Banishment

Banishment

“As if this first stinking American foro dell'inferno was not bad enough.”

Nicolo slipped his slim fingers into the front pocket of his shirt and retrieved a half empty pack of MS Filtros he had stored there for just such emergencies. As he compulsively tapped the box into the palm of his left hand to pack the tobacco, he watched the men two stories below backing their rig down the tight French Quarter street.

With the practiced motion of a ritual repeated a million times, a cigarette was to his lips, the silver lighter’s top flipped, lit, and the calming incense of a bustling Roman metropolis flooded his being. Sure, it was nothing like a human’s experience. But the smell alone, when he chose to smell, brought him back to the Motherland, and that is where he especially longed to be at this moment.

He noted the mens’ filthy, wreaking uniforms, their greasy hair and unshowered bodies and their grimy hands so close to his baby, and longed to jump to street level to protect her. But he held back and watched.

Moving. Again. He’d only settled here two years ago. A flash in time considering his life. But it surprised him not that the Spaniard should be so insecure with his presence. He had that effect on powerful Kindred.

Down below they lowered the rig’s back ramp and positioned the car to be pulled up. Nicolo had carefully covered the front seat in plastic so there’d be no human filth left in his car. Another long, calming drag off the MS. The Santified in Rome had asked him nicely to take this position in New Orleans. Well, strongly suggested, if he was being totally honest with himself. He made some mistakes as he came up the ranks in Italy, but that was between him and God. Exhile from the Motherland was orribile, but now this? Being sent to Sacramento? Well, this was banishment, assolutamente!

Now they were pulling the tow wench out. Nicolo scrutinized the proceedings. He could read one of their name tags as the shorter one came around the front end to hook onto the frame. “Gary”. “Gary…” he quietly hissed to himself. “Gary, bischero, that is not the frame, it is the bumper. If you rip the bumper off my Ferrari in front of my eyes, I will come down there, stake you to the ground and use that wench to pull each of your limbs off as you watch. Then, as you still live, I will boil what’s left of your blood inside your body and skin the rest of your flesh off you to finish the job.”

Almost as if by magic, Gary looked up at the pale figure on the French Quarter balcony staring calmly down at him. Gary looked back at the hook and moved it to the metal frame of the car and continued on with his job.

Nicolo flicked the cigarette to the balcony floor, twisted it with his black leather Armani shoe, and silently moved back into the flat to finish packing his meager belongings. He had a flight to catch to Sacramento.