|
Idle
Hands chapter 10 After leaving Alexis alone with his computer, passwords in hand, Lorenzo headed downstairs to the hotel lounge to mark time. Restlessly occupying an overstuffed chair in an underlit corner, he tried not to think too much about what she might or might not be doing upstairs and managed to kill an hour making half a dozen phone calls, downing a cup of coffee and too many nuts, even fielding two blatant propositions -- one from a well-heeled professional type, probably trying to dull the numbness of her success with a walk on the wild side, and the other from a true professional, a high-end hooker thinking tonight might not be so bad. He declined both politely with a subtle flex of his ring hand and a nod upstairs, play-acting the story: a husband temporarily banished from his hotel room by his infuriating yet adored wife, thoroughly in thrall though she held him off. The truth wasn’t that far off. His wife was infuriating, and though it might have been a relief to be enticed by either one of these attractive women, and certainly a night of simple, non-argumentative sex had its appeal, somewhere along the line Alexis had claimed the whole of his attention, and her grip showed no signs of loosening, even as she weighed his fate in her hands upstairs. Lorenzo made himself sit through two numbing loops of the sports highlights playing on the TV above the bar, and only then, finally, at two in the morning, unable to wait any longer to learn the fall of the dice on his gamble, did he begin his slow ascent. He wasn’t certain what he would find when he returned to the suite, and he opened the door slowly. No police in sight, her coat still over the chair, nothing broken or shredded or burned. All good signs. As he approached the bedroom, he could hear the music of Turandot’s final act, for all its richness sounding soft and tinny over the laptop’s speakers, and he smiled to himself, breathing a sigh of relief, or maybe satisfaction. She had chosen to listen to her mother’s singing rather than dig his grave. Not the fairest test, but maybe she didn’t hate him to his very core. The bedroom door was slightly open, but he knocked lightly anyway before pushing it open the rest of the way. Alexis looked up and welcomed him with an acknowledging smile. She sat in bed, a tissue in her hand and a box at her side, but she looked emotional, not wrecked. Lorenzo went in and took a seat on his side of the bed, propping up some pillows behind him. “How is it?” he asked. Alexis shook her head. There were no words adequate, and the attempt to find them brought the tears to her eyes again. Lorenzo gave her hand a squeeze. “May I stay?” Alexis nodded, and Lorenzo settled in next to her to listen. Turandot was beside herself, desperate to discover the identity of the prince who had solved her riddles and thereby won her by law, yet had given her a chance to evade her fate if only she could learn his name by dawn. The queen’s stern voice rang out, ordering her soldiers to torture Liu to make the slave girl reveal the prince’s name. “That’s your mother?” he confirmed. “No.” Alexis shook her head. “My mother’s Liu.” Lorenzo acknowledged this with a lift of vague surprise, but Alexis’s attention was on the music. Liu was holding fast in the face of the queen’s torture, and Turandot demanded to know the girl’s secret: Chi pose tanta forza nel tue cuore? (What powerful force lies in your heart?) Principessa, l’amore! Alexis wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “I think it’s appalling the way Calaf just stands there as Liu is tortured and doesn’t give himself up to spare her. And then how quickly his promise to avenge Liu is forgotten once he kisses her murderer’s lips.” Her tone was almost belligerent, as if inviting challenge, and her mouth was set in a frown. "It is appalling, but he’s a man in love, no sane creature that. His role here is a different one.” Alexis looked unsatisfied. “I suppose. Did you know that Liu was based on a girl who was a servant in Puccini’s household? Apparently he was a serial philanderer and his wife, Elvira, was bitterly jealous. She became convinced that he was having an affair with this twenty-one year old servant, Doria. She fired the girl, slandered her, threatened her physical harm, until Doria killed herself out of humiliation.” “That’s terrible.” “Yes. They say that upon autopsy she was confirmed to be a virgin.” With tight lips, Alexis fell silent again, listening intently through the remainder of the scene. Puccini’s final composition before he died, Liu’s death received the richest, most inventive music of the whole opera, a rising crescendo of barbaric emotion. Alexis closed her eyes and didn’t open them again until the scene was over, and Calaf and Turandot were left alone in the aftermath, Calaf appalled by the queen’s cruelty yet determined to break through her ice with his passion and ignite the woman inside. Principessa di morte! Principessa di gelo! Dal tuo tragico cielo scendi giù sulla terra! (Princess of death! Princess of ice! Descend to earth from your tragic heaven!) Tu stringi il mio freddo velo ma l’anima è lassù! (You may pierce my cold exterior, but never my soul!) Alexis reached forward to stop the play of the disk on the computer and leaned back again with a long, heavy sigh. Tired as she was, her shoulders were still tensed. She took a few more long breaths and then glanced sideways at Lorenzo. "I'm sorry I hurt you earlier." The apology seemed the product of something bigger, some introspection or summons of fortitude. Lorenzo tried to hide his surprise. "Thank you," he said hesitantly. "But if you told me again I deserved it, I couldn't argue." Alexis nodded. "But perhaps not at that particular moment." "No," Lorenzo agreed, a small smile forming. "Perhaps not." Alexis pulled another tissue from the box, dried her cheeks, and moved in a little closer to Lorenzo. He lifted his arm to make room. “My mother was a governess on Cassadine island,” she began, with the air of one telling a very familiar, closely held story. “She and Mikkos had an affair, fell in love. He sent her away, set her up on the stage in Stockholm. She had talent, real talent.” Lorenzo nodded. “She did.” He lifted Alexis’s hand and traced the veins on the back slowly with his forefinger. “She changed her name. Mikkos tried to hide her from Helena, hide me and my sister when we were born, but no one stops Helena for very long. Helena found her and killed her.” “She cut her throat in front of you,” Lorenzo added softly. Alexis’s mouth curved down as a questioning frown vied with the urge to cry. “You know?” “I just found out," he admitted. "I got a call about it downstairs.” “How much do you know?” “Just what Luke Spencer had to tell.” Alexis shook her head, and he could see her weighing things, deciding whether or not to be angry with him. “Luke. Big mouth Spencer.” “He owed me. And he can’t hold his liquor as well as he thinks. I’m – I'm sorry for intruding. It was already set in motion." Lorenzo felt terrible for it, that earlier order issued in anger, his domineering determination to expose her story before she was ready to share it, but she shrugged her shoulders, as if she’d decided it wasn’t worth the energy it would take to be angry. In the insanity of this marriage, the crucible of this night, it was an explicable transgression. “After Helena murdered my mother, she brought me to Greece,” Alexis continued. “I didn’t remember anything, not consciously. They told me I was a distant relative. Helena promised my father she wouldn’t kill me as long as I didn’t know the truth, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make my life a living hell. And she did, god did she, and all the while he was too busy with his insane schemes to pay any attention.” “I’m sorry,” Lorenzo frowned. “No child should go through that.” Alexis shook her head. “I’m not fishing for sympathy, Lorenzo. I’m just trying to explain something.” She withdrew her hand from his and sat up a little before proceeding. “You asked me before why I get such a kick out of hurting you. I think the answer is it's the only time I don't feel helpless. I – you -- this whole situation – makes me feel so helpless most of the time, and it’s a terrible, sickening feeling. So if I delight too much in those rare moments when I get the better of you…maybe that's why." A shot of self-loathing washed over Lorenzo, and if it weren't for her simple, non-accusatory tone and the absence of anger in her weary body, he would have slithered off the bed and onto the floor. As it was he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, leaning forward and burying his face in his hands. Not used to questioning his actions, he struggled to get a purchase on his justifications for the things he had done. Unrepentant arrogance was so much easier; it didn’t make his gut twist in knots this way. "God, what a mess," he muttered. “Yeah,” she agreed, half-giggling through an exhausted sigh. Clearly spent by the effort of self-analysis, she seemed relieved just to have it out there. “I thought you were Turandot.” Behind him, Alexis shrugged. “Sometimes I think so, too. And sometimes…” Birth, birthright, breeding. Nature, nurture. Kristen, Helena, Mikkos, Stefan. One mixed up, unsortable mess. "I'm just Alexis." The mattress shifted as Alexis leaned closer, and he felt her hand on his back, an offer of peace he probably didn't deserve. "You gave me a choice in the end, Lorenzo, such as it is. Thank you for that." Lorenzo closed his eyes. He was dirt, lower than dirt, and soon his name would be mud. He stood up, letting her hand fall away. “I’m going to get ready for bed.” ***** Lorenzo stood at the double sink in the bathroom, carefully brushing his teeth. It was obscenely late, he was obscenely tired, he wanted to join his wife, obscenely, in the big, warm bed just outside the door, but he brushed the dentist-recommended two minutes and a little more for good measure. He had one of those fancy new sonic toothbrushes, the best available, and the buzz made it hard to hear the music, hard to think, but he wasn't getting another set of teeth, not in this lifetime. Might as well make them last. Might as well make it hard on the police when they came to identify his body, if someday, god forbid, all that was left of him was his teeth. Lorenzo flossed, plucked a few stray eyebrow hairs, scrubbed his face, even behind his ears, took care not to aggravate the cut on his cheek. Paid extra attention to the oily spots around his nose and chin. Applied a special cream to the lines emerging at his eyes, two layers of moisturizer everywhere else. He had a regimen, for god's sake, a whole skin care regimen, irregularly adhered to but he had it. Supposedly it would help ward off the aging process, the inevitable decline, the irreversible wearing out of bits and parts. People lived too long these days, longer than their bodies were ever meant to. He meant to live a good long time, unless he didn't, and if adhering to a regimen would keep his body running through his biblical three score and ten, he'd exfoliate and moisturize with the best of them. He meant to live a good long time, if his wife didn't kill him first. She was in the other room, listening to the end of her opera, waiting for him to come to bed. Was she really waiting for him? And if so, why wasn't he hurrying to get there? It was well past two in the morning, and they'd put each other through the emotional wringer tonight. They'd fought, kissed, talked, shared secrets, lowered walls, they'd moved closer than they'd ever been, and maybe, just maybe, she was going to welcome him in bed. She had her choice, he'd given her her choice…in his way. And she hadn't chosen to leave. So why was he waiting? Was it guilt or fear that was holding him back? He put his toothbrush back in its case, lined up all the little skin care bottles and tubes in sequential order at the side of the counter, made a last inspection in the mirror. He pulled open the door, hoping the opera would be over, but it wasn't, not quite. Il
mio mistero? Non ne ho più! My
secret? I no longer have a secret! There it was, the crux of the matter, the lesson he'd been supposed to learn. The part where a victorious Calaf, despite having solved Turandot's riddles, despite having proven her passion for him, reveals his name to her and in so doing gives her power to command his death. He doesn't owe her a damn thing. He has every right in the world to make her his wife, he has the right twice over, but the romantic fool gives her a third chance to evade marriage, puts the choice entirely in her hands, risks it all on the strength of a kiss. Crazy thing to do. Crazy. Who would do a thing like that? Lorenzo stepped out of the bathroom and paused. Robe discarded, Alexis sat in bed, her bare shoulders a pale ochre glow set off by the strappy cream nightgown and the pile of pillows behind her. Just his wife in bed, but something about those bare shoulders, their naked vulnerability, skin belying the undeniable advance of age over youth, made him feel as if he himself were standing there naked, stripped of his carefully chosen clothes, his well-constructed façade, stripped even of his smirking arrogance and his gamesmanship, just a middle-aged husband, a little thick around the belly, uncertainly negotiating his way. She seemed small, human, no longer the icy antagonist he'd first cast her as or even the vexing tease of a wife she'd lately played, but just a woman, and more his than ever before. Alexis glanced up from the bed, looking him up and down. He still wore his tuxedo pants, and a plain white t-shirt. His pajamas were in the drawer a few steps away, but he felt nervous. Her tongue dashed out to swipe her lips. "Are you coming to bed?" Forty-something years old, and looking most of it at this hour, and still that little curve of her shoulders took his breath away, a quintessentially feminine form alchemized from knobby bone and smooth tendon, sweeter than any plunging neckline. He felt suddenly certain it always would and reached behind him, vainly, looking for something to stop the spinning. She wasn't going to be happy with him if she realized the choice he'd given her had been rigged. "I have a little more work to do," he heard himself saying. "I know it's late. But when you're done… " He gestured toward the computer. She tried, but she couldn't quite hide her surprise or her hurt. “Of course,” she nodded automatically. She was nervous now, unsure and withdrawing, and Lorenzo fought the urge to hit himself. “The opera will be over in just a minute.” Lorenzo shifted his weight uncomfortably, his jaw tight. “I’ll go in the other room so I don’t keep you up,” he offered. Alexis nodded again at his solicitation, but her teeth sank into the frowning curve of her lower lip, and only half-conscious of her own movement, she tugged the blankets a little higher on her chest. “Thanks.” ***** Until that moment of rejection, Alexis would have said she hadn't made a choice at all. Where her husband and marriage were concerned, she had simply opted for postponement, giving in to the emotional pull of the disk Victor had given her rather than venturing into the muddy waters of ransacking Lorenzo's computer. When he left her alone earlier, she had thought about it long and hard, thought about what she might do with his computer -- she could go digging around and copy files to Ric at the DA’s office, copy them to herself for future use, she could turn the whole damn computer over to the FBI – and she had thought about what it would be like to see Lorenzo led away in handcuffs, to see him frantically fighting to save his business, even his life, to be finally free of him. No more orders, no more arguments, no more command performances. For weeks she’d been maneuvering to get some kind of leverage over him, and then there it was, in her hands, but she couldn’t seem to pull the trigger. She had told herself it was basic human compassion that made her shy from sending him to jail, or throwing him to the wolves in the form of any of the other mobsters she knew, and maybe sex played a small part in it as well, that long-denied rainy day sex she certainly had earned. She had told herself it wouldn’t be wise to find out too much about his activities if she wasn’t planning to use the information immediately, and that she could get her leverage later, once the formalities of her employment were in place. All of it was true, more or less, but the pang of disappointment she felt as he took the computer from her hands, turned off her light and bid her goodnight with a chaste peck on the cheek told her something else was true, too. Maybe, just maybe, there was a bit of a choice involved, whether she admitted it or not. Not that she had denied it, she amended; he hadn’t even asked…. ***** "Wait." Lorenzo stopped instinctively at her command, pausing at the door on his way out of the bedroom. He had the computer in his hand and had almost made it to the living room, but now he turned back toward the bed, holding his breath. "What?" Alexis pushed herself up to a sitting position again, peering at him suspiciously through the dark. The only light came from the lamp in the living room, but in the arch of her spine and the tilt of her head he could see that formidable intelligence, awakened just at the edge of sleep, focused in on him again. Analyzing, sorting, discarding. Coming to judgment. "You know what I can't help but notice?" she asked finally. Lorenzo forced a smile. "What?" “You aren’t even the slightest bit worried that the police are going to show.” Lorenzo held his features to a passive non-reaction and just shrugged. "You don’t work that fast. I figure I have a few days." Alexis's eyes narrowed further in the darkness. "No. You're not worried at all. You're not worried the police are going to show, you're not worried I sold you out to Sonny or Ric or anyone else. You never were. You never even asked what I did. You were afraid I'd be angry, maybe, but that was it." "Maybe I trust you. Us." Her laugh cut through the dark. "I know you better than that, Lorenzo. You're not a trusting soul. There was nothing on the computer, was there? You gave me nothing." “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” he retorted unwisely. “If you looked, you would know.” “You gave me nothing, you bastard!” Lorenzo ducked quickly to avoid the book that came flying at him, but he couldn’t suppress a smile. Pissed off, mocking and exasperated was better than he'd expected, much better than disappointment and despair. “You didn’t look," he concluded, trying not to sound too smug. "You had a choice and you chose not to look, Alexis. You didn’t want to get out.” "It doesn't count! It wasn't a real choice." "You thought it was. Admit it or not, you made your choice, Alexis. And I'm thrilled." With little argument to fall back on, Alexis reached for something else to hurl his way. Lorenzo laughed, easily batting down a pillow as he made his way to the side of the bed. “I want a real choice, Lorenzo,” she insisted grumpily, kicking at him when he sat down beside her. “Give me something I can use.” “I’ll give you a real choice when I know what you’ll do with it." Bolder than circumstances warranted, he rested his hand on her bare shoulder. "I can’t have you leaving, can I? When we’ve made such progress?” "We haven't made any progress at all. We're right back where we started." "No, we're not," Lorenzo asserted with confidence. He leaned in and kissed her full on the mouth, and they both noticed how long it took her to object. Finally she shoved him hard in the chest, and he got up from the bed. “You’re not going to let me go until you know I’ll stay?” Alexis threw up her hands in impotent exasperation. “That makes no sense.” Lorenzo shrugged and flashed a quick grin as he headed out to the living room. “Turns out I’m not a betting man.” ***** Alexis woke up blind some time later, yanked out of the depths of sleep by something that was gone before she reached the surface – a noise somewhere, a forgotten dream, a misfiring synapse. It was pitch black all around her, with none of the faint, familiar light sources of her bedroom at home, and it took her a long, panicked moment to place where she was and to remember it was a hotel room's blackout curtains that brought about this darkness unlike any other. Even the sounds of the city far below were muffled into silence by thick windows and walls and tight fittings, and the effect of the sensory deprivation was disconcertingly tomblike. In her panicked disorientation, Alexis reached across the bed, looking for Lorenzo at his habitual distance to ground her, but she came up empty. She willed her heart to slow, and pealed her ears to any sound of him. “Lorenzo?” she called quietly. “Yes,” came the surprisingly timely response, but he sounded far away, as if down a well, or in the next cell over. “Where are you?” “On the couch in the living room.” Alexis sighed, unaccountably relieved by the reasonable response. “So we’re not dead?” From the living room came the smacking sound of hand hitting cheek. “Nope,” Lorenzo confirmed lazily. “Though if this is the way the two of us are damned to spend eternity, God has a better sense of humor than I ever gave him credit for. Together in the dark, not touching, for an eternal sleepless night. A well-earned hell.” Lorenzo's low chuckle made Alexis smile. “Why are you out there?” “I’m giving you space.” She could hear the wry expression in his voice, as if he, too, were a little surprised by his own consideration. “You’re being nice?” “I thought so.” Alexis found herself frowning into the darkness. Sure, he was a controlling jerk who couldn't even see fit to give her a real choice, but still…. “It feels like we’re fighting. Usually when the husband sleeps on the couch it’s a sign of trouble, not a warming trend.” “We’re unique.” “I don’t like it.” “What?” Alexis bit her lip. There was no taking it back, even at this distance, even though it was the unreal disembodiment that had formed the thought and given it flight all on one impulse, and she forced the words out again, with no further elaboration. “I don’t like it.” “You want me in there?” She didn’t answer, but soon she heard the rustling of his rise from the couch. He moved almost silently, in bare feet or socks, possessing either the night vision of a cat or perfect topographic memory, and soon she sensed him standing there beside the bed. She reached out a hand, jumping when it landed high on a trouser-covered leg. "Well, hello," he teased. "Sorry. You’re still dressed?” “Yeah.” Something light fell to the floor, his t-shirt probably, and she heard him unzipping his pants. The mattress shifted as he leaned one hand on the bed to step out of his pants. “So you fell asleep on the couch. You lied. You weren’t just being nice.” The mattress shifted back as he stood again. With each tired step, stiffened muscles flexed and his weary exhalation was an accompanying growl. “Does that mean I should go back out there?” She lifted the covers by way of answer and scooted over to make room for him on his habitual side of the bed. Apparently she didn’t scoot far enough, because when he lay down in bed they touched, his left side pressed up comfortably against her right, and when she rolled over to face away from him, he rolled, too, and she found herself tucked into the curve of his body. For once Lorenzo resisted his bastard impulse and held back from teasing her about her invitation. Instead he pressed a light kiss behind her ear. “I want this, Alexis. You, my wife. I want it.” There was a rustle of sheets as she turned slightly to look up at him. “But not enough to let me go.” “Too much to let you go.” If she hadn’t been so tired, she might have argued, or she might have objected to his arm curled around her waist and his feet twined with hers, but she was halfway back to sleep already, and it took just the slightest adjustment to get a comfortable fit.
|
|
|
|
|