Notturno (6 page)

his hands together briskly under its jet of hot air.

“And that,” Adin said to himself, “makes
you
beer snacks.”

He turned and bumped into Donte, who had come up behind

him as silently as fog and whose face didn’t seem to appear in

the mirror unless Adin was turned obliquely, and then he could

catch him out of the corner of his eye. Neat trick that, but just a trick, like all the others.

“Caro. I’ve frightened you.” Donte sighed, running a thumb

over Adin’s trembling lower lip. “I meant only to tease.
Sono

perdonato? Mi perdoni?
”

Adin brushed his hand away.

“Come have a cigar on the patio with me.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“But surely you can’t argue that it would harm me? I don’t

breathe, therefore, I’m not really
required
to inhale.”

“Cigars are foul,” said Adin, thinking of returning to the

table and paying the bill for dinner.

“I’ve paid our tab, Adin. They have already given our table

to some other young couple, who ordered an execrable wine

that they read about in a magazine.”

34 Z.A. Maxfield

“Would you just…?” Tears stung Adin’s eyes, and he

swallowed his shame.

Donte took his hand and led him through the busy bar to a

bench on the patio, where he ordered a cigar and Courvoisier

for himself and a Bushmills, neat, for Adin.

“How did you know I drink Bushmills?” Adin asked finally.

“I tasted it on your skin in the airplane bathroom,” Donte

said matter-of-factly, which drew a stare from an older man

close by. Donte waved an impatient hand and the man looked

away.

“You are still angry with me.” Donte clipped and lit his

cigar, then nodded his thanks to the waiter as he returned the

implements to him.

Adin remained stubbornly silent, yet he was taken by the

way Donte seemed so natural in this venue, an aristocrat with

his cigar and after-dinner cognac. He was stunningly attractive,

and he knew it. Adin felt his breath leave him with a terrible

moment’s fear that Donte was having him on again, and then

realized he was just intrigued by the man, who literally, and

figuratively, took his breath away.

“Caro, you make me feel like a child who has played just a

little too hard with a bird. I am all contrition. Look at me again

with brave eyes, or I shall hate myself.”

Adin didn’t know what to feel. “When you’ve finished your

cigar, I would like to return to the hotel.”

“
Più amato.
What can I do to find forgiveness in your eyes?

Would you like to tie me up and have your way with me? This

might be what you call a win-win.”

Adin stared at him.

“I see I shall have to work harder then.” He smoked in

silence while Adin worked on his whiskey. “Will you come

someplace with me on faith, Adin? Will you let me show you

something special, that perhaps only I can show you?”

“You’ve already shown me things only you can show me.”

He thought about his damp trousers. “I’m not exactly standing

for the encore.”

NOTTURNO
35

Donte processed this. “I am truly sorry, Adin.”

“I know.” Adin tossed back the rest of his drink. “
I know.
I just…wasn’t afraid until that moment.”

Donte’s dark eyes found his as he stubbed out his cigar.

“You should have been.” He got up and walked away, turning

to see if Adin followed. To Adin’s everlasting shame, he was on

his feet and right behind Donte even before he’d looked back.

Slightly worse for drink, Adin looked out the window of the

cab and checked his watch. Almost 1 a.m. Donte was silent

except for a brief phone call during which he spoke in hushed

tones. Adin paid little attention to it, preferring to give Donte

his privacy. Donte snapped his phone shut and said nothing.

After a time, Adin noticed they were staying on Santa Monica

Boulevard, and they traveled only minutes more before the cab

stopped on Santa Monica near Gower, at the Hollywood

Forever Cemetery. They exited the cab, and Donte paid the

driver handsomely to stay where he was until they returned.

A security guard was at the gate, waiting, it seemed, to greet

Donte.

“Hello, Michael,” said Donte in a warm voice. “Thank you

for this.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Fedeltà. I’m glad I could help.” He

unlocked the gate and pulled it open, allowing the men to enter.

Donte walked along, seeming to know where he was going, so

Adin followed. He comprehended that this silent,

contemplative Donte was someone he didn’t yet know. Most of

the grounds were lit by the ambient city lights, but Donte was

leading him to shadowy places, niches where the overarching

trees or monuments blocked the light.

“You, of course, can’t see this in the same way I can, Adin. I

am at home in the darkness, as you might imagine. I have the

permission of the family that owns this cemetery, and others

like it, to research some of the names that are found here, they

believe, for a nonfiction book about Los Angeles.” Adin could

almost feel his smile. “My credentials
were
impressive. At any rate, I’ve made friends with the guards.”

36 Z.A. Maxfield

“Why would you do that?” Adin asked as he followed along,

careful to step where Donte walked rather than stumble in the

darkness.

“It suits me to walk among the dead.” Donte caught Adin’s

hand and led him around a metal grid where water drained from

the landscape. “I know that’s vaguely cliché, but believe me, it’s

a delight to find a quiet place to think in a city this size.”

“You could try the botanical gardens,” Adin told him. “Far

less cliché, and they have things you can eat there.”

Donte looked at Adin pointedly. “I have
things
I can eat

here. Besides, as you can see, I have the run of the place at

night. This cemetery was opened in 1899. That is comparable to

the Dark Ages in terms of Los Angeles history. This is a city

with little or no memory. Actually, I cannot like it much, but I

like this place, this city of the dead.” He led Adin across a

footbridge to a small building that seemed to float in the center

of a lake. Donte urged Adin to sit with him on the steps. “This

is the Clark mausoleum. Frankly, I neither know nor care who

William A. Clark, Jr., was.”

“He was the founder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic,” said

Adin. “I come here mostly in the daylight when I’m in town to

visit my sister, although last year they did
Hamlet
here in the summer evenings. That was fun. You’re going to get your nice

suit all dirty, like my trousers, which will require dry cleaning.”

“I said I was sorry, caro,” Donte repeated. They stayed silent

for a few minutes, absorbing the sounds of the night. Adin

heard the city traffic against the soft music of the fountain in

the small lake before them. The air smelled like earth and grass,

and Adin shifted, leaning into the windbreak Donte provided.

Donte put an arm around him and then unexpectedly kissed his

forehead gently.

“Fraternizing with the enemy?”

“Me or you?” asked Donte.

“Both.” Adin was afraid to take his hand. “Can you do

that…thing if you’re not touching me?”

“Yes.”

NOTTURNO
37

“I see.” Adin sighed and took Donte’s hand in his, finding it

cool to the touch. He interlaced their fingers and lifted them up

in the dim light. “You have lovely hands. I was going to

mention it. Artist’s hands. Your work is wonderful.”

“I was a young man who found endless fascination in

drawing the boy he loved. What you have is the only surviving

proof that he lived. My—the woman I was married to, Renata,

destroyed the rest.
Notturno
was hidden, along with some other things of mine to which I didn’t choose to allow her access.”

“Why is it Notturno? I’ve wondered that, the musical

meaning of Notturno came later, and—” Adin felt Donte

rumble with laughter.

“That was my private joke, a kind of blasphemy. Of course I

was to make my nightly supplications to God, say my prayers

like a good boy and shun vice and temptations. Yet even then, I

often found myself reliving the time I was able to spend with

Auselmo. So the nightly vigil, the
nocturni
, became the time I used to ruminate on the boy I loved. I mouthed words by rote

and let my mind wander. Mea culpa. I gave the journal the

name to flaunt my transgression.” Donte shrugged. “I was

young.”

Adin swallowed hard. “
I’m sorry.
”

“For what?”

“For your loss. It must have been terribly painful.” Donte

said nothing. “What happened?”

“Renata had Auselmo killed. As you can see, she had a

particularly spiteful way of dealing with me.” He flicked a moth

off his jacket.

“
She
made you what you are?”

“Not personally, no. She outsourced—isn’t that what it’s

called? She hired a foreigner.” Adin shivered, whether from

cold or fear he didn’t know, but Donte gave him a squeeze.

“The joke was on her, though. I renewed our acquaintance at a

masked ball she gave some years later, and invited her out to the

garden. She went with me quietly, thinking I was someone else.

I gave her no pleasure and it was like drinking battery acid, but

38 Z.A. Maxfield

she had a nice finish, which went rather well with a quite good

Chianti they were serving that evening.”

“You are
making that up
,” said Adin, shocked.

“Only the part about the Chianti. I’m a rather-devoted

cinemaphile and always liked that line.” Adin couldn’t help his

laughter. “Now, have you forgiven me?”

“No.”

“Ah well. The reason I brought you here is to show you

something, and show you I mean to do, whether you like it or

not.”

“All right.”

“So acquiescent sometimes…so stubborn at others.” Donte

gave his hand a firm tug but didn’t rise. An eerie glow began

over the lake, as though Adin were looking through weak night-

vision goggles. He could perceive the movement of

things…insects and small animals where before he’d seen only

darkness.

“Donte…”

“Shh…wait,” said Donte, still holding his hand.

As if the dawn were breaking, Adin now saw the cemetery

itself, the lake, the fountain, the pathways… It was incredible.

He felt the grass trembling in the breeze, saw and heard a cat

moving stealthily behind some bushes. Farther away, he heard

Michael, the security guard, humming the “Macarena” in his

office where he watched the monitors. Adin smelled things like

doughnuts frying in some distant little shop and the arousal that

Donte had hidden all evening. He heard the beating of a

number of hearts, only vaguely aware that Donte’s was not one

of them. He heard birds rustling and exoskeletal insects

scuttling along. Adin turned to Donte in awe.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, seeing Donte as if for

the first time, his newly heightened senses drowned by the

nearness of this man who attracted him so powerfully.

“Because I can. Because I thought it might please you.”

Donte kissed the palm of his hand. “Does it?”

NOTTURNO
39

“Yes,” breathed Adin. “I want…”

Adin turned in Donte’s arms and kissed him, pressing the

advantage he gained by rising to his knees and looking down at

the taller man. He cupped Donte’s face with his hands and

looked into his eyes, finding a kind of curious look, like surprise but far more subtle.

Adin used his thumbs to trace the dignified sweep of

Donte’s brow and once again touched his lips to the vampire’s,

running his tongue carefully along the teeth and finding nothing

more unusual in the act than the unfamiliar taste of cigars.

“No vampire teeth?” he murmured against Donte’s lips.

“No, not when I’m not planning to use them,” Donte

whispered back. Adin felt wrapped in a cocoon of night and

sensation with him.

“And you’re not?”

“Not now, anyway.” Donte hesitated. “I brought you here

so you could see things as I see them.”

Adin was quiet for a while, listening at what he considered

the closed door of something he could never possibly

comprehend. This was what Donte was privy to all the time, the

thrumming, vibrant exchange of air and rushing of fluids that

was life itself at its most primitive. Adin was completely

unprepared for the fear this evoked.

“It’s immense,” he said at last.

“It frightens you,” said Donte. “I can taste your fear on the

air around you.”

“Yes.” Adin pressed his face against Donte’s cheek, allowing

a shuddering sigh to escape his lips. It sounded terribly loud to

his newly keen senses.

“Caro, you must understand that while I was once a human

man, I am no longer anything of the kind. That which made me

human, and sympathy for humans themselves, that elusive

quality of empathy, has long since been eradicated by time and

experience.”

40 Z.A. Maxfield