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

dad had gotten off work early and would be here to pick them both up. Perhaps she was already waiting outside.

He turned to go and bumped into Stacey. Her books hit the floor, the pages splattering open.

“I’m sorry!” she gushed, kneeling to pick up the mess. “Omigosh!”

Dante knelt with her, grabbing the books. “Don’t be silly. It was my fault. Listen, have you seen Sunny?”

“Yeah, she went to the girls’ room. The one beside the science lab.”

Dante picked up the last book—Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison—and handed it to her. “Thank you. Take care getting home.”

He went to the science lab still thinking Sunny was okay. Other students gave half-hearted waves as he passed, but things were thinning out now, getting quiet. A boy wearing a denim jacket stopped to get a drink, then went outside. Another followed him from the library. After that Dante was alone.

He waited by the girls’ room for a minute before someone came out—a mouse with brown hair and glasses. Dante asked her if Sunny was inside. The girl claimed not to know Sunny, but said she was quite sure she’d been alone in the bathroom. Dante thanked her. He was beginning to worry now, to feel an instinct old and natural as fire swell in his chest. Hoping she had indeed gone outside after all, he took a step towards the exit—

And stopped as a sound of breaking glass came from the lab.

Dante went to the door. It should have been locked but wasn’t. The knob turned in his hand. Another noise came. Springy. Metal on tile. The sound of a chair being dropped. Dante opened the door to find Sunny pinned at the back of the room by a short, muscular boy with blond hair. The boy held her wrists against the wall. Sunny’s face was twisted with pain. Tears wet her cheeks.

“Are you gonna say you’re sorry?” the boy asked. He squeezed Sunny’s hand, making her wince.

And slowly, silently, Dante came up behind him.

“Come on. Say it. I’m sorry, Billy.”

Dante got directly at his back and stopped. “Hello, Billy,” he said.

Billy let go of Sunny. He spun around. Though short, he had powerful-looking arms and a wide chest. Dante thought he recognized him as being on the JV wrestling team. He also recognized him from somewhere else, though for the moment it didn’t matter. Nor did Billy’s muscles, or the sneer on his face. Right now only one thing mattered. Only one.

Smiling, Dante said: “I’m sorry, Billy.”

He picked Billy up and threw him over one of the desks. The desk fell over, spilling broken pencils. Billy hit his head on a chair. Snarling, he leaped to his feet. He cocked a fist at Dante.

Dante punched him in the eye. Billy screamed and flew backward over another desk.

“I’m sorry,” Dante said again, “that I’m gonna beat you so badly you’re gonna need an ambulance.” He hesitated. “Oh wait. No I’m not.”

And then he proceeded to beat Billy very, very badly, slamming his head on the tiles, the chairs. He punched Billy in the nose and felt it break. Blood flew. Crimson droplets of life. Some of it splattered Mr. Sitz’s desk. Dante didn’t care. He slammed Billy against the chalkboard, cracking its slate wide. A huge piece fell on the floor. Then he punched him under the chin so hard it knocked him cold.

The sound of crying made him stop. Chest heaving, Dante turned to see his girlfriend still standing at the back wall. Her knees were buckled; her hair was a mess. Make-up streaked her face. But she was smiling at Dante like a shark.

“That,” she told him, “was so, so awesome. Really, Dante. Wow.”

He went to her, jumping over toppled furniture, so she could fall into his arms.

“Baby?” he whispered, holding her close. “Sweetheart? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she sobbed. “I’m okay.”

But her whole body was shaking. Dante thought if he let her go she might fall.

“Easy,” he told her. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. It’s all right.”

“Did you kill him?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Could you, please? Never mind,” she added quickly. “We’re at school. I’ll have Daddy do it.”

Dante wanted to laugh, except he wasn’t quite certain just how funny Sunny was trying to be.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Do you want me to carry you?”

“I sure do, but I think it would attract too much attention. Let’s just walk.”

Dante’s eye went to the mess. Toppled furniture, broken chalkboard, blood. Knocked out jerk on the floor. “I think,” he began clumsily, “I’ll be going to juvenile home. The one on Benedict Avenue most likely—“

“No one will know about this,” Sunny said into his ear. “Daddy will handle it. All of it.”

“I hope that’s true,” he said, not really believing it was. How could anyone cover up chaos like this?

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Sunny said with a little laugh. “It’s all right. And thank you.” She kissed his ear, and then his cheek. And then on the lips. “Very.” Kiss. “Very.” Kiss. “Very much.”

Dante let his arms tighten around her. Despite what had happened, the assault she’d experienced, the pain, the fear, he was smiling. This probably wasn’t the best time to tell her he loved her. They stood on a bloody battlefield, the enemy conquered. It probably wasn’t the best time—it was probably better than that. It was probably perfect.

“I love you, Sunny,” he said. And if her green eyes were to suddenly catch fire and burn him to death for that statement, so be it.

Instead they shined, like two planets set beneath the moon on a wintery night, where ice hung from the eaves of abandoned places, and bare trees trembled along unkempt boundaries of snowy fields.

“I know you do, Dante,” she whispered. “I know. Just like I’ve always known you were the one.” She kissed him again. “Let’s go, before somebody comes in.”

Dante gave Billy one last look. He was beginning to stir. His eyes blinked. Saliva drooled from his chin.

“Isn’t this the kid we saw at the lockers last year?” Dante asked. “The one who got bitten by the spider?”

And Sunny, gently tugging him towards the door: “Yes. Come on, Dante. My dad’ll be outside.”

Billy blinked some more and looked around blearily. Dante wanted to kick the brute one last time for good measure, but couldn’t. Sunny was right. They had to get gone.

They slipped into the hall, where no one saw them, and outside to the January sun, which burned in a sky so blue it was a wonder fish weren’t swimming in it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Girl Downstairs

Donati came home from the clinic still sick, though cotton continued to burn from his wick.

 

It had long since been unnecessary for Dante to knock at number 114 on his Sunday visits. The opera singer had given him a key, kept supple by an oiled pouch, which he now used in the home’s ancient lock. It was ten in the morning. The smell of fresh cappuccino should have greeted him in the anteroom. Donati should have been up and about, fiddling with breakfast, smiling, beckoning Dante inside.

This morning the hall was quiet, the stairs empty. Peering into the classrooms-turned-living rooms, Dante could see two cold fireplaces. The table where they ate brioche was clean and bare. He went to the kitchen already knowing what he would find. And sure enough, it too was empty.

None of this surprised him. Donati had not been home from the hospital long. Along with heart medication, his doctors were prescribing extra rest, and more vegetables in his diet. Dante went to the stairs half wondering if he should go up and check on the old man. Deciding not to, he turned to go, and that was when Donati called from one of the upper rooms.

“Is that you, Dante?” his cracked voice asked.

“It’s me,” Dante said. “How are you this morning, Mr. Donati?”

Shuffling footsteps across the hall. Slippers on wood. Donati appeared at the top of the stairs. “A storm rumbles on the horizon, young man,” he said as he started carefully down, “but it has yet to reach the happy streets.”

“You look well,” Dante lied.

The singer looked rather more like Ebenezer Scrooge. He’d lost weight, and now his bathrobe, rather than bulge around his once formidable belly, hung like a beaten battle flag on a bent pole. Clinging to the rail, Donati took the steps as the child he once was, using his right foot to come down, hesitating, bringing the left, then moving again with his right.

Help him, dummy, called a voice from some great distance in Dante’s mind.

He helped the singer into the living room and got him sat down in his usual chair. Donati thanked him. He tightened the belt of his robe. Then he asked for brioche.

“I think your doctor would prefer strawberries and chamomile tea,” Dante told him.

“And if he were here he could have some,” Donati said with a smile.

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant—“

“I know, dear boy, I know.” He tilted his head. “Do you know how to make toast?”

“Of course.”

“And wrap it around ice cream?”

“I think I can manage. If you truly insist.”

“The truth is typically an unhappy thing,” Donati said. “And food makes me happy. So let’s eat brioche and call it a lie.”

∞

They took breakfast without speech, clinging forks on the plates, slurping from coffee mugs. The only other sound was that of the fire, which Dante had taken time light, and the constant aging of the house. Sighs from peeling paint, groans from warped wood. The creak of subsidence in some far off empty room.

When Donati’s plate was clean he asked Dante about school. How were his grades? Going up or going down? Dante told him they had leveled off, but were still low. Cs and Ds mostly. The singer became appalled. He asked what was wrong. Was it concentration? Self-confidence? Or something else?

“A girlfriend,” he ventured. “The girlfriend.”

Dante waved the allusion off. “No, no. Sunny’s cool.”

“I see. And what of that despicable letter? Has it been deployed to its intended target?”

It took Dante a moment to gather what Donati was talking about. “The poem you mean,” he replied flatly. “Not yet. But we’ve set a date.”

“Is there no way I can change your mind about sending it at all?”

“I…don’t think so,” Dante admitted.

The other shook his head. “Sad.” His fork found a bit of brioche left on the plate, lifted it to his mouth. “Sad,” he repeated, “but here I am, still happy to be your friend. I am ipocrita. A hypocrite.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Dante told him.

“But I must. At times the only teacher we can listen to is ourselves. Indeed, that voice that speaks in our brains, the voice of Virgil, the voice of reason, is always the strongest. It knows what’s best.”

“What is it telling you now?”

Donati looked at him with a dab of ice cream hanging on his chin. “You’re a good boy who has been mislead by beauty. Fleur de feu. That is French. It means flower of fire. It happened to me once, a long time ago. Would you care to hear?”

“Please,” Dante said, in all sincerity.

“Then perhaps you should boil more water for cappuccino.”

∞

It happened somewhere between 1958 and 1960. Our choir from Nascosto Villagio had not been out of Rome for long. The Pope enjoyed our singing, but of course there were other choirs that deserved a chance to be heard, and indeed other Catholic places on the planet that deserved a chance to hear us. One of those places was the Philippine Islands. We flew to its capital to perform at a beautiful church in the village of Intramuros—a Latin worded meaning within the walls—which is even today considered the heart of Manila, and at the age of five hundred, is its very oldest section.

I arrived at San Agustin Cathedral on a sweltering hot day. It must have been the end of April. High summer in the Philippines. At that time of year the planet