Chapter 10
Chapter 10
“Gliel’avevo detto,” Lucrezia moans for the third time, rubbing her hands together nervously, reminding me of the flies feasting on the half-eaten dessert plates in the garden. According to the translation app I’ve been stealthily using, it means I told him so.
Dr. Cacciari, a dour, lanky man who could successfully serve as an international spokesperson for facial hair, pats her repeatedly on the back. His dark beard extends upward into a mustache and down to the breastbone, to mingle with a tuft of equally black chest hairs that peek from the neck of his button-down. It’s bushy, veined with gray, and fashionably groomed; I expect a hummingbird will be flying out of it any second.
“Nulla di cui preoccuparsi,” he says. He drove up to the villa from one of the towns surrounding Taormina, and didn’t finish his rounds until close to midnight. In the meantime, someone must have blown out the lanterns in the garden, probably to hide the evidence of our idiocy. “Uno o due giorni, al massimo.”
Do not darken, my phone translates in real time. Spend one or two days at Massimo’s.
I click out of my useless app with an eye roll. In truth, Dr. Cacciari speaks English as well as I do, but stopped once he realized that if he talked with only Conor and Lucrezia, he could stick to Italian. I don’t mind being excluded, especially after overhearing the phrase “ Staphylococcus aureus .”
It is, I believe, Latin for: These fucking morons.
“So,” Minami asks once he’s gone, “what are the bullet points, Hark?” The three of us, official plague survivors, have retreated onto the living room couch. Everyone else is making out with a ceramic toilet.
“Axel and Paul went to some kind of market. Axel, in his infinite wisdom, saw a bottle of something that looked like fresh arancello—that’s limoncello, but made with orange rinds—and bought it.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. Pasteur is rolling in his grave.
“Was the seller a trickster god?” I ask. “Did he throw in a pouch of magic beans?”
“One can only assume. Axel then proceeded to pour shots while we were waiting for someone to join us for dinner.”
“Hey,” I say mildly. “So now the puke-a-thon is my fault?”
“I’ve been referring to it as vomit-fest in my head, but yeah.” His lips twitch. “Everything is your fault, Trouble.”
My heart stops. Restarts. “You should know better than to accept food or drink items from some dude who probably glued his balls to his thighs well into his twenties.”
“She’s got a point,” Minami mutters. “Axel is an idiot, but everyone else should have known better.”
“How come you’re okay?” I ask her, curious.
“Didn’t feel like having some weird orange concoction. What’s your excuse, Hark?”
He shrugs. “It’s food poisoning, that’s all. They all need fluids and rest, and should be fine by tomorrow night.”
“At which point they’ll be able to join us in the collective lighting of Axel’s funeral pyre?” I ask.
Conor’s smile is grim. “If he doesn’t get stabbed overnight.”
“How do you think Rue and Eli would feel about holding a wedding and an entombment on the same day?”
“While everyone around retches like a garden hose?”
“It’s about time we redefine the term ‘wedding shower’—”
“Hey,” Minami interrupts, eyes narrow between us. “Why do you two sound like you’re enjoying yourselves?”
Conor and I exchange another look. His lips twitch, just like mine. “ Do you ever laugh just to avoid crying?” I asked him a year and a half ago, after hitting a curb and messing up the brake system of the car I’d just finished paying off.
“ I laughed three times at my mom’s funeral ,” he told me. “ Felt like absolute shit the whole time .”
He remembers that conversation, too. I can see it in the sudden softness of his expression. “Some people just like to see the world burn, Minami,” he says.
“What people?”
“Terrible people,” we say in unison, and our eyes lock, and—
“So,” a voice says from the staircase.
Conor turns toward it first, but it’s Minami who asks, “Tamryn, are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. My body rejecting every sip of water I take qualifies as okay, right?” She climbs down to the last step, long legs pale against the purple shorts of her pajamas.
“Fucking Axel,” Conor sighs.
“I’ve been thinking along those lines, too.” Her words fall with the same cadence as Conor’s. Musical. Rising. Dropped g ’s. “Did the doctor happen to leave any drugs behind? I told him I wouldn’t need it, but I’m in the grip of a very strong bout of regret.”
“He did. Pills, for the nausea.”
“Thank Christ. Do you think I could have three or more?” I watch her cock her hip against the railing. Her r ’s roll, sinuous. She looks freshly showered, skin scrubbed clean and hair damp around her shoulders.
“However many you want, Tam.”
“Unfortunately, I also had about a gallon of wine, which means that I’m still wasted and a bit woozy, and—” I’m the closest to her, and when she wavers on her feet, looking as though she might fall on her face, I sprint out of my seat to put my arm around her waist.
Conor and Minami get there about a second later.
“You sure you’re doing okay?” I ask. Her skin is hot, even through the jersey of her top.
“Yes. No. Now that I think about it, I may have puked out a vital organ.”
“The drugs will help with that,” Conor says.
Tamryn nods, in no hurry to start back up the stairs.
“You’re so…” she starts, staring down at me. She must be nearly six feet, taller even than Rue. “Maya, right? You’re not like Conor described.”
She’s the first person I met who calls him Conor. Besides me, that is. “Please, don’t elaborate on that.”
“Why?”
“Can’t be flattering.”
She laughs like she’s highly familiar with the brand of insults Conor likes to deliver. Eli’s little sister. Has all the charm and maturity of a boy getting his first newspaper route. Did one nice thing for her, and she latched on to me like I’m a teat that yields chocolate milk. No good deed left unpunished.
“You’re very pretty,” she tells me. Which is like getting hit with a pinata stick over the head. Clearly no ill is intended, but there’s something patronizing about being called pretty by someone who looks like she came straight out of Instagram.
“Let’s get you to bed,” I say with my steadiest smile, and I’m not sure how it happens that her arm slips around my shoulders for support. From up close, she’s not as young as I originally thought.
“I can take you to bed, Tam,” Conor tells her.
“Oh, I know. You’ve done it plenty of times.” She winks at him. “But I’m hanging out with my new friend Maya. What’s it like? Being an enfant prodige ?”
There’s a lump in my throat. “I guess I wouldn’t know, since I’m neither.”
“Nonsense. Everywhere I stumble, someone’s bragging about how smart you are. It’s heartwarming, how much they all love you.”
We climb up. Minami stays downstairs, but Conor trails behind us. Honestly, there’s no reason for me to be here. He could easily carry Tamryn to wherever she’ll sleep.
“I think it’s brilliant, being so young and already doing great things,” she says. “When I was your age, I knew sod all.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Oh, it is. I made some shit choices. My email was CuntGoddessTam, and I used it proudly on job applications.”
I laugh. “Did you get any offers?”
“Of course. The email, specifically, made me a very desirable coworker for a certain segment of the population. Not one that I wanted to work with—oh, here, on the right. That’s my room.” She turns around. Beams at Conor and holds her hand out to him. “Tell me more about those drugs.”
He lets a few pills drop in her palm, without touching it. “No more than one every six hours, CuntGoddess.”
“Thank you for addressing me by my preferred title.” She turns to me. “Maya, did you know that he took three calls during dinner? You cannot allow him to keep working for the entire holiday.”
“I…doubt it’s within my powers to stop him.”
“We’ll figure out something. You ’ll figure something out.”
“We are,” Conor grumbles, “in an active deal phase that requires finalizing—”
Tamryn interrupts him with a playful wave of her hand. “Yes, yes, the markets, the country’s GDP.” Holding on to the wall, she lifts on her toes to press a kiss against his cheek. “Do you have time to tuck me in?”
Conor nods, no hesitation.
“Good night, Maya,” she tells me before disappearing with him past the door.
I’m left alone in the deserted hallway, hollow-boned, wondering how the fuck I’m supposed to look away from this.
Remembering a time when I pulled Conor inside my room.