Notturno (3 page)

electronically checking out of his Frankfurt hotel was to switch

Notturno
with the informative hotel binder from the room. Even as he switched them, placing
Notturno
and his laptop in his Pullman and the travel guide in the missing carry-on case, he

knew he was right to do it, even though it meant letting the

journal leave his hands. Adin hadn’t liked giving in to his

paranoia, but as the feeling of being stalked persisted, he’d

forced himself to act in the interest of caution. Which meant

that somewhere, out there in the night, a gorgeous, appallingly

sexy stalker-who-bites could order pizza from any one of a

dozen German restaurants. If he could eat garlic.

Adin did laugh then as he placed
Notturno
securely in the

hotel room’s wall safe. In the morning he’d take it to the lab.

While the sun was out. Just in case.

When Adin finally slept, he dreamed of Donte, surrounding

him in whispers of Italian, French, Romanian, and Greek,

sometimes all at once, like a chorus of bad angels building up to

a crescendo in his veins. It was as if his blood were alive,

independent, and pulsing with possibilities. Several times Adin

woke, sweating and chilled, his cock banging against his

stomach, leaving glistening trails in its wake. Adin could almost

hear Donte laughing at him as he broke out the lube and gave

himself to pleasure, a minute’s worth of frustrated groping that

left him nothing but damp and hungry for more.

Eventually he must have slept; it was full light when he

awoke. He was so completely disoriented that it took a pot of

room service coffee and a large breakfast before he could think

again. He headed down for a cab with the
Notturno
manuscript in an expensive new leather briefcase, one he’d had delivered by

personal shopper to the concierge and which he would mind

very much losing. He stepped into the bright sunlight of a

ninety-something-degree day and caught a cab headed for

Welkeil Pharmaceuticals. The cab was full of religious symbols

of every conceivable faith and smelled of coffee and mint gum.

The cabdriver was a portly man of unknown ethnic origin who

was pleasant and talkative and followed the shortest distance

between where Adin started and where he was headed. A

definite plus.

They stopped at the foot of the Welkeil Building on

Wilshire, a towering edifice wrought in steel and smoked glass,

and the cabbie came around to open the door for him,

depositing him on the sidewalk like a Sherpa delivering a

climber to base camp. Together they looked up, and when Adin

glanced back, the expression on the driver’s face was one of

mistrust, as if he’d had dealings with people in large buildings

and didn’t approve.

14 Z.A. Maxfield

Stupidly, Adin blurted out, “My sister works here,” and the

man smiled as though that made a difference. Adin paid him,

and he left.

Welkeil was not the most welcoming place. After following

protocol and checking in at the large, busy reception desk,

Adin’s briefcase and person were searched, and a handheld

metal detector was run over his body. The blonde woman, in a

navy blazer with a tag on a lanyard that read SECURITY, smiled

apologetically.

After a time, one of the doors in a bank of elevators opened

and Adin’s tiny, energetic sister, Deana, rushed out.

“Adin, oddball, you jerk!” she said as he picked her up and

swung her, simply to illustrate that he still could. “You could

have told me you were coming. It would have been a lot easier.”

She smiled at the security guard and took him by the hand.

“You look great, Deana Beana,” he exclaimed, trailing after

her, taking in her bronzed skin and sun-kissed hair. “You’re all

golden and glowing.”

“It’s a spray-on tan,” she said, laughing. “It makes me look

like a proper Angeleno.”

“You’ll never be a proper anything,” he teased. They

returned to the elevator and got in just as the car was about to

close its doors.

“Look who’s talking,” she said. “What have you brought me

this time?”

“Renaissance porn.”

“No kidding?”

“Entirely on the level. I thought we could take a peek…”

“And you want into the lab.” Deana raised her eyebrows,

and Adin grinned. “That’s fine, but not the clean room. I

assume you don’t want to prepare a slide?” They exited the

elevator on the sixth floor.

“Oh hell no. This stays intact. Nothing invasive just yet. It’s

my preciousssssss.”

NOTTURNO
15

“Well.” She pursed her lips. “Jeff’s got the electron

microscope, so you’ll eventually have to. You know the drill.”

He held up his case and patted it. “You won’t even believe

this manuscript. It’s unbelievably graphic. I want to look at the

parchment under a standard microscope first before I make the

decision to prepare a slide sample for electron microscopy. I’ve

brought my digital camera, and you can help me photograph the

pages. This is pretty racy stuff, Deana Beana; better gird your

loins.”

“You and your smut.” She led him down a gray-carpeted

hallway.

“This is historical smut, I will have you know. Erotica is an

art form that has its beginnings in cave paintings—”

“Save the speech, Adin. I’ve heard it. What makes this one

so special?” She swiped her card in a reader and then followed

him as he entered a brightly lit white lab room filled with long

stainless steel surfaces. Various stations held microscopes,

centrifuges, and burners, and each had file drawers underneath.

“Ah,” he said, finding a long stretch of clean counter. The

room was a good one for handling the book. The temperature

and humidity levels mimicked those in which he would

eventually store his precious find at the university. He took out

his case and handed her a pair of white cotton gloves. She

pulled them over her small hands and watched with amused

condescension as he carefully opened the special box in which

the manuscript traveled. It was designed to allow the

manuscript to be removed without any kind of pressure on the

object itself. Gingerly, he opened to one of the pages. “See for

yourself.”

“You are shitting me.” His sister stared at the book in shock.

“Nope.” He grinned.

“Gay porn from beyond the grave?”

“You can’t be terribly shocked.” He laughed outright.

She shook her head. “Oh, oddball. Only you…”

She went to the phone and dialed four numbers. “Hello,

Jeff? I need the TEM. No, Adin’s here. It’s for ink.” She

16 Z.A. Maxfield

glanced over her shoulder at her brother, who was sticking his

tongue out. “No, he still doesn’t spell it
O
-
D
-
D
. You have to promise not to file sexual harassment charges, Jeff… I
am

serious… If you aren’t okay with
Brokeback Mountain
meets
Two
Gentlemen of Verona
, don’t hang around… Okay, then we’ll be up in a while.”

Deana leaned over him to explore the page further. “Oh,

Adin,” she said. “It’s gorgeous.”

“I know. I looked it over as carefully as I could in Frankfurt,

but I didn’t have the time to read much of it.” He took a

magnifying glass out of his jacket pocket, and Deana pulled

over a couple of stools.

“
Can
you read it?” she asked.

“It’s Italian, but of course not the Italian we use today.” He

thought of Donte, whispering “un amore vietato.”
Forbidden love.

He shivered a little, and Deana looked at him, not missing a

thing.

“Cold?”

“Just thinking,” he said, going back to the manuscript.

“Somebody tried to steal this from me on the plane.”

“No. Adin?” His sister stared at him. “That is so very
not

good
.”

“I know.” He peered at the words under a nude rendering of

a really beautiful man. “Oh, this is interesting. He refers to the

man as his award. Like a prize or the result of a bet, almost;

something he won. Hmm. ‘I possess him, yet he possesses me

entirely. My will is no longer my own.’ Whoa. Time for an

intervention. Ye olde Codependents Anonymous.”

Deana looked closely at the page. “Yet look at the drawing.

Wow.
That
is the expression of a man in love, isn’t it?”

“How would
I
know? It’s a lovely drawing, though, isn’t it?

Look at the eyes; they’re so…soft. I can assure you, I don’t

inspire that look at all.”

“Yet you persist in playing hit-and-run all over the world

with what, fuck buddies?”

NOTTURNO
17

“Friends. I have really good friends when I need them and

strangers when I want them. It’s not like I need much more

than that.” He turned a page gingerly and drew in a deep breath.

Deana gasped and clutched at her heart. “Oh, hell, I don’t

care what century you’re from, that has got to hurt.” They both

tilted their heads in the same direction to look at the drawing

more closely. Her face caught fire. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” he replied, schooling his expression. He

wished he could just sit somewhere and read this damned book

in private. His dick was interested now, and his sister was

watching… “What?”

“Maybe we should go see Jeff now.”

“Oh, you think he’s ready?” He replaced the book in its case

without meeting her eyes.

“No. I don’t seriously think Jeff will ever be ready for the

contents of that book.”

“I know.” He followed her out into the corridor and then

pressed the elevator Call button. “To be honest, I’m not sure

even I am, and I bought the damn thing.”

“Think this time the university will say you’ve gone too far?”

“Maybe. Probably.” He turned to her and grinned cheekily, a

persistent memory of their childhood.

“You go, oddball!” She high-fived him.

They spent an hour in Jeff’s lab and two more meticulously

photographing each page of the journal. It was painstaking

work, each page carefully checked on Adin’s laptop to see

whether the writing was legible enough for translation and the

drawings could be reproduced adequately for study. Better

copies than these would eventually be made of the work, but

Adin couldn’t help wanting to get started on the translation

right away, and Deana had always been a willing accomplice.

She drove Adin back to the Bonaventure, leaving him with the

firm promise of lunch the following day. He wasn’t about to tell

her that he planned to stay indoors at night. He merely begged

off dinner, using jet lag as an excuse, and of course he
was
tired and looked like hell.

18 Z.A. Maxfield

When he returned to his room, he stored the manuscript

back in his wall safe. So far, he’d been right about it. The

document was written in iron gall ink on true vellum. Step one

to authenticating the manuscript. Next, paleographers and

codicologists would assess the writing and the binding.

Translation and further testing would be required to prove its

actual age. At this point, however, Adin had no reason to

believe it was anything other than what it seemed. He allowed

himself a small, triumphant smile and went to the window. Still

light out, it was a balmy Southern California evening, perfect for

dining alfresco at one of his favorite Westwood eateries. Adin

even longed to take in a Dodgers game. But Germany had

messed with his internal clock, and his own fertile imagination

supplied a reason to succumb to his exhaustion. He knew he

had to rest this night and rise early again the next day in order

to get himself back on Pacific standard time.

Adin was so exhausted he fell asleep on his bed with his

laptop still glowing from when he’d checked his e-mail. The

dream from the night before returned; his blood sang in his

veins. It heated his body and stained it with crimson at the

surface of his skin. He woke flushed, knowing that he’d heard

Donte’s voice again, murmuring with that peculiar accent in his

ear, coming from under his flesh even as his cock, which had

always had a mind of its own, rose to seek the man out.

“Crap,” said Adin, taking a few deep breaths. He dressed

and headed for the BonaVista Lounge, hoping he could still get

something light to eat as well as a drink. For whatever reason,

eating alone in his hotel room didn’t feel like an option.

Entering the elevator, he was glad to see a few smiling faces, an

older couple holding hands and two Asian girls who were

dressed for and talking about business. By the twenty-second

floor, everyone exited the elevator but him. He stepped off at

the top floor, looking for the lounge, when a large hand swept

out from behind him and pulled him back in.

“Caro.”
Donte’s voice.
He was looking at the light panel on the elevator, watching the floor buttons fire up in a chaotic, random

way that made him think of science fiction movies from the

’50s. He jerked forward to step off again but was prevented by