Coming Up
That afternoon, when Elena had finished her piano playing (Debussy today), Cassandra invited her to tea. Elena left the great circular music room and followed Cassandra into her office. The small room was severely neat, with a desk and a few chairs, and a cabinet against the far wall. A narrow window let in the late winter sunshine, casting a pale yellow rectangle on the floor.
Cassandra and Elena sat on the chairs in front of the desk, facing each other, while Cassandra poured the tea and Elena related the events of that morning.
"You broke his wrist?" Cassandra asked, sounding a little surprised and very amused.
"Yes."
"You ruthless bitch," Cassandra said with fond admiration, and they both laughed aloud, for she and Elena had called each other that—among other things—when they had been sparring partners years ago.
"He didn't take it personally, thank God," Elena added, taking a small sandwich from the tray. "In fact, we arranged for a demonstration of the epee tomorrow. European style fencing, something different for them," she said.
"Good," Cassandra said, taking a sip from her cup. "The two of you should get to know each other better, and the students will enjoy the demonstration." She smiled, obviously still amused. "And so will I. What time?"
"Two in the afternoon." Elena was a little surprised at Cassandra's interest, so Elena offered, "Would you like to spar with me?"
"Not really," Cassandra said with an apologetic smile. "Though I suppose I should."
"You have to practice," Elena said then looked at Cassandra more closely. "Do you spar at all?"
"Occasionally, with the students."
"That's not enough, Cassi," Elena chided her. "Not if you want to stay alive."
Cassandra drew in a breath to speak, but then said simply, "It works for me. And I have other things to do with my time."
"Like what? Teaching music?" Elena said, waving a hand at the music room beyond the office door. "You know, Connor told me that he didn't get a chance to spar with another Immortal very often." He'd actually said "a challenging opponent" and while Cassandra was by no means a great swordswoman, she could at least make him work up a sweat. Elena leaned forward, hoping to help both of them. "I think he misses it."
Cassandra set down her teacup. "Thank you for your concern, Elena," she said, very polite and very remote, just like a Japanese teacher Elena had once had, a quiet and firm closing of the door. But then Cassandra met Elena's eyes and said, "I have flashbacks, as you know."
"Si," Elena said. Flashbacks, nightmares, guilt-ridden hours of pure agony, adrenalin-driven moments of terror—what Immortal didn't have these? And someone as old as Cassandra—
"A few years ago," Cassandra continued, "before Connor and I became lovers again, I told him we could either spar or we could have sex. I can't do both, not with the same man." Cassandra picked up her tea cup again and looked at Elena over its rim. "We decided we'd rather have sex."
Elena nodded; that was definitely a more fun way to work up a sweat. "Good choice."
"It works for us," Cassandra said with a demure smile that hinted at much more.
"I'm glad to hear it," Elena said, for she'd been wondering. Connor and Cassandra didn't kiss in greeting; they didn't even hold hands. "You two seem very… restrained."
"We're surrounded by hundreds of very curious teenage girls," Cassandra explained. "Besides, hiding it all day adds a touch of excitement for later, you know?"
"I know," Elena said, remembering a few clandestine relationships. She leaned forward again, this time to ask, "So, is he still a come-candela?" for Cassandra had once described Connor as a fire-eater in bed.
"Oh, yes," Cassandra replied, and now her smile was supremely satisfied. "Even better."
Elena found herself smiling, too. "He's probably learned a thing or two in the last… How long had it been for you two?"
"Four hundred and twelve years," Cassandra supplied.
Elena had no doubt that Connor was passionate—she'd borne the brunt of his passionate anger on several occasions. But in bed… she just didn't see him that way. Except that one time, oh, boy, that time, when Methos had led them on an 'adventure' to battle an old Mongol Immortal named Temujin, and Connor had just taken two quickenings, and Elena had found herself staring at him, lusting for him, completely filled with longing… Well, yes, maybe she could see him that way.
She picked up her own tea cup, then leaned back and closed her eyes as she drank. She sighed in relaxation and said, "I haven't had high tea since Lord Haversham tried to seduce me in… 18—" Her musings were interrupted by the chime of Cassandra's computer. "A plea for help from a student?" Elena asked.
"Student messages are announced with an A-major triad," Cassandra said. "That chord is for a custom news feed." She set down her cup and laid her hand gently on Elena's arm. "Elena, Marcellino is salvaging your family plane."
Elena sighed, this time in resignation. She had hoped someone would do it so that Lorenzo and his mother wouldn't become fish food, and of course Marcellino had. What a good son! The Pontis would have a proper Catholic funeral and be buried in the family plot in Rome where they belonged. In fact, there would probably be an empty casket for her. Elena wondered what they would say at her funeral, and at Lorenzo's funeral.
Would Marcellino give the eulogy? He would want to, she knew, thinking of his love, actually his almost worship, of his father. And his beloved grandmother! Burying three loved ones in one day—it was going to be so hard for him. She should be there to support him, except of course… Immortality sometimes was a curse.
"Do you want to watch?" Cassandra asked. Elena nodded fiercely, and Cassandra said, "Would you mind if Connor were here, too? He's been following this story."
"That's fine," Elena said, touched by their concern. She hadn't been following it. In fact, she'd been avoiding it. But not anymore. No more running.
Cassandra pulled the curtains over the window then went behind her desk to her computer to type and click. The video appeared on the screen mounted on the wall. "Connor will be here soon," Cassandra said, and Elena nodded, already engrossed in the news.
The caption read, "Ponti Aircraft Salvaged Earlier Today!" The salvage operation had involved a huge ship with a crane and dozens of workers. Smaller ships waited at a distance, and several helicopters circled overhead, all with camera crews. Buzzards. Vultures. Better known as paparazzi.
When the news camera zoomed to the ship's deck, Elena spotted Marcellino, wrapped in a warm coat and wearing his favorite black fedora pulled low, standing by himself. He looked so lonely and so brave, as he'd often been as a child. But sometimes he confided in her, and she knew that hugs always made him feel better. She wished so much she could hug him now.
Elena watched the cable on the crane tighten and the winch began to turn. By the time Connor arrived at Cassandra's office, the small plane, streaming water, had been deposited on the deck of the ship. Connor shook his head at the bent wings and crumpled fuselage. He ignored the tea, instead silently retrieving a bottle of Scotch and some glasses from the cabinet against the wall, and sat down next to Elena on the chair in front of the desk.
The view shifted to the harbor of Mahon, with pleasure boats along the south shore, and fuel tanks and rows of warehouses to the north. The caption now read "LIVE! BREAKING NEWS! Ponti Plane Crash!" in English and Italian. The ever-frenetic ad-bar had green flamingos wearing Solari sunglasses dancing across the bottom of the screen.
On the left side of the screen, a beautiful woman with plastic-looking blonde hair narrated with the annoyingly smooth yet somehow breathless tones of a newscaster, speaking in Italian: "The Ponti family plane was taken to the island of Minorca and placed inside a warehouse, where workers searched the plane. ISN has just learned that only two bodies were found: that of Gina Ponti, the eighty-year-old matriarch of the family, and her son, Lorenzo, age sixty-one. The body of Lorenzo's estranged wife was not found." The woman's voice dropped suggestively. "One can only wonder why."
"!Que villana!" Elena muttered. "Why do they… Don't they give a damn about anyone? !Al carajo todos!" Connor handed Elena a drink. She gulped the Scotch quickly, and he took the glass back and poured her another.
"We go now to Dacio Girodano on the ground," the newscaster continued, "live with the latest from ISN. Dacio, the distress call from the Ponti plane a week ago on Saturday said that their engines had failed. Any information as to why?"
Dacio appeared on the screen, a young man with dark wavy hair and unrealistically white teeth. A plain gray wall rose high behind Dacio, broken only by a few small windows near the roof. Uniformed guards stood near the door. Dacio nodded earnestly. "Serafina, I'm standing in front of the warehouse where the salvaged plane was taken less than an hour ago. That model of plane has a good safety record, so experts are baffled as to why the engines would fail. Possibly ice, or lack of fuel, or even—" he paused dramatically "—foul play."
"I see," Serafina said, in a way that suggested she knew something more. "Business rivals? Or something more personal?"
"Of course, that's just a speculation, and no one can say," Dacio said, then went on saying it anyway: "The Ponti family does have a long history, going back to the poisoning, scheming Borgias, and is known to be ruthless in their business deals. Also, the heir to the family fortune, Roberto Marcello Ponti, recently became engaged; he and his fiancée will now be completely in charge of the business. And of course, there have long been rumors that Lorenzo's father and grandfather knew people in the Mafia."
Elena shook her head in disgust. "They say that about every rich Italian." She sipped at her drink, letting the Scotch linger on her tongue before drinking again.
Serafina said, "Dacio, I understand that Marcello Ponti was present for both the salvage and the search of the plane."
"That's correct, Serafina. He insisted on being there."
"He should be there! He paid for all of it!" Elena exclaimed.
"Were officials present?" Serafina asked, looking serious and concerned. Below her, the dancing flamingos had been replaced with flowers that turned continually themselves inside out and formed into letters, spelling out Nostalgia, the latest perfume from the House of Darrieux.
"I don't have information on that, Serafina." Dacio waved at the uniformed guard near the door. "Probably just the local Spanish police. We should remember that Lorenzo's wife was Spanish, and she moved to Spain almost twenty years ago. The couple had been living apart since then, she very quietly, while Lorenzo Ponti kept up an extremely active social life."
"!Mal rayo les parta!" Elena hurled the curse at the video like she would throw a brick. "I'm not even Spanish, !idiotas! And it's been only seventeen years." She glared at the screen. In just a few sentences, the newscasters had managed to suggest that Marcellino—or possibly his fiancée's family—may have been behind the crash, that Marcellino was bribing the local cops to hide evidence, or even that Lorenzo and his mother had tossed Elena from the plane then crashed into the sea themselves, and, also, that the whole family was in a feud with fellow Mafioso, and that Lorenzo had been cavorting with mistresses or hosting orgies.
"I can use this as an example in my class on neuro-marketing and propaganda next week," Cassandra said.
"Yellow fucking journalism!" Elena agreed. "At least they haven't speculated that I murdered them then got in a submarine," she said bitterly. She finished her drink then snorted. "Well, I did fool them in the 'living quietly' part."
Connor shook his head, his eyebrows raised, then leaned over and filled her glass again.
"Serafina, I've just heard that the new head of the Ponti empire is leaving the warehouse, where the bodies of his father and grandmother were recovered from the plane," Dacio said in excitement. "We're going to him now—live with the latest from ISN."
The camera left Dacio and pulled back to show a huge gray warehouse. Then it zeroed in on Marcellino, who was walking to his car with a bodyguard on either side. Elena took a deep breath, let it out slowly at the sight of her son. "M'hijo," she murmured, wanting to touch him, to reach out, to hug him.
Marcellino favored his biological mother's side of the family. He was shorter than Lorenzo, and darker. He was also not as charismatic, or intelligent, but he was, Elena opined, a much kinder man, with a rock-solid reputation for integrity.
The reporters were throwing all kinds of questions at Marcellino, crowding his bodyguards, who weren't shy about shoving back. Marcellino walked slowly, shaking his slightly lowered head, mostly ignoring them.
Elena's heart went out to him. "I should be with him," she murmured.
One the brasher reporters yelled, "Signore Ponti!" as the driver opened the car door and it seemed Marcellino was about to escape. "Your mother's body was not found in the wreckage," continued the reporter. "Do you think she abandoned the others to try to save herself, or that she committed suicide in the sea when she saw your father dead?" The reporter eagerly held out a microphone toward Marcellino.
Marcellino stopped, one hand on the car door, then turned to that reporter and stared at him. Marcellino acted surprised, but his light brown eyes, the one feature he did share with Lorenzo, were glittering. Elena could tell he had been crying, although his face was set now, calm. Camera flashes illuminated it over and over, and the cameras continued clicking, but all questions died down then finally stopped. Everyone was waiting to see what he would say.
Marcellino stepped away from the car and came toward the reporter, getting so close the man had to take a step back. "Watch out," Elena said, her lips pressed together. If she'd been there she would have run that damn reporter through with her sword. And Serafina and Dacio, too. Elena's son, in his own way, was equally tough.
Marcellino positioned himself so that the microphone could get every word. "Are those my two choices?" Marcellino asked the reporter then continued, "Tell me, do you… journalists…," the word was loaded with sarcasm, "…stay up nights trying to think of the most vicious things to ask, or are you just naturally born evil parasitic bastards?"
No one answered, and even the cameras were silent. As Marcellino turned on his heel and went back to his car, the cameras started clicking again. Marcellino and his bodyguards got in the car, and it drove away.
The newsfeed zoomed back to Dacio, his face intent and eager above an ad-bar of exploding watermelons, but Cassandra turned it off and the screen went black.
Connor snorted then said, "I like your son."
It was the same thing Connor had said about Lorenzo, and Elena nodded her appreciation. "Me too," she whispered. Connor leaned over and topped off Elena's Scotch, and she drank it in one swallow then coughed, put the glass down, and stated, "I have to see him."
Cassandra moved the tea tray to the side of her desk then leaned forward to ask: "Why?"
"Because he needs me," Elena said. "I'm his mother. He's lost his beloved father and his doting grandmother, but he hasn't lost me, not yet."
"Yes, he has," Cassandra contradicted. "He lost his mother the same day he lost his father and his grandmother. You, Elena, are alive, but Elena Duran-Ponti is dead."
Elena shook her head. "I'm his mother, and I intend to be there for him," she declared. "Lorenzo hated Immortality and he wanted Marcellino to have no part of it. And it was hard, believe me, keeping that secret, but we did it. But on his deathbed, on that plane, Lorenzo gave me a message to give to our son. It means he was finally giving his permish—" She tripped over the English word and switched to Spanish. "—permiso."
Elena saw the quick glance that Cassandra and Connor exchanged, and the way Cassandra sat back in her chair. Elena stood to tell them: "I've tried raising children three times, and the first two didn't make it past infancy. One of them didn't even make it out of the womb; the Hunters machine-gunned Maria when she had eight months." Elena dashed away her tears. "Marcellino has lived to be a grown man whom I'm proud to call my son. I'm not going to give him up. He's going to live for another forty years, and I'm not going to spend them looking at him on television being interviewed by bastards like that Dacio bastard, or on the cover of some gossip magazine!"
Cassandra had just been sitting, not arguing, not agreeing, but now she got up from her chair and came over to Elena. "Oh, nina," she said softly, taking Elena's hands in her own, "I know you miss Marcellino terribly."
"I do," Elena agreed. "I want to see him and I'm going to see him. And Connor…" He looked up at her, and she reached past him for the Scotch, holding on to the edge of the desk for balance with her right hand while she grabbed the bottle with her left, "I'm taking this bottle."
Connor simply nodded, but at a narrowed-eyed glance from Cassandra, he stood and opened the door. "Come on, Elena. Cassandra has work to do."
Elena walked with precise strides to the door, the bottle firmly in hand.
Cassandra went back to her desk chair, saying, "Connor, would you please go with Elena back to her room?"
"I don't need help to get to my room," Elena told Connor, and he nodded but kept walking next to her as they made their way past pianos and drums and treacherously unstable music stands. They went down the stairs and through a door and down a hall but when Elena started to go up another staircase, Connor casually blocked her way and steered her down the hall. "Condenao laberinto," she muttered. After that, she followed his lead as they went down the hall, around a corner, through a double set of doors, and up another set of stairs. Finally, they came to a familiar hall and her room.
Connor patiently held the bottle while Elena took out her key and opened her door, then handed it back to her. Elena's fingers curled snugly around the bottle's neck. "Is Cassandra angry with me?" she asked him.
He shook his head. "She's mildly irritated, at most. But not with you."
"With you?" Elena asked, and he shrugged. "Well, as I recall, you've always tried to get me drunk, Connor," she said. This time he smiled. You bastard, she thought. "In any case, I will be at the dojo, tomorrow at two, as we agreed," Elena told him.
"I'm sure you will," Connor said.
Elena locked the door behind her and looked around. There were no glasses in her room, so she simply took a deep swig from the Scotch bottle. It burned; she coughed and spat some of it out. She knew if she kept drinking like this it would just make her sick. It wouldn't make her feel better. It wouldn't make anything better for Lorenzo, who was dead, or for Marcellino, who was still alive.
So she carefully placed the bottle down on the desk, right next to the lavender plant from Duncan, opened the curtained alcove where her bed was and flung herself, fully dressed, on it, for a long afternoon of dreamless sleep. Late that night she went back to the dimly-lit chapel to pray again for mercy, for forgiveness, for strength. And for guidance.
On Sunday Elena decided, for the first time, to eat lunch while the students were there. The dining hall was noisy and crowded, yet cheerful. As she picked out her food from the buffet, several of the students greeted her as "Senora Gutierrez," and Elena noticed some of them pointing her out to their friends, and overheard the words "epee" and "Sensei Mike."
Elena spotted "Sensei Mike" and Cassandra sitting at the far end of the hall, so she wove her way among the tables, stepping over backpacks and outflung feet. "Buenos dias," she said as she slipped into the chair opposite Cassandra.
"Buenos dias," Cassandra replied, and Connor nodded in greeting, even as he inspected her. He seemed a bit surprised to see Elena at the table.
Good, Elena thought, picking up her fork and knife. Nothing like being unpredictable to other Immortals.
"And how are you today?" Cassandra asked, with a little more interest than usual.
"Well," Elena said cheerfully. "Invigorated. I went down to Sankt Jakobus for a frozen Mass, and that Polish priest, the one who speaks French, was there. We talked a little about my being a recent widow."
"Did he help?" Cassandra said.
Elena nodded as she ate her salad. "I like talking to priests and nuns. They give me comfort and an eternal perspective, but they won't let me get too deep into self-pity. They say it's against God's will."
"Yes, Sister Anelise—she's in charge of the medical center in town—and I have had many good conversations," Cassandra said. "She likes Father Tomasz, too; she says he listens well." Cassandra smiled at Elena. "It's good to see you here, Elena. I'm glad you joined us for lunch."
"Although you don't seem too hungry," Connor opined.
Elena glanced down at her lunch, which consisted of a small piece of grilled chicken, a salad, a tall glass of water and a cup of coffee. As she did so, Connor pushed a small plate with an apple strudel toward her.
"You're kidding, right?" she laughed. "In two hours you're going to run me up and down that dojo floor like we were playing basketball. I am not eating anything heavy, de eso nada." No way, she thought, using her knife to parry then thrust at him, playfully.
Connor smiled. "Eating anything after drinking a bottle of whisky can be a challenge."
Elena knew that, thank you very much. As did he, she was sure. From past drinking bouts, she remembered vomiting before she'd even been able to get dressed in the morning. But last night she hadn't drunk any more in her room after that first long swallow. Not that she would tell Connor that. Let him think she would be sluggish in the dojo this afternoon. Surprise, Connor!
"I'm fine now," she said. Connor laughed and took the strudel back.
And two hours later in the dojo, Elena burned away her lunch plus whatever alcohol was left in her system after she and Connor donned protective gear, saluted with their buttoned epees, and Connor announced, "En garde."
To be continued...
Translations (Spanish):
Que villana – what a villain
Al carajo todos, mal rayo les parta – to hell with all of them
M'hijo – my son
Condenao laberinto – damn labyrinth