The Taming of Frankie Carrozza

The Woes of Seraphina Rose

Charlie's dreams of underwater kisses shattered like glass once a loud bang woke him up. Half-expecting to find his bedroom door blown to smithereens and dust settling over the muzzle of a tank lurching over the wood, he looked over to see something more catastrophic than a cruiser tank bulldoze through the door: Seraphina Rose rushed in, frightfully pale and frantic. The lamp was still on and he was still dressed from the night before, having fallen asleep reading Frankie's copy of The Interview with a Vampire. The book slipped off his chest and fell to the floor once he rose up. A part of his dream, a little shard of reality slipped in from the evening before, slowly disintegrated in his mind like a burning polaroid: a moment between him and Frankie, standing outside Baldwin's Bec last night, dripping wet from the pool still, and exchanging books.
'Read this,' Frankie had ordered, taking The Interview with a Vampire from his satchel. 'It's a book for actual adults. You ought to prepare yourself appropriately for the coming threshold of adulthood. Ill-equipped, and you'll only be sickened by the sights.'
'I do read books for my age, you know. With very easy comprehension, too. I've always been at a much more advanced reading level for a boy my age. But if I read this, then you must read something of mine.' Once he'd returned from retrieving it from his bedroom, Charlie prescribed him with Watership Down so as to remind him of his own childhood that had been put to rest. 'And I want it returned to me unharmed, so don't bother leaving it for the next person who happens to walk passed the very place you so happen to finish the book at once you've added your own annotations to it.'
Seraphina threw herself onto his bed, leaning on her elbows and bouncing the grogginess out of him.
'Seraphina?' Utterly mystified, he stuttered, 'Guh-good m-morning!'
'Is it, sweetie? Is it? Is it really good?' she snapped, long golden hair spilling out of the open window like Rapunzel once she leaned her head backward to heave in great breaths. 'Oh, Charlie, darling!'
'Is everything alright?'
She turned on her side to look towards him fretfully, a hand plunging into the side of her bouffant blonde hair. Sunlight gilded the thick silver cross she wore around her neck, the crucifix spilling down to rest between the divine divide of her purplish bra that blared from underneath her laced white top to match her skirt. She clicked the metallic spikes of her heels together instead of answering, and her arm jingled like the bells at Christmas from the copious amount of bangles climbing up her wrists like ribcage outlines as she straightened his bedsheets.
'What's the matter with you?'
'Oh, Charlie! Whatever am I going to do?' She flopped back in defeat. 'I'm in trouble, Charlie. Trouble, trouble, trouble! Then again, how could I claim to be a Rose if that tempestuous temptress wasn't involved somehow?'
'What's happened, Seraphina?' As he smoothened hair away from her worried eyes, he recalled sensing that this day would come on the very day that they were reunited. 'What's going on?'
'Do you remember that lord of a cartel that I was telling you about?'
'The simply sensational Persian man named Judas?' Charlie sighed.
'Judas Ghorbani is still both simply sensational and sexual, so don't you use that tone of voice with me, mister!' She scowled haughtily. Taking a breath to compose herself, she added, 'Well, I may have ran into a spot of bother with him last month, and ... he may or may not have arrived in Eton today.'
'He's in town?'
'I can neither confirm nor deny.' Seraphina winced, raking her pearly teeth over her scarlet bottom lip.
'How do you know?'
'Well, the receptionist at my hotel had telephoned my room this morning to let me know that a foreign man had just asked for me by name—and many other of my aliases—with no luck. When he described a beautiful blonde, she immediately thought of me—naturally.' Seraphina rubbed at her smudged lipstick. 'He left shortly after informing her that she was to tell me that he'd visited if she happened to see me. The silly girl couldn't remember his name, but she did say that it was ... biblical! I usually go to Frankie with these sorts of problems, but the England national football team just lost to Denmark at Wembley Stadium the other day, so he'll be in the foulest mood with me if I pop in with yet another conundrum. That beautifully Persian bastard must have overheard me making a reservation at Macdonald Windsor Hotel in Saint-Tropez, or maybe he spotted brochures or a contact card. But he knows everything, Charlie!'
'What do you mean?'
'Charlie, he knows that I retreat to Eton when things get rough because he knows how much my mother makes me batty after staying with her too long.' She looked to her knees like a forlorn child caught stealing confections from the sweet shop. 'He knows all about Eton, the tiniest town essentially designed around and for the college. I'm sure I mentioned meeting you and Iggy, of course. I'd spoken to you both for nearly thirty minutes whilst relatively sober, and that means to me that we've become great friends! Imagine, it would be rather outrageous if he was to come to Eton one day and was unable to say "I've h'ard all abo't yew", wouldn't it, darling?' As soon as she'd finished her passable impression of the Persian, her eyes bulged and a hand slapped over her mouth, smothering the squeak in her throat once she realised the ramifications of what she'd just said—that she was now much easier to locate. 'He'll find me sooner or later. Aside from his wealth and contacts and connections, all he needs to do is track down Frankie. If he finds him in one of his moods, who knows what he'll do to him to find me! If he won't leave by force, then I must: I'll jet off to Corfu for awhile. I'll return to Imogen—'
'You'll do no such thing.' He paced through the room with a hand on his chin and a frown creasing between his eyes, making his forehead look like a ploughed field as he thought. 'We can only hope that he has come alone.'
'Charlie?' She sat patiently on his bed with her knees and hands stacked together, watching him cautiously and curiously as he marched back and forth like a pendulum. 'What are you thinking on, Charlie?'
Ten minutes later, Charlie sat cross-legged and thought for a further fifteen minutes. Spooning spoonfuls of cereal into his mouth, he watched various birds visit a variety of trees fringing the outskirts of the street, imagining that they were preparing for the coming season, urging friends to pack their things so that they could migrate soon to a faraway south much warmer than here. His eyes lifted to watch an adventurous squirrel skirt from the rooftops into the rust-coloured leaves. The rest of Baldwin's Bec were either still sleeping in their beds, off rowing in the River Thames, fishing at Fellow's Pond, staying elsewhere, or exploring Eton, Windsor, or the bigger beyond. He'd seen some of them leave through windows, doors, and spouts between the time the milk float arrived and the postman was due.
'I've got it!' he cried suddenly, startling Seraphina so much that the Eton College Chronicle leapt from her hands and out the open window.
'You will get it if you honk like that again! Got what?'
'A plan!'
Minutes later, the pair rushed through Eton as fast as their legs could stride. The morning was cool and crisp and quiet, the horizon as beige as the autumnal foliage.
'Oh! Tell me, what did you and Frankie get up to last night?' Seraphina asked, clip-clopping quickly alongside him and carrying a very large square package awkwardly. 'Oof!'
'Nothing much,' he responded breathily. 'Palled around.'
'Fine, be coy. But try to bear in mind what literature often says of lovers who fall in love: a seed of content buries in his breast, a pip sowed into the chest of another to conjoin them both, allowing the divine source of happiness to flow through the vines and bramble that links their veins—until overgrown, until cruelly sheered, until untimely death due to failure to garden, or until brutally wrenched free by gardener hands.' She shifted the parcel around to lean it against her other shoulder. 'Try to remember that you could live without whilst living in the era of B.F., won't you?'
'B.F.?'
'Before Frankie.' She flicked her head back to shoo hair from her eyes. 'Dream and dream and dream up there, but beware of the detrimental reality below: of the possibility of returning to a life without him in it.'
'Carrozza's barely in my life as it stands, so enough of that guff,' said Charlie. But traces of Frankie's existence remained everywhere, always; remnants of his insistence to be reminisced about could be often found in the copper pennies that tumbled from his pockets to litter bedsheets and carpet, so much so that Charlie wondered if he dropped them on purpose; and the scent of him lingered on his skin and clothes as determinedly as cigarette smoke, engulfing him sporadically throughout the days like the unexpected presence of a ghost. Charlie asked her, 'Do you have coins on you?'
'Coins?' she parroted confusedly.
'Take these coins to the nearest telephone box and tell whomever at your hotel to divert all messages to Farrer Theatre. Meet me there when you've done that.'
'Farrer? How are we going to get in there?'
'Iggy, of course.' Charlie pointed towards Perkins, who was rushing down the street towards them.
'Well, that'll work wonders because I'm sure I left playbills of Frankie's laying around somewhere.'
'What is that?' Charlie pointed at the package in her hands. 'Why haven't I asked you about that yet?'
'Do you remember seeing this by my room door a few weeks ago?' she asked, turning it around to show that only the front of the packaging had been slightly torn. She began to rip off the rest of the brown paper. 'It arrived at the hotel to wait for me shortly before I did.'
'You said it was you,' he recalled aloud.
'Yes, it's me—of me.' She turned the painting around and his eyes swung skyward. 'Come now, there's no need to avert your eyes; I look sensational in it. Look here, underneath the multi-layered pearls ... no, not the jewellery I'm wearing as a bikini, but the ones around my neck. There is a red stain spilt across my throat. It's a message.'
As soon as Iggy arrived, the three of them separated immediately to retrieve supplies and carry out objectives to ensure a successful mission. They met again at nine o'clock in the dressing rooms backstage inside Farrer Theatre.
'This will never work.' Izzy sighed dubiously as Seraphina and Charlie shoved him onto a box.
'But of course it'll work, darling, if you simply believe it will,' Seraphina insisted. 'If we took a step back to actually think how silly it is to watch grown men and women dress up in costumes and pretend that they're someone else on screen or stage like children at play, theatre would be ruined. We all want to believe, we just need someone to help us to. The performance of the actor is the safety net that saves us from losing our faith in escapism and the last of our imagination. Now, shut your whorish mouth and close your already heavily painted eyes. Rome mightn't have been built in a day, but the beauty of Helen of Troy tore Sparta apart in one.'
'What I've come to understand about grand schemes is this: the more elaborate the ploy becomes, then the smoother the lie unfolds, making it easier to manipulate minds, slick cobwebs spreading treacherously thick to catch the fattest, juiciest fly,' Charlie said, as he helped Rose bedeck Perkins with mascara and primer, before stepping aside to allow her to contour his cheekbones. Once they'd truly unleashed themselves upon him, backstage was soon clouded with the distinct smell of creamy products, citric perfumes, and thick fuchsia smoke and white powder that almost choked them. From afar, it almost looked like a cartoonish brawl, arms and heads and legs randomly popping out of various areas of the smog. Charlie continued, 'Effectively, the more unbelievable the story is, the more believable it appears.'
'You look ... absolutely mesmerising.' Seraphina stepped back to admire her work, folding one arm of Charlie's emerald jumper that she was wearing as a minidress and inhaling deep on the end of a blueberry-coloured cigarette. Looking away from the mirror, she said to Iggy, 'As do you, sweetie. Good Lord, these holy hands of mine are truly blessed. I'm beginning to believe that I really am what many have already suggested: the modern reincarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Jessie Christ.'
'If anything, Rose, you're the Antichrist,' said Iggy.
'Oh, no,' she remarked, pinning a long blonde wig to his head. As she curled and primed it where required, she added, 'That title has already been claimed by Trevor Hamilton.'
'Well, how do I look?' Iggy asked, his smouldering eyes shimmering like two peacock feathers. Looking androgynous and elfish, he crossed his legs and began to paint his fingernails silver. 'Tell me I'm pretty.'
'Very Renaissance.' Seraphina put a hand on a chest that had swelled with pride, looking to him fondly like an adoring mother seeing her child walk for the first time as he approached the mirror to reapply his lipstick. Wiping away an absent tear, she narrowed her eyes and gripped his chin with bejewelled fingers. 'Bear in mind that this is a one-off. If this look becomes a daily occurrence for you, I have no qualms about eliminating you if needs be. There can only be one.'
'Qualms?' he replied. 'What are qualms? They sound delicious.'
As the pair twirled in circles and cackled wickedly together, Charlie left them to scour the make-up studio and costume racks for a pink feather boa to pair it with the rest of Seraphina's clothing and jewellery that Perkins was already wearing.
'Shit!' Iggy cried, wrapping the feather boa around his neck like a scarf. 'Where are my tits?'
As he watched Iggy stuff the front of Seraphina's top with their socks, Charlie said to her, 'I suspect that this has been a dream of his for some time: to be you.'
She smiled. 'Concupiscent dreams—'
'Zeraphina!'
She flipped her head around to look towards the stage, where the heavily accented voice had barked from to break echoes throughout the auditorium like a gunshot. 'It is Judas!' she gasped dramatically. 'He has come!'
'I hardly think we needed confirmation,' said Charlie, already certain of who the thick and guttural voice belonged to since it sounded like it was chewing on a chunk of gravel. 'You're on, Iggy!'
'Here, take this!' Serph shoved a lit green-coloured cigarette into Iggy's hand to complete the costume. 'Break a leg! Failing that, we'll break his if needs be.'
'Go, Iggy! Oh, for goodness' sake, just bloody go!' Charlie encouraged, taking him by the flesh of his very thin arm and pushing him out of the wing and onto the stage.
Trembling like the last leaf on a branch braving the winds of winter, Iggy suddenly flipped his hair back as he walked and the leaf was sheared free to fly in the wind. He sashayed the rest of the way, confidently and provocatively, now that he had no fear of falling since he'd already fallen.
    Seraphina and Charlie snuck between the backdrop and the set for Eton's rendition of Julian Mitchell's Another Country, crouching down to peek through the false window to look across the fake headmaster's office to see Iggy Perkins stride into the centre of the stage.
'This couldn't be his first time wearing a pair of heels, is it?' Rose asked.
'I'm sure his mother has a pair of nice shoes amongst her boots, clogs, and crocs that he's bound to have practised in.'
'He has?' she demanded. 'What's bloody wrong with my shoes?'
Judas was standing in the large orchestra pit, dressed in a cream three-piece suit and smoking a cigar. A hand swept through gelled hair that was as jet-black and wet as a rainy night, the small goatee and moustache framing his mouth like a portcullis. Wearing a frown, oceanic-blue eyes glared compellingly from a swarthy complexion.
'He's not as seedy as I'd expected,' Charlie commented. 'He's actually rather dishy.'
'Isn't he just?' she hissed. 'The bastard.'
'Hoo are yew?' Judas demanded.
'Darling, I am Seraphina Rose.' Iggy flicked the feather boa around his neck like a scarf to pet it like a snake charmer soothing their captive. 'And who may you be?'
'No!' Judas shook his head rapidly. 'You iz not my Zeraphina. Vere iz my Zeraphina?'
'Oh, sweetie! You beckoned for Seraphina Imogen Rose, and the minx has arrived. Some swear to say it thrice and you might just summon her like the Devil.'
'Vhat?' Judas eyed Iggy up and down through narrowed slits, then spat, 'Vhat iz this madness? Bring my Zeraphina out here right naow!'
'Oh, my darling, how many more times must I tell you? You wanted a Rose, and I've brought you a vixen.' Iggy sucked deep on the cigarette and sighed out the smoke. 'Are we done? This is getting very tedious and I have to meet Bowie and Jagger at the Goring Hotel in London shortly.'
    Judas looked utterly bewildered. He rubbed his mouth and then slammed the hand down on the wooden panels angrily. For a brief moment, uncertainty lingered: the man seemed puzzled as to whether this was or wasn't the girl he'd spent his wild and rampant summer season with. But then he shook his head aggressively again to dispel the dizzying notion.
'No! Not yew. Yew iz just a little boy in silly costume. Go to Zeraphina. Tell 'er that I am 'ere!'
'Sorry, my beauty clearly must be positively confusing your nether regions something shocking right about now, but if you can't handle the heat, then you really ought to get the fu'—Iggy stamped the stage with a heel, flicking wispy strands of hair from his glittering cheek—'ck out of my kitchen.'
'Ziz is ridiculous!' Judas spat aside.
'You're ridiculous!' Iggy remarked haughtily.
'I forgot just how barbaric he is,' Seraphina moaned dreamily. She quickly added, 'Isn't he absolutely disgusting?'
'Oh! Oh, my darling. My dear, dear darling man.' Iggy sighed sympathetically. Removing the wig from his head, Perkins approached the edge of the stage to crouch before Judas. Iggy was a tour de force now that he'd became a facsimile of Seraphina Rose, so much so that his knee barely wobbled as it usually did when nervous or bored. 'Oh, my sweet soul. You must mean my imposter.'
'Eemposter?' Judas repeated.
'Yes, darling: imposter. This poor girl has stolen my name, my mannerisms, and my looks to use as her own ever since she stumbled across my marvellous show. Don't get me wrong, it's very sweet that she has been inspired by me, Sebastian Ignatius Rose, but I've gotten into such trouble because of her; Lord knows that I can get myself into my own incredible amounts of mischief with many men, so I most certainly don't need her contribution.' Iggy stuck the cigarette into the holder that he'd concealed in the bra, hands flying around carelessly to explicitly imitate Seraphina's grand hand gestures. 'It's utterly tragic.'
'He's taking some liberties right now,' Seraphina hissed.
'This girl. This plain girl. This plain Jane. This Jane Peters followed my tours around the country to ... to study me, taking notes so as to effectively mimic everything I do and everything I've done. The pitiful creature is clearly deranged. Up north, I did take this Jane under my feather boa for awhile before I realised how absolutely batshit she is. I even gave her a makeover ... and helped her lose bucketloads of weight ...'
'Oh, that's it!' Seraphina snarled quietly. 'I've had it with him. He's in for it!'
'Sit still, Jane.' Charlie lowered her again by the shoulder.
'Like a fairy godmother,' Iggy continued, 'I helped transform this ugly duckling into a beautiful swan, and then I set her free to fly! Unfortunately, she became dreadfully obsessed with Iggy Rose. For goodness' sake, she was reliving the entire biography of my life! To the point of lying that she was from west. She even stalked me across the country and collected things from the hotels I've stayed at. Now, she couldn't exactly say that she attended Eton, but she did say that she was at Wycombe Abbey. I hear that she's even been telling people that she is my mother's true daughter. Now, my mother already has a daughter, darling, but she only lives for a few hours in the evening when the curtain calls.' When he'd finished cackling, the character of Iggy Rose stood to address the room now as though it was packed with an audience rather than talk to Judas directly, clutching the wig tight to his chest and looking hopelessly towards the 401 empty seats as he belted his own improvised monologue, demanding that the girl be locked away for damaging his reputation. As Charlie's fears that Iggy might just yet burst into song and dance grew, the boy cried, 'Oh the terrible toll this dire drama has had on me! Me! Why can't I just be me? I, Iggy, who could leap before I could reach! Sing before I could talk! Dance before I could walk—'
'So, 'er name iz Jane Peters ... not Zeraphina Rose. An' yew, yew are Sebastian Rose?'
'Precisely. You're not as dumb as I still think,' said Iggy, enjoying Judas' face faltering with horror the longer the narrative played on.
'Charlie?'
Charlie turned to the hoydenish girl crouched down beside him, emerald irises glowing like a cat's from the gloom that smothered between backstage, backdrop, and stage. 'Yes?'
'Thank you for excogitating this ruse.' She smiled. 'I think Frankie Carrozza would be very proud.'
'You're very welcome, Seraphina.'
'And another thing, darling,' she whispered. 'You promise that we shan't ever part?'
He looked at her questionably, a frown asking her to expand on what she meant.
'Well, change, darling. That horrid, corrosive, incurable, and inevitable bitch of a phantom haunts us all. Before she comes, I just want an oath from you. I'd put it in a binding contract if I could. An oath that the three of us—you, I, and that estimable boy out there—that we will never ever part. Never ever. Not ever.'
'I promise, Seraphina.'
'Not even when I decide to walk red carpets galore as a ridiculously notorious actress. Not even when you've sold simply millions of a remarkable bestseller novel titled, Seraphina Imogen Rose: The Revelation of a Beautiful Bloom. Critics, award ceremonies, book clubs, and the Times will go simply gaga over it. That is, until you write the follow-up on the famous dame, in which you'll cover the aftermath of my dreadfully mysterious death in the sequel after they find my young and gorgeous twenty-seven-year-old corpse artistically mutilated inside Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square, where my murderer has displayed the phenomenon like a masterpiece.' She shifted on her knees so that she could peek through more comfortably to see Judas gobbling up Iggy's every word, the man's eyes squinting with teary fury, before she regarded Charlie's blue ones with her own emerald pair, lit alight with a passionate fire that glowed from the coals of her aflame heart. 'Of course, maimed only to the point of causing universal horror, yet still remaining as shockingly beautiful as a doll-like goddess. It'll produce a gripping frenzy and widespread speculation. The papers will have me known posthumously as the "Red Dahlia", leading to many prime suspects, books, and several television and film adaptions of the sensational story. Due to remaining unsolved for decades, it'll go down as an urban legend so that I may live on yet. But you, you'll have the best insight due to being a dearest friend and confident to the beautiful victim—yet, still, you'll publish the series of biographies, Seraphina Imogen Rose: Petal or Thorn?'
'Something tells me that you've imagined this macabre scenario numerous times before,' Charlie murmured, leaning his chin on the back of the hand that clutched onto the glassless wooden window. 'I mean, I know you're joking, I just don't know if you're joking.'
'And we'll remain together still,' she proceeded, 'even when Iggy is tearing up the stage as a popular performer somewhere—in London, say—where billboards of his shows will spring up more commonly than the flowers come spring. As audiences pour into seats to see him every single night, you and I will already be sitting excitedly at the very front.'
Charlie chuckled, 'I promise you, Serph.'
'And Charlie,' she whispered, gazing at him imploringly, 'you will write about me, won't you? Say you will, Charlie.'
Chance regarded her assiduously, both humbled and endeared by the little miserable ounce of plead sparkling in her eyes. There was a wistfulness to them, too, an emerald expression as powerful as her cousin's, strong enough to scorch right through him like sunbeams. If he did, he knew exactly what he would write: Seraphina Rose was a divine concoction of whim and fantasy and reality. As dangerous as a petrol bomb if hurled violently into any situation or environment. She was hollow like a porcelain doll—that wasn't to say, by any means, that she did not have genuineness, substance, or cleverness to her, but that she had a void inside, and if the eyes can't see what's within, they assume there is nothing. Charlie had a theory that if he shook her long enough until it riled her, she'd rattle. It was much like calling nothingness blackness, or wondering what is truly reflected when two mirrors are put together: we know something dwells there, we just have no name for it. All in all, it was very difficult to find the niche that would allow a peek into Seraphina Rose beyond what she allowed to be seen. She perceived the world with a completely divergent perception compared to the viewpoint of anyone else he'd ever encountered. Mainly, she was a Venus flytrap in an overgrown English garden—pretty, bright, and deadly. Her vanity wasn't misleading, misplaced, or encompassing—she was clever with it and beyond it. Her soul was old, but not weary. Her experiences were scarring, but not crippling. Her views were naive, but not gullible. And when it came to defending loved ones or protecting integrity, no man or woman could ever force her to hold her tongue, an organ as sharp as any blade. To curtly put it, her unapologetic outlook kept her safe from a world suffering beyond the outskirts of parties, diamonds, jets, and champagne. Yet, again, the very same girl would kick off her heels quicker than any lad or lady to trudge through the nearest bog if needs be, and she could find a jamboree just about anywhere. She was whimsical, fantastical, fiery, unfiltered, aloof, mischievous, mysterious, fun, icy, ghostly, halved, whole, tragic, magic, here, and there. She was some—if not all—of his favourite words and more.
'I swear.'
'Now swear on us.' She spat into her palm, then shook his hand once he did it, too. She then sliced her other palm on a nail, and led his up to cut it, too.
'I swear it,' he promised, bringing their bloody palms together.
'No,' she whispered to herself, 'we shall never forget each other. Isn't that so, Charlie? We will grow old together, and then we will die together at the exact same moment so as to invoke havoc and revelry in the hereafter, arriving at the pearly gates hand in hand and as tumultuous as earthly elements still. But not before we have half a billion adventures in this life—going hell for glory.'
Nothing short of a fiasco occurred shortly afterward, and it all boiled down to three things: a spider, a wall, and a heel. The hairy spider plunged down onto Seraphina's lap, causing her to unleash a thunderous scream and knock Charlie over once she'd leapt to her feet. Iggy had been walking away from Judas towards the scenic design of the office, telling him about how the fake Seraphina Rose had come after all the men he'd left behind, but had misjudged the height of his heels, the width of the step up onto it, and his own footing, which resulted in him tripping over it and a high back armchair until he was soaring through the air like a startled peacock, a blur of colours and feathers. Seraphina bumped into Charlie's back again, who then slammed into the flimsy wall of the headmaster's office. It tipped forward, and both he and she fell into the falling backdrop as it toppled. As he sprawled onto the wall, Seraphina shrieking like a banshee beside him, the wires attached to the bottom of the prop by a pivot had instantly upended beneath their feet, pulling it upwards into a diagonal slant as it overturned to reverse their direction as though they were sliding across the bench of a seesaw and down it like a slope. The three friends met in a head-on collision on the carpet of the faux room like fried eggs shook onto a plate from a pan, forming an abomination of arms, legs, necklaces, heels, painful cries, and feather boas, leaving them unsure where one ended and the other began.
Iggy's head popped out from amongst the knotted entanglement. 'Who threw that?'
'Could you please get your foot out of there before I have to give birth to you!'
'Zerapina?' the dark Persian man shouted.
'Judas!' Seraphina cried gleefully, removing someone's shin away from her face and placing her hand beneath her chin, drumming the fingers of the other hand on the floorboards. 'Darling, when did you get here?'
'Nice try.' He scowled back at her, smoulderingly and huffily, then leapt onto the stage.
'Oh no, you don't!' Charlie quickly unravelled himself, sprang to his feet, and brushed himself down. 'Stay right where you are, you Persian pillock!'
'Sharlie and Eggy!' Judas gestured between the two boys. 'I 'ave 'erd so much h'about yew.'
'See, what did I tell you, sweetie?' Seraphina called.
'Off with you, Judas, or we'll—or we'll call the police!' Charlie ordered, putting himself between Judas and Seraphina. 'We know exactly what you are, Pablo Escobar!'
'Pablo?'
'Yes.' Charlie shrugged. 'You know, cause you run a cartel.'
'A carpet cartel! I sell expensive carpets!'
'Oh ... OH!' He turned towards Seraphina, who only shrugged back. 'Carpets, really?'
'Anything can sound quite sinister when accidentally overheard, you know. He has all these rather secret meetings and muffled telephone conversations behind closed doors. And I only half-listen to anyone half the time and sort of just wait for my turn to speak about me. He calls himself "the Carpet King", so what was I to think? Other than I thought that meant he rolled dead bodies up in them and chucked them into the Kārūn river.'
'Vell ... vell, I 'ave got a deal with some middlemen for cheap importation,' he offered.
'Is it illegal transportation?' Charlie asked.
Judas shrugged, too. 'Somewhat.'
'Then we'll report you for that, so stay you put!' Charlie shouted, puffing up his chest to look as threatening as could be; he wasn't much smaller than the man, yet Judas was probably more familiar with fisticuffs. 'If you're not some sort of successful criminal—'
'Successful enough,' Judas tried.
'Barely!' he shouted back. 'If you're not some sort of criminal, why've you followed Seraphina all the way here from Saint-Tropez? Why'd you send her that painting with the slit throat?'
'Slit throat?'
'Yes!' Seraphina pointed an accusatory finger at him. 'There's a red mark on my neck in it!'
'I wuz upset. I drink vine vhen sad. I drink vine, I spill vine, I accidentally ruin painting, my bad.' Judas pouted his lips and threw up his hands. 'But yew vere more delicious than any red vine I've put to my lips—'
'Pipe down, Casanova, and answer the other question,' Charlie ordered.
'She—she steal from me!' Judas barked, wagging his own accusatory finger at her under Charlie's arm.
'You stole from him?' Charlie gaped at her. 'Seraphina, you're absolutely loaded! Last week, you wore an endangered species to dinner!'
'I did not steal from him—well, not necessarily, darling. Literally? Well, yes, I did. Needfully? Why, absolutely not. I just took whatever exchanged money that he had on him at the time that wasn't safely stowed away in the Canary Islands—which, might I add, wasn't much for such a wealthy prick—and took all of his travelling documents. I then burned the entire lot in the Maiolica fireplace so that he wouldn't be able to follow after me anytime soon. Anyone in their right mind would've done the exact same thing I did. That's all.' She folded her arms and shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. 'Alright, so I left him positively stranded in France without any means of obtaining funds to live on or fly with, so what? Sue me, I'm resourceful.'
That's all? Charlie thought, unable to voice his concerns since he was in her corner.
'She also take my silver spurs,' Judas muttered grumpily.
'Besides, he hit me!' Seraphina cried, another finger condemning him as a witch.
'You hit her?' Charlie bellowed at the man, but he only shook his head and rolled his eyes.
'Lades and gentlemen, we've arrived at our destination: welcome to Atro City!' sang Iggy, crossing his bony legs on the headmaster's desk.
'I did not heet her! I—I caress, I never heet. She tells me she sleeps vith a Bulgarian prince vhen ve vere at party togedder—that iz to say, a prince of pianos. I push her out of party doors to 'ave ... to 'ave, how do yew say'—Judas circled a hand to grasp the word—'to 'ave talk with her. It vuz accident that I push her face instead of body to move ... she stumble before I reach out!' Judas shrugged again and stuck out his bottom lip, an open palm waving out like a waiter offering entrees. 'She drink too much, like always.'
'That's because you're so boring that only alcohol could make you that little bit more entertaining, you sandy brute! At least the Bulgarian prince had only eyes for me and two other girls.' She looked down at her chest and danced her shoulders to emphasise her point. 'Never, and I mean never, has a man ever looked at another woman in my presence.'
'She iz my sister!' Judas cried incredulously, his fingers bouncing off his temples.
'That's neither here nor there!' Serph stuck up her rudest finger.
Judas' body slouched in defeat. Looking to her sorrowfully, he sighed, 'Yew are zo beautiful vhen yew are zo angry, my Zeraphina.'
'I know, I know,' she replied irritatedly as she rolled her eyes to look aside, bobbing her knee and folding her arms.
'This is frying my head, so sort it out between you.' Taking both of them by the elbows, Charlie shoved them towards the shambles of the makeshift office despite their protests. With a frown that warned them not to complain again, he commanded, 'Talk it out!'
With words dying in her mouth, Seraphina flounced forward with her arms still tightly folded. Keeping a watchful eye on the bickering pair, Charlie sat beside Iggy on the edge of the stage.
'I tell you what,' Iggy whispered behind a palm, 'I was sort of expecting a grubby man in a pinstripe suit, armed with a gun and loose connections to mobsters, thugs, and international drug trades, not this mild-mannered handsome man we've encountered. His pompadour should be slicked back rather gruesomely with blood, not styling grease. I'm not gonna lie, I think I'm a little disappointed that this isn't going to end in an exhilarating shoot-out.'
'Don't speak so soon.' Brushing dust from his trousers, Charlie said, 'With the fire in his Persian blood flaring a bit, our girl is going to start screeching like a vengeful harpy any minute now.' He looked back to see the man yelling in her face, but Rose, however, just calmly lifted a bottle-green glass bottle and promptly smashed it over his head. Springing to his soles, Charlie gasped, 'Good gracious!'
'It's alright! It's fine!' Iggy scrambled awkwardly to his feet. Hobbling towards them like a kid walking on hooves for the first time, he cried, 'It isn't real! It's only breakaway glass!'
'Oh, bloody Nora!' Rose grunted, scowling her disappointment at the prop. 'Then what's the point of it?'
Judas was clutching the top of his head, looking at his hands and expecting blood. His shock shifted into a savage rage. When he reached forward and yanked her closer by the wrists, unexpectedly and aggressively, Charlie and Iggy lunged forward to defend her; Charlie snatched up a long floor lamp from the corner, brandishing it like a staff and getting ready to bash the Persian's skull in with it; and Izzy had ripped the feather boa from around his throat, ready to fling it around Judas' neck to throttle him with it. Judas flung himself and Seraphina to the ground, lost amongst the wreckage. As they neared the commotion, they instantly registered the unforeseen: it was not an act of aggression, but one of passion; his lips were smothering hers violently as she laughed into his mouth, fondly pawing his neck and hair. The two boys pulled to an abrupt halt, gathering their breath and staring incredulously at the gyrating figures as they wrapped and writhed around one another like battling snakes. Horrified, they quickly fled the scene once they'd heard the distinct sound of buckles and zippers jingling urgently.
'Will you help me with the zipper on the back?' Iggy asked, wiping glitter from his slender neck. 'Well, how was my performance?'
'Spectacular.' Chuckling, Charlie rolled up his sleeves. He waddled towards Iggy and set the basin of water on the desk beside him. 'I could've sworn you were her if she wasn't bad-mouthing beside me.'
'Aren't you glad we're friends again?' Iggy simpered.
'Sort of.' Charlie winked. 'Days like these make up for the days you're critical, cynical, capricious, and downright preposterous.'
'Longest fight of ours yet,' he commented thoughtfully. 'What would you say it was, about thirteen hours? I think the one before that only lasted six.'
'Then you shouldn't have told everyone that I was a ghost,' Charlie muttered.
'You, too, eventually found the funny side of returning to Eton last year to learn that you'd died in the Air India Flight 403 crash over summer. Let's never fight again.'
'Well?' Charlie called, looking up to see Serph approach. She had a blanket wrapped around herself to hide her underwear. 'All's well that ends well, I assume?'
'Yes, we're finished with.' Once she'd wiped off the lipstick smudged around her mouth, she lifted a cloth to wash Iggy's face with it. 'He took a polaroid of us to remember me by. And that green jumper. I didn't bother telling him that it was yours. I'll buy you a new one.'
'Honestly, I was in no rush to get that back.'
'Let's paint my eyelids blue,' Iggy suggested.
'Let's not,' Seraphina replied wearily. 'Let's go for a drink.'