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Oct. 14th, 2004 12:54 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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nanowrimo_ljOK, I'll try the challenge. Here's my beginning, my prologue...
Chasing Alessandro Safina
Chasing Alessandro Safina
Prologue
A midnight mist crept into a grove in Siena, the haze stretching through the olive branches like ghostly laundry. In one of the trees lining the driveway, an owl hooted. Its eyes reflected the muted light from a second-story window of the 18th century stone villa at 45 Via San Pietro.
Had the great bird flown to the ledge and perched there, it would have seen Isabel Cahill, a twenty-six-year-old American, standing naked before a cracked mirror in the candlelight, rubbing virgin olive oil into her skin. The electricity was out again in Siena. Isabel always thought this only made central Italy’s most medieval town feel all the more romantic.
Pouring a miniature pool of oil into one hand, Isabel watched it settle, then smeared it down her right cheek like war paint. She poured a trickle more, slathering it diagonally across her smooth belly. Using a sea sponge, she took a long, lazy swipe down the length of one arm. The dark eyes looking back at her from the ornately framed mirror were wide and slightly panicked. A long tendril of brown hair flecked with gold had escaped a barrette to tickle her right shoulder. When the candles flickered, the fluid light made the bedroom’s turquoise walls appear watery.
Downstairs, a man named Nico, worried about the changes he’d noted in Isabel, set one foot on the first of fifty-five stone steps leading upstairs. He took the stairs quietly, not knowing why. On one hand he balanced a rectangular wood tray that wobbled slightly as he made the turn halfway up the staircase.
Alone behind a locked door, Isabel continued her ritual, shiny with oil now, desperate to try anything that might make her feel more Italian. She yearned to wake daily to the pungent aroma of rosemary wafting in through an open window. Each night, she petitioned God that her parents might suddenly be transformed into third- or fourth-generation owners of a quaint Tuscan shop with green shutters and a name like Cioccolata. Maybe this all would make sense then.
“What am I doing?” Isabel whispered aloud. A dull pang of guilt over the numerous unanswered e-mails from her mother clutched at her stomach for half a moment, but then she thought of how she’d come to be in Siena and she threw her head back and laughed out loud. She covered her mouth, embarrassed. A gust blew the curtains inward with a poof, sending the candles in Isabel’s bedroom flickering wildly.
“Am I crazy?” Isabel whispered aloud.
How else to explain these last months’ of travels around Europe, the endless concerts, the many ways she had studied the emerging Italian tenor Alessandro Safina? How many nights had she sat in cafes with a dictionary in hand, translating his lyrics from Italian to English. But how had she come to be here, in this house, on this hillside in Siena, a prisoner of her own little masquerade?
She knew the answer. Only by becoming Italian could she experience the joy she was sure Alessandro Safina felt when he opened his mouth to sing. The sound of the young tenor’s voice had come to be like breathing to Isabel, so different from her suburban upbringing. She dipped the sponge in the oil again. Dabbed the inside of her elbow. She glanced shyly in the mirror again and was pleased. Indeed, her skin seemed bronzer.
“Italian,” she said. “I will feel it.” But Isabel’s heritage was not Italian. Her parents, Marge and Dave, both Sacramento real estate agents, had never been to Italy.
“Isabel, darling,” a man’s voice called through the bedroom door. “Will you be going out tonight?”
Squeezing her naked breasts against her body, Isabel ran to the door quickly, on tiptoe. She leaned in and listened; sank into its coolness. Although the heavy wooden door separated them, he was close; she could hear him breathing on the other side. “Isabel? Open up. I’ve brought you a hearty sopa verzerra. Have some wine, darling.”
She stood motionless. She willed the molecules in her body to halt all motion. A strand of her long hair hung down one side of her face and Isabel made no move to move it.
“Isabel?” His whisper was a little more urgent this time.
She rested one cheek against the door, her thoughts sliding back a month earlier, to the day she’d arrived here. How she’d found his room a few days later; searched it for his secrets. It wasn’t the flesh-and-blood man she was after. It was understanding. That voice. The voice of Alessandro Safina.
The sound of someone rapping on the door sharply pulled Isabel back into the turquoise room in Siena.
“Yes? What is it?” She glanced around, annoyed at this distraction. She loved this room; this place. She smiled weakly at her scant possessions, few, but important. On a small dressing table sat the only material things that meant anything to her at the moment. Her grandmother’s pearl rosary. A silver filigree bracelet from the first boy she’d ever loved. A ceramic saucer holding ticket stubs from Alessandro’s concerts and benefits. A note written but never sent. Her journal. A tiny black and gold Godiva tin swimming with prescription pills.
“Isabel?”
She turned to the door. “Yes?” she replied. Then louder: “Yes, wine would be good.” She heard a soft laugh and thought she heard relief in it.
“Then open the door, mi amore,” the man said.
She pulled at the wooden door, stopping when just a crack of light filtered through. She peeked out. Light brown eyes thec olor of milk chocolate looked back at her.
“Nico?”
“Yes, it is I. Nico,” he replied. Isabel always got a kick out of Nico’s English. “Open, Isabel. Open your door to me.”
A great rushing sound behind her made her to spin around. Heart pounding, Isabel caught a glimpse of the hulking sight in the mirror before she saw it head-on. She gasped. But it was just an owl. An owl sitting on her window ledge. “Strange,” Isabel whispered. The owl stared back at her, its yellow, mechanical eyes blinking. Isabel heard the clock on her dresser ticking. The owl lifted on its clawed feet, turned and flapped away.
Isabel relaxed. Owls were an omen of something, weren’t they? Something good or something bad? What was it? Isabel couldn’t remember.
Chasing Alessandro Safina
Chasing Alessandro Safina
Prologue
A midnight mist crept into a grove in Siena, the haze stretching through the olive branches like ghostly laundry. In one of the trees lining the driveway, an owl hooted. Its eyes reflected the muted light from a second-story window of the 18th century stone villa at 45 Via San Pietro.
Had the great bird flown to the ledge and perched there, it would have seen Isabel Cahill, a twenty-six-year-old American, standing naked before a cracked mirror in the candlelight, rubbing virgin olive oil into her skin. The electricity was out again in Siena. Isabel always thought this only made central Italy’s most medieval town feel all the more romantic.
Pouring a miniature pool of oil into one hand, Isabel watched it settle, then smeared it down her right cheek like war paint. She poured a trickle more, slathering it diagonally across her smooth belly. Using a sea sponge, she took a long, lazy swipe down the length of one arm. The dark eyes looking back at her from the ornately framed mirror were wide and slightly panicked. A long tendril of brown hair flecked with gold had escaped a barrette to tickle her right shoulder. When the candles flickered, the fluid light made the bedroom’s turquoise walls appear watery.
Downstairs, a man named Nico, worried about the changes he’d noted in Isabel, set one foot on the first of fifty-five stone steps leading upstairs. He took the stairs quietly, not knowing why. On one hand he balanced a rectangular wood tray that wobbled slightly as he made the turn halfway up the staircase.
Alone behind a locked door, Isabel continued her ritual, shiny with oil now, desperate to try anything that might make her feel more Italian. She yearned to wake daily to the pungent aroma of rosemary wafting in through an open window. Each night, she petitioned God that her parents might suddenly be transformed into third- or fourth-generation owners of a quaint Tuscan shop with green shutters and a name like Cioccolata. Maybe this all would make sense then.
“What am I doing?” Isabel whispered aloud. A dull pang of guilt over the numerous unanswered e-mails from her mother clutched at her stomach for half a moment, but then she thought of how she’d come to be in Siena and she threw her head back and laughed out loud. She covered her mouth, embarrassed. A gust blew the curtains inward with a poof, sending the candles in Isabel’s bedroom flickering wildly.
“Am I crazy?” Isabel whispered aloud.
How else to explain these last months’ of travels around Europe, the endless concerts, the many ways she had studied the emerging Italian tenor Alessandro Safina? How many nights had she sat in cafes with a dictionary in hand, translating his lyrics from Italian to English. But how had she come to be here, in this house, on this hillside in Siena, a prisoner of her own little masquerade?
She knew the answer. Only by becoming Italian could she experience the joy she was sure Alessandro Safina felt when he opened his mouth to sing. The sound of the young tenor’s voice had come to be like breathing to Isabel, so different from her suburban upbringing. She dipped the sponge in the oil again. Dabbed the inside of her elbow. She glanced shyly in the mirror again and was pleased. Indeed, her skin seemed bronzer.
“Italian,” she said. “I will feel it.” But Isabel’s heritage was not Italian. Her parents, Marge and Dave, both Sacramento real estate agents, had never been to Italy.
“Isabel, darling,” a man’s voice called through the bedroom door. “Will you be going out tonight?”
Squeezing her naked breasts against her body, Isabel ran to the door quickly, on tiptoe. She leaned in and listened; sank into its coolness. Although the heavy wooden door separated them, he was close; she could hear him breathing on the other side. “Isabel? Open up. I’ve brought you a hearty sopa verzerra. Have some wine, darling.”
She stood motionless. She willed the molecules in her body to halt all motion. A strand of her long hair hung down one side of her face and Isabel made no move to move it.
“Isabel?” His whisper was a little more urgent this time.
She rested one cheek against the door, her thoughts sliding back a month earlier, to the day she’d arrived here. How she’d found his room a few days later; searched it for his secrets. It wasn’t the flesh-and-blood man she was after. It was understanding. That voice. The voice of Alessandro Safina.
The sound of someone rapping on the door sharply pulled Isabel back into the turquoise room in Siena.
“Yes? What is it?” She glanced around, annoyed at this distraction. She loved this room; this place. She smiled weakly at her scant possessions, few, but important. On a small dressing table sat the only material things that meant anything to her at the moment. Her grandmother’s pearl rosary. A silver filigree bracelet from the first boy she’d ever loved. A ceramic saucer holding ticket stubs from Alessandro’s concerts and benefits. A note written but never sent. Her journal. A tiny black and gold Godiva tin swimming with prescription pills.
“Isabel?”
She turned to the door. “Yes?” she replied. Then louder: “Yes, wine would be good.” She heard a soft laugh and thought she heard relief in it.
“Then open the door, mi amore,” the man said.
She pulled at the wooden door, stopping when just a crack of light filtered through. She peeked out. Light brown eyes thec olor of milk chocolate looked back at her.
“Nico?”
“Yes, it is I. Nico,” he replied. Isabel always got a kick out of Nico’s English. “Open, Isabel. Open your door to me.”
A great rushing sound behind her made her to spin around. Heart pounding, Isabel caught a glimpse of the hulking sight in the mirror before she saw it head-on. She gasped. But it was just an owl. An owl sitting on her window ledge. “Strange,” Isabel whispered. The owl stared back at her, its yellow, mechanical eyes blinking. Isabel heard the clock on her dresser ticking. The owl lifted on its clawed feet, turned and flapped away.
Isabel relaxed. Owls were an omen of something, weren’t they? Something good or something bad? What was it? Isabel couldn’t remember.
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Date: 2004-10-14 05:07 am (UTC)That said—technically, we're not supposed to have started writing our NaNovels yet. If you want to write one in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, you can go ahead and start now, but you can't exactly say you're a NaNo'er if you start before November first. 'Tis against the rules.
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Date: 2004-10-14 08:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-17 10:01 pm (UTC)