“Another Day at the Vatican”
by
Gene Stewart
She approached him as he stood gazing at one of the fountains in a smaller piazza off the main tourist route. He’d gone exploring, as he often did. This statue of a nude Venus featured an intricately-carved necklace with a bee-and-flower motif. He had just taken some pictures when she gazed at him from a passageway, blinked, then wobbled toward him on high heels.
She wore a silk sundress of splashed watercolor palette. It moved on her like seaweed on a sleek, new yacht, newly sunken. Her dark hair caught flashes of sunlight in rippling streaks. Her eyes, once she removed her Sixties style windshield-sized sunglasses, were nothing like Audrey Hepburn’s, but as expressive, in a liquid, languid way.
“Excuse me.” Her voice burbled, a contralto artesian stream from depths unguessed. It was cool, soothing.
“Yes?” He let her gaze at him despite being aware of her scrutiny from the passageway. “How may I assist you?”
“I seem to have gotten separated from my tour.”
“A small matter.” He raised an arm.
Her fingers perched on it.
He led her from the fountain, noticing that she let her hip bump his. Not only a beauty, but a seductive one, sending signals willing and perhaps eager. They entered the passageway, the ambient temperature falling thirty degrees, it seemed.
Mid-way through he guided her with a gentle lean under an archway, into an alcove where an over-sized statue had once and would again stand. Shadows made it almost entirely dark.
He pressed her against the wall, kissing her.
She melded against him.
He stepped back. “Raise your skirt.”
As she did so, he snapped a latex glove onto one hand, then placed a dollop of goo on it.
“Won’t need lube.” She spoke in a breathless rush. She slipped off her underwear, which fell around her ankles. She stepped out of them to let her spread her legs wider.
They could barely see each other. No one passing would notice them at all, unless they made noise.
He took a hand full of her fur, then curled first his middle finger, then both middle fingers up into her.
Her sigh into his neck told him he’d found her.
They barely moved. He kissed her hair, her eyelids, her hungry lips as he pressed his erection against her thigh and kept his fingers moving, probing, and caressing.
She trembled, her knees giving way with a tiny sound from deep in her throat. Her eyes rolled up.
He eased her so she sat on the ground, propped against the wall. She looked like a tourist passed out from heat or dehydration.
He snapped off the glove and turned it inside out, so it contained the poisoned lubricant. He put it into a plastic bag, then pocketed it. Before he left her, he gave one last kick to her hip.
It toppled her.
He walked away, going to the far end of the passage, where he joined a tour group passing by.
Back at the fountain a hooded monk retrieved the package the well-dressed tourist had left.
In air-conditioned suites, important men awaited the information that packet contained, so they could decide how best to deal with this or that global emergency.
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