Author's Forward (Chapter 11): 07-07-2011
Alright, after listening to Trevor Hall's 'Other Ways' and 'Origami Crane' on repeat through the inception and editing process of this chapter, I think I finally have something...a warming up, perhaps a little kindling between these two. The music really lent itself to a kind of lightheartedness and humour that, while it surprises me a little when I reread it, knowing the early beginnings of this story, I find it the natural course now (though not to imply that there will be a lack of dark theme later on). Also, while I can't foil anyone's thoughts on reincarnation...I can say is that there will be an interesting and unexpected twist as to why Elena has suddenly come into his life...
Please let me know if you think it would be useful to have some Italian translations included at the end of a chapter. I will share with you now, what my fiance said to me last night: "Why are you forcing people to Google shit?" This, I thought, was hilarious but when I asked him to help me come up with a language barrier joke for Damon to tell Elena, he failed.
Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful comments/reviews, and to those of you have favourited this story or have simply read it! It makes me smile!
Now on to the goodies...
"Mr. Salvatore, travelling with us again so soon? Third time I've seen you this month," the hostess greeted a familiar face, her smile, which couldn't have been any wider, practically hitched to her eye sockets.
"I hope you're not getting tired of it. I'd hate to have to switch charter," Damon returned with an open, affectatious grin, pulling out all the stops in a flashy showing of his own pearly whites.
"And lose you as a frequent flyer? Oh, no. I wouldn't dream of it," she flirted back, turning to enter the main deck of the aircraft and motioning for Damon and his anxious-looking female companion to enter.
"Glass of Woodsen, Mr. Salvatore?"
"Delia," he began, addressing the hostess as if she were some long time acquaintance. "If you call me that one more time, I'm docking it off your tip."
She laughed and it was a high-pitched, girlish whinny, as artificial as the coppery dye-job of her hair.
"Well, you know how the higher-ups l-ooove protocol. Have to keep up an image here," the hostess remarked, before moving her eyes to Elena, her envy of the girl's slender figure and her escort to such a well-moneyed and attractive businessman keenly masked behind her servicing smile.
"Would you like any refreshments, hon?"
Elena shook her head, still confounded by her surroundings. She had been lost to the experience, moments, even hours before this, wondering how it was that she was standing in the aisle of a Boeing 787 airbus on a transcontinental flight to the Malpensa Airport in Italy, just nine hours away from the most unlikely, most unimaginable of destinations.
Their carrier was monstrous, outfitted with every possible amenity that one could dream up for a home, let alone air travel. The room in which they presently stood held two coffee tables, two loveseats, four matching recliners, a dining room set with a sofa on one side and a backless settee on the other, and mounted to the wall, directly above the sofa, was a large flat screen television filling half of the room's width.
"Go ahead and explore. Make yourselves comfortable. The toilets and showering facilities are just past the main dining area and the bedroom is at the far end of the deck, if you feel like taking a nap," Delia remarked, though mainly for Elena's benefit, appearing like any usual tourist would, in her cheap dress, with her out-of-season handbag and her looks that had 'economy-class' written all over them.
Then the hostess disappeared into the cabin through which they had entered, presumably to pour Damon his drink and leaving Elena to wonder how it was that a flight attendant could brave such immodestly high heels.
Damon set his luggage down, threw his jacket over the corner of a loveseat and perched himself atop a set of plumply padded cushions. Elena chose a recliner on the opposite side of the aisle, dropping into it, wilting in the opulence of the jet's interior.
Delia returned with Damon's glass, placing it on a napkin before him and smiling more warmly than was generally her practice.
"Here you are, dear. If...either of you need anything, just give the buzzer a ring. We're right on schedule for take-off. Should be about ten minutes."
Elena waited until the hostess had returned to her cabin before saying anything.
"Did you really need to book us a private jet and blow all your money, or were you just trying to impress me?" she asked finally, the room's electric powered door hissing to its full closure.
Damon pulled the zipper to one of his bags, ignoring her and retrieving a recent issue of 'The Florentine,' along with a novel he'd procured from one of the little shops that lined the upper floor of Norfolk International, as they'd waited for their aircraft to arrive. He flattened his newspaper, resting it on his lap as he glanced up.
"R-iiight and how could I possibly pass up travelling executive? There's nothing I find more relaxing than sitting in the sweaty confines of my thirty-inch seat, arm wrestling with my neighbour who's been eating airport food all afternoon, and I know this because he's been passing gas for the last two hours. A-aand in compensation, I can...purchase myself a set of headphones to watch a film rehashing ten-thousand others as I choke on my little bag of pretzels and wash that down with a shot of medium grade liqueur. So...yes, we are travelling by personal charter because I like it...and not because I want to impress you."
A short silence hovered after Damon had finished speaking. Elena raised both of her eyebrows, opening her mouth slightly in a look of shock, bewilderment and disgust.
"Wow. How is it that you can be so old and still be such a jerk?"
Damon leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, grounding his surge of temper. Already he had begun to regret his decision of bringing Elena along and ironically, they hadn't even left the airport.
"And how is it that you can be this irate after I've just paid your way for a Boeing aircraft? It's insulting."
"Because I didn't want to be here. I don't want any of this! You kidnap me, compel my family into thinking I'm in some student exchange program and on top of all that, you make me...you...How else do you expect me to handle any of this? Am I supposed to...roll over, do whatever you say like I'm some...some blood doll?"
Damon let her finish, more out of recompense than out of the need to avoid making a scene, though, it was true, they were within a very short distance of the cockpit and Damon wasn't pleased to think of what the crew had already overheard. He was thankful when Elena's voice lowered, her anger subsiding a little when he didn't react and when he simply provided her an audience.
Elena paused, watching the lines of the runway and awaiting the sound of the engines.
"Why don't you just make me forget? Wouldn't it be easier?" she asked quietly, a solitary expression having worn into her eyes, aching under the burden of what it was that she had asked.
Damon thought on this for a long time. With just a few escalated sentences, she had sucked all the fun out of their enterprise, managed to render obsolete the luxury of their surroundings and certainly, it would have been easier on him if she didn't continue to plague him with questions. But now...when she wanted everything to end, an easy escape that he himself might have chosen for her, Damon couldn't offer it. Elena would remain a liability even if he did compel her. Perhaps she would resume her 'dreaming,' her recall, whatever it was that he didn't seem to have a word for...or perhaps not. There was no sure way of telling and Damon, for all of his impulsivity and carefree nihilism, suddenly didn't want to take any chances.
"No. It wouldn't," he answered coolly and with this, Damon closed the conversation, picking up his newspaper and immersing himself in its coverage of world events which, in his irritation, failed to take his mind off of Elena and the terrible weight of her sigh as she left him.
Three hours into flight, Elena stared absently at the magazine she'd snagged from one of the racks mounted in the long hall. She was itching all over from anxiety, stymied by the prospect of entering into a foreign country whose language was completely unknown to her.
Exasperated, she flung herself off of the leather sectional centered in a room partitioned off from the first passenger area.
Looking out the window, Elena watched as they glided high above the Atlantic, blurred over by thick formations of cumulous cloud. She had never flown before today and Elena was surprised at how smooth their travel had been, even their take-off - a memorable thing, despite the nauseous feeling of all of her organs settling into the pit of her stomach.
Safe and insulated within the confines of the aircraft, Elena was lulled into sedentary boredom by the ever present, background humming of the engines. Once in a while, they would encounter turbulence, the jet would dip down to lower air pressure and Elena would experience that same sensation as her body readjusted to newer altitudes.
Curious, she made her way through the electronic door to the first room, observing her companion as he lay stretched out on the loveseat, his arms half-folded across his chest, still clutching a bent book, eyes closed. Elena scrunched her lips together, making a p-uh sound as she exhaled, considering other ways with which to occupy her time.
"Mm...What do you want?" he asked, startling Elena as his knuckles cracked in a stretch.
Elena's head whirled round as Damon pulled himself up to a seated position, looking at her with tired expectancy.
"I was...just seeing if you were awake. I'm kind of hungry," she announced a little apprehensively.
"There's a buzzer for that you know, or is this your way of telling me you're up for something else?"
He cocked her a narrow grin, setting down his book and pulling up his sleeves.
"No...it wasn t. I was just wondering when they're serving us dinner," Elena continued, batting away his insinuation.
"Half-hour...and by the way...I'm starving here myself. Airport security doesn't take too kindly to passengers toting around blood-bags in their carry-on's. Apparently you need a licence for that. S-ooo... that leaves me with one of two options..."
Elena shook her head in opposition to the idea.
"Uhh-uh. No way. Not happening."
Damon gave her a look of tall authority, one side of his brow creeping upwards, testing her. Then he stood, shrugged his shoulders and sauntered over to the intercom device fitted above the light switch, next to the room's entrance.
"Well, then I guess I'll just have to ring Delia...who I think will be f-aar more accommodating..."
He had his finger poised over the buzzer and like clock-work, just as he'd anticipated, Elena's resolve came crumbling down like the great walls of Troy, bastions ablaze and defences undermined by a single Greek horse that, in her case, was Damon.
"No! You can't...I mean...she's just...she's just some stewardess," Elena floundered in her distress.
"And your point?" he asked her.
"I can't let you do that...She isn't in this like I am. It-it wouldn't be right," she murmured, holding back as though she expected him to read between the lines of this.
"Still waiting for the point."
Damon knew he was being unnecessarily cruel now, but he wanted her to say it. He wanted to feel that trigger in his hands as the words came, even if it wasn't real, even if she was just feeding him a bunch of self-sacrificing crap to preserve her own sense of integrity.
He smiled as Elena spoke her request.
"You can do it, alright? Do I have to spell it out for you? You can do it this one time and once you're through...and we've landed, you can find yourself another donor, blood bank or whatever."
Damon took several steps towards her, ambivalent as he reached out to brush aside her hair, unveiling the swoop of neckline which lay beneath.
"That's very selfless of you but are you sure about it? I mean...not that I'm trying to sway you otherwise. Invitation does...have its perks..."
Damon's tone was a proposition in itself, yet even amidst its throaty heat, a laughter seemed to belly the sound, an echo to the former night when he had mocked her, prodded her into thinking of him as some Luciferian evil arisen from the depths to torment her. She placed this laugh against the image of a soldier once fighting for a cause beyond his own. Even as she tried to understand it, Elena would never fully realize the nature of the thing that seized him, that need for which he had sold his soul. And who had he been before this? How could she even pity the remnants of that man?
Elena pulled herself out of these thoughts and nodded in stern concession. If this was to be a choice between herself or some innocent bystander, then the answer was obvious. She braced herself for the pain to come...but it was not pain that she was met with.
Damon simply stood against her, hand pressed to the left side of her neck. He grazed the pads of his fingers upwards, past the outer lobe of her ear and into a section of hair, which he let slide out of his hand, slowly, as though he were considering the merit of its texture.
"So noble...hm? So esemplare, though I think maybe too much for your own good," Damon said, his eyes impossible to read, rippling through her like a blue Mediterranean, with motives as equally unclear. He pulled away.
"Tell you what, since you have me feeling a little more...amicable, I have another way we can kill thirty minutes," he continued impartially, as though their exchange had been as simple as a game of cards brought to completion.
"So, you're not going to...?" Elena trailed off, still believing that he had something more up his sleeve, something that he wasn't telling her.
"No. I'm not...but I will take a rain check if that's what you're offering. Meanwhile..."
Damon retrieved an article of luggage, a sleek, brown leather bag with a flap closure and a brass buckle. He threw back the flap and withdrew an item, one of those Oxford edition translators stocked on the shelves of nearly every book shop that Elena had ever visited. She eyed it sceptically.
"Here," he said, tossing the translator in Elena's direction.
"I picked this up earlier. You were taking your sweet time in the washroom, so I had a few minutes to browse. Thought it might be useful," Damon remarked offhandedly.
"Thanks...I guess," Elena responded, skimming through a few pages and picking out those words which were listed in bold-face print.
"Yeah, well, you know...Couldn't have you wandering around, not having any basic conversational skills. There is more to the language than 'ciao' or 'pizza,' despite what you've seen in the movies. You're quick, though. I think you'll pick it up," he offered, making his way back to the loveseat and seating himself.
"In fact...how about we start over. If you try to keep that teenage drama-queen of yours in check and aren't overly snarky with me, then I will try to be a gentleman and help you out with that language barrier. Sound doable?"
Now that the would-be virgin neck of their hostess no longer needed defending, or her own for that matter, Elena felt a measure of relief with this suggestion, though less so than she might have hoped. She was still addled by those persistent warning flares going off at every half-second interval and it was very difficult to put much faith in Damon as he playfully tapped the cushion next to his, beckoning her to sit.
"So...is this your idea of an apology?" she asked him, crossing her arms in lack of diffidence and playing up the dramatic element, if only for the fact that he had mentioned it in the first place.
"I never apologize," he answered with a look of such hardened sobriety that Elena found it nearly impossible to take him seriously.
"Now, get your troublesome little ass over here before I change my mind," Damon said, hiding the subtle amusement that had begun to blossom inside his breast as he watched her huffily stride towards him and plop herself down on the farthest corner of the loveseat.
"Gentlemanly, remember?" she reiterated.
"Totally. I'm in the process of it."
Snaking his arm across the backrest, Damon tucked in one leg so that his upper body was directly in line with hers.
"Ok...we'll start with the alphabet...and build from there, I guess. Now...pronunciation and appropriate phrasing are key. If you don't say things correctly, you're going to give Americans everywhere a slightly poorer reputation than we already have - that, and you could wind up pissing someone off."
"Example...you're at a hotel, you're trying to rent a room for the night, you pull out your cash, and you say to the clerk, 'Sto cercando un posto di presentare questa in voi.' You think you've asked him if there's a room for you to lodge in, but what you've really said implies that you'd like to lodge your money inside of him."
Elena laughed and it was the first real laugh that had passed her lips in nearly three days. A small chuckle issued from his own before Damon gave her his rendition of a straight-laced, down-to-business look.
He ran through the Italian alphabet, pausing after those letters which deviated from their English equivalents.
"Pretty much the same, except with twenty-one letters instead of twenty-six. Fascinating, I know," Damon continued, his eyebrows wagging.
"Same vowels but with sl-iiightly different pronunciations...and they're always short. You say 'a' the way you'd say 'ah,' a soft sound. 'E' has two pronunciations. The first is like the sound in 'hey' and the second is like the one in 'pet.' So when you say 'bere,' which is the word for drink, the last 'e' is accented a bit...as opposed to 'festa,' meaning party, which is softer...Have I lost you yet?" he suddenly asked.
Elena, who had her arm propped up, knuckles resting against her cheek, now gave her head a quick shake.
"No...I'm interested."
"Alri-ight...but if you fall asleep, I'm not making any promises. Sleep is a deal-breaker," Damon warned her, though there had been an audible shift in his tone. It was light-hearted, the way he spoke, and Elena found it much easier to tolerate his presence when she wasn't having to keep her guard up constantly, in the face of coercion, slander and mutual upset.
She stared at her companion, evening sunlight peeking onto his face. He wore it so well. He wore it like the expensive clothes on his back. But within...within she knew it was a different face, its splintered ego hurling pieces of itself somewhere inside her.
Again she found the humour in her voice and clung to it, forcing a smile.
"M-hmm. Well, I'll give you plenty of notice before that happens. Keep talking."
And so he did. He covered the pronunciations of the remaining vowels and their various combinations, the 'wo' in 'buono,' and the 'ew' in 'chiuso,' with Elena repeating each in turn until Damon was satisfied with her sounds. Elena watched his mouth move with different inflections, trying to mirror them and discovering how fluid the language was when she didn't stop to think about where to place emphasis.
"Those letters that get strung together to make one sound...a lot of people have problems with that, but-ahh...looks like dinner our is here," Damon interjected on himself.
Moments later the electronic door opened to reveal their hostess pushing an elegant silver trolley. She manoeuvred its wheels down the aisle with careful efficiency, pausing before the loveseat and setting the brake to keep its load stationary.
"Would you like me to set up here or in the other dining area?" Delia asked, directing her question solely at Damon.
"Here is fine, thanks," he answered, eyeing the trolley as it was steered towards their table, a glossy slab of ebony wood supported by thick, twisted carousel legs.
"Ah, Delia...did they manage to fill my order? Pl-eease tell me they made it happen."
Delia grinned as she crouched down on one knee, sliding open the cabinet doors of the trolley. Then her head poked up from its service counter as she held up a bottle with a red and gold label.
"Ugh...you're beautiful. Thank you," Damon said as his mouth broadened into a smile. "Hand it over. I'll take care of it."
Damon accepted the bottle from their hostess, handling its neck with near reverence and swiping up the corkscrew that was offered to him. He rotated the bottle, examining its vintage label and authentic wax seal which bore the emblem of the Salvatore legacy. Semme Rosso - red seed. A Chianti Superiore made from a blending of the finest Sangiovese and Malvasia grapes that his family's lands could produce.
"It was easier than you made it sound. Just two calls - one to Norfolk's Winehouse and one to Sonoma. Sonoma's had it and they sent it out in plenty of time," Delia boasted, eager to assure him that her employer had taken care of every detail.
Damon lowered himself onto the table's settee, scraping at the wax seal of his bottle and uncorking it. Elena, however, remained where she was, watching as their hostess took to the convoluted process of arranging dinner. First it was the silverware, tucked away in pressed, white linen napkins, then the red-etched water glasses, the wine glasses, the saucers and their coffee cups, and finally, two lidded serving platters, foggy from the presence of the steam within. As each lid was removed, a rich, zesty aroma announced itself and Elena followed its scent off of the loveseat. Delia made her final pourings of ice water and at last the table was set.
"Conchiglioni with ricotta and spinach...as per your request. It's still really hot, so be careful. I'll be back with desert and coffee when you're ready. Just let me know," she chimed, scooting out of Elena's path and dragging the service trolley with her as she exited the room.
Elena sat opposite Damon, staring at her plate, dazzled by its presentation of oversized pasta shells drenched in red sauce and dusted over with flakes of herb and cheese. So vigorous was her appetite that in the haste of unwrapping her cutlery and throwing aside her napkin, Elena took no notice of Damon as he filtered the wine into two bowled glasses.
"When I was a kid," he began, "My father would have our brand of Chianti shipped over from Florence. It would come...in bottles sometimes, the squat kind, packaged up in little baskets...or 'fiaschi,' as they're called in Italy. Most of the time though, his wine came in barrels. It was different somehow...better from all those months at sea, mellowed out...woodier," Damon said as he finished his pour, setting the bottle down and watching as Elena broke her eyes away from her platter.
"Have a try," he prompted her, gesturing his head towards the glass.
"I'm underage, remember?" Elena reminded him, as though she expected him to be utterly deterred by the prospect of corrupting a minor, when in reality, a little peer pressure into alcohol was probably the lesser of all evils. At seventeen, even she couldn't deny having had her experiences with it, a few coolers now and then, and the occasional beer to stifle her brother's nagging remarks of 'loosen up' or 'grow some hair on your chest' whenever he threw one of his secret soirès, usually entailing an aggressive mixture of Old Milwaukee, weed and a half-dozen other teenage boys scheming and carousing and making a general nuisance of themselves.
"That is the biggest load of B.S. I've ever heard. Come on, just sip on it. I guarantee you, it'll do more for the flavour of that food...which...isn't going to last two seconds at the rate you're inhaling it."
"Lo non...lo-la penso...cos-i," she spoke in broken Italian, smiling.
"I don't recall teaching you that," he returned, studying her with surprise and admiration.
"You didn't. It was in the common phrases section of my dictionary."
"Ah, well...regardless...you really should have a drink," he solicited. "I'll make you a bet. If you can hold down three glasses, I'll answer all your questions about where we're going and why."
Damon raised his own glass now, taking in a great mouthful of its dark, ruby intoxicant. He ran his tongue along his bottom lip, moistening it, and scraped at the wine stain with his teeth. Still holding the stem of his glass between two fingers, he prompted her again.
"How about it?"
"That depends...What's in it for you?" Elena asked, suspicion once again whispering dark thoughts into her ear, conjuring images of chains and flogging, whips and teeth. Ok, perhaps her imagination had run a bit off-track with its depiction of gruesomely medieval apparatuses and torture scenarios. They were, after all, on a jet, fully-staffed and equipped with numerous intercoms, and it was highly unlikely that anything as terrible was going to occur if she did agree to the wager.
Damon grunted overconfidently. Then his lips formed into a sly grin as he responded.
"Why...the pleasure of seeing you shit-faced of course, and besides that, I don't think you'll make it past the second glass."
Elena took this in, hating to be so underestimated, so confined to the limits of her gender and size. It was his stereotyping that angered her most, obviously meant to provoke her into doing something stupid out of pride. How many mouths had salivated, she wondered, over those buxom, small-waisted college-eds failing to hold their alcohol and revealing their tiny bodies one article of clothing at a time? Elena was determined not to be added to their list. Nevertheless, she was naturally curious of Damon's plans, what exactly he had in mind once they reached Italy.
Elena lifted her glass and took an enormous gulp, then a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth, until she heard him exclaim between these swallowings, "Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa! Slow it down there! I think you've somehow confused the term 'shit-faced' for 'hurling your cookies.' Sip, for god's sake! This is a four-hundred dollar bottle of wine. I mean...as much as I admire your commitment to winning, you can't just slap it back like it's Kool-Aid."
The wine's flavour, at first only mildly dry, now ran bitter across her tongue, transformed into a hard acid scourge down her throat, and as she drained the contents of her glass, Elena's stomach churned unhappily, quaking and contracting in an awful motion.
Damon's features had collapsed into utter dismay. Certainly, he'd intended for her to drink, he knew she would eventually cave to his offer, but somehow, this wasn't quite how he'd pictured it.
"That was..."
"Dumb, I know...and I'm probably going to pay for it later, but you're going to dish up the goods on this trip, one way or another," Elena finished, trying to extinguish the sour feeling in her belly as she tore at a stuffed shell with her fork, consuming its portions.
"...profoundly dumb..."
"Just pour," she instructed, not wanting to dwell on the subject as Elena continued to pick at the remainder of her conchiglioni.
"You are, without a doubt, the most obstinate girl I've ever met...and I do mean that as a compliment," he said, snatching up the bottle and angling it over her glass.
"Compliment accepted. Now, pour."
The subtlest of smiles emerged from her lips, where wine marks had blotted the edges of their creasing. Absurd as it was, the sight was enough to trigger the on-switch of his ever mechanical soul and Damon found himself afflicted by the nastiest, most unbecoming of all human frailties - sentimentalism.
"Ok...but if this winds up with you in the bathroom redecorating the floor, I refuse to clean up..."
Onward and over the Mid-Atlantic they journeyed, still many miles from the port cities of Barcelona, Valencia and Rome, their districts teeming with drinkers, dancers, backpackers, and street performers negotiating all sides the pavement, while Elena, much to her own displeasure, conversed with the washroom's toilet. It was an act consisting mainly of repeated retches and prayers that she be delivered from the misery of her body's present condition. Elena's guts twisted in predictable spite, paying for every bit of alcohol that she'd imbibed - only two and three quarters of a glass. Of course, since she hadn't made it to three, no precious answers were to be had and the mystery of their voyage remained, though not that it mattered, given her lack of interest in anything that required moving her head outside the vicinity of the toilet.
At last she offered up her cheek to the tiled mosaic, rotating beneath her like a mandala, summoning her with its coolness. She curled herself into a fetal shape and lay there for some time, watching the walls as they circled her, trying to slow the objects that moved in and out of her peripheral.
Then, with no way of gauging how or when, Elena felt a damp cloth being wiped across her mouth and two hands lifting her up, up and around, the motion intolerable. But the arms that carried her were as smooth and as wonderfully cool as the tile itself, and she leaned into their firmness, assuaging the acid heat that swirled and rippled in her belly. Sinking gently onto a soft surface, Elena felt the arms recede and in one final moment of consciousness, she grabbed hold of the frigid wrist that was her only means of comfort. The wrist was easily bent and Elena closed her eyes to the winter that slid around her back.
Translations:
"Esemplare" - exemplary
"Sto cercando un posto di presentare questa in voi." - I'm looking for a place to lodge this in you.
"Lo non la penso cosi." - I do not think so.