Notturno (10 page)

garment bag.

Deana finally opened the driver’s-side door and got in. “I

guess so. The Kabuki, right?”

“Right. It’ll be fine, Deana Beana,” he said, getting in on the

passenger side. “You’ll see.”

As she pulled out onto Flower Street, Adin had to force

himself not to swivel his head in order to look around. His

blood was whispering to him, a low hum he’d begun to regard

almost like foreplay, which threw his body into a chaos of

longing. He had no doubt that Donte was in that garage,

watching him from somewhere. He felt it. His blood told him

Donte was near. He wondered if the feeling would dissipate

with time and distance.

Adin’s heart constricted. He would probably never see

Donte again, unless he got
Notturno
back. Even that would be no good, because they’d be on opposing sides, each struggling

to take it and hold it for their own. The faint thrill he felt was

disappearing, and it saddened him. For a while at least, he had

known, in as deep a place as the molecular structure of his

body, a connection to a person not in his immediate family. For

a moment anyway, he hadn’t felt alone.

Adin emerged from the plane, part of a crowd of tired

people being funneled into the long hallway leading to the

terminal. It was around ten forty in the evening, and he

followed the tide from his plane down to the baggage claim area

where the hotel driver was scheduled to pick him up.

While he was standing by with his case waiting for his

luggage to slide down onto the carousel, he saw a dark,

diminutive man with short, curly hair holding a sign that read

TREDEGER. He nodded and smiled when the man scurried over

to introduce himself. Adin wasn’t a tall man, but the driver, who

identified himself as Boaz, came only to his chin. He chatted

amiably and seemed to have energy to burn, so that when

Adin’s suitcase and garment bag came around and he pointed

them out, Boaz shot between a number of larger, more

determined people to retrieve them.

Once in the limousine, a luxury that made Adin thoroughly

ashamed, he tried to relax. He’d thought they were sending a car

or a shuttle bus, but here he was riding too comfortably in the

back of a white stretch limo, sinking tiredly into baby-soft

leather seats, and he
loved
it. It wasn’t a long drive, but Adin took advantage, finding a classical radio station and allowing the

pimped-out neon stripes on the walls and ceiling to soothe his

nerves as they changed from one color to another.

“Boaz,” he called out, turning the radio down for a minute.

“Do you think you could stop so I can buy a bottle of

Bushmills?”

“Certainly, Dr. Tredeger. I’m completely at your service.”

Adin restored the radio’s volume and rested his head against the

back of the seats. He was thinking how used to the experience

he could get when Boaz slowed down to park in front of a

liquor store. Just as Adin went to open the door, it was opened

for him.

66 Z.A. Maxfield

“I’ll be back in a minute.” Adin left the little man with the

car. He entered and started up the aisle, looking at all the

different types of wines and liquor they offered. They had

snacks as well, and Adin automatically picked up some chips

and Lindt chocolate truffles, things he liked to have on hand in

the middle of the night when he just wanted a handful of

something. He found his whiskey, Bushmills 16, in a locked

case, so he flagged down an employee to get it for him. He was

bending himself back through the limo door that Boaz held

open for him in no time.

“That was quick,” said Boaz as Adin seated himself.

“It helps if you know exactly what you want,” Adin replied.

Something tingled on the periphery of Adin’s awareness, and he

looked past Boaz to see a tall man in a long, dark overcoat.

Adin’s heart rocketed around his rib cage once or twice before

he realized the man reminded him of Donte. He was looking at

Adin curiously, staring in a frank way that Adin was unused to

and uncomfortable with. Boaz closed the door, and in minutes,

they were on their way.

Adin didn’t think about Donte again until he was alone in

his room at the Kabuki, a lovely, comfortable hotel with down

pillows and comforters, terry-lined silk robes, and shoji screens

on the windows. He was in the garden wing, on the fifth level, a

private floor he’d needed his key to access, there being no fifth-

floor number on the elevator panel. He hung up his suits and

placed his Pullman on the luggage rack before pouring a drink

and settling into the soft bed. After taking out his reading

glasses and the yellow legal pad on which he’d written his

translation of Donte’s journal entries, he reread them slowly.

Adin felt a faint hiss of awareness as he closed his eyes, but

thought it was primarily arousal, because reading the words

Donte wrote made the man come alive in his imagination. He

took out his laptop, grateful he’d gotten the photographs of the

manuscript before it was stolen. Even though they were a poor

substitute for holding the centuries-old journal in his hands, it

didn’t take long before he was lost in the entry after the last one he’d translated.

^\

NOTTURNO
67

My best loved, I write this in the spring, after the snows have melted,
when the sun warms the earth a little. I know very well that if I could move
through time and space to be by your side at this minute, and I lifted your
hand to my lips for a kiss, I would find it redolent of basil and maybe
fennel. You may not deny this! I know you’ve been in the garden. I can see
you there, and if I have a quiet moment with no distractions, I can imagine
the scent of your skin, warm from the sun and sweetly green from rubbing
your hands on the plants.

My son thrives, and I have no idea how. He is his own worst enemy.

He chases the animals and has no fear of the stairs or the water in the
fountain. There are four girls employed just to see that he doesn’t get into
mischief. Renata quickens again, and the house trembles with her moods.

For myself, I am man enough to want more sons, the only reason I ever go
near her at all. And you, beloved, are married and might have a child on
the way for all I know.

It breaks my heart to have no message from you. Is it possible that you
don’t know that I wait for word as though it were water and I were dying of
thirst? I shall never believe, my love, though my heart fails me, that you
have no wish to write to me. I would die deluded before I would die
faithless. So now I wait and hope and dream and love, with such a love
that were it a tangible thing, you would feel it rush to Liguria and crash
over you like wind and water speeding from where I sit. Dear heaven,
Auselmo, what are we to do? I ache for you.

^\

Auselmo, sweet lover, how handily you made me a fool and surprised
me on my own doorstep! I was beginning to feel almost tragic when I saw
your standard bearers! Renata is in an uproar, as always, ordering the
servants about and making everyone miserable. Naturally this delights her.

Your sweet wife said not more than two words the entire noonday meal, and
I feared she would faint dead away when Renata suggested they spend time
together.

As I write this you sleep beside me, still damp and sated from our
endeavors. I am breathless with joy and cannot sleep, so I will draw you as
you lie beside me, and I will record your blotchy, well-marked skin for all
eternity. What we shared felt sacred, my love, superhuman almost, divine.

That I asked you to fill me with your body and your seed distressed you, I
68 Z.A. Maxfield

could see, but when you loved me I could see the passion glistening in your
eyes, and I know you felt it too.

We are something new, Auselmo. Something powerful and eternal.

There is nothing and no one who has been as we are, and none shall ever
know what we know. I am yours, as completely as if you bought me for a
slave, and you, my love, are my prize, won by what magic I do not claim to
understand. I cherish you completely, Auselmo, with the certain knowledge
before all the gods that ever were, that I would gamble all except for you,
and they may reward me for it or not. As long as you are by my side, I care
not what befalls me. Mad words for a man who must rise before the dawn
and slink like a penitent, beardless boy back to his room in case his bitch
of a wife sends servants to find him… I asked you again last night, should
we have run while we were boys and had no one to disappoint but ourselves?

Wise Auselmo, you never answer, save to use your body to make mine
burn. Will I ever be worthy of you, I wonder?

^\

Raking an impatient hand through his hair, Adin tossed the

tablet aside and rolled over, pulling the soft pillows to his chest.

He fell fast asleep with the light still on.

In the muffled quiet of the night, Adin dreamed of his sister

and their family as they’d been while he was growing up. They’d

lived everywhere, from Alaska to Saudi Arabia to Kuwait to

Indonesia. Anywhere with a possibility of oil. His geologist

father’s small consulting company had grown, and with it their

fortune, and when his father finally retired at an early age in San Francisco to teach, he’d sold the business, cashing in at exactly

the right time.

Adin remembered his father as a literate and charming man

as well as a thoughtful scholarly professional. They’d had a

wonderful family life in the years before he and Adin’s mother

passed away in a tragic boating accident among the Channel

Islands of Southern California, even during the difficult time

after Adin came out and they’d had to adjust to…what? Adin

knew they’d been disappointed. Not in him, or his choices, but

for him. For what they’d perceived his choice meant. They’d

seen him rootless in his middle age, without a home, without a

family, and he’d tried to reassure them that those things would

NOTTURNO
69

be there for him regardless of his choices. That he’d make a

home and create a family if he chose.

They’d come to a loving acceptance, but then tragedy struck.

Adin had been in graduate school studying abroad in England

for a year when his parents died, and Deana was a junior at

USC. During those terrible weeks of the search for the boat and

the missing Tredegers, Adin returned to San Francisco and

discovered that he could no longer sleep in the city he called

home, and he hadn’t slept a single solid, dreamless night there

since.

This night, for the first time, Adin thought he might actually

feel
rootless. It didn’t surprise him at all that his own family returned to him in dreams. Adin dreamed his father was sitting

in his tiny office with his hands up in a halfhearted defensive

gesture as a group of girls pressed a plastic-wrapped plate of

brownies on him. As if Adin were only a disembodied presence

in the room, he found he could wander and look at the pictures

on his father’s desk, the books lining his bookshelves, and the

view from his window. He spent, in dreamtime, what seemed

like a pleasurable afternoon there.

Lying quietly, he tried to figure out just what he was feeling.

The thought once again brushed his mind that his blood was

silent.
Donte?
Nothing. He closed his eyes and dreamed again, this time of elevator cars that felt like clear glass Christmas balls and eyes the color of the rich brown leather club chairs that

once dotted the large library of his parents’ Victorian home.

He awoke sometime later feeling vaguely lost. He resolved

to call Boaz first thing after breakfast, hoping the small man

wouldn’t be too busy to drive him for the rest of his stay. While

being driven in an ostentatious limousine was pretentious, he

liked the idea of renting a car and driving himself through San

Francisco’s overcrowded streets even less. The memory of

Boaz’s smiling face reassured him in an odd way, and he looked

forward to the company of the diminutive man, which made

going back to sleep a little easier.

Adin finally slept deeply enough, then woke about the time

when the hotel put out their continental breakfast. He slipped

into his hotel spa robe and padded out to get a plate of fruit and

70 Z.A. Maxfield

rolls and some coffee. He smiled genially at the other guests

doing the same. Once back in his hotel room, he phoned Boaz,

who said he would be happy to drive him wherever he needed

to go while he was in town. They made arrangements to meet in

front of the hotel at ten a.m., and Adin hung up the phone

feeling better than he had since he’d landed.

“Where to, Dr. Tredeger?” Boaz inquired as he handed Adin

into the back of the car.

“I’m meeting friends for breakfast at the Buena Vista.”

“Very good, sir,” said Boaz, and Adin gave him a look that