Uptick for Love, Inc., makes Monique nauseous! David and Cleo visit Rome’s Capuchin Crypt, their passport to the Roman-held Judean census archives and possibly to David’s past. . .
Week Eleven:
September 5th through 11th, 2025
September 5, 2025. At Aphrodite’s City of Mount Olympus mansion Monique Reynard, Love, Inc., CFO, reports the success of their “Gift Bags for Lovers” joint operating agreement. CEO Aphrodite’s response to profiting from this venture with arch-rival Hera’s Marriage and the Media division: “Where’s the fun in that?”
Monique experiences a sudden wave of nausea- -Aphrodite’s flippant take on hard-won corporate success makes her want to vomit!
Meanwhile, in Rome, David Bernstein and Cleo Petra play tourist. While sightseeing they grow irritated with each other’s idiosyncrasies (he’s a bottomless food pit; she’s an autocratic list maker). It doesn’t help that, after a few glasses of champagne the night of their arrival, Cleo pushed David to name the woman she’d heard in his sleeping alcove last June. When she learns it was the flirtatious Monique Reynard, she freezes him out!
To remain calm David focuses on their September 10th meeting w/Peter Petra’s fellow census taker, Cleo’s Uncle Massimo. Massimo sends them tickets for a guided tour of the Capuchin Crypts. He insists this will put them in the right frame of mind for their visit to the Judean census archives.
With a party of tourists they descend some stairs through a side-entrance of the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. The guide points to a sign: What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be. They pass through a dank underground gallery of rooms decorated with human bones and brown-robed skeletons posed in vignettes. Remarks of other tourists make Cleo aware that mortals take death personally! Seeing the bones, David’s thoughts turn toward his unknown mortal father: whoever he was, he’s been dead a very long time.
When they return to street level they are greeted by Uncle Massimo, a tall middle-aged man wearing the robes of a Capuchin friar identical to those worn by the skeletons in the crypt. Working previously as a tax collector for an Italian prince, he become a friar a few hundred years ago as a means of staying close to the census records, which date from Herodian era. The records are in a climate controlled storeroom underneath the church. David is mightily relieved when Massimo assures him he in no way resembles Herod Antipas! The census of Hera’s household lists only women and eunuchs. The census of Herod’s much larger household includes a variety of guards, personal servants, a cook, and a flute player, ages 14 to 50: concrete leads for untangling the mystery of David’s paternity.
They part from Massimo. David is swamped with emotion. And famished. They stop at an Italian restaurant on the way back to their hotel. Karaoke is on offer. After many glasses of wine David takes the mic and croons a Sinatra standard. The audience goes wild! A man even stops by their table to tell David he’s like that fellow who recorded Sinatra songs fifty years ago. His name was- -something that starts with a K, the man thinks? His wife says David looks like the singer, too. David tells Cleo that’s the third time he’s heard this on his trip, but no one can remember the guy’s name. Could he possibly be a distant relative of David’s, Cleo asks? Though tempted to think so, David is skeptical. Privately, Cleo resolves to somehow put David in touch with the singer.
Is Monique’s nausea (and her thickening waistline) simply a matter of work-related stress or . . .something else?
Guard, servant, cook, flute player- -who will David’s father be? And what does this have to do with the Sinatra singer dude?
If you’re falling off the edge of your seat with curiosity, go here:
https://www.susandmatley.com/beyond-big-g-city/
