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Messages - Rex Vulpes
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1
« on: May 18, 2022, 06:32:20 PM »
"I wouldn't say no to a drink," Leonard said. Hell, about now I would beg for one, he thought. He made every effort possible not to check his watch. Not because he was bored by the present company or had anywhere else to be, but because it seemed impossible to him that this night was still going on. He felt like he had been wrung out like a sponge, and it was only by some marvel that he was still on his feet. He wanted to get out, to go...not home. He was too keyed up to go home. But somewhere. Out. Maybe a club. There had to be someplace open. Maybe in one of the working-class neighborhoods he could find a drink, music, companionship...yes. That was about his speed.
"Ahh, Ms. Giovanni," he said after being introduced to Serafina. He looked between her and their host Andreas. "You must be Mr. Giovanni's..." he calculated her age. "Neice, perhaps. Surely not his daughter?"
He looked at Moses with a tilt of his head. "Shiner?" he asked.
2
« on: May 02, 2022, 01:41:50 PM »
"Of course," Leonard said, both relieved and annoyed at being dismissed from Andreas' company. He didn't believe what Andreas said. Oh, that wasn't right. He believed that Andreas was sincere about it. But he was not sure he agreed with the facts of the matter. Where it wasn't common sense, it seemed like the history of the godly and the pagan was not quite as sanguine as Andreas said. Or maybe he, Leonard, had it wrong. History had never been his strong suit. Maybe he should look into it. "I've got a few suits," he mumbled as he went back into the main chapel.
"He wants to see you," he told Isabella. Turning to Serafina and Moses. "Mr. Dunsirn I know but I'm not so sure we've been formally introduced," he said.
3
« on: April 29, 2022, 03:38:24 PM »
Leonard was about to reply on automatic, make some pleasant banality about indigestion or something else that would be an outright lie about the source of his discomfort. Two things drew him up short, however. The first was Andreas' use of his formal name. On just about everyone's lips that spoke it in Boston, not to mention his degree and identification card, he was Leonard Test. Malatesta was a name he had deliberately distanced himself from years ago, and Andreas' use of it seemed deliberate. Reminding him where he'd come from. What his roots were. All that.
The second was the feeling coursing through him. It intensified when he spoke with Andreas. It was like the intensity of a new friendship but also the comfort of an old and beloved relationship all mixed into one. If Andreas' hadn't been a man, Leonard would say he had a crush on him.
"Yeah, no, I..." he stammered. Then cleared his throat. "That was an unusual Mass," he said. "I'm not sure the Bishop would approve." He laughed dryly at his own bad joke. "I'm just not sure what I'm doing here. You said a promotion, so to speak, but I'm not sure what more you need from an old surgeon like me that I'm not already doing for you. But I guess that's what we'll see at the party, eh? I mean, as long as there's an open bar I'm not likely to stay away. Is it...ahh...is it a formal affair? I think my tux is at the cleaners."
He looked over and saw Serafina staring at them as he drifted out slightly from behind the pillar and gave her a wave. He made a note to talk to her, and to Moses, before he left. Which he desperately hoped would be soon.
4
« on: April 16, 2022, 09:15:36 PM »
Wanting to get this entire distasteful business over with as quickly as possible, Leonard nodded politely to Andreas Giovanni. He was torn in a place between nausea and ecstasy. The wine had tasted good. Better than the first burn of scotch in the morning. It left him jazzed up, energetic without being jangly, and he wanted to jump out of his own skin. It took considerable effort to look politely hurried and disinterested, effort betrayed by the beading sweat on his brow.
"Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Giovanni," said Leonard. To both Andreas and Stefano, in point of fact. "You too, ladies. Mr. Dunsirn." That seemed to cover everyone. Leonard looked at his watch, tapping his foot with a rapid patter on the church's stone floor.
5
« on: March 24, 2022, 12:38:55 PM »
As the Mass progressed, the small alien features mutated into some horrible parody of a religious service. Leonard had begun to feel uncomfortable, then perplexed, and then outright horrified and nauseated at the procession of events. If he had been asked to write up an account of what he imagined Protestants THOUGHT Catholic Mass was like, it would not be that different from this. Blasphemous, bloody, borderline insane. No, scratch that. Absolutely insane. He wanted to be done with this farce, find the nearest place he could get something to drink, and dull the edges of his horrified awareness.
Technically speaking, Leonard was not eligible to receive Holy Communion. He was not in a state of Grace, being unrepentant and unconfessed in his sins. He had, however, long ago ceased to care about sins, Grace, and the hypothetical state of his mortal soul, if he even had one. So when the time came, he got to his feet, prepared to take the bread and wine, and get one step closer to getting the fuck out of there.
6
« on: March 08, 2022, 02:57:05 PM »
Going to church always sent Leonard down the miserable paths of memory to his childhood. The heavy-handed discipline of the nuns, the overly-affectionate touches of some Fathers. Boredom, routine, endless carping on about what a horrible sinner he was in his natural depravity and the soul-searing shame of confession. He stopped going as soon as his mother got spotty enough to stop making him, but all it took was crossing over into the narthex to put Leonard back in the place of the scared 13-year-old boy he'd been when last attending Mass.
Yet the rituals all came back to him. He put his hand in the font of holy water and made the sign of the Cross over himself before entering. Again the same gesture, coupled with a kneel, as he stepped to the second row of pews. As he sat and lowered his head, his mind was filled with the dry, rasping voice of old women who had terrorized him as a child.
"Mass is the re-presentation of Calvary. Mass is not a party! Socializing should be conducted outside the church building. Silence is Golden in the House of the Lord" Leonard kept silent and still. Focus on the priest (who is in the place of Christ) during Mass, not on your neighbor. No time is more advantageous to you for gaining graces. He took out the rosary beads from his pocket and started to pray on them. Or at least, look like he was praying on them.
7
« on: February 13, 2022, 05:20:48 PM »
"Ffff," Leonard chuffed, blowing smoke out of his nose. He didn't exactly know if he believed Hank...but what the man said had at least the veneer of plausibility. Maybe he had done a good job for his employers...his REAL employers, not Harvard University...along the way and just not known about it. The discretion Hank observed and which Andreas evidently valued was second nature to him. You couldn't be a kid named Leonardo Malatesta in King's College and not know how to keep your mouth shut, if you wanted to get through unscathed.
"All right," he said. "Tell Mr. Giovanni that I'll be there. That's my RSVP. In the meantime, if you need anything, you know where to find me."
8
« on: February 11, 2022, 01:37:10 PM »
"Midnight Mass?" Leonard asked. He took an angry drag of his cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray. "Jesus Christ, Hank. I haven't been to church in years." Unaware of his own casual ironic blasphemy, Leonard refilled his coffee. He reread the invitation with a less annoyed mindset. "OK, Andreas Giovanni wants to meet with me and wants to meet with me after Mass. Fine. Anything you can tell me ahead of time? Normally my relationship with the Giovanni is less...formal than this. They show up, make an ask, I give it to them, I'm paid, everyone's happy. So why church?"
9
« on: February 07, 2022, 04:42:11 PM »
Leonard took the envelope from Hank. Almost to prove a point, he went to his knife block and took out a little paring knife. Expertly, he slit the envelope free hand, parting the paper in as close to a straight line as he could manage. When it was done, he tapped his ashes into the tray and examined the envelope's contents. "Speaking of. How's your gall bladder? Still giving you pain? Need me to..." he made a suggestive see-saw motion with the paring knife.
10
« on: February 06, 2022, 09:09:00 PM »
Leonard sat and stared at Hank for a long moment. It was not to buy time to think of a response, but rather a chance for him to let the drugs take effect. Booze to calm him down. Caffeine to spin him up. And the cigarette to put a sharp burn on everything. He got to a place where they all sort of balanced each other out and left him in a state of what he could only call an annoying calm. When he was there, he exhaled a twin tail of blue smoke through his nose and smiled.
"Then what, Hank? Then I drink and fuck and smoke my way to my grave. Along the way I'll do whatever I can for the family. I'm not so far gone that these hands have started to jitter. Look here." He held out his hand. Steady as a rock. "But if you're trying to get me pissed off by saying I've lost my touch. I can only teach now. Well. Next time you need your gall bladder out, let the fucking janitor do it. Then tell me how much teachers at a medical school do for society.
"Come on, Hank. You're better than this. So I like to have a good time. What's the big fucking deal?"
11
« on: January 29, 2022, 03:38:43 PM »
"Hank," Leonard said, genuine pleasure in his face and voice. He stuck out his hand, giving the Fixer a good shake. Hank was a good one. He reminded Leonard of one of his favorite professors from his days as a student in London. That man had been a Jew too. "Why don't you come in old man? I'm sure there's some coffee on the stove."
There was, in fact, a pot of hot coffee ready to go, because Leonard had been about to have his usual breakfast of bourbon and black coffee with a cigarette. He made the same meal for Hank, minus the booze and cigarette, and sat down with the man at his kitchen table. "What brings you around to see an old sinner like me?"
12
« on: January 27, 2022, 07:24:43 PM »
"I heard you the first time," Leonard shouter into his pillow. He had heard and prayed they would go away and leave him alone. He was certain he had no appointments scheduled that day. The University didn't make him teach on Tuesdays, and his office hours were, at best, a suggestion only. No one cared where he went or what he did on Tuesdays, which was always what made Monday nights a source of temptation. He opened his eyes. The hateful light of day was a knife across his corneas, and Leonard cursed as he sat upright. At least he'd taken his glasses off before he'd passed out. They were right there, earpieces over the bottle like they were giving it the hug Leonard wanted to. He slid them on his face, pressed them up the bridge of his nose in a familiar gesture, and got up. His shirt didn't stink too badly of sweat, but he'd taken his collar off and couldn't be asked to find a new one to pin on. Besides. No one needed to wear a collar and jacket to answer their own front door first thing in the afternoon.
"What?" he asked, opening the door and bracing himself for the light that would assault his aching head like a battering ram.
13
« on: January 27, 2022, 07:02:24 PM »
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