Passeggiata (complete 2016)

He listened to the sound of her pain and they withered the flesh of this night with green fire. Her wails came as putrid agony to the chaste, waiting night, they came as rotted dreams oozing from the wounds of her private Hell.

The boy beheld all this, and began to cry.

She held the animal and became as crystal; she shimmered and wavered in the moonlight as all the agony of broken dreams came back to her in the water, came to collect a debt long due, and the animal took her pain and held it out to the moon.

Then Toni could hear the meaning of this union as his mother's cries filled the night.

'Destiny is not your enemy,' he heard the wind and the water say, or was the voice he heard Vico's? 'You can not fight her. And you must not turn away from her. You must find her, and never let her go again. You must find you destiny even if it kills you. But there are limits to what we are allowed...'

Toni looked at his mother in the sea and he began to see how her life had unraveled. He could now feel his father in the air and in the water, and somehow it was all bound up in the creature by her side. He could see now that she had not come here seeking death. Rather, and of this he was quite sure, she had come seeking an affirmation of life, the will to continue. The creature by her side in the water was a link to the very essence of life, a silent gray sentinel who had come to guard her dreams and guide her destiny. And as inverted as the scene was, to young Toni everything now made perfect sense.

He slipped from the rocks and made his way back into the night. He walked home shattered by everything he'd seen.

He never told his mother about that night, about what he had seen from the shadows. And what he had come to know about her truth.

And Toni never saw the other eyes watching him. Eyes both in the sea, and on the wind. He never saw the old man's eyes watching from behind dark trees, and the smile on the man's face as he watched the young boy walk back to his life.

And when the old man smiled at the water, and the water smiled at him.

+++++

Ospedali Civili Di Genova

Tom Goodwin sat up in the hospital bed, his back propped up on a stack of stiffly over-starched pillows, looking at Margherita as she slept in a recliner by the window. His head felt better now, now that he'd managed to eat solid food, yet he still felt light-headed whenever he sat up in the bed, and his forehead pounded when he tried to stand. He'd lost twenty pounds in two weeks and was still as white as the sheets on his bed. He reached across for the cup of crushed ice on the bedside table and knocked it over; water spilled and the cup fell to the floor, waking Margherita from her light sleep.

"Sorry," Goodwin said quietly while trying to get up from the bed.

Margherita opened her eyes and looked around the room; it felt to her like bad memories were alight in the room, beating wings filling the air over her head with hollow echoes, filling the room with dreadful purpose. She saw Tom struggling to sit up in the bed, water running off the bedside table to the floor, and she pushed herself awake. She tossed a washcloth on the table and some napkins on the floor, then stood beside Goodwin and helped him sit up.

"Tom, take deep breaths." She caught his wooziness while she looked at the clock on the wall. "It's time for medication. I am getting the nurse now." She rubbed her eyes while she left the room; Goodwin held on to the bed -- the world resolutely refused to stop spinning despite his best efforts to stop it -- and he looked down at his bare feet swinging just above the cold tile floor, trying to hold a fixed frame of reference.

The night nurse came in and Goodwin groaned. The woman looked like a professional wrestler and was usually about as pleasant, but what really made her attractive, Goodwin thought, was the dark mustache. It matched the circles under the woman's eyes, and her dour, dark mood. She spoke a little English, relied on Margherita to translate when necessary.

"Good evening, Nurse Ratchet," he said with his nastiest sarcastic smile plastered on his face. The woman looked at him helplessly and shrugged while she slipped a thermometer under his tongue; an orderly came in and mopped the floor while the nurse continued taking his vitals. She took the probe out of his mouth and read the numbers, wrote them down on his chart, then flipped over to read through the orders once again. She scowled, walked out of the room, and Goodwin sighed.

"She's so talkative, and so lovely," he said as Margherita came back into the room. "I think we're going to be good friends. Maybe even lovers."

"Shush!" Margherita smiled as she put her finger to her lips. "She doesn't want you to know, but she thinks you have a cute ass."

"I do have a cute ass." Goodwin smiled as she came back in and resumed her place by the window. "I think I remember you telling me just yesterday how cute my ass is."

"You are insufferable, you do know that, don't you?"

"Absolutely. Wouldn't have it any other way. And I'm so glad Nurse Ratchet loves my ass. My life is complete now."

She said something in rapid-fire Italian and laughed, and he tried to smile, then rubbed his temples with his thumbs; soon he lay back on the bed and a chill ran through his body. Another nurse -- probably an aide, he thought -- came in with a fresh cup of ice water and a half dozen pills; Goodwin tossed them in his mouth and forced the water down.

"I'd kill for a Coke," he said, and the nurse nodded and left.

"Are you feeling any better?" Margherita asked.

"Actually, I don't think so." He reached up and felt a bead of perspiration forming on his forehead. "Feeling kind of clammy again."

"Clammy? What is this?"

"Sticky and wet. Fever. I think it's coming back." Nurse Ratchet came back into the room; with a saline-filled syringe in hand she came over and flushed out the central line protruding from under his left collar bone, then swabbed off the fittings on a new I.V. bag and hooked it up. She checked the drip rate and made a note on her omnipotent and omnipresent chart. The aide brought in a cup of Coke and more ice.

"Coke good. You drink lots tonight, yes?" She looked down at Goodwin, her coal dark eyes full of unexpected compassion.

He didn't know why, but her eyes choked him up. They caught him off guard, and he felt himself starting to tear up. The nurse ran her fingers through his hair and smiled at him. He raced to put up the wall, raced to hide his feelings. "So, what is it tonight? Vancomycin again?"

"Si, doctoré. You temp -- ah -- your temperature is high again. I get you ready for another lumbar puncture later."

"Oh! Goddamn, fuck no, not another one..."

Goodwin started crying openly now, and Margherita came to him and took his hand.

The nurse looked at Margherita, her smile traced with grim lines that radiated strength. "He be okay," she said in English, if only to reassure him. "You going be fine again."

+++++

Florence, 1984

'Why am I here?'

Margherita Morretti kneeled over the washbasin as yet another wave of nausea washed over her sweating face. She shuddered, closed her eyes as bile crept up her throat one more time; as this wave broke, she looked at her reflection in the mirror with barely concealed contempt filling her mind. She knew she was pregnant, but this sickness was coming in nonstop waves now, and the smudged mascara lining her eyes felt preposterously out of place. She thought she looked hideous, like a circus freak, and she found the idea darkly amusing, almost ironic.

'Why am I here?' she asked herself for the hundredth time, here in this preposterously tiny, hideously filthy bathroom. Trapped here, trapped as she struggled to hold down another rising tide confusion.

Marc was rehearsing for the big gig in the sky tonight; his group was going to perform on a hotel rooftop down by the Ponte Vecchio. Record producers were going to be there, and everyone was excited that this was the big break they'd been working, and hoping for.

Marc's skills as a keyboardist had grown over the past year, and his group was becoming famous around Florence, and much of northern Italy, so much so that they had been billed to open for Emerson, Lake and Powell on their upcoming European tour. They were even making money occasionally, living the high life from time to time.

But they were, Margherita knew only too well, now living way too high most of the time.

The hotel room they'd checked into two days ago now smelled of whiskey and pot, the sheets -- soaked with semen and a loose brine of urine-glazed orgasm -- lay on the floor in a ragged heap. She smelled the mess and stifled another heave, then ran her hands under the tap, wiped her face clear of sweat -- and even tried to clear the black smudgy circles from around her eyes. She stumbled into the room and slipped on fishnet stockings and red thigh-high boots, a short skirt of violet suede topped by a black leather vest. Nothing else covered the rest of her body, and her breasts jutted out proudly. She put on fresh lipstick and touched up her eyes, then hurried back to the rooftop.

Marc and the guys were running through their progressive rock version of Camille Saint-Saëns' Aquarium sequence from The Carnival of the Animals; the piece had justly put them on the prog-rock map and their hopes of landing a recording contract tonight rested solely on how they performed the piece. Now she watched as Marc ran his fingers over the keyboard -- amazed, as she always was, at his daring virtuosity. She watched his long, slender fingers, thinking as she watched how he played her body with the same precision, and she trembled at the thought of their making love.

She watched -- and listened -- as an upright bass, then piccolo and mandolin -- layered over acoustic guitar and drums gave birth to something new and magical, and she knew the boys were sitting on the cusp of greatness; she marveled at the sudden turns her life had taken as she rode their wave. Just a little more than a year ago, she had been festering in that little village, her duplicitous mother infecting everything with her treacherous lies and vacillating half-truths. How had her father put up with the mad woman all these years!

But she had left that all behind, and she felt like she was making her own run for the stars. She'd never once looked back, and never would, she told herself. She didn't care if she ever saw any of her family, ever again, and she'd told them exactly that as they watched her leave.

The boys finished rehearsing and everyone made for their room -- to take it easy before the big gig -- to take another quick trip together, so to speak.

And while it wasn't a quick trip, it most certainly was a weird one. And almost a bad trip

Whether it was the acid they'd scored from some kids at the university or the heroin a drummer from L.A. gave them, Marc got seriously fucked up while Luc, the group's vocalist, went out on a catatonic tour of the Milky Way for a few thousand years. When they were called to the rooftop as night fell over the city, they stumbled onto the stage and into the light and never once looked back.

Of the critics who attended the performance that night, all were unanimous in their utter astonishment at the groups explosive virtuosity, the serious, indeed profound musicianship on display, and their almost painfully beautiful rendition of Saint-Saëns' Aquarium. Agents swarmed over them after the performance - but these parasites parted as representatives from Atlantic Records surrounded the boys. It was a new day now.

And two days later the boys were in London, in the studio.

Margherita remained in Florence for a few days, then decided to head to Genoa.

She called Marc a week later, and he told her how well things had been going.

She asked what all these changes would mean. What all these changes meant to their relationship?

He told her he'd been thinking a lot about her, and it wouldn't be fair to make her go through all this crap, that life was getting too complicated, and that it would be best to end things now.

Margherita fell violently ill the next morning. She was spotting and her belly was hot and tender. She took a taxi to the nearest hospital; later that afternoon she miscarried. She took a bus back to Portofino a week later and moved into a little flat Vico found her. She took a job cleaning hotel rooms and disappeared into the anonymity of the life that had claimed her.

And she remained good to her word and never told anyone in her family she had returned.

There was no need, really, and she knew it. It was a small town.

She was going round and round now; like she was on a carousel, and yet the ride never stopped. There was no way to get off, so she held on, held on as the years reeled away -- and she too stopped believing in the future.

+++++

She listened to Goodwin as he slept; she could hear the little trembles that shook his lips when he took a breath and she tried to smile. She looked at the half finished Coke on the bedside table and watched as little silver drips cued up at the bottom of the I.V. and fell into the tubing that ran silently into his chest...and as she looked at these impossibly complex things she felt utterly devoid of even the simplest hope. It was as if she was watching him die right before her eyes, yet she understood that wasn't really the case.

No, I couldn't be...

Maybe it was because this place smelled just as it had so many years ago. This building made her skin crawl every time she saw it -- even from a safe distance. Yet once she had felt like she was pregnant again, and then that other life rushed in from every direction. She'd felt the need to run again, and now, every time she walked the corridors of her own personal Hell, there was nowhere to run but back to Tom Goodwin, and to the hope she prayed would find her.

So the carousel just kept spinning round and round; there never seemed to be enough time to get off. She looked at Tom and the poison dripping into his chest and deep inside felt the spiraling gyre of her own life; all was bound in circles and cycles beyond her understanding, and the feeling left her breathless, and always alone.

She watched sweat soak through his gown, and started to cry.

+++++

Paul Goodwin lifted his suitcase up onto the scales; the check-in agent tisk-tisked and shook his head. "Three pounds over, sir. That'll be seventy five dollars extra, sir."

Goodwin smiled at the agent and put down the cash; he just managed to keep his mouth shut. He was enjoying this way too much.

"I see you requested a window seat, sir. We can accommodate that request, but that will be an additional fifty dollars. Premium seating, as I'm sure you know."

"Really? Is the flight full?"

"No, sir. Shall I find you a cheaper seat?"

"Oh, no. Heaven forbid. I'm sure all your customers must love being ripped off like this."

"Sir, please watch your attitude. We're required to report all abusive remarks to the TSA."

"Yes, I imagine you are." Goodwin slipped a few more bills on the counter. "That enough? Anything else you can get me for?"

The agent smiled as he printed up the boarding pass, his sense of victory apparently complete, then he reached down to put the baggage tracking bar-code on Goodwin's bag.

"I thought I was going to Rome?" Goodwin said, now enjoying this game even more.

"You are indeed, sir."

"Oh. Well, I wonder if you might put the correct airport designator on my luggage. You've got mine headed for Roanoke. Last I heard, Rome was in Italy, not Virginia."

"Oh! I am sorry sir. Let me fix that for you!" The man smiled as before, but Goodwin could see he'd deliberately made the switch, and the agent knew he'd been caught.

"Thanks. Oh, by the way, could I have your name please, and employee I.D. number?"

"Sir? No, you see..."

"Well, you see, I used to fly these things for a living, and for some reason they've asked me to perform random courtesy inspections of staff whenever I fly. You know, fill out reports on folks who've been, well, unusually helpful, like you. You know what I mean?" He pulled out his corporate I.D. and flipped it open so the man could read it. "Actually, it's about the only thing I like about being retired." His eagle's eyes were leveled now, boring right into the agent's cowed eyes. Goodwin wrote down the man's information slowly, carefully, drawing out the agony as long as he could.

"Sir? Could I move you up to business class? No charge, of course!" the agent laughed knowingly at this little humor.

"No, that's alright, Bruce. Actually, I'm sitting up front tonight. Jumpseat, of course."

"Yes, sir."

"Bruce?"

"Sir?"

"I think they might be hiring at Wal-Mart next week. Good luck with that."

Goodwin turned and walked off toward security. He whistled an old Disney tune as he got in line.

+++++

Trudi Blixen sat in Springer's cockpit, Elsie draped across her legs. She scratched behind the pups ears almost absent-mindedly while she looked at the water behind the boat -- even now expectantly. Several times the big male dolphin -- the one with scars below the left the eye -- had shown up and looked around for a minute before vanishing. There were no patterns to these appearances, but she had seen him three or four times already. Mary Ann Doncaster seemed to imply there was nothing unusual about this, and the assertion flummoxed her, yet she smiled. She had been, quite simply, dumbfounded by a few of the comments the members of this little circle of friends made. These associations with dolphins were astonishing, however, and she grew painfully curious when the one Malcolm called Two Scar began showing up behind Tom's boat again and again.

Then there was the matter of the Doncaster's dog, Elsie. Despite the fact that Tom Goodwin was laid up in the hospital, the dog would not leave Goodwin's boat except to do her business. Then she pulled and strained to get back to Springer and seemed almost physically pained until she got back to Goodwin's bunk. After settling-in there for a while, she'd return to the cockpit, resume her watch for Two Scar.

The first time the dolphin appeared she'd heard the dog jump down to the swim-platform, and she'd run up from the galley to investigate. The dolphin and Elsie were only inches apart -- nose-to-nose, staring intently into each other's eyes. She looked at them for a while, and was left with the impression the two had -- somehow -- been communicating. Each subsequent time the dolphin appeared the two went through the same routine. One was definitely a teacher, of that much she was sure, and again, she smiled at the thought.

'So, there's a link between these two animals and Goodwin?' she told herself one afternoon, after one particularly long encounter. 'He's coming to see if he's back from the hospital?'

It was like peeling an onion! Remove one layer and another, more supple layer appeared.

"How very strange you are," she said to Elsie that evening. The dog looked up and returned the woman's curious smile, then turned back to look into the black water.

+++++

A red-eyed Paul Goodwin arrived in Rome early that Friday morning. He made his way to the main train station and just made the next express to Genoa and bought his ticket on board. After the train cleared the city he made his way to the café car and took a seat. A waiter approached and asked him what he wanted.

"Coffee. And keep it coming until we pull into the station."

The waiter had no idea what the disheveled American had asked for, but from the look in the old man's eyes he could guess.

Goodwin looked out the window as the landscape slipped by; once out of the urban nightmare the land still looked pretty much as he remembered. One thing was unchanged, and that was the sky. There was a hazy tan sheen in the sky over the city, and though it had bothered him for years the acrid haze seemed acutely bad today.