Page 1 of Just for a Taste

T he boy was used to his house being transformed into chaos on a regular basis. The party inside was bustling as usual, bright and loud and teeming with people. Voices overlapping with a roar of laughter, mostly forced. Superficial conversations he found sinful on top of the live string instruments, and lights so bright they made his skin and eyes burn, even from the tree in which he sat.

Zeno resembled the people inside, to some extent. His lanky body, now in the awkward period between boyhood and early adolescence, was fashioned in formalwear. It had taken one of the most talented tailors in Italy to make the suit conform to his figure, and still he had chosen to cover most of it in his favorite antique overcoat—an overcoat now strewn across the branches at his side.

Zeno’s white hair had been tamed into a smooth pompadour at the beginning of the night, but now it had deep ridges where he had run his fingers countless times. His pink eyes, long trained to watch the ground, had been powdered in a mostly successful attempt to conceal the deep bags and dark circles endemic to his face. It had taken a special formula to make a foundation that looked natural on Zeno’s nearly translucent skin.

There weren’t many trees in this area of Florence—at least, not many that were allowed to grow as gnarled as the one outside his bedroom. Zeno wasn’t sure why exactly this one had been allowed to twist and turn freely for centuries without intervention, especially when it had always been surrounded by immaculately groomed hedges. Every weed was torn from the ground. This grooming, of course, wasn’t exclusive to the manor’s exterior. The boy’s room itself had the same baroque decor for centuries, the sheets permanently folded. Zeno never slept under the covers.

As usual, he tried to ignore the urge to wash the dirt and bark from his fingers, the crimson from his arms. There was no way for him to climb into the tree without getting scratched up a bit, he had discovered. He looked to the ground and mentally plotted potential paths down but was unable to find any route more efficient than his usual.

The sounds from inside the manor briefly swelled. Another boy, slightly older, crossed the forbidden barrier between them, but at least he had the decency to shut the door behind him quickly.

“Ah, Zeno,” he said. “I should have known you would be here.”

Zeno, having already found his way to the ground, stared up at the teenager. “Oh. It’s just you,” he said in a monotone. “Did my father send you to bring me back in?”

The teenager rested his arms along the barrister of the balcony and rolled his eyes. “Why do you think he had to send me? Why couldn’t I just want to see you?”

Basilio was barely older than Zeno and had the same condition, yet their appearances could not have been more different. Basilio’s shoulders were broad, his body lean yet proportionate, his skin creamy with a healthy flush. Despite all his dancing that night, his medium-length ponytail still didn’t have a strand out of place.

Zeno blinked, unimpressed, then brought his attention back to pressing a handkerchief against his bleeding elbows. “I see,” the younger boy stated. “So he did send you.”

“Well, yeah, but . . . look, you can’t hide out here every time there are guests.”

Zeno pulled away the cloth, saw that the blood had not yet clotted, and returned to pressing down the handkerchief. Without looking up, he replied, “I’m not hiding.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Rotting.”

“Rotting?” Basilio chuckled. “How could you be rotting when you’re alive?”

“I am dead,” was his grave reply. “My body hasn’t caught up to it yet, but I died a long time ago.”

At this point, Zeno tied the handkerchief around his arm, ignoring the red spots seeping through the white. Instead, he knelt to dig through a pile of leaves with a stick.

After realizing his cousin had little interest in speaking to him face-to-face on the balcony, Basilio easily scaled the tree to the ground. “What are you talking about? You’ve been acting so peculiar lately. Did you hit your head or something? Have a bad transfusion?”

“No,” Zeno’s grumbled. “And I didn’t have a transfusion this month.”

Basilio tied Zeno’s handkerchief tighter and scoffed, “You refused again ? No wonder you’re bleeding so much.”

Finally, Zeno met his older cousin’s eyes. “How can you stand it? Every single month, another transfusion . . . looking forward to a life of pain and needles . . .”

Basilio shrugged. “You’re going to be fourteen in, what, a year? I hear it isn’t so bad once you get a beniamina . I’ll let you know once I get mine.”

“I don’t want one,” Zeno responded immediately.

“Why not?”

After several seconds, it became apparent Zeno wasn’t going to bother with responding.

With a grimace, the boy finally used his hands to brush aside the leaves. “Where did you bury her? You told me you were going to get her a gravestone. Where is it?”

Basilio laughed. “Is all this about the bird ? Of all the—you can get another bird!”

Zeno looked up and met his cousin’s gaze. For the first time, Basilio could see that although his eyes were empty, tears had gathered in the corners.

“Carmen wasn’t just a bird. She was mine.”

Basilio kicked a nearby pile of leaves, causing them to blanket the spots Zeno had uncovered. Zeno forgot all about cleanliness and plunged his hands into the dirty leaves to clear them away again. Basilio groaned loudly and threw his arms out to his sides.

“Come on! I told your father it would only take a few minutes to get you back inside. We need to get you cleaned up. There are people who want to meet you. How are you supposed to get a beniamina if you hide out here every time?”

No response at all but the skittering leaves. Basilio nudged his cousin, who gave him a glare but continued what he was doing.

“I was so foolish to think that you would be normal once those damn birds were gone,” Basilio grumbled to himself.

Zeno’s head snapped up. “What did you just say?”

Basilio quickly took a few steps back to widen the space between them. He held up his hands. “Look, i-it wasn’t my idea.”

“What the fuck did you just say?” Inch by inch, vertebrae by vertebrae, Zeno lengthened his spine.

“It was painless! I had them use natural gas, so it only took a few—”

Basilio didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence before his collar tightened around his neck. He gasped and clawed at his throat, trying in vain to dig his feet into the ground rather than be dragged back onto the tile beneath the balcony, but the very leaves he had kicked prevented him from getting a grip. Dead silent, Zeno grabbed his cousin by the hair and bashed his head into the base of a column once, twice, three times. He only stopped once he saw teeth through Basilio’s split lips, his chin a crooked mess of blood and bone, Zeno’s own knuckles broken.

He picked Basilio up with his intact hand and dug his fingers into his cousin’s scalp until blood gathered beneath his fingernails. Then, he threw Basilio to the side and kicked him as hard as he could in the stomach until vomit and gurgled sobs spewed from Basilio’s lips.

Just as Zeno lurched forward to start another onslaught of punches, a large hand pulled him back. Another hand grabbed his other arm, seamlessly pulling them back into an uncomfortable cross behind his back. Zeno kicked and fought despite the risk of dislocating his arms, then went limp when he realized who was holding him.

“All this where guests could have seen you?” came the unmistakably low voice of his father. Every time his father spoke, the boy thought, it sounded like a dirge.

Zeno wilted to the ground. His father let go of him and knelt close, so close his lips were almost touching Zeno’s ear.

“You’re so fucking lucky that nobody else heard this,” he hissed. “You’re so lucky that I even call you my son.”

Several people crowded around them then, numerous guards lifting Basilio and rushing him off. Zeno’s father shoved his son so he was belly-up and spat in his face. “You’re disgusting.”

Zeno didn’t wipe it off, even once his father’s back was turned to him. Those familiar footsteps, slow and even, faded into the distance, leaving the boy alone.

Curled up in a ball, face covered in tears and vomit and blood and spit, Zeno whispered back, “I know.”