Stages of Love

Chapter Five: Bargaining
The next day she took a bus for Rome.
She had shed another layer of identity in Florence, and now she had a fake passport that identified her as Clarissa Kestrel, a member of the American press. She had also purchased a gun. She knew she wouldn't use it against Lecter unless her life depended on it but she felt safer for having it's comfortable weight strapped securely under her jacket. Her hand strayed to it from time to time, like a touchstone.
She refused to examine too closely what she was doing. So far he had been the cat in their game, toying with her. Would he allow her to get close? Could she somehow turn the tables, capture him?
Or was this game something else entirely?
She had been replaying the events of the past over and over again in her head: the first moment she had seen him in the dungeon, the time his fingers had brushed hers in Memphis, his promise not to come after her, the letter, the phone call, and finally the night she had saved him at Muskrat Farm. That night more than anything convinced her that it was not his intention to harm her, indeed that his intentions were very different. It all coalesced in her mind.
He wanted her. She would not use the word love. Clarice didn't know if he was capable of love, as she understood it. Even the seeming self sacrifice of his hand had a double edge. He had meant to show her that he could not be put into that "bad guy" category in her head. He wanted her to see him; horror and humanity together.
And that created a moral ambiguity where he was concerned, a hollow place in her identifying faculties that, combined with her expulsion from the Bureau, had led her here.
She had no frame of reference for Rome. She could not recall him ever mentioning it before and she was at a loss as to what to look for. The first day she spent scouting out the city, taking in the famous sites, eating the food and listening to the rush of musical Italian around her. She wished that things were different, that she could live here...
And what Clarice? Live happy ever after with the serial killer?
She shut down that line of thought and turned instead to more practical concerns.
Okay, I’m here. Now what? She sat in a cafe sipping coffee and thinking. She would start canvassing hotels, asking questions, doing footwork. Maybe she would shake something loose.
She spent a whole fruitless week trying to find something, anything, only to come back to her hotel, footsore and frustrated. On the eighth day, as she came down the stairs into the lobby, one of the desk clerks was yelling at a luggage boy. She could not understand most of it, but he kept gesturing to a box. She made to move past when she heard her name mentioned. She turned back, but the luggage boy had beat a hasty retreat and the desk clerk was angrily picking up the box and stashing it behind the desk.
He noticed her watching and put a fake smile on his face, "Yes, Signora. Can I help you?"
She took the opportunity to move closer, saw the neat copperplate writing on the address portion of the box.
"Yes, I think that's mine." He handed the box to her without argument and she took it upstairs to her room.
The packaging was nondescript, bearing no postmark or any other identifiers, just her name in his neat script. She took out her pocketknife and cut the box open. Whatever it was, it wasn’t small. Clarice tore off layers of white tissue paper to reveal a gold-gilded birdcage. She furrowed her forehead, searching the packaging for anything else but there was nothing. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands.
It was not a real birdcage, but a decorator’s piece made to look like one. The bars were gold and the middle braces had traceries of lighter gold traveling all the way up to the hanging ring on top. An ring itself was carved to resemble a laurel wreath intertwined with roses.
Roses for love and laurel for victory. Message, Doctor?
Clarice noticed that the red velvet lining the bottom of the cage was coming up on one side. She tugged on it and it came loose.
Underneath there was a ticket for a performance of Aida at the Paris Opera House. It was dated exactly two weeks away.
It was an invitation then. And a warning too, for the birdcage was a clear notice that he was not the only one being hunted.
She grinned.
Only my freedom, just that.
“All right Doctor. Let’s play.”