thanatos | torvas

three

early 1998. the press is giving clarity to president clinton's lewinsky scandal, a political sex scandal that involved him and a 22-year-old white house intern. paolo laughs at this news, and the woman laying beside him chimes in. she grabs the remote control and turns the tv off, now turning the radio on instead.

well, it's not far down to paradise, at least not for me.
if the wind is right you can sail away, find tranquility.
oh, the canvas can do miracles, just you wait and see.
believe me.

"reagan, isn't this the song you told me you liked?" paolo asks, turning to his lover's side. reagan's face stretches into a smile and caresses one side of his face.

"it's the song i love."

paolo returns the smile, but heaves a deep, deep breath. he could not believe the beautiful soul that is laying before him, spread out like a map. a map that he knows every inch and scale of—a map of the universe, its galaxies and its stars. every moment with her feels like a thousand honeymoons, and he prays to every god in existence that they won't have to end.

reagan displays a look of discern, "hey, are you okay? what's wrong?"

"nothing. nothing can ever go wrong with you."

heat rises up to reagan's cheeks and they flush red. a giggle slips through, and paolo gives her a peck on the forehead. he stares deep into her eyes, and he swears he was right—nothing can ever go wrong with reagan. well, except for one thing.

"paolo, can we talk?"

he already knows where this is going. paolo understands his line of work has never been one to his girlfriend's liking, especially the fact that he works for her mob boss of a father. as illegal as the dirty work was, without the job, he wouldn't have met her. he wouldn't have met the amazing reagan smith, sitting behind her father with a tattered guns n roses t-shirt that she won from a rolling stone magazine's lucky draw, reading 'less than zero'. and she couldn't have looked more perfect.

paolo musters the energy to proceed with the dreaded conversation, "of course, babe."

"tomorrow's tribute is going to be the last, right? then you're out for good?"

there it is. the question and the area that he'd opted to steer clear of for the past few days.

"reagan, you know i pledged a lifetime oath to your father—"

"fuck him. fuck your stupid oath. i want a life out of this devil's ménage, paolo. and i want it with you. no matter how tough it'll be."

paolo looks at her sternly, "believe me, i do too. but you know i can't just back out like that."

"i'll force my dad to make an exception for you," she grabs his hand and gently kisses it, "for us. please? all you have to do is say yes. just promise me it's your last."

paolo doesn't like to choose. especially between his aspiring career, in which he's being groomed for things much, much bigger than himself, and on the other side of the scale, is the girl of his dreams—there is no simple or logical choice. this decision has to be made solely from his heart.

"i'll think about it, okay?" he doesn't want to lie, and nor does he like to. only the truth and nothing but the truth, his old man said in his dying breath. paolo's father was one of the smiths's low ranking soldiers, so it was only natural that he'd continue the legacy, no matter how much his father was against it.

but then reagan's whole body shuts down—her shoulders droop, eyes hanging low and clouded in defeat, and as the final blow, she turns away to paolo's opposite side. "hey, hey.." paolo touches her shoulder as he gently pulls her back into his arms.

"i promise you i'll think about it, okay?" he whispers softly, but all he could hear in response is his lover's sniffling and her sobbing. god, he hates it when reagan cries, because he could feel it too. he'd always been some sort of an empath, or at least someone adequately sensitive to sense shifts in other people's energies and having his also shift along. he thinks of this ability as his gift and curse. it's a gift because only very rarely do people have this ability, and also for the fact that it grants him spiritual healing properties. yet it's also a curse because he's not able to control it yet. he hasn't figured out how to ward off unwanted shifts of energy, but it's a work in progress.

to his surprise, reagan stands up and drags him right with her. she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him into a hug.

sailing,
takes me away to where i've always needed to be.
just a dream and the wind to carry me.
soon i will be free.

they sway in silence with the music, feeling every inch of warmth radiating from their bodies. reagan envelopes him tighter, and paolo reciprocates the deed. he could tell that she's stopped crying.

fantasy,
it gets the best of me, when i'm sailing.
all caught up in the reverie,
every word is a symphony.
won't you believe me?

"paolo, i love you—"

"i love you too." the latter counters without a second thought.

"then show me. show me that you mean it."

paolo's head hangs low—she'd hit checkmate. he pauses to stare into his lover's eyes, feeling himself drowning and getting lost further and further into them. he looks deeper and he sees a bright future with her. he sees a wonderful family with two beautiful children, the eldest looking like an exact replica of her mother. he sees them running in the sand, under the canopy of a breathtaking sunset, having the time and laugh of their life. that's it. there it is, all the convincing he's ever needed.

paolo sees life in reagan's eyes.

"alright. tomorrow's the last tribute i'll make." and he means it.

but as we all know, the universe works in its own uncanny ways, and anything that happens beyond our present time is outside our radar of control.