I nodded.
She took my hand, looking it over, like I had done earlier. “You rage instead of…” She paused for a moment. It seemed like she was trying to collect her thoughts, maybe arrange them in a way that made sense. “You love her—”
“Più della mia stessa vita.” I swallowed hard. The tar had set and made it hard to draw breath.
“More than my own life,” Gabriel said, translating. He had mentioned earlier that Eva only had so much Italian.
“Did you tell her—” I couldn’t finish.
“No, I rarely tell the person what I see of them. She knowswhoyou are,whatyou are to her, and she'll remember. You need to remember that too. It’s very important.She’llremember. She’s touched, you know. She feels, like I—”
“Is my wife going to die?”
Gabriel said something in his language and took his seat again, like all the air had escaped from his lungs. He bowed his head low, pushing up the sleeves of his sweater, eyes hard on the tattoo on his arm.
Eva looked down, then back up a second later, meeting my eye. “I can't say.”
Or won't?I refused to say. The words felt like barbwire on my tongue.
“It’s not for me to say.” She grasped my hand, holding it like a lifeline. Maybe I held hers like a lifeline.
“Tell mewho you are.” My voice came out so low that I wondered if she’d heard me.
“Evangeline Maria Roberts, wife of Gabriel Louis Roberts. I am the granddaughter of Juliet Monroux,reine des rêveurs,queen of dreamers, and Cola Lombardi. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, by the light of the moon. Some say that I have been touched by a rare gift.”
“Tell me what you are then.”
“Un rêveur.Je vois dans mon sommeil.”
“A dreamer,” Gabriel translated, his voice a whisper. “I see in my sleep.”
“Laissez-moi vous aider, Brando Piero Fausti, son of Lucious Leone Fausti.Le savoir c'est le pouvoir.”
“My wife says,let me help you.Knowledge is power.”
Then the dreamer came forward and whispered in my ear what she had seen of my wife in her sleep.
Chapter Eight
Brando
In that strange and flexible but unyielding way that sleep has, I was aware, yet totally lost. For the past two weeks I had been stranded on an iron prison. A prison because my wife was sick, but as anxious as I was, some part of me knew that if I didn't find an outlet to recharge, my heart would burst in my chest.
There was something else there, though, something on the edge of consciousness, but hidden in the thick layers of sub consciousness. The presence floated like a command, as powerful as the words “wake up” when the time came.
I knew she was there, hovering over me, setting my hair right with her fingers. She came in closer. I could smell her and feel her nearness. She offered a particular calmness that enticed me to slip under even deeper. She whispered, “I love you,” and then put her lips to mine. She muttered something about the both of us being asleep as her fingers journeyed even lower, slipping underneath the thin sheet to caress the shape of my balls. The muscle hibernating against my leg rose with the attention.
“Asleep no more.” She laughed quietly to herself.
For as lost as I was, my senses were aligned. I could move without opening my eyes, the sensation like being underwater.
She collapsed on top of me with awhoop!of surprise when I brought her to my chest. “Brando,” she barely got out. “I. Cant. Breathe.”
I let up on the pressure around her waist.Don't start something you can't finish, I think I said. Maybe I was dreaming.
She began to caress my skin. Her fingers drifted over my chest, above my heart, over my arms, my throat, my lips, and then my cheek. “You don't have to worry anymore,mio angelo,” she whispered in my ear. “My fever broke. Uncle Tito says that I'm in the clear.”
A piece of tension broke. The feel of the hidden thing lessened its burden. But the heart of the matter still had too much weight. I couldn't face it in that moment, but soon. Real soon.
