Author's Note: Yes, mobile phones technically were available to the general public in 1984, or at least one was. Motorola launched the DynaTAC 8000X in 1983 with a sticker price of $3995 dollars (about $9700 adjusted for inflation). Not a widespread gadget, certainly, but generally well within the price-range of a guy who cruises around in a vintage Rolls Royce. Taking around 10 hours to charge and offering about 30 minutes of talk time it's... actually not that much different from my current phone (insert rimshot).
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"Del Mercante Perfetto"
Morrisville – 1984
Silence ruled the air.
This one wasn't awkward like the others had been. This one was different.
This one was more 'deadly'.
Medici made his little statement about Jamestown and he'd seen Penance's reaction to it, and Penance had seen his reaction to that. Neither knew what to say now. Medici turned around and stared at the far wall, sighing. Penance looked down at the floor beneath his chair.
"I gotta pee."
"Nobody's stopping you," Medici mumbled.
His words were humorous, but there wasn't any more of that Italian lyricism in his speech, and he did not smile.
Penance slowed his breaths; they escaped his lips and nose in stuttering huffs, despite his best effort to keep them steady. Medici's words had at first struck him like a brick to the skull, blanketing his brain in a dreamy fog. As the fog lifted he felt his anger and his fear coming to the forefront.
Mostly anger.
"Who are you?"
Medici did smile at that question, turning towards the boy and scoffing.
"You've got a pair on you, asking that of me. You now know more about me than almost anyone alive. Except maybe—"
"Black Hat!" Penance hissed the words, his voice as soft as a buzzing fly and as harsh as a rattler's tail.
Medici nodded, staring down at the boy's bare feet.
"What're you to him?" Penance demanded. "What's he to you that he's got you out here doing his dirty work?"
For the first time in their conversation Medici looked up at the boy with a glare that threatened violence.
"The only dirty work I've ever done in my whole life was my own," he answered. "And you're here to satisfy my curiosity. Unless you want to see exactly how 'dirty' my 'work' can be I'd suggest you remember that."
He hissed the last of these words with dangerous inflection, but when he finished speaking his face softened. He drew a quick calming breath through his nose and wandered behind Penance's chair, towards the draped windows. He toyed with one of the thick cloth curtains as he spoke.
"I, uh, I apologize. I don't quite know how to handle this situation—"
Penance figured the direct route was best; it was certainly the least annoying.
"You wanna know if we were there, together."
Medici looked back at the boy, who craned his bound body as much as he could to look back at the man; Medici nodded.
"You wanna know if we met, there."
Another nod. Medici slowly walked back around the chair, again moving to that small table in front of Penance.
"And you wanna know if I killed him."
No nod this time; it was as if the man were seeking responses to questions already answered. One thing was for certain: this wasn't about the man's prized ledger of immortal activity. Penance wasn't watching a cold and clinical 'banker' assemble 'figures' for his records; there was something else here. Something more passionate.
Something personal.
"You... you're his teacher, aren't you? Or you were, whatever..."
The man cleared his throat. He walked back to the little table and poured himself another glass of wine.
"I like to think the teacher/student relationship may change over the years, but it never really goes away—"
"Your student is a monster!"
Medici took a long sip of his wine, his eyes sedately closing as he swallowed the drink. When he opened them he looked back at the boy and gently nodded, as if agreeing on whether to call out for Chinese or pizza as a snack.
"Yes, he is. But then so am I. And so are you—"
Again the boy bucked forward in his chair, managing more air time than when Medici had threatened to destroy Galabeg. Penance's face beamed blood red.
"Well he's a monster to a monster!"
Medici leaned against the table, quaffing another very large draught of wine.
"Jamestown," he repeated with a forceful voice, like a stern schoolmaster. "1676. Bacon's Rebellion saw the whole city burned to the ground. I was organizing my own little business venture in the Americas at the time when I heard a strange tale whispered on the wind not a few months later. People told the story of a phoenix that rose from the town's cooling ashes— a body stripped to its bones, charred black in the smoking remnants of a house, but a body that stood and walked, its wounds fastening up with skin like hot wax sealed across an envelope even as it shambled through the ruins of the town's embers. It was a horror that fled into the wilds, dazed and delirious, disappearing into the dark of the frontier, fleeing beyond the reach of civilization."
Penance said nothing as Medici talked, merely staring at the man's alligator belt; his silence and pensive stare were enough.
"I knew it was a 'newborn' before I'd even heard the first tale. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, all the same. In all my time I'd never been that close to a new-born immortal. I'd always considered the possibility of it happening, but also dismissed the idea of ever offering my assistance. I'm Italian by blood, but Swiss by temperament; I've always maintained a cold neutrality when it comes to our brethren. My services are available to all, but always at the right price, and with no favoritism or favors. But this? This was different. Pressing. Instinctual, even. A pull strong enough to drive me out into the cold December winds of the wilds, searching."
"And you found him?" Penance grumbled.
Medici smirked.
"Not quite. He was the one that found me, actually. 'Black Hat Sommer' was always one hell of a trapper and a tracker, after all. Knew the frontier like the back of his hand. Knew it better than the cozy confines of Jamestown, at least. He was never one for creature comforts like that. He was on friendlier terms with most of the Indian tribes beyond 'civilization's' reach than civilization itself."
"Yes," Penance coldly agreed. "He was."
"And it was quite an experience, dangling by the leg from one of his traps, his dagger at my throat. Even in that moment I wasn't the one who was truly afraid. You can remember it, can't you? That rush of confusion and fear that marks all our first deaths? The want for answers? The need?"
Penance did remember. Keenly.
But he wasn't going to show it.
"I never needed answers about my immortality," the boy growled. "I wanted excuses and fairy tales, but I've always known the truth."
"And what 'truth' would that be, my child?"
Penance looked up at Medici, and for a moment he felt himself nearly on the verge of tears. He pulled back from this indignity, a quivering lip the only betrayal of his emotion.
"We all deserve each other, I think."
Medici read the obvious passion in the boy's face. He poured himself more wine as he spoke.
"Precious few among us would consider our 'gifts' and situations to be entirely a blessing. But then precious few, also, would consider them to be entirely a curse—"
"I met my own curse," Penance answered. "I made my curse— made him— in Jamestown. But then that was also fate—"
"Fate!" The man chuckled, knocking back the entire glass of wine in one go, like a frat pledge polishing off a beer. "A child's fairy tale to describe things one can't understand."
"I am a child," Penance countered. "And I like fairy tales."
The man didn't appear to have an answer for this, so another silence came between them. Medici would be the one to break it, but not until nearly a minute had passed.
"This encounter here in Philadelphia was not the first time you'd seen him since Jamestown, was it?"
"Like you don't know!" Penance barked.
"Say I don't!"
The man's shout was earsplitting; it was so startling that it quailed the boy into silence. Penance sank back in his bonds, his muscles relaxing. He sighed.
"Whether you did, or you didn't, now you do." Penance looked to one side. "Why doesn't he know all the things that you do? About me, I mean. Like that name and... well, whatever else you know about me?"
Medici poured the last of the bottle into his glass; each glass had gotten progressively bigger than the one before until now the elegant glass was quite improperly filled over three-quarters to the rim.
"He doesn't know the things about you that I know because he thinks I have no information on children in my ledger. Because I told him that I don't."
"Why?"
Medici held up the wine, staring at the boy with grave eyes as he spoke.
"Because to dangle that information in front of him is as bad as offering you a sniff of a rich Bordeaux. No addict should ever be tempted, if it can be helped..."
The boy ground his teeth together. He turned his head even further away from the man.
"You know that about him, too?" Penance asked.
Medici nodded.
"Black Hat bared his soul to me, so to speak, in the aftermath of our first encounter. Many things. Most things. Not everything, including the particulars of his first death. I taught him, yes, and I trained him. Trained him in many things. Including 'self-control'. Including... quitting one's 'addictions'. You of all people must know how difficult—"
"I'm not 'addicted' to raping little kids!"
Medici had been speaking clinically. 'Professionally'. At Penance's interruption he'd been gesturing urbanely with one hand, like an erudite professor lecturing a class. With the boy's outburst the man froze for a moment, hand still up in front of him, palm up, with his lips still parted in anticipation of his next words. But for a skull in his hand he might've been practicing a pose for Hamlet.
In any other circumstance this would've been hilarious.
But neither man nor boy cracked a smile.
After a ten-second pause Medici let his hand fall down to his side.
"That's a fair point," he mumbled.
He guzzled the last of the wine with that same frat-boy grace and then stared at the empty lead crystal in his hand. He sighed, loosing his grip on the stem until the glass slipped from his fingers and hit the wood floor, shattering.
"Not happy with the wine?" Penance taunted.
"Happy as I can be," the man mumbled. "Like vinegar, through and through..."
When he looked up at Penance his brow and eyes were firm.
"Were you ever a teacher, child? Did you ever hold the fate of a scared and scarred 'newborn's' life in your hands?"
"I— that's irrelevant—"
The man wagged a finger in front of the boy's face.
"It's entirely relevant. First you feel the burden, then the obligation. Last is the responsibility."
"Those are all synonyms, you know—"
"They are not—"
"We've been studying them in school—"
"Enough! When you feel that responsibility— when you realize some poor wretch's life is in your hands, no matter who or what they were before..." Medici dropped his hand, backing away from Penance's chair and staring at the far wall. "After all that, you only think about what they can be, and how you have the power to make it happen."
The man drew a breath and let a bitter chuckle escape his lips.
"Any banker worth his salt knows that the only proper way to manage an account is by double-entry bookkeeping. Ever heard of that?"
Penance shook his head; only after doing so did he realize how foolish this was, given that Medici was facing away from him. But the man took his silence as a 'no', or else he didn't care.
"Assets," the man explained, "are always a function of two things: equity and liability— or what you have invested in a thing, and what you owe for it. Positives and negatives, in other words. And one has to be mindful of both when considering the value of an account. That's what double-entry bookkeeping allows you to do. And I, my child, have been managing accounts since well before you were ever born. It's what I'm good at. What I'm best at, in fact. I can consider the value of any investment with cold and calculated detachment— the Italian banker with a Swiss disposition, yes? But when it comes to a teacher and his student the figures can get... 'murkier'. Sometimes the equity blinds you to the liability; sometimes you choose to believe the 'account' has more value in your head than it does on paper. Sometimes you think...you think your investment is more than what it is, because you so desperately want it to be, and you don't realize the liabilities are far, far in excess of whatever equity you've managed..."
It took Penance a moment to understand what exactly Medici was saying, and when he did he wasn't having any of it.
"Bullshit," the boy growled. "A teacher knows his student better than anyone! You can't say that you didn't know the kind of man you were teaching, and the kind of things he might go on to do!"
The man spun around, brow furrowed with hateful passion.
"That's a rich sentiment coming from a student that slaughtered his own teacher!"
Penance's face lost its combative hostility. The boy caught a small lump in his throat and looked away, his face flushing with a combination of embarrassment and anger.
And something else, too.
Medici clearly regretted the words the instant he said them. He closed his eyes and shook his head, running his fingers through the hair over his left ear, chasing a most likely nonexistent itch.
"I'm sorry. That was unfair."
"No, it wasn't," Penance said. He managed to meet the man's gaze briefly before again looking away. "Rude, yeah. Unfair? No."
"I think," Medici said, "that we might both at least understand that things between a teacher and their student can be 'complicated', can we not?"
Penance grudgingly nodded at this.
Medici seemed pleased by the concession. He got down to eye-level with the boy, awkwardly clearing his throat, and after a long pause he asked the question he really wanted answered.
"Black Hat," Medici whispered. "Did he?"
The man's voice was a grave whisper. Penance didn't need to ask for clarification to this question; he knew exactly what the man wanted to know. What Penance didn't know, at first, was whether he was going to give him the truthful answer, or not. He didn't know whether Medici deserved it. But then Penance thought about what he deserved, exactly, and figured that he couldn't afford to be too judgmental.
So he told Medici the truth.
"No," Penance whispered back. "He didn't. But not for lack of trying."
The man drew a long breath, nodding.
"And when he's hunted you since?"
Penance shook his head.
"He kills everyone I know. Everyone I... everyone I love. He doesn't touch me. Not like that, at least; he just leaves me 'dead' for a few years, but untouched. He doesn't want that from me." An involuntary sneer formed at the corner of Penance's mouth. "So I guess you got him off that addiction, at least!"
Medici considered the boy's words and then he stood, crossing his arms and shaking his head.
"No," he mumbled. "It's the same one, really..."
The boy looked up at him, puzzled, but Medici wasn't going to elaborate on that point.
"There was something different about this last time, though, wasn't there?" The man asked. "Something that didn't usually happen?"
"I got free," Penance looked away, blinking evasively. "And I tracked him down to my foster mother's funeral. I told him I was done running, and that I'd kill him the next time I saw him."
Medici again leaned his rear against the small table, head craned back.
"You told him you'd be hunting him, then?"
"Something like that," Penance grumbled.
Medici returned his head to level and shook it, scoffing with a forlorn smile.
"I assume that spirited young lady with the freckled face had something to do with you getting free 'early'—"
"You leave her out of this!" Another forceful hop in his chair.
"Her decision, not mine. We'll see how she decides to involve herself in this matter." Medici stared down at the shattered remains of the wine glass, absently poking one of the larger shards with his shoe. "You should know that Black Hat has gone off and found an ally to help pursue you: a certain legendary creature among legendary creatures. Perhaps you've heard of the name..."
He looked up at the boy, his gaze dramatic and intense.
"...Carlin Gay?"
Penance blinked. He shook his head.
Medici pursed his lips; apparently he was expecting a much more intense reaction than that.
"Well, there are other names you might know," he said. "Maybe N—"
"Maybe I don't care," Penance interrupted. "And why is Black Hat teaming up with another immortal, anyway?"
Penance's question made Medici tilt his head, narrowing his eyes with infinite puzzlement and bewilderment, as if to confirm that, yes, that question was just in fact asked.
"Do... do you really not know why he'd do such a thing? Seems relatively obvious to me. It really isn't, to you?"
All of a sudden Penance felt like he was in one of those nightmares where he'd been called on in class to answer a tricky math problem he didn't know.
And he was stark naked.
And his teeth were coming out.
And he was freefalling in space.
Presumably whatever 'class' he attended in his nightmares had wonky physics in the classrooms. And poor nursing staff. And a lax dress code.
He wagged his head, trying to play down that sudden rush of embarrassment. He gave an aloof shrug in reply.
"Why should I know? Why should I know the reasons for anything that Black Hat does?"
A sad little smile formed on Medici's lips.
"He's your 'curse', as you yourself say, isn't he? The monster under your bed—"
"He's a little worse than that," Penance narrowed his eyes.
"No less than you think you deserve, huh? 'We all deserve each other' after all, no?"
Penance didn't answer.
Medici's sad smile gave way to a long sigh.
"I'm not a fan of throwing quotes around to show off how smart I am, but I'm not entirely above it, either: 'the really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.' Do you know that one?"
The boy shook his head.
"You probably at least agree with the sentiment, I'd wager. Well, you shouldn't. The man who said it was an idiot. The man who wrote it was not, but the man who said it?" He shook his head.
"And just what do you know?" The boy flashed an even darker look, his nose wrinkled like a pig's.
"I know it's a sad fact that some little boys seem to think they need to have a monster under the bed. Even little boy-monsters."
Penance took a moment to let that little pearl sink in. Initially he was offended, then puzzled, then offended once again.
Their whole conversation in a nutshell, basically.
Suddenly a high-pitched, tinny noise broadcast itself from an off-white plastic case on the table. It almost sounded like a tweeting bird, but it was far too mechanical and precise in pitch. It repeated itself as Medici walked over to the case and opened it. Inside was a large plastic device about the size of a brick, complete with a cumbersome plastic rod extending out the top and a white keypad on the front.
"What's that?" Penance twisted in his bonds, trying to get a better look at the gadget.
"A portable telephone, of course," Medici answered.
"You're shitting me," the boy craned even further in his chair, blinking in wonder.
"Never think it. I have, you'll understand, been expecting a certain call..."
At these words Penance's interest in the space-age device dried up, replaced with a cold and sinking feeling in his chest. When he looked up at Medici the man shrugged his shoulders.
"Sorry to end our fun little chat, but at least the call came a little later than I figured."
Penance flared his nostrils; he didn't dignify the man with a response. For his part Medici merely smiled at the boy and gave him a condescending pat on the shoulder.
And it took significant strength of will not to try biting the man's fingers off.
Medici pushed a button on the brick-like device and held it up to his head.
"Good aftern—"
Instantly he pulled the device from his ear, eyes scrunched in pain. He wagged his head and chuckled. When he looked back at Penance he gave the boy a rueful smirk and set the phone on the table, pressing another button near the keypad. A familiar voice suddenly blared through the small room.
"—and then feed 'em to you so you can see how them prairie oysters taste going down your goddamn throat, you motherfucking fucker—"
Penance's eyes widened.
"Uh... Whip?"
A brief silence filled the air, broken only by uneven static coming from the phone.
"Pen?" Whip answered.
"Uh, yeah. Hi."
"Y— you okay?"
"Yeah." The boy reconsidered this sentiment, looking down at his bound body and then over at Medici. "I mean… relatively. I think..."
"Where's that ice-picking bastard?" The girl demanded. "Where are you?"
"I don't know, but—"
Medici casually offered the address, including a description of the duplex and nearby landmarks.
"Whip, don't—"
Penance didn't get to finish his sentence, as Medici ended the call instantly.
"She will indeed come," the man predicted. "She seems a most determined little thing."
"How'd she have your number?" The boy demanded.
"Left her my card in the street."
"If you touch her," Penance warned, "I swear to God—"
"I've no interest in her at all." The man packed his phone back into its cumbersome plastic case. "My interest today has solely been with you, Mister Cameron. And, if you'll take my meaning, I sincerely wish I didn't have that interest."
The boy tilted his head skeptically.
"And... so then what're you gonna do now?"
Medici shrugged.
"That I don't know. I've got the rest of the day free. Maybe I'll take in a film. Haven't seen that 'Ghost Hunters' one yet, or whatever it's called. I hear it's worth a laugh. I suppose I could use a laugh right about now—"
"I meant with me!" Penance demanded.
Medici looked down at him, a playful smile on his face.
"I mean... I'd take you, but I doubt either of us would enjoy sitting in the dark with—"
Penance huffed through his nose, giving off his best 'pissed off kid who doesn't want to be patronized' look.
It was enough to make the man laugh a little.
"I plan on doing nothing with you. As I said, my interest in you was one of curiosity, and now that's more than satisfied. Forgive me for not untying you, but I'd wager you only have a half-hour, at most, to wait for your girl."
Medici picked up Penance's little knife from the tabletop.
"And she'll need something with which to do the cutting, eh?"
The boy grit his teeth and twisted his head to one side, ready for the man to stab him someplace particularly unpleasant, but instead Medici delicately set the knife down in Penance's lap. The boy looked up at the man when he'd finished.
"Beannachd leat, Penance Cameron," Medici said. "And— from one monster to another— I'd see about cleaning out the underside of the bed, if I were you."
The man hefted his case and moved to the door, at which point his portable phone again made that mechanical chirping from inside its case. Both man and boy looked down at it.
"Whip, calling again?" Penance asked.
Medici shook his head.
"I rather think she's in a dead sprint on her way here by now. Probably doesn't have the breath to talk."
They both exchanged glances.
"I can think of one other person with this number," Medici mumbled.
"What're you gonna do now?" Penance whispered.
The man stared down at his phone case, waiting for it to stop ringing. When it did he slowly looked back up at the boy, again flashing a sad smile.
"I'm gonna skip the movie, I think. Not the time to laugh, perhaps. The days grow shorter, and the season colder. Maybe for all of us it's the time of tears."
Again the man moved for the door, and again he looked back at Penance.
"Gay has eyes everywhere. They've seen me, I suppose, and you can only pray to God they haven't seen your girl. And you should endeavor with all your might that they don't see you. It'll be your end." Medici threw up a serious little salute to the boy with two fingers. "Take care, little Rabid Fox."
Penance watched the man walk out of the room. He sighed through his nose.
"Addio, Maestro Contabile..."
He could barely make out a nascent smile on Medici's face as the man rounded the corner; Penance listened as the Italian's footfalls echoed through the apartment, ultimately reaching the front door, which he opened and then shut behind him.
Penance stared down at the knife in his lap. He didn't know what to think about this strange little happening; he felt like a regular person who'd just gotten into a car crash with a semi-truck and walked away from the ordeal uninjured. He didn't know whether to feel lucky, relieved, or suspicious.
But then a distant throbbing came to the back of his teeth, giving him something else to think about.
"I still gotta pee," he mumbled, his dour voice echoing in the empty room.
