in the pockets of his overalls. He was every bit as tall as Dante’s father, but much wider, with huge brown boots on his feet, a blue bandana in his back pocket, and a red face that Dante thought looked well accustomed to smiling.

All three men were in a barn on the east end of Monroeville, which was a very small town three miles west of Norwalk. In a million years Dante would never have pictured his father in such a place, but here he was. His reason lay on the floor, bundled beneath a pile of blankets. As John Huntley talked, Dante kept looking from the bundle to his father and back again, trying hard to get his mind around what he was seeing.

He couldn’t do it. His father was a lot like the skyline of Cleveland—cool, pragmatic, rigid—but here, on a cold day in a cold barn, the ice had cracked. From beneath emerged a very different man. One who had not known the sun for a long time, or perhaps never at all, and looked all the more happy to feel its long overdue radiance upon his face.

Dante watched as Mr. Torn knelt and, gently pulling the blankets away from their contents, began to laugh. Laugh! Mr. Torn was laughing! At this Dante almost wanted to run to the nearest phone, where he would then dial 911 and beg for assistance.

“Dad?” he brought out instead.

“Look at them, Dante! Just look at them!”

“Yeah,” Dante said, smiling, “I’m looking.”

The puppies—a litter of four shih-tzus—yipped and yapped about the teats of their mother. They were brown and black bundles of fur, with tiny, wriggling noses that poked at Dante’s hand when he tried to pet them. All looked friendly, full of energy. Ready to play for the next hundred years.

“They’re not really farm dogs,” John Huntley explained as the elder Torn, to Dante’s absolute shock, picked one up and began to cuddle it. “So I figured it best to sell the pups. We’re looking to get a briard for the sheep.”

“I can’t imagine anyone not wanting one of these,” Mr. Torn cooed into the baby shih-tzu’s nose. The shih-tzu licked him back. “What time is it? Huh? Huh?”

“It’s almost noon,” John Huntley answered.

“Is it time