He saw and understood.
“If Ducatisti is the plural of Ducati,” I said, “and Succo (‘juice’) del (‘of the’) Gatto (‘cat’) means ‘Juice of the Cat,’ then gatto means cat; which means,” I said... hating how it pained him, “that if I swap the o for an i, I should get the plural of cat. Which is gatti. Or ‘cats,’ right?” He nodded, glumly.
Lia walked by and gave us the beady eye. “Don’t say it,” said Ballard.
“‘I Gatti,’” I said, reading the back of her open jacket, “‘the Cats.’”
He groaned deplorably.
“But that isn’t what’s bothering me,” I said. If I was going to do this, I may as well do it completely, thoroughly. “What’s bothering me is how you can be so calm––”
“Halls,” he said.
“Discussing all of this. Magic; I mean, it’s a lot to take in. Yet you handle it so calmly. It’s almost like––”
“Don’t. Please,” he said.
“Like you’ve heard it before. Like you believe it.”
“Don’t you!?” he said. He got to his feet; the book fell. He caught it with his amazing reflexes.
“I bet, if I were to ask you to win me a prize, you could do it every time,” I said.
The stalls were full of trick games: ring tosses, knock down the bottles, shoot the bull’s-eyes.
“Just because I’m good at stuff,” he said.
“Don’t walk away from me,” I said. I got up and came over to him. The fireworks were getting ready to start. They let off a few to get everyone’s attention. It was quite a sight: the bangs and the streaks; some flew up so high they created a mushroom cloud of stars. Nobody could hear us; we were totally alone.
“I’m not completely stupid. I’ve been reading that book,” I said. “The things it talks about. Bad choice of words. All I’m saying is, I really hope you’ll learn to trust me, because I really want to be your friend. If you’re, you know...”
“I’m not,” he said.
“Because I’ve been sitting here trying to think how your uncle Risky may have heard about it all. He wasn’t..., was he? Because, otherwise, how would he know about my mom and dad? Ballard?”
He looked away. “Please don’t ignore me,” I said. I was pushing him to his limits, I knew that. I didn’t care.
I saw his hand grip the book; the tendons stood out against the flesh. “Don’t be upset,” I prodded.
“You don’t get it, Halls.”
“I want to. Help me to understand, Ballard.”
When I next saw his eyes, they were anguished; his hair was in his eyes and they were hurting. My protective instincts took over, but he held me back. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you,” he said.
Satisfied that I was going to get what I wanted, I listened.
“It’s like this,” he said, and then let out an exasperated breath. I didn’t know why that bothered me so much, but it did. Before I could think about it, he continued.
“I feel like one of those lesser known works, you know the type? There is Moses or whoever, decked out, and behold the blurry schlubs with no arms and legs. The afterthoughts, surrounding him.”
What did this mean? I knew there was a Michelangelo Moses that Michelangelo sculpted. The fact that Ballard said blurry schlubs, had me laughing, though.
“He did the Ten Commandments, right?”
“What?”
“Moses,” I said.
Maybe it was my old headmistress trying to get me psychoanalyzed, but I couldn’t help deconstructing everything Ballard said. Moses was a leader and he brought the law. He was Moses. Bold words.
What Ballard was talking about was not having any arms and legs. Like in a nightmare where someone ran but couldn’t move. Or their teeth fell out. I was sure this all meant something. The only question was what?
“Why do you feel this way? Is it all of them?” I said. I did a perfunctory thing with my arms. I would let him choose who or what I meant by that. What them had Ballard in such evil spirits?
“It’s like that race. They hold it every year. Do you know why?” he said.
Then I remembered: “Hey! They let you in it!” Was it Gaven? Was he jealous of Gaven? “Why?” I asked.
He smiled at my train of thought bouncing off the tracks. “You would think they would let me join, wouldn’t you?” he said. “But no. It’s Bal’s just a kid, or some other crap. I tell you, I’ve had it. Risky didn’t think I was too young!” He stuck his finger in the air. “Check this out,” he said. He opened the book to a spot. “It’s dog-eared.”
I looked what he was pointing at. It was open to that page full of symbols. He pointed.
“This is the Greek symbol for change,” he said. He traced the triangle with his finger. “It’s called delta. I did a little digging on the computer, and it has a lot of uses today. Architectural plans mostly.”
He was pointing to a triangle.
“Whenever the architect makes changes he numbers them and puts in the delta symbol for change. But look.”
I saw. Not the way Becks did, but I did see.
“The delta’s within a circle,” said Ballard. “It’s like, wasn’t that double pentacle symbol thing within a circle.”
“The glyphs,” I said. The magic symbols that had circled the pentacle. The pentacle had been repeated, so that there were two pentacles. One inside the next.
“First of all,” said Ballard. “It’s a circle. You realize what this means?”
“No.”
He smiled enigmatically. “I admit, I’m reaching, but this is a magic book, which, by the way, you also seem to be okay with.”
“From a school of magic here,” I said, pointing at myself, and cocking my head. “Why is the circle such a big deal?”
“Because,” said Ballard. “Circle. Magic.”
“A magic circle,” I said. “So what, exactly?”
“That’s where you do incantations from. Sorry. Workings.”
“Okay.”
He pointed, our earlier confrontation forgotten. “So if this is a triangle and is change,” said Ballard, indicating the delta symbol, “then, this, a circle, is theta.”
“What is theta?” I said. Though I immediately thought about fraternities.
“It’s Greek. My parents are in Greece, so no duh, I don’t know why I didn’t recognize this earlier.”
“It’s a big book,” I said, gesturing for him to continue.
“Theta is part of the Greek alphabet; it’s the eighth letter. It also happens to be the ninth number. Number nine.” He drew a big number 9 in the air. “Obviously, I tried to go looking for what a delta and a theta symbol, combined, meant. But you can’t enter in a triangle inside a circle and search for it on Yahoo. However.” And I sensed that he was getting to his point. “When I entered the words delta and theta, I got all kinds of interesting things.”
I just realized that the fireworks were still going; it was nighttime and Ballard’s eyes would light up with jets of light. We were standing like two people lost in conversation.
“The circle sign used to mean death,” he said. “It was like a warning. ‘Be careful. If you go down here, you could die.’ They used a theta to denote that. And in Egypt, if you put a dot in the center of the circle––”
“Oh my god,” I said; I had just realized that there was one.
He nodded, his finger tapping the center of the image.
“That stands for the sun,” he said.
“So it’s a sun inside of change,” I said.
“Precisely,” he said.
“And it means death.”
He nodded.
* * *
Lia was tapping her foot. That was the first indication that we were not alone. The second was the square had emptied; the vendors were locking up their stalls for the night. Ballard and I had spent our time looking for the meaning of the symbol in the magic book. Whoever had drawn it seemed to take for granted his or her reader would automatically know w
hat it meant. What we needed was a key to unlocking the Codex (“Like a Rosetta stone, even if it’s just a person with firsthand knowledge,” I said. “This Foucart person, for instance. You see all the scrawls and scratchings-out? The book is covered in annotations. Here’s one.” I read: “‘Whoever that bastard priest was, his transcription from the Glagolitic leaves much to be desired.’” Ballard did um face.) Lia really was tapping away. “I’m going to figure it out,” she said. She honed in on the magic book. I closed it. “Suit yourself,” she said; but she seemed to look like she relished the challenge. I was almost tempted to ask for her help, but I had promised Ballard I wouldn’t. I was beginning to realize just how much he liked to do things for himself. Ballard would probably never ask for directions, much less something so impossible as help. But Lia was standing there.
“We get it. We notice you,” said Ballard, irritated, and then laughed. She soured immediately.
“I just wanted to let you know that we are leaving, if you care to tag along?” she said.
My eyes lit up. Lia. Inviting us somewhere?
“I’m in,” I said. Ballard just shook his head.
“You see, Bal Lard?” She pronounced both syllables, driving him crazy. “You’ll have to teach him to be more risky,” she said to me. “He doesn’t do anything without first thinking it through and drawing maps and such. He has a game plan for everything. Including––well...”
“Piss off.”
I thought differently. It would be fun to hang with a member of the female species. Lia’s eyes were alight with mischievous pleasure. She put her arm around me; I was suddenly being steered toward our bikes. Well, her big, thrashing super hog, and my, well...
The Risky jibe had not escaped me.
“Don’t worry,” Lia said. “When it comes to my brother, you have to know how to get him to do what you want.” She turned around: “Ballard! Mush!” she shouted.
“He follows you like a puppy dog,” she said.
“It really isn’t like that,” I said.
“Can you follow me?”
Interesting question, I thought. “I guess,” I said.
“Good,” she said spritely, swinging her leg, in her black leather pants, over her fire-red racing bike. My mount was less stellar. I started up my Vespa and put on my riding helmet. “Where to?” I asked.
Her visored helmet turned to me; I imagined it would have been winking, if I could have seen her face. She revved her engine: not loud, just a growling, keeping things in reserve.
I looked behind me. Ballard was trotting to keep pace. He waved his hand, like Go, just go, and I did, I went, sure he knew where we were headed. Lia rode fast.
It was all I could do to keep up.
Her red taillight hypnotized me. It was like one of those overexposed pictures of downtown traffic, except I had to concentrate on the walls flying past us.
She looked behind, occasionally, making sure I was with her, then decelerated. I pulled adjacent.
She looked to me like a preying mantis, visored as she was; then her wrist flicked. The front end of her motorcycle rose above my head; she shot forward, popping a wheelie.
I had never seen a girl do anything like that before. I didn’t think I could have arrived with any less fanfare. She dropped the nose and hit the brakes, directly into a crowd of guys, all of whom cheered. Then I pulled up.
I watched Lia bask. I couldn’t tell if it was bitchiness, or she couldn’t help herself. Her drug was their adulation. I watched them worship her. Every guy there was into her. I hung my head with my feet down. She took her helmet off like a shampoo commercial; her satin black hair cascading down her back absolutely perfectly. Should I just leave?
It felt like she rode on my plainness to make herself look better. It sucked.
She didn’t even look back. She just went in with the guys. It was like I had been forgotten or something. I could hear Ballard’s voice in my head, telling me I told you so.
I looked back for him. He was trotting into sight.
That was fast.
He stopped, just before he got to me, like he was listening to something; like something disturbed him. “Weird,” he said, and then walked up and held my handlebars while I put the kickstand down. We were in front of what looked like a bar.
Uh-oh. I didn’t think I was old enough to drink. Lia must’ve been twenty-one. No wonder she bossed Ballard around so much. I took off my helmet.
“Why does it feel like you just got socked in the gut? Oh right. Lia,” said Ballard. “You just got Lia’d.”
It was an expression?
“Does she do that often?” I asked, trying and not managing to keep the hurt out of my voice.
“Just for her special friends,” said Ballard, sardonically, putting the word in quotes. I had never felt closer to him.
“I should introduce her to my friend Becca,” I said. “They could bitch it out for bitch of the year. Bitch of the Century. Super Bitch!” I apologized. “Sorry. She can be...”
“Thoughtless is, I think, the word you are looking for. Come on.”
“I can’t go in there,” I said; it looked like he was going to make me go anyway. “You don’t understand. It might get violent.” I did a series of fist punches. “See?” I said.
He laughed again. He had a little hitch in it that was adorkable. I got Lia’d. Maybe that was like a rite of passage or something.
“Or something,” he said. “You can just leave your helmet on the handlebar. You don’t even need to take the key.”
“What d’you mean?”
He looked, I thought, significantly, when he said, “No one––no one would be fool enough to come around here, who doesn’t belong.”
“Right. Six Nine Guys.”
“Pardon?”
“I have this thing. All Lia’s––” dismissive wave “––well, they’re like super tall, right?”
“Six Nine Guys. I like that,” he laughed.
“I guess this is like their hangout or something?”
“Or something,” he said again.
Adorkable. Definitely adorkable.
Music swelled from the open doors. We walked past the fifty or so high-priced motorcycles all shining in a row. Had Ballard worked on all of them?
“It’s her idea of keeping me out of trouble. Which may explain that little stunt just now.”
“Then, by that rationale, she thinks I’m trouble,” I said.
He did sorry face.
“She’s really pissing me off!” I said.
A sign over the door said, Watch your back. I didn’t need to be told. I felt Lia’s dagger in my spine. What the H? “What is this place, anyway?” I was irritated, pissy.
He pointed to a crude engraving in the stonework. I was getting pretty used to secret symbols everywhere. If you were going to Rome, you had to. It was probably the history of persecution and religious fervor; if anyone stood for anything, it had to be in secret. I wanted to know what they stood for, because right now I didn’t have a fair opinion of them. I Gatti.
Ballard explained. “It’s called a heptagram...” he said. I ran my finger across it. “Your basic seven-sided star.”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“Search me,” he said. “Come on.”
I followed after him into the club––for a club it was.
It didn’t take an outsider necessarily to feel that way. Being popular could be a lonely place. In a strange way, it prepared me for being unpopular. Even when I was in, at St. Martley’s, I knew it wasn’t because of who I was.
The sign over the bar said LA LUNA BLU, in neon blue lights.
I got the sense that Ballard and I were unwelcome.
Maybe that was Lia’s point. Though what I had done to deserve her ire was beyond me. I looked for her at the bar. She was leaning against it, talking to the bartender, who cleaned a glass out with a rag. Her eyes were made up to look dark. I could see them through the mirror behind the bar. When they lo
oked at me, they had none of their previous warmth. It was almost like she hated me.
“How...? What...?” I said, practically to myself.
It was then that I noticed every other eye was staring at me as well. This level of hostility was unknown to me. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve it. Ballard seemed completely immune.
“Is this typical?” I asked of him.
Lia smiled: it was sly and calculating and I didn’t like it. The rest of the Riders and their dates, were drinking the Succo del Gatti, or else playing pool, or feeding coins into the jukebox. But, of course, that was before Ballard and I had entered into The Blue Moon.
It was a rough looking joint. I remembered how my guidebook had said Romans detested public displays of drunkenness. Maybe Lia’s false façade had finally cracked. Like I was seeing her for the first time or something. Why did she dislike me so much? That wasn’t even strong enough a word. I was going to get my answer.
Reflexively, I grabbed Ballard, who still seemed ambivalent to the amount of stares that we were getting, and dragged him over to Lia. But before we could get there, he was steering me toward Gaven. Lia looked away but I kept my eyes on her. She was going to get a beat down in my jour––diary tonight.
The rest of the little gang went back to what they were doing. Part of me was shaking my head. I wanted to rip her face off. Two-faced something-or-other.
Gaven, of course, was the six nine-yish of all the Six Nine Guys; and therefore, their leader.
The biggest and dumbest is the biggest and dumbest, I thought in a bad mood.
But it was hard to be upset when I was in his presence. He had this way about him, of making you feel calm, content, at peace. One. Too bad his girlfriend needed to chill.
He was playing darts, when we got to him.
Next, the inexplicable happened.
Two members of his posse practically jumped us. They put their arms out like we couldn’t pass. Ballard, still holding my arm, said, “I need to speak to him.” I put up only token resistance. Ballard’s hand was rough, calloused, but also warm, safe; I would probably have bruises tomorrow. I think he thought I might actually attack his sister. It would go something like this: