The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird (13 page)

“I will think about it,” she said, and stood, clasping her expensive purse in both hands. The shop bells jangled as she left.

“So, how do you think that went?” I asked Giuliano. The air seemed lighter now that she had gone.

“She will agree to it,” he said. “And she will convince her husband.”

He was right. She called the next day. Even though I couldn’t hear her words, I could tell from the tone of her voice over the phone that she was back to her grumpy self, now that she had gotten what she wanted.

That night, Nonno turned to me and said, “I want you to help build the Second Door, Mia. You and Anna Maria both need the practice.”

At the time, I had my mouth full of
budino al cioccolato
, which I think was deliberate. I could only nod.

Emilio was over for dinner, he and Alba having fought again.

“Bernardo can’t start until the week after this,” Giuliano grumbled to his grandson. “Even though I told him it’s urgent.”

I put my fork down and asked cautiously, “Are Bernardo and his family … Do they do what we do?”

“No, they are building contractors only. They know a bit about our work, as much as any of the neighbors. They send us clients once in a while.”

He went back to his thoughts, looking crabby.

“He and his father have some project they are finishing up for one of the universities, and when I suggested to Rinaldo that he hire someone else so we could get Bernardo sooner, he just shook his head.”

“He has always said Bernardo is the best apprentice he’s ever had, even so young,” said Nonna.

“He’s not so young anymore,” said Anna Maria, sounding irritated. “He’s my age, after all.”

I looked up. Bernardo was only nineteen? My heart seemed to bump up into my throat and come to rest on my tonsils. I hadn’t been able to tell how old he was. I mean, he was definitely older, but not too old, really. I took a deep breath, feeling relieved—then quickly checked around the table, to see if anyone had noticed my expression. I was pretty sure they hadn’t.

“Yes, and you are positively elderly,” Emilio teased Anna Maria.

“Oh, no, not as ancient as you,” Anna Maria replied generously, and everyone at the table laughed.

“Like you,” Nonno said to Anna Maria in a reproving tone, “he has come far for one so young.”

If he was trying to put her in her place, he hadn’t succeeded. She had her mind on another question. “Why do we need a contractor anyway? Haven’t you guys done this before?”

Emilio laughed.

Giuliano answered, “Oh, yes, but always with help. If we were just building a simple frame on the ground floor, I wouldn’t worry. But we need something on a second floor that will actually hold us all long enough to enter, and get out again, maybe several times. I’m not interested in doing this myself and ending up with a family of demon catchers with broken bones. I know what I’m good at, and what I’m not.”

“Nonno, you know you won’t be working on it much anyway. It will be the rest of us,” Emilio said.

“This is true, Giuliano,” Nonna said to her husband.

Nonno shrugged, and said, with the corner of his mouth turning up ever so slightly, “A heap of demon catchers with broken bones.”

Anna Maria laughed, and Emilio said to her, “Now you know why. And who.”

“But there is the danger that Signora Strozzi might change her mind,” Emilio went on, serious again, looking at Nonno.

“The demon might change
his
mind beyond repair,” agreed his grandfather.

“Yet the
famiglia
Tedesco has a living to make,” Emilio
said, gently. “We can’t pay Bernardo what others can, especially when we can bet Signora Strozzi will argue about the price for the job.”

Nonno snorted. “Too true,” he growled. “It’s the poor who give more than they can, out of gratitude.”

“That always breaks my heart,” Emilio said. “Like that family from Sardinia, with the Etruscan seven-repeater.”

Everybody else at the table was listening. An Etruscan seven-repeater is a demon of Etruscan origin that attacks the same family line, once every seven generations. According to Emilio, Etruscans had powerful magic, and these demons originate from curses they laid on their enemies. The tricky thing about a demon that attacks so rarely is that often the folks who suffer from it don’t remember the last time their family had some kind of occult trouble by the time it shows up again.

“Are we looking at a family repeater here?” I asked.

“We don’t have any record of it, but I am wondering,” said Nonno, lifting his eyebrows at me. Then he smiled. “You and I will be hiding behind piles of books tomorrow,” he said. “But for now,” he added, raising his eyes around the table, “let’s change the subject. Thinking about rich people is bad for the digestion.”

Emilio laughed, and helped him turn the conversation, leaving me free to think about Bernardo.

Of course, I hadn’t the faintest idea what I would do when I saw him again. Giuliano had said it would be a week before
Bernardo could help us. That meant the following Thursday, so I kept track and waited.

On Wednesday night, I sat up in my room, laying out different outfits for the next day.

“What are you doing, dear?” asked Signora Gianna.

“Uh,” I answered, searching for a better explanation than the truth.

“It won’t do to keep a young man so much in mind,” she said gently.

How did she know?

“The Tedeschi are a good family. He’s a good choice. But don’t keep him in your thoughts so much; it’s better to wait and see, you understand? You do not know him yet, and you must decide if he’s worth your time.”

I almost laughed. It’s not like I was planning to marry the guy.

“Oh, Signora Gianna,” I said, “He won’t think I’m worth his time, anyhow.”

“Really?” she asked. “How do you know?”

“He’s older. And he’s gorgeous.”

“And gorgeous older men never look at you?” she asked.

“Well …” I began. She had a point. Even though looking at women was a favorite sport for the men of Milan (and all of Italy, from what I’d heard), I had to admit some pretty handsome men had turned my way lately.

“You see!” Signora Gianna said, accepting my unfinished
thought as an answer. “I wonder about young women today. You don’t seem able to put a value on yourself. In my day, we knew we were treasures to be sought after. We would have made this fellow work to get to know us. The art of fascination.”

“Isn’t that kind of devious?”

“Devious?” She laughed. “This is love we’re talking about!” She paused, then added in a more reflective tone, “I don’t know about devious. Why should we just throw ourselves at some man like a parcel of rags? We always thought we were worth more trouble than that. And you know, they don’t like what they can get easily. They like the chase.”

I’d heard this before. “It doesn’t seem very … feminist.”

“Is it feminist to think that you are not worthy of him, instead of waiting to see if it’s the other way round?”

She had me there. What had men been like in her day and age? Had it been easier to get a date?

“If I sit around all day, waiting for guys to chase me, I will die old and alone,” I pointed out.

Signora Gianna guffawed, startling me. “Unlikely,” she said. “After all, you are a Della Torre, my dear. But you don’t sit around at home, silly girl. You go about your days. And then they begin to call on your elders. Or at least that’s what they did when I was young.”

“Things have changed a lot,” I informed her.

“Some things do not ever change, my dear,” she said firmly.

“What did you mean, I’m a Della Torre?” I asked.

“Oh.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “For those in the know, we make
excellent
wives.”

I noticed that Gravel hadn’t chimed in. “Where’s your …?” I asked, not sure what to call him.

“My familiar? He’s out patrolling.”

“Oh,” I said. I started to formulate a question, but she got in ahead of me.

“Think about what I’ve said,” she finished, and then I felt the change in the air that meant she had gone. I turned over the new ideas she’d given me. It seemed kind of unfair to the guys to expect them to do all the work, but then, it was pretty unfair to expect us to do all the work, too.

Just the same, I spent another hour deciding which outfit I wanted Bernardo to see me in the next day.

It didn’t matter. Thursday came and went; I knew I hadn’t missed his visit while out getting groceries for Nonna because nobody mentioned him that night at dinner, nor did he turn up over the weekend.

On Monday, Emilio texted me to change into the work clothes he’d left out for me and be ready when he came home. I found them on my bed: a worn canvas shirt and heavy canvas pants, a lot like the kind my father wears, and nearly as big. I rolled up the sleeves and the pant legs and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her father’s closet. I laughed at myself. Who would want to chase me after they’d seen me in a pair of canvas pants, anyway? Oh, well.

Francesco stopped by in the late afternoon to receive an order of lumber from a squat, scowling old man who came in a truck that was probably as old as he was. We parked the wood in the courtyard below our apartment, and two young kids, a boy and a girl who had just moved in across the way, crept out and started climbing on it almost before we’d gone back to the shop.

About half an hour later, after Francesco had left for his next lecture, Emilio pulled up in a white van that I’d never seen before. If anything, he looked handsomer in an old canvas work shirt and paint-spattered jeans than he did in his usual crisp, clean clothes. It was deeply unfair. He looked me over, taking in the dress-up clothes.

“Good,” he said. “Come help me with these,” he added, pointing at the boards.

When Emilio and I finished loading the van, he sat down on the back bumper to wait, and I followed his lead. He seemed antsy about something, at least as antsy as he ever got about anything, and when his phone rang he jumped, looked at it accusingly, and put it back in his pocket. I thought he and Alba had made up, but maybe they hadn’t. I heard the chime of voice mail and decided not to ask him whom he had ignored.

Sitting next to Emilio, I liked breathing in his pinesap smell, feeling the warmth of him. We watched our breath frost the air.

I looked up just as Bernardo turned down into our street.
He had the most beautiful walk, sure and graceful, a long loping stride that brought him to us before I had a chance to catch my breath—only to have it taken away again, by his pale blue eyes, the clean angle of his chin, his white skin, and his dark, reddish hair.

Emilio stood up and clasped his hand, giving him a kiss on both cheeks. I didn’t expect to get the same treatment, but I did; I guess I rated as a member of the family. Bernardo’s after-shave smelled delicious.

“Thanks for picking up the van,” he told Emilio. “I couldn’t get away. Ready?” he asked us. We climbed in, me wedged in the rickety backseat next to all the lumber, and Bernardo drove us off back down the way he’d come, swerving around a well-tailored old woman on a bike with a dog in her wicker basket. Then he jerked hard left into the Via Borgonuovo, and again into Via Fatebenefratelli. He drove calmly, his hands loose and relaxed on the wheel, but the van moved like a Milanese, hopping up the narrow streets, yanking us from lane to lane on the wider Foro Buonaparte, revving at the stoplight. Bernardo and Emilio exchanged heated views on the soccer game that would be on TV later—Emilio was coming over to watch it at our place—and then they talked more quietly about some business trouble Bernardo’s uncle was having.

“It was a bad idea to begin with,” Emilio said. “I love the guy, but he should have gotten advice.”

“He should have gotten
good
advice,” corrected Bernardo, laughing ruefully.

I liked his laugh. He didn’t sound mean, or even particularly mad at his uncle.

Since they were both pretty much ignoring me, I watched him, thinking about what Signora Gianna had said. But how could I tell if he was worthy? All I could do was stare at him. He laughed and swore as a blonde woman in a dinky Smart car cut him off.

“Gorgeous,” he said to Emilio.

“Maybe,” Emilio shrugged. “Not gorgeous enough to drive like that,” he added.

They both laughed then. I envied her.

Bernardo wore a canvas work shirt, too, a dark navy, with
Tedeschi Imprenditori Edili
embroidered on the pocket and over the shoulder yoke. The navy fabric set off his pale skin. To me, he didn’t look like a building contractor; he wasn’t sunburned enough. His toolbox, rattling beside me, looked real enough, with
Bernardo
carefully spelled out in square letters on the dented lid.

It reminded me of my father’s toolbox, even though it was smaller and steel-gray, not a huge black Craftsman like Dad’s. I looked up at him again, and this time I looked at his hands, which looked older than the rest of him; they were strong, and long-fingered, with big joints and surprisingly well-kept nails. They were hands that could do this kind of work, I thought. I
thought other things about them, too, which made it hard for me to look at him in the way Signora Gianna had suggested.

He turned, suddenly, and asked me a question. I was so embarrassed that he’d caught me looking that I didn’t hear what he was saying.

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

“The van’s too loud?” he asked. “I was just asking if you needed anything to eat before we get there.”

“Oh, no, thank you,” I said, and felt my face get hot. Immediately, my stomach growled and I wanted to change my answer.

Emilio glanced back at me and said, “There’s a wine bar around the corner from the apartment that does really nice
aperitivi
.”

“Oh, yeah!” Bernardo said. “Let’s go there after we get everything roughed out. Is anyone else coming today?”

“No, just the three of us.”

“It will be enough.” Bernardo shrugged and turned to me again. “You know which way to hold a
cacciavite
?” He asked.

“A …?”

Emilio thought for a minute and then supplied, “A screwdriver,” in English.