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

surprise appeared ready to weep.

“At worst, souls will be destroyed. The girl’s. The boy’s. The boy’s in particular. He stands before a tsunami. And yours, Dante,” the singer added. “We mustn’t forget yours. Pain can be like light, and its target a mirror.”

“Unless the mirror breaks,” Dante said. “Then I won’t have to worry.”

“Is that what you want? Good Heavens, boy.”

“No. No, of course not. I was thinking of Sunny.”

“If those are the thoughts she puts in your head,” Donati told him with furled brow, “consider another for the flowers you buy. Girls like Sunny don’t destroy souls, Dante.”

“No?” Dante said, perking up at this bit of optimism.

Donati, however, hadn’t veered down any gilded paths, as his next words proved.

“No,” he said. “They eat them.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Happy New Year

Dante spent Christmas alone in his room. His presents were few, given not with love, but memories of love, set too deep to exhume.

 

Things were certainly different with Sunny. On the day before school let out—Tuesday—he’d given her the nail polish. Their surroundings had been secret. No one ever went behind the giant Christmas tree in the foyer. Knowing this, Dante had led her there by the hand. They’d hunkered down behind a number of large, empty boxes decorated to look like presents, and here, Dante gave her his own present. Sunny’s response could not have been better. Gushing with thanks, she’d thrown her arms round his neck, punctuating each word of gratitude with a kiss. The color was perfect, she’d squealed, totally what she would have chosen had she been in the shop with him.

“I’m glad you like it,” Dante told her, leaning on a Styrofoam snowman.

And Sunny, with her head on his chest: “Oh, I love it dear. In fact why don’t we just stay here all through fifth period?”

“I have a better idea,” Dante had then said. “Why don’t we just go home early? Sneak away to Stoutenburg Park, swing on the swings?”

“In twenty-five degree weather?”

“Sure. I’ll keep you warm.”

And so they’d gone, giggling, down one empty hall and up another, peeking around lockers like a couple of Santa’s helpers hoping not to get caught with the milk and cookies. They’d slipped out the front door, ducked behind the bicycle racks. None of it frightened Dante. Somehow he’d known they wouldn’t be caught.

He’d been right. Fifteen minutes after leaving the school, on the cold, empty playground of Stoutenburg Park, Sunny had given Dante his present. It was a book. The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein.

“Don’t open it here,” she’d said, snuggling him on one of the picnic tables. “Wait ‘til you’re alone.”

“Thank you for this,” Dante said before putting the book inside his coat.

“My family doesn’t celebrate the holiday. But how could I not let you know what you mean?”

“So the book has a message?”

“Not according to Silverstein. Read the inside cover though. You may find something.”

Later that night he did exactly that, pulling the book’s handsome cover back slowly in a ploy to savor the moment. There was a note inside, written in loops and swirls of red ink.

 

Dante, Sunny had written.

 

Chances are you’ve already read this book a hundred times. Its author insists there is no message, but as I told you on the picnic table, the message is mine not his. It goes as follows: Sometimes—most of the time—being good just doesn’t matter. The universe is going to take from you. You are the giving tree; it is the old man. Stop. I’ll help you. I’ll show you how.

Love,

Sunny

 

He had indeed read the book more than once, but since he always found it so enjoyable he read it again right there at his desk. Then he read Sunny’s note again. And again, and again.

…but as I told you on the picnic table, the message is mine not his.

Over the school year she had executed a number of disturbing maneuvers upon his psyche, to the point where they should have, by this time, been nearly commonplace. All the same, his heart went cold at these words. How on Earth had she possessed the foresight to write them? There was simply no way Sunny could have known his intention to steal her away to the park. Right up until the moment it happened, Dante hadn’t even known himself.

On impulse he decided to open the book again, flipping the pages carefully to see if she’d written anything else. There was nothing until the very back, where on the opposite side of the cover he found:

 

I know everything…

About the boy I fell in love with. You, Dante.

You.

 

Had this strange statement, written in the same red ink, and in Sunny’s hand, been there all along? Dante couldn’t be sure. He put the book on the desk, stood up, and went to the window. The scene beyond—light snow, a large church, an empty street—was certainly familiar enough. Comforting even. But the darkness he sensed did not come from outside. Rather, it was right here in the room with him.

“Sunny?” he called aloud, still staring at the church. “Tell me something. How long were you able to hold your breath that day in front of my locker?”

He waited a few seconds, then crossed to the desk. The book lay there, just as he’d left it. But had it perhaps changed just a little bit? He opened the cover gingerly, as if at any moment it might snap and take his fingers off. Sunny’s note was still on the inside, word for word as she’d written it. Dante flipped to the back. There was the other, shorter note. It too read exactly the same as before.

“You’re an idiot,” Dante said to himself, closing the book.

He didn’t get it all the way closed. Somehow one of the pages curled over too far. Yanking the cover back so as not to damage it, Dante’s hand slipped. The book slid to the edge of the desk and fell off. It thudded on the floor with its cover wide open. Dante bent, picked it up…

And saw that it had fallen to page thirty.

∞

New Year’s Day arrived. 1993. Like always, it was a quiet one in Norwalk. It brought no drinking or dancing. Nobody honked their car horns, or sang Auld Lang Syne in drunken, warbled notes. In Ohio fireworks were illegal for civilians to launch; thus, the skies at midnight of January the 1st remained dark and cold. Indeed, for one in Norwalk to look from skies to streets retained the potential for brief confusion, as they both, at a glance, pretended to be each other. But for the courthouse clock that chimed the hour, nothing among the old downtown buildings made a sound.

This year Dante didn’t care. He wasn’t in town for the holiday. He’d gone with his mother and father to stay at a hotel in Cleveland, where a yacht-owners convention had been booked. The idea excited him at first, not due to the company they would surely keep (tall, suave, self-important—and of course, male), but the premises in which they’d be kept. The Hotel Consorcia on Euclid Avenue was lavish—or so his father promised the week leading up to the event. It boasted three hundred rooms throughout fifteen floors. A swimming pool, a gymnasium; a Jacuzzi, a sauna. There was also a video arcade (again, promised by his father before Dante saw any actual proof), a candy store, and an ice cream parlor.

Of all these fanciful amenities, only the latter two turned out to be bogus. They arrived on the afternoon of December 31st. A valet parked their car. Luggage boys carried their bags through a revolving gold door. Beyond lay a whisper quiet, dim lobby painted wine and gold. Huge pieces of cedar wood furniture snoozed beneath the glow of pleasant lamps. At a long counter, also of cedar wood, his father spoke to a girl who procured a room for them on the ninth floor.

They went up in an elevator silent as the lobby. The car’s door was mirrored. Seeing himself reflected made Dante, as always, immediately self-conscious. He set about straightening his hair and collar while his parents stood statuesque. It didn’t seem to help much. His jeans looked baggy, his shirt wrinkled. Irritated, he took a deep breath and decided to hold it until the doors opened, which they did in plenty of time, dumping them all into yet more dimness, this time a hallway, lushly carpeted and set with fake plants that cast long, vaguely unsettling shadows.

A cart with their bags on it sat outside room 909. Dante’s father opened the door with a mag-card, then asked Dante to roll the cart into a room that smelled of fresh laundry. One of the bags—a red duffle—belonged to him. He put it on the bed closest to the window, hoping his parents wouldn’t ask him to switch. Then he went to the glass and looked out. Craning his head, he could see Euclid Avenue’s wet sidewalks stretching to the Huntington and PNC buildings. Nearer by was the State Theatre on Playhouse Square. Everything was rain and concrete gray. Not unpleasant. A day for coffee by candlelight, or a good book in an easy chair. This was the departure of 1992. Its final few steps would be from a city by the lake.

“Dante?” his father called.

Dante closed the curtain. “Yes?”

“Your mother and I are going to wash up for the convention. Once we’re gone you’ll be on your own…probably for the rest of the night.”

“Okay.”

“They’re having a little party after all the boring slide-shows,” Mr. Torn went on to explain. “I guess to ring in 1993.”

He spoke this last as if the holiday were normally too trivial to muck about with. For the most part that was true. Dante thought his parents might stay out late tonight, but they wouldn’t dance or get drunk. That kind of behavior simply didn’t fit their reasoned, sensible style. Some of their friends, on the other hand…

“Is Joe going to be there?” Dante asked.

Immediately he regretted bringing that particular friend into the conversation. Too many bad memories—bad and not so distant memories—involved Joseph Jones. And since Dante never liked the big blowhard anyway, why had he even bothered think of him?

“No,” his father said, with a drop in temperature Dante could easily feel. “Joe doesn’t leave his house much these days. But don’t worry,” he added after a moment, “I’ll leave some money for you on the bed-stand.”

Ouch, Dante thought.

His father stared at him with eyes like the headlights of a police car. “Will there be anything else?” he said.

“No,” Dante told him. “Thanks.”

“Good boy. Happy New Year, Dante.”

“Thanks,” Dante said again. “Happy New Year, Dad.”

∞

In less than an hour he was all by himself in the room. By then it was near six o’clock and almost full dark. Euclid Avenue had come alight, though very few Clevelanders wished to brave the damp weather. Looking out the window Dante could see a good many traffic lights serving a futile purpose. He counted their cycles—red, green, yellow, red—half a dozen times before seeing a single car.

Not that the cold was solely to blame. Because of the holiday very few shops along the strip were even open. Of those that were, Dante guessed, none would welcome patrons with open arms. Yes, there were people who still had to show up for jobs over the holidays, but they didn’t expect to work.

Yawning, Dante left the window. What lay beyond mattered little. He was prisoner of the hotel. Indeed, it appeared as if he might open 1993 right here in room 909, watching movies on cable television. Hoping this wouldn’t be the case but feeling powerless to avoid it, he lay back in bed with the Consorcia’s remote control and began to surf channels. What sprang up was not encouraging. First came a black and white sitcom from the fifties; next, a basketball report from two nights previous—Cavaliers 114, Hawks 96—then a Schwarzenegger movie on HBO; then snow; then a beer commercial; then another