"Please tell me that you're not busy tonight," I say to Dante after work the next day. Feeling better after talking to Coleman, I'm dying to spend some time with Dante tonight. We haven't seen each other very much today because I spent my lunch working on the security system to rebuild their security against Pantera so that only I and Coleman have access instead of all of Pantera.
He looks up from his computer at me and offers me a slight smile before saying, "I'm not busy tonight."
I walk into his office farther and shut the door behind me. I then walk behind Dante and put my hands on his shoulders and I start lightly massaging his taught muscles through his business shirt. "I know that I was kind of dismissive yesterday but I'm hoping that I can make it up to you tonight," I tell him before I lean down and start to gently kiss his neck.
"Did you resolve whatever was happening yesterday?" He asks me curiously.
I stand back up and let him get back to work without me being distracting so that he can finish his work faster. "Yeah," I confirm and then I start making up a quick lie that'll make sense with my fake backstory. "My dad's just giving me a hard time but I'm taking care of it. Can we stay in tonight? Maybe order takeout or something?"
"We can do that," He confirms with a nod. I lean against the edge of his desk and watch him work. "I should be done here in maybe thirty minutes if you want to stick around."
"I do," I tell him with a nod. I glance down at the desk drawer that I had found his writing in when I had first snooped in here, the snooping that had forced me to ask him on the date that started this whole thing. I remember the little quote that he had scribbled down on one of his pages about being invisible and how painfully well I related to that quote. I want to know what else he has written; I want to know what else he has to say that he is afraid to tell other people.
As he's working, I look at the shelves of books he has behind his desk where, back at my office in Pantera, I have computer screens. Some very famous books by famous authors including Shakespeare, Dickens, and Jane Austen, but most of them are authors that I've never heard of.
"Do you ever have time to read all of those books?" I ask Dante curiously. "You seem like you're always busy."
"Sometimes," He doesn't look away from his computer, hopefully to get done with his work as quickly as possible.
"Have you read all of those books?"
"Nope."
He's obviously trying to work fast so that we can get out of here fast so I don't bother him again and just silently analyze the books on the shelf from where I'm leaning against the desk. When he does finish his work, we head out of his office toward the parking lot.
"My apartment is a mess," I tell him when I remember that I had left out all of my investigative stuff that I'm studying to try and get to the bottom of this whole mess I've found myself in. It really is a mess too, I haven't done my dishes in a while or my laundry, I've been so busy. "Can we go to your place instead?"
"My place?" Dante wonders back, sounding surprised that I'd ask that.
"Yeah," I confirm. "There has to be some seriously impressive mansion that you've been dying to show off, right?"
He seems to have to think about that which is kind of shocking because I didn't think that it would be such a big deal for him to take me to his house. Thinking back to my own house on the other side of the city, we don't have our secrets out in the open. No guns, drugs, or anything that could incriminate my father or anybody else. If you walked into the house not knowing anything, you would think that it's just a run of the mill mansion in the desert. I guess the Berardis are different in that aspect.
"Sure, we can go to my place," He eventually confirms.
We both get into his expensive Aston Martin with the plan that I'll spend the night at his house and just get my car tomorrow from the casino. That sounds like a very good plan to me.
His house is only about a twenty-minute drive away and, unsurprisingly, guarded by an iron gate that Dante opens by entering a pass code into a keypad and then there are guards standing their guard outside of the tan castle-like house that towers in front of us.
"You have a lot of security," I feign surprise at all of the security guards and passwords that go into just getting onto his property. It's not surprising though—I have the same security system set up at my own house.
"My dad is paranoid," Dante shakes it off as he parks his car in a five-car garage on the side of the house and then he leads me passed a few guards and into the marble foyer of the fancy house.
"This is beautiful," I tell him, looking around in awe. Granted, my house is just as big and fancily decorated but in different ways. Both of our fathers are very drawn to their heritage. My father has decorated our walls with dark colors, grand arches, and golds that go with classic taste in Russia.
The inside of this house is very Tuscan with wrought iron, lots of antique-looking wood furnishings such as cabinets, chairs, and tables, and beige colors. It's all very open too; I can see the huge kitchen from the foyer along with a hallway that, as we walk through, I can see leads to a comfortable-looking living space.
Dante leads me up a grand staircase, "It's like we never left Italy," He says as we ascend the stairs.
"I can't believe you haven't shown me this place yet," I tell him as we pass a very classy framed map of Italy in the open hallway upstairs with a balcony that overlooks the living room that we had just walked through downstairs. "Especially considering how you love to use your money to impress. Because I am very impressed."
"It's not much of a home," He tries to explain to me. "Just a really big house and I know that it's nice and I'm grateful but it's suffocating and given the choice, I'd much rather spend my time in your apartment."
"Alright, well I can't say that I understand but okay," I say and I really don't understand that. I love my house because although my father lives there with me and it is always under a guard's watch, I have more freedom there than I do anywhere else. I have my own room and it's fairly big so I can just lock myself away for hours, days if I'm lucky, and draw or do whatever I want. It's my only sanctuary.
Maybe, to Dante, his sanctuary is my apartment because it's closed off from his father and the business that he does. But before he had my apartment, I wonder what he considered to be his place to go to just be himself without the fear of his father or any other people. Sure, the lake house, but that's too far away to visit frequently.
Dante opens one of the doors and it's like an entirely new world from the Tuscan theme of the rest of the house. His bedroom is very modern with clean lines, black, white, and silver are the main colors. The space is wide and open with a queen sized bed, made to perfection, a couch seat built into the wall, and a TV hanging on the wall opposite of the bed. A book shelf is built into the left wall of the room and it's filled with even more books.
"Don't be fooled by the cleanliness," He tells me as we both walk deeper into the room and he closes the door behind us. "We have a staff that does all of the cleaning, I'm actually a mess."
I watch as he peels off his sports jacket to reveal the tight fitted white t-shirt. He tosses his jacket onto the chair sitting in the corner of the room where he also rests his briefcase. I put my stuff down beside the chair too because I don't know what else to do with it.
"You heard me tell you that we can't go to my apartment because it's basically a health hazard, right?" I wonder jokingly. "I know messy, it's okay."
"Do you want something to change into?" He asks me, noticing that my blouse, pencil skirt, and three inch heels probably aren't the most comfortable things to spend my evening in.
"Yeah, that'd be great," I nod, still looking around the room to notice everything that there is to notice, especially all of the books.
"Clothes are through that door," Dante says, pointing to a door right beside the book shelf so I walk over there and walk into a fairly large walk in closet. I momentarily feel smug that my closet back home is way bigger. There are a lot of sports jackets, dress shirts and pants, some jeans, and it's all very neatly organized. I choose a long sleeved sweater that looks warm and I exchange my office attire for the sweater, leaving on my underwear but taking everything else off. I throw my hair into a messy bun and then exit the closet to put my clothes near the chair to keep all of my stuff in one spot.
While I was changing in the closet, Dante had apparently chosen clothes from his black dresser to change into because he's now wearing a t-shirt and sweat pants.
"I'll get us food, you're probably starving," Dante observes me as I invite myself to take a seat on his extremely comfortable bed. He then joins me, sitting on the other side of the mattress. He then pulls out his phone and starts texting somebody, maybe a chef, to start dinner or to order out.
"How can you tell?" I wonder because I am starving but I didn't think that my stomach was rumbling that loudly.
"You didn't eat lunch again," He reminds me. "And you're also always hungry. How's Chinese sound?"
"Sounds good," I nod at him, I then decide that I want to do something that I've never done before, something that I will only ever do for him, and I get up from the bed again and walk over to the chair where I had left all of my stuff. "Take off your shirt."
"What?" Dante asks me with an understandable level of incredulity in his voice.
"Your shirt," I repeat as I get to my bag across the room. "Take it off please."
"Chinese food doesn't take that long to be ready," He tells me, looking very amused as I carry my large tote bag back to the bed so that I can find what I'm looking for.
"I'm not trying to seduce you," I assure him but he still isn't moving to take off his shirt like I had asked so I crawl over the bed to the side that he's sitting on and I grab ahold of the hem of his shirt with a threatening look. "I will do it for you if I have to."
He doesn't fight me so I pull his t-shirt over his head and then quickly kiss his lips before I crawl back to the other side of the bed. I lean into his very soft pillows and pull my sketchbook out of my bag along with a pencil.
"You're going to draw me?" He finally understands what's happening. "Why did I need to take my shirt off for that?"
"I want to get your tattoos," I explain. "Just stay relatively still."
"Sitting like this?"
"Yeah, this is good," I assure him, focusing on the drawing so that it looks good and that I get every detail of Dante as perfect as possible so that even when our time has passed, I will have this to remember him by. I will remember the curves of his muscles, the waves in his hair, the terrifying gleam always found in his dark eyes, the colorful designs etched all the way down his arm, and the beat of his human heart. Obviously, I can't get that last one drawn on the paper but I will remember it, how human he is, despite the reputation that surrounds him.
It takes a while to get the outline of his body done and I shade in his skin to show the shadows of his taught muscles. I then start working on the tattoos on his arm and I enjoy the silence between us, just being together even though we aren't having a conversation. I'm also enjoying his body.
I copy down his tattoos as best as I can despite how intricate they are, most of them are Italian symbols and Italian phrases but there is one part of it that I see but don't understand.
"What does the bird mean?" I ask him, seeing a little blue bird on his forearm.
"It's..." He trails off, seemingly not really wanting to tell me what it means. I assume that it's something to do with the mob. Maybe something like the rose I have on my side with each thorn symbolizing somebody that I've killed. I can't see how a little bird could mean something like that but I don't know why else he's so hesitant to tell me. "It's really lame."
I look up from my sketch pad to look at him curiously. "Lame?"
"Yeah," He confirms.
I can't help but laugh just a little bit as I go back to sketching the little bird. Seeing Dante Berardi look embarrassed, thinking that something is lame, is the funniest thing. I mean, I know him as more than just Dante Berardi, Giovanni's son, bloody right hand man but this is still amusing. "I don't mind lame."
He bites his lip a little bit and it makes me drop my sketchpad because seeing him bite his lip makes my entire body go limp and I can't focus on anything else. "It's from a poem."
I recover and pick my sketchpad again along with my pencil. I'm not sure if he noticed my collapse but he doesn't say anything about it. "A poem?"
"Yes," He confirms and then I realize why he was so hesitant to tell me what the bird means. Like me showing him my most personal drawings, it is a very intimate look into a person's soul so I understand if he doesn't want to share that with me. His favorite literature, poems and stories, are his voice and it's a lot to share with somebody else.
The drawing is pretty much almost finished and I can finish the rest of it later but now, I'm interested in this poem that he loves so much that he got it tattooed on his arm and so I put the sketchbook down and look at him, waiting for more of a look into the voice that he hides from everybody except (hopefully) from me.
"Can I read it?" I ask him hopefully.
He still looks hesitant but he still gets up from the bed and walks across the room to the full book shelf. "I'll show it to you but you have to show me your favorite drawing from your sketch book."
"Alright," I say and I sound confident even though I've never showed anybody my drawings before. I know that Dante has seen two—the one of the cityscape and the one of the rabbit—but none of the serious ones, the ones that I draw about how I feel and stuff like that. But he's showing me something personal and I know that I should return the favor. It's kind of exciting knowing that I'm giving him a part of me that I've never given anybody, like he's doing the same with me.
I find my favorite drawing in my sketchpad and flip to it but keep it face down on the comforter so that it isn't revealed yet. It's a picture of a girl that looks stitched together like a doll and there are a few holes where her blood and organs are slipping out so it's a little gruesome but it's not too bad.
The caption at the bottom of the page reads 'sewed together with good intentions, ripped apart at the seams'.
Dante returns to the foot of the bed where he was previously sitting with a little black book that reads 'The Last Night of the Earth Poems' in big white letters.
"Charles Bukowski," Dante tells me and I see on the book that it's the author's name.
"He's your favorite author?" I make the assumption.
He nods at me. "Yeah, so even if you don't like what you read just don't shit on him, alright?"
"Okay, I won't," I promise him as he flips through the pages to find the right poem. "We'll switch on a count of three. Ready?"
He finds the right page and nods. "Sure."
And then I'm counting down and then we're switching. I hand him my sketchpad and he hands me his book of poems. Too nervous to see his reaction to my drawing, I just look down and I read the poem titled Bluebird.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
The poem continues about the bluebird being locked away and hidden but the poem isn't very long. The end of the poem is what I think really gets me though.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
My hands are shaking by the time that I've finished the poem and it's not really all that much because of the poem but because of the boy that had given me permission to read it. Even though he didn't write it, he felt this poem on such a level that he felt it necessary to get the bluebird tattooed onto his arm as a part of him forever.
My hands are shaking so terribly because I'm realizing even more so than before how much I connect with Dante, even more than he can realize, and I'm realizing that he's been through what I've been through. He's lived everything that I've lived, we've just been on opposite sides of the same life like living on different sides of a mirror.
And I'm also realizing that there's this swelling happening in my chest and it feels like I'm about to explode or have a heart attack and it feels like I've stopped breathing. I close my eyes and I try to calm my breaths but my entire body feels like it's on fire but in a good way. And I have no idea how that makes sense to me. I've never felt like this before and so as I'm realizing that I think that I love Dante.
I don't feel much for many people, I rarely even tolerate them, and I've never loved anybody except for my parents, I guess, and Coleman sometimes because he's practically family but this is a different type of love.
So I'm sitting on Dante's bed going through all of these realizations as I read this poem. I realize that we are so alike, that I might be overheating due to the overflow of emotions, that I love Dante, and that I might be having a panic attack. And I also realize, after all of these other realizations that I am so fucking screwed.