Palimpsest

Ludovico covers his mouth with his hand. “I felt it… oh, God, the bees, I felt them when they did that to you …”

“I'm sorry. I felt the people in the church, too. I think… it's to make it easier to find each other. It doesn't help that much, really.”

“No.” Ludovico seems to be calculating, weighing something precious in his mind. “You said California?”

“Yes! You have to find me in the real world. You have to find me.”

“I know! I mean … I know how this works.”

November blinks-she is stung. She had thought it was her secret. “Remember this,” she says, “don't forget when you wake up, no matter what. Tell me where to meet you. Tell me where you live.”

He shakes his head, beset by her own bees, who float lazily, happily around his hair in a black-gold corona. “Italy I live in Italy Rome.”

“Okay. Tomorrow, I'm going to call you. Give me your telephone number.”

He does, stuttering, and she repeats the numbers to herself over and over until she is sure she can remember.

“There's something else, though. And it's important, please, please remember.” She cocks her head, listening to the bees’ confused report. “We have to get to them, too. The next time you come, you have to find him, the other one, Oleg Sadakov He keeps running away from the bees, but he's… by the river, he's under a black bridge with stone cockerels on either side. The bees will help you get there, it's far, and we're too new to have access to much of anything. That's why you can't come in. Unless you meet a girl with red hair called Clara. Or find Oleg. And I'll find Amaya Sei.”

Slowly as though speaking underwater, Ludovico says: “The one with blue hair?”

“Yes. She's on the train, but I knew that anyway. I smelled it.”

“Yes, I did, too!”

“Ludovico, tell me where to meet you. Tell me where to go.”

He says nothing for a long time, staring at her. She thinks for a moment that he does not want to come, that he is like Clara, and does not want more than he has.

“The bees sought you out,” he says. “I don't know what that means. But I think it means you are virtuous.”

November is laughing, her body bright, full of certainty all at once. “There is a list, Ludovico! A list of the things necessary for happiness, and the list is us! Ludovico Conti. Oleg Sadakov. Amaya Sei. November Aguilar.”

Ludovico tries to cross the street to her and is quietly repulsed by the amber air.

“Caracalla,” he says finally “Meet me at Caracalla. I'll remember.”

TWO

THE BUSINESS OF HUMAN PURITY

November woke laughing. She put her hand over her mouth, but the laughter would have none of it. Her hand ached—the

blisters were still golden and painful, but they were not so swollen. She thought that when they had healed, she would be an entirely different color. She did not pull a brown book from the cabinet, though her hand strayed to it. She breathed deeply. It would wait. It would wait. I am an ill-tempered and irascible child. The kind the Green Wind wants, she told herself.

November pulled her telephone from its cradle instead, and dialed the number still glowing in her head before it could fade, before she could forget. Her heart was her own again—the bees were gone, but she felt their absence lurch and sway in her. She missed them. Her tangled brown hair fell over her face, and her sheets were a disaster of folds and creases, and in the sheets was the disaster of her, fingerless, her face a nightmare, half-healed welts reddening her skin and sure to scar, but she could not feel them, could not care about them. She could not even risk breakfast before this, before this act she could not bear to delay, to risk losing the fire in her to speak through five thousand miles of wire to a sad-looking man with hair like fitful sunshine.

The phone rang on the other end, that strange European tone. A man's voice, bleary, tired, slurry, answered.

“Ciao?”

“Ludovico, it's me, it's me,” she cried, laughing again, unable to stop.

“Chi e questo?”

“November, Ludovico, it's November Aguilar. Do you remember?”

His voice sharpened immediately, tightening into panic. “Oh, Christo, Christo, non parlo Inglese! Sono un tal sciocco!”