The Chamber of Ten (6 page)

Nico pulled down his trousers and boxers and stepped into the bathroom. Moments later she heard the water turn on, then the sound changing as he stepped beneath the spray. He sighed, groaned, and she heard the soft thud as he rested his head against the tiled wall.

Geena went back and cleared the breakfast table, trying to fill her mind with inanities rather than let it dwell on the image of blood. She scooped up the plates, piling
them on top of each other, then carried the empty cups through to the small kitchen. Filling the coffee machine with water and fresh coffee, she leaned against the counter and smelled the gorgeous aroma of brewing coffee filling her flat once again.

For a moment I thought I’d lost him
.

She and Nico had met two years before at a lecture she was giving, and the attraction had been instant and mutual. He’d persisted in asking her on a date, and it had taken three days for her faltering professional concerns to be cast aside. She knew that fraternizing with students was frowned upon, yet there had been something about him that drew her from that first moment. His good looks and youthful fitness didn’t hurt, but his was also a mind that she perceived as an equal to hers. His eyes betrayed an intelligence and quirkiness that matched her own, and more than anything she’d sensed a passion in him about the past. For many, history was simply times gone by, but for Geena it was a more rounded, real, whole place than the present. The past was set and immutable; it had walls and boundaries, rules and certainty. The present was unreliable.

On their first date he had taken her to the Museo Archeologico, and that night they had made love in his small apartment, windows open, moonlight silvering their sweat-sheened skin, cool air flooding the bedroom. The next morning she had wandered naked into the bathroom, only to be startled by Nico emerging from the shower. His laughter at her shriek of surprise had melted her heart, just a little, and through the embarrassment she had found a smile.

He was twelve years her junior, and she loved him because he did not make her feel younger than her age.

The coffee machine was grumbling as the last of the coffee dribbled into the pot. She focused, trying to see if she could sense his mind reaching out to her, and felt only a warm, gentle satisfaction. She wished there were something more.

Geena pulled off her shirt and slid down her sweatpants. She crossed the small living room, glancing out the window but not caring if cat-man or the young flirter were looking. Steam billowed from the bathroom—he must have the heat turned high—and she stood in the doorway for a while, watching his shadow through the shower curtain. She frowned, trying to sort her confused emotions from those of his she might be feeling; frustration, anxiety? And she thought about what the dreams had been telling her last night—that Nico was gone, that she would never hold him in her arms again, never feel him smile and shudder against her neck as he came inside her. Never again argue with him about who was the greatest painter or sculptor.

She pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the bath. Nico still had his back to her, face turned up into the overhead shower and hands both clasping a tablet of soap. He was rubbing at his shoulders and chest, and his breath came in short gasps.

She stepped forward and reached around to his stomach.

Nico jumped and spun around, almost sending her sprawling. The shower reached her, and it was scalding hot across her face, shoulders, and chest. She gasped.

“I just can’t get myself clean,” he said, and for the first time since she had met him, he sounded like a child.

“I’ll help you,” she said. He nodded and smiled gratefully, and for the next half an hour as she scrubbed his
skin pink, he projected only an unfamiliar, heartrending vulnerability.

Domenic returned mid-morning with a doctor, and although Nico protested, he let the doctor look him over. There were no injuries and no obvious indications of any head trauma. He sat through the whole examination looking vaguely befuddled, and when the doctor stood to leave, Nico walked him to the door.

“How is he?” Domenic whispered.

“I don’t know,” Geena said. “It’s like he’s been away a lot longer.”

“How do you mean?”

She shrugged. How could she communicate to Domenic the subtle differences, the awkwardness between them that had never been there before? So instead she changed the subject.
Divert your mind and sometimes the answers will creep up on you
, her father used to tell her. He’d never given her a piece of advice that had failed her yet.

“Is Dr. Schiavo angry that we’re not at the site?” she asked.

“Of course not. You two have had quite a trauma—”

Geena frowned. “Not more than anyone else who was down there when the wall gave way.”

“Not true,” Domenic said. “I didn’t explain to Dr. Schiavo what had happened with you and Nico—that’s not my business to explain to him—but I told him you’d both had a close call. Ramus is site manager and he’s been there all day, talking with the city engineers about shoring up the canal wall, getting pumps in, all of it. You let us worry about all of that for today.”

“Have you looked at the film yet?” she asked.

“No, but your BBC friend is all over us.” Domenic rolled his eyes.

“Let’s have a viewing here. Finch can come, too.”

“You’re sure?” He looked around uncertainly, and at first she thought he was still worried about Nico. But then she realized the source of his discomfort and smiled.

“Sure. I don’t think we can pretend that Nico and I are a secret anymore, can we?”

“I suppose not,” Domenic said, returning her smile. “I’ll call the others and get them here for … two o’clock?”

“What’s at two o’clock?” Nico said, entering from the hallway.

“We’re going to watch the footage Sabrina shot,” Geena said.

“Of course!” he said, and his eagerness was troubling. He pushed past them with a vague smile and started picking up books and magazines, clearing the sofa, tidying Geena’s room in preparation for visitors. She watched him, wondering why she was unsettled, and it was only when Domenic touched her shoulder that it clicked.

“Geena? I said, do you want me to pick up some food?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, and she went into the kitchen to fetch her purse.
He still smells of the canal
, she thought. As Nico had passed her by, she’d caught a whiff of Venice’s old, dirty water, even after all that scrubbing.

As if it were as ingrained in his skin as it was in the foundations of the city itself.

Domenic brought pizza and Finch arrived with two bottles of cheap wine, wearing a bemused expression at
actually being invited. Geena welcomed him in and chatted inconsequentialities, and when he saw Nico standing by her living room window he nodded once.

“Glad to see you’re well,” he said.

Nico only smiled in response.

Ramus and Sabrina arrived around two p.m., hot and hassled from their dash through the city. The temperature had been rising all day, and now the air had grown motionless and heavy with humidity. Geena had opened all her windows and turned on the ceiling fan in her living room, but all these measures only seemed to push the hot air around rather than provide a cooling breeze. She’d chilled the red wine, much to Finch’s consternation, and they drank from tall glasses filled with ice. She would happily forsake some of its subtler tastes to be refreshed.

With other people in the flat, Nico projected his normal self. There were familiar intimacies: his fingers playing across Geena’s as she handed him a wineglass; the touch in the small of her back that always made her weak at the knees; his smile, dazzling and beautiful, the best part reserved for her. But there was still something different about him that went beyond the faint aroma beneath his aftershave and perspiration. She did her best to shut out the strange time spent in the shower in case lingering sexual frustration was clouding her thoughts. Even then, there was a distance between them that had not been there before. And she could think of no better way to describe it than how she had put it to Domenic.

It’s like he’s been away a lot longer
.

She was glad when Ramus closed her blinds and Sabrina loaded up the DVD player.

“Burned this an hour ago,” she said. “Dr. Schiavo
wanted to see the footage first, so I left the camera in the lab, told him I had to get home for my grandmother’s birthday. He’s quite concerned.”

“You told him we’re all fine, though?” Geena said.

“Yes, yes,” Sabrina said, then looked away sheepishly. “Actually, I meant he’s concerned about Petrarch’s library.”

“Well,” Geena said, letting the word hang for a while.

“Maybe we fucked up,” Domenic said. No one answered, and for that Geena was grateful. This was her responsibility, and she usually had strong shoulders.

“I haven’t even had time to check that it works,” Sabrina said, slipping the disc into the machine.

“Now you tell us!” Ramus said.

“They usually work,” she muttered defensively.

“Yeah, I’ve heard about you and your home movies,” Domenic quipped.

“Make sure you’ve put the right one in!” Ramus seconded.

“Oh, you’ve seen them as well?”

The banter continued until Sabrina held up a hand, smiled as she made a gun with forefinger and thumb, and shot Ramus.

“Jealous boy,” she purred, and then the screen blinked into life. She paused the picture on the title card, which contained the date, location, and time of the filming. She glanced around at Geena, then her eyes flickered briefly to Finch.

“I invited him here,” Geena said. “Mr. Finch is more interested than ever.”

“I am,” Finch said. He sat at the small window table, wineglass already empty before him. He was sweating and uncomfortable, but there was an eagerness about
him, too. “After what I saw, I’m certain this could be a fascinating documentary.”

“We lost about half of what was still down there,” Domenic said bitterly.

“And it’s the recovery of what was saved that will make the program,” Finch said slowly, talking down to him, though the silver-haired Domenic wasn’t much younger than Finch himself. Geena was still unsure whether she liked the British man for his candidness, or hated him for his vacuous pomposity.

“Nothing to do with a fucking flood and half of us almost dying,” Ramus muttered. The room fell silent for a few seconds, then Sabrina chuckled and pressed
PLAY
.

Nico tensed as soon as the first images appeared. Geena felt his thigh harden against hers, and another waft of dirty-water smell stung her nostrils.
Doesn’t anyone else smell that?
she thought. Perhaps afterward she would ask Domenic. She glanced sidelong at Nico, but his face seemed calm, eyes flickering with the reflected TV picture.

Heads bobbed on the screen as Sabrina and her camera followed them down the curving staircase. They paused at the bottom, then Geena opened the door and stepped into the lower chamber.

I should have held back
, Geena thought.
I was much too eager to see what was down there, and a lot of that came from Nico. I sensed his excitement. He projected it to me
. She glanced at him again but he seemed enrapt with the picture.
So why can’t I feel anything from him now?

She rested her hand on his knee—an intimate gesture that she had performed a thousand times before when they’d been sitting beside each other. But this time felt
like the first, and he flinched before settling back against her. She gasped softly, confused, and his awkwardness bristled the small hairs at the nape of her neck.

“Get your hair cut!” Domenic said to Ramus. The younger man’s flowing mane filled the screen for a few seconds, and sitting on Geena’s floor he ran both hands through his hair.

“No way,” he said. “Gives me my sexual power.”

Nico shifted a little, but Geena did not move her arm.

On the screen, flashlights were shone around the chamber. She concentrated, trying to see anything they’d missed down there before. In their excitement there might have been obvious features that eluded them, or which the dancing lights had skimmed across too fast to see. She knew that a camera saw things differently.

“Strange columns,” Ramus muttered. “Why have three for support when one would do the job?”

“It’s a hiding place,” Geena said, thinking of how the man had stood within those columns, in his elaborate robes.

“Hiding what?” Sabrina said.

“None of us saw the urn until Nico touched it,” Finch said, and Geena started. It was the first time anyone had called it an urn, and the first she’d thought of it as such.

On screen they circled the room, examining the obelisks and then the granite disk in the stone floor of the chamber. Their voices coming from the TV sounded tinny and distorted.

“What is that?” Nico asked, nodding toward the screen.

Geena frowned. He’d only been twenty feet away while they’d been looking at the granite disk. He must have overheard them. But when she glanced at his face,
she realized he had not. His entire focus had been on the stone jar hidden amidst those three columns.

“Some kind of plug, we think,” Domenic offered.

“Plug?” Nico echoed. “Covering what?”

“A drain or a well?” Geena suggested. “Or a subchamber.”

“Is that even possible?” Nico asked.

But no one replied. None of them knew how to answer that, and now the plug was submerged under water in a room whose structural integrity was uncertain. It would have to be a question for another day.

It was strange seeing herself on the television, and stranger still seeing Nico. Geena concentrated on his image, on the way his eyes had widened and he seemed drawn to the shadowy space amongst those columns. She should have noticed something off about him, even then.

“What’s wrong with you?” she whispered, and the screen flickered and blurred.

“Damn it!” Sabrina said, picking up the remote control. The image paused, jerked up and down a little, then started again.

“Dirt on the disc?” Ramus asked.

“No,” Sabrina said, grinning. “I put the right one in.”