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the corners of his lips in a
    half smile.
    “And what about you, Donte? What did you do to earn
    immortality?”
    Donte’s eyes met Adin’s implacably. Adin didn’t consider
    that he’d just refuse to answer, but refuse he did, changing the
    subject adroitly after the waiter came to take their order. Adin
    relaxed as the wine traveled its path through his body, warming
    him and loosening his tongue.
    “Well then, let me tell you why you will eventually give the
    journal back to me,” said Donte.
    “Yes, why?” Adin was beginning to feel thoroughly pleasant
    in a toes-wrapped-in-cotton-batting kind of way. “What’s in
    that book that you would be so determined to get it back? What
    is in your own journal that you couldn’t write again?”
    “As if I could begin to explain to you the complexities of
    Italian noble life in the time during which I wrote that journal.”
    Donte leaned his head on his hand. “Everything we did was
    ruled by the nature. By the church. By the season of the year or
    the light of the sun. We had little control over our destiny.”
    “I imagine.”
    “I doubt that very much. We were boys, Auselmo and I. I
    was called Niccolo then, and we were fostered together,
    destined, as third sons, for the church.”
    “Really?”
    30 Z.A. Maxfield
    “Yes, although fate has a way of changing one’s plans, we
    were both remarkably well suited to religious life. At the time
    we were both serious and studious, yet filled with passion. Our
    thirst for knowledge was insatiable. But then we noticed each
    other; how could we not?”
    “I see.”
    “Well, no. You probably don’t have the first idea of that
    kind of passion. If Auselmo sighed, it came from my lungs,
    Adin. I might have been kilometers away, but I felt every beat
    of his heart. From everything we knew about the world, this
    was madness! We were completely incapable of understanding.
    Completely innocent. Then one day Auselmo caught me in the
    kitchen gardens and kissed me as no man has been kissed
    before or since.”
    Adin could say nothing.
    “You believe the persistence of that memory has probably
    been made more intense by the time afforded to me as an
    immortal.” Donte nodded. “Yet when you read the journal,
    when I read it, that kiss is as fresh on my lips as the day my lover placed it there.”
    “Then he’s not…”
    “No.” Donte was silent for a moment. “Auselmo is not an
    immortal, like me. After five hundred years, it’s as if he was
    barely more than a breath of wind that caressed me. Yet not a
    day goes by that I do not wish to feel it again.”
    “ Motherfuck. ” Adin raised his glass and drank to soothe the ache in his throat.
    “Well.” Donte cleared his own throat. “I’ve turned morose.
    Perhaps this would be a good time for you to sparkle.”
    “I…uh,” said Adin, “would have liked to sit and read the
    journal, but I haven’t had the time to go over it carefully in a
    safe environment. Above all, I would like to protect it so it’s not lost.”
    “So that everyone may see my most private and intimate—
    and sometimes painful—thoughts. Yes. That surely is a worthy
    goal.” Donte’s luscious lips thinned into a brief line.
    NOTTURNO 31
    The waiter arrived with Adin’s dinner, so beautifully plated
    that he felt the absurd desire to just stare at it for a moment.
    “This is nice,” he murmured, picking up his napkin and his
    fork. “Look.” He stopped with his fork halfway to his plate.
    “Usually, when I find a manuscript, there’s no one around,
    living or undead, who can lay claim to any part of the
    intellectual content inside it. This is utterly new to me. Can you
    understand that, very possibly, it’s that slight breath of wind
    that I’m trying to preserve? If the journal goes, everything that
    was Auselmo goes with it, except for that which is in your
    remarkably well-preserved person. He is gone as irrevocably as
    if he never existed. I’m not a panderer, Donte. I’m