The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird (25 page)

“Your story will always be different,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes,” was all I had the breath to say.

For a moment, as he stood on the starter, I felt sad that he hadn’t said “our story.” But then I felt relieved. I could almost hear someone’s voice—Mom’s? Signora Gianna’s?—saying, “Time enough for that.”

We didn’t ride very far, unfortunately. I had just gotten used to the feeling of my arms around his waist again when he pulled up in front of a restaurant in the Via Solferino. It was an Indian place, with low lights and strings of marigolds hanging like streamers. We sat in a corner, looking out into the street.

“I hope you like Indian food,” he said. “I’m addicted.”

Now that we were sitting down in a restaurant, on an actual date, I felt as if all that time we’d spent working together on the balcony or joking over
aperitivi
had evaporated. I found myself staring at the candle between us, wondering if I should check the restaurant for the presence of annoying Satanists. If I didn’t say a word with more than one syllable in it soon, Bernardo was going to think I’d been possessed by a very shy demon. At that thought, I wondered how much he knew about what had gone on the other night.

“You look like you’re over the other night,” Bernardo said.
“Has anyone heard anything about Signore Strozzi? I meant to ask Emilio, but I forgot,” he added, flicking a smile at me.

I smiled back, remembering, but then gave him the bad news.

“Signore Strozzi is still in the locked ward at the Ospedale San Giuseppe. We don’t know if he’ll ever recover his senses,” I told him.

“Wow.” He shook his head. I waited for some way of telling how much he knew.

“Yeah, it’s kind of crazy, isn’t it?” I said.

He nodded. “Hard on his family, I imagine.”

“They’re very upset, Nonno and Emilio say.”

He shook his head. “They shouldn’t be. Your family are good people; they only try to help.”

I stared at the menu. I’d had Indian food once and hadn’t really liked it, because most of the dishes had practically burned my head off. But I would try anything that he suggested.

“Can you recommend anything?” I asked, finally, remembering Signora Negroponte asking the same question of the waiter at the Caffè Vecchia Brera, the day we first figured out how to protect me in the street. Bernardo smiled with his eyes this time.

“Menu overwhelming?” he asked gently.

“A bit.”

“Will you allow me to order for both of us, then?” he suggested.

I had a sudden flash, of a very different guy telling a waiter what I wanted before I’d ever agreed to it. Lucifero hadn’t waited to hear my opinion.
Maybe not all dates have to end in demonic possession
, I told myself.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked.

“Long story. Yes, I would appreciate it very much if you would order for both of us, please,” I added. “And …”

“Yes?”

“Well …”

“Come on,” he coaxed.

“Well, the last time I had Indian food, everything burned my mouth.”

“So, mild, mild,” he said.

“Yes, please,” I agreed, relieved.

He laughed. “Of course! How am I supposed to talk with you if you have to spend the whole time like this?” he asked, fanning his mouth as if it were on fire.

The words were out before I could stop them. “How come you’re so kind? I thought guys were supposed to be, I don’t know, tough,” I said.

He laughed. “Oh, I can be tough. You’ve seen me dealing with a bad wood order, right? Me, I’m macho.”

We were both laughing by now. All that time on the scaffolding hadn’t gone away after all, and yet I still had butterflies in my stomach. He waved the waiter over in what he clearly considered a very macho fashion.

“Ciao, ragazzo
,” said the waiter. “Haven’t seen any of you for weeks. How’s your father? And who is this beautiful girl?”

“My father is fine. And this beautiful girl is named Mia Della Torre,” said Bernardo. “She’s hungry, and she needs mildness, gentleness in the food. No heat.”

“No heat, eh?” The waiter raised his eyebrows at me. What would my sister do in an embarrassing situation like this? I decided to try acting innocent, even though I was pretty sure Bernardo would see through it.

“No,” I said demurely.

“Yes, she is to be protected,” Bernardo said firmly.

“I will bring extra raita, just in case,” the waiter told him.

“Thank you.”

“And I will warn the kitchen.”

“Thank you.”

“So, what will you have?”

“The set menu … unless … Mia, are you a vegetarian?” asked Bernardo, suddenly worried, as if this might be a serious problem.

“Bernardo,” I replied in a severe tone, dropping the innocence, “you’ve seen me eat a metric ton of that amazing salami at the wine bar in the Via Vincenzo Monti after work, haven’t you?”

“Not vegetarian,” noted the waiter, eyes on his pad.

After he left, we laughed some more.

What my sister and the girls I knew back home had failed
to mention was how friendly a date could feel, even if you spent a lot of it thinking about kissing the man across from you. Sometimes I would remember the kiss in the darkness of the shop, and several minutes would go by before I could speak again. Bernardo noticed, but he didn’t seem to mind. He just seemed happy to be there, looking at me, tasting course after course of the wonderful food that was set in front of us, nearly all of it very mild. The waiter made a point of bringing Bernardo a selection of hot chutneys, “In case you miss the heat,” he informed him.

“Not in this company, I don’t,” Bernardo rebuked him.

I smiled at my date.

Worthy enough for you, Signora Gianna?
I asked in my head. Though I wasn’t sure that was what she had meant.

After dinner, I looked at my phone.

“We only have an hour,” I said. He must have seen how sad I looked, because he put his arm around me and said, “That’s okay. I know just the thing.”

He walked me across the street and settled me on the
motorino
before he climbed on.

“You’re a better passenger tonight,” he told me.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t before! I hadn’t ever ridden on a
motorino
, you see?”

“Really? Wow.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Well, this time, put your arms around my waist, like
before, but then put your hands in my pockets. So.”

I was glad he couldn’t see my face. I was also glad my family couldn’t see him.

I loved the feel of his back.

“Lean where I lean, and keep your feet on the footrests. Don’t bring them down when we stop someplace. And lean forward, into me, not back. You don’t want to fall off if I have to jet forward. You can learn to push off with me, but that will come. Ready?”

“Yes,” I said.

It turned out I had forgotten to tuck my dress under, so I almost didn’t make it out of Via Solferino without dying of embarrassment. I hoped nobody I knew had seen my underwear. I worked the skirt around my legs while we waited to turn into the Bastioni di Porta Nuova.

We drove through the warm air, the smell of leather and diesel fuel in my nostrils, flowing with the river of traffic, just another couple like all the others. Sometimes I’d look over and see some guys scoping me out from a car, or some girl checking out Bernardo and looking enviously at me—at me! I clung like the luckiest girl in the world to the back of the most beautiful boy, riding between the lofty buildings, passing the models and the businesswomen in their perfect evening clothes, jouncing together over cobblestones or rough pavement.

He got me home at 10:46. I didn’t come inside right away, though.

In fact, I would have stayed outside a lot longer, because he had turned around on the seat of the
motorino
, removed my helmet, and taken me in his arms. But he had taken Nonno’s words seriously, as well. In his voice that made the shivers run up and down my spine, he said, “I, too, would like one more kiss, Mia. We can have one soon?”

“Yes, please,” I said as we drew apart … and then knocked heads.

“Ow!”

“Ow!”

“Your necklace is caught on a button,” he said, chuckling into my hair.

We had a bit of work to do disentangling it. He held the bell between his fingers for a moment, turning it.

“You always wear this,” he observed. “It’s beautiful workmanship, so fine.”

“Thank you.”

He let it fall, and it rang once. He raised his eyes to me, a mischievous look in them.

“Do you wear it so the boys will hear you coming?” he asked.

I stared at him.

“Like a leper?” I asked.

“What?”
he barked, astonished.

He put his long fingers under my chin and lifted it with great care, as if I might break.

“Is that what you really thought I meant?” he asked. He held my eyes for a moment. I could see the light at the end of the street reflected in his pale irises.

“I don’t like kissing lepers,” he declared. “I meant, like a
cat
 … so that all of us poor bird-boys will have some warning before we are caught by your beauty …” He grinned but gave me a sad look as he added, “Someday maybe you will tell me what ever happened to you, that you would think that I would say such a mean thing.”

“Someday,” I said. I thought of my neighbor Tommaso d’Antoni’s afterthought of a kiss, of walking boyfriend-less through the halls of my high school, and of Lucifero, turning his handsome face upward and smiling as the demon descended from the roof of the Galleria.

Bernardo eased his weight off the
motorino
and held out a hand for me.

“Let’s make sure you’re on time. I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

I wanted to retort that I was already in plenty of trouble, but I wasn’t feeling as sure of myself as I had before. He walked me to the shop door and waited until I had let myself inside.

Then we did kiss once more, there on the threshold.

“
Not
a leper,” he whispered into my ear, holding me tight. Then he let me go and waited a moment while I locked the shop door from the inside, before he smiled at me and walked
back to his
motorino
, waving once more as he climbed on. I watched him turn on to the Via Brera. The shop was dark, not one solitary flame left burning. As I slipped up the stairs and passed down the hall, I noticed Nonna and Nonno’s door stood slightly open. When I opened the door to my own room, I heard it close with a soft click.

Nobody scolded me, not even Signora Gianna. She said nothing when I came in and sat down on the bed, but I knew she was smiling.

When Anna Maria cornered me in the shop around lunchtime the next day, I thought she wanted to know about my date. Instead, she called me to follow her into the back office, where she started emptying her satchel of all the notebooks she had borrowed for the Strozzi case, gently setting each one on the table.

“Two things,” she said abruptly. “One, I’ve seen Lucifero again, on a shoot. He looks bad, like he’s been doing heroin, but I know that’s not it.… Well, he could be doing that, too, but I can see that something’s eating him.

“You need to look out,” she went on. “I don’t know what Emilio’s thinking, I heard about the so-called ‘trap’ he set the night of Nonna’s birthday dinner. I don’t think much of a grandson who would risk ruining that for her.”

“I honestly don’t think he thought it would,” I said. “I don’t think failure crossed his mind.”

At that, she drew her lips in a thin smile, her eyes hard.

“You’re right. And he is good, very good. We know that. Some humility wouldn’t hurt him, though.”

I didn’t think that Emilio lacked humility. It just seemed like it wasn’t a consistent quality in him.

“The second thing is … I want to help you,” she said.

I
stared at Anna Maria.

“Help me? How? What do you mean?”

She paused again, putting the notebook she was holding down on the table, stroking its leather cover with her archival gloves. She looked toward the door that led upstairs.

“Let’s talk somewhere else. Have you eaten lunch? Is Nonna expecting you?”

“No … she’s out at some meeting,” I said.

“Let’s go, then. It’s a beautiful day. Want to bike?”

We grabbed bikes at the BikeMi Brera
stazione
and took off. We stopped at the
panetteria
in the Via Solferino and took sandwiches and fruit to the Parco Sempione.

We dropped our bikes at a stand on the near side of the
park. Anna Maria chose a bench facing the stream that runs by the ampitheater. She looked around, as if one of our relations might be behind a chestnut tree or something.

The sun sparkled on the water, and a man and a woman, hair streaked with gray, passed down the gravel path opposite us, hand in hand, heads bent together, laughing. I pictured myself walking with Bernardo, streaks of gray in his red-brown hair. It seemed so easy.

“There are things you should know,” said Anna Maria, watching me. “Things you’re not learning.”

I turned away from my daydream.

“I study every day,” I said. “Every weekday, anyway. And we are still searching for the poem,” I added with a sigh.

“The poem? Oh, yeah, the one the demon recited to you when you were out at Peck that day? Yes, that may be one of the keys.” She waved her hand. “But they aren’t teaching you everything,” she said, knitting her brows. “I believe there are things you have a right to know.”

I frowned, too.

“But you know they can’t, right? Because if I lose, if the demon succeeds, he’ll know everything I know. We can’t risk it,” I finished.

She snorted.

“I don’t believe that. The demon took my cousin Luciano, and he was good, better than his son may ever be. What of his knowledge?”

I drew myself up.

“Emilio says that we learn ways of sequestering parts of our minds, just in case.” She narrowed her eyes, looking fierce. “And are they teaching you how?” she asked.

I blinked at her, then I opened my mouth and shut it. She could tell the answer was no.