Arcadia Burns

THREE WORDS


“A FEW hundred?” ALESSANDRO exclaimed.

“The entire freezer is full of them.”

He slowly shook his head, unable to take it in, and for a moment she was afraid that this could all backfire on her. Suppose he thought she was just like her grandmother? Suppose he began to believe what everyone had been telling him for months? That she was bad news for him, bad news for Cosa Nostra as a whole, and it was a mistake to have anything to do with an Alcantara.

Rosa was sitting beside him on the battlements of Castello Carnevare in the evening twilight, looking out at the plain below the mountain where the castle stood. The land was not as flat as it looked at first sight. The farther you went from the Castello, the hillier the country became. Here in central Sicily the landscape was bleak and inhospitable, a sea of ocher undulations in the ground, with dry riverbeds spanned by ancient stone bridges running across them. The sun had sunk below the horizon in the west. A solitary car was driving along a road a few miles away. Its headlights were two lonely stars in the darkness.

Rosa and Alessandro were nestling close together, enveloped by blankets. Both of them had drawn up their knees and wrapped the thick wool tightly around them. They were sitting on the very edge of the abyss; if anyone were to push them from behind, there would be no stopping their fall. Forty-five feet to the bottom of the castle wall, and nothing in the way to slow their progress along the rocky slope.

But Rosa wasn’t even uneasy. Nowhere had she ever felt as safe as she did with him, her shoulder against his, their fingers closely entwined.

“I love you,” he said.

Just three words—but it was so sudden that she swallowed. Whatever they had been talking about just now, their emotions were in tune. They both felt equally ready to be there for each other, forever.

She didn’t say anything. She still couldn’t do it, couldn’t bring the words past her own lips, or not so that they sounded genuine. Even as she formed the sentence in her mind—I love you—it sounded artificial to her. She had tried to explain that to him, and she could see in his eyes that he understood.

She leaned her head on his shoulder, felt his lips in her hair.

“How do you do it?” she asked, looking into the distance.

“Do what?”

“Be the way you are. Still like me in spite of everything I’ve just told you.”

“That’s got nothing to do with us. What your grandmother did—it’s so long ago. We can’t help what our ancestors did.”

She raised her head. The horizon was reflected in the green of his gaze. For a few heartbeats she saw the world through his eyes. Larger, wider, and yet so close that you could put out your hand and grasp it. To him, nothing was beyond his reach.

She had told him everything. About her horrifying discovery in the cellar, and also about her visit to Trevini and the agreement she had made with him. And how Valerie was a captive in his hotel.

“I have to get rid of the whole thing,” she said, adding quickly, in case he misunderstood, “I don’t mean her; I mean the stuff in the basement. But if I have the furs burned, there’s a danger that someone could see the names on them.”

“We can tear the labels off first.”

“Open all those containers? Take out every single fur?” She shook her head. “I’d rather move somewhere else and have the whole palazzo blown sky-high.”

“By somewhere else you mean—”

“Not here. That wouldn’t be a good idea…and not safe,” she added a moment later. “It’s strange enough that they let us see each other at all.”

“Most of them have other things on their minds right now.”

“The Hungry Man?”

Alessandro nodded. “Some of them are more worried than ever that he’ll return. And others can’t wait for it. The mere possibility that he might come back to Sicily from the mainland has them at one another’s throats. I’ve seen them sitting in a conference room in Catania…worldly men in expensive suits. If the rest of us hadn’t separated them, they’d have torn one another apart. They shifted shape, the idiots. Luckily there were only Arcadians in the room, or else—”

“It’s getting out of control, right? The old rules of the dynasties, the laws of the tribunal, all the agreements to keep the peace…before long, none of that will mean anything anymore.”

He smiled sadly. “I know some who claim that our relationship is already part of it. Nothing’s the way it used to be. Alcantaras and Carnevares hand in glove. A package deal.”

She plucked at her blanket. “Two of them. Dammit.”

He turned to her and put one hand under the soft bedspread. His beautiful, long fingers touched her bare thigh. Moved farther up. She was wearing only a large T-shirt and a pair of his shorts. They had been in the pool down in the castle, and after that in the sauna. Her own black clothes were lying crumpled somewhere down by the edge of the pool.

“Wait,” she said, and almost choked.

His hand stopped moving. “Snake alarm?”

“That too. But I have to talk to you. First, I mean. Talk—normally.”

His smile widened. A wind from the plain, from the south—maybe from Africa, as he always claimed—blew through his tousled hair. It wasn’t its usual nut brown, but almost black. He didn’t have his transformation under much better control than she did, no matter what he said the big cats in the zoo had taught him.

“Valerie,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with her.”

He let out a sigh. She felt his fingertips move back like velvet paws. “And you think she’s responsible for what happened?”

“Partly, anyway.” Why didn’t she tell it as it was? Valerie had handed her over to Tano, Michele, and the others. There was no ignoring that.

“Then let her rot away with Trevini.” He meant exactly what he said, as she could tell from looking at him.

“I can’t,” she replied. “I can’t give someone orders to kill her. Or simply act as if I don’t know about it. It feels like she’s next to me all the time. Even when I look at Iole, I see Valerie.” A cold breeze blew against the walls and got under the fabric, and she pulled her blanket close. “We both freed Iole because your family was keeping her captive. Am I going to do something like that to Valerie now?”

“Iole was innocent,” he said. “Valerie isn’t.”

“I know that. And yet…” She shook his head. “Trevini and the others are right. I’m a disaster as head of a Mafia clan.” She laughed out loud. It sounded hysterical, and made her furious with herself. “Even the words are like a bad joke. Head of a Mafia clan!”

“Then ask her questions. Try to find out what really happened back in New York. What Michele wanted with you.”

“Tano,” she corrected him.

“Both of them.” The anger in his voice made her shudder even more than the cool wind from below. But the goose bumps on her arms and legs felt good, perfectly natural, unlike the icy breath of the snake.

“I can’t talk to her,” she said after a moment’s pause. “If I do, I’ll go for her throat. It’s…I’m surprised at myself. When I saw her sitting there, totally helpless, stoned out of her mind—I didn’t even feel sorry for her.”

“It’s what she deserves.”

“That sounds so simple. But it’s a little more complicated for someone who wasn’t brought up knowing the basic rules of the Mafia.”

He stroked her cheek, smiling. “Where’s the tough Rosa who was on that first flight to Sicily with me?”

“The odd thing is that all this should have toughened me up even more. Made me more realistic about it. But instead just the opposite has happened.” She ran her fingers through her hair, and propped her chin on her knees. “I don’t understand myself anymore. And that’s an awful feeling. I don’t want this. Can’t everything just go back to how it was before Trevini brought the whole thing up again?”

“He’s a calculating man. He knew exactly what he was doing.”

“Yes, sure. But now it’s too late. I can’t just act as if I never watched that video.”

He looked out into the dark. “Are you asking me what I’d do in your place?”

She’d known the answer to that for a long time, and it wasn’t what she wanted. “No.”

Minutes passed, and neither of them said anything. Their hands met again, but he didn’t make another attempt to get closer to her. It was probably up to her to take the next step.

All she said was, “And then that ship.”

“I have people finding out as much as possible about Thanassis and the Stabat Mater. They’ve come up with nothing but a few newspaper reports. Looks like he’s cut himself off from the outside world in every possible way. Erected a kind of firewall around his business affairs and his private life. Not easy to get past that.”

“Do you think he’s a member of TABULA?”

“How would I know?”

“Exactly. We don’t know anything.” Alessandro didn’t conceal the fact that he was at a loss, and it was good to see him, too, baffled for once. Without any answers. Or suggestions. Or any idea how to get out of this mess.

“There are just too many things I don’t understand,” she said. “And now my father is part of it as well. Can’t anything be simple for once?”

“What did you say to Trevini’s proposition?”

“What do you mean?”

“When he asked why you didn’t get out of here, taking a large sum of money.”

“He can go f*ck himself. Figuratively speaking, anyway.”

“He’s right.”

“What?” She stared at him, at the fine profile that looked, against the indigo twilight, as if it had been drawn with a quill. “How can you of all people say that?”

“I’ve thought of doing it myself,” he admitted. “More than once.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. You’re exactly where you wanted to be.”

“But you matter to me more.”

“I’m not running away from you.” She tried a smile. “Hey, you have a sauna. And a great pool. I wouldn’t give that up for the world.”

“Maybe we will go away, all the same, some time or other.”

“Sure.” She didn’t believe it for a second.

“Can I take a look at them? Those furs?”

“Come tomorrow. Maybe you’ll arrive before the villagers march up the mountain with lighted torches to burn the monster on her pyre.”

“Your grandmother was a monster. Not you.”

She widened her eyes theatrically. “A reptile? Nine feet long? How does that sound to you? There we are, the story of my life. My boyfriend turns into the most beautiful animal in the world, and what do I turn into? Godzilla.”

He drew her close to him, and she was thankful for that. He often guessed what would do her good even before she knew it herself. But why did the same never happen to her? Was that why it was so easy for him to say he loved her—and she found it so hard to say she loved him back? How long had she mourned for Zoe? Not long. What did she feel for her mother? Not enough. Couldn’t she love like other people? Was that her real problem?

He kissed her, and as the tips of their tongues touched, she thought: Of course I love him, more than anything else in the world.

When his hands felt under her T-shirt, and her fingers touched his arms and went to his chest—all in a tangle of blankets, crumpled shirts, and shorts, rather clumsily and very much her—some things didn’t seem to matter, others were more important, and she thought: Don’t let the snake control you.

She felt the panther fur at the back of his neck and the scales on her hands. She heard them rubbing together, and the sound thrilled her to the marrow of her bones. It was like a series of gentle electric shocks, a tender vibration that lasted a long time, much longer than usual, before the cold she feared came over her at last, bringing with it the transformation, and the end of something that hadn’t even properly begun.

Coiling and purring, they lay together on the battlements, unable to stay in human form. But for the moment it was all right, because it was their nature, what they had in common, and perhaps even their purpose in life, if they only wanted it enough.