Desdemona, Tag Cavello [classic literature list TXT] 📗

know what words he might speak to defuse the ticking time bomb standing before him. The silence of the hall felt thick and creeping ever closer. He looked at Sunny’s freckles. Her green eyes. Her red hair. She was fierce and frightening and really quite beautiful.

“My locker,” he said. “But it’s okay. I can just tell the principal—“

“You can open it right now,” Sunny snapped. “But you need motivation, that’s obvious.” Her face relaxed—a little—to let a devious smile curl the corners of her lips. “Imagine a girl trapped inside, Dante. She’s trapped inside and has to hold her breath, because the locker is full of water. Could you get it open then?”

This bizarre spillage of words confused him utterly. Blinking, Dante said: “I—I would certainly hope so.”

“Me too. I like swimming, Dante, but every so often I need to come up for air. All girls do.”

“Of course. Of course.”

“If I were trapped in here”—she tapped the locker with a tiny fist—“holding my breath, could you get me out? Tell me,” she demanded, before he could splutter something absurd.

And with all the courage he could manage, Dante somehow told her: “Yes.”

Sunny took a step closer. Her voice lowered to a near whisper as she said: “I’m going to get a niccce, deeeep breath for you, Dante. Deepest I can. Then I’m going to wait.”

“Uh…”

“While I’m waiting I want you to open that locker. Don’t let me run out of air.”

“All right.”

“You’d better be more confident than you sound,” she told him.

She was now standing close enough to share the smell of a girl: perfume, shampoo, baby powder. He could hear her high, sweet, pretty breath as she gasped in and out, getting her lungs ready.

Her eye went to the locker. “How stuck is it today?”

“I’ve already tried it twice. It’s being stubborn.”

Sunny breathed in again—hahhhhhhh! Her slim chest rose high. Then she let the breath out—phew! “All right,” she said, “next one’s it. Put your hand on the dial.”

Dante did.

“Your hand is shaking,” she observed. “Relax, Dante. Be a man.” She then tilted her head back. “Ready?” she said at the ceiling.

“Ready,” Dante, still shaking, replied.

“HAAAUUUUHHH!” Sunny gasped. When her chest was quite full, she looked at Dante and smiled.

Immediately he set to work. He cranked the dial right, left, then right again, making certain to stop on all the correct numbers. His hand fumbled to the latch, pulled.

The locker stayed shut.

Taking a deep breath of his own, Dante tried again. Right, left, right. Now the latch. Come on , latch, he thought, how about a break?

But no. Once more the latch simply would not move.

Next to him, Sunny let out a tiny moan. She was getting uncomfortable. Starting to feel some tightness, some pressure. Dante looked and saw that her lips were pursed. Arching a brow, she pointed to the locker. Get back to work, mister.

In the middle of the third try she let out a longer moan. “Mmmnnnn!”

It caused Dante to lose his concentration and start over with the dial. Even so, the latch remained stubborn.

A desperate hand tapped his arm. Sunny’s eyes were wide. Her freckled cheeks were puffed. Frantically, she pointed to her chest. The lungs inside were just about spent.

“Nn! Gnn!”

Dante’s fifth try didn’t even come close. He was yet to even finish dialing the combination when Sunny drowned. Out of breath and still far from the surface, she drowned. A hard, heavy gasp signaled her defeat—or rather, Dante’s.

“PHEW! WHEW!” she heaved. Needing support, she grabbed his shoulder. “You did that…on purpose!”

“No!” Dante said, appalled. “No way!”

“You just had to let the damsel perish in a watery grave!”

“Never!”

Sunny looked up…and smiled. “Shame on you. That really hurt.”

“I’m sorry!”

“I should have told you my personal best is only about thirty seconds. After that”—she snapped her fingers—“hey, the girl’s gotta have air. Phew!”

Dante edged closer so she could lean on him some more. “Are you all right?” Then he kicked the locker—BAM! “Stupid thing.”

“Yeah!” Sunny cheered. “Beat that hunk of metal!”

“Seriously, Sunny, are you all right?”

“Phew! Of course I’m all right! I wasn’t…you know…underwater for real. Thankfully,” he heard her mutter as an afterthought.

Dante looked at his locker. “I guess the school needs to replace this thing.”

“Nah,” Sunny said. “I bet now because you kicked it, it’ll open. Try it.”

Shrugging, Dante dialed his combination. No way did he think it would open. Nor did it matter, considering the girl inside was already dead. Still, when he pulled the handle, the door popped and swung wide, revealing his coat, his books. His gym bag. A dirty mirror. A pack of Black Jack chewing gum.

Sunny gave him a pat on the back. “See? It just took a little toughness. I knew it was in you.”

“Monday it’ll get stuck again,” Dante said.

Her response was adamant. “No it won’t. You showed it who’s boss.” In the next moment she was standing on tip-toe to kiss his cheek. “You also found out how long the totally great, totally awesome Sunset Desdemona can hold her breath. Don’t tell anyone else.”

Dante couldn’t respond. The kiss had set his heart into hysterics. A fireworks show lit the firmament of his brain, rendering blindness upon all rational thought.

“It’ll be just our secret, okay?” she whispered.

“Yes. Yes. No problem.”

“I gotta go. My dad’s probably waiting outside. But maybe next week I’ll let you walk me home.” She grinned. “If you’re a good boy. Bye!”

With that, she skipped off, leaving him as last actor of the stage. Not wishing to abandon the privilege too soon, Dante remained, placing his books down slowly on purpose, straightening his hair in the mirror. Then he closed the locker door. An utterly silent hallway, devoid of expression, regarded him. All of the classroom doors were shut and locked.

Weird. Shouldn’t there be some teachers doing gradework yet?

Apparently not.

He stood for another minute, enjoying the quiet. “Time to go,” he told himself. “Time to go.”

And still thinking of Sunny, he went home.

CHAPTER SIX: Mermaid Pizza

Money changes hands surreptitious, leaving those in command most suspicious.

 

Dante lived just a quarter mile down the street from Horatio Donati, in a federal style home built in 1832. Its plain brick walls rose austerely over the street, undaunted by Norwalk’s downtown district, which seemed to creep closer to their mortar every year. From any of number 54 West Main Street’s nine commandingly large front windows one could stare forth and perhaps be unnerved by the city’s progress. It stood to reason. A fine, two-story colonial style home had once occupied the lot directly east, but no more. It had been demolished to make way for a bank. Up until recently, the lot due north bore the weight of a huge Queen Anne. Only just last year it had been torn down. Dante watched it happen from his bedroom window. City bulldozers and backhoes made quick work of the Queen’s tall corner towers and deep-shadowed entrances. Her death cries, the sound of shattering brick, echoed for half a mile in all directions. But number 54 remained.

Dante would have been glad to know his house was safe, and not simply because he happened to live there. He loved number 54. Like Donati’s home, it boasted a number of ornate fireplaces, all in far better condition. Its wide upper story windows afforded wonderful views past the purple maples that lined West Main. Often times in the summer he would sit in his room with the window open to allow the warm wind, and listen to the chickadees sing from their boughs. And at night there were fireflies among the leaves, sparkling like stars.

But what he liked most about the house was its staircase. There were no others like it in Norwalk. So Dante’s father liked to boast. Its beauty was one of the few things they agreed upon. It stood on the east side of the living room, a serpent of American cherry which began its ascent facing downtown, but soon curled immediately opposite without the use of a half-landing, so that the user, regardless of which level he began his journey, always set out east and ended west. The curve was tight, severe, immaculate. Meticulously beautiful amidst flowered stronghold high and pretty as Dolomites mezereon.

It was almost sickening to watch his father’s friends, Joseph and Janet Jones, taint it this weekend with their Gucci loafers. Yet taint it they did (or at least it seemed to Dante) on the Saturday night following Sunny Desdemona’s extraordinary little breath-hold. Not that their visit should have been surprising. Every other weekend they came to play cards in the basement and drink brandy. And while it was true they hardly ever went upstairs, Dante still hated to see them round the curve. It portrayed, he imagined, yet one more beautiful thing to which the condescending couple were granted access.

“Well hey there, tiger!” Janet’s dimpled face said when he opened the door. “Is your daddy home?”

“Sure,” Dante said, letting the couple in, “he’s in the kitchen.”

“Yo, slugger!” A towering man—Joseph—bellowed through his heavy mustache. His feet pounded the floor, shaking some of the home’s delicate Chinaware. “You’re gettin’ tall enough to pose for GQ!” And he gave Dante’s hair a ruffle.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah! Heck yeah! Mind if I go upstairs and use your bathroom?”

“There’s one down here actually.”

Joseph laughed, making his ugly chest hairs bounce like picket signs beneath the collar of his Land’s End dress shirt. “I know that, but come on, I’m a big guy, and that bathroom’s small!”

“Okay,” Dante told him. “Sure.”

“Thanks, buddy!”

And off Joseph pounded, all but attacking the stairs with his monstrous gait.

“Dante,” Janet scolded, “you know Joseph likes the big bathroom more.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones. Please make yourself comfortable. My dad’s almost ready.”

The woman’s volcanic features loosened—a little. “Okay then. We can let it go this time.”

He fetched her a plate of cheese. It had to be him, for his mother was out of town that night, eating cheese at some other card party. Cribbage, no doubt, which she preferred to poker. Poker is for philistines, Dante sometimes heard her say to his dad, to which he always replied, So is the Mazda Miata, before gazing out the window at her little red roadster.

“This cheese,” Janet told him presently, “is a bit stale.”

She was seated on the couch, her face lost in an essence of confusion as to what she might be chewing.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones,” Dante said for a second time.

“Oh no, no. It isn’t bad. It’s just…stale. A little.”

Now Joseph came pounding back down. Dante saw a Homer Laughlin about to fall from its stand and rushed to catch it.

“You know what I like least about this house?” the big man said to no one in particular. “These stairs! They’re too steep and the curve always makes me feel like I’m being stirred in a damned tea-cup! Dante!”

He jumped, almost dropping the plate. “Yes, sir?”

“What’s takin’ your dad so long, boy? He kissin’ his money goodbye already?”

“No, sir. I’ll go check.”

Half an hour later all three of them were in the basement. The cards were on the table. So was the money. So was a rapidly waning bottle of brandy. Periodically, one of them would call Dante down with a request—Dante, the ash trays need emptied; Hey big guy, how ‘bout some water; Dante, another plate of cheese if you please. He ran up and down number 54’s narrower, cruder stairs without complaint, careful not to drop anything or let his face flash signs of the least dissent. Janet made mention once more of the stale cheese. She also asked him to please bring down ice with the water from now on.

Around ten o’clock they decided to order pizza. It came on time, though Dante’s father refused to tip because he insisted the driver was ten minutes late. By Dante’s watch (it was he who had called the order) this was simply not true.

“Late,” his dad said flatly, handing him a ten from is wallet.

“But Dad!”

“No tip. Now bring us down the pizza.”

“Do as you father