Desdemona by Tag Cavello (read e books online free .txt) 📖

Why not? he asked himself.

Because she won’t love me back. It’s all wishful thinking.

All good things start with a wish, Dante. All good things.

Now who had ever told him that? Someone wise. Or maybe someone foolish. His uncle maybe. Kind but foolish. A drinker, a gambler. A man who got philosophical with his beer instead of angry. Had he once waxed poetic to Dante during some holiday eve party?

Please please please…

No, that wasn’t his uncle. That was The Smiths. Morrissey wishing on some star that wasn’t really a star at all, but a rock burning through Earth’s atmosphere. Wishful thinking.

All good things…

“Shut up,” Dante said aloud. He turned left on South Pleasant. Here the houses got a little smaller but still looked nice enough. One after the next, he delivered his papers. Dogs barked from back yards. Birds twittered. It was a lovely morning to be out for a walk.

Sunny Desdemona was a lovely girl. The prettiest Dante had ever seen. Last year, attending sixth grade at Norwalk Middle School, he had fallen in love with the back of her head. That was in room 105, Applied Math. The first day of classes. The kids had been restless from summer break, fidgeting in their seats. Pencils and notebooks, all brand new, shined under fresh tubes of fluorescent lighting. Sitting near the back row, Dante had looked up to get a bead on some rookie female teacher just out of college. He got something else instead. Fire. A blazing calligraphy of red-orange that capered on narrow shoulders. Within he could see a jewel, a glimmer of gold, shining like forbidden treasure lost to magmatic depths. It was, Dante realized, an ear-ring, and quite a beautiful one at that. Its shape resembled a trident.

WHAP!

Another paper, another porch. The wagon’s load continued to diminish, so by the time he reached the valley of Pleasant Street he had no trouble pulling it down. Here the houses backed away to provide room for a park. Breezy trees stood watch over a playground, a picnic shelter. Water gurgled on one side. Norwalk Creek, carried off by a culvert under the street. Normally Dante avoided the park on Sundays. Woodland bordered it on two sides. Or rather, encroached it. For Dante the dark trees seemed to lean a little too close to its tennis courts, its flower beds. Once, back in 1978, a rash of Sasquatch sightings had broken out between Norwalk and Monroeville. One such sighting was said to have taken place right near the tennis courts, where a trail led behind West Main to the old Baltimore and Ohio rail line.

But today the valley looked fairly inviting. Dante decided to cut through the park on his way up to Elm Street. He left the sidewalk. Dewey grass got the wagon wheels all wet. Near the shelter, he stopped to pick up some trash. Teenagers were always messing the place up on Saturday nights. Even the picnic tables had been violated. Their normally militant rows were now crooked. Twisted askew by crazy kids with stolen beer and garish girlfriends. Dante set about straightening them, then sat down at one for a breather.

Crude carvings in the wood provided a harsh welcome. Ridiculous thoughts laid down by untalented hands. Some were pornographic, others comedic.

Why? one wanted to know. The word had been written in weak felt, faded but legible. Beneath lay a piece unlike all the rest. A paragraph, composed with the same marker, its words dim, its message anything but.

Why?

Why did you leave me? I’m sitting here watching our children play. Eve is on the swing, Aaron the monkey bars. They’re having fun, while all I can do is pretend. I thought our marriage was good. I thought you loved me. I was wrong. Now you’re with her somewhere. You’re with a better woman I guess. Someone prettier than me maybe, someone smarter. Eve and Aaron sometimes ask where their daddy is. I always tell a lie. But I am running out of lies to tell myself. I thought we were happy, Jacob. Why did you leave me?

Why?

Dante stood. Grabbing his wagon, he struck off towards the creek. A quaint little wooden bridge crossed it. He looked down at the water, saw his face looking back.

Sunny Desdemona’s face had not disappointed. He had waited all through that first day of class just to see it, not paying attention to the lesson. When the bell went off, he’d leaped from his seat, bumping his knee on the desk, so it was with a slight limp he saw her eyes for the first time.

They were green. The shimmering green of Aurora Borealis in an oxygen storm. Cinnamon freckles dotted her nose and cheeks like dragons at play on a pristine snowscape. Beneath that snowscape, a cutting-blade ridge of blood—her lips, to breathe, to kiss. And yes, to ultimately wound.

Dante did not think these things when he saw her. He felt them. And when the girl (he had not known yet that her name was Sunny) sneered at him for staring, he felt that too. Like her lips, it wanted to cut.

This girl is not going to be easy, he thought. Then: I’m going to have her anyway.

The girl—Sunny—had turned away from him. Dismissed him. Two other girls left the classroom with her. Dante noticed how they seemed to reach for her, though she was not the tallest in their group. They smiled as they talked, but not Sunny. Sunny only listened.

A bee flew over the wagon. Dante watched it buzz towards Hogan’s Hill, where kids liked to go sledding in the winter. Once, Dante’s toboggan had crossed the field at the bottom too fast and crashed, sending him head first into a frozen Norwalk Creek. The other kids had run to get a look, some concerned, others laughing. Good times. Crazy, frostbitten fun.

He pulled his wagon to the top of the hill. Here he met a younger boy—Michael Roberts. Dante knew Michael because the Roberts’ house was on his route.

“Hey Mike,” Dante said. “Here’s your paper.”

Michael took it. He was only seven. The paper looked very large in his hands, like a trout caught for breakfast. “Thanks,” he said.

“How’s that new swimming pool?”

“Good.”

“Haven’t peed in it yet, have you?”

The boy’s eyes grew wide. “No!”

“I’m just kidding,” Dante laughed. “I know you wouldn’t do that. Tell your mom I said hello.”

“Okay!”

The boy ran to the porch of his house, leaving a toy truck on the sidewalk. Dante waited. He didn’t want to see Michael’s truck get kicked or stolen.

Ten minutes later he was done with Elm Street. Only four papers remained. All of them went to houses further down West Main. Dante passed Michael again on his way back, waving hello. This time he did not cut through the park. He went to the culvert where Elm ended and Pleasant began. The creek flowed beneath him. If you followed it deeper into the woods you would come across an old stone bridge with an iron rail. Dante had learned this himself while playing guns with his friends years ago. The bridge had looked very strange and out of place, just sitting amidst the trees. It seemed to have no purpose other than to help wanton children cross the creek for further adventure.

His love for the red-haired girl had seemed purposeless as well, at least at the outset. He had even made fun of himself that first morning. A dozen Peanuts strip references played across his mind. He thought about asking his mom to buy him a yellow sweater. He thought about joining a little league team, going out for pitcher. Maybe one of the other kids would hit a line drive and knock off all his clothes.

By lunchtime, however, none of it was funny. Dante thought about her all through English class, and then all through World History. He had gone to lunch that day with his head somewhere between heaven and hell. Standing in line for Salisbury steak, he saw her sitting at a table with five other girls. The five other girls were talking to her. Talking, talking. The red-haired girl would only nod occasionally.

“That’s Sunny,” someone standing next to Dante said.

He turned to see a dark-haired boy with glasses and a cagey smile. “Who’s Sunny?” he asked, doing his best to sound innocent.

The dark-haired boy hadn’t been fooled. “The girl with the red hair you keep staring at. I saw you staring at her in Applied Math too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. You want me to tell her you like her?” The boy’s smile flashed. Under the duel assault of it and his glasses, Dante thought he might go blind any moment. Also, he wasn’t sure he could answer his question, so he countered it with one of his own.

“What’s her last name?”

“Desdemona,” the boy answered, as if he had known the girl for a long time. Turned out he had. “She was in my class last year. Pretty much every boy had a crush, but she never let any of us so much as buy her a milkshake.” His eyes had wandered as he spoke, to where Sunny was sitting, and his voice had gone dreamy.

“You had a crush too?” Dante asked. Or he might have stated it, so aloof was the boy’s tone.

“I did,” the other replied. Then he’d blinked as if coming awake, and looked at Dante pugnaciously. “So what? You won’t get anywhere with her, either.”

“She doesn’t like boys?”

“I don’t care what she likes or doesn’t like. Not anymore.”

“I’ll leave her alone,” Dante told him, just for something to say.

Hearing this, the boy’s cagey smile had clicked right back into place. “No you won’t, you liar. But you’re going to get bitten, you’d better believe it. You’re going to get bitten.”

Thus far his prediction had not been accurate. Dante had gone through the rest of sixth grade without being bitten. Curiously, the boy with the glasses had disappeared. Gone off on Christmas break with his family and never returned. Timothy, his name had been. Timothy…something. Dante couldn’t remember what.

Anyway, he had not been bitten. Then again he was not holding Sunny Desdemona’s hand today, either. He had yet to even come close.

∞

Three of the final four papers in the wagon went quietly, without incident. Dante’s last stop was number 114. This was an old, old mansion that looked like a Greek temple. It stood on the opposite side of West Main, at the corner of Pleasant. Its huge windows and old, cracked pillars towered over unkempt grass (the man who lived here rarely strayed outdoors). Dante supposed it looked haunted, though he normally paid it little mind. Nearly done with another day’s work, he approached it now with cavalier deportment. The unmown lawn encroached its front walk. Some of the windows lacked shutters; all were badly in need of fresh paint. Dante took a step closer. A set of broken steps led to a set of double front doors. He tossed the paper…

And for whatever reason the shot went too hard. Maybe it was baseball. Steve Olin’s submarine had been smoking that year. Or maybe his lack of progress with Sunny contributed an element of frustration to his delivery. Whichever the case, Dante’s throw was aggressive, and when it struck number 114’s twin doors, one of the windows shattered. Jagged glass fell on the steps, disrupting the morning stillness. The sound frightened a murder of crows from a nearby tree; they rose, cawing, like black balloons from its branches.

Dante couldn’t believe his eyes. He looked at the shards of glass. Glittering, they lay on the mossy stone. In on piece Dante could see his face, his own guilty face, sickened by what had happened. The customer who lived here—a tall, rotund man who tipped light and never talked—was not going to like this. Oh no, not remotely. Sometimes on collection day Dante thought he detected a trace of irritability in the large man’s bulbous eyes, a trace of