Milo's Journal

Good welcome, dear readers: I am Milo Bellori, Felix’s Uncle, once his mentor and then his servant, now retired to the hills around Calabria, near the Bergamot Orange presses which I sold to Maxine. I spend most of my time working on a life-story of “Sybian: The People’s Saint.” It is my hope that, by publishing her story, pressure might finally be put on the Vatican to recognize her and move toward the official canonization she deserves. That would validate all the hardships her followers have had to put up with over the years. I do this at Sybian’s bidding.

Patrick Lockwood, so tragically taken from us in the plane crash in Milan, encouraged me in this project and I so looked forward to his assistance. Now, all is in pieces, both in Sybaris and here in Chicago, where I’ve accompanied Maxine Culpa for his funeral.

Maxine has asked me to keep an account of events for a while, until
someone can be found to carry on in Patrick’s stead. This I will try to do.

We arrived in Chicago, where we were met by people I knew only by name: Francesca, Ramona, Emilio and, of course, Esperanza. I picked her out of a crowd halfway across the airport concourse. She projected such a field of energy around her that I only saw once before, when I was blessed and honored with a brief vision of Sybian herself, back when Felix was only thirteen. She dressed like everyone else, walked and talked like them, but when you studied her, or rather when she studied you, there was a feeling that her beautiful, alluring body was as a garment she wore and underneath it was pure energy ---pure voluptuousness.

We hardly spoke at that first meeting, but I knew her and she knew I knew her and we both knew Sybian, she more intimately than me, but a secret knowledge we shared nonetheless.

At the hotel, while the others left for Patrick’s wake, Esperanza and I stayed behind in her room. She wanted to know about Felix and Sybian and their sexual/metaphysical relationship and about the love between Mia and Felix, and I wanted to know what she had experienced with Felix and Sybian. She wanted to know where Felix could be and so did I.

We were both nude---I quickly found out how much Esperanza abhorred clothing, unless it was luxuriant silk or plush velvet. I would soon learn she felt the same about her body, and at times could not wait to escape it. This was how we had sex that day--- if you can call sex outside of one’s body sex. It was instead waves, with ebbing and cresting tides of energy and undertows of electricity. For a marvelous time we were not two, but one whirlpool of building energy and release.

She returned to her body, and while I got back into my clothes, she seemed light years away, staring out the window and humming.



“We’d better be going”, I said, finally.
She nodded, and reached for her black silk dress, that looked like dark water in the lakeside twilight.