CHAPTER FIFTEEN - A Slow Hand

“Ohhhh my gggaa…”

“Am I hurting you?” Dr. Saxon asked, his perfect brow furrowing with concern.

Megan bit her lip to keep another moan of pleasure from escaping. “Nnnghho, Doctor –“

“Call me Mitch, please.”

“M-mitch, please. Don’t stop. I mean, no, actually that feels…really…nice. Reaaaally nice. Ohhh, What…are you doing to me?”

As promised, after lunch, Mitch had helped Megan into the study for a proper examination of her ankle, politely declining any assistance from Edmund, Jean and Robert. Megan was comfortably ensconced in the huge leather chair while the handsome doctor knelt at her feet. After he’d assessed her injury and determined she’d only twisted, not sprained her ankle, he’d rubbed some odd-smelling ointment on his hands and began to gently massage her calf and the bottom of her foot.

“This is a little something I learned while studying alternative healing techniques in India – by focusing on certain…pressure points…like here…”

“Mmmmgh,” was all Megan could manage in reply.

“…I can reduce the pain and even the swelling.”

Megan let her head fall back into the soft leather and allowed herself to give in to the sensations. All her awful worries from the last few days receded to the back of her mind. The man was good. Very good. Megan began to imagine what other techniques he was expert at, and had to mentally shake herself. Christ, she’d only just met the guy!

“Well whatever it is,” she sighed, “if you could bottle it you’d make a fortune. Could you please keep doing that for like…the next year?”

Dr. Saxon gave a mellow chuckle. “As tempting a notion as that is, I’m afraid I’ll need my hands back for my research. But I’d be delighted to come back tomorrow and check on your progress. Maybe if you are feeling up to it and the sun ever comes out around here, I could take you for a drive? There are still some beautiful autumn colors to be seen farther way from the ocean.“

“Well, sure!” Megan was mortified to feel her pulse racing as if she were sixteen and had just been asked to the prom. “I mean, it’d be great to get out of here! And even if it rains I’d love to get wet with you, I mean, it’d be fun to go riding you I mean for a ride with you oh jeeze I mean….

Please God, just blast me into a pile of ashes right now…

Laughing, Dr. Saxon gently squeezed her calf, sending a frisson of unholy delight up Megan’s entire body. “I know what you mean. What you need right now, however, is to keep off that foot and rest up.”

Reaching into his doctor’s bag, Mitch pulled out an Ace bandage and began to wind it carefully around her ankle. “ I’m going to wrap this for now, but make sure to take it off before you go to bed, or else in the morning your foot will look like a ripe eggplant. I’ll leave you some pills to help you sleep, too, if you need it. There,” he said, tying off the bandage. “Is that too tight?”

Megan shook her head. “It feels so much better! I can’t thank you enough.”

“You should be fine in a few days if you’re careful with it. No marathons or running down darkened corridors after ghosts, okay?” The doctor gave her a wink, then stood up and stretched. “I have to go visit my other, less intriguing patients now, but call me if your ankle feels worse. I’m in the book. Or call me if you just start going stir crazy and need a friendly ear.”

If you only knew, dear Doctor…

She was loath to let him go thinking she was a babbling sex-starved idiot. Even if she was. “You previously mentioned your research, Mitch. May I ask what it involves?”

Oh great, now I sound like my mother.

“Ah, if I start talking about that,” he said with a smile, “ I will stay here for another year! I’m afraid I’d bore you to death if I went into any detail. Suffice it to say, my work has a lot to do with unearthing certain…mysteries of the blood.”

“Really!”

“And you know what they say…”

“No, Doctor Mitch Saxon, what do they say?”

Megan’s coy smile faltered as the handsome young man stared intently into her eyes and intoned with absolute conviction, “The blood…is the life.”


-----------------------------------------------------------



It is late October in Florence and the sun is setting. On the terrace of the Alfredo sull' Arno, a tall, silver-haired, well-tailored man sits alone at his usual corner table, enjoying a glass of wine and the quiet dance of light upon the river. He gives a small sigh of pleasure, for the weather is finally beginning to cool and the maddening crowds of tourists are starting to thin.

It is difficult, at first glance, to tell the man’s age, for he has a face that looks like it could have been hewn from the same marble as the statues in the nearby Uffizi. It is the face of a man of infinite patience and implacable resolve. It is the face of a man who could be fifty-three, or eighty-three, or four hundred and three.

Removing his sunglasses, the man polishes them thoroughly with a pristine white handkerchief, then places the glasses in their sleek Cuoietto leather case and lays it down on the table at an exact 90-degree angle to his place setting. As he refolds his handkerchief precisely and replaces it in his breast pocket, he contemplates ordering the prosciutto e fichi and wonders if the melone might be better this late in the season.

"‘Scusi? Professore?"

The man turns an expectant gaze to his usual waiter, Marco, who hovers at a respectful distance.

Il Professore is a very good patron, Marco knows, but it is impossible to feel quite at ease in his presence. There is none of the usual friendly banter the waiter enjoys with his other regulars. He tries especially hard to never look directly into the man’s eyes. His nonna would say that there is a black spirit in those eyes, a spirit of death. But he is also, the waiter reminds himself, a very good tipper.

“Il telegramma che stavate aspettando?” the young man politely inquires, offering a salver that holds a single yellow envelope.

“Ah! Si,” Il Professore replies, eagerly reaching for the telegram. “Grazie, Marco.” Noticing the young man’s questioning look, he tosses a handful of euros on the tray. “Nessuna risposta”, he says, dismissing him.

Alone once more, Il Professore tears open the envelope, and a rare, dark smile crosses his face as he reads the two-word message:

I’M IN.

“Well done,” he murmurs with satisfaction. He folds the telegram as carefully as he did his handkerchief, and places it in his billfold.

As the last scarlet rays of sunlight slide below the Ponte Vecchio, Professor Wilton Leonard Carandini, lately of Oxford, Bombay, Hong Kong, Boston, London, Rome, Berlin, and various points southwest of Moscow, raises his glass of Brunello di Montalcino in a salute of farewell. He contemplates the dark red liquid with a certain joy and whispers, “L'anima…è la vita.”


L.A.G. 9/12/05