Episode 3: Regina

Episode 3: Regina

Regina.

I don't even have to wonder who would show up at my door, next. I know – before I've even confirmed her all-too familiar silhouette. Before she speaks, I know that Chaos has arrived, as it so often does, in the guise of a damsel in the midst of some distress.

“Oh, Robert!”

I sigh.

Not exactly how you'd hope this day would go?

The room is once more bathed in absolute dark.

At least she shut the door.

Shaking the cobwebs of sleep from my head – and realizing only then that I had been in the midst of falling back into it – I sit upright and reach for the top-left drawer of my desk. Listening to her footsteps as she blindly - but confidently - makes her way toward me and the chair waiting for her, I find what I am looking for a few seconds later: a Draig – for the candles. A hiss, a pop, a cloud and the stink of sulfur later, and a small flame dances above my fingertips. This I apply to the pair of candles trisecting my clutter. By the time I've finished, she is standing between the desk and her chair. It is hers for now, anyway.

I gesture for her to sit down and do so myself. An old routine, this, between her and me. She’s long since stopped being impressed by my fire conjuration.

She sniffles, and I swallow my frustration. “What’s wrong, Regina?”

That wasn’t really her name. Who remembers the name of their most regular client after 1000-plus years? I do. But it doesn’t matter what her name was - just that it wasn’t that. Regina is undoubtedly beautiful. An elegant and understated dresser, she wears no jewelry, no adornments to announce her station. That is, I have often thought, what attracted me to her in the first place. In my most cynical moments, I have thought it was that she offered herself to me and nothing else. She certainly gave me nothing else besides frustration.

You know you don't believe that.

“He did it again,” she says, dabbing at her eyes with an invisible kerchief.

I remember vividly the first time I met her:

It was right here, in my office. In almost these very circumstances. She stormed through my door like an invading army. Leaving it open behind her. Practically stomping her way to the waiting chair, like this weren't her first time meeting me; like she owned the room – and every other she'd ever entered. Even in the dim light of the twin candles, I could see the riot of emotions roiling across her features – and the hand-shaped bruise tattooing the left side of her face.

Mistakes were made that day. I fell for her. Pity is not compassion— I cannot say to this day which of the two drove me to take her in my arms. But embrace her, eventually, I did. Her tears, her cries of the violence – both emotional and physical – that her unnamed husband put her through were too much for me to do elsewise. Or so I thought, then.

“Did what?” I wasn’t even trying to hide my exasperation with her.

“He saw her again! I know it. I just know he did.”

Saw her? Wasn't he just here?

“All right. And? You’re here with me.”

“Yes, but— We aren’t…”

“This time. Yet.”

“Ugh!” she practically screams. “I hate him. I hate him so much. I wish he would just die.”

“All right, now. That’s enough. What’s actually wrong. You didn’t just want to see me.”

“What if I did?”

“Then you don’t get to be upset that your husband was with another woman!” I laughed as I said this, but I wasn’t laughing.

“I want you to prove it.”

“No.”

“Yes! Prove his infidelity. Then I can get a divorce.”

“Regina, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I said no. I said no when you first started coming to see me, and I’m saying no now. I won’t help you destroy him.”

“Because he’s your partner.”

“He’s not my partner. He’s my—” What do you call the husband of your paramour when he’s effectively your drug dealer? My contact with Persia? She wasn’t even supposed to know he was connected to Persia and the rest of the Eastern world. And, what? I was just going to out my business partner, the man who had basically made me the richest person in Genoa, because the woman I was sleeping with wanted me to?

I sighed. “No. I’m just not going to do it. I’m not getting involved in your marriage, Regina.”

“If you don’t do it, someone else will.”

“I know, Regina. Someone else will want your father’s money as badly as he does. And you think that if he… you know what? If you’re willing to believe that someone who would destroy your husband to have you isn’t going to destroy you to have your money - just like Francis does - then there’s nothing I can do, anyway.”

“You’re an asshole, Robert Longshore. You know that?”

“I know that. Thank you for sharing. ...Is this what you came here for?”

Of its own accord, my hand tosses another lozenge of opium into my mouth.

She throws herself to her feet. “I just wanted to see you. I wanted to - you know, I just wanted to talk to you. I wanted you to understand—”

I’m shaking my head.

“You know what? Nevermind. Nevermind, Robert. Just never mind.”

“Nah,” I say, grinning like Satan. “Tell me.”

Her face screws up with fury and frustration and her fists ball at her sides, a fit of rage fit for a child, not a woman in her 20s.

“You’re no sorcerer,” she spits. “No prophet. No Master. You’re just a judgmental asshole who gets off on hearing other people suffer!” She shouts this last bit.

I lift an eyebrow at her. “You done?”

“Yeah. I’m done. Done being treated like this. You said you loved me—”

“Wasn’t it you who said a modern Christian marriage isn’t legitimate if one of you isn’t committing adultery?”

Her mouth snaps closed. She exhales hard through her nose – I can almost see the steam. Even in the dark - more shadows were cast by the measly flames that flickered atop the candles than light - I can see the color in her cheeks, the whites of her eyes.

“It was. Right before I took you in my mouth, if I remember correctly. You weren’t complaining then.”

My eyes roll in my head. “I’m not complaining now. You’re angry with Francis. Don’t bring it here and take it out on me. Isn’t that what rich people have servants for?”

Her spine snaps straight, as though I’d slapped her.

“Good day, Robert. Good day, and good riddance.”

She turns and storms out of my office. I watch her go, puffing on my Mwg long after the door has closed behind her and the candles have burnt themselves out. It isn’t until many, many tens of minutes later that I’m sure she won’t be coming back.

She always comes back.

And never when you want to see her, huh?

“That would be nice,” I mutter

That’s what prostitutes are for.

Nice. Real nice.

It’s sure not what wives and girlfriends are for, though, is it?

I sigh. My thoughts aren’t always nice. They were less nice, then.

“This isn’t what I came to Genoa for.”

What did you come to Genoa for?

This, somehow, caught me of guard – like I'd never considered it before.

It shouldn’t have, maybe. Maybe I had, maybe I hadn't; probably I should have. This question, or one like it, seems like it should be the first or maybe second, or, at the latest, the third question you ask yourself after moving to a new city - especially when you look nothing like the people who live there and have effectively nothing in common with them culturally besides what you've been educated to know about them.

“Not this.”

Not anything. We came here running. Running away. Always running.

Exactly, Robert. You are not tied here, just as you were not tied to Tuscany—

“I don’t want to think about Tuscany.”

She died.

You are not tied to anywhere was my point, Robert. You can leave today, if you like.

“And go where?”

Anywhere.

Where haven’t I been? What new is there to see?

Exactly. Anywhere is as good as anywhere else.

When you’re doing what you’re doing.

I have rolled, I realize, another Mwg. I hold a Draig, unlit, in my hand. The Mwg droops in my lips for a moment.

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

You know exactly what it means.

I shift the lozenge of opium to my other cheek.

“Yeah, well. What should I be doing?”

Your laboratory is probably covered in dust by now. When was the last time you were down there?

I couldn’t remember and didn’t want to try.

When was the last time you lay with your wife? Shouldn’t a man your age have children?

I couldn’t remember, and didn’t want to try.

Robert, you can’t want nothing from life. You have to want something.

“Can’t I?” I say to the empty room, standing. “Desire is the root of all suffering. Beer, on the other hand, is a panacea against suffering. I think I want a beer. A trip, friends! To the Tavern!”

Finally.

If I had expected my thoughts to cheer at my rousing speech, I was disappointed. Disappointment, however, should be no stranger to man by his twenties. I was certainly no exception.