Chapter 5
Winter was proving to be a cold yet sunny one, though there were stretches of December weeks in which the sky was overcast into a single white expanse. A light dusting of snow powdered the cobblestones of Venice, making the slopes a perilous journey as well as an adventure for the youths to clamber up and ride down on the seats of their pants or cardboard boxes.
Silvestro yawned as the radio chattered on about the day's updates, sun not even peeking over the horizon as the slow grind of a Saturday morning began to move the town. Her kettle was slowly coming to a boil over the stove as she chewed on her pastry. A bag hung off a cupboard handle full of a dozen of the same, shoved into her hand by Quinto yesterday as he had huffed past.
She hummed along to the radio's upcoming low swinging bass as she set her cup up for an instant espresso, having splurged just a little bit of her new paycheck to buy one of the better types of 'add-water' coffee. It was no Kopi luwak, by any means, and the upper class in their white stone mansions would probably have gagged like children with cough medicine if they tasted it, but Silvestro waited with a bit of a bounce anyway.
The ex-militant peered at the clock on her wall and sighed, seeing it dawdle around half-past the hour of five just as her kettle began to squeal.
000
The woman crouched amongst the frost-slicked grass of the grounds of Balletto Giovanile Bacigalup, her expression unwaveringly still as she gazed down at a little quail that lay on its front, wings tucked in tight and body stiff.
The little bird wasn't moving, but Silvestro knew it wasn't dead; not quite, anyway. It was the nearest something of its fragility could get, however, the lacklustre, sparse breaths and occasional twitch of a shiver showing how life was slipping from it. Crystals of snow were clinging to its feathers and greedily drinking away its warmth. The bird rested its breast heavily on the frosted earth in its exhaustion.
Silvestro continued to watch it over her arm that was wrapped around her knees, mahogany eyes glazed in a kind of glassy past regard. Her glove offered her protection as she grabbed the common quail off the ground, feeling it sag and crumble under her grip, too weak to fight back. She trudged through the slow-growing grass back to the waste disposal at the back of the Balletto Giovanile Bacigalup and dropped the bird.
It chirped as it landed in a box she had stuffed with shredded newspaper and other amenities, burrowing deeper as she brought the small cardboard cradle to her chest as she ascended the stairs. Her footsteps attracted the children and their squeals of excitement arrived to crowd around her, their little eyes trying to peer into the box.
"See, I told you there was something!" a little Germana snuffed, crossing her arms as her brother pouted at her.
Silvestro shuffled unsurely, the mass of inquisitive children blocking her from going any further into the building. She spied Amelia grinning at her from across the sea of ballerinas, the woman watching her plight with amusement as the beings no higher than the ex-militant's hips trapped her better than boarders. Her face fought to remain stiff as a younger girl tugged on her coat, making her kneel shakily until the dancers could see the quietly tweeting quail, gasps and 'aw's' spilling from them as they stared down at it with wide eyes.
She stayed like that for a couple of seconds, before getting back to her feet, causing them to take a step back and crane their necks up at her.
"You should all get back to practice," she murmured, before shuffling through them as carefully as she could.
"Everyone say thank you to Ms Russ for saving the little birdy," Amelia smiled, clapping her hands together.
"Thank you Ms Russ!"
Silvestro hugged the box tighter and looked away from the group, blaming her happy hue on the cold. She nodded quietly, allowing the young dancers to begin running back up the Western stairs to their practice rooms, leaving her with their teacher and the slowly recuperating bird.
"You need more emotion in your voice if you ever want to connect with the kids, Silvestro!" Amelia exclaimed, coming over with the soundlessness of her pointe shoes.
"I'm talking with emotion," Silvestro denied, frowning at the woman who looked down at the quail.
"Yeah, the emotion of a slab of cold meat, maybe."
The woman thinned her lips at her co-worker and friend in a show of annoyance, getting a giggle out of her before she danced off to the staircase.
"Get back to your students, Amelia," she grunted, before thumping down the hall and away from the gentle laughter.
000
Silvestro sat in the corner of the dance room patiently, listening to the music jump in predictable but pleasant beats. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy bounced about the room's hardwood floors while young girls and boys danced on the balls of their feet. Their instructor clapped in time to keep the less perceptive students on track, uttering the times to them as they followed an array of motions and steps to an amateur's degree.
"Wonderful!" She smiled, clapping for their cease. "You're all doing remarkably well so far! Now, before we finish for the day, are there any final questions?"
The sun was riding low for a Winter's early coming night, bleeding the clouds peach over their school's old walls. It had warmed with the evening, but there was still a bite to the air and Silvestro found herself dreading to leave the rather warm atmosphere of the classroom.
"Oh, Miss Maddalena, could you show us a lift? I saw one last weekend and they made it look so graceful!"
"A lift, hm?" She breathed, looking over her shoulder to her teaching assistant.
Silvestro caught on in a moment and began shaking her head insistently, real panic in her expression.
"I'll drop you!"
"No you won't, just have a good hold on my waist. We'll even do one I know you can do. Come here," the woman laughed, grabbing her by the hand and turning to the front of the class. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, Ms Russ and I are going to show you a Shoulder Sit."
"We're going to try," Silvestro grumbled behind her, making the woman snap around and herself to look away.
"We all know that Ms Russ is very strong, yes? It is because of this that I am sure we can handle this, but I ask that none of you attempts this out of class, understood?"
A chorus of 'yes's came from the children as Amelia took a position in front of her companion, placing the larger woman's hand on her waist and pressing it there in a kind of comfort and encouragement. She smiled up at the hesitant expression and gave soft instructions, bending her knees and feeling the arm tense before she was sprung from the floor and hoisted up like a feather in the wind.
Silvestro locked her arm in place as a knee bent under her bicep to hook the ballerina in place, an expression of elegance on the instructor's face as she gazed down at her partner, her own willowy arm extended in a dainty reach as the other laid across the dark nape.
The young dancers gasped and clapped in delight as they gazed at their teacher who perched like a dainty bird atop the sturdy branch of the groundskeeper.
"This could have gone so badly, Amelia, you have no idea," the ex-militant whispered to her friend, helping her slip from her shoulder and near soundlessly return to the hardwood floors.
"Shh," she hushed, smiling at the class as she spoke to her. "Don't let them know."
A steady clapping brought the two out of their hushed bickering and the room turned its gaze to the back, where a dark figure in a fedora leant against a window. The man's smile peeked out from under the shadows of his face, the pink afternoon glowing against his cheek.
"What an absolutely beautiful display that was, bella," he crooned, charming the room with a smooth song of a voice.
The children seemed to be bewitched by the being before them, gazing upon his mysterious aura with childish reverence of a movie star and bright eyes. They whispered amongst each other excitedly, a low murmur that the man seemed to be completely unfazed by - something that didn't surprise Silvestro at al.
"Oh God," Silvestro groused, making a face at the man. "Why are you here?"
"You know this man?" Amelia sighed, cupping her flushed cheeks as she swooned beside her scrunched-nosed companion.
The ex-militant glanced to her friend, trying to convey her distress through her eyes but was muted out by the woman's taken mind as the single mother drooled after the man in the fedora.
"I heard that you worked here, in the Balletto Giovanile Bacigalup, and I just had to see you again," he sighed, crossing the room like a feather. "The Winter has been so cold without you, bella. I was a fool to think I could survive it without your grace."
Silvestro couldn't conceal the irked twitch of her brow as she pulled Amelia a step behind her, suspicion still simmering in her brain as the yet to be officially named being clasped his hands behind his back and tilted himself in a manner that most would consider cute, if it weren't for how his fedora still hooded his eyes from most of the room.
"I thought I told you not to call me that."
"Oh? When did you say that, bella?"
The woman frowned at the obviously coy act, Amelia peeking out from around her hollow shoulder with interest.
"The last time I ran into you."
"Ah yes, when I bought you that lovely dress!"
At that moment, the dance instructor emerged from behind the woman and stepped to the man with a wide grin upon her face, eyes bright with humour and glee.
"You got her that dress!? You're the mystery man!?"
Silvestro groaned as she suffered quietly, before pausing as one of the young girls perked up from the group, raising her hand hesitantly to gain the adult's attention.
"Are you Ms Russ' husband?"
There was a crackling silence. Mahogany eyes glared down at the black voids of the strange man as a devious smile began to spread across his sun-kissed complexion.
"No! Ms Russ isn't wearing a ring!"
Silvestro narrowed her eyes in warning, his lips pulled wider. He wasn't doing anything, she knew it too.
"If he's not her husband...Oh! You're Ms Russ' boyfriend!"
The class broke out in agreement, all of the young dancers unanimous in their apparent 'realisation', nodding to one another.
The man grinned, looking her right at her as he angled his body the slightest bit and addressed the horde of ballerinas.
"Oh, you all must know about how Ms Russ and I met in the park then!"
"The local park? You two met in the park, oh how romantic!" Amelia squealed, fully aware of how she was irking the frozen woman. "How did you meet?"
"My friend was embarrassingly drunk, and I was trying to get him to sober up," he began putting on a wistful voice as he looked off into the distance, like he was remembering a wonderful dream. "But he stubbornly ran out in his nightgown and slippers, making me follow until we came to the park, where he quite literally crashed into the most beautiful being to have graced this Earth-"
"Okay, now you're just milking it," Silvestro grunted, cutting off his pixie-dusted rendition. "You knocked me over, ruined my groceries and ran off after your friend pulled a knife on me."
There were gasps, and she could just see their imaginations switching the scenes from fairy tale-esque, pastel pallets of golden leaves and blushing maidens, to Noir alleys, high-collared trench coats, smoking guns and dramatic music.
She rolled her eyes in exasperation, before pausing as her pants were tugged, making her look down at a little girl who shuffled unsurely beside her, tiny in comparison with little hands clenching and unclenching in trepidation.
"Are- are you okay? The knife didn't hurt you...right?" she asked, and the name Susanna came to the woman's mind as she stared down at her, her throat contracting at the fragile little thing's presence.
"No," Silvestro grunted, "The knife didn't hurt me, I am fine."
The man had begun chattering to the children, and the ex-militant decided she had had enough of him there. She stepped away from her friend and checked her pocket for the glove she had stowed away, satisfied that it was still there. Her shoulders rolled in anticipation as she made her way over, the man still charming the children with sugar-slathered renditions of brief moments together.
"-And we played in Prada after I teased her by buying a dress that I knew would look stunning on her. She caught me, and I was on the floor in a moment! Such a powerful woman I've found myself!" He laughed, making the girls' cheeks become apple red in their imaginations of idealised men.
Silvestro rolled her eyes as she loomed over his crouched form before snatching him up off the floor and flopping him over her shoulder with a grunt.
The young dancers gaped as the man flailed in surprise, having known she was there, but not having expected the woman to treat him as a sack of potatoes. Her shoulder wasn't exactly comfortable against his stomach as he gripped at the back of her thick coat despite knowing she had a good grasp on him.
"Oh, bella," he laughed, a tang of worry in his smoothed tone. "Are you going to spirit me away to an Amazonian wedding?"
Silvestro made a face of confusion and shook her head at the strange man's behaviour, glancing over her shoulder to see the dancers and their instructor waving at the hanging man. She sighed and trudged with heavy steps down to the entry and out into the cold Winter.
"My, it's nippy out here," the man commented, standing beside her, shoulder to shoulder in a blatant effort for contact.
The ex-militant yelped as she took sharp steps away and looking at what she was clutching over her shoulder. The black jacket was still in her grasp, but empty of its wearer, who now stood in a yellow dress-shirt; a shock of vibrancy against the cool shades of the frosted season.
"What are you doing?" She hissed, "How did you get out? I didn't even feel it!"
The man let his lips quirk into a cocky smirk, hands fixing his collar before moving to incline his fedora to obscure his coal eyes.
"It is because, bella," he spun towards her and bowed in a dramatic fashion. "I am Andrei, the World's Greatest Escape Artist!"
Silvestro raised a brow for a moment, her expression speaking of being unconvinced.
"Okay, Giovani-Andrei, go away."
She made a shooing motion before turning on her heel and retreating back to the building, ignoring the man's squawk of indignation at the blunted brush off. The woman was halfway up the stairs when she paused and made a grab for a falling piece, her mind slowly turning its cogs as she stared at Vanquish II fabric. She snapped her spine straight with wide eyes, before spinning and dashing back down and out, an urgent shout on her tongue as she raised the nauseatingly expensive suit piece.
"Hey! You forgot your-" Silvestro looked around the empty path, trying to spot a sunbeam against the white landscape. "-jacket...Shit."