Bloody Mary Blues Read online

  Bloody Mary Blues

  By Federico Negri

  Copyright 2012 Federico Negri

  Amazon Edition

  Translation by G. Drane.

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  A Short Dystopia

  She wrapped her long, slender fingers around the lemon slice and squeezed a few teardrops into a long glass tube, which was already full to the brim with a red liquid. As the drops of lemon juice fell into the glass, she lifted her gaze, her deep blue eyes drawing me in like a magnet.

  Drip, drip. As each drop of lemon juice fell, it looked as though her lips curved ever so slightly closer to what one might call a grin. Drip, drip. That magnetic gaze kept pulling me in.

  She placed the lemon on the old wooden table and, without saying a word, turned and left the kitchen. As quiet as a cat—because Simona liked to be barefoot whenever she could—and with her feline gait, she would sneak up on you when you least expected it. Not that it was unusual to be barefoot and half naked in the middle of summer.

  I was just about dying of thirst. A thirst for that cocktail she had just finished making, but also for those sinewy legs, sparkling under a delicate patina of sweat, her hips swaying elegantly before me as she walked away. I got up and took a beer from the fridge, then rolled it across my forehead to try and cool off. I scratched my cheek through a wiry beard and took a cigarette out of a pack that I’d been keeping in the pocket of my shorts. As I closed the fridge, I nearly jumped right out of those shorts. Simona was standing right there behind the door.

  “Fuck! You scared me,” I said.

  She smiled. “He liked it. The others want one, too.”

  “What’s so special about that drink?”

  “Want me to make one for you, too?”

  “No, beer’s fine for me. I don’t like Bloody Marys. Can’t stand the tomato juice.”

  “Mine are the best you’ll ever taste. Know how I learned to make ‘em?”

  I sat at the table and lit the cigarette.

  “Hmm. No, I don’t. Enlighten me.”

  Simona took three glasses from the cupboard, reaching slightly on her tiptoes each time. She could have gotten all three at once, but she grabbed them one by one and looked me straight in the eye as she set each one on the table.

  “It happened a long time ago. My mother was at sea during the Repression,” she said as she placed a hand on her hip.

  “Yeah, I had a feeling you came from that part of the world.”

  She smiled. And Jesus, what a smile! Teeth flashing. Cute dimples. The works! It was the first time I had ever seen her smile.

  “I was small, and she didn’t want to leave me home alone. And it was a good thing, too, with all that chemical shit they dumped on us towards the end there.” She opened the door of the fridge and took out a bottle of tomato juice. She had to bend over a bit, and her blond hair fell across her face. When she stood back up, the hair stayed there, stuck to her face.

  “Do you have any family?”

  “Who knows? Mom ran off with some officer when I was just eight. She used to tell me what it was like at home with Grandma Elisa and Grandpa Whatshisname. But I’ve pretty much forgotten it all now.”

  I was beginning to see her in a new light. “So your mother abandoned you on a pirate ship when you were eight?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wasn’t that hard?”

  She set the bottle of tomato juice on the table a little harder than she meant to.

  “You always ask such stupid questions?” she said, trying her best to hide her emotions.

  I blew away the smoke and averted my gaze.

  “It was hard for everyone,” she continued, “so it was hard on me, too. But when I figured out that I just had to yank the captain’s sextant a couple of times a week, things were a little less hard.”

  The war left its mark on us all. It made whores out of little girls, monsters out of men.

  She cut a few slices from the lemon. With the tip of the knife, she dropped the lemon slices into the glass.

  “Anyway,” she said, “after a stormy shore leave north of Puerto Escuso, the captain fell ill with some sort of hemorrhagic fever. They left him in his quarters for three days before tossing him out to sea, still breathing. The penicillin had run out, and we were afraid we’d all catch it. The crew fought for days before naming a new captain. We stayed hidden away in the bay as Alliance fighter jets sped past unawares. In fact, the only break in our fighting was when one of those damn jets passed overhead. Not that they could hear anything from 40,000 feet, but they scared us anyway.”

  She grabbed the Tabasco and put a few drops in each glass. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other with an almost harmonic sway as she did this.

  “Anyway, the essence of the matter,” she said as she turned to me, “is that the new captain was quite the bastard. As soon as he’d settled into the captain’s quarters, he sent for me. He was a huge, black man with an unkempt beard and the worst stench of sweat all the time. I was twelve by this time. He told me to come closer so he could check me out. He cupped what little bit of boob I had then, gave my butt a slap, pinched a nipple. I was terrified, and after a bit more of this, he goes, ‘You know what I like?’ And of course I didn’t. Then he said, ‘It’s that terrified look in your eye. I’ll make sure you never lose that look. Go make me a Bloody Mary.’”

  I snuffed the cigarette out in the ashtray. Some people are just so horrible. Then she poured another dark sauce into the glass, followed by a pinch each of salt and pepper.

  “So this bastard had a thing for Bloody Marys,” she said. “The first one I made for him, he tasted it and spat it right back out in my face. ‘That’s awful,’ he said. Then he forced open my mouth and made me drink it all down in a couple of gulps. At which point he told me to make another one. So I brought him one after the other, changing the doses slightly each time with a little help from the ship’s cook. But there was no way. He just kept spitting it back in my face and telling me to do it again. After several tries, I was so drunk that all I could do was collapse at his feet. That evening, he had his way with me while I was barely conscious.”

  “Definitely a bastard,” I said.

  “That he was. But not so much because he had his way with me. After all, the captain before him exacted his own dues, although they weren’t quite so high. No, that Johnny Sill was a bastard because he got off on humiliating me. When it came time for his Bloody Mary, usually in the evening, he’d come up with all sorts of stuff. If he didn’t like the drink I made, he’d toss it on the floor and make me lick it up. Or he’d dump the glass out on my head or make me swallow it down in two or three gulps. Then most of the time he’d rape me while I was still all soaked in tomato juice.”

  She put some ice in the glass and poured the vodka in over it.

  “How’d you get through it all?”

  “The only thing that saved me,” she continued with half a smile, “was being able to serve him the perfect drink. When I managed that, the ass would lap up every last drop, so there wouldn’t be anything left to spit out on me. He would still tell me to make another, but if I managed to get three or four right in a row, he’d be too drunk to fuck, and I’d get the rest of the night off.”

  Her eyes, blue as the morning sea, were fixed on me, and at last she brushed that lock of blond hair behind her ear.

  She grabbed the bottle of tomato juice and raised it up in front of her face. “This is the secret to the perf
ect Bloody Mary,” she said. Then she tipped the bottle, and a red cascade of juice arched its way into the glass. Once the first glass was full, she let loose another blood-red arch into the second as I drank her in with my eyes, entranced by her grace. Then she poured in a generous dose of vodka.

  “It’s amazing how you do that. But I didn’t get the secret.” I was too distracted watching your fingers dance across the glass, I thought.

  “The tomato juice has to oxygenate, to breathe and lose its natural acidity. That way, the cocktail takes on a softer, more sensual flavor that’s absolutely irresistible.”

  She took the glass and came around the table. She set the glass down in front of me and sat on top of the table, then lifted her feet and rested them on my thigh. I could feel her warm, moist feet against my skin.

  “Simo–” I stuttered. My eyes were at belly-button level.

  She gestured toward the glass with both hands. “Go ahead. Have a taste,” she said.

  I picked up the glass and took a long sip. All at once, I tasted the warmth of the sun that had ripened the tomatoes exploding in my mouth and the fire of the Tabasco as it warmed my soul. Then came the lemon, followed by the fuel of the vodka that lit up all of my senses.

  “Ahhh!” I said. “That really is excellent!”

  “You know, I see how you look at me,” she said. She wiggled her toes so that they slipped under the hemline of my shorts.

  “Simo, you know that I could never. Walter–”

  “Tomorrow we’ll all be dead.”

  “But that doesn’t mean we should die like animals, not caring about one another, does it? Walter is my best friend—our mentor—and you’re his girlfriend.”

  She took my hand and held it firmly in both of hers.

  “I’m with Walter because he saved my life. I care for him very much, but I don’t love him. Tomorrow, we’ll probably all be blown sky high before we even reach the Directorium. And anyway, we’ll never be able to get out alive. I’ve never truly made love in all my life. It’s always just been sex in exchange for something else. It doesn’t seem right to die without having done it at least once.”

  “But–”

  “Meet me in an hour out at the skiff,” she said. “If I don’t see you there, it’s okay. I’ll understand.”

  She slid down from the table and bent over me, then parted her lips and kissed me. Once again I tasted the tomato juice and the vodka, but I could also already hear the whistle of the bombs as they fell. She heard them, too, but she just grabbed me by the head and kissed me even harder. The bombs crashed down on our little hideout without mercy, reducing our lives—our plans of rebellion and all our dreams—into a mass of burning rubble.

  .o°o.:END:.o°o.

  If you liked this ebook you could enjoy more from this author.

  Federico Negri has written several novels in Italian, and on May 2017 a steam fantasy novel, The Codex of the Witch, has been released also in English, translated by Chris Tamigi.

  Here's the beginning of The Codex of the Witch:

  PROLOGUE

  Sadhi raises the hammer and lets it fall once more against the metal structure. Her eyes are clouded by exhaustion and burn in the dry mountain air. Today she made it to the pond only once to bathe herself, and her grimy skin cries out for water.

  The huge frame of the flying machine they’re constructing is starting to take shape. In her simple mind, Sadhi is unable to imagine what its final contours will be like or why it is necessary to carefully rivet every corner of the structure. But inside herself lurks the urgent need to strike and restrike every dowel, as she was asked. As he asked her, with a soft pat on the back, a few days earlier.

  And today that touch still suffices to drive her to lift that damned hammer once again, such is the joy and affection infused in her veins.

  If she turns her gaze upward, up among the wooden gangplanks on which a hundred of her kind were working themselves breathless, she could catch sight of him or at least guess at his kind reassuring presence. And thus find in her heart the reserve to strike another blow. But it’s too late now, they have to raise anchor.

  BOOK 1 – KASIA

  UNWANTED BARGAIN

  “My beautiful lady, my Captain!”

  Kasia looks up toward the merchant who accosted her, in English. Passing for German is out of the question, not even among the market stalls, however the man hit the mark with his epithet. Kasia always comforted herself by attracting the eyes of men, having to forego anything more for three hundred sixty-four days a year. And being a witch helped a lot.

  “An ancient lamp, eh?”

  The merchant holds his hands together, rubbing them with short movements. A greasy hood covers his hair, thin as straw.

  She grabs the object and weighs it in her palm. “Why should I buy it?” she asks.

  “It belonged to an alchemist,” the man says waving his hands. “Very, very ancient, eh?”

  “I bought five candlesticks here years ago before the war. You were just a thin little boy then; your father was manning the stall,” Kasia answers. With a finger, she caresses the object’s curves, trying to guess at its occult qualities.

  The man raises his eyebrows. “Ah, my beautiful lady! Yes, I remember. You haven’t changed at all, you look even younger.”

  “Your goods at the time proved to be of excellent quality. My clients admired them. We could do business together. Give me an object as a sample, something like this lamp, that way I can show it up north where there are appraisers for these types of relics.”

  “A good idea! A great idea, Captain! But, a sample… I don’t know. I had an offer for that lamp yesterday.”

  “A hundred and ten pieces, and it still stands.” Another man approaches the stall and stops beside Kasia.

  “Leonardo!” Kasia exclaims, spreading her arms.

  The newcomer curves his wide, blonde moustache and breaks into a smile, the same smile deceiving half the women of Europe. They gently embrace, and Kasia gives him a few pats on his cowhide coat. He is a hearty man, with a prominent paunch and a strong smell of tobacco about him, mixed with some floral essence. Kasia steps back a hand’s width. The perfume is coming off his bright white shirt with a starched collar.

  It stands in contrast to Kasia’s dark smock, with a stain of lubricating oil running down the seam to her elbow. Damned maintenance, forever tinkering with gears and belts when they ought to be replaced.

  The witch withdraws her hand behind her back and adds, “Leonardo, I didn’t think you’d be here.”

  “My airship was supposed to leave last week. Then I heard you were on your way so I decided to wait.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. You’re probably sticking around to collect some debt, or because of the attentions of some blonde valkyrie.”

  “My only love rejects me” He whistles, looking toward the sky with faraway eyes.

  Kasia laughs. “Fool. I’m not your type.”

  “Were we speaking about you?”

  “Oh, my infallible intuition has failed me?” Kasia raises a hand to her mouth.

  The man chuckles, keeping his big bright irises fixed upon her. Then he continues, “I’d like to buy you a drink. After all, I waited a whole week for you, just to have you deny me. It’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

  Kasia narrows her eyes, so as to put him in clearer focus. What is this dandy plotting?

  Leonardo is a pleasant enough companion among the stalls of this market or that. A weapons expert and a dealer in art—for which you can ask his opinion, considering it carefully, of course, but he’s fairly trustworthy. What’s more, he knows she’s a witch. At the Dresden tribunal, where he testified in her favor, they properly declaimed her particulars: Kasia Santuini, nationality: English. Identified as a Witch by the Amsterdam special tribunal. At the time Leonardo had only raised an eyebrow, but afterward he returned to the subject several times, trying to coax out trivial little details and information.

  Leo jerks his head a half
inch in the direction of the salesman behind the counter; not all discussions can be had in public.

  A witch never says no to a good deal. Kasia puts her arm in his and whispers, “Then I suppose I can’t refuse.”

  “Hey, what about the lamp!” the merchant persists, but the two abandon it with a smile and start off along the Walkway, ignoring other calls from merchants hungry for deals.

  Frank Fort is an old city, clinging to ancient ruins which date back to the dawn of time when men were powerful as gods and traversed the Earth by air and by sea, masters of their world and lords of hyper-technological machines. That brilliant age has passed, faded by millennia of shadows, leaving humanity with rusty vestiges and the struggle to survive, in a world turned hostile.

  A cloth merchant places a royal purple brocade, inlaid with gold, between Kasia’s fingers, “It’s Venetian, madam. I got it from a dying prince, on the street of Gran Bernardo,” he whispers into her ear.

  Kasia smiles, but passes him by. The hold of her airship has already reached its weight limit and the roll of cloth is a deal wanting careful consideration, a bit outside her area of expertise.

  Leo leads her toward the dark wooden door of one of the many beer halls that enliven the market stratum. A puff of steam, smelling of roast pig, escapes from the door, together with the voices of patrons and the clatter of cups and dishes. The environment is crowded with people and the air is saturated with smoke and mixed aromas, of food and burning wood, but also of warm humanity.

  By means of shoves and apologies, Leo manages to sit himself at a small round table, stone, supported by four thin legs of burnished metal. Kasia squeezes herself onto the stool, her back almost leaning against that of the patron seated at the table behind her.

  “So, big man,” she begins, “what duties have kept you here?”

  “The pleasure of your company,” Leo insists, seeking out the waitress with his gaze.

  “Swiss men are all liars.”