Epilogue
Autumn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q
-Hallelujah-
There are many things I find out about him. He knew the great Michelangelo Buonarroti and he was actually friends with my idol, Leonardo Da Vinci. He taught me about the many hidden messages in Leonardo’s work. Secret images that you could only see in the mirror. Images of beings.
I find out that when he is really happy his cheeks become pink. They became pink when I told him I was pregnant, and they remained pink and flushed all through our wedding day.
Ah, our wedding.
I’d always thought I’d wear a simple white dress (I hate the meringue look) on a bright summer day. I’d never imagined I’d wear the most fabulous dusky-gold, custom made dress with a train so long it needed April to walk behind and keep adjusting it and get married in the middle of the night.
I thought since I didn’t have any close family to speak of, it would just be a few old friends from school, and work, I never thought the entire church would be packed with people neither Rocco nor I knew. They were beings with the same spiritual mission as me who had turned up to witness our union.
“Who are all these people?” Larry whispered in my ear.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back, mystified.
But I felt their love radiating into me as Larry walked me down the aisle. Rocco was turned towards me. I looked into Rocco’s breath-taking eyes and I felt as if I must be in the most fantastic dream. How could I be so lucky?
“Do you Autumn Delaney take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“I do.” Of course, I do. Do you not see what a spectacular man he is?
The beings who filled the church pews filed out silently afterwards. There was no need for words.
We flew to Paris for our honeymoon. I loved Paris by night. If you don’t count the dreadful abduction episode, I’d never been outside the States and it was such an adventure. I didn’t think much of French men, they were not Marlboro men, that for sure, but the women had a style all of their own. Even when they wore jeans they wore them with red lipstick and a flair that I never saw back home.
Rocco could speak French. Actually, he could speak Italian, Latin, Dutch, Finnish, Spanish, Persian, Aramaic, quite a few German dialects, and even languages that have since been lost to time.
Rocco’s personal assistant, Gabriel had arranged for me to shop at some exclusive boutiques at night. I needed two new suitcases to pack my new wardrobe. Birkin bags and spectacular silk scarves from Hermes, classy houndstooth patterned suits from Channel, sexy leather pants from Versace, and knee-length boots from Louis Vuitton. I felt so incredibly spoilt I actually felt guilty.
“Don’t,” he said. “How can you begrudge me the pleasure of spending money on you.”
Gabriel had also arranged, and paid a great deal of money, for the Louvre to be opened just for us to have a night tour of it. Alone, we wandered around the rooms. He knew so much. I listened to his hypnotic voice tell about the different artists, he knew so many of them and I felt so much love for him I felt as if I was floating on air.
“Mmmm…” I couldn’t help uttering, when the delicious smell of crepes cooking filled my nostrils. Vanilla, eggs, and chocolate. It was coming from a stall across the street. A man in a striped t-shirt and jaunty cap was making them.
“Would you like one?” he asked.
I immediately shook my head. I knew he could not eat them. They were poison to him.
“Why not?”
“Not hungry,” I said with a big smile.
“Liar,” he teased. “You’re dying to have some.”
“For your information, I’m not dying to have it. I just commented on the smell,” I denied haughtily.
“Let’s get this straight,” he said. “Never deny yourself anything because I can’t have it. That would break my heart. I want you to have everything you want.”
“I don’t want the crepe,” I said softly.
“Okay then. I want you to have it. Are you going to deny me the pleasure of seeing you eat one?”
So it came about that he bought me a crepe filled with bananas and chocolate sauce, and we sat on a bench so I could eat it.
“I feel really bad about this,” I said chewing my bottom lip.
He gazed into my eyes with amazement. “Do you really think I give any importance to eating a street crepe? It is nothing to me. I have you and everything else is superfluous. If I have it, I have it, if I don’t, I don’t. Now will you please eat the damn thing before it becomes cold.”
In our room later, I lay next to him, satiated and asked him. “Rocco, what will happen when I start to age and you don’t?”