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ABULIA FURIOSA

by

Antonio G. Oppi

subm itted to the

Faculty o f the College o f Arts and Sciences

o f Am erican University

in Partial Fulfillm ent o f

the Requirem ents for the Degree

o f M aster o f Fine Arts

in

Creative W riting

Chair aRichard M cCann

r m i f \4 n v # » r 'Kcrm it M oyer

*Dean K ly M ussell

^ o t a 'Date

2003

Am erican University

W ashington. D.C. 20016

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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UMI Number 1413634

Copyright 2003 by Oppi, Antonio Giorgio

All rights reserved.

___ __®

UMIUMI Microform 1413634

Copyright 2003 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against

unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road

P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346

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© COPYRIGHT

by

Antonio G. Oppi

2003

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


Un corpo nudo forse ma un cuore...un cuore nudo non lo trovo piu.

Gabriella Sica


ABULIA FURIOSA

BY

Antonio G. Oppi

ABSTRACT

Abulia Furiosa is an original novel told in first person and third-person limited

point of view. It follows the exploits of Tommaso Giusti (Italian by birth and residing

America since youth) during the spring and summer of 2002 and takes place in both

Washington, D.C., and the provincial town of Vignola, in northern Italy.

Living in Washington, a city he despises, and equipped with a bag full of

memories, a bleeding heart, no will power, and just enough money to get him back to

Italy, Tommaso continues his aimless journey in search of the serenity of old while

avoiding any situation that might cause complication.

ii

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you, faculty and students at American University’s Literature Department

for your support.

Thank you, all influences, whether good or bad.

And thank you, Melinda. Because of you, I’m lucky.

iii


TABLE OF CON TENTS

ABSTRACT......................................................................................................................ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................................................. iii

Chapter

1. OF RELEVANCE.......................................................................................1

2. ONE D A Y .................................................................................................... 10

3. THE FUTURE AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE..................................14

4. THE WOMEN............................................................................................. 25

5. IN THE DISTRICT OF YOUR MOTHER.............................................35

6. PAPA WAS A ROLLING GRAVESTONE...........................................51

7. EASY COME...............................................................................................55

8. EASY GO..................................................................................................... 66

9. SOME OPAQUE WISDOM......................................................................81

10. NO MORE SUGAR IN HER BOWL..................................................... 85

11. A BUSY MORNING IN THE PO VALLEY........................................ 102

12. A BALSAMIC MOMENT........................................................................123

13. MEET A LEGEND.................................................................................... 136

14. DESPERATE EROTIC STOMP: LEG 1............................................... 140

15. DESPERATE EROTIC STOMP: LEG II..............................................163

16. DECISION AND REVISION..................................................................214

17. FUNGHI...................................................................................................... 221

18. HUGS AND KISSES................................................................................239

19. CIAO, CIAO...............................................................................................245

iv


I

CHAPTER I

OF RELEVANCE

Vignola, 1973-1985.

Miami, 1985-1991.

Gainesville, 1991-1996.

Miami, 1996-2001.

Washington, 2001-present.

* *

Father: Pietro Giusti, deceased.

After reading Conrad, sophomore year at the University o f Florida, Tommaso

was convinced that Michael Jackson was entertainment's Kurtz.

It made perfect sense then.


10/ 10/01

Tommy,

There's a reason why they call it the past. I can never be there fo r you again.

You are out o f my life forever. Keep me out o f yours.

I truly wish you the best,

Shery

Tommaso Giusti is an only child.

No note.

The doctor told his mother, she hasn ’t told a soul.

He fe ll in love with Shery the moment he saw her. He was a professor’s assistant

in a literature course at the University o f Miami. She was a business major

sitting in the front row who happened to love Shakespeare.

Mother: Maria Bettolini.

**

Tommaso's Graduate Thesis: Kierkegaard's Influence on Modernism

**

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Maurizio Graziosi, Tommaso's best friend, has a younger sister Tommaso loves.

Little Veronica was bom when the boys were in second grade. He saw her

breastfeed, saw her bathe, saw her take her first steps.

* *

He doesn ’t understand the saying: a living dog is better than a dead lion.

**

His mother is a saint. A simple minded, big-hearted saint.

* *

He no longer believes in books. None o f them say what he needs to hear.

* *

Shery did leave a note.

**

Only once has Tommaso considered ending it.

Instead, he bought a carton o f Marlboros, shut himself in his room, and smoked

fo r five hours straight.

While vomiting, he realized his life was really not worth taking.

Also, he had to wait fo r Shery to come back.

**

His godfather told him, “I f you learn the music, then you can begin to understand

the country. ”

And so he listened to oldies fo r a few years.

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4

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie was an early favorite. So was Phil Philips, and

many others. He didn't like Elvis, o r Buddy Holly.

* *

“ You '11 never be happy, " she had told him, “but I'll always love you. ”

Shery left him a month later.

* *

He spent the two years before going to graduate school sniffing cocaine o ff South

Beach's endless mirror and bartending.

Phi Beta Kappa was a joke.

* *

He tells his mother that he visits his fa th e r’s grave. But Tommaso has only gone

there twice. For the funeral, and once in 1992.

* *

He once found a hundred dollar bill outside a McDonald's. He spent it all on

Pink Floyd cassettes and a chocolate shake.

***

The Simpsons and bong hits.

* *

No note.

* *

He was once swimming in a canal in the Gables when a huge shadow appeared


5

underneath him, way down at the bottom. He panicked.

It was only a manatee trying to get back into the open waters o f Biscayne Bay.

It died later that day when a yacht's propeller slashed it.

* *

So many people came and went. So many people are coming and going.

* *

Heroin and Kind o f Blue. Once was enough.

* *

He went to a Catholic pre-school run by nuns. The first time he saw the naked

Jesus on the crucifix, he and a friend giggled so hard that Sister Agnes

twisted their ears until they turned purple.

**

Some songs make him want to cry, but he doesn 't.

**

He remembers when Italy won the World Cup at the 1982 games in Spain.

Paolo Rossi became Ita ly’s god.

* *

His father is buried next to his grandfather.

* *

H e's had an audio cassette o f Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet since his first year

o f graduate school.

He has never written poetry, and never will.

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Since Shery left him, he listens to it in bits end pieces, looking fo r comfort in

solitude, looking fo r anything in anything.

It doesn 't work.

* *

He's heard o f the saying, “The last lesson a father gives his son is how to go on

living without him. ”

Tommaso has wondered i f it's possible for a father to only give that one lesson.

He has never spoken to anyone about Veronica Graziosi.

He’s not one to quote. He usually steals.

He and his roommate Alonzo used to bring pounds o f Miami crippie back to

Gainesville. Alonzo dropped out junior year and now lives in prison.

* *

His godfather did a better job than his mother could have.

Every time he has gone across a river and through the woods, he has run into

another river.

* *

He adored learning.

**


7

A few months after fa lling in love with Shery, he did spring cleaning and gave all

his excess clothing and books to the homeless man he 'd see every day on his way

to and from class. The man smelled like urine.

Tommaso put three overflowing garbage bags at the m an's feet.

The next day the man had spread all o f the goods on the sidewalk in an attempt to

make a few bucks.

When Tommaso walked past him, he bought back a Norton Anthology of

American Poetry fo r three dollars.

* *

He barely thinks about his father.

* *

Photographs are like death.

* *

If he could do it all over again, a clean slate, he wouldn 't know what to do.

* *

No note.

* *

Veronica used to make him drawings.

He saved them all.

**

“Study the letters, ” his godfather told him. And so he did.

"Study history, " his godfather told him. And so he did.


8

"You don’t have a mind f i t fo r business, ” his godfather told him.

Junior year, Tommaso made over ten thousand dollars in one month.

* *

He has never dreamed that he could fly.

* *

Vignola is home. Miami is home. Nowhere is home.

* *

It took his mother an entire day to get in touch with him after New York and DC

were hit. She was wailing and asking him to come live back home, where i t’s

safe.

**

Shery Steiner. 667-1789. Call me.

* *

He once wanted to be a professor, but the road got too bumpy and things got too

easy.

*=t=

He's been afraid to let her go completely.

* *

In a town like Vignola, where half the population is communist, the other half

fascist, and the other ha lf is something else, Tommaso doesn 't judge.

* *

When he was six, his fa ther took a picture o f him in front o f Daschau. He was


9

wearing a pair o f Leiderhosen that had a big plastic daisy in the middle. He

hated that outfit.

**

He went to a dogfight once, in Hialeah, with his friend Rafael Consuegra.

* *

During Tommaso's last year at Gainesville, his godfather died o f a heart attack.

He inherited three thousand dollars.

**

No note.


10

CHAPTER H

ONE DAY

Yesterday, a colleague of mine, a certain “Chuck Howard. I teach algebra and

trig,” asked me where I’m from. I told him I don’t know.

“What?” he said. A bit perplexed.

“Italy and Miami,” I said. “Or somewhere in between.”

“In the Atlantic?” He smiled.

“Yeah. Smack in the middle of the Atlantic.”

Last night, with the only friends I have here in Washington D.C., I went to see

three one-act plays being performed in a shack of a theater. O’Sullivan passed me his

flask of whiskey. I guzzled it and threw up on a girl sitting in front of me, all over her

pretty blonde hair. I understand why I haven’t gotten laid since Shery left me. I’m not

dumb.


11

This morning my mother in Italy calls. Noon my time, six in the afternoon in

Vignola. Are you still asleep. Tommy? Yes. Why? It’s Saturday. Are you coming here

for a few weeks over the summer? I’m thinking about it, Ma. You should. I might. Do

you want to? Very much so. How are things. Tommy? Fine, Ma. Sure? Oh, yeah,

everything’s Fine.

Hang-up, get out of bed, coffee and a cigarette. Step outside, sweatpants and a

coat. Fuck this chill.

Today is a beautifully cold day, the kind of January day that reveals what the

nation’s capital really is: a frigid, whitewashed bitch. On New Years Eve I had hoped

that 2002 would bring me a new outlook on life, on me, on this city. Fifteen days into

this New Year and I still don’t have it. “Patience,” O ’Sullivan and Tainto keep telling

me. “It’s not as bad as it seems. You just have to find your niche.”

“Niche, you say?” I look them in the eye. “My niche is between ethereal thighs.”

“A toast for our man Tommy,” O’Sullivan lifts his glass. ‘T o thighs and the spell

they put him under. May ye Find a warm niche soon, or the thirst for it will drive thee to

spend a pretty doubloon.”

“Aye,” I say, “but the few doubloons I hold in pocket hardly can pay for a worthy

fack, when I’ve taken up the bad habit of drinking rye whiskey and the cheapest of sack.”

And we drink.


12

Tonight, a pita restaurant. Very hungry, even more boozed up, and I don’t know

what I want. Falafel or babaghanouj? Falafel. No, babaghanouj. Sorry, sir, falafel.

Yes, falafel. Positive. Thanks.

We carry our trays at a table and sit. I take a bite. “I should’ve ordered the

babaghanouj. This is too fried.”

“That’s a falafel,” O ’Sullivan says.

“I know, dick. I wanted babaghanouj.”

Later, our bar. Forcing to keep my head up amidst a table full of unknowns.

Falafel gas seeping. I miss Shery, I miss the feeling of not needing to go out for a good

time. I miss everything. I drink a tequila and stand. Stumble in a cab that drives me

right to my bed, and I crash. The best sleep is when I don’t even know I’m sleeping.


13

The first year he moved to Miami, when he was twelve, Tommaso would always

find himself in the same little street, riding his BMX home from school through a

mahogany grove.

Then the pink Blob would appear behind him.

No matter how hard he pedaled, the Blob never lost distance.

And then Tommaso would fin d himself at the end o f a pier, and the only place fo r

him to go was into the same warehouse stacked with the same square wooden

crates. His heart would beat faster and faster, and he'd ditch the bike, run

around the maze o f crates, and try to hide.

But the Blob always knew where to find him.

And at the last beat o f his heart, stuck in a comer with the Blob creeping its gushy

hotness onto his feet, Tommaso would wake up. Wet with sweat.

Now, his most recent reoccurring nightmare has him married to Shery.

They have a small baby.

She tells him to take out the dirty diaper.

He pinches the fou l diaper and takes it in the backyard to toss it on a mountain o f

diapers.

He goes back inside, and Shery tells him to take out the dirty diaper.

And Tommaso does it again.

And when he goes back inside, she tells him to take out the dirty diaper.

And when he comes back in, she tells him again.

And again. Until he wakes up. Wet with sweat.


14

CHAPTER HI

THE FUTURE AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

Tommaso Giusti gets out of bed at midnight to take a sip of whiskey. The

whiskey makes him want to have a cigarette, which turns to another sip of whiskey, and

another cigarette.

He awoke from a nightmare that had something to do with Shery and dog shit on

his shoulders, though the specifics elude him. It was one o f those dreams that make the

dreamer incapable of action, incapable to do anything besides receive abuse, and hurt,

and pain. A real shitty dream.

It has been a few days since Tommaso’s last Shery dream. It was overdue as far

as he’s concerned; why shouldn’t she invade his subconscious when she already occupies

so much of his waking hours?

“Needed a drink, Tommy?” His roommate, Ricky ‘I’m doing my doctoral work

on Romantic Poetry,’ Shackle says.

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“I need to kill that ex-girlfriend of mine, or I’ll never sleep.”

“Metaphorically?” Shackle asks.

Tommaso, unsure of what goes on within Shackle’s literarily-acute yet morosely-

dull mind, wonders why he still tries to make normal conversation with this man. To

Shackle there’s only books and masturbation, all else to him is irrelevant. To speak about

mere human troubles with Shackle is like telling a book you like its words.

“Yes, Ricky, it was a metaphor.”

“Well”—Shackle’s looking for a tea bag to brew— “that’s good.”

Tommaso gulps the whiskey and slams his glass on the table. “And why’s that

good, Ricky?”

Shackle, aware of Tommaso’s foul mood, says nothing. He scurries up the stairs

to bury his nose and mind in the realm of Romantic Theory and to find a haven within a

warm cup of tea.

Never in a million years did Tommaso think that he’d share a house with Shackle

and four other literature scholars, but when this presented itself as his only option, he

took it. He had to.

On the couch, near one in the morning, Tommaso thinks about tomorrow’s class

plans: the Sobibor revolt for first and third periods, the Emancipation Proclamation for

second and sixth. Lunch at Wendy’s, probably chicken nuggets, some chili and a baked

potato. Come home to find a few messages on the answering machine, continue hoping

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it’s Shery calling, find out it’s only O ’Sullivan wanting to get a drink and either stay

home or go out. He’s living for a message that’ll never come, and he knows it.

“Are you smoking down there, Tommy?” Michael’s voice echoes from his

upstairs bedroom. The housemates don’t like cigarette smoke in the house.

“No,” Tommaso says. He puts on his shoes and slips out onto the front stoop to

smoke in the late February freeze. There’s no snow, but it’s cold. Not cold like Chicago,

but cold nonetheless.

He had gone to Shery’s home in Chicago the previous winter, four months after

they had moved to Washington D.C. It was his first Midwestern winter, and since Shery

left him this past fall, he is sure that he’ll never again feel that Windy City frost crawl up

his nose— unless, of course, Shery wants him back.

He looks at the bare trees sway in the wind, and that empty sound reminds him of

Italian tombstones. Shery told him that she wanted to visit his father’s grave with him, it

would give him an excuse to go see it again. Tommaso often told Shery that he never

wanted to go back to that cemetery, but she insisted that he should, “to remember, to

make you stronger, to face the ugly truth this poor bastard put you through.”

Shery said this to him the summer when the two of them went camping in

northern Wisconsin, right before they moved to Washington. It was one of those trips, at

least in Tommaso’s mind, which defined their relationship at that moment, an experience

that made him understand the meaning of trust and truth. He could finally look inside

and see something besides the void. There was something in there— indescribable

perhaps— but something, nonetheless.


17

They had gone up to the Lake Michigan campsite on a whim. It was a beautiful

sunny day when they left Chicago, but by the time they reached Ellison Bay, the rain was

pouring down in bucketfuls. Once they arrived at the camp’s parking lot and spoke to the

ranger who told them that their campsite was a good twenty-minute walk, Shery wanted

to go and spend the night at a cozy B&B or at very worst, a motel. But Tommaso refused

to give in; they had come to camp, and camping they were going to.

They waited in the car for a quarter of an hour to see if the buckets would let up

just enough to give them a chance at getting to their site with minimal soaking.

“Ok, let’s load up and go,” he said.

“But it’s - ”

“Nada, Googy Mama. Let’s do it now. Under all these trees we won’t get too

wet, and we have to set up the tent before it gets too dark. Let’s go. I got the cooier and

backpack, you take the plastic bag and the tent. Uno, due, ire, let’s go!”

After a wet walk that lasted more than half an hour, with a lot of Shery’s

complaints, puffs, and a few curse words here and there, they had reached the site. As

they did, the rain completely let up. like magic.

Shery and Tommaso pitched the tent, hung their damp clothes to dry despite the

chance that it might rain again, secured the cooler and plastic bags in the outdoor metal

locker, and immediately went exploring their new home. They walked towards the shore.

“Are there bears here?” Shery asked.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because of that locker.”

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“Its purposes are plentiful. It protects the food from rain, raccoons, bears, and if

we had a lock, people.”

“So there are bears here?”

“Doubtful. I’m telling you, people are scarier. You did bring your mace, right?”

“Shut it, Tommy.”

“Oh, man, look at this!”

They came to the lake’s edge; a rocky, placid, deserted bay-within-a-bay that

most likely, since their campsite covered two miles of lakefront, belonged to them and

only them.

“This is all ours, Googy Mama.” He put his arm around Shery’s shoulders and

pecked her cheek. For a silent minute they stared out at the infinite, pure sweet-water

sea. He looked at his watch, then at her.

“We need lots of wood, then we can chill.”

With an hour to go before the sun fully set, they roamed the near woods to find a

suitable amount of logs and kindling. For Tommaso, suitable meant excess.

“More?”

“Yes, more.”

Finally Tommaso found what he was looking for; a long-dead log of at least

twelve feet lodged within the shrubbery that lives near the high-tide’s boundary. After a

good struggle, he was able to drag it to the campsite. He broke it by wedging it between

two trees and pushing with all his might. Then he took the smaller pieces and forcefully

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swung them like a baseball bat against the solid tree, until the twelve-footer was made

into perfect chunks.

“Now the fun begins.” He went into the tent, got the camera, and took a picture

o f Shery. She was squatting.

“You’re such an asshole.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She looked at her feet, making sure she wasn’t peeing on her shorts.

“Shit. Can you please get me the paper? It’s in the tent.”

That night, after cooking hot dogs and canned peas, they sat in front of the

immense fire and spoke of their exciting future in D.C., about her becoming a lawyer and

he a reporter, or columnist, or editor. He was worried about finding a job, but she told

him that in a city like Washington there were hundreds of good jobs available.

“Googy Mama, you know I’m never going to be rich. You know I don’t give a

damn about that crap, right?”

“Yes,” she said, “I know, I know. That’s why I love you. You’ll take the Ritz if

it comes your way, but if it doesn’t you’re not going to kill for it.”

“All I want,” he had said, “is a bunch of good books, all your good love, and

some occasional good weed to take the edge off.”

“Speaking of which, Googy D addy...”

And he rolled a joint, and they smoked it in peace, laughing at shadows and trees.

They were one with everything and were always going to be.


20

“What would you do if I died?” she asked.

“I would die too.”

‘T hat’s the answer I had hoped for.”

“I know.”

The next morning he awoke with the sun and let her sleep in. He went down by

the shore to wash his face, and when he saw a crawfish scuttle under a rock, Tommaso

jammed his hand in the brisk water and magically caught the crawler. He examined it

closely; it was longer than his middle finger, with bulging eyes and frantic arms. Its

shrimp-and-lobster qualities reminded him of stealing lobsters from traps with his

godfather’s friends back in Miami— a more fun illegal activity he can’t remember. He

and these old men would eat like kings, smoke fine cigars, and drink Cardinal Mendoza.

When he had thrown the crawfish back into the water Tommaso knew what he’d

use for bait. He was going to catch Shery a fish, the biggest fish in that shallow bay, and

then he’d cook it for her, on the fire, and they would be fat and happy.

He went back to the campsite to start a small fire so that he could boil water for

coffee. Shery got out of the tent, in her pink underwear and a faded green tee-shirt, and

blew him a kiss.

“Let me get a picture of you, Googy Daddy. You look so manly building that

fire—cigarette in the mouth, undershirt, sandals. I swear that if I didn’t know you I

would think you were bom in these parts of the woods.”


21

“I was bom here though, just today.” He stood up and stretched his arms to the

sky, to something invisibly there. ‘Today is my birthday. I am pure, I am a virgin, and I

want to lose my cherry to you, Mama!”

Tommaso ran to her, and they made love in the tent— long love that had her

scream three times, had her dig her nails into his back, had her sleep for a few minutes

more before she could go back outside and start her day.

“Sleep,” he had said, “sweet, sweaty doll. Later we will bathe in the cold lake and

get this sticky stink off of us.”

Shery smiled, with her eyes closed, and fell into a deep little slumber.

At the lake’s edge Shery watched Tommaso in knee high water with a fishing rod

in his hand and a plastic bag filled with crawfish tied to his shorts.

“Daddy, where’s my fish?” she yelled.

‘There are none out here!” he yelled back. “I could walk out to Michigan and

still find no fish. It’s useless.”

“Why don’t we just eat some hot dogs then?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Want to smoke a joint?”

And Tommaso, sick of fishing for nothing, walked back to the shore, returned the

crawfish to their waters, and the couple went back to the campsite to relax.

“Lucky little bastards,” he told Shery as they walked, “if there were fish those

crawfish would have been diit.”


“Yes, Daddy. Dirt.”

* *

Tommaso goes back inside his house. It is nearing two in the morning, and he

knows— out of habit—that the dawn will be a cruel bitch. He’ll get up, try to listen to

some Verdi, drink his coffee, shower, drive to Starbuck’s for some more coffee, then get

to the school by eight. If he’s lucky, Vicky will be in class. That’ll give him something

to think of while blabbing to his students about the bitter irony of Lincoln’s

Emancipation.

But before he heads to bed he has another sip of whiskey; it’s easier not to think

of her when he can’t think, when he has no time to because his brain is softly lulled into

drunken sleep.

On the couch, staring at Virginia W oolf’s portrait on the mantelpiece, he cannot

help but compare the dead woman’s gangly giraffe neck to Shery’s. Shery was— is— his

perfect type, and besides her petite curves, magnificent breasts and glorious vagina, she

had that headstrong determination only successful predators have; a fortitude that as far

as he was concerned, existed only in American women. She knew what she wanted, and

she got it. Always.

What changed them was Washington; he is certain it’s this soulless city’s fault.

She grew a bit older, got involved in law school activities, new friends, new environment,

and things invisibly plummeted at the murderously slow pace of sap dripping from a tree.

It was of such slow speed that he didn’t even notice it. They would go out with her new

friends— some of whom he even liked, although most of them were the rich and sheltered


23

types— to places that screamed money, and she became enthralled by the whole of it: the

idea that she was en route to becoming a young professional, with networks, contacts,

people who could call their uncles and get anyone they wanted into the Ivy League.

Before, in Miami, Tommaso and Shery saw these sorts of people as the yes-sheep

to the world. They laughed at them, their habits, their need to impress and be seen. Tuff-

boys driving a BMW that their parents had bought them, listening to Wu-Tang, acting as

if they understood the meaning of hard times; these people were, as Tommaso had

learned to put it, ‘unfortunate’.

To Tommaso, it all was just a fact of life. These kids were nothing more than

kids, acting out their most primordial fantasies with the help of their parents’ cash, and it

was ridiculous. Plain and simple. If they weren’t already assholes, they surely were

going to grow up to be one, run a company or a state, and that was that. The world’s

their spittoon.

These gluttons never even fazed him much— besides, they were good for the

occasional comic relief. Miami, like all big cities, was dripping with this kind of peculiar

folk. He had his first run-ins with the law-school types in college. They had been his

best customers. But he had seldom found a law student interesting, at least none of the

ones who came to him. Real law students, he imagined, didn’t shove coke up their nose

seven days a week; real law students studied law because they were fascinated by the

legal system, and racked their brains on books. The ones he saw, Tommaso had decided,

were the ones who were in law school because Mommy and Daddy had told them to be.


24

He didn’t notice that Shery, once immersed in this dialectic environment, almost

became infatuated with it, and with a new set of legal words and references, friends with

unlimited credit cards and houses in Mallorca, she gradually became more of a taker and

less of a giver. Dinner at home became a bore, and without his realizing, so did he.

Never did he think she’d become like that, and even now, even after all the hurt she’d

given him, he still doesn’t believe it. She left for other reasons, that’s what he keeps on

telling himself. It would kill this memory of her if he were to perceive her as a money-

grubbing cunt. She had said that she didn’t want him to chase the Ritz. She did say that.

Staring at Virginia Woolf, he closes his eyes and mumbles, “Cunt”. He takes the

last gulp of whiskey and lights a cigarette. He goes back outside to the company of that

chilly wind, and wobbling because he’s drunk, he knows that his head will shut down

once it hits the pillow.

The last thing he thinks about, once on the pillow, is Pinky. He had met her

weeks ago, on New Year’s Eve, and just last weekend, on a fluke, they’d had sex. He

thinks about her pink pubic hair, and although he isn’t one for hair, he recalls that it was

rather pleasing. Then again, after four and a half months of abstinence and solitude of the

loneliest type, just about any human contact would’ve been remotely pleasing. At least

momentarily.


25

CHAPTER IV

INTERLUDE: THE WOMEN

Tommaso’s first was the fat lady across the street. Her name was Margherita

Coppini. She was big, too big to find a good man, but he thought she was gorgeous with

that big black hair and dainty lips. Someone was losing out.

Whenever she went on the balcony to hang her laundry on the clothesline, little

Tommaso, home from preschool with the nuns, would take his Nutella and bread snack

and sit on his own balcony, coyly staring at her large curves while pretending to play

with his Matchbox cars, or staring at his shoes, or at birds above her roof. Any excuse

would do, just as long as he could stare at her.

Sometimes she would wave at him and he’d turn red. Sometimes, if Tommaso’s

mother was on the balcony, the two women would chat, and Margherita Coppini would

rest her elbows on the railing, revealing the abyss of her cleavage, and Tommaso, afraid


26

that his mother would notice his infatuation, would go back inside and spy on her from

the kitchen window.

When Tommaso was almost six, Margherita Coppini seemed to have found love.

Her man was a little one— short, skinny, balding, at least ten years her elder. He would

come to her house almost nightly, to eat, to chat, and to sleep with her. And this was

when spying really became a fun vice. The fat lady wouldn’t shut her blinds, and in

between sex rounds she would walk to the kitchen to get some water, naked, with all the

lights on, and Tommaso could finally see what it was that had him so mesmerized: her

billowing breasts, her powerful thighs, the dark patch between her legs. From then on

Tommaso would bring a book into the kitchen, act as if he was reading, and catch

glimpses of her in her nakedness.

Unfortunately for Tommaso this, didn’t last too long. On a warm spring night,

after dinner, while Tommaso was fake-reading some folktales by Calvino, his mother saw

their fat neighbor’s indecency. Vexed at this woman’s inappropriate behavior, the next

day she went and told her to stop letting her son and the whole neighborhood in on her

love life. And so the peepshow ended for Tommaso, the shutters and blinds at

Margherita Coppini’s were always drawn. From then on Tommaso started to read in his

bedroom, and he concentrated on words, although a small part of his mind always

retained a spot for a nightly fantasy with the fat lady across the street. The fantasy

involved a lot of touching, and him nestling his head in her breasts.

* *


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A Sicilian family moved in down the street when Tommaso had just started grade

school. The son, Santino D’Alcamo, was in Tommaso’s class. Santino was epileptic. It

only took the boys a few days to become natural friends. Tommaso liked Santino’s

laughter, and with his ugly, lumpy, disproportionately large forehead, Santino was a

natural goalie. He might have been slow, but it was difficult to get a ball past that head

of his.

Since both mother and father D ’Alcamo worked long hours at the meat-packing

plant, Santino’s four-eyed sister—Giuseppina— who was in fifth grade, used to care for

Santino after school. She would cook lunch for him, make him do some homework, and

then at around two-thirty or three, Tommaso could come over.

The boys would play soccer in the gravel courtyard for an hour or so, but since

they played alone, it got boring, and they would resign themselves to other activities.

They’d go in the house, doodle stick figures robbing banks and shooting sheriffs, and

then they’d ask Giuseppina to play hide and seek with them. She’d say no, say she was

busy studying or cleaning, but eventually she’d give in.

The first time happened down in the cellar. Tommaso and Giuseppina were

hiding in the darkest comer—a prosciutto and a few salamis were hanging from the

ceiling, there were two bicycles with wicker baskets and flat tires. Santino was nowhere

near them, they could hear him shuffling his feet in the gravel above, and so Giuseppina

asked Tommaso if he wanted to feel her breasts.

Soon after he had slipped his hands under her tight bra, squeezing with the rugged

touch of a novice, Santino began calling their names, saying he wasn’t playing anymore.

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The two had to quit their game and go upstairs. Giuseppina gave herself up right away,

encouraging Santino to keep playing. The two boys went to hide.

Tommaso, feeling strange, a little embarrassed, returned down into the cellar after

convincing Santino that he should hide across the street behind a car. And soon enough

Giuseppina came back down, found Tommaso hiding in their spot, and they resumed

their exploration of feeling and being felt. After a while, Tommaso went home because

of a strange sort of guilt.

That night he thought a whole lot about the sensation of touching her breasts, the

nipples, and the slight thickness of Giuseppina’s flesh that protruded from under the wire

of that tight bra; the same slightly thick flesh that stretched down to her belly and

probably beyond.

It wasn’t long before Tommaso got to see and touch Giuseppina’s lower body. In

the D ’Alcamos flat, that winter, all it took was for Santino to be watching his favorite

cartoon or to be going to the bathroom, and his sister, in the kitchen or in her bedroom,

would lift her skirt, or pull down her pants, and tell Tommaso to kiss her and touch her.

Tommaso, embarrassedly compliant and excited, would do so, and would also let

Giuseppina touch his little, hairless man.

“Why don’t I have all those hairs you got?” He asked, mesmerized.

“You’re still young. I only started getting mine last year. I’m sure they’ll sprout

sometime soon.”

“And what if they don’t?”


29

And she told him not to worry, that they would come, and then began kissing him

repeatedly down there, putting it in her mouth and sucking on it like a Popsicle.

“And why do you have all those dimples on your butt?”

“My mom,” she said, “calls it cellulite. She says I should eat less.”

“I like them. I want hairs and dimples on my butt, just like you have.”

She sat up and looked at him. She kissed him on the mouth, and then they

touched tongues.

“You should keep kissing me down there.”

“Is it nice?” Her big white teeth, perfect in proportion to her mouth and face,

shone. Her glasses were still on, and Tommaso took them off and tried them for himself.

But he saw fuzzy, so he put them on the bed.

“I think it’s very nice.”

Giuseppina continued kissing him there, but a moment after, Santino walked in.

“What are you doing?” His sister’s bare hind end was sticking in his face. He

had a big smile.

“Playing doctor. I want to be a doctor and Tommaso said he’d let me practice.”

“Can I play, too?”

But Giuseppina told him she was done playing, that she had to get dinner ready,

and set the table. She told Santino to get out so that she and her patient could get dressed.

While they were pulling their clothes back on, Tommaso felt shame envelop him.

He was usually taciturn after such activities, but this time it felt worse. He didn’t like the

fact that Santino had seen him, he was worried that the D’Alcamos would find out, which


30

would mean that his mother would find out, which would mean that his father—once

back from Australia— would find out.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing.” He looked down at his shoes.

“He won’t tell, don’t worry. I’ll tell him not to tell, or else I’ll tell my dad that he

pees on the back of the building every time he’s out there. He knows Dad would hit him.

He won’t say anything.”

Tommaso went home that night, and eating dinner with his mother, he could

smell Giuseppina’s scent on his hand every time he brought the fork to his mouth. He got

up from the table and went to wash his hands. ‘This,’ he thought, ‘is why they say to

wash your hands before dinner.’

Things never went back to the way they were. Tommaso, still embarrassed,

started going over to the D’Alcamos less and less. Although he and Santino remained

good friends at school, Tommaso began chumming with his desk-mate Maurizio

Graziosi, and eventually, towards the end of that first-grade year, it was Graziosi who

became his best friend— although Tommaso never let him in on the Giuseppina secret.

That summer, the D’Alcamos were forced to move from Vignola to the north side

of Modena. Tommaso never saw them again.

Maurizio Graziosi, son of a high school-teacher, dramaturge, writer of children’s

books, lived near the elementary school, but far from Tommaso’s house. On certain days

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when his mother would allow him to, Tommaso would go to the Graziosi house directly

from school, eat lunch with them, and then play. Maurizio knew all the kids in the

neighborhood, and around two or three in the afternoon, they could always play futbol

matches until his mother came to get him around six. These were Tommaso’s favorite

days.

In the summer of 1980, when Tommaso was seven, the Graziosis had a new

edition to the family: little Veronica. She was an ugly little thing, thick black hair and a

squishy face. Since Tommaso was like family, Veronica would breast feed right in front

of him.

“Mauri,” Tommaso said to Maurizio on their way to the school’s field to play a

game, “does it bother you to see your mother’s boob?”

“Not really. Why?”

“Just wondering. I don’t mind it either.” He kicked a rock down the street. “Does

it bother you to see your little sister crap herself?”

“No.”

“I hate that smell.”

“Me too.”

“So it bothers you?”

“No. They put powder on her ass and then she smells fine.”

“I wonder how she’ll look when she gets older.”

“Me too.”


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“Do you hope she’ll be pretty, or do you want her to be ugly like now?”

Tommaso asked.

“I think I want her to be pretty. Why?”

“I’m just talking. But I also hope she’s pretty. Ugly girls don’t have it very

good.”

Tommaso watched little Veronica grow. He saw her stumble her first steps. He

heard her say her second ‘Mamma’, and in 1982, when Italy won the World Cup, he

heard her sing her first song; Verdi’s Va pensiero su ll’ali dorate was perfectly in-tune for

a good four seconds.

For Veronica’s fifth birthday, Tommaso bought her a colored pencil set. She

gave him a kiss on the cheek (just one of the innumerable kisses she had given him

throughout her four years of life) and then drew him a yellow flower with a gray center.

She dedicated it to him, and Tommaso put it in a little metal box where he eventually

saved all the things Veronica had ever given him: drawings, bottle caps, stickers, pictures

of eagles and seagulls, letters.

Although he had moved to Miami to live with his godfather when he was twelve,

Tommaso would still come back to Vignola every summer. And every summer he would

notice Veronica growing prettier and prettier. She had a thin, tall, delicate frame, with

skinny ankles, gentle calves, long thighs, beautifully thick, dark, straight hair, lovely

green eyes, a smile that could kill all sin. Even her ears seemed flawless to Tommaso.

She never got them pierced because they didn’t need to be.

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He’d bring American chewing gum to all his friends in Vignola, Veronica

included. He’d often see her at the Graziosi dinner table staring at him, hanging on to

every word he would tell them about Miami, about how things worked over there, about

how his godfather treated him real good, about how he’d finally learned English the way

it was supposed to be spoken, about how similar Spanish and Italian really were.

“Say something in Spanish,” Veronica asked.

“Hola, chiquita, quepasat"

Veronica smiled at him. “What?”

“I said, ‘Hi, little one, what’s happening?” ’

“Nothing. Just eating. Say something else.”

And she would always be like this. She would always pester him to tell her

something new, something she’d never imagined could be possible; like gang stories at

his high school, or about the temperature of the water on any given June day in South

Beach, or about the humidity and the parrots and mangoes and avocados. She was

insatiable, at three, thirteen, twenty. She grew more beautiful as the years slipped by, she

played the piano fairly well, attended art school for painting, and could speak French with

such a Vignolese accent that it seemed to Tommaso, who could also speak French, that

the French language ought to spoken the way she spoke it.

The last time Tommaso saw Veronica was in the summer of 2000. She was

twenty, and already every man’s dream. Tommaso never saw her as a little sister but


34

always acted like she was. He never told her about the things he did in college, he

wanted to keep her pure because that’s what she was. The freshest air.

But her brother, Maurizio, told her some of the stories Tommaso had told him in

the strictest of confidence; after all, Maurizio was oblivious to anything that might have

been stirring between his sister and Tommaso. In his view, they were all brothers.

And then, between middle school and college, with one exception in Genvieve

Amaud (who never really meant more than just an ideal), Tommaso had not experienced

love. Sex, plenty. He did have the drugs, some money, friends and looks. At a big

university like the one in Gainesville, those four ingredients are enough to make bread to

feed the world—and Tommaso ate it, all of it, but never quite reached satiation.

Then came Shery. Beautiful, smart, from a good family, fun to be with, an easy

talker and an even better lover. Everything with her worked. He could make no mistakes

with her. She was his safe haven. He felt as he did when young, in Vignola, with family

and friends who loved him unconditionally regardless of success. He loved her more

than himself, far more than his puny self. And when she left, she left him to dissipate in

the shallow Washington skyline that had become, with no desire o f his own, his home

away from home away from home. He was starting from scratch, with a job he detested,

in a city he despised, with a trunk full of excess baggage, and a penchant for stagnation.


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CHAPTER V

IN THE DISTRICT OF YOUR MOTHER

Somewhere near eleven o’clock, after two hours of overflowing martinis, broken

discussions about Keith Jarrett, God, shaven vaginas and Bitch Set Me Up, the bar’s patio

closes and our waitress gingerly kicks everyone inside. I go piss. Tainto and a few other

guys hustle to claim the entire far left periphery of our rather seedy joint. That’s what we

claim. The periphery.

Because life has had a sordid and twisted way of shining on me, it’s fitting that

the only empty seat at our big table is the one nearest to a girl who looks like a Carmen—

this Carmen is sitting with her friends.

I do nothing to deserve such grace. I don’t work hard, nor do I pray or give to

charities. My ethics, in my opinion, are quasi-laudable, but my morals are shit (or is it

the other way around?). Regardless, small bundles of joy are frequently sent my way:

like the 1899 copy of Crime and Punishment I found under the Metro seat, or the time


36

this stunning teenage student of mine— Vicky— in a mini-skirt, bent over to tie the strap

of her sandal and granted me a staggering Penthouse shot below the waist. Or like right

now.

Right now there’s a table with a Carmen. Her onyx hair is in a bun and it reveals

the neck of a swan. She is sitting with a girlfriend of rather unequal looks, and a guy. If I

get eye contact, and a small smile, I might force an utterance. But I need more drink.

Bitch Set Me Up is the working title for a film that O ’Sullivan is dreaming up.

From the little that I pick up. Bitch... is about a group of guys who find out where

Marion Barry’s crack dealer hid his money. It’s about suburban boys taking a trip to the

projects, with shovels, to dig for a box of cash— a classic odyssey. O’Sullivan thinks

they can talk Marion Barry into doing a cameo. “Bitch set me up,” he’d say. It sounds

good, but drunkenness prevents me from investing in the idea. I’d rather let Carmen

know that I like to greedily stare at her olive ankles and pretty red toes.

“Heff,” I ask Hugh, who is sitting next to me, “what do you think?”

“Show me the script, that’s what I think.”

“No, this girl.”

“Which?”

“The mamacita, right here with her friends.” I’m a bad whisperer.

“Always looking,” Heff says. “Hawk-eye.”

“Passive staring. That’s what I’d call this modus of mine.” The waitress sets

down another martini. “That Carmen sure is beautiful, huh?”

“How you know her name?”


37

“I don’t.”

“I like it,” Heff says. “It's a good name. Fits her like that tight sweater. Curves.”

“Voluptuous, and with class.”

“Refined.”

“Molded at El instituto para las joven virgens de Santa Asuncion Maria Teresa

Lourdes. A pristine Catholic girl with the mind of a shark, the heart of a saint, and the

soul of an angel. A prettier, less artistic Frida Kahlo, with a virgin’s passion, and true

dedication to her one and only.”

“Shit. Island getaways and fast cars, that’s her dedication. Rio! You got a big

trust fund? That’d help.”

Heff—a Ph.D. student of physics. Always on the reality watch.

“All I need is one day to talk to her, without any obstacles,” I say, “like in the

woods or on a beach with no people— where I can prove my raw skills and provide it to

her in every which w ay...she’d fall for me. Fall hard on that pretty face of hers.”

“Sure,” Heff says, “but the best you’ll do here is to take her to the basin and

watch the...oh-so-delicate cherry blossoms—you’ll park your ’85 Chevy and walk hand

in hand, far away from that doctor’s son sitting next to her. I bet she’d be impressed with

your knowledge of Lincoln and Jefferson.”

Bastard’s absolutely right.

‘T he need of a Beemer to validate existence is absurd, repulsive!” I say.

“Sad, but true,” he says.

“True, but sad.”


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Heff raises his glass and glances towards Carmen. ‘T o the sad truth.”

“Aye.” We clinic glasses. Carmen’s looking.

The descent continues.

Musical chairs have been going around at our table, more people show up, but I

don’t move. I am fixed near Carmen and her friends. The puzzle of Indie Pop is blaring

loud enough to make us dumber than we are. I look over at the mamacita and her pals

and I can tell their lips are moving Spanish. O’Sullivan is next to me. The masochistic

smile on his pain-accepting Catholic face tells me that the Tanquerrays are working him

with no remorse— left-right, left-right, jab, jab. And my friend O ’Savonarola loves it.

“You know who scare me most of all?” he says.

“No.”

“Asscroft and Assfeld.”

“You know,” I’m misquoting The Onion, “Ashcroft donated blood, and it ate its

way through the plastic bag.”

“Was this before or after he decreed that naked Greek statues are offensive?”

“Since always. He runs on acid.”

“A mystery of science, huh? He scares me.”

“Looks like a broom has been permanently shoved up his flabby—” Carmen

waves at me and all my attention goes to her. “Hola, miss.”

“Do you have a light I could use?” she asks, nonchalantly.


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“Yes,” I respond, equally nonchalantly. Can’t crack the smile first. Must show

the rough side. I light her cigarette.

“Thank you,” she says. A little smile peeks at me.

“Yes,” I say. My eyes smile, but I don’t. I look at the man who sits with her.

“Where you from?”

“Mexico,” he says.

“Me and Anna are. W e’re from the capital,” Carmen’s friend says. Her eyes are

sweetly big, like a cow’s, but she’s by no way a Carmen— Anna! “Diego is Californian.”

“I’m still Mexican!”

“No,” Anna says. “Marina and I are. You’re American.” She smiles, tipsily. She

is classic Mexican aristocracy, I can tell. If we were in Guadalajara, she would be queen.

“What’s your name?” Marina, the big-eyed-not-Anna asks. She isn’t ugly, by no

means. She just looks like a potato wedge.

I tell them my name; we all shake hands. I toss out a few carajos, maricones and

pinche bendejos. Before I know it, I’ve abandoned my group, and Diego and I are

drinking tequila with the girls, and betting shell money about the upcoming World Cup. I

speak like a Latin trucker. I tell him Italy’s going to play big— it’s their year, v la puta

madre to the rest of the teams. Mexico, in his opinion, will be the mighty upsetter.

“I’m afraid they’ll upset you once again.”

Marina and Anna excuse themselves and a moment of silence envelops us. I’ve

got nothing to say. I light a cigarette, take many unnecessary puffs, and watch the

glowing tobacco. When I did acid, a good while back, I thought I could see millions of

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tormented faces within the embers of my cigarette. Acid might truly be the mirror to

one’s soul, and small mirrors are ideal to cut coke, and coke does make you happy but

after a while you begin to feel like slime on two feet. The connection is clear enough,

though I seem to be hazing up a bit.

“Diego, which one is your girl?”

Girls. Great centerpieces for a conversation with an unknown guy.

“Why, you like them?”

I don’t think there’s enough confianza between us, so I can’t be fully honest and

reveal my bubbles for Anna. “Yeah, they’re very nice. How do you know them?”

Diego smiles and gives me a laid-back— ‘Waz-up, I’m at Johns Hopkins doing

my masters in economy and met these two babes’— sort of answer. Now the three of

them have become great friends, but he most certainly wants something beyond Platonic

friendship. With Anna, for sure. But he doesn’t tell me all this— I work simply on

instincts.

When the girls come back, all smiley, Marina inches up to me and asks about my

life. The whole where-what-when-who-why-how routine. I tell her I am so sick of

myself that to delve into the pit of me might generate suicidal tendencies. She finds that

funny and asks for more.

The space between me and O ’Sullivan and H eff s table has grown. In the

distance I see The German sitting between two girls who go by the names of Jackie and

Pinky. Pinky is a petite stripper, somewhere from the Midwest. I slept with her one


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night in February. She was my first post-Shery screw. Her pubic hairs are pink— at least

they were then. I think Jackie is Pinky’s somewhat new roommate and part-time lover.

I haven’t been able to wind-up energy for the pursuit of Pinky-and-Jackie

sexcapade. I feel too lazy to work such elaborate moves— moves that would involve

painful, nonsensical chats and hoards of yeyo. Plus, I would like to consider that phase of

my life, of sleeping with booched-up strippers in the bathroom of some house, long gone.

I’m a man on the rebound, a high-school teacher who in theory should have become shy

to the hunt for cunt, a man who would much rather stare at silly pussy from a safe

distance rather than spend a grueling minute trying to touch it. Damned passive staring.

To a man who has spent the last two years o f his life in a monogamous relationship, it’s

an addiction. My backbone has frozen into the memories of past serenity, and habits are

getting harder and harder to brake.

In between answering Marina’s “why’s” and “what’s,” I nod at The German. He

raises his glass, all the while his new pawnshop Rolex brilliantly glares back at all who

stare. He mouths the words, “Oyster Perpetual,” and grins.

As a translator for his country’s embassy, The German does nothing and lives

better than all of us put together. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were indulging in the

Pinky-Jackie cliche. I raise my glass and give him a big smile. He smiles back with

Aryan confidence. Nice guy, but a bastard nonetheless.

All the while Diego and Anna have been talking to two possibly-gay men at the

table next to ours. I turn to Marina and ask her if these two hombres are friends of theirs.

She says she’s never seen them before.


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Half past midnight rolls along and my head’s so heavy that it’s weightless. When

I look within, I could be anywhere right now—Miami, Veracruz, Pamplona—but the

stinking sight of politics in khakis, of anti-conformist conformity, and of intellectuality

disguised in dark-rimmed glasses reminds me that I’m still here in D.C., America’s

Hollywood for ugly people. I am sitting next to a potato wedge o f a Mexican girl, talking

bullshit, failing to teach high schoolers how to use their brains in a society where

violence trumps all other action. We’re all drunk. What was supposed to have been the

biggest tragedy in our history was nothing but a big fart at a party. Now the stink has left

the room, and we are all resuming our mingling. God bless us.

I excuse myself from my new friends and go to the bathroom. In the piss line I

run into Tainto, the thespian. We go in together.

“Yap yap yap, but will you slap slap slap?” he asks.

“Doubtful.”

“She’s all over you.”

“She says nothing to me.”

“Speech is the last thing you ought to be concerned with,” he says, shaking his

prick dry. “Your God-given gift gets wasted all too often.”

“So do I.”

“Exactly my point.” He unlocks the door.

“If only I could do what I really wanted,” I mutter.

“What?”


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“Nothing— I said I wanted to poop but I only farted.” I flick the back of his neck,

right where the big brown mole rests. He loves his mole.

“Watch the mole, man.”

I return to my warm seat. Marina and the rest are chatting with the two men; it’s

a laugh-a-thon.

‘Teacher,” Marina says, “Geoff and Todd want us all to go back to their house

and smoke.”

“Mota,” Diego says, smooth as he brings an imaginary joint to his lips. “W e’re

going. You come too, cabron." He, Anna and the two guys stand. I look at my full

drink, then at Marina, who’s eyeing me with bovine passion.

“Is it near here?” I ask. “Let me finish this drink and I’ll catch up with you.” I

attempt winking at Marina, but all I do is give her a heavy blink.

‘Tw o blocks down,” Geoff— or Todd— says, with the street number, “com er of Q

and 20th. On the right. Apartment 114. Just ring and we’ll come down to open.” He

smiles, they all smile.

“Ok,” Marina says, “me and the teacher will be over in fifteen minutes.” I see her

smirk large and in charge at the departing crew. “Remember the address, teacher.”

I lift my glass, like a boulder, and take a mercury sip of vodka and brine. “Got it.

Mama.”

The party leaves, the last words I hear Diego say are, “Cuidate, Mari.”


44

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask Marina. “Am I supposed to be

dangerous?”

“Maybe.” Her repulsively nice smile says something like sex. “He’s just looking

out for me.”

I give a quick glance towards The German, Tainto and the rest. Those lucky

bastards aren’t even aware of my distant presence. Out of all of them, O ’Sullivan is the

only one who feels a shred of the burden that our particular time in space has put upon us.

He’s afraid, he’s very worried about humanity’s lot and the hands that it rests in. He

thinks too much at times, but at least he’s thinking. I wish I could wish thought away,

erase all the past and take a new step into a grassy meadow, oblivious.

On our walk over to Q and 20th Marina and I lock fingers. I let my hand slip into

her big back pocket, and I feel like a couple— terrible, really. I wonder whether I’m part

of conversation back at the bar. Maybe Tainto is aggrandizing my petty feats, maybe

Pinky is telling the table that my prowess is fantabulous, and that this girl who left with

me is one lucky Mexican gal. So lucky.

Before reaching Geoff and Todd’s place, Marina stops and looks at a patch of

wild daisies growing amuck in the plot of dirt in front of a building. I know this is make-

out opportunity, but my body and mind can’t overcome repulsion, regardless of the liquor

in me. So Marina takes me, limper than overcooked spaghetti, and I go with it. Our

tongues stumble and I wish I would stop, but I don’t. I have no control over myself, none

whatsoever. I need that mota: at this moment, it’s my only savior.


45

But it takes more than mota to save me. Induced oblivion, by whatever means, is

only a thin smokescreen, nothing more. The facts, however much I wish them to vanish,

linger even more profusely because of my understanding of the screen. I see the truths,

hiding, like stupid children behind an oak in a schoolyard. But still, I dance; I try to hide,

to get saved, ignorantly. I smoke two big blunts rolled by Diego, the appointed twister.

Manu Chao on the stereo sings about the drums of rebellion and about how everything is

a lie, a big fat lie. Diego and I enjoy it, talking slap while Geoff and Todd are showing

their room to Anna and Marina. Anna, that queen, she hasn’t said one word to me since

our introduction at the bar. I wish it were her who liked to look at daisies with my hand

in her back pocket.

It’s just me, I’m my problem. I attract, but not what I want to attract. My only

time, the real true time when I got what I wanted, was with Shery. Close enough for

love, like Getz played. We fell in deep, like a movie, lived together, like a life, and then

she left me for that dentist. Since then, passive luck, like what I live tonight, happens

more than not, but it’s not what I want. I need more—a truth all to my very self, but one

that meshes with everyone else’s. Not perspective though— I’m not talking perspective.

I’m talking about that one mighty word, like whatshisname pompous Irish expatriate

wrote. We all need responsibility. Not responsibilities, as in babies and mortgages and a

flash of success. One common responsibility. And fuck all the rest, whether it comes or

not should be of tertiary importance. But unfortunately we are not beasts, we are human,

and can’t help ourselves, and we do what we do, as we are all aware of, and for some sort

of ill-fucked logic, after pain so red that it turns white, we do it some more, to see if the


46

last time we caused pain might have been the final fluke in a history of perennial hurt.

We are all idiots. A nd when we are together, we are asses. Masses are for asses,

someone said. But he too knew he was an ass, because we all are. He didn’t elevate

himself up high, like a god. God, I wish I were in my bed instead of slouching over this

plastic chair and listening to the faint whispers of strangers. I didn’t want to come, not

really. I didn’t need to smoke, not really, not this much. I forget what it’s like to be

young, I forgot that a past life or two ago. What would my mother say?

Marina wants to serve me water, she’s forcing me to drink. She wants to help,

nice girl. But all help, all gifts, are given with expectations. I need water to be sober, to

satisfy the urge of the long-lost Aztec mother and Conquistador father in her, the urge

that silently sizzles with desires of new found glory. But it won’t work. I’ll stand my

ground.

‘Thank you,” I say to her.

“Cabron esta fucked-up!” Diego squeals.

Before I can slu r a fuck you back to this son-of-a-bitch who sounds as if he’s in

enough control to talk to Anna, I am yanked off my seat. ‘‘We are going, good bye. Ok,

we are going, we are going. Let’s go, we are going.” The panic-struck voice sounds like

it belongs to the fam iliar starch of a woman. I see, in entrails, the white hallway and

flight of stairs that lead to the building’s exit. My hand is being tugged. I’m holding on

to the potato. There are steps behind me, in front of me, loud and fast-paced.


47

“W hat’s going on?” But nobody says a word. “Que pasa, pinche bendejosl” We

hit the sidewalk, fresh air, wet pavement, daisies— most likely—in little dirt patches

within people’s dirt patches. “Why? What?”

‘T heir neighbor pounded on the door and she said she was calling the cops,”

Marina says.

“What time is it?”

‘Three-thirty.”

“I have to be at school by eight, latest.” Whoever made me think that I could

overcome my hatred for getting out of bed early is a lurid pig...ultimately it was my

decision, so I’m the swine.

Locked arm in arm, Marina and I walk a good ten paces behind Anna and Diego.

They aren’t holding hands, but I know he’s won. Next to me and the gay couple, Diego’s

like D.C.’s bull farm. I must learn to moderate, like Miller claimed of his old man. A

little bit doesn’t hurt.

“What are you thinking about?” Marina asks, eyes all in my face. We are near a

playground.

“You think this is how some people become crackheads?”

She looks at me funny. I hear Diego and Anna chuckle.

“I mean, a guy like me, right now, simply wasted, but only wasted, stumbles by

himself in the not-so-nice part of town, sits on a park bench and smokes enough crack to

make himself feel wonderful again? What would happen if you guys just left me here?”

“W e’d be at Anna and Marina’s, and you’d be here,” Diego says.


48

We all laugh, because it’s true. I whisper in Marina’s ear. “Am I like before? I

mean, did I lose my cool?” This must end here, I’m being a fool. I’m going home. “I

need to get a cab.”

“A few more steps and we’re there,” she says. She doesn’t even seem drunk.

I listen to the silent street beside us and peer up to see that Anna and Diego are

entering the gate of a typical red townhouse. I stop, close my eyes, and look everywhere.

Shery’s there, smiling, laughing at me. My mother’s there too, crying. Veronica

Graziosi, sweet little girl, she’s there, not saying a word. All she does is stare and shake

her head, like a sparrow searching for crumbs.

When I’m back in my sickening reality, Diego and Anna are up the steps, opening

the front door. The street once more whistles its silence in my ear, and I see two

headlights coming towards me. I will hail the cab and go to my nice big bed. I will get at

least four hours of sleep then drink five espressos. I will, I will, that’s what I say to

myself while the potato pulls me past the iron gate into the realm of a petty orgasm. I

will.

But there is no will. I roll with punches, dance the dance, and when I think to

myself, ‘Shit, this time I’ll do things differently, justly’, it’s just another lie, another

affirmation that hypocrisy is as alive within me as it is everywhere else— go for the fuck,

fuck all that you can, that’s what makes you the man. I swear, after tonight I will be who

I want to be. I will be strong, with conviction and regain the backbone that dissipated

when all that meant something to me shattered. Just one more romp in the grass, that’s it.

Then it’ll be serious, I’ll be serious. I will kick this abulia square in the nuts, and when


49

it’s on its knees, I will kick it again and again, obliterate it, make it disappear completely

off the face of my earth. Then things will be just. Then I’ll know where to go and how

to go about it. After this mamacita, I will. Tomorrow.


50

No note.


51

CHAPTER VI

INTERLUDE: PAPA WAS A ROLLING GRAVESTONE

He works and hates it. He has loved and aches for it again; aches for it so much

that it affects everything, every little thing— especially life. Life, to Tommaso, is a puny

word with an even smaller meaning. H e’s given up, there’s no reason to try anymore.

He just does. Routine. Mundane. Life, nothingness, drunkenness; it’s all the same.

At his father’s funeral he bawled his eyes out, only because that’s what an only

child should do at his father’s funeral, in front of family, in front of friends. And those

were the last tears he ever shed for his father, a man who in Tommaso’s heart had already

been set in stone even prior to his death. Even now, if he tries to figure some things out,

he can’t. He doesn’t want to dig within. He’s fine, staying shallow, uncontrollably in

control.

It’s not that Tommaso didn’t love his father, because he did. He loved him as

much as a fatherless child could love a father, or the ideal of a father, or the memory of a


52

father who had never really existed. Vittorio Giusti was a man who didn’t hold up his

end of the marriage bargain, nor of the fatherly bargain. He was away from home on

most days: Milan, Singapore, Sydney, Rio, or just across town, at one of his girlfriends’

apartments, while maintaining that he was in Milan or Sydney or Singapore or Rio,

selling Italian rubber. When he was home, bringing t-shirts with koala bears and

Donkey-Kong video games for Tommaso, he was usually too tired to do much of

anything, and after a good meal, he’d sit in front of the television and doze off.

Tommaso’s mother would clean the dishes and then join him on the couch, sitting silently

while gazing at a blurry television and listening to her husband’s faint snores. On the few

nights when they slept in the same bed, he was too beat from travel, and she, a lonely,

ungracefully-aging woman, was too subservient for confrontation. He gave her a son, a

roof, a car, and some spending money. More shouldn’t have been needed, not for a

married woman in Vignola whose job was to look after a house and a boy.

Tommaso was forbidden to watch television after seven o ’clock, so books became

a father of sorts. At night, after a day of school and play, after a hearty meal with his

mother, he would read until his eyes died and his head was full of clouds— Agatha

Christie, Calvino, Andersen, Verne, Mr. Graziosi.

His friend Maurizio Graziosi’s father wrote children’s books and every time one

went to press, Maurizio and Tommaso were the first ones to get a copy. They were

historical tales about brave little children, with titles like, Cro-Magnon Kid, Pasqualino

Alighieri’s Underground Travels, The Clay Cavalier. After Veronica was bom, Mr.

Graziosi wrote his one and only hit: Daughter o f the Sun—which was even translated into


53

French under the title. La Fille du Soleil. The others never became popular, but

Tommaso loved them nonetheless. All the heroes knew what was right, they always

stood for something good, and if they didn’t, by the end of the book they learned a lesson

on how to live. Because of this, Tommaso never had the time to miss his father, and his

father, in return, who had all the time in the world to miss his son, just opted not to. A

vagina a i'J ;ct, like any addict, has very few cares with the exception of procuring the

goods. That’s why Pietro Giusti sold rubber like a madman. The only time he was happy

was when he traveled.

Throughout his subsequent days in Florida, Tommaso never spoke about his

father; he had no reason to. When the subject had to be confronted, his answer was

always the same: “He’s dead. Lung cancer.”

It was Shery who probed for more, who got him to talk about the lack of a father,

the suicide. To Tommaso it had always been just a fact, a reality that was neither sad nor

discomforting. Shery was the one who tried to make him understand that it was not right,

that his father was just not right.

“But it really doesn’t bother me,” he’d tell her.

“Well, it should.”

“Why?”

“Because we all have fathers, and bad ones have to be confronted.”

“It’s a little too late for that.”

“What would you tell him if he was here right now?”


54

Tommaso took a long drag off his cigarette and looked at the plain ceiling of their

living room. “Hi.”

‘T h a t’s it?”

“How are you?”

“Nothing else?” she asked. She was already past the point of disbelief, she knew

Tommaso all too well. “Be serious, please.”

“Ok, how’s this: Dad, this is Shery. I love her. I’m going to treat her better than

you treated Mom. You know why? Because you taught me. Thanks.”

“God,” she had said, “must be awful, Googy Daddy.” And she rubbed his back

and told him she was sorry.

“But I had a beautiful childhood, you shouldn’t feel sorry for me. I had

everything I needed. Friends, a mother, family, sandcastles in the playground and

Nutella. Shit, I almost got laid when I was six!”

“But what do you care about?”

“You.”

“I know. But what else?”

“Well,” he said, “what do you care about?”

“A career, my father, my mother, my Nana...should I keep going?”

“Fine, but of course I care about those things, too. I don’t think those things need

to be stated in order to be.”

“What about a career?” This, on a larger, subconscious scale, was what she had

been aiming for.


55

“A man like me gets no career. He just works.”

“You know. Tommy, what your mother tells you is right. You should go to the

cemetery more often when you’re home. It’d be good for you. You can’t be shut and

alone forever.”

“But I’m not,” he smiled. “I have you.”

Tommaso did cry like a baby at his godfather’s funeral. It was during his third

year of college, and his godfather Beppe, who smoked more cigars than Castro, died in an

interstate accident while driving to his doctor to get his lungs checked. He had told

Tommaso that he’d been feeling pains under both ribs.

When Tommaso thinks about Beppe, he mostly thinks of the times they had

fishing. Beppe never tried to be his father. He was just a friend, and that is why they got

along so well. He advised, knowing that a child like Tommaso could not be told what to

do.

“You know,” he told him, the summer before Tommaso left for Gainesville,

“we’re all alone on this big ball.” They were off Key Biscayne, fishing in the flats.

“So what am I to do with that?”

“Find a good woman when you’re ready for it, and don’t fuck it up. Better than

that, I doubt it gets.”

“You miss Viviana?” Tommaso asked. Beppe’s wife had died of a tumor in

eighty-four.


56

“No. I miss not having found the right one and having settled with the wrong one,

for all the wrong reasons. I miss what could have been. And trust me, at my age, that’s

not something that rests easily.”

“But you look happy. Aren’t you?”

‘T hat’s just because I can make no mistakes with myself. Because I’m alone.

But still, regardless, I’m alone.”

“What about Ugo, and Ralphy, and Sergio?”

“We’re all a sorry bunch. And don’t you forget that.”

“So what is it then?” Tommaso said.

“What is what?”

“Are we always alone, you think? Even with someone?”

“Yes, as far as I’ve experienced. But I think you can lessen the burden if you find

someone right.”

“Great words of advice, Beppe.”

“Shut up and fish, punk. You haven’t caught a decent one in months.”


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CHAPTER VII

EASY COME...

A beautifully hot spring sun is a bitch to a man in corduroys, and near the

Washington Memorial I begin to sweat forty-three proof. I use allergies as an excuse and

douse my bloodshot eyes with Opcon-A, eye drops with a high concentration of

microscopic men equipped with floor sanders. Thank God it’s Friday. No work

tomorrow. Need the rest. Natalia worked me good last night. Nice girl when taken in

small doses, though I feel her tightening the clamp.

Vicky Ramirez, my angelic student, is next to me. When she misses class, my job

seems almost pointless. Not completely pointless, just almost.

“Does Mr. Saunders’ speech about our first president move you that much?” She

mocks, smiling in a way that makes me wish I were sixteen again.

“Yes, it’s quite amazing,” I tell her. “His eloquence and love for American history

are inspirational.”


58

“Oh, Mr. Giusti, if you don’t stop crying I’ll start too, really.”

“Yes. I’ll try and hold back however tough it might be. I can’t help it though, it’s

hard.” I smile while my eyes bum, and wipe the drops off my cheeks.

She gives me that look again, and I put my hand on her back— the tips of my

fingers feeling her bra— to shove her along with the rest of the group. In this mire of

schoolchildren, tourists, joggers and political business-heads, Vicky’s like a sore thumb.

A few more inches and catwalks will be at her feet.

At just about every concession stand I stop to buy water. I need bottled life to

replenish mine, but it feels like there isn’t enough to do the job well. When I can I rest

under the shade of a tree, look at all that surrounds me, and feel my sickness— a pint of

cheap scotch, a few beers, and a Vicodin are still in my blood. I am running on four-and-

a-half hours of sleep, the faint smell of Natalia, and nothing more. This morning’s triple

espresso flew out of my mouth and into a gutter along with the strawberry-banana

smoothie; I had made the mistake of getting a Jamba Juice between Starbuck’s and

school, and now I’m fucked with no caffeine.

This field trip should have been organized for January. It’s too crowded, too

unseasonably hot, too many stars and stripes—on shirts, hats, backpacks, tattooed on

children’s cheeks. Poor Nebraskan mothers hobbling along, carrying all their fat on the

cusp of their kneecaps and elbows, looking at the monument with melancholic pride,

being mesmerized by the sight o f the White House. ‘Oh, say, children, can you see the

house of our President? Have daddy take a picture.’ So they can then put it in an album,

or on the fridge, and reminisce about the time they proved that by eating in Georgetown


59

two nights in a row they are true Americans. This soaring patriotism needs an emery

board to dull its talons. It’s nauseating. The potato-chip lifestyle isn’t as worthy of

defense as they’d want us to believe— God, Shery ate healthily, but she did like chips.

There were always chips to eat at our house: Doritos, Cheetos, Fritos, Pringles, Sour

Cream and Onion, Plain, Fat-Free, Buy-Two-Get-One-Free. Bitch loved chips.

On our way to the Capitol I lag behind our group and try to appear as if I am the

herdsman to the few straggling students who don’t give a shit about this trip; they aren’t

even concerned with hiding this fact. I hope the other chaperon, this Mr. Saunders,

thinks I’m sacrificing myself and carrying out my duty as a teacher rather than being a

truant like these boys ahead of me. I tell the kids to move along and try to act interested.

We continue up the gravel path that leads to the Capitol. We cross 4th street and I

see Calder’s black Stabile to my left. Never could pinpoint what it is about those

structures that I like—the Stabiles of that fucking man-child.

I had introduced Shery to Calder, our first year together. She was into reruns of

Law and Order after nighttime lovemaking. I convinced her to watch the PBS

documentary instead. After, late in the night, she kissed me goodnight with tongue and

excitement for our days to come in D.C. On most occasions, her g ’nights were rather

uneventful.

I guess I can say that I bought my unwanted freedom at a Dollar Tree. In

laziness, I had failed to recognize Shery’s needs and when I came home on our two-year

anniversary with a delicate plastic flower arrangement, a letter expressing my love, and a

few other personal items— baby oil, a candle and its Taiwanese holder, a bumper sticker


60

that said, ‘I’VE GOT LOVE, WHAT DO YOU HAVE?’, and Sylvester and Tweety Bird

toothbrushes— she aborted me with a coat hanger. Like my gifts, it was a very cheap

operation, though by the looks of things, a rather painless one for her. I said I’d run out

to buy her whatever she wanted; she said that wasn’t it. I pleaded, on my knees, that I’d

marry her like we had discussed on so many nights after love; she said that wasn’t it at

all. I told her that I loved her more than anything— still on my knees— and that, that

struck the chord. She said that was it. Freshness was now stale.

I cried fiercely and pleaded for a few hours, but then her forty pages of contracts

needed her undivided attention. I slept in the bed, she on the couch. She left the next

day. Her possessions a week later. Shattered.

I shuffle in the gravel, drag my feet. I bend to touch a stone. I smell. I’m

pungent. If there was a bed here, if only there was bed.

This fieldtrip has socked me blunt. Mr. Saunders, a few years ahead of me in age,

light years away from me in knowledge, intimidates me. We sit next to each other on the

bus ride back to school and are forced to speak. He has a squared life, a polished Toyota,

a wife named Carla, two children ages six and three, a house, stocks, and a pain in the ass

of a cat who answers to the name of Ruggles. Darling Vicky Ramirez is sitting behind

me, her sharp knees pressed against the back of my seat. Slightly bothersome, but it’s as

if we’re touching.

R e p ro d u c e d with pe rm iss ion of th e copyright ow ner. F u r the r reproduction prohibited w ithout perm iss ion .

61

I tell Saunders a bit about myself—bom and partially raised in a provincial town

of northern Italy. I don’t tell him that Papa was a traveling man and a cheating bastard

who made adultery seem like fluffing a pillow before bedtime, I just tell him my mother’s

a saint. After my father’s death, when I was twelve, I came to the States to live with my

godfather—he and Papa had made some sort of agreement, one whose full details I never

got to know, and my mother reluctantly sent me off to the warmth of Miami. In high

school, I became American— I don’t tell Saunders that I succumbed to conformity and

the habitual recklessness that only happens to big-city dwellers, he doesn’t seem like he’d

fully understand me. I just tell him that undergrad and grad school felt like the natural

stone to step on. I tell him I met Shery, a senior in college during my second year of

graduate studies, and followed her to D.C. where she could pursue law and I could get a

real job. After a yearlong struggle to apply my Masters o f Reading towards a pseudo-

career in the editing business, I opted to use my other undergrad major and teach high

school history— an adequate runway for my life to take flight. A little more than a year

after Shery and I had been living together in bliss— in what I perceived as being the

typical, young couple’s financial blues— on a beautiful autumn day, she left me. I don’t

tell him that I’m sure it was for Dr. Bloom, the happy, handsome dentist, because Shery

never actually admitted it; she said it didn’t matter who it was, if who had to be made an

issue. Over means kaput— it is not a walkie-talkie expression that waits for an answer.

Saunders, obviously uneasy with the candid intro into my past, says that life at

times is...but doesn’t complete the sentence. Instead, he looks at his lap.

“Life.” I finish it for him.


62

Then he nods, and when he looks out the bus window I take the gum from my

mouth and stick it under the seat. I unwrap another Juicy Fruit and chew. I offer him one

but he declines.

He asks me whether I think in English or Italian, and I tell him that the only

Italian I always think in is when I count. He asks how I’ve been enjoying my First year as

a teacher. I tell him that in such a crazy year as this— heartbreak, falling planes and such,

these kids have really been my salvation. I spew on about the notion of lessening one’s

burden by taking on someone else’s weight. ‘These kids needed me, and it made my

troubles seem less important.” Me a Stanhope; what bullshit!

Saunders looks at me with compassionate disbelief, and I wonder whether he can

sniff the J&B on my body or if it’s just my windowpane words that he doesn’t buy. I

change subject and tell him I moved out of where Shery and I lived, far from the law

school, far from the possibility of ever encountering her again. If I go out, I go to holes

and dives, places that produce the same effect on lawyers and dentists, and Sherys, much

like a cross or garlic clove has on vampires.

Vicky’s knees in my back feel nice and I don’t tell Saunders that I live in a house

with Five graduate students— all down-home literature biffs— and that I drink with them

every night, and that I drink without them every night. I make no mention of the shrine

to Virginia Woolf; or the bar with dusty bottles of creme de cassis and Martini Sweet,

and empty bottles of Don Pepito’s Mezcal and Ten High Whiskey. I don’t tell him of the

three toilets in barbarous conditions, and of the bathtubs with enough hair in them to


63

make new wigs for Parliament. I just tell him that it has taken me six months to recover

completely, and that I am now happy once again.

“Sometimes,” he says, “all we need is a change of seasons.”

Or maybe we just need a bunch of bullshit to fill the empty spaces, the silences,

the impossibility to act and speak honestly, justly, for just one minute because of this, that

or the other, you smug dick. Vicky’s knees press on.

“Isn’t that the truth,” I tell my colleague.

“Any plans for the summer?” he asks.

“Probably go to Italy and visit mother and family, but money is an issue. School

loans— I’m not denting them as much as I thought I would.”9 9

‘Tell me about it. It took me a couple of years to get mine squared away.”

This comforts me. I’m looking at life plus ten.

“Lovely day, hasn’t it been?” he says.

“Lovely does it no justice, Mr. Saunders. I am proud to be working with such a

man as you. And by the expression on their faces, I think it’s safe to say that the students

are aware of their fortune, too.” I turn to look at Vicky. She glances at me all the while

maintaining conversation with her best friend, Sandra. When I turn back to Saunders he

blushes, mattes his wavy hair, and lets out a faint “Thank you.” Vicky and Sandy giggle.

Saunders looks out the window, holding on to a proud smirk, imagining...laurel crown

on the head?— Ruggles, that pain in the ass feline of his, tied in a knap sack and tossed

into the Potomac still scratching and hissing?


64

Vicky’s knees rock me ever so slightly, poke me, force me to conjure chatty

words with Saunders without appearing to notice and enjoy her immediate presence. The

eyes in the back of my head see her seated knees up high. She’s rather little, an unlikely

virgin— God, if only! She melts me with her attention. She must taste sweet; surely

smooth and still tight. I’d squeeze in to pleasure us, no protection, feel the feeling of

being two candles gone soft into one. And after, speak Barry White for comic

smoothness, like Shery used to encourage me to do because she said it made her even

happier to love me. With Vicky, I’d claim his words as my own, she wouldn’t know:

‘it’s ecstasy when you lay next to me’— ‘I’m qualified to satisfy you’, so roll over Vicky,

‘I’m gonna love you just a little bit more, babe.’ Then nap, her legs straddling me, wet.

But I know I’d tickle her more— I can’t sleep with her next to me, I can’t sleep on

ecstasy. It would be dangerously good.

But then it’d have to end, and the drive home would be sweet and sad love— a

plausible item at an S&M Chinese restaurant that’s going out of business—and lovers

end a block from her home. W e’d be sneaky. We’d have to be.

“See you Monday, Mr. Giusti,” a student of mine says.

“Remember the quiz is important, it can fix a bad grade if you do well. Have a

good weekend, guys.”

“You too, Mr. Giusti. Bye, Mr. Saunders,” the chorus chimes.

We both wave at our students. Then silence. I look at my watch, then at

Saunders, then back at my watch.


65

I clear my throat. “Care to grab a beer?”

“Love to, but the missus and I have plans. Another time though, definitely.”

“Sure thing.” This was close. Politeness could have backfired. “Have a good

weekend.”

“You too, Mr. Giusti.”

We shake hands.

I then rush to my car, get home like a bullet. Salute a few roommates on the

couch, shower, masturbate to a conglomerate of Vicky and Shery (I call her Very), slip

into bed. Six-fifteen, and my exhausted, limpish state is still not enough to make Very

fade. Very is perfect. I hear Lachme’s music when I see her glow, naked, with my smile,

long hair, and no hair. Hair belongs on heads. If Shery did one thing right, that was it.

Damn me! Sleep, sleep, sleep. But mind is elsewhere, not on immediate sleep. First I

must mechanically twist it, tug it, twist it, more, more— she’s a virgin!—come again.

Then sleep.


66

CHAPTER VQI

EASY GO

A knock on my door. I look at the clock. Five minutes to nine, nighttime. Not

even three hours of sleep.

‘Tom ,” Michael’s voice says, “phone.”

“Take a message. Sleeping.” A pause. I hope it’s not Natalia.

“It’s urgent though.”

Must be Natalia, she always claims urgency. I lift the receiver. “Oy?”

“Mr. Giusti? O’Sullivan here. You are required to get out o f bed and join Tainto

and me at a benefit masquerade for the Shakespeare Company. Ten dollars, all you can

drink. Evening attire. Plethora of young men and women, all drunk, looking for what we

all want. You get yours, I get mine, Tainto will slide whichever way he feels like

sliding.”

“But I had a long-ass day and-”


67

“It’s Friday night. No excuses. Will be at your house by 9:45 for cocktails.

Dress accordingly. A mask will be provided.”

He hangs up. I get up.

If there’s a thing I’m a sucker for, it’s a small theater’s production party.

Actresses, drinks, all too good to pass. Besides, after a night with third-rate prima

donnas, I can always reassure myself that ‘at least I have not become like them.’

I come to life with O ’Sullivan’s idea of a cocktail: three extra dirty martinis (or a

Sloppy Joe’s Handjobs as he calls them), a shot of the Mezcal, and a cheap joint. I ask

the roomies present if they care to join our party, but To the Lighthouse, Dante and

Cross-Talk in Comp Theory are plaguing their minds. The semester is near its end and

papers deserve their due attention. I bid the students good luck, give them a “fare thee

well” , andTainto, O ’Sullivan and I get on our way. O’Sullivan doesn’t feel like driving,

so we take my car.

As expected, Tainto knows many of the guests. As a jobless actor his work

consists of running with the in-crowd of down-and-out theatre. O ’Sullivan, too, is well

versed in theater mingling; some of his one-acts have been staged in the area the past few

years with fair praise. By the punchbowl they greet people and introduce me to these

people who smile and tell me that it’s nice to see me again. I cannot understand how

some can claim to recognize me behind this freebee black mask I wear, so I slip it around

my neck and let my eyes breathe. Then I sip my punch, and then my wine, and smile at

folks who skip and dance by me to the sounds of the Jackson Five and the Village People.


68

Shery adored the Jacksons. I hope she’s knee deep in her law shit and fails every exam.

But she’s probably dropped out already, not needing it anymore since the dentist can take

care of her every need. It kills to think of her doing the dentist the way she used to do

me. Kills. It kills to think you know and trust someone so well that you can open every

pore of your body to them, just to be reminded once again that sometimes people change

in the way you don’t want them to.

I step outside to take a smoke, not really needing it but wanting to get away from

cliques of theater patrons. ’Next month is Lord o f the Flies, can’t wait to see it!’ Or,

‘have you heard that so and so has landed a spot o n ...’ I don’t care. I can’t imagine

these people really being happy. If you expect me to take you seriously, you can’t really

be happy. Not now— not ever. Art is pain, only stagepuppets chuckle and dance.

Before I can begin to count the ways in which these people delude me, a fairy

with sparkles around her eyes— a clever little mask— flutters up to me and desires a

cigarette. Of course.

Her name is Tiffany, a middle school music teacher in Virginia. Drunk little

Tinkerbell with southern drawl, petite and coming on to me. I say I’m a literature

professor at a major university in town. She asks how I happen to be here; I say a friend

is part of the company. I ask her the same, and she responds the same. Man or woman?

She says, “Man.” I ask if boyfriend, she says, “Gay, and just old friend.”

“Want another drink?” I ask. She does, and we return inside.

Sipping and giggling our faces nearly touch, moving closer and closer. I want

that glitter on my cheek, on my chest. We look in each other’s eyes for whiles at a time.


69

We dance clumsily and sip more. She’s elegantly bombed. Tainto walks by and I grab

him. She’s funny.

‘This is Tiffany,” I tell him. He and I look in each other’s eyes, an all too

knowing look. ‘Tiffany, this is my friend w ho’s in the company.” They shake hands.

“Isn’t her mask adorable?” He nods in agreement, devilishly, and then I begin. ‘Tainto

and I met in Rome at a dive called Buca del Orso,” I haven’t been to Rome since my

fourth-grade class trip. “I was listening to-”

“I was just in Rome for the jubilee!” she says, big smile and glassy blue eyes.

“Are you from there? I’m half Italian.”

“No, I’m from the north. Near Bologna. You been there?”

She looks confused. “No.” She’s as Italian as the Olive Garden. “But I loved

Rome. Everything was so fantastic, the people, the-”

‘T he men?” Tainto asks. She nods with faint little snorts.

“Anyway, back to my story. I’m in this place, Duna del Buco, listening to this

jazz trio, and I hear American speakers behind me. I turn and begin chatting.

Introductions, hello hello, ends up they’re from D.C. So we drink a bit, drink some more,

he buys rounds, I buy rounds, we go back to my suite at the Nazionale and party until ten

a.m.” I look at Tainto. “Man, those Swedes! Remember?” He grins lecherously.

“Anyway, that was a year ago and we’ve been buddies ever since.”

“Wow,” she says. “Where’s that place?”

“Where was it, Tainto? Oh, yeah, near Piazza di Spagna, on the left of it down

that narrow street. Great jazz.”


70

“Wow.” She smiles at both of us, tipsy Tiffany. “Small world.” Tainto then tells

her nice to meet you and leaves me be.

We then continue marginal talk about Italy, and her drunk is a happy one, and we

get snugglier and snugglier. Tiffany asks why Tainto is called Tainto and I explain to her

what the ‘taint’ is and why we call him that. She isn’t turned-off by the vulgarity, rather,

she rubs the cuff of my suit. I rub the mesh of her skirt.

Would love her tonight. She’d be a fresh change from Natalia’s increasing

clinginess.

Chad walks up, her friend. She does introductions— apologetically forgetting my

name— and Chad seems unimpressed with both me and Tinkerbell’s state. Says it’s time

for them to go. She tells him to wait a few minutes, wants to dance with me a bit more—

wrong verb, wrong verb!

We hit the dance floor and barely move. We mostly talk, giggle and touch, until

finally I whisper loudly that I want her to come home with me to have fun, molto fun.

She likes the idea and I can tell that in that pretty little head of hers she’s churning the

notion, but she says she can’t. She must get back to Alexandria early and be at school at

ten for rehearsal.

“What rehearsal? It’s Saturday.”

“The glee club performance.”

I say I can have her back to wherever she needs to be by nine, eight, seven. Just

sleep with me.


71

“My stuff is in Chad’s car. He picked me up tonight and I was going to sleep at

his house. He lives in Virginia.” But I prod, and touch her ass on the sly, and she

breathes deep. “You can get me to Virginia by nine?”

“Easy.”

“I’ll have to get my bag from his car.”

Well then, get to. “Ok. Where’s his car?”

“Somewhere down some street.”

“I’ll walk you to it.”

Chad stiffly comes up to Tiffany and me. Intruder. Says its time. I smile at him,

he doesn’t smile back. She tells him she’s going home with me, and I see his eyes sliver.

I smile at him again, he looks right through me. I step away, take a seat at a nearby

couch, and let Tinkerbell wiggle her way out of this one. My presence won’t help.

Finally, after a few minutes of bickering, she comes to get me.

“Ok,” she says. Cute, drunken smile.

“All right.”

She leads me to Chad, by the front door, and I ask him where his car is.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “I’ll drop her off out here.” He’s not looking at me, there

is no pep in his sober voice. Not sure if there ever is. He might be a good actor.

I grab Tiffany’s hand and peck it. “I’ll smoke a cigarette and wait out here.” She

hurriedly kisses me on the lips and stumbles off with her friend in a way that’s not

friendly. I chuckle, grab a smoke and light it. Shit. Tainto and O ’Sullivan.


72

I scramble inside and find O ’Sullivan. He’s chatting with folks who dress as if

it’s the big prom. I interrupt and ask him if he can come talk to me.

“Do you want to leave soon?”

“Not really, why?”

'That little sparkly girl is coming with me. I like her. I want to take her out of

here before she completely loses control. Come now or get a cab.”

The look on his reddened face says ‘Fuck, man, I was working on something.’

“Guess I’ll have to come. Let me get Tainto and tell him. Maybe he can catch us

a ride.”

“Ok. I’ll be outside waiting.” I turn my back and he grabs my arm. He looks me

in the eyes and tells me to be sure not to leave without him. I tell him not to worry.

“I’m not worrying, but don’t leave me.”

At 2:45 AM Tainto is behind the wheel of my ’85 two-tone brown Blazer,

aimlessly driving around downtown. The party’s over, all bars are closed, and Tinkerbell

never came back to me. I held on to a bit of hope for half an hour after she had left me. I

imagined Chad painting me as a slime, and her telling him that I wasn’t, and that she was

a big girl and could do as she pleased. But after half an hour the sad realization settled in

that she and Chad had pulled a fast one. I regret not having got her number, she seemed

all right. Now all I want to do is go to the massage parlor on 13th Street.


73

But I only have a few bucks on me, and my friends know better than to lend me

any considerable amounts of money. I plead and plead, tell them I hunger for porcelain

Asian girls.

“You know,” O ’Sullivan says, “a babyfaced Asian boy sounds quite fetching at

this point in the evening.”

Quality promiscuity— and by this I mean complete avoidance of streetwalkers— is

far more taxing for straight men. If I want to go whoring I need at least a hundred for just

one round. If O’Sullivan wants to go for all-out debauch he spends forty bucks to enter

into his own personal Eden, and he’s in that bathhouse until sunup. And shit, sometimes

he goes on nights that are half off. Twenty bucks, all you can chuck.

“I want steak and eggs,” Tainto says.

And I want scotch. And we all agree that we need some of that. We settle on

going to the all night diner run by Middle Eastern men and then back to O’Sullivan’s for

Red Label.

We come out of the diner and all light cigarettes. We sit on a Georgetown stoop.

Food and a whole lot of coffee did shave a good bit of my edginess, and I assume J.

Walker will shave off the rest. Across the street two black men stand snickering; not too

far from their feet a parking meter lies dead. I walk up to them and ask how their night’s

going— it sounds about the same as mine. I look down at the meter and ask if they’re

planning to do anything with it.


74

“Maybe,” the man with the Yankees hat says, “but that cop’s too close.” The

police car is parked at a bus stop. The cops are inside the diner, I had noticed them on

our way out.

“You ever open one of these?” I look at both men.

“My cousin has. He used a power drill,” the man wearing Fubu says.

“Need a heavy-duty power drill,” Yankees says. “Hey, you got a smoke?” I give

him a smoke and a light. ‘Thanks.”

O ’Sullivan and Tainto come to us. They look at the meter then say “hi” to the

men. The four of them start chatting, and while I’m inspecting the broken meter, I pick

up that Yankees and Fubu are Hoya law students. I bend and lift the meter’s head—

heavy mother—and glance at the cop car and diner. All clear. I raise the whole thing and

struggle around the comer, down the street where my car’s parked. Out of sight from

authority and the diner. Crash! Lift again, crash! One more time, crash! The lead Filled

head chips cobblestones without suffering one bit.

‘Tom ,” O ’Sullivan says, “that’s loud.” The four are looking at me.

“Had to test it.”

“You never going to get it open that way,” Yankees says.

“Motherfucker crazy,” Fubu says, shaking his head with approval.

The five of us stand in silence, all staring at the object of our attention.

“You guys got a car?” I ask the two lawyers.

“No.”


75

“Guess it’s ours then.” I drag it towards my car. ‘T h is will look great in your

apartment, man.”

After a minute o f convincing, Tainto and O ’Sullivan help me lift the piggybank

into the back of the Blazer. All the while Yankees is calling us crazy. Fubu seems to

have gotten bored with the whole ordeal and shuffles back to the main street. After a

short struggle with placing the meter in an inconspicuous way, I close the tailgate.

“Don’t I get a finder’s fee?” Yankees asks.

“I already gave you a smoke. Want another one?”

“You probably got a hundred dollars in there. That shit’s heavy as shit with

quarters. Give me twenty.”

I look at O ’Sullivan. “You got five bucks on you?”

O ’Sullivan digs in his wallet and holds up four singles.

“Yankees,” I say, “we’re bailing you out, you do realize that, right? Had we not

come along you probably would have gotten yourselves in a whole lot of trouble, and for

what? Let us pros take care of what we do. You and your friend keep at the law, and

study hard. God knows we need good lawyers in this world.” I look at O ’Sullivan, and

in turn he hands the four singles to Yankees. Yankees takes the cash and crams it in his

pocket.

“You boys crazy.” He smiles.

“And we make it seem so easy,” Tainto says. W e all shake Yankees’ hand, and

hop in the car. I drive because neither of them wants to.

* *


76

On our way to O’Sullivan’s, Tainto goes on a babbling rant about how beautiful

the moment we had just lived was. Black and white, working together for a common

cause. If there were more people like us the world would be a better place, he says.

‘There was a mutual understanding of the status quo, and they let their fellow man profit

because they saw the futility in taking the risk. God, that was beautiful.”

Driving down deserted Constitution Avenue I feel reasonably at peace. A bit

drunk, full belly, monuments, Capitol, all bright and comforting. Four in the morning is

the perfect time to take a drive in this com er of the District that has died six hours before.

At least six hours— could be seven or eight. Everything down here dies too early. People

run away to their suburbs on a Friday afternoon, happy to have left the center of their

existences. But this, right here and now, is my suburb. I can almost forget it all in this

stillness.

‘Tom , cop. Tom! Red! Cop!” O ’Sullivan shouts. Too late.

I slam on the brakes and skid past the red light. Since I’m in the middle of the

intersection, I slowly keep going— no point in showing panic. I look at the two officers

inside the car and apologetically wave and shrug. Those lazy good-for-nothings don’t

budge.

Once out of homeland security’s sight we all chuckle. My heart still pounds.

“Ah,” O ’Sullivan says, “the privilege of being white in this city makes you

wonder why more people don’t change the color of their skin.”


77

After wrestling the meter into O’Sullivan’s, we sip our well-deserved scotch. I

ask for some sort of wrench, to see if something wrenchy can cover the nutty lock and

twist it open. Or just a hammer and screwdriver. O ’Sullivan searches his place,

disappearing somewhere behind the kitchen with the certainty o f these tools’ existence.

“We should wait for another day,” Tainto tells me. “He’s got no tools.”

“And what do you call these, ye thespian o’ little faith?” O ’Sullivan is holding a

two pound hammer and two screwdrivers. Drunk, proud.

After a few pounds of the Philips, the hammer’s head flies off. “Shit’s strong,” I

tell my cohorts.

“Another day,” says Tainto. He isn’t amused. He lies on the couch with one

hand on his gut and one holding his glass.

“Maybe if we bust through the plastic that’s covering the timer?” Our host says.

He picks up the hammer’s head and slips it back on the handle. He then takes a few

whacks himself. “Hurts. Fucker’s tough.”

“Another day.” Tainto puts more drink in his glass. “We need a drill, like the

guy said.”

“Or a blowtorch,” I say. I sit cross-legged on the green carpet and sip my drink.

Light a smoke. Nothing doing. The night’s over. Capacity. I gulp the booze and take to

my feet. “Boys, it’s been a pleasure. I'm going. Perhaps tomorrow can do.”

“I’ll take the Metro and get my car,” O’Sullivan blankly states. “Maybe do a late

bloody-mary lunch?”


78

“Sure.” I wave, drop ash on his carpet and rub it in with my foot, and then leave.

Last thing I hear O ’Sullivan say is “thanks."

Strapped in my seatbelt only because I do not want to give the police a reason to

stop me, I drive towards my bed. A good ways, fifteen minutes at least. The city is still

as a dead mouse. Lifeless at this hour. Other cities don’t die so soon, some not at all. I

pass the Calder Stabile outside the museum. I try staying within the lines that lead to my

home. I’m a failure. I do nothing that I want, I know of nothing that I want besides that

which I can no longer have. Work is pointless. I’ve gotten far more satisfaction out of

clipping my toenails. It was easy with her. There were reasons, legitimate ones. I could

offer something to someone, she told me I could. But now I see my fingers offering aid

to my clustered nose, and nothing more. Solitude is just solitude, and all I can do is wait

for something good to come out of it. No choice, no nothing. All I can do is wait; for

Italy, for tomorrow night, for anything that might show promise. All I can do is lurk in

the waste, and hope to find another gem.

Near home, near five in the morning, and I know I will not sleep. I’m reasonably

drunk but the coffee high keeps the heart alive. Shaky hands, yellow fingertips, smoke

another one. I pull in front o f the house and put the Blazer in park. The idle engine whirs

and chugs and because I have no music I make this my music. I close my eyes and I hate

this. I need fun. And whether hollow or real, moments disguised as fun seem to make

weights go off somewhere far from me. The party was fun for a while, the whole meter

incident was fun for a while, but all has an end to it. And like most every night, I drag


79

out the end, not wanting to face it, not knowing quite how to put a stop to the day. Bed

won’t do, not yet. Liquor hasn’t done me its usual kindness tonight. Food’s been had.

Could visit Natalia, but I know her. She’d end up making me pay, inch closer to me and

some form of commitment. Could go get me a little loving in cheap disguise, but I have

no money, nor energy for such vileness, not anymore. Tiffany would have been perfect.

Easy, nice looking, sound asleep soon after.

I could go inside and pull one more to Very’s image, but I’ve used her enough

already. One thing I don’t do is masturbate out of sheer boredom.

Unwilling to resign I opt to go back to the Stabile. Nothing sounds better.

Nothing.

Of course, by the time I get there, my eyes feel like the hazy mist in the sky. I

touch the slick, black metal, in solitude, without faces looking, without seeming like a

fool. Tom ’s it’s called. Seven legs, immovable. I lie underneath it, stare up its invisible

skirt, and let the dew seep into the fibers of my jacket and pants. Sun will be up soon.

Crickets rub their legs. Why is that? Don’t know.

Maybe I’ll let my eyes close, sleep if I am able to hush my mind into letting me,

and when the cop wakes me, maybe I’ll ask him about the crickets. And maybe he’ll

look me in the eyes and understand. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll have some sort of an

answer to give.

But he doesn’t. All the bastard does is write me some bullshit three-penny

citation, “out of kindness”, and tells me to go home and sleep.


80

No note.


81

CHAPTER IX

INTERLUDE: SOME OPAQUE WISDOM

Four years after he moved to Miami, once he had learned English and had

Finally caught up with his true high school status, Tommaso got into a fight with

Eisenhower Martinez. Martinez, a very jealous eighteen-year-old sophomore, had spit on

Tommaso because he had seen him talking to his girlfriend. After a few pushes,

Tommaso dragged Martinez to the ground and kicked him in the face enough

to make him partially blind in his right eye.

That night, after a long bout with school officials, Tommaso’s godfather, hair like

silver silk, sat him down and gave him some words of advice. Beppe asked that he listen

to him good.

"When I used to live on Key Biscayne in the late sixties, your godmother—rest

her soul— and I threw a party. She wanted to impress the elites and philanthropists of

greater Miami, but all I wanted to do was have a good drink with our real friends.


82

Needless to say, and you will learn soon enough for yourself, Tommaso, I bowed to her

wishes. So we made the invitations, got the caterers to do a real off-the-charts job with

Beluga and Dom, and we even got the museum and Italian Chamber to display some art

in the house.

“Have you ever heard of the Arte Povera movement? It’s nothing worth noting,

trust me. Well, at first, before I even knew what it was all about, I was actually

interested—excited even— to have beautiful works on exhibit at our house.

“A few days before the event the art arrived. At first I thought it was a joke. But

this nasty, sassy curator assured me it was no joke. He proceeded to arrange the

pieces in a fashion in which they’d be ‘self-serving and pleasing to their viewers’,

and happy as a mockingbird he chirped on and on about what a success this whole

night was going to be. You should have seen his pinky flail!

“So the day of the party your poor godmother was running all over town taking

care of last minute details. She was so thrilled with the way the house looked— mind

you, son, it was utter crap. Strings, rocks, neon, sheet metal all clumped together and

hailed as this incredible expression of man’s plight, or some shit like that.

“So while she was out getting her nails done and God knows what else, I had the

idea to rearrange the rooms and the furniture to be as uninviting, unappealing, and

alienating as possible. Chairs facing walls, crooked if not upside down paintings, took

the labels off the wine, and put the ashtrays in the most unreachable places.

It was fun. God, what an ass I was.


83

“A few hours before the party, she comes home to slip into her evening attire,

and, boy did she blow-up! Never heard words like that come out of her mouth, never.

I took it all with a chuckle, explaining that my choices were calculated precisely in what I

perceived was the plight of modem man. She responded with these vicious ‘fuck yous’

and stormed upstairs.

“And the party began, and all these stiffs seemed to have fallen for my trap. I got

many compliments, was encouraged to explore my feelings to the fullest, and even that

curator— although I believe he did it because by then he had no other choice— went along

with my ‘creation’ and raved about me to all those asses he longed to kiss. I’m telling

you, it was spectacular. I had these people eating out of my hand, like those goats at the

zoo.

“Your godmother though, and I did try to get a few smirks out of her, never once

gave a sign of forgiveness. She was doing mock pleasantry, for the party’s sake.

“No matter, I didn’t let that bother me all that much and went on with my

business.

“I was actually having a good time. It was a good party— well— around midnight,

and I’ll always remember were I was on that midnight of September thirteenth in sixty-

nine, I noticed I hadn’t seen your godmother for a good while. I scanned the scene, and

not seeing her I went upstairs to check our bedroom. She was there.

“No, that’s what I was thinking, but she wasn’t crying, not at all. She was on our

bed, with her dress up to her neck, getting banged from behind by this young artist from

Torino.


84

“No, the party kept going until three.

“My point is that in life a whole lot of shit happens, that’s inevitable. It’s law.

But where we come in is precisely there, at the cause and effect of this whole lot of shit.

You see, had I been good towards my wife’s desires, had I let her have her way without

any of my immature hindrances, had I respected her through and through like a good

husband— without screwing around on her, without belittling her at every whim— this

might not have happened. Had I been good her actions would have seemed as those of a

cunt. Plain and simple. But because I was not good, not in this instance, not in many

other previous and future times, I had given her and life a carte blanche at fucking me

over.

‘That is why you should always be as good as you can be. When the shit happens

to you, and it will, you want to be as sure as you can possibly be about whether you

deserved to have gotten fucked, or whether it was one of the many random instances of

celestial injustice.

“I, for one, think your poor godmother had always been a conniving wench in the

making. But I was never all too good to her, so I will never know, and on paper, I will

always be the asshole.

‘Tommaso, I say this with love. Don’t be the asshole.”


85

CHAPTER X

NO MORE SUGAR IN HER BOWL (THE MAGICAL EFFECTS OF COWARDICE)

A...

In September, everyone’s light changed.

October swung heavily around and I was left alone.

In November, the streets were golden, and December brought me the most

solitary of holidays, far from my mother, far from my family.

On New Year’s I vomited for the first time in ages, with strangers who knew my

name, and I kept that motif up for all of January.

Finally, February brought: sex in the form of a girl with silky-pink pubic hair, a

few blasts of cocaine, and the imaginary confidence that travels with such behavior.


86

In March, work became the ultimate burden, and in April I somehow managed to

get something like a girlfriend— Natalia from Moscow: beautiful, possessive, a great

fuck, bald in the right spot. The relationship felt good. Nice and meaningless.

But soon she became addicted to me (her words) and I could no longer go on. I

tried to make Natalia understand that I was only capable of juggling one responsibility at

a time, and my stinking job unfortunately took precedence over all else. But she pointed

her goods at me, and given that in times of war every hole is a trench, I was forced to

linger in hers— after all, it was a mighty comfortable trench: far from ugly, with

international flair, and far better than being caught in the gruesome crossfire of self-

gratification.

Toward the end of April it dawned on me that I hadn’t heard anything about my

future with the school, and when I went to talk to Principal Connell, he told me that I

would have gotten a contract renewal form in the mail if they’d been inclined to renew

my contract.

“So you don’t want me back?”

“Even if we did, we can’t afford you. Sorry.”

I wasn’t sorry, and I’m still not. I’m not worried about finding a way to eat.

Whatever my downfalls might be, wherever my wanderings take me, I’ll always figure

something out. Resources and outer comfort is not what matters right now. What I need

is the proverbial Zen. I need to kill that flame that still bums for Shery, and proceed


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anywhere, everywhere. Up, down, left, right, I don’t care. But as long as that flame

roams within, I know Zen won’t let me in on its secrets.

B ra...

If not for Natalia, he thinks he’d be steeped in freedom. Regardless of his

perennial desires for Shery, he has finally become comfortable again with the give-and-

take vigor o f being alone, and putting up with Natalia’s ‘Come here’s ’ and ‘Let’s go

there’s’ is downright idiotic. He feels he doesn’t need to check in with anyone. In life,

the only ones he’s truly answered to have been Shery and his mother— and now that

Shery’s gone, his loyalty to the female gender rests solely on his mother’s shoulders.

He’s certainly not going to compromise the promise of better days with Natalia, this life

sucker, this female version of himself.

He had hoped that acting nonchalantly towards her would have sent the message

across, but whenever she sensed his distancing, she threw herself at him, ensnaring him

deeper into her web. He found his inability to break this chain because of sheer

gutlessness despicable. All he had to do was say it strong, ‘Kaput!’ like Shery had, and

be done with it, but instead, during his last few weeks at school, he avoided Natalia with

the excuse of grading final papers and preparing for exams (he neglected to inform her

that he was on the verge of unemployment, lacking all loyalty towards those kids, and


88

had decided to give them all grades they didn’t deserve—after all, life’s tough, and he

ought to give a break to anyone who could get one).

He spent his last breaths as an employee of the District in the company of the

guys—O ’Sullivan mostly— racking his brain to find a way out of Russia.

“If you really can’t make yourself confront her, the easiest way to finish this

ordeal is to surf the Volga’s wave until you leave for Italy— and then it’s au revoir,

babuschka,” O’Sullivan concluded. “I’m sure she’ll move on to bigger and better in a

few months.” He smirked.

“Of course she will, you prick. But I can’t handle another day of those waves,

they deplete all my patience and build stress in my back— like Quasimodo.” Tommaso

took a long sip. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Honor me.”

“Serious. The strictest of confidence, I don’t want Tainto, or Hugh, or anyone to

know.”

O ’Sullivan gave him his word and drank to it, and Tommaso told him about

Natalia’s offer: marry her for ten thousand dollars. Five on the wedding day, and five

more once she got the papers she needed.

Drunk and homy Tommaso, confident that this proposal was nothing more than

sheer bedroom talk, was appealed enough to say, “If you finally let me have sex in your

ass. I’ll do it.”


89

“You swear?” she had asked. And he swore, and swore, until he finally

convinced her to let him go Greek for the first time in his life. It was a pretty fun mess,

all in ail.

Afterwards, he thought he had reached a pinnacle, a most marvelous

accomplishment—it wasn’t until the next morning, when he looked at himself in the

mirror, that he realized his entrance into the elite club of men who’ve dated women who

take it up the ass wasn’t as life-altering as he’d imagined it’d be. He was still sinking

into the emptiness within.

O ’Sullivan congratulated him. He had a big smile.

Tommaso shook his head. “T hat same morning she was talking about buying me

a better car, and then and there I felt the noose squeeze tenfold.”

O ’Sullivan took up a cigarette to soothe his excitement. He called Tommaso a

“moralistic fool,” and proceeded to make him— “the soon-to-be-nouveau-riche”— buy

four shots of tequila. “Can I be your best man?”

“Have you ever heard Russian hip-hop? Have you ever slept over at someone's

house knowing that in the morning you’d be eating orange caviar the size of marbles, on

melbas, with a caffe latte, listening to Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion? It’s repulsive.”

“Have you tried Hall and Oates?”

“I’m serious. I can’t stand her. Her aloof walk, her laugh, seeing her interact

with bartenders or grocery store clerks. I’ve seen her put cigarette wrappers inside a


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blind man’s collection cup. That damn trashy, ‘I could be a model’ attitude is

wretched— like caviar with coffee, like Bocelli with Dion, like—”

“You! You are wretched. How was her ass?”

“She claimed first time. I think it really hurt her.”

“As close to a virgin as you’ll ever get,” O ’Sullivan said.

“Yet it’s paradoxically so far away from it.” The two men pondered this for a

brief minute.

“I know!” O’Sullivan said. “Just ask her for more money. Take her for all she’s

worth.”

“I thought of that, and at what I perceived as the perfect time to approach the

subject, I asked her. And, man, she cried and cried. Said I didn’t care for her, said I was

using her and that I had not one honest feeling for her.”

“Excellent, that’s as good of an out as any.”

“I know, I know. But those Christ-forsaken tears turn my heart into mashed

potatoes, and with this whole anal thing glooming over me, she’s now got me by the

sack. So I go on kissing her and making her feel like I like her, and then I end up

sleeping with her again and digging deeper and deeper.” He takes a smoke, as if it might

shed some light on the dilemma.

“You are suffering in the depths of amazing sex and possible monetary stability.”

“Fuck off! You can’t imagine having to live with that— not to mention the

repercussions if something were to get botched-up with the migras. I’d be enslaving

myself either way.”


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“Your guilt is truly remarkable.” O ’Sullivan slid a tequila towards Tommaso and

lifted his glass. “A toast. To your merciless eros and retrospective guilt, one of the most

vicious cycles a man can put himself through.”

“I’d also like to drink towards the nurturing of some balls, so that I can put an end

to all this nonsense.”

“Aye, but I fear it will only end with your departure, my friend.”

But it can’t, and it won’t.

On the last day o f school he told some of his students— the ones he thought he

had developed a bond with— that he wouldn’t be back next year. Most gave Tommaso a

blank look, like saying, “And this affects me how?” and shook his hand as if doing him a

favor. But Vicky, sweet Vicky, she reacted just as he’d fantasized— with a sympathetic

look of disappointment mixed with primal sexual desire. He could have, he knows he

could have, but he refrained. Instead, he let her press against him in a warm hug, smelled

the sweetness of her black hair, grinded her perky breasts on his ribs, and they wished

each other the best of luck.

That day his testicles ached incessantly, but he was still able to see his

righteousness amidst the pain, and he was really proud for having overcome the lust.

That night he drowned his misery in vodka, redirected his sexual frustration on Natalia,

and vowed to call it quits with her in the morning— he shouldn’t have gone to her in the

first place, but the way he saw it, he deserved to celebrate the end of his teaching era with

one last sexual encounter o f the Russian kind.


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C a...

Last night I broke my vow for the third night in a row. We went to her friend

Sasha’s Russian restaurant downtown. In a tucked-away lounge in the Kremlin red

basement, a select group of expatriates watched the World Cup and drank for free. All

these Ivans and Mishkas chatted in their mother tongue, and I listened— as if I

understood. One guy tried to tell me that the Italian team had nothing, and that they’d get

theirs soon. I told him his Russian team had never had a thing, and had already gotten it.

He didn’t smile. He just mouthed something and scratched the stubble on his chin. We

continued to watch the game.

Somewhere near the end of the second game, with the Italy-Mexico game coming

up at seven, Natalia slid her hand in my pants. “I want to make love to you, Tommaso.”

I was drunk beyond speech, so I nodded and pointed at my watch, which meant: fine,

let’s just hurry before the game starts.

I let her lead me into the back room’s back room— an office with an affinity for

landscapes painted by Motel 8’s premier Gerhard Richter impostor. We rolled on the

carpet, on leather sofas, against walls. My knees got bumed-up and I came on a pile of

papers on the desk, but it was fine. What’s important is that Italy tied although they

played like shit, and they're advancing into the next round.

I should really put an ad in the City Paper. Lost: a pair o f balls. Contact testicle-

less man fo r reward.


93

Right now I’m in bed with my Muscovite lover who’s snoring away last night’s

liquor. I’m smelling my underarms because that’s the way I happen to be lying. I

despise myself more and more. I wish I had tossed Vicky on my desk. Regardless of the

outcome, I couldn’t have lost. Either have blissful sex or get thrown in the can for a bit—

a simple win-win, well worth the price.

What I need is a rock to stand on, to grip, in case I am pushed or nudged. Solid.

“Sorry, mama, can’t do you anymore. If I had it in me, I would, really, but you are on my

last nerve and I can no longer handle any of this. Ciao, e stato un piacere .” But I’m not

a rock. I’m just a good-hearted romantic who’s been predisposed to avoid emotion, pain,

tears. I hate that shit.

Natalia stirs, snorts, and throws her arm over to search for my body. Yes, I’m still

here, I am still— here. I inch to the edge of the mattress and, although I feel like I got the

shit kicked out of me, I must get up. I detest this bed.

I gather my clothes, tiptoe to the bathroom, wash and get dressed. For the First

time in my life I am able to successfully sneak out of a bed without awaking a lover. I go

back home and sleep for the rest of the afternoon.

The next few days I crash on Tainto’s couch and avoid all familiar hangouts. We

make Wasabi, Tainto’s neighborhood karaoke bar, our spot of choice. Plum wine and

sake specials every night. I make sure to let my housemates know that if they see or

speak to Natalia, they are to inform her that I’ve left town to think, and I will call her

upon my return. “Tell her those exact words.”


94

Back at Tainto’s. I’ve been callously flirting with our more American than Asian

waitress, Poli Sci student Scarlet Wong from Seattle, for the second night in a row, and I

think we really clicked when the fat man from Japan began to sing Benny and the Jets. It

was so funny that even the serious sushi chef who looks like Elvis with a bandana

laughed.

Tainto offers me a nightcap, says it’s impossible not to drink one more in honor of

the ...Erectric groos...B-B-B-Benny an de Jess... so we do. I drink mine fast.

“Want to watch a pom ?” he asks.

“Not really.”

“What then?”

“I think I can sleep.” I’m not about to ask Tainto to stay up with me and talk. His

conceit to discuss anything but himself can get tiresome. A good drinking partner, but

chats always steer in the dark labyrinth of theater talk, of his shortcomings as an actor, of

his struggles in an art form that has been gobbled up by evil Hollywood and untalented

good looks, and his deep-down desire to join the forces in the city of angels.

“You don’t mind if I try to sleep, do you?”

He stands up and puts more scotch in his glass. “Not at all. I’ll go watch the

movie by myself, the way it’s supposed to be watched.”

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Da...

Seeing the dental tape in Tainto’s bathroom makes Tommaso realize that it’s been

eons since he’s last flossed. After a thorough cleansing of his teeth, he strips into his

boxers and plops on the corduroy couch. Shery had clinically perfect teeth but he bets

that dentist of hers made them even better, meticulously bleached and whitened. “It’s too

bad insurance doesn’t cover it,” Dr. Bloom had said to him when he went in for a

cleaning, “but I’d give you and Shery a good deal. It’s really worth it. Who doesn’t want

ivory teeth?” Then he’d smile, knowing he was completely right. Who doesn’t want a

star’s smile?

Scarlet Wong also has a nice smile, when she wants to show it. Tommaso

wouldn’t call it perfect; he did notice a jagged snaggle in that candy mouth of hers, but

it’s all fine the same. There’s a saying that goes, ‘a mouth is only as good as its user’,

and she looks real good. Doesn’t have that stereotypical Asian hotdog bun of an ass. It’s

nice and small, slightly protruding out and upwards. Like Natalia’s— her redeeming

factor. Her ass and the false smile are what got him. By the time he saw beyond the

smokescreens, it was too late to fight her spell. She keeps her ass in tune by running,

everyday, religiously, regardless of the previous night’s goings-on, for at least an hour.

What dedication. What commitment.

What’s he going to do? To break something fragile— regardless of the

unavoidable repulsive factor—without causing damage is a tough trick, and he’s a one

trick pony, void of sincerity and afraid to confront anything that might challenge his

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96

superficial bonheur. If he had a rock inside him, Tommaso would walk into Natalia’s

place, and go straight to business, without flinching at the waterworks. Proof of his rock

would be in the hollow way he’d stare her down and tell her, “Don’t talk of Mahler. Not

even Lautrec or Verdi or a BMW will buy me. Me no want you. You go your way, sans

moi. I will be down some street, or at a restaurant table, reveling in my retreat. Restless,

perhaps eating oysters or some crab, intent to eavesdrop on a tedious argument that some

man is overwhelming his woman with. As people come and go, I sit, eat and listen. She

pleads, ‘What is it? What is it?’ And I laugh, rub my hands, scratch my back and lick my

chops. I’m no longer in that pool: like smoke through a chimney I have drifted into

freedom. Shery left me in October, while I was asleep. Love song over, and pain settled

in. But now it is me who leaves. If you hurt, Natalia, then curl up in your house— but let

me go.”

And what if she pleaded, like he knows she would?

“Trust me, there will be time. You’re better off without me. Talk to a friend,

she’ll agree.”

But what if she said she was terminally ill and wanted to spend her last few

months with him?

“Stop. You need the introspective time alone, and you must dare. Dare to make

this time the reversal and creation of your new universe. You must.”

And what if she said it was a horrible thing to face?

“Yes, I have known them all— the good, the bad, the ugliest of times. Days when

I wanted to die, days when all I wanted was gin and cigarettes, days when I wished I were


97

a broken record and could skip from time to time, only to repeat myself. But then I dared

to take the leap, and it’s worth it, trust me.”

And what if she caught on to his heavy-handed bullshit?

“No, I am not digressing from the matter at hand, how can you presume that?”

And what if she says she can see he’s so full of it that his eyes are brown?

“I see. Because I speak of a narrow truth that I know all too well, and of the

smoke of freedom that will allow you to rise beyond this inevitable loneliness?”

What if she calls him a cruel son-of-a-bitch?

“I’m not being cold. I’m trying to give you strength through this moment of

crisis. I know how it is. When it happened, I wept, involuntarily fasted and even prayed!

Gone in the head, me praying!”

What if she laughs? It might cause him to blow my cover!

“Oh, so now you snicker? My melodrama might be funny, but trust me, I was

afraid. Afraid because I measured my worth in unison with her. Like a porcelain tea set,

I was the cup and she the saucer...well, more like the other way around.”

And is he prepared for all the tears, all the self-loathing?

“Of course you still turn me on, but you’re worth much more than that. You

deserve more, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all the while. It’s our sunset, the

end of our novel. I’ve trailed off somewhere else. No, I can’t. Impossible! Not even

one last time.”

And what if she says he lied to her, that he used her?


98

“But I fully...eh—strongly think our story is worthwhile; there will always be a

part of you in me, because I did feel settled.”

What if she misunderstands him and tries to go down to make him feel settled all

over again?

‘That is not it at all, that is not what I meant at all. Please. No! I am no longer

your sweetness. You are better than me, and I cannot do, I must not do! If we do it now,

which could be easy— no doubt, yes— I would simply be using you. And please, you

must be cautious in these next few weeks. You are too vulnerable to crooked men with

high ideas.”

What if she says that he’s a ridiculous bastard for making her think he still cares?

“I am not! At times maybe, but not now, I know what I say. Your desire for it,

once I leave, will grow and grow, and before you know it you’ll roll over for the first Joe

on the scene and be his peach to eat. He’ll unzip his trousers and walk all over you.”

Why is he spending all this time on her, she might ask?

“It’s because I care. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t even be here, don’t you think?”

What if she requests one last hump?

“Don’t, please don’t. I don’t think that riding me will solve anything. I do not

think that your ass or blowing me is the answer. I am nothing, remember.”

He’d then hug her and walk out, find himself in the savannah. The cigarette he

smokes tastes like the monkey fur in his hand, and then a woman with dark hair and thick

eyebrows comes to him with a smile and he tells her that he did more than just live. And

he then lays her down and lets her sleep, nestled in his lap, while he stares at the blank


99

ceiling of his old bedroom in Vignola, with the Yogi and Bubu sheets. And then he goes

on Jeopardy! and wins just enough money to pay back his loans, start fresh. Alex Trebec

and Angela Lansbury come up to congratulate him, and Tommaso gets Tainto a job as an

extra on the set of Magnum P.I., which eventually leads to a career in baking for the

largest bread makers in the country; it’s in New Jersey. He’s riding a Piaggio Si scooter,

driving by his elementary school’s playground and being waved at by Santino, the

epileptic who in first grade broke Katia’s elbow by making her trip when he convulsed

and drooled on the dusty terrazzo floor of the classroom. The poor idiot laughs while he

cries. Tommaso’s teacher looks like Amiri Baraka but he’s sure his name is Santino

because that’s what it feels like. Then he and Maurizio and Paolo go down to the boys’

room. They know the older boys will be hiding in the stalls and lurking quietly behind

them until they all start to piss— then they’ll come out and kick them in the back, making

them pee all over themselves.

When they open the door it’s dark, pitch black. Tommaso doesn’t want to be in

here but he still keeps looking for the urinal. He doesn’t want to, really doesn’t want to

but can’t help it. He knows someone’s down there, waiting for him to walk by, then he’ll

jum p on Tommaso. The urinals are far, it’s a long dark hallway and he senses its

configuration is that of a perfect square. It’s dark and he keeps walking by this body on

the floor. It’ll jump soon, so he must walk by it again so it can jump. Creeping this time

because he’s sure it’ll leap and grab him, Tommaso sneaks slowly. And of course the

body pounces, but Tommaso’s in one of those half-dreams that can’t be stopped until

he’s jerked awake, so he waits until he can consciously panic about the fact that the


100

body’s pale fingernails are tickling his throat, before he regains a feel for Tainto’s

corduroy couch.

He’s still here, in his underwear, on Tainto’s couch.

Bra.

After four days of sleep at Tainto’s, I come back home to find eight messages on

the answering machine. Seven from Natalia, one from my mother. Natalia’s all have to

do with me being a motherfucker who should never call her again. My mother’s says that

she and the family can’t wait to see me, and hopes I’ve been keeping my spirits up while

looking for a job.

I leave the day after tomorrow, and I cannot wait to get out of this sinking shit

hole of a city.


101

Federico Giusti, his fa ther’s father, fought in the Resistance. He was a founding

member o f the Partito Socialista Italiano. One afternoon in 1931, when

he was passing by the Communist Party’s offices and saw the building ablaze,

Federico Giusti rescued the little girl trapped on the third floor.

When he came out o f the inferno with the child, a fascist stabbed him twice in the

abdomen. Fortunately fo r Federico Giusti, the kn ife’s blade struck his cigarette

case both times. He only needed twenty-seven stitches.

In the summer o f 1962, on a day trip to Lago di Garda with his wife Matilde,

Federico Giusti went fo r a swim, got a cramp in his stomach, and drowned.

Matilde lived the rest o f her life with a sore heart.

In the winter o f 1989, less than a year after Tommaso's fa ther died,

seventy-four-year-old Matilde left her house at eight in the morning, as usual.

She walked through Vignola's old piazza nodding at a few acquaintances, down

the cobblestone steps past the castle, and onto the bridge that makes the other

side o f the Panaro River accessible. She looked at the castle, and at the Agip gas

station, and then at the gray sky. Then, in one clumsy try, Matilde slithered over

the railing and plummeted into the brown waters o f the torrential Panaro. A few

cars saw her go, but nobody ever found her body.


102

CHAPTER XI

INTERLUDE: A BUSY MORNING IN THE PO VALLEY

Wolf, already panting from the early-morning July heat, wags his tail at the sight

of his master, but doesn’t get up. Piero, gangly and naked except for his striped briefs,

bends to scruff the German Shepard’s head, then flattens his plush ears, and in one clean

swipe swoops down onto his snout to rub its wetness.

“Good morning, you old ruffian. Got a lot of juice on that nose of yours, don’t

you?”

After a trip to the bathroom, where he washes his pits and ass in less than two

minutes, Piero walks past Wolf again and goes back into his room. Dressed in five

minutes and he’s out the door and behind the wheel of his white Fiat, driving towards

Vignola’s center.

He mbs the sleep out of his eyes, and then picks at the comer of his sockets. He

looks at the eye-couscous on the tip of his finger and tries to flick it out the window.


103

When he realizes that the yellow slime won’t budge, Piero smears it into the passenger

seat’s fibers, making it invisible to everyone but him.

He pulls into a spot right in front of Bar Del Corso, walks in, and is greeted by

Gianni, the bartender.

“What are you doing up so early? Joining the rest of the working world?” Gianni

shows his rotting teeth and looks for acceptance with the few businessmen gathered

around the counter. But nobody pays attention to Gianni, they are too busy reading the

paper and dunking their pastries in coffee.

Piero, too sleepy to offer the rotten-toothed bartender a rebuttal, smiles and orders

a cappuccino. “Later, after my coffee. Can you bring it out to me?”

“Sure thing, slick. Anna will be right out.”

Piero sits at a table under the bar’s awning. He looks at cars drive by, on their

way to work. He looks at people walking by, on their way to work. Old ladies with

plastic bags, shuffling their swollen feet to and from the baker, the butcher, the vegetable

stand; they won’t go to the supermarket that was built in seventy-three. They’ll stay the

way they’ve been since youth, doing their daily shopping around Vignola’s center, and

die that way. If they absolutely need anything from the supermarket, they’ll send their

sons or daughters to pick it up with their car.

Anna, Gianni’s chubby sister, sets the cappuccino down. “Hi, Piero.”

'Thank you.”

While he sips, Piero nods at a few passers by, his father’s friends, old high school

acquaintances. It’s a quiet, hot moming.


104

And then his phone rings.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Are you up?”

“Yes, I’m at the bar grabbing a coffee.”

“You got the list?”

Piero feels for the crumpled piece of paper in his jeans’ pocket. “Yes, Dad.”

“Don’t forget anything. You know how Mom and Aunt Maria get. Then they’ll

complain about how they won’t have enough time to prepare them, and this, and that, and

soon. We won’t hear the end of it.”

“I won’t. Dad. Don’t worry.”

“See you at home. And be on time.”

“Yes, Dad. Bye.”

Piero goes inside and pays for the coffee.

“You coming back later?”

“It’s like any other day, Gianni. Only difference is that I’ve got stuff to do before

lunch.”

“See you then.”

“Ok,” Piero hollers, already out the door. “See you later.”

After the supermarket, where he bought a case of Del Monte canned tomatoes,

three cases of sparkling water (for him and his father) and a case of still water (for his


105

mother), Piero goes to the baker to get the daily bread, and a big bag of day-old that his

mother had called in advance to reserve.

“Doing the shopping for Mom today?” the baker asks.

“Yes.”

“Everything all right, I hope.”

“Yes, Mr. Rinaldi. A ll’s fine.”

“Good.” Rinaldi smiles, and tells his daughter to get the bag for the Giusti family

that’s in the back. “Yesterday’s, Lucia.”

“I know. Dad.” She comes out, hands the large brown bag to Piero with a smile,

and helps the next customer.

“Is that it?” Rinaldi asks. “Want a slice of pizza or a focaccia?”

“No, thank you."

“Have a good day, then.”

“You too, Mr. Rinaldi. Bye, Lucia.”

Methodically, Piero proceeds to the ice-cream shop to order a one-hundred Euro

cake: hazelnut, vanilla, chocolate, and stracciatella, topped with freshly whipped cream.

Bigger than a pan of lasagna.

“It’ll be ready after tomorrow, won’t it?” Piero asks Mrs. Donatelli.

“I can have it for you tonight if you’re really worried,” Mrs. Donatelli huffs.

“No, it’s ok. My dad will be by to get it at noon. Make sure it says just this,” and

Piero points at the paper he had given Mrs. Donatelli a minute before.


106

“Piero, we’ve been doing this before your dad was bom.” She puts the note in her

pocket and walks away. “W -E-L-C-O-M-E,” she says. “I might be old but I can still

read. Good bye, Piero.” She smiles.

“Bye, Mrs. Donatelli.”

On the way to his car, Piero runs into Sandrone, the forty-something dishwasher

with a few black hairs on the tip of his nose. They talk about last night’s work, of how

busy the pizzeria was for a Tuesday.

“Yes, but it’s always nice to drink at the boss’s expense after a long shift,” Piero

says.

“Certainly, can’t be beat. I overdid it though on that grappa. My head’s still

hammering away. Boom boom.”

“Christ, I couldn’t see straight this moming, I almost shit in the bidet.”

“Ha. I like shitting.” Sandrone looks at his Velcro shoes, then back to Piero.

“Want to grab a coffee?”

Piero looks at his watch. “Shit. I can’t. I have to run.” They shake hands and

part ways.

At Bertacchini’s butcher shop, Piero gets in line behind a woman with a cane who

orders a quarter-kilo of ground beef.

The younger butcher, the son of the son of old man Bertacchini, was a schoolmate

of Piero’s. His name is Fausto, a real dull-witted guy with an apron that’s more red than

white and a weak little mustache that hasn’t grown any since their days in school.


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“Hey, Giusti,” Fausto Bertacchini says, nonchalantly.

“Hey, Bertacchini.”

“What d’you need?”

Piero pulls the list from his pocket and quickly reads it to himself. “I need a kilo

of triple-ground veal, a kilo of triple-ground prosciutto, a kilo of triple-ground

mortadella, a—”

“Slow, Giusti. A little at a time. Kilos of veal, mortadella and prosciutto?”

“Yes. Triple-ground.”

Piero watches Fausto do his job: chop, weigh, grind, grind, grind. Pack, weigh

again, and write the price on the paper wrapper. “What else?”

“A pair of chicken necks, a handful of chicken feet, one liver.”

“Chicken?”

“Yes. For broth.”

“You making tortellini? In this heat?” Bertacchini says. He looks at his father

and smirks. He looks at a lady and shrugs.

“Yes. It’s a special occasion.”

“Wedding?”

“No.”

“Birthday?”

Now both the lady and Fausto’s father won’t do another thing unless they find out

what it is that Piero is celebrating.

“My cousin from America is coming the day after tomorrow.”


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“America?” the lady says, as if she hadn’t heard of the place.

“Yes. He’s a history teacher.”

“Your aunt Maria’s boy?” Bertacchini the elder asks.

“Yes. Tommaso.”

“How is he? I heard he has his doctorate in letters.”

“He’s fine, just fine.”

“I bet he’ll be better once he eats some of his mother’s food,” the lady says,

smiling.

“Yes,” Piero says, forcing a smile at this stranger.

“Anything else, Giusti?” Fausto asks.

Piero looks at the list that has grown moist in his hand. “Uh, an eighth of

prosciutto. No, make it a quarter. And give me an eighth of coppa.”

Fausto carefully slices the meat onto its waxed paper, weighs it, scribbles a price

and lays it on the counter. “Is that it?”

“Oh, I also need,” Piero looks at the glass casing, “that rabbit there. The third one

back, with the big eye holes.”

Fausto takes the skinless, stretched-out rabbit by the hind legs, lifts it up and gives

it a pat on its rump, like a doctor. “Anything else?”

‘T h a t’s all.”

It’s hot in the shop, hotter than outside, although two ventilators are oscillating

right in the faces of all who step up to the counter.

Piero and Fausto’s father exchange money.


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‘Thank you Piero,” Bertacchini the elder says. “Make sure to give my best to

your cousin. Tell him we’d love to see him. I remember him when he was in his stroller,

always making his baby sounds and screaming every time I’d hold a chicken at him,”

Bertacchini chuckles, looking for a response in Piero that he won’t get.

“Sure, I’ll tell him,” Piero says. ‘Thank you. Bye, Fausto.”

“Bye,” Fausto says, not looking at him, helping another lady.

“And Piero,” elder Bertacchini says.

“Yes?”

“Make sure you go home and put that in the fridge right away. It’ll spoil real

quick in this heat.”

“Sure thing, thank you.”

Back at his house, Piero walks into the foyer with all the meats, and is greeted by

a wobbly Wolf.

“Back away, wet nose. None of this is for you.”

Wolf barely moves, too arthritic to make any flamboyant or significant shifts. He

barely leaves enough room for Piero to squeeze by, and then drags his body behind his

master, following him and the sweet meats into the kitchen.

“Is that you, Piero?”

“Yes, Mom.”

Piero’s mother is wearing an apron and rubber gloves. She’s cleaning the

bathroom. “Did you get everything?”


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“Meat’s here. I’ll put the tomatoes and water in the cellar.”

“Bring a few bottles up and put them in the fridge.”

“Ok,” Piero says while walking back out to his car.

“Piero!”

“Yes?”

“Did you order the cake?”

“Yes.”

“Did you give them the note?”

“Yes, don’t worry.”

“Oh, I worry. You remember what happened to Mrs. Molinari from down the

street, don’t you?”

“I know,” Piero says, “I know. She got her granddaughter a cake for her

thirteenth birthday and they inversed the numbers. That happened when I was three,

Mom. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Well,” she says, “one can never be too sure.” And she proceeds to go back into

the bathroom to finish her cleaning.

Piero, after a struggle with trying to lift all four cases of water at once— he

couldn’t do more than two at a time— finishes unloading his car, puts the meats in the

fridge, steals a slice of prosciutto for him and Wolf, and goes to the bathroom to make

sure his hair is acceptable. Once outside, with a foot in his car. his mother yells out the

window.

“Piero!”


I l l

“What?”II

“Be home before one. We won’t wait if you’re late.”

Without responding, he drives away. It’s already eleven-forty. His friends are

waiting.

Piero has a harder time finding a spot for his car now; near the noon hour, the

piazza and center fill with late-moming shoppers and other people who’ll chat to just

about anyone as long as they can kill some time before going home to luncheon with their

families. The piazza never bustles like it does during this time of day.

Marching under the fierce sun towards the bar, Piero sees Sacchi’s Mercedes and

Pozzi’s Golf parked side by side. On the sidewalk, Bacchus’ old red Vespa. All three

men are sitting outside, in sunglasses, with cigarettes. Pozzi’s in his beige suit, Sacchi in

jeans, Bacchus in bright orange shorts and a white sleeveless t-shirt.

“Bacchus,” Piero mentions in passing, “I didn’t realize you could be a tourist in

your own town.” He opens the door, tells Gianni to send out an espresso, and sits facing

Sacchi. Not a second passes that Piero lifts his chair and moves it against the wall. “I

hate having my back to the street.”

The four men sit hip to hip, all under the awning, all looking straight ahead at the

sights and sounds of Vignola’s miniature chaos. A pretty, young woman in tight jeans

walks by.

“That’s Franceschini’s girl, she’s from Fanano, or some place around there,”

Pozzi says, near salivating.

“Who?” Piero asks.


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“You know,” Sacchi responds, taking a long drag off his cigarette, “that smug

Bolognese lawyer who’s married to Sonia Cassetti’s older sister. Drives that old Dino,

lives up in the hills in that house with that big sculpture of a square in its yard.”

‘T hat was not the older Cassetti sister!” Bacchus protests.

“No shit.”

‘T hat guy,” Bacchus says, perplexed, “fucks that girl and the older Cassetti?

Sweet Margherita?”

“Yeah,” Sacchi says, “I even think your sweet Margherita knows. That guy slays

so many of them, you can just tell it, and I doubt she ever says a word. He’s got it.”

“No, prince,” Pozzi retorts, “you’ve got it. You don’t have the wife.”

‘That guy’s an asshole,” Piero slurs. ‘T h a t’s what I can tell.”

“What else can you tell?” Pozzi jests.

‘T hat I’m sleepy as hell.”

“What,” working-man Pozzi says, “sleeping until eleven tires you out?”

“Listen, Jean-Paul, I was actually up at eight running all over the place getting

this, that and the other. I even stopped at your mom’s for some coffee and a kiss. A big

wet one, right on my left test--”

“Enough. You know I hate it when you tell me about my mom’s missionary work

for the improvement of Italy’s twenty-six-year-old virgins. After all, I don’t tell you

about your mom’s work with Bacchus, do I, now? What our pious mothers do for charity

should remain between them, their beneficiaries, and The Lord Jesus Christ.” And the


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men chuckle, like any other summer moming, like any other time a mother joke is told.

Certain things, however ancient they might be, never get old.

At noon the church bells ring their melody. Pozzi stands, drops a few coins on the

table, and leaves. He works in Modena, half-an-hour away from Vignola, so he has his

mother fix him lunch an hour before the rest of his family eats.

Soon after, Bacchus stands up. “Pool this afternoon?” he asks. “I’ll be there

around one or so.”

“I don’t think I can. Got things to do at home, then 1 work at six.”

“I didn’t think you worked on Wednesdays.”

“I don’t, Bacchus, but if you recall, I told you that I switched shifts so that I could

be with my cousin Friday night.”

Bacchus is often in a drunken glaze. He can afford it. ‘T hat’s right!” Bacchus

says. “The American is coming, little Bush. Hey, ok American Joe, azza right, thenk you

very moch.” He laughs at himself, pleased. “You going to come out on Friday? Should

be good. Right, Sacchi?” He jabs Sacchi, who nods in return.

“We’ll see if he’s up for it. I’ll call you that night if I don’t see you before.”

“Ok. See you up at the pool, Stefano?”

Sacchi tells him yes, that they’ll get a few beers and play some ping-pong.

Bacchus hops on his Vespa, puts on his father’s Harley-Davidson helmet, and cranks the

starter. He shoots a grin at his friends, and drives off leaving a faint trail o f smoke that

lingers within the stagnant air for a few seconds.

Once alone, Sacchi and Piero order the customary sparkling white wine aperitif.


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“How long is that wild man staying, you say?” Sacchi asks.

“I’m not sure, he never told me. I spoke to him about a month ago.” Piero

laughs. “Catch this. He lost his girlfriend, his job, and now lives in a house full of

university students. Says he’s been drinking more than ever before!”

‘T hat’s tough to beat, eh?”

‘T hat’s what I told him. But he says he’s been really going hard at it.”

“Good, he’ll once again fit perfectly within our clan.”

“Yes,” Piero says, “I suppose that crazy bastard will.”

“What was it that he did anyway? Taught music or something?”

“He was a school teacher. History.”

“Unbelievable!”

“I know. I would never let that guy near my daughter, and I love him, he’s

family.”

“Did he commit any atrocities?” Sacchi smirks. “I can see him pulling one or

two.

“You know me, I don’t ask such things. If he wants to tell me, fine. If not, fine.

I just hope he’s not all doped up like he used to be.”

“A little never hurt anyone.”

“I know, but to him everything is either black or white. No little— it’s either all or

none.”

‘The guy’s a beast, though.” Sacchi looks at a good-looking mother pushing a

stroller walk past the bar. He takes out a cigarette and lights it. “Whatever his code is, I


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like it. I’m not sure I understand it, but I like it. No limits. Shit, you remember last time

he was here, down at MMR, how we’d all get to my place and sleep, while he would

open a beer, slip into his flip-flops, and go sleep on the beach? We’d show up in the

afternoon, his eyes redder than the fires o f hell, telling us he slept only half an hour. ‘I

can’t sleep on the beach, but I keep trying it anyway. I’m not going out tonight, I’m

staying home to sleep.’ And of course--”

“He’d be leading the pack with consummation after consummation, sweating it all

out on the dance floor, in between the two fattest girls in the place!” Piero looks at his

watch and sighs.

“What?”

“Nothing. My parents— my father especially— has really been on my balls lately

about doing something more than just waiting tables. He wants me to find a school—

accounting or something...anything, as long as I start pulling my own load. He’s afraid

I’ll end up a bum.”

“But did you tell him of your cousin’s sociological study?” Sacchi lets out a

guffaw.

For a minute they stay silent, looking at the steadily quieting street, thinking back

to Tommaso’s accounts of his ‘experiment’, which ultimately, was an indescribable

experience. At the beach all Tommaso had told them was, “If you’re white, and

somewhat good-looking, people might help.”


116

INTERLUDE: WITHIN THE INTERLUDE

One moming after returning from the Paradiso, Tommaso had changed into his

beach attire, and went walking M M R’s streets, from cafe to cafe, striking conversations

with the handful of African men who walk all day along the shore, selling copied CD’s,

necklaces, fake designer sunglasses, and other novelties. He had asked— the men he felt

were apt to talk to him— if they were happy doing this, if people treated them well, and if

they could do anything, what would they do. Most of these men responded the same

way, more or less. They would look Tommaso in the eye, with no sign of sentimentality,

and say: va, qa va. I rather be sitting than walking, buying instead of selling. But

this is what I do, because this is what I have.” And then Tommaso would shake their

hands and wish them luck.

That same early moming, Tommaso became interested in a very tan girl who was

mopping the patio of a cafe near the shore. He stopped and asked her if they were open.

The skinny girl with black hair and an armband tattoo told him yes, so he went in. When

he came back outside with his cappuccino, he asked the girl if he could sit.

“You’re the customer, you can do whatever you want.” She smiled, not really

looking at him, and continued her mopping.

Tommaso, still drunk, feeling the surge of three coffees, couldn’t keep his hands

still, although what he really wanted to do was to lie down. He finished the last sip of his

coffee and then asked the girl what her name was and where she was from.

“Moroccan. My name is Stefi.”


117

“My name is Tommaso.” He stood up. “Can I help you? I’d like an espresso,

but I got no money.”

“You don’t look poor. Where are you from?”

“America. Florida.”

“Sure you are.”

“Don’t roll your eyes. I’m serious.” He pulled out both his passports, and in a

minute he had explained the story of his life. “I like you, you look noble.”

“You’re drunk, very drunk.”

“I know, but it still doesn’t change things, does it?” He gazed at the still beach in

the distance. “C ’mon, let me help you. I want more coffee.”

“Your eyes are hurt, no?”

“I don’t have sunglasses.”

“No, I mean you look down.”

“No more than anyone else, and definitely less than many.”

“What do you do, Tommaso?” She was mopping, making the patio’s terracotta

clean.

“I could tell you this and that, but the truth is that I don’t know. I really don’t

know.” He lit a cigarette and offered one to Stefi, who didn’t want one. Tommaso

continued. “I wish there was a book or notes somewhere about what I should do. Don’t

you wish there was something like that?”

‘There are, many. Some call it the Bible, others call it the Koran.”


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“Yeah, I’ve heard of them. But I need something for me and only me. A guide to

living in my body.”

‘T h a t’s for you to write.” Stefi said. She smiled, and Tommaso thought she was

beautiful. “Let me get you your coffee.” And she went inside.

Tommaso waited, ripping a few napkins to shreds and burning them in the

ashtray. After his coffee, Tommaso asked to help her, payback.

“Don’t want your help. I wish I could talk, but my boss needs me inside.”

“Well, since I can’t bother you I best go. W hich way is the Albacore beach area?

That’s where I’ll meet my friends later.”

“It’s down that way, a good thirty-minute w alk.”

Tommaso wondered how it was possible that he had strayed so far off the beaten

path. Sacchi’s house was less than a ten-minute walk to the Albacore.

‘T his town is a maze. I always get lost.”

Stefi nodded with a smile, but didn’t say anything.

“What time do you get off work?”

‘Three or four.”

“Do you want to come to the beach later?”

“Maybe.”

“What if I come get you?”

“Ok. I can do that, maybe.”

Tommaso shook her small hand, thanked her for the coffee, and said he’d be

back. But that afternoon, with Stefi's spirit drifting in his mind and his friends’ presence


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in his face, Tommaso didn’t go back. He had forgotten the precise details of what she

looked like, of where she worked, and besides knowing that he had gotten a free coffee

out of her, he couldn’t remember anything else. They had talked kindly, they had smiled,

and they had said their goodbyes. That was it.

AND NOW, BACK TO THE ORIGINAL INTERLUDE

In front of Bar Del Corso, Sacchi stands up and shakes Piero’s hand.

“Force your cousin to come out Friday night. We all want to see him.”

“Are you going up to the pool later?”

“No, I don’t think so. The Brazilian’s going to be in MMR tonight, and she’s not

working. I’ll go out with her and spend a day or two there. I’ll be back Friday.” He

smiles.

“Lucky bastard.”

“Luck has everything to do with me.” He opens the doors to his Mercedes.

“Should’ve rubbed some off on that lousy team of ours!”

Sacchi shakes his head, not wanting to get into another discussion about Italy’s

pitiful showing in Korea. He waves and closes the door.

Walking back to his Fiat, Piero sees Maurizio Graziosi crossing the street, going

towards the bar. Piero backtracks his steps.

“Graziosi!”

“Hey Piero, how’s things?”


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“Good. You know Tommy’s coming Friday, right?”

“I knew he was coming, but forgot exactly when.” He looks at his watch.

“Listen, I have to run. Give him my number— I know he doesn’t have it, although it’s

been the same since birth— and tell him to keep a night open next week. We want him

over at our house for dinner.”

“Sure, no worry.” They shake hands. “Give my best to the author, mother and

sister.”

“Ok, bye.”

It’s a quarter to one. Piero will be home on time.

At the kitchen table, Piero and his parents eat rigatoni with butter and parmesan, a

salad, and some prosciutto and coppa. He keeps the scraps of fat on the side of his plate.

He’ll feed them to Wolf in secrecy. The old dog is supposed to be on a strict diet.

“Piero,” his father says in between forkfuls of pasta, “I’m going to be in Sassuolo

until one or two on Friday, so after the airport, you and Tommy are going to have to go to

pick up the cake.”

“Ok.”

“You won’t be here for lunch?” Piero’s mother asks.

“I’ll be a little late, sorry.”

“Here we go again!” She lets her fork fall on the plate. “Always doing this and

that, and—”


121

The man looks at his wife. “Listen, I’ll be here, but I have to go to this meeting.

Don’t bust my balls, I already have enough on the plate as it is.”

“I know you’ll--” she’s interrupted.

“Enough! I’ll be here, so can you shut it, please?”

Piero’s mother, mumbling to herself, keeps eating and doesn’t speak a real word

for the remainder of lunch.

“Just don’t forget about the cake, will you?”

“I won’t, Dad. I won’t.”

“Good.”

It has been a trying day, and it’s not over. Piero still has to wait tables. Instead of

watching the usual hour or two of television, he takes the fan from the kitchen into his

bedroom, pulls down the shades, and takes a nice nap. He wakes to W olfs ju icy nose in

his face, telling him it’s time to go to work.


122

Tommaso’s m other’s fa ther—known as Nonno Aurelio to the family, Ragioniere

Aurelio Bettolini to Vignola— was in his late twenties during the war. He was a

quiet fascist who was able to avoid enrollment due to a heart murmur, so he

worked and worked, and became Vignola's accountant.

In his late eighties now, Aurelio still thinks Italy's best days were under

II Duce. “He had the right idea, ” Aurelio will say, though not too often

anymore. In his old age, he has learned to accept reality. “Reality is, ’’ he says.

Aurelio’s wife, Nonna Luisa, has never voiced her mind. What Aurelio

says, is life.

Tommaso thinks she’s the best cook. He could eat her veal scaloppine until he

choked, and listen to Nonno Aurelio sing his favorite Aida arias until the

Lambrusco ran out.


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CHAPTER Xn

A BALSAMIC MOMENT

My cousin Piero has the dirtiest car in Italy. He doesn’t smoke, but all his

ashtrays are full. The seats have what seem to be coffee stains, but it’s not coffee; no one

here drinks coffee in their cars. The backseat floor is so cluttered with crushed cans of

Fanta that I cannot help but wonder whether this is Piero’s idea of a shrine in honor of the

pagan orange soda god. The windows are grimy, inside and out. For people who live

with their parents, the car is— ought to be— a safe haven, a place for all sorts of

interaction. He obviously hasn’t gotten laid in a long while.

Our drive from Bologna’s Marconi airport to Vignola takes less than half an hour

on the back road. On the way, familiar landmarks greet me: the black and white Zola

Predosa city limit sign, the Q8 gas station, the small bar under the portico where my

father would always stop for an espresso— on our way to and from Bologna. Why he


124

liked that bar, I don’t remember. M ust’ve been the coffee, or perhaps the owner’s

daughter was fine, though I don’t recall any women in the joint.

At Castelfranco, Vignola’s castle appears in the distance at roughly two-o’clock.

“Shit,” Piero says.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. I forgot we have to stop and pick up the cake.”

“And?”

“Nothing. I had forgotten. That’s it.”

I punch him in the arm and then light a cigarette. He looks good. Good shape,

good hair, well dressed. I remember when I was eight, and he was five or six, we used to

play father and son. The game was that he’d say something offensive to me, and I’d

begin to chase him around the house until I got a hold of him and wrestled him to the

floor. Then, with particular theatricality. I’d slap him on the ass with a sandal, or belt, or

ping-pong paddle, and curse him and his mother, God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary.

“Do you see Maurizio much?” I ask.

“Who?”

“Graziosi, who else?”

“Shit, he comes around Bonno’s every once in a while, but you know him. Has

that great piece of a girlfriend, works his ass off at the factory. He lives his tranquil life,

unlike some of us.”


125

“I haven’t spoken to him since last time I came.” Mauri and I never keep in

touch. Seeing each other when I come back home is all we need. There are no

expectations.

“He knows you’re coming, I saw him just the other day. Call him later.”

“Good, I will.” I roll the window all the way down— the Fiat’s air-conditioner is

too weak. I look at my watch, not yet noon. “How’s Veronica doing?”

He smiles. “Better than ever.”

“She have a boyfriend?”

“She was going with this guy Callo for a bit, but I’m not sure.” Piero looks at me.

“An asshole, parents own that sporting store on the way to Spilamberto.”

“So she’s Fine, huh?”

“Oh, so fine.”

“What’s for lunch?” I ask.

Piero gives me his big smile, a good person’s smile. “My impatient cousin, you’ll

find out soon enough. All I can say is that there’s an ice-cream cake for dessert.”

He honks his horn at an old woman riding her bike along the busy thoroughfare.

“Lady,” he says pulling up to her, “I don’t feel like killing anyone today. Stay in your

lane!” A few cars have grown irritated by Piero’s slow driving and pass us. He honks

again and tells the woman to have a good day.

Finally, after we pass the all-night bakery in Formica and go around the hairpin

turn that separates the Apennine foothills from the valley, Vignola’s castle comes to full

R e p ro d u c e d with p e rm iss ion of th e copyright ow ner. F u r th e r reproduction prohibited without perm iss ion .

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view. We cross the Panaro’s bridge where my grandma jumped to freedom, pass the

Agip station that has now become an Esso, and come right under the castle.

‘T hey’ve restored it?” Its bricks look new, clean, too nice and not real.

“It was like this when you last came.”

“I don’t remember the castle at all last time.”

“Still doing drugs?”

“Just your kind.”

“Good. Nonno Aurelio’s got three types of Lambrusco for us, and Dad’s busting

out this grappa that a client of his from Aosta gave as a holiday present.” He smiles.

“It’s fucking nice to see you.”

No doubt my mother is the first to come to me, a few tears in her worn eyes.

She’s a little shorter, a little plumper, a little grayer. A new gold tooth sparkles. She

smiles so big that I see it lodged in the back of her mouth, on the upper left side. She

takes my hand in both her small, calloused, dry palms, and leads me inside the house. I

put down my suitcases and take a deep breath. I smell childhood, old furniture, rosemary

and the roasted rabbit this noble herb has died for.

And we eat. First: tortellini in broth. They trigger sweat beads the size of

cherries, but are so goddamn good that I eat them until I’m full. 1 can tell my mother and

aunt made them because they’re no bigger than the tip of a pinky, the way they’re

supposed to be. I still can’t understand how my grandmother can be in her sweater with


127

this surge of heat, in July, slowly sipping away at the broth as if it actually cooled down

her body.

Second: rabbit and roasted potatoes, a fucking delicacy that I could suckle on until

all my buttons pop. The Lambrusco is sweet and cold, and I cannot refuse a refill.

Then a salad to clean the palate, which although I really didn’t want, I eat anyway

because Nonno Aurelio has brought out his hundred-year-old balsamic, vinegar so thick

and sweet that it resembles fresh blood, or fondue chocolate.

“Well?” Nonno Aurelio asks.

“Good,” I say in between forkfuls, “all so good.”

“Damn right. It cost two-hundred thousand just for this little vial.”

Two hundred thousand liras are one hundred euros more or less. It’s already been

six months since the conversion, and they still compare everything in liras. An espresso

used to cost one thousand liras tops, now, with the conversion, it costs almost one

thousand six hundred. A pizza was somewhere between three and four thousand liras,

now it costs six or seven. “All has gone to shit,” Nonno had told me on the phone in

January, “I have so many goddamned coins that I don’t know what to do with them. And

you know what? These bastards were smart. All these coins you spend like water, as if

they were the old coins, but they’re not! W e’ve got four thousand lira coins now. That’s

two euros! A four thousand coin! Can you believe it?”

It’s like dollars now, and for me it’s as if nothing’s changed, really. Coming here

with dollars I’d always have to multiply or divide anyway; this euro makes things easier

for me. But for Italians—old timers especially— it’s as confounding as a talking dog.


128

They pick up these coins and look at them in wonder, trying to figure out what in the hell

they are spending, bitching about the inflation and of how everything became more

expensive. Even when Piero and I went to pick up the cake, old lady Donatelli said

something like, “I still can’t figure these things out.”

I’m a bit dragging from the flight, but I hold on. I must get used to this sort of

feast because this is just the first of many. Throughout lunch they all ask me how things

are in the States, how Bush is doing, if things are scary, if the people are afraid, or

paranoid. 1 tell them nothing’s changed, not in the city; partly because I’m too tired and

don’t feel like saying all too much about it, and partly because it’s the truth. Nothing’s

getting better and it’ll probably get a lot worse. Shit, I remember when coming to Italy

with the dollar was like going to Bangladesh. Now I come to Italy, and it’s like going to

New York.

Thankfully, they don’t ask about Shery or my job. My mother must have told

them not to mention anything; at least not yet, not on this first day.

I only eat a sliver o f cake because I feel the tortellini pushing out of my eye

sockets, but then eat another piece because Nonno tells me that we’ll have some grappa

and that’ll make everything settle. I’m heavy and tired. All I can do now is smile and

mumble.

They say my eyes look exhausted and so after w e’ve put a good dent in the bottle

my relatives leave. They all kiss me and tell me to rest up. Piero says he’ll call me later.

I try to help my mother do the dishes, but she won’t have any of it.


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‘Take a nap, Baby. It was a long trip, and you need rest. I’ll get you up in a few

hours.”

I worry she’ll let me sleep until seven, until it’s time to eat again, and then I’ll

start that vicious cycle I got stuck on for the first week of my last visit: going from the

bed to the table and back to the bed, spend sleepless nights, only to do it all over the next

day.

“ Don’t let me sleep too much.”

“ I won’t, Baby.”

I go to my old room, with my old Coca-Cola desk lamp, my Battisti and Venditti

posters on the walls, my lime-green comforter on the little bed that at one time seemed

almost too big. My white, manual alarm clock is still living, ticking away as if time has

only stopped for it, and I set it for five-thirty. That’ll give me a few hours of rest, but not

too many. Tonight I need to get good sleep. I need to kick this jetlag thing as quickly as

possible. Last time, during that first week, I read all night, and slept all day. This time, I

didn’t even bring a book.

M y mother wakes me up at six thirty. It seems, after all, that my clock’s alarm

doesn’t work anymore. She tells me Piero’s on the phone.

He asks me if I want to grab an aperitif at Bonno’s bar. I tell him I’m not up for

it, to which he says, “Enough bullshit, I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.”

“Serious,” I say, “I’m not ready to see everyone quite yet. Let me hang with my

mother tonight.”


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“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He tells me to call him later, but I don’t.

I stay home with my mother. We eat a handful of leftover tortellini and I let my

mother eat the last little piece of rabbit. What I do is suck up the brownish-gristly

remnants that stick to the bottom of the pan, and sop up the rabbit-rosemary juice with

bread. She looks at me while I eat. Her eyes are pensive and sad, but the curled lips on

her aging face tell me everything is going to be all right.

I sit silently at the kitchen table while my mother does the dishes. I look out the

window to the orange street lamp, then at the moon’s sliver peeking out from behind the

building where as a child I developed my lust-glands. What ever happened to fat

Margherita Coppini? All the lights are out, and the building is drab and tired, almost

shapeless. It hasn’t started to crack yet, but I can tell the plaster is beginning to bubble.

It looks like an old, shriveled man sitting on a plastic lawn-chair, waiting for a summer

shower.

“What are you looking at?” she asks, scrubbing plates with a worn, gray sponge.

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

“You should talk to Piero about doing something with himself. His father is

starting to worry.”

“Why? He’s totally fine.”

“He’d like to see him find a real job.”

I put my hands on my mother’s shoulders. “He’s fine. Mom.”


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“He should become an accountant. He was always good in math.”

“Maybe compared to every other subject, but he wasn’t even really good at that,

Mom. He’s for the university, an American university where kids have fun and

eventually get a degree in something they know nothing about. Then he’d be ready for

something serious.”

“He’ll be thirty in three years. Tommy. You can’t do these things this late in

life.”

‘T hat’s not right, Mom. Anyone can do anything, anytime. All you need is will.”

“Is that it?” She wipes her wet hands on a rag. She sits, slips out of her slippers,

and rubs her feet. “Would you get me my cigarettes, please?”

Her Marlboros are in their usual place, in the living room, on the big bookshelf’s

third shelf, where the only picture of my father remains, in his plaid suit and red tie.

That’s also where he kept his Camels. I had become a Camel man at an early age, first

stealing my father’s, then Beppe’s. Beppe once caught me behind the house, when I was

fifteen, and told me I didn’t need to smoke on the sly. “You’re a big boy,” he had said.

“Do what you want. Just don’t throw the butts in the toilet.”

She lights her cigarette. I light one too. I should say something, anything, but the

smoke rises and accumulates around the florescent white light above us, and all I do is

stare at it, its thick grayness surrounding the light with its last gasps of life. Once the

smoke’s gone I force my exhalations up towards the light again, to see how smoky I can

get it, to see if 1 can change the light to better suit the moment.

“Stop that," my mother says. ‘Try blowing it toward the window, at least.”


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She stares at her swollen feet; the feet that once had red polish on a beach’s sand

are now crackling and blue with green veins. A bomb is going to drop, I can hear it

within my head.

“Why don’t you move back here?” she says, bombs away. “I don’t like you being

over there anymore, it frightens me more and more. I can smell a big mess is starting,

and I don’t like you being in the center of it. You know what your father would think.”

No. I don’t know what my father would think.

“Can we not talk about this now? I just want to sit here and enjoy.”

“Enjoy what? Uncertainty? Your father, God rest his soul, would tell you exactly

what to do, he would—”

“Please don’t talk about him, I don’t want to talk about him or nothing. I will

figure something out, don’t worry.”

“Impossible for me not to. W e’re both at an age where we need something. I

need you to be secure, and so do you. We both need your welfare.”

“Yes.” I light another cigarette with the hopes that the smoke will take me with it.

My sorry mother, still stuck to a man that I don’t know, pretending.

She puts her feet back into the slippers and stands. “I’m getting old. Tommy. Do

you understand what it’s like to be like me? Your only son living in the next hell,

unemployed, needing money, not doing anything about it— can you understand my

concern?”

“No, Mom. I’m an idiot. I can’t understand.”

“So why don’t—”


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“Because there’s nothing to worry about.”

She shakes her head and walks out on the balcony. It’s a muggy night, the stars

are out; someone once said the moon is God’s toenail. An alcoholic, brilliant

observation. I tell my mother. She doesn’t like it, or maybe she just doesn’t get it.

“When will you stop your dream talk? You can’t do that forever.”

“Mom, I can do it until I die.” I look at the drab building across the street. “It

doesn’t really matter.”

She looks at me. Her face, in this poor light, this toenail’s light, sags like a

willow. Her concern makes me sick. What a pitiful face, the face of my mother—lonely,

decaying, needy. I put my arm around her.

“Beautiful night.”

“Yes,” she says. “I put that fan in your room. You should use it, but make sure

not to put it too close to you or you’ll catch a cold.”

“I won’t, Ma. Don’t worry.”

“Can we talk some other time? I want to, we need to.”

“We can always talk.” I look at a light flicker in the sky. An airplane, traveling

to Mars.

“I want to talk about your poor father.”

“Maybe, Ma. Maybe.”

‘There are things you have to know.”


134

She waits for an answer, some sort of exclamation on my part, a brightening of

my face. But I need to know nothing. Nothing. When it comes to my father, knowledge

and nothingness are the same.

“Sure, Ma. Maybe.”

She rubs my head and kisses my cheek. She’s going to bed, without watching

television, without her cup of decaffeinated tea. Just bed. I know she won’t sleep right

away. I know she’ll be thinking. About what, that I don’t know. But I know she won’t

sleep.

On the porch, the smell of hot air and cigarettes. Neighboring televisions scream,

their blue lights flickering from windows, and I am one with nothing. Maybe I’ll watch

some television, though I don’t want to, and try to see what everyone else is seeing. Oh,

yeah. I’m sure I’ll see a revelation.


135

No note.


136

CHAPTER XHI

INTERLUDE: MEET A LEGEND

It hasn’t been a week that he’s back in Vignola, and already he’s disappointing his

family. His mother says don’t go. Uncle says why go. Cousin says you’re stupid to

go— don’t go right now.

But he goes anyway. He figures Bastille Day in Paris, regardless of France’s

lousy World Cup, must be as good as any other year. Anyway, there’s Sacchi. Where

there’s Sacchi, there seems to be action.

Stefano Sacchi is the utmost symbol of male prowess— he is man. He is the

stereotypical Italian man, the type o f man that’s been cliched to be by the majority of

secure heterosexual males who frequent sport pubs, “the kind of guy I’d be fucking if I

were gay.” When Sacchi goes out to party, more times than not he comes home with a

black eye. Jealous boyfriends blindside him all the time. Faithful, pious housewives

have been known to leave their families for a minute of his attention.


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But it’s not only because he’s Adonis incarnate that makes Sacchi who he is—the

real kicker is that he’s got more money than a sheik, that old family money that’s

engrained within the furniture of chateaux’s in Switzerland, the sands o f Curasao, the

textile factories in Indonesia.

His saving grace is that he’s afraid to fly, speaks only Italian, and that he’s not

comfortable in situations where his behavior is expected to be “refined” in compliance

with his family’s standards. Because of a rather remarkable rebellious strain in his genes,

Sacchi is one of those peculiar examples o f nature’s victory over nurture. He should be a

polyglot, a chamber pianist, an excellent tenor, the world’s greatest economist, a mogul.

But he’s not. He’s just Sacchi, the coolest guy in Vignola.

Tommaso had met him the last tim e he had come home, the summer before he

met Shery. It was like hanging out with his favorite superstar and finding out that he was

really as cool as he’d imagined. Tom maso’s cousin Piero had told him that hanging out

with Sacchi might get him laid, and if he w asn’t going to get laid, he’ll never have as

much fun not doing so.

Just a few hours ago, they were all sitting around at their friend Bonno’s bar,

having their Friday night pre-nightclub aperitifs, when Sacchi turned to Tommaso and

said he was sick of going to the same place, week after week, seeing the same faces, the

same music, the same of everything.

“When’s the fourteenth?” he had asked.

Tommaso looked at his watch. “Day after tomorrow.”


138

“Let’s go to Paris.”

Tommaso declined. His pockets were too light to pull something like this. But

Sacchi nudged and nudged, and then offered to pay the tab.

“I only got two-hundred,” Tommaso had said. “At most.”

Sacchi said it’d do them just fine.

With this Tommaso really had no reason not to go home, pack a few things in his

garment bag, and catch the Friday night train to Nice— well, none besides his mother’s

wishes for him not to go.


139

Sometimes, when ju s t about everyone looks like an animal, that's when he

reminds him self that h e ’s a man.

Other times, he can't even tell the difference.

R e p ro d u c e d with p erm iss ion of th e copyright ow ner. F u r the r reproduction prohibited without perm iss ion .

140

CHAPTER XIV

DESPERATE EROTIC STOMP: LEG I

In a sleeper, somewhere before Lyon, drinking Martini Bianco from the bottle,

ready to collapse at any moment. The sun’s been up for an hour o r two. Sacchi forgets

about the lit cigarette in his hand and sets his pillow on fire. Cursing, he gets up, draws

the curtains, pulls down the window, and chucks the smoking pillow into the French

countryside. He lights another cigarette.

“Son of a bitch, I could’ve burned to death.”

After a few hours of astoundingly refreshing sleep, I awake to the voice of Sacchi

on the phone. By the way he’s talking, I can tell it’s his grandmother. He’s asking her to

get us a room at Place Vendome, or thereabouts.

Sacchi’s grandmother is younger and far more attractive than the typical grandma.

She’s like his nanny, more of a mother to him than his real mother. Anytime he’s in a


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bind, anytime he needs anything of anything, he calls on her. Before getting off the

phone, he tells his grandma to calm his mother’s nerves. By the time we get to Paris, we

have an address to give to the cabdriver.

We get to our room at the Hyatt Park, a spit away from Vendome, as Sacchi puts

it, and he tells me to hit the shower.

“You look like shit. Clean up, get that red out of your eyes, and meet me in the

bar. It’s as good a bar as any you’ll find. Might be a little early for the ladies, but they

will come.” I look in the mirror and I must agree with Sacchi. It’s three in the afternoon

on the day before the Bastille. I’m in Paris. I should be looking better.

On the big night, we hit the renowned Buddha Bar. In the restroom, Sacchi and I

meet a Catholic-Lebanese man named Jaques who considers his people to be more

similar to Italians than anyone else. Jaques, Paris’ most generous coke king— especially

with us two Italians— invites us to spend the rest of the evening at his table, to drink his

drink, to flirt with his women, to laugh at his jokes. The night could’ve been incredible,

but ridiculous amounts of white powder and I don’t mix too well, and I become a

monster, and I blow everyone to hell in a silent way, and wander the streets aimlessly,

and get back to the hotel at who knows what time in the morning, only to find Sacchi and

this Polish minx passed out on his bed, naked. The thought of touching her does cross

my mind, but instead I light a cigarette and stare at her curves. It’s a nice way to fall

asleep.


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On the Fifteenth we sleep until nine at night and proceed to spend the rest of the

soiree at our hotel’s bar flirting with our cocktail waitress from Mauritius. Sacchi, unable

to communicate with her, says little to nothing. All I can ask her, repeatedly, is whether

she’s positive that she’s never modeled. I must’ve gotten on her nerves because she

leaves without even saying goodbye to us.

Then there’s the mellow night. After pleading with Sacchi about not wanting to

go to a club— no Queen, no Palladium— our concierge suggests a jazz joint near St.

Germain where all the greats, at one time or another, have played.

Forced by Sacchi’s immaculate appearance o f jacket and stylishly ripped jeans, I

too dress to impress, once again. And it’s a good thing I follow his cue. Le Bilboquet is

swank with capital SW.

At Le Bilboquet we are seated next to two black American women. They are

incredibly gorgeous, and were it not for their apparent haute-couture tastes, I’d have

sworn to have seen them in a Snoop Dog video. I ask them this, at which Charlotte and

Tatiana laugh. They’re from Atlanta and both are lawyers. Interestingly enough, they

did strip their way through law school. “That’s where we met,” Tatiana says.

“In law school?” I ask.

“No, at the club,” Charlotte answers. She sips her wine and looks at me with

these Asiatic eyes in such a manner that I feel uneasy. Beauty intimidates me, exotic

beauty downright tickles me scared. I gulp my courage and take the liberty to order

another round for the four of us.


143

What is great about this scene— besides the fact that I am in a cozy red-velvet

lounge with a friend who needs my translating, with two intelligent, beautiful women

who equally need my translating, and good music— is the present opportunity: to be

whoever I want to be.

Given that both Charlotte and Tatiana graduated from Georgia Tech, I become a

professor of Eastern Philosophy at the University of Califomia-Berkley, currently on

sabbatical, taking a break in Europe to see friends and family before I head to India once

again to gather more information on Vatsyayana’s methods of compiling the Kama Sutra

(my other option was to tell them I was studying gynecology, at Harvard, but I would

have put myself in unchartered waters— at least with the Kama Sutra I can sling it). The

women look at each other, then smile. Unsure whether they’re buying my shit, all I can

do is continue.

Sacchi, who has been sitting quietly and watching the quintet is, “an old friend of

mine, the heir to the Pirelli tire fortune, and a has-been model. We met in elementary

school and have been close ever since.” I light a cigarette and offer a couple to the girls,

which they decline. Charlotte speaks.

“Sure,” I respond, “our different upbringings have made us quite opposites—as is

the case with most other childhood friends of mine— but with Stefano,” I pat Sacchi’s

thigh and wink at him, “we could be incommunicado for years, and once we see each

other, it’s as if we didn’t lose a beat.”

Tatiana speaks, smiles.


144

“Yes, it’s being able to mold to the world that’s around you while at the same

time holding on to that child within. I am fortunate to have the instinctual blessings of

balancing the good things from all facets of my life. Adolescence, childhood, youth, and

now— and I say this tongue-in-cheek— manhood.” I must change the subject. I’m boring

myself.

“So,” I say, “do you know what the difference between a pessimist and an

optimist is?”

“No,” the beauties both answer. They creep to the edge of their seats so as to hear

me better.

I take a breath, and reluctantly say, ‘T he pessimist thinks all women are

whores”— I take a drag— “after all, that is a rather pessimistic view, wouldn’t you

agree?”

Charlotte and Tatiana nod, slight smiles on their faces. I could cut the tension

with my finger.

“The optimist, on the other hand, hopes all women are whores! Good one, huh?”

They love it. They even drink to it. I take time to repeat the joke to Sacchi. He

laughs, bobbles his head at an almost-forced rate, and puts his glass out for another toast

to my daring witticism. Our four glasses meet, we sip, smile, and exhale. Afraid to have

topped-off the conversation, I continue. The music seems to have grown louder, and I

lean in to get closer to our new friends.

“You know what I’ve noticed? That these sort of interactions—comfortable,

pleasurable— happen to me only when I’m out of the United States. Well, I’m sure two


145

beautiful and smart women like you have no problems meeting interesting people all the

time, but for me, as a man, these types of encounters can never be duplicated back home.

I mean, I already feel like I’ve known you for more than w hat...” I look at my watch, “a

little over an hour. You know what I mean?”

They both nod again, and say they know exactly what I mean. “Must be the air,

water, croissants, wine,” Charlotte says.

“Don’t forget the people, the women, with those natural upper-lip overhang,”

Tatiana sighs, “it’s all so beautiful and warm here.”

“Yes,” I say, “you kind of want to embrace everything you can get your hands

on.”

The musicians take a break, and we all clap. Sacchi excuses himself, he’s going

to the restroom.

“So, you guys know no Italian?”

“Nada,” Charlotte says.

‘T hat’s funny,” I tell her, taking the chance at play-punching her thin, well-toned

shoulder. “You know, we should switch seating around so that we can get Stefano

involved in the conversation. He’s no ace at English, but he can make himself

understood when he wants to.”

Tatiana says she believes it without a doubt.

The women agree to do a musical chair number, leaving the first seat empty, then

there’s Tatiana, then me, then Charlotte. Her seat is a bit too close to the drum set, but

she says she’ll lean into me if it gets bothersome, if it’s ok with me.


146

I think about telling her that the extent of her divinity is such that she could poop

on me and all I would do is smile and wait for more, but instead I just tell her that it’s ok.

Drinks, shots, and Sacchi and Tatiana are busy trying to understand each other.

As long as they’re both smiling, gesticulating, and as long as their cup is full, all is good.

I must keep an eye on them, though, can’t let my wingman falter. If he goes, I do, too.

Before the band returns to stage for their last set, I accost their leader—the

pianist—and ask him if he could do us the favor of playing 'Round Midnight before the

end of the night. He says he can.

“W hat’d you ask him?” Charlotte says.

‘‘I’ve noticed that they’re reading the music, and however good they might be, I

had to give them the Tommaso test of excellence in jazzology.”

“Which is?”

‘T o see how they play 'Round Midnight."

“I love that song,” she says. Good.

“Same here.”

“Let’s hope they’re good, or I’ll be disappointed in them and feel like I’ve been

suckered the entire time they’ve played.” She pouts playfully, the same way all women

that I’ve loved— my mother, Veronica, Shery— pout playfully. It sends an immediate

message to certain unidentified receptors of mine that arouse a tingling sensation that’s

both sexual and compassionate— tender, one could say. Although my impulse is to


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squeeze Charlotte to my side, all I do is take her hand and return the jocose sentiment

with a series of light pats. What softness, oh my, what titillating softness.

Towards three, the bandleader acknowledges my request, apologizes if they might

sound a bit rusty, and says, while thanking me, that this is “la meilleur chanson pourfinir

la soiree."

Charlotte leans into me and whispers in my ear, “What did he say?”

“He said that this song goes out to all the beautiful women in the world who have

the mishap of sitting with ugly, clumsy, awkward men.”

She slaps my arm. “Stop it. Seriously.”

“I’m serious,” I say.

‘Then it’s not dedicated to Tati and me, is it?”

“Guess not. But you should still sit back and enjoy.” I wave at Jean-Pierre, the

gentleman in charge at Le Bilboquet, and order one last round for us, and one for the

band— I am so good when Sacchi’s money is backing me.

To my dismay, the young trumpet player gets off the stage while the pianist

begins his slow descent into the gutter of one of jazz’s greatest compositions. I call the

kid over to our table. After brief introductions and compliments, I ask him what gives, to

which Paul replies that he’s not yet mastered improvisation. Claude, the sax player,

might not hit the notes as high as they ought to be, but at least he won’t butcher the song.

And Paul is right. Their rendition of 'Round Midnight is sweet, soft, touching, much like

I’d imagine Barron and Getz would’ve played it.


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We all clap. Sacchi is very involved with Tatiana, each o f them seemingly

enthralled by the other; they put their hands together once or twice and return to their

chat. Once the music is over and there’s a hush in the whole joint, I understand their

conversation is about Sacchi’s preference for Dolce & Gabbana jeans over the Diesel

brand.

“Hurry up, please, it’s tim e,” Jean-Pierre hollers to us, the only remaining patrons

with the exception of a few old men at the table behind ours. I stand, shake hands with

the band, and since I got them scotch with no ice, I offer them a toast and we all swallow

our drink. Paul, the kid-wonder with the sax, after a reluctant whiff of the booze, follows

our lead. He winces, coughs a bit, then eerily smiles at me. I hear Charlotte giggle, say

he’s cute.

After Sacchi picks up the bill like the true signore that he is, the four of us salute

Jean-Pierre and the band, and proceed to the front door. The girls excuse themselves and

go upstairs to freshen-up.

“Well?” I say.

“Well, shit!” Sacchi slurs. He has the clement grin of a wino that’s been given a

fifth of gin. He leans against the wall. “You’ve carried us this far, Tommy, don’t let up

now. W e’re close, I can smell it.”

“What do you think it really smells like?”

“Oh, God,” he says, punching my arm, messing up my hair, “like freshly pressed

grapes! Like—like— I need to make fallopian contact.”

“Should we invite them to our room for a nightcap?”


149

“Yes.” Hiccup.

“Don’t you think that’s stretching it?”

“No.”

“Honest?”

“I don’t give a shit, do whatever. I’ll just keep smiling and you do what you have

to, but just do it right.” Hiccup. He is holding on to the banister.

“Might be tough— they seem slick, you know? Intelligent.”

But Sacchi knows nothing about slick competition, never even considers such a

thing. The first time I had met him we were at the Paradiso in Milano Marittima, one the

most it clubs in all Italy, in a town on the Adriatic coast that’s not too far from Vignola.

It’s the type of place one makes fun of until he is allowed to enter.

When I was a child, Milano Marittima was a cesspool for the blue-collar

vacationers, but in the past five years it has boomed into the place where everyone who’s

anyone goes to be seen. Sacchi, being Vignola’s foremost innovator of trends, decided a

few years ago to make the Paradiso and Milano Marittima (a.k.a. MMR) the summer

hangout. He had bought a three-bedroom condo in the heart of town, and lived there off

and on for entire summers. He’d only drive home to Vignola to get more money from the

tree in his backyard, pick-up a change of clothes, drop-off dirty laundry, and eat with his

family for a day or two so as to settle his mother’s worries that he wasn’t eating enough.

That summer Piero took me with him and some friends to the Paradiso. It was

soon after the 1998 World Cup, and Bobo Vieri and a handful of Italian national players


150

were all hanging out at the glam club, having a good time and drowning their ‘sorrows’

after an almost glorious tournament. Needless to say they were in very good company.

After a good while of drinking at Sacchi’s table, I leaned into him and, pointing at

Vieri’s group, said, ‘Those guys have a pretty good life, huh?”

“Who?” he said. “Vieri and the rest? They’re there. I’m here, right next to

them, doing the same thing they’re doing. Sure, I guess I’d like to be a world-class

futballeur, like any man, but besides that, there’s nothing to envy.” He then proceeded to

take the bottle of Habana Club off the table, pulled a swig from it, and then passed it to

me. Later that night, after the sun had come up, I vomited in Sacchi’s garden and fell

asleep under a pine tree until the sweat and unbearable heat awoke me at noon. Sacchi,

on the other hand, had taken home his favorite cube dancer, the mythical Brazilian whose

legs go up to her neck, and indulged in a few ‘fallopian encounters’ as he’d say.

No, when it comes to slickness, when it comes to challenging play, Sacchi knows

nothing of it. He only sweats it when it’s hot outside.

Charlotte and Tatiana are taking too long. Jean-Pierre is asking me what the

trouble is. He needs to close up. I tell him I don’t know. I’ll go check. Before I go

though, I tell Sacchi that if the girls ask, he’s a Pirelli heir and I’m a professor living in

California, on my way to India.

“What do you teach?” He is on a stool, slouched, elbow on knee, chin in hand.

“Eastern philosophy.”

He laughs a series of choppy staccatos, “Ha, ha-ha-ha, ha”.


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I tell him to shut up and not blow the cover, to which he laughs even harder.

‘Tommy,” he says, giggling the kind of giddy giggle one has when the right

combination of sleep deprivation and alcohol gel into a near-hysteria, “I told Tatiana you

live in Washington.”

“Shh. Shut up. If nothing happens, it’s all your fucking fault.” I ask Jean-Pierre

if he can bring a glass of water for my friend. I then take a deep breath and turn away

from this sack of chuckles.

Up the narrow, carpeted steps, I pass through the saloon-style doors that lead to

the restrooms’ foyer. As in a fantasy— but so much better— the two lawyers are

passionately hugging, smacking their lips, necking. They stop, and while still holding

tightly onto each other, they smirk at me. Charlotte’s eyes are tenebrous, staggeringly

beautiful. They’re either telling me a) “Get the fuck out of here” or b) “I’ve been waiting

for you, and in the meantime I decided to kiss my best friend. After all, she is one

beautiful woman. You do understand, don’t you, sweet Tommaso?”

Flustered in my daydream, I blurt like a fool, “I totally understand. How can one

resist? You can’t. You just have to dive in.”

“Are you going to stand there all night?” Tatiana asks.

Charlotte smiles, little devil, giving me the greenest light of my life.

“Actually, uhm, that’s why I came to get you.” I try to keep my voice in a low,

low tone—the type of low tone that can only be generated by a pair of pulsating balls that

sense imminent satisfaction— Barry White style. 1 inch nearer to the nymphs, heart


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pounding as if I’d ran the 400 with hurdles, and I know that whatever other words come

out of me will not suffice. I need to keep my mouth shut.

Face to face to face with them, their breaths tickle each of my lobes. Charlotte,

on my right, has gum in her mouth, spearmint. Tatiana is all Bordeaux, hot, stale, dry.

I’ve never held such perfect elbows in my hands, bony yet not too delicate, muscular but

all feminine. Tatiana licks ever so gingerly my neck, and instinctively I take the

centimeter lunge towards Charlotte’s mouth. I bite her moist bottom lip, she my upper

one.

Immediately following this most miraculous moment of my life, this moment

which at my present state of being I truly and in all honesty believe is to be my purpose

for living, Sacchi yells from downstairs, “Professore, che cazzo fa i? Stai cagando?"

He’s still laughing.

I jump back a step, greedily afraid that Sacchi might be on his way to try and cut

in on my deal. But he’s downstairs, no worries for the time being.

“Arriviamo" I yell. “Girls, can we move the party somewhere else? These

people need to go to sleep, and we do too.” I smile, still unsure of myself, although a

surge of adrenaline has stepped-in to support my buckling knees.

Instantly, the girls break away, swing through the doorway and make for the

stairs. I want to say something to Charlotte before she’s gone, but my mouth and brain

have hit a brief lapse. I look at the happy boy in the mirror. I am so proud.


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In the little street outside Le Bilboquet, Charlotte and Tatiana, a few paces in front

of Sacchi and me, walk arm in arm. While staggering, he’s elbowing me, pointing at

them, telling me to say something. His face is contorted, it’s saying, ‘Da fuck you

waiting for?’

On the comer of St. Germain and whatever little street we were on, I say,

“Charlene,” I’ve already given her a pet name, “what’s your favorite Nina Simone song?”

This stops the two of them. They turn around, each looking at me. I can sense Sacchi

behind me, invisible, so invisible that if he had any good judgment left he’d leave me

alone with my two darlings. But Sacchi is no quitter, especially when he’s drunk and

fixed on an idea.

‘Tatiana,” he says in his thick accent, “kiss me. I need. Andiamo."

Only because it’s Sacchi, this works.

She smiles while strutting past me, and they lock lips. I immediately look

Charlotte in those eyes of hers and shuffle the necessary steps to have her in my arms.

She breathes in long, winded umpfs, her body pressed to mine, and I ask her who should

go where.

“What do you mean?” she says.

“Do you want to come back with me and let them go to your hotel?”

She smiles, goddamn that smile! That mouth!

“Honey,” she says, ‘Tati and I do everything together.”

“Really?”


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And all she needs to do is part her lips for a nano-second before I pinch her check

in between my teeth and simultaneously hail the taxi that is driving by.

After haggling with the cabbie for a minute about the dire necessity that he take

all four of us in his car, we hop in. Unfortunately I get stuck in the front seat, which now

knowing how things stand with the lawyers, I am not too pleased. I turn to my partners

and ask where to.

“Le Ritz,” Charlotte says in a faux accent. “Place Vendome.”

I turn to smile at her. She puckers her lips and sends me a kiss. “You know,

Charlene, we are neighbors.”

“You know, honey,” she says, “we’ll be more than that by the time the sun rises.”

I grin and turn to look at the street ahead. Not a second after I begin imagining

the night I have in store for me, Tatiana speaks.

“I want to go dancing.”

To which Sacchi, with his head rested on Tatiana’s shoulder, fully unaware of my

knowledge of the impending erotic bliss awaiting, and ridiculously thinking it’s his turn

to take command of this mission, responds, “Me also.” This catapults Charlotte into

chiming in that she too would like to dance. “Professor,” she says, “do you want to

dance?”

In fear of being seen as homy and impatient, what else can I do but respond,

“Sure. Would love to.” So I tell the cabbie to take us to the Champs— Queen. This

annoys the Berber driver, but money is money and he does as requested.

“You know,” Charlotte says, “what I’d really like to do is go get a lap-dance.”


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I turn, see that Sacchi’s eyes are fighting to stay open. How he can be snoozing

now, is beyond me. “I can give you one,” I tell her.

“Sure you could,” she says, “but I want a professional one, French style.”

“Ooh,” Tatiana says, “I’d love one. A little Claudette or Sophie, rubbing me all

over. That would hit the spot, good and hard.” She’s staring at Charlotte.

So again, in an attempt to hold on to these two beauties, I ask the cabbie where we

could go if we were looking for naked dancers of the up-close and personal kind. He

starts rattling off all sorts of places, and I tell him to pick one. A good one. One where

my friends and I won’t get jum ped by junkies the second we step foot on the pavement.

This, as expected, vexes him even more. Nothing like being the asshole

Americans, with a Muslim taxi driver, in a foreign land. But he’s got a wedding band on,

which means he’s probably— hopefully— got children, thus my mounting paranoia gets

calmed by the thought that this man is of honorable fiber. I’m really not sure how this

thought process works, but for fallopian sake, I allow it to set my nerves at ease. I just

hope Sacchi can carry his weight for the upcoming hours.

“Oh my,” is Charlotte’s response while we enter this dank, narrow hallway that

poses as a strip joint. I try ever so hard to plastic-ify a smile of some sort, feeling very

unsuccessful in my acting method.

There’s a handful of scantily clothed women sitting near the bar, all smoking in

silence, burning us with their stares. A few are not bad looking at all. But there are no

patrons. Just the doorman in the white suit, a big black man whose only job could be that


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of the muscle, the bartender with slick ponytail, and this bag of mixed nuts that are to be

our sought after entertainers.

“What the fuck have you gotten us into?” Sacchi asks, groggy from his taxi ride

power nap. “Is this a brothel? I don’t see anyone stripping.” He stares at the disco ball.

Electric Avenue is the music. He then turns his attention to the stage. “A chicken

couldn’t stand there without falling off it.” Sacchi has hit the irascible mark.

I laugh. “Just play it cool. Let’s not tarnish what we got going.”

“I could puke all over this place and still not tarnish it. Don’t worry.”

I turn to the muscle man, who’s been eyeing our dates ever since entering— who

hasn’t?—and ask him what the deal is. Nice, friendly big man, says they start as soon as

we order a drink and sit.

Sacchi, in no mood to waste time, gets royally sodomized by ordering a three-

hundred-euro bottle of Mumms, and the four of us take a cramped booth center front.

Eddie Grant stops, and Madonna starts. A girl in a short, red dress finally takes stage and

the four of us clap exuberantly.

“It’s about time,” Charlotte says.

‘This is so strange,” Tatiana responds. “Never ever! Not even in back country

Georgia would you see this sort of thing.”

“Welcome to Paris,” I add, with attempts at getting the girls to smile. They don’t,

they are too busy studying the slow art o f the French strip show.


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I lift my glass to propose a toast. “T o being here, four a.m., four of us, and naked

women.” The girls clink with me, very business like. Sacchi has given up and is glaring

at the still-dressed dancer, though I’ll bet that he isn’t even seeing her.

And then the girls of this fine establishment, in swarms of two at a time, bombard

us. First is Katrina, a petite Latvian blonde, and Ramona, a heavy-set French girl with

red hair whose use of lipstick, among other things, teils me that she’s been a faux pas

since birth. Sacchi shakes his head, not giving them the time of day.

Once I’m done talking to Faux Pas, I tell the girls what the scoop is. ‘T he deal is

that for one-hundred they’ll take you upstairs for an all nude private dance. You can

touch a bit, and they’d love it if you bought them something to drink.” I put my hand on

Charlotte’s lap, and she’s as receptive as marble statue. Sacchi looks at me. He’s so

pissed. The dancer in the meantime is flapping her weathered, small breasts, moving like

an uncoordinated little girl at a wedding reception.

The next two girls come. The sexy one is an obvious dope addict, Paulette. It is

quite amazing how she can retain those curves and blooming breasts. Paulette is talking

to the girls, who entertain the thought of giving her money. The other one is a horridly

fake blonde, of Arab blood, who claims her name to be Shakira.

“Sacchi, she says her name is Shakira.” I laugh. Shakira, poor chubby girl,

smirks. Sacchi stays stone. He drinks.

“Tommaso,” Charlotte leans into me, “we’re going upstairs with Paulette.”

“Want me to come?”

“No, wait down here.” She gives me a peck on the cheek.


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I smile, faker than ever now, acting as if I could give two shits, and tell them to

have some fun for me. The three leave, up the stairs of mystery.

“You going to buy me a drink?” Shakira asks. 1 offer her my glass of champagne,

and she declines. “You don’t want to go upstairs?”

“I got no money. Want a smoke?”

Shakira takes one. “Why don’t you buy me a drink?”

“Got no money.”

“Where you all from?”

“My friend and I are Italian, the girls are American.”

Shakira turns to Sacchi. “Tu veiuc ciller en hautV she asks, pointing upwards.

With his eyes glued on the now-empty stage, Sacchi says, in Italian, that he

doesn’t speak French.

“C’mon,” Shakira says to me, “let’s go upstairs.”

“All I got is five bones and these cigarettes.” I open the pack and count. “Seven.”

I smile, and she does too.

“You’re so full of shit.”

“I’m telling you honest truth. Go get a glass, we’ll give you a sip of champagne.

And for five and seven smokes, I’ll take a dance, Shakira.”

“You guys aren’t Italian, you’re Parisian,” she says. “I can tell.”

“Sacchi,” I nudge him, “she thinks we’re from here.”


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‘Tell her,” he says, “that if we were, we surely would know better than to come in

this dump.” He fills his glass and mine. Asks me for a cigarette, lights it, and blows the

smoke in Shakira’s face.

She gets up and goes away.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Sacchi barks, gathering strength to get up.

I grab his forearm. “We have to wait for the girls.”

He scoffs. ‘They just want to ride our wallet and lick each other.”

‘There might be room for us too.”

Sacchi, polishing the bottle off, tells me that we’d be with them by now if that

were the case. A strong point, but I will not surrender to sleep this easily. I decide not to

tell him my insider’s scoop and ask him to wait and see. They’ll be down soon.

Another stripper, one I hadn’t noticed, very sexy, very Frenchy, wearing a black

and red lace corset, takes a chair on the stage, and the old tune that goes, “Hey, big

spender..." plays on the sound system.

“What is this shit?” Sacchi’s face says, ‘I don’t care, I loathe everything.’

This dancer— and I am weary of giving her this title— has ungodly moves. No, to

call them moves is preposterous in the first place. If I had any guts, I should go up to her

and ask her to stop. But instead I look at her and try not to laugh. I am very mindful of

this woman’s feelings. Being her only audience, to explode of laughter right in her face

would be a prick’s move.

Sacchi, of course, lets out a few of his staccato “ha-ha’s”, and even points at her.

“Poor girl,” I say.


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“Poor, my ass. Dumb bitch should stick to tricks. She has no business doing

that.” He takes another smoke. “How can she think that turns people on?”

“C ’mon, she is pretty. Look at those perky tits, her face, her ass.”

“She’s doing the Robot! She’s a fucking Transformer!”

Finally, soon after the atrocity, the girls come back down. Their pinkies are

locked, and there’s a satisfied air to them. In Charlotte’s eyes there is something askew,

if not downright slanted. Right now, this point in my life, might be as crucial a moment

as any I’ll ever encounter. What does a drunken Kama Sutra scholar say when he has

one last chance to score and the game clock has expired? I look over at Sacchi. His left

eye is near shut, and his right one is creeping, fixed on the cigarette’s ember.

“Let’s go.”

And in the cab ride home, with my wingman dozing, his head rested against the

window, Tatiana and Charlotte ask me to ask the cab driver to turn the air conditioning

down. They are cold.

Then I hear Charlotte yawn, and Tatiana saying, “I’m exhausted,” followed by,

“Me too.”

I hear whispering, then a “No,” to which I playfully say, “Hey, no secrets.” I turn

and smile. Charlotte forces a smile; Tatiana rolls her eyes.

“Sacchi,” I say, in Italian. “It’s over. Sacchi! You were right.”

He opens his right eye.

“It’s finished— we lost,” I say.


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“Bitches,” he mutters. His eye is closed. “Bitches, bitches, bitches.”

Back in our room, after practically tucking Sacchi in bed and being unable to shut

down, I find myself taking a long, long shower. With all the could-have-been-fantasies I

have to work with, it really isn’t bad.

We wake up late in the afternoon. Sacchi is sick of Paris, so after dinner and one

last hurrah at the hotel’s bar (sans our friend from Mauritius), we catch the midnight

TGV to Nice. Little prince wants to go, we go. Little prince wants to stay, we stay.

Little prince wants to leave, we leave. Fortunately, the little prince has enough foresight

to get us a bottle of cognac for the long haul.


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No note.


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CHAPTER XV

DESPERATE EROTIC STOMP: LEG II

It’s when w e’re in Nice, in the station’s bar waiting for the train to Milan, that the

little prince gets the phone call from Pozzi— Alberto Pozzoli, another of my cousin

Piero’s friends: a man who at the age of sixteen, due to a motorcycle nose injury, was

able to exploit socialism to the fullest and got his snout finely shaped by a plastic

surgeon. From what Piero has told me, he was quite horrendous before getting his Jean-

Paul Belmondo nose.

Sacchi wanders out of the bar to speak with Pozzi. I stand at the counter, dunking

my croissant in the latte. What I like about train stations, especially in Europe, are the

faces and the personalities attached to them. Not the travelers, but the ‘locals’. Arabic

youths in jumpsuits, down-and-outers, old men, rarely a woman, and if there is a woman,

chances are she isn’t all too honest. Everyone’s got a beef and a cigarette. The majority

of mouths are decaying, except the Africans. Their teeth are white and strong. I’d like to


164

sit in on some of these conversations like I’ve done in the past, but being sober and well

rested, this idea strikes me as stupid and not as fun as it’d seem.

Sacchi comes back, smiling.

“Boy,” he lights a cigarette, “big night tonight. Pozzi, your cousin, Munta, Selmi,

Bacchus, Chiara, Elisa, Monica, even Bonno, all at the Paradiso. It’s Manni’s birthday.”

“Who?”

‘This guy who owns La Rumba, that place we go to in Modena during the winter.

Real cool guy. He’s got most of the place reserved.” Sacchi slaps me on the back and

orders another espresso. “I don’t know why I keep drinking these, they taste like dirty

water.”

“I can’t make it.”

Sacchi says nothing. He just looks at me, cigarette in mouth.

“I’m serious. No money, my mother’s bound to be writing me out of the will by

now, and—and—”

“You got dick. Those excuses don’t work with me, and you know that. I hope

you brought a swimsuit.”

“Fuck you, I’m not kidding. My mother would box my nuts.”

“Screw your mother then.”

“I can’t. I’m not like you. It goes limp when I try.”

“Strange, when I’m with her she always keeps me interested.”


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In Milan’s station, after enough pulls from the cognac to make me excited about

the night in MMR, we hop on the Bologna/Ravenna.

“I never ever want to hear you whine about all the money you spent on me, got

it?”

“Yes,” he says.

“I’m serious. I know you. You’ll see everyone, and soon enough you’ll be telling

them that in these past days in Paris you spent enough money for a vacation in Rio, or

some shit like that.”

“I would never say such crud,” he smiles. “I’d say something like, ‘I might as

well have put up a girlfriend with all the money I spent on Tommy.’ You see, that’s

clever.” He taps his temple.

“I’m taking a nap, don’t talk to me until we get there.” I put out my cigarette and

kick back.

“I might not wake you at all,” he says.

After a brief nap, Sacchi kicks my shin.

“Oh!” he shouts. “Stop kicking me.”

I open my eyes. “This fucked up dream,” I mumble.

“Did you dream you were kicking me?”

“Yeah, in the balls, and then you came. Give me a smoke, won’t you?”

The remainder of the trip we sit quietly, looking out the window and at the few

people who walk past us, mostly Scandinavian backpackers. I know my mother will


166

lament when I tell her I’m still in Paris and won’t be coming home for another few days.

When? Don’t know, Ma.

My Italian friends are simply a bunch of good-looking sons of bitches. Tainto

and O ’Sullivan would die o f laughter if they saw me now, perfectly coiffed, shiny shoes,

flapping collar, and a Eureka in my pocket, courtesy of Pozzi. They’re probably drinking

at the pub right now with The German and Heff and— no, it’s four in the afternoon in

D.C. They’re still slaving away, staving off the humidity in their offices, getting ready to

go soak their throats at any minute. And then they’ll get housed, most likely on gin and

tonics, and do whatever it is that they do when I’m not around. I know Tainto and

O’Sullivan do each other on occasion. I’ve caught them kissing once or twice, but they

always deny it, probably reasoning that it wouldn’t be a good thing if I knew about their

thing—it’d ruin our friendship dynamics. So I let things be, let them keep their secret. I

don’t give a shit either way.

We are drinking grappa and waiting for the girls to arrive at Sacchi’s. From what

I know, Elena and the rest have all at one time or another slept with a few of the guys.

Chiara and Selmi were an item for a few years. Monica and Munta did it, Monica and

Pozzi hit it too, and Pozzi and Elena, and Elana with Sacchi, Piero, and Bonno. The only

one who hasn’t tasted these girls’ flesh—besides me— is Bacchus. Bacchus likes to think

of himself of a different echelon from the rest, but the real reason, as Sacchi puts it, is

that he enjoys the drink far too much to bother with women.


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But all this was in the past, high school and a few ensuing years. Now they are a

tightly knit group of friends, so close that if Elena wanted to change in front of them, they

would think nothing of it. I would, I’d think a lot. But they don’t. They’re all family.

Sacchi is starting to bitch, pacing around his living room. “T hey’re always late,

always!” He lights a cigarette. “Call them,” he orders, to no one in particular.

“It’s not even midnight,” Selmi, the only four-eye of the group says.

“Yeah, but they won’t be ready. They’ll have to change, pluck their hairs, put on

make-up, on and on and on. Pick out the right thong for the occasion, in case they meet

anyone special. Pack the tampons. And they’ll still need an hour after that.”

Bonno, the pub owner who on this night was able to get away from his job, calls

Elena’s phone. “Where the fuck are you guys?” He waits. “Should we just meet you

inside?” He waits. “Ok then, just hurry your bony ass up.” He smiles at us. “Fuck you

too, hooker.” He hangs up. “T h ey ’re near Ravenna, another half hour.”

To this Sacchi pours us all more grappa, tells us to drink up, and then pours more.

We all drink, and with the exception of Sacchi, Bacchus and me, everyone’s had enough

for the time being.

While we wait for the girls, guys are making sure they look as good as they

should, primping their hair, applying lotion on their tanned faces, making sure they did a

good job at waxing their chests, deciding which jacket to wear, wondering if the people at

the Paradiso’s front door will let them in if they’re wearing Prada sandals. I just sit,

smoke and drink.

My cousin asks me if I want to borrow a sports coat. He brought an extra one.


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“I’m fine, they’ll let me in. Aren’t we there for a private party? Then what’s the

big deal?”

“Yeah, but that bitch at the door is always wary of us,” Pozzi says. “What’s the

name of that fat cow?”

“Amanda,” Selmi says.

‘T hat’s because Bacchus throws-up every weekend, and always gets his ass

tossed to the curb.” Sacchi looks at Bacchus. “Please, please, I say, try to get to the

bathroom if you’re going to vomit tonight. That’s enough grappa for you.” He snatches

the glass away and drinks it himself. “Oh, while we’re waiting, we should all give

Tommy his welcome-back present.” He digs in his pocket and gives me a fifty.

“Everyone else give him twenty, nothing less.” And they do, gladly, except for Pozzi.

“I already gave you a rubber. That’s enough, no?”

“I’ll give it back to you if it’d make you happy.” I take the Eureka out.

“Is that the rubber that’s been in the back of your car for two years?” my cousin

asks. “Eureka, she’s pregnant?”

Pozzi laughs.

“Here,” he goes, handing me a bill. “Welcome back, officially, you poor bastard.

Give me Eureka, he’s going back in the car.”

My cousin calls me out on the balcony. Already dizzy from the grappa, I walk

slowly to him. Pozzi mentions I walk like a banana, and they laugh. I guess I lean, that

I’m a tad bent.


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“Here,” Piero says. “My dad gave this to me, to give to you.” It’s a two-hundred

bill, that sweet lime-green.

“Holy-”

“Don’t worry, he won’t tell your mother. As far as he’s concerned, you’re still in

Paris.”

“Your dad’s one cool man.” My mother’s brother. He was listening to Ella,

Monk, B.B. King, even before people knew who Elvis was. Raised Fascist, but far from

one.

“I know, that’s why I’ve got to stop this sooner or later.”

“Stop what?” I ask.

‘This, living off him, sucking him dry.” Piero lowers his eyes. “He works twelve

hours a day so that I can wear this fancy shit and come here every weekend in the

summer and go to Cortina in the winter. I can’t be part-time forever. I’ve got to do

something.”

And now, at this point in the night, looking forward to all the beautiful people, I

don’t want to talk about this. I love Piero, but I truly don’t care about his awakening.

Save it for another day. Don’t get down on yourself now, old boy; no point in letting it

work you like this.

“Don’t worry.” I pat his back. “We’ll figure things out. Life’s long, very long.”

I look at my watch. “Thanks for this, I really needed it. Let’s go back inside and catch a

drink.” And we do.


170

It’s when I go piss that I realize how drunk I am, have been for over a week, for

over— a long time now. In the mirror I’m just as I remember. “A Gainsbourg in the

making,” as Shery used to say.

“Stop your flattery!” I’d tell her. “ I’m not at all talented.” Then I’d pinch her or

throw her on the bed.

Now that I’m eye to eye with myself, alone in this bathroom, it’s easy for me to

see that I’m carrying something of weight that makes me different. My personal bags of

shit are getting fuller. I’ll have to do something about these bastards, get rid of them in

some way. Soon.

Finally the girls show up. Sacchi gets his arms around Elena and tosses her on the

couch. “It’s about time, pretty woman.” All the others chime in, let the girls have it:

“slow-pokes”, “sluts” , “narcissists” , “histrionics”, “whores” . “Fuck you’s” are

exchanged, Chiara reminds Bonno to make sure his chest is smooth; Monica fixes

Selmi’s hair and tells him he might want to put his tortoise shell frames on— they go

better with the shoes. Sacchi tells them all that their asses look nice and tight, and that he

can’t wait for “Monica’s red hair to tickle— Elena’s lips to lick— Chiara’s rump to

snuggle with— and Vittoria’s tight one to clamp on— my prick. I’ll take any of you.

You’ll all do fine."

Vittoria’s here! And she has a new look, she looks good. I’ve only met her once,

last time I was here, over two years ago. She used to have long black hair. Piero told me


171

that Vittoria Toschi was infamous for her bouts with depression, her soft mannerisms, her

love of wine, and her tumultuous affairs with men.

That night two years ago, I could tell she was different from the rest. While the

others danced, she and I drank tequila, bitched about life, and discussed our alternatives.

After countless shots of the Mexican, she started to cry on my shoulder, and then got

embarrassed and asked Elena to take her home. She shook my hand good night, said she

was sorry with her little teary face, and left. I hadn’t seen her since, hadn’t thought about

her. But now that I see her, I remember the attraction she had for me that night. I saw it

in her eyes.

“Vittoria,” I say. “Come here and have a drink with me. I’ve been waiting for

someone fun to arrive. Finally.”

She looks at me. She knows me, though she’s playing like it’s taking her a while

to remember me. Her hair is now shorter than mine and she seems to have lost all her

baby fat.

‘Tommy?” She is wearing a black linen skirt that goes down to her thin ankles,

and a black top of similar material that ties around her thin neck, leaving her delicate, fair

shoulders fully exposed. Her breasts are non-existent, but if they were any bigger she

wouldn’t look like herself, she would no longer be breathlessly fragile. Her hair is cut

short like mine, but the shape of her head is perfect. She is the definition of symmetrical,

ears, mouth, nose, head, body, feet. Eyes.


172

Moon-shaped eyes curve with a smile, and she proceeds to walk towards me,

every step more graceful than the last. Besides her semi-mystical aura, what could really

make me fall in love with her is the way she smiles; it’s an exquisitely tragic thing.

I pat my lap, and she sits on it. I pour us two grappas and propose a toast to her

divinity.

“Remember me? We cried together.”

She blushes. “You’re drunk already?” She wants to say something tender, her

eyes tell me so, but she doesn’t. She lets the to-be words die at her mouth’s rim.

“Ever since you walked in. I’m drunk for you.”

While her head is cocked back, slowly swallowing the drink, my thigh finally

feels the acute pressure of her bony ass, and I can almost imagine that which lies in

between the cheeks, gently caressing my pants— her little lily. With mental and physical

control, I focus to clench a leg muscle that might possibly tickle her. She turns to me

with a smile that says, ‘I know what you’re doing,’ and finishes her drink.

I have no control because the following second all my blood speeds to my vas-

deferensial area, and I’m one impulsive flex away from a fully operational erection.

Tight pants, shirt tucked, desire utterly in bloom, and a room full of friends, I ought to

implement the legendary ‘baseball-to naked grandma-to frigid water on the scrotum’

erectile destruction routine, but I’m still a little boy, I still enjoy the feeling of becoming

stiff. I look down at it. It’s in the middle of its miracle. I cross my forearm over it,

impeding it to the best of my abilities from reaching for the stars. ‘What an

overachieving little prick’, I think. I laugh out loud, I’m funny, I crack myself up


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sometimes. Munta is glancing at me. This is good; it’s like dropping a silent stinker in

grade school and waiting for the reaction of your classmates. Not really though, no one

should be able to smell my erection.

‘Tom my’s happy,” Sacchi says. He walks to me and I let him ruffle my hair

since I can’t stave him off. “What a couple. Perfect!” He bends to whisper something in

Vittoria’s ear, and they both laugh. She tells him “no,” and smiles at me. And I enter a

vacuum, a dark one, where Shery is on my lap, naked the way I hope only I knew her,

and no one else is here, and we can look at each other softly as in a morning sunrise, and

I want to cry all over her, and have her squeeze and beg me for my forgiveness, and tell

me she has been chaste ever since she left me, and that it was all a bad dream, and that it

won’t happen again. “I only love you,” she tells me. And I’d tell her that she needn’t my

forgiveness, she’s already blessed.

The slap on my face wakes me.

‘Tommy, are you home? Anyone in there?” Sacchi asks.

Vittoria smoothes my head. Sweet sweet honey, I want to hold her so tightly that

our ribs rub, and we can both find peace, mutual salvation— however indecipherable a

spirit that may be. Make her my second and last communion.

“Are you ok?” she asks. Her nails are lightly scratching the back of my head, and

it tingles, I am warm.

“Fine. Fine.”

With her other hand, Vittoria cups my chin and makes me look at her. What

concern. She could love me, but I know eyes are the best liars, and I can’t trust them.


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“Oh!” Sacchi yells. “Should we call you the morgue?”

“Cousin banana,” I hear Piero say, “when death knocks, the best thing to do is let

it in.” Everyone laughs.

I look at Vittoria. ‘They laugh at the dumbest things.” And I stay shut for

another second before I am aware of my sullen state, and I must change. “You are all

idiots, and I want to go out and drink, and when I come home I’m going to piss in your

mouth, cousin polenta.”

‘There he is!” Munta shouts, and it feels as if all applaud, or sigh in relief.

“I’m always here, drunk or dead, always.” I look at Vittoria. She can understand

me, she’s telling me this without speech. Whether she’s it or not, she knows— she

undoubtedly knows. It’s about not letting death in, about finding reasons why every door

should remain locked.

“Let’s go get this ragged boy an espresso and some Red Bull,” one of the other

girls says in between giggles.

I stand. I’m ready. We go.

If it weren’t for Sacchi’s status at the Paradiso, I wouldn’t get in. The bitch at the

door uses every excuse not to let me go up the stairs — from my untidy appearance

(which is bullshit, disheveled is a more appropriate term), to my drunkenness, to the fact

that I can’t stand without a human crutch. With an American accent, I tell her I sprained

my knee playing soccer, and that I came expressively to MMR to write a report for a


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travel magazine. I have to see what the hubbub is about. “Mannix,” I say, “he told me to

come.”

“Who?” The bitch contorts her face.

“Manni,” Sacchi says. “He’s a friend of Manni’s. He’s giving you publicity, tons

of it.”

She waves us in. “Watch yourself, American,” she snorts.

“Yeah,” I say while Sacchi is tugging me away and hurrying me up the steps to

join the others, “I’ll make sure to find a mirror right away!”

“Keep good, won’t you?” he asks.

We are going up a wide, white marble staircase. It’s dark, but the light is always

there.

“What a cunt,” I say. “Cunt!” I scream.

“Oh! C ’mon, please.”

I turn to him and whisper, ‘T ell me she’s a cunt.”

He smiles. “Yes, yes, she’s a cunt. Now walk straight. You have to now, this

guy will check you closely.”

“A big one?”

“What?”

“Is she a big cunt?”

“Huge.” Sacchi smiles at the gatekeeper. “Pietro”—he puts out his hand— “nice

to see you.”

Pietro shakes his hand and returns the smile. He then looks at me.


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‘This,” Sacchi tells him, “is Tommy. He comes from America.”

Pietro puts out his hand.

“Hey, it’s George Clooney!” I slap Pietro five. “Love your work.”

Pietro laughs and tells us to have fun.

Manni, having been forewarned of my antics, greets me with a hug. He tells me

he’s heard a whole lot about me, offers me some champagne, and says he has a seat saved

for me. He also looks like George Clooney, but his hair is long and black.

I thank him and plop on the couch next to a woman. Manni’s girlfriend. A fine,

fine woman. I want to ask her if she gets it good from him, but just before I utter the

“D o ...” Vittoria taps my shoulder.

“How are you?”

“What?” I say.

“How are you?”

“I’m in heaven, but I still live.”

Manni’s girl stands up, and I tell Vittoria to sit next to me, as close as she can.

“You know,” I say to her, “when you were sitting on me before, I got aroused.”

“What?”

“Before, when you sat on me, I was very aroused.”

“Hm. When can I come visit you in America?”

“What?”

“When can I come to see you in Washington?”


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“When I go back, you come with me.”

“When’s that?”

“What?”

“When?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug.

“What?”

I lean into her ear, my lips touching her lobe. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Once we agree that we cannot possibly hear each other unless she is on me, our

conversation ceases only when we get an occasional visit from my cousin and the rest.

They keep handing me drinks, and Vittoria shakes her head, or pinches my arm, so I

brush them off. “No, thanks.” I say. “In a little bit.” But I really want one now.

Vittoria tells me about her long-time boyfriend, Germano. Sacchi or Selmi

nicknamed him The Germinator because he’s all bulk and no cabeza. She thinks he loves

her, but he doesn’t know how to handle her mood shifts. He tells her he no longer knows

how to sustain a reasonable rapport with her because she’s making him crazy with her

whims and bouts.

“He’s no Stanhope."

“A what?” she asks.

“In English that means someone who carries your burden, and in the process he

lightens his own. You should leave him and move on. I would in an instant. He doesn’t

deserve you. Take me.”


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She smiles, sadder than ever. “I don’t know you at all, but you know what 1 like

most about you?”

“My boyish good-looks?” I say. ‘T he fact that our hairdo is the same?”

“No,” she smiles. “It’s that you’re not like the rest. They say and say and say,

but you do. I can see that in you. If you told me you were going to Africa to take a look

around, I know you’d do it. If these guys told me they were going to a concert in Rome, I

bet the farthest they’d get is the piazza.”

“Bullshit. First, you don’t know me, so your opinion is a false one. Second,

there’s Sacchi. He’s got brass balls.”

“Because of the Paris trip? Because of all the dough he tosses around? He’s

claustrophobic when he’s out of his element. Paris was simply to impress you—mister

America—and the others. He wanted to raise himself to your heights, make them think

he’s all that and more. Don’t get me wrong, I love them all dearly, they’ve been my

closest friends for ages, but they are not like you. Not one bit. W ith a few exceptions, in

twenty years from now you can come back to Vignola and find them all at Bonno’s on a

Friday night. Married or not, they’ll be there, pathetically dandy.”

T h ey are dandies, that’s for true. But I’m not any different. I might not be like

them, but we are still the same.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Kiss me.”


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“No.”

“C’mon.”

“Not now. Definitely not here.”

“When?”

“Not sure.” She looks out onto the dance floor cluttered with pretty bodies doing

their thing.

“I’m going to the bathroom. When I come back, I want you to tell me what it is

that I have to do in order to prove my love for you.” I kiss her on the cheek.

On my way to the bathroom, Manni, Sacchi, Selmi, and Bonno kidnap me to the

bar and we drink tequila. When I try to leave, we drink more. When I finally slip away

from them, I’m a feather being blown by big warehouse ventilators. People nod at me, as

I walk, and I nod back out o f politeness. Beauties smile, and I smile, but nothing more. I

am walking. Pissing is o f primary concern. What came first, the piss or the shit? Dandy

is a very funny word, Vittoria is not like others. Here’s the toilets.

Behind the heavy black door, men stand, looking at a mirror that’s the length of

the restroom, at least twenty feet long. They love themselves, every little hair on their

heads, every little crease of their shirts. They wet their hands and rub water in their hair.

They look at their image, from the right side, then the left. Impeccable. Solid.

I piss.

I walk a labyrinth back to Manni’s table. Vittoria is talking to Elena and Selmi.

Sacchi wants me to go on the floor with him and the other two girls. I say I can’t. He


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shakes his head, I still say I can’t. I tell him I want Vittoria and he says, “No shit.” I ask

him the time, tell him I can’t read my watch, can’t focus. It’s twenty to four.

“Go sit with Vittoria before you make any damage.” He leads me to the sofas.

He’s good to me, they all are. Vittoria sits back down.

‘Took you long enough,” she says.

“Already nagging like a wife.” I take a deep breath, the lights spin fast. I lean

into Vittoria. “What do you want me to do to prove my love? Anything you want, just

tell.”

And she proceeds to point at a bouncer close to our group. Typical Italian, big,

bald, handsomely rugged, ass kicker. She wants me to go flirt with him, tell him he has

beautiful eyes, a great body that screams sex. Tell him I want to give him my ass.

“All that?” I ask her.

“You have to let him know you want him.”

“When I get kicked out o f here, you better be following me right away. I am not

staying outside alone, and I’ll get lost if I try to get back to Sacchi’s.” MMR’s streets are

a cruel maze of pine trees and rotundas.

I stand. She grabs my arm, smiling.

“I’m only kidding.”

“Watch me. You better be right behind me.”

“Tommy, c ’mon.”

What briefly follows is like seeing a camera flash. I walk up to big guy, ask him

his name and he says it’s something. I then tell him he’s hot, just my type. This makes


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him uncomfortable. I ask him if he wants to buy me a drink. He tells me to get away. I

then try to grab him behind the neck so that I can kiss him. Problem is, the second I start

to reach for him he takes my wrists in one hand, spins me, grasps my collar in his other

hand, and escorts me back down the marble stairway. When we walk past the door bitch,

he tells her never to let me in again. I laugh and laugh, so many people still on the street

waiting to see George Clooney or someone exit the Paradiso. “It’s only me,” I yell, still

in the clutches of the bouncer.

He gently nudges me and tells me, “Get lost.”

‘Too late for that, asshole!”

He turns around and makes back towards the stairs. “Oh, and tell that cunt,” I

stare right at her, having to scream to make myself heard, “that people can get the clap

just by looking at your sorry ass. You ought to clean up, you foul mongrel!”

To this, the bitch unleashes three outside bouncers. They slowly come my way in

CIA style, with a finger to their ear and mouthing shit like, “camera five, locate man near

side exit. Situation in progress.” Some people behind me tell me to get the fuck out of

there— although I prefer believing they’re concerned for my health— but I don’t budge.

Standing ground. I’m making my mother proud. If my father’s looking down, he most

certainly knows I’m a fool; Shery knew it too, maybe that was the glitch? Whatever, I’m

not moving. I want to get smacked, actually. It’ll be nice, can say I was roughed-up at

the Paradiso. Extend notoriety. Talk of the town. The American man. Shit, these guys

look mean, it’s going to hurt being slammed around.

Luckily, my darling Vittoria swoops in and whisks me away before they can get


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their hands on ‘the situation’, and drag ‘its’ face to the curb.

“You’re lucky,” I yell at them while she’s pulling my hand, “or I’d have slapped

you all up.” I turn to Vittoria. “Do you think I scared them? I think they’re scared. Is

there a Grand Prix this weekend?” But she doesn’t know, and tells me to shut up for a

few minutes. So I do. She takes me to a little garden in a rotunda, and we sit on a

concrete bench.

Her lap is my pillow. She tells me not to sleep. I say I’m not going to. I tell her I

haven’t eaten anything since lunch, and that I want some baker’s pizza. With her phone

she sends a message to Elena. Elena responds, saying that the party is moving to

Sacchi’s soon. Sacchi is working on food and alcohol as they speak.

“I bet I run into some bad faces back at Sacchi’s,” I say, positive that a few of the

Paradiso’s staffers will be there.

“Yes, I’m sure we will. W e’ll slip in and go straight to a room and lock the

door.”

“I think that club is funny.” I laugh aloud. “And I think I like you.”

“I think you’re crazy,” she says.

“But don’t you like me?”

“Nope.” She looks into my eyes. “Not at all.”

I convince Vittoria to buy me two squares of pizza and a beer before we walk

back to Sacchi’s. I sit on the curb while she stands with the mob of hungry, drunken

night owls. The sun is starting to rise.


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When she hands me my two squares, I stack them together cheese-to-cheese, and

devour them with extreme gluttony. “Where’s the beer?”

“No beer. Fanta.” She raises the can and cracks it for me.

“You’ll make a great wife,” I tell her. “Men like me need to be kept in check,

always. It’s too much freedom, that’s my ruin. I think I can do anything I want.”

“You’re beautiful the way you are.”

“I could be better.” I sip the Fanta and stand. I reach out for her and she takes my

hand. “Let’s go to the beach.”

“You need sleep, we both need it." She’s tender.

“We can get it there. C ’mon, it’ll be nice, see the orange ball come out, let you

rub me a little,” I smirk, “then we can go back.”

On the shore, closing in on six, we sit on the cold sand. It’s windy. Not chilly,

but windy. The sun is to our right, rising behind the cliff of San Marino that can be seen

in the clear distance. We are quiet. We have nothing to say. We haven’t held hands, and

however strong an impulse I have to kiss her, I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t want

to push, I don’t want to disrespect. I do want to touch her panties, take them off and kiss

her every inch, but I can’t. It doesn’t feel right. It would feel good, but it wouldn’t feel

right. But what does feel right? I don’t think I’ve ever known that— well, I did, but I was

wrong.

Since I wear an undershirt, I unbutton my shirt and drape it around her shoulders.

She laughs.


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“You wear an undershirt? Only old men and truck drivers wear them.” Her voice

is drowsy, whiny almost, but it sounds so sweet when she laughs like this.

“You see, this is such bullshit! I learned to wear them as a kid, here, and now I’m

paying for a habit that’s been engrained in me since adolescence. Without it, I might die

of pneumonia.”

“Yeah, but it’s not too cool anymore. Maybe in thirty years,” she laughs and pats

my belly, “when you’ll have enough there to fill it nicely.”

I stand up. “Listen to me, and do it good. For the past who-knows how many

years, they’ve been cool in America. Everywhere you look people wear them.

Magazines, television, all that shit. It’s cool, and you know why?” Vittoria is lying on

her back, looking at me with an incredulously immense smile. “Of course you don’t,

you’ve been cramped in Vignola all your life, never been exposed to the finer things.”

“Such as old man undershirts?”

“Exactly! The undershirt is the ultimate symbol of cool. It mixes culture with

fashion, tradition with fashion. It’s appropriate for the well-dressed tycoon to have one

under his Boss shirt just as it is for a vato in his low-rider to have one.”

“A what?”

“A vatol You know, East L.A. thug, the barrio, those cars that bump up and

down?”

“Oh, like rappers?”

“Yeah, them too. They’re all wearing the undershirt, and believe me: will come a

time when they’ll be big here. And then you know what? Then Prada and Gucci will


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sell them to guys like Sacchi for one hundred a pop, and then they’ll all be wearing them.

I’m telling you, I’m like Nostradamus when it comes to certain things.”

“Oh, I didn’t know I was in the presence of a prophet.”

‘T he Prophet!” I raise my arms to the sky. “Now kiss me.”

“No!” She is laughing still, probably in no mood. An old man in a jumpsuit is

walking his black and white mutt at a fast pace. I wave at him and neither he nor the dog

wave back.

“You know what this reminds me of?” I ask.

“A ZacintoT

“What?”

“It’s a poem,” she says.

“Oh, Foscolo?”

“Yes! How do you know it?”

“I may not look it, but I studied once. Anyway, that’s not it at all. It reminds me

of this story a high school friend of mine back in Miami—Rafael Consuegra— told me.

Man, he’s a story all in itself, but that’s not the point.”

“W hat’s his story?”

“Oh, well, his father’s brothers are these two twins right? They were both

handsome, the Iadies’-man type. One of them was Castro’s right hand man, the other was

considered to be the Cuban James Bond. Anyway, back in the seventies when Castro’s

government got called on drug smuggling, Castro covered up the ordeal by assassinating

a bunch of his top officials with the excuse that they were the culprits in this scandal—


186

which everyone knows is bullshit anyway. So Castro has one of the twins murdered—

can’t remember which— and the other imprisoned for life. All this guy does now is paint

all day, sad paintings, like caged parrots and peasants. I’ll tell you, these people and their

families were total aristocracy. You know, when you’re rich in a poor country, you’re

really rich.” She nods her head. “Anyway, the wives of these twins and their children—

my friend’s cousins— escape Cuba and come to America through Mexico. They leave all

their valuables behind, all their art and furniture and money goes to Castro, and they start

fresh in the land of the plenty. And you know what?” She doesn’t. “My friend’s

cousins, two of them in particular, are now junkies. And the other kids are all either

doing gang stuff or leading some other form of questionable existence. They all live in

the worst part of Cuba town and have shit of shit.”

“And your friend’s like that, too?” she asks.

“No— well, his father had left Cuba early, and they are a very good family.

Rafael might be considered a little rogue, you know, dealing and stuff, but he’s a good

guy. I haven’t seen him for a few years.”

“That’s a sad story.”

“Oh, but I forget the funny one.” The sun is now beginning to affect the

temperature. “So Rafael’s sister gets married, right? A real pretty girl, smart, marries

this lawyer. They go on the honeymoon to Abaco, off Florida’s coast. Real nice. One

afternoon they go to this place on the beach to look at the sunset, and it’s beautiful, with

these amazing colors, practically making her pregnant just by gazing at it.


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“So that night the newlyweds talk about the sunset, of how magnificent it was,

and how they should go back and take a picture of the sunrise. So that’s what they do.

They set the alarm for five in the morning, drag themselves out of bed, and go to that

same spot to try to capture that same sun.” I smile, this story gets me every time.

“And?” Vittoria’s expression is as if she’s watching a thriller, waiting for that

climactic moment when you can finally let it all out and breathe relief.

“And nothing. That’s the story! They went to look at the sunrise where they had

watched the sunset!”

“Oh,” she smiles, “it didn’t come up.”

I sit back down, attached to her. I wrap my arm around her small back and lean

my head on her shoulder. I pinch her side lightly, and coyly let my fingers roam under

her shirt, feeling the softness of the skin over her lower rib. Vittoria rests her head on

mine, and we stay like this for a little bit. There isn’t much in my mind; the sun is rising,

it’s very pretty, and I like her near me.

“You know,” I say softly, “I want to sleep with you. But not sex. I just want to

sleep with you, feel you near me and just sleep.”

“Like brother and sister?”

“No. Like Tommaso and Vittoria, Paolo and Francesca. No sex, but just like that

nonetheless.” And I mean it. I just want touch, real touch.

When we start our walk back to Sacchi’s, it’s almost eight. When we get to

Sacchi’s, we deduce that the party is over and that everyone’s asleep. In the process of


188

climbing the iron fence to open the gate for Vittoria, my pants snag, and when I jump

down they rip and the back of my thigh gets a wicked scrape. She gives a sigh-laugh, and

I tell her it’s nothing.

The front door is locked. Vittoria suggests the back one. And if the back one

isn’t open, then we can try to peek into a window and see if we can wake anyone up.

‘The important and considerate thing,” she says, “is to avoid the doorbell. Sacchi hates

it.”

“I’ll bet you he won’t even hear it.” And without another second wasted, I press

the round button next to the door and hear the buzz pierce the silent air. Shave-and-a-

hair-cut— two-bits, and I do this two more times before Bacchus, was passed-out at the

house since four, opens the door. He’s in nothing but his bikini-briefs, like a good

Italian. He scratches his crotch, smirks, and shuffles back onto the couch. My leg stings.

“What time is it?” he mumbles. His eyes already shut.

‘Tim e for the beach!” I say. I look around and see half empty beer bottles,

overflowing ashtrays, clothes, and trash of all sorts, spread everywhere. I look at my

Vittoria, whose babysitting seems to have worn her thin, and I know that there will be no

place for her and me to crash comfortably. If we’re going to get some decent sleep,

we’re going to have to split. One part of the com er couch— between Bacchus and

Monica’s feet— is free. I’m sure I’ll find a half-empty bed, probably next to Selmi or my

cousin.


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Vittoria goes to her duffel bag, takes out a hand towel and a white tank top, and

walks to the bathroom. I light a cigarette, open the door to the low balcony, and step out.

Vittoria soon comes back.

“What are you doing?” she says.

I turn to look at her, and in all her smallness I have never seen such greatness,

beauty, simplicity. Well, I have; but given all that we’ve gone through, she seems so real,

so possible. With the dark living room as a backdrop, she stands in her white top and tiny

black panties, looking at me with tired, serene, thoughtful eyes. Her legs, although white

compared to most people’s at this time of year, do have a tan. A simple tan, a little tan

that goes well with her little body, little head, little arms, face.

“I like your clavicles,” I say. ‘They are perfect.”

She smiles. I toss the butt into the gravel driveway. I don’t know what to do, no

idea, but I’m comfortably placid. She and I.

She tells me to follow her and turns towards the back of the house. Her little

cheeks are bare but for the thin floss between them. They float with a strut to the pitter-

patter of her feet; the white tile is cool. My blood is melting. I want to be branded with

her touch.

She opens the door to a bedroom and peeks in. She shuts it quickly, turns to me,

and shakes her head. A little farther down, she opens another door— Sacchi’s appointed

room. Curiosity makes me go up behind her. I lean on her back to sneak a look inside

the dark room. One of the queen beds is empty; the other is occupied by Sacchi and

Elena, both in their underwear, as far apart as possible without being off the mattress. I


190

rest my chin on Vittoria’s plush hair. She molds perfectly to me, we spoon with our

necks. I nudge her gently.

We tiptoe around Sacchi’s bed, and slide into ours. The sheets have a slept-in

texture, and she whispers that she doesn’t want to think about it. I laugh.

‘That’s not funny,” she says.

“If you think about it, it is.” I look at her with one eye, the other one’s shut.

She smiles and I know I need so much, but I almost feel content with what I’ve

got.

I lie on my back, still. My eyes shut.

Slowly, she puts her lips to my cheek and glues her smooth warmth to my side.

Near peace.

The air from her nostrils; I imagine it caressing my whole body, in waves, from

my ankle bone all the way to my chin bone, to my ears, then scalp. I caress her perfect

head and she does a yawn-moan-stretch thing, pushes up to me, crawls into me. Her leg

moves over mine, and its weight settles quickly, and my dick takes off, and in one

thought I am rock.

Involuntary instincts make me move it— I don’t want to, really don’t— but I

manage to repeatedly pat her inner thigh. Vittoria, now doing more of a stretch-whine

thing, softly grips me and we begin the sleepy, desperate finger-fumbling dance.

“You’re dead tired.” She pauses her play.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Yes, you do.”


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“Yeah.” I hug her tightly.

Vittoria’s slimness makes me think of holding Genvieve Am aud’s calf in seventh

grade gym. I chucked a tennis ball at her ass. She tried to kick me and I caught her leg.

I felt that calf for a good three seconds. That same weekend, at Fernando Toledo’s

thirteenth birthday party, Genvieve and I kissed for seven minutes in a closet after a most

fortunate draw from the hat. There and then, both she and I learned how to kiss, with all

the passion, lust, love, and tenderness one will ever need to know and have in life. Once

time was up in the closet, we came out and split to our respective comers; I briefed

Fernando and David Goldberg at the deep end of the pool. Later in the party, after a few

hours of avoiding each other, Genvieve and I figured it’d be good to go out. But I fucked

up because I should have kissed her again on that late Saturday afternoon, but I was shy

and conscious of all our friends’ eyes, so I figured I could just kiss her at school on

Monday. But then it got weird, our phone conversations were dull, and after five days of

blank love, Genvieve dumped me and went out with Alex Castro, my good friend, and

that same year they lost their virginity to each other. They were a couple for two years,

until Genvieve had to move back to France because of her dad’s job.

My pal Alex was down, poor kid, and I understood him. But at the same time I

was happy, so goddamn happy. I was sick of hearing Alex say, “I gotta get me some

rubbers.” It was torture to see her and imagine what could have been. My only option

was to pretend indifference, lie to myself and endure a facade. It was ugly.


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I awake to the feel of sweaty leather on my mouth. I have sharp pains in my head.

I open my eyes, and although it’s all fuzz and static, I know this leather is Sacchi’s foot,

that fuck. He’s towering over me, grinning in staccato between making googly, baby

sounds. Vittoria and I are holding tight to each other. I have to keep my eyes closed or

I’ll vomit.

“Sacchi,” she whines, “get the fuck out of here and let us sleep.”

I feebly spit onto the bed next to ours in an attempt to rid myself of Sacchi’s feet

germs.

Cradling each other we roll around and give our backs to this asshole. He pulls

my boxers down.

“What beautiful asses!” he says. “It’s two. W e’re going to the beach.” He slaps

my ass and leaves.

“How are you?” I mumble.

“You?” Vittoria says.

“A champion after a tough fight.” I yawn. “We did sleep together, right?”

“Yes.”

“It was good, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like me?”

“I think,” she whispers.

“Don’t do that. Sleep on it rather than think on it. When you awake, you tell

me.”


193

She stretches her legs, her butt clenches.

“If you want,” I say, “we can make love again. Call it a chamomile, a soothing

moment.”

She turns to look at me. “Can you even open your eyes?”

“I don’t need to.”

We kiss. Our breaths so lethal they exterminate each other within a matter of

seconds. As long as I keep my eyes shut, all is fine.

After, half asleep, she tells me that I am transparent, and that she wants to be also.

“Glass palaces don’t work though, impossible.”

‘T h a t’s sad,” she says. “I think they can.”

“I think you’re more one than me.”

And she says that my perception is obtuse because I have a privileged view of her.

In reality, she’s not like this. It’s only when she’s happy, or close to it. “You,” she says,

“you are what you are, transparent. No poses.”

“You don’t know me. I’m such a mannequin”— I laugh softly— “that it sickens

me. Trust me, I know me. But I understand you. It would be good to be”—I yawn

large— “a crystal palace.”

“Transparent.” I barely hear her.

“Yes.”

I think we’re talking about the same thing.


194

When she wakes me at four-thirty it takes my eyes a few minutes to focus. My

mind will need longer. She says she’s ready for the beach; sunglasses, tapestry-like

pareo wrapped around her waist, white cut-off t-shirt, bag in her hand.

I tell her she looks sexy. She tells me to get up.

I tell her I need coffee. She tells me to get up. But I can’t right now. I’m too

heavy, everywhere. Bad. I need more rest.

I tell her to shut the blinds. She tells me to get up.

I tell her to shut the blinds, please. She insists that I get up, so I tell her that I

want to marry her.

That gets her to shut the blinds and leave.

I then wonder about Genvieve Amaud, and if she stayed beautiful, and about

Shery, and I hope that she and her dentist are vacationing in Padre Island with freshman

spring breakers. I’m glad Shery’s not here, and I hope her dentist never takes her

somewhere beautifully static.

Then I sleep for three minutes, wake and go to the bathroom for some water, and

with the exception of repositioning myself every so often out of a drool reservoir, I sleep

until everyone returns from happy hour, around sunset.

Vittoria awakes me. She sits on the edge of the bed and caresses my cheek. From

what I can tell through my warped vision, she got some good sun today.

“Add a few more shades to the tan lines?”


195

“I think. It was beautiful out there, you should have come.” She stands up and

goes to lock the door. The tapestry wrapped around her thin waist drops to the floor in a

gentle shush, and she stands before me in her black swimsuit bottoms and white

sleeveless t-shirt.

“Let me see the lines, where darkness meets light.” I stretch my arm to her and

tug at her top. She smiles, and in one swift motion she flings the top on the bed. She

crawls onto me, slithering, her pink nipples feeling their way up my chest and to my lips.

“Did you think of me today,” she asks.

“I dreamt of you, I smelled of you, but I couldn’t think.”

“I did. I thought about you all day, and had to fight the urge to come back here.

Elena told me not to, or else I would have. So I went with all of them to get a few drinks,

and now I’m back here with you.” She wraps her arms around me. “What am I going to

do about you?”

“Whatever you want.” I feel her ass, the small of her back, her inner thighs.

“What do you want?”

“Everything. I want you all to myself. I want to eat you alive, feel you in my

mouth, feel you inside me forever, your hands on me until I die, your face and body, your

words to make me smile. Teach me about your ways, your world. I’m sick of it. I didn’t

want to be at the beach because you weren’t around. I wanted to be with you!”

“That’s nice, no?”

“It is, but it’s terrible. I can’t go falling for you.”


196

“So don’t.” Few things feel as wonderful as when someone tells you they need

you.

“But it might be too late,” she says.

I kiss her neck and slowly slide the swimsuit to her knees. “I think we are old

enough to control our emotions and be sensible about all this, to take it as it goes.” This

is all I can say at the moment—nothing too binding, yet implying that I love having her

near me. I wonder how this sounds to her, but I cannot ask. I have her naked now and I

want her too much to partake in this sort of intimate small talk. I too need her now. I

feel too good, she feels too good, and the samba in my head makes me smile until we

love as best we can, with the calmness of a hurricane’s eye.

We get a knock on the door; it’s Elena. She and the girls are all going back to

Vignola, and Vittoria says she doesn’t want to go back— or she wants me to come back

with her—but says it’s best if we don’t see each other tonight, for perspective, to think

about us.

“You know all I’ll be thinking is about your body, like it is now, next to me,

naked. I don’t want to be of trouble to your situation with the Germinator and all, but

know that I’ll be thinking of how we are right now.”

She gets up, her face a little sad.

“Even as you get dressed. That’s what I’ll be thinking of. Bending naked over

your bag to find your clean underwear and skin, slipping those cotton cradles onto your

beautiful frame. I’ll get fucked up tonight, drink tequila in your honor, and rerun in my


197

mind all we’ve experienced since last night after midnight, since you sat on my lap and

told me I was drunk.”

She leans down and kisses my forehead. She has the sad smile of a sad child. I

don’t know what’s in her mind, nor do I want to know right now. My vow is golden, I

will think of her, and if she’s half as sad as she appears to be, I know she’ll be thinking of

me; and hopefully in a few days we can be together, over coffee or a beer, in a bar or in

her bed.

I sit up, take her in my arms, and inundate her neck and shoulders with tiny

kisses. Her eyes closed, faint smile on perfect lips, silent moans pulsating from her body

to mine, making me want her more. But she can’t, she must go. Just a little bit more?

No. Will she call me? Yes. When? Soon. One last kiss, and she’s gone. I wait until I

hear goodbyes and the front door close before I come out and face the spitfire music of

drunken friends who want to know everything.

“Haven’t you heard of the saying, ‘a gentleman never tells’?” I tell them.

“Yes,” Sacchi says. ‘T h a t’s why we’re asking you!”

“Nothing.”

“Did you sleep with her?”

“What do you think, you fools?” They all stay silent, waiting for my testimony.

“Give me a drink, I need to catch up.”

“Was it a double-header?” Selmi asks.

“Ah, if only I could remember.”

“You know she’ll tell us. Why don’t you just come out with it?”


198

“In that case. I’ll ju s t let her say. Now please, Piero, fetch me a beer. My throat’s

a desert.”

On the streets tonight we are all fine messes, rare form for anyone but us. After

we killed a bottle of grappa Bonno decided to drive back to Vignola with Pozzi and

Selmi; they could no longer handle the juice’s power and at eleven the thought of home

and Mamma and a Sunday meal with their families sounded too alluring. I am left with

Bacchus, my cousin and Sacchi. Sacchi is in one of those obscure moods where talk and

smiles no longer work. H e’s on the hunt tonight for a woman he had met late last night,

near closing time. He had invited her back to his party, but she couldn’t make it, and

now he’s going to try and find her again, back at the Paradiso. He says last night’s close

encounter with Elena w asn’t all that bad, but she wasn’t his first choice, nor second.

Tonight he must get a hold o f that woman. And if not her, someone else.

Bacchus is his usual peculiar self, commenting about women’s breasts that pass

us on the busy streets of MMR, telling them “hello” and then shitting his pants when they

actually seem interested. M y cousin Piero has been talking all night about a girl who last

night gave him a kiss on the cheek while dancing with her, but as soon as the song was

over she had disappeared into the Paradiso’s thick crowd.

“Please shut up,” Sacchi tells him. “You haven’t stopped talking about that girl

since last night.”

We are walking aimlessly, wasting time before entering the club, stopping at

random bars to grab drinks and look at people. Piero and I lag behind the other two, and


199

he tells me the girl was beautiful. He doesn’t remember what she looks like, but he

knows that if he sees her again he can recognize her.

I’m not worried about my entrance to the Paradiso because my expectations of

actually getting in don’t exist. Sacchi says not to worry, w e’ll find a way, but I don’t

give a shit. Tonight I’m satisfied with just killing time, gazing at all the pretty nasty

people, being drunk and ridiculing them in my head. I’m going to smile a lot, that I

know— Vittoria on my mind, her fresh sadness, her strong love, her little ass and plush

hair. Making almost-sober love was quite a wonderful experience.

Down the street from the Paradiso, in a bar whose DJ is mixing Spanish pop— on

CD’s— and the small crowd loves it, Sacchi decides it’s time to go to the club. I tell

Piero that he should hang out with me in case I don’t get in.

“You’ll get in," he says. ‘T hey need Sacchi there. He’s tops.”

“I don’t care. I was no good last night. If I worked at the Paradiso I’d kick the

shit out of me at first sight.” I put my arm in his, almost skipping through the asphalt

filled with all types of the same type. “Let’s just fuck around out here. We’ll get a bottle

of something potent from that small market if it’s still open, and just wander, hit the

beach, harass, carouse family style, see what happens.”

The look on Piero’s face seems pleased with the idea, but at the same time I know

that he wants to follow Sacchi in the realm of the blessed beauties. But I know regardless

of the outcome, he’ll be with me. He has a responsibility to me, his cousin from

America.


200

We approach the Paradiso and Sacchi tells me to leave the talking to him, so I do.

He goes to the front, talks to the front wench. She glances at me and shakes her head,

talking rapidly—certainly about my behavior—and instinctively I give her a big smile

and the middle finger. Her bug eyes bulge even more, like a cartoon’s.

“Bacchus,” I say. ‘Tell Sacchi to have fun. Piero and I will go around, maybe try

later if she’s not in front.” I turn to my cousin. “You ok with that?”

‘There’s no way they’ll let him in,” Piero tells Bacchus. “You guys go in. We’ll

hang around. I’ll send you a message later.”

Without another thought, I walk off through the crowd, that same crowd that last

night was waiting to see George Clooney, the same crowd that booed and hissed at me.

These people drool at the mere thought of a celebrity, like hyenas but uglier. Real

sycophants, sicky sycophants looking for famous asses to flash their cameras at and

impress their small town with a blurry photo of so and so entering the Paradiso. Fuck all

of you, that’s what I say. Fuck you all— I think it with a big smile, reminiscing Vittoria’s

gentle feel, her soft, gentle tightness, her pretty feet. If I could see myself with her, I

would confront the possibility of love. Thing is. I’m still not sure whether it’s just a fad,

for me, and for her. We might have just satisfied an urgent need, for survival, and now

we’re fine all over again.

“What should we do?” Piero asks. “We need drink.”

“Give me your phone, please. I want to call Vittoria fast.”

“At this time of night? She’s probably asleep, or with the Germinator.”

“All the better. Do you have her number?”


201

Piero presses the buttons and hands me the phone. We are in one of those

rotundas similar to the one Vottoria and I spent time in last night. The phone rings, rings,

and no answer. So I send her a message: U THNK OF ME? SAY HI TO GERM.

“Let’s roll,” I say. ‘T o the nearest store.” But the nearest one is closed, and so is

the next one. It’s almost two AM, and in resignation we buy a bottle of cheap whiskey at

a cafe that’s off the beaten path. They charge us a lot, but my cousin picks it up.

“We must look like alcoholics,” he says.

“As long as we are, I see nothing bad in it. Denial is the real killer.”

“So tell me of Vittoria. C ’mon, details.”

“Beautiful, wonderful, great, exciting.”

“And?”

“And we made love three times, each time better than the last. I want her, I’m

thinking of her now, more than my ex.”

“What did happen with her? What was her name? Cherry?” He takes a long

swig from the bottle and passes it to me.

“Shery. Yeah, she left me for a fucking happy dentist, a real dull success, a

fucking hole Filler who drives a nice car.”

“Bitter, huh?”

We come to a bench near a pub that brags of its pure Irish bloodline, and I sit.

“Bitter, sour, rancid, all the adjectives applicable to the taste of piss, that’s me. She set

me back at least a few years on my maturing process. My liver is paying hard, my head

is flustered, my heart is almost dead. If noses could be affected by such things. I’m sure I


202

would no longer be able to smell my own farts. I fucking hate her for what she’s done,

but I still love her, still think of her every minute of my day, still dream about her almost

on a nightly basis, still hope— and I know it’s gone, she’s gone. But I still hope. She was

my only dream before I had even met her, and she still remains my one and only. Damn

bullshit.”

“C ’mon!” He asks for the bottle. “You don’t seem that fucked. You handle

yourself well, you still get laid— tell me last night wasn’t great.”

“It wasn’t great. It was very nice. Vittoria’s nice. Far more beautiful than Shery,

better body, better everything. But Shery was Shery, all mine. She was what I wanted

without knowing. So of course, once you get it and realize that’s what you wanted all

along, shit! It leaves a mark, it does things to your insides that change your whole way of

being, o f looking at things. And then puff! Gone. No more communication, no more

nothing. Have a nice life, you were a great stone to step on and now I’m on my way up

the mountain. It’s not a good thing. Avoid it.”

“Shit, if I could just get some I’d be happy. Take a drink.”

I drink. I tell Piero I’m going for a record. Need to drown in this shit, overflow

my blood and see what that does. He laughs. It’s past three. We are near belligerence. I

smoke a cigarette and a girl walks by that reminds me of Shery— her breasts.

Piero soon begins chatting at passersby, bidding them a fair eve, asking their

names or phone numbers, seeing if they’d be interested in an orgy. Naturally no one pays

any attention to him. We are well-dressed bums, the cancer of a city, ants on a sandwich.


203

I recall my mother’s statement about Piero’s lack of motivation, and decide this is as

good a time as any to talk to him. Better, actually. Incomprehensible babbles between

drunken cousins always find a way to strike a true chord.

And so we stay seated, on our bench, watching sheep roam free on the streets of a

circus that only leaves MMR once the summer’s almost gone. My eyes ache, feel

blistered with the embers of a shattered life that couldn’t withstand the impact of the

bulldozers that followed Shery’s departure. I’m a pussy. This Ballantine’s scotch tastes

of nicotine, and I tell my cousin.

“I think it’s the cigarettes,” he says.

Silence between us. We watch the feet walk by, nearly trampling each other at

times, all the pretty feet. I look up and see a guy with hair so caked with mousse that it

could get up and walk away. Funny.

I tum to Piero. ‘This American poet once wrote: Mama, I'm afraid o f trying.

Mama, sing me that song that used to make me smile. I like that, don’t you?”

“Who?” Piero’s head is in between his knees. “W hat?”

“I don’t know.” I look at the streetlamp above me. The insects fly to it, it’s their

sun. “Mama, I ’m afraid o f trying. That’s what you are. That’s all you, Piero.”

“What?” He slurs something else and belches quietly.

“You have to try, man. We just have to try. Our Mammas won’t be around to

sing forever. Shit, my Mamma doesn’t even have vocal chords anymore.”

“Your Mamma is good. My Mamma is on my balls. She and Dad say I have to

work to be free.”


204

“Work will make you free, that what they say?”

“Yes. If I work seriously, then I’m free to do as I please, spend money where I

want.”

I have never lent thought to that before, how outside of a concentration camp,

when taken into the context of a simple, free existence, Arbeit Macht Frei is a rather just

statement.

“Yeah. You work hard in the daytime, you sure can get stoned at night.”

“Who says that?”

“An American musician.”

“You know what Nonno Aurelio says about America?” Piero is now sitting up,

shiny eyes reflect half a bottle of scotch consumed.

“What?”

“ ‘America’s right here!’” We both laugh.

“That’s right!” I remember. Nonno Aurelio is part of the generations that created

the American myth, that made it the w orld’s Shangri-La. But many, especially real

patriots, always said America's here. There was no point in leaving, starting fresh. Italy

had all to offer. America meant nothing more than opportunity and cash, and in the

pursuit of it you tended to lose part of yourself.

“We still have to try,” I say. I struggle to gulp a bit of whiskey. Lighting a

cigarette is near impossible. If Shery were here, she’d light it. So would Vittoria. So

would Veronica, although she’d make a snide comment about how dumb smoking is.

“Piero!”


205

“What?”

“You know who I want?”

No answer.

“Piero!” His head is rested on the bench.

“Huh?”

“Know who I love?”

“Who? Mamma?”

“I love Maurizio’s sister. I could love her forever. I’ve loved her since I was a

toddler— I mean, since she was a toddler.” I slap him on the arm. “What do you think of

that?”

Piero’s eyes are closed, his head leaning back, mouth like a flytrap.

I shake him awake, startling him. I tell him the sun’s almost up and we should go

back home, sleep in Sacchi’s luxury. I ask him which way more or less, and after looking

around for some landmark, he vaguely points straight ahead.

W e’re holding on to each other, stumbling. We have to walk through a busy

stretch before we get to the side road that leads to the house. I hear a few people every so

often say something about us, but all I can do is mumble ‘fuck you.’ I can’t confront

anyone now; it’d be stupid.

Piero has to vomit, says he must. I take him down a side street, away from the

parade of drunken, happy youths. A trashcan attached to a lamppost seems like the only

suitable place, so I prop him against it and tell him to do his business, which he does.


206

with no delay. A few people walk by, a group of girls making disgusted faces, and I slur

that he’ll be fine. “Not to worry, ladies. My friend is Fine. It’s cathartic.’’

Once his third round is complete, Piero sits crossed-legged on the sidewalk, head

sulking, he’s moaning and groaning. I cannot let him sleep here, we need to get home.

“Let’s go, Piero. Time to sleep.”

“Right here.”

“No!” I get him up, and we get back on the main road. People from the clubs are

slowly trickling to the streets, making MMR’s downtown even more populated. Piero’s

eyes are nearly closed, his steps jagged, his mouth sour and dry.

“What do you want?”

“Anything,” he says. “Water and food. Anything.”

A small cafe with a display case full of pastries is to our left. People crowd

around the cashier, ordering, paying, waiting for some food. I sit Piero on the curb and

tell him to wait. I hit the line, it’s past five. The sun is rising, again. A few guys look at

me strangely, but nothing’s to be said. I’m sure my looks deserve a few strange glances

anyway.

On the curb, Piero and I eat our cream-filled pastries. I bought him water. I’m

drinking Fanta.

“Why didn’t you get me one of those?” he says.

“You said you wanted water, do you want mine? I’ll drink the water.”

“No. I’m fine, it’s all shit anyway.”

“Yeah.”


207

A man walks up to us and crouches. His color is that of dirt, his pants are tom,

his sandals worn, and his toenails are thick, yellow, poor.

“Friend. Can you give me money, please?” he asks.

“Sorry.” I look in the bag and give him a pastry, the chocolate filled one.

‘Thank you, friend.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Hey,” Piero says, “why you give him that? It was mine.”

“You can have my last one,” I tell Piero. I turn to the crouching man, who’s

devouring the pastry. The front of his blue striped t-shirt is covered in flakes. “Where

are you from?”

“Albania.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Living.” His eyes are tender, hollow.

“You like it?”

“I don’t want to offend, but I hate it. But I can’t be back in my country. There’s

nothing there.”

‘They don’t like you much here, right?”

“Yes. They look at me like a monster. Like I kill and steal.”

“Do you want a cigarette?”

“Thank you.”

I light his and mine. I look at Piero, his head again between his knees. “My

cousin drank too much tonight.”


208

“Good,” the man says with half a smile.

“Yes. But I have to take care of him, which isn’t good. We are like the blind

leading the blind. We have to get home.”

“You’ll find the way. This place is confusing, but it’s also small.”

“You’re right,” I tell him.

He stands up and stretches his hand. “You want up?”

“No, thank you. We’ll sit here for another minute.”

“Ok. Thank you for the food and cigarette. You are good. I’m going to go over

there, across the street and see if I can find more like you.” He has a smile, a forced one.

“Ok. Be well.” We shake hands, and with a plastic bag in his hand, the Albanian

in raggedy pants and a blue striped t-shirt wobbles across the street. I watch him go up to

a group of guys, asking them for change or something. They all ignore him. He bows

and walks down the street just a bit, asking two women for help. They turn around and

begin crossing the street. The Albanian stands alone, watching their asses wiggle away,

and then turns his attention to the sky. I don’t want to look at him anymore, but I can’t

take my eyes away. I want to see him succeed.

He walks back up the street, past the group of guys he had just talked to— bowing

to them— and asks another group of guys for some help. One man, with dark hair and an

unbuttoned blue shirt that reveals his hairless, sculpted chest, pushes the Albanian,

forcing the poor man to swagger, to try to catch his balance, but with no use. The

Albanian lands on his knees, his bag at his side, the contents of it scattered around him.


209

The guy with hairless chest, laughing, stands before him. I nudge Piero to life. “Hey," I

tell him, “look at this.”

Piero looks up. “He’s going to get beaten, watch.”

Sure enough, the next thing the m an does is kick the Albanian square in the face,

catapulting him to his back. I can hear his head hit the pavement, and his body is now

still.

“Motherfucker,” I say. I try to get up, but Piero holds on to me.

“Don’t go. It’s no use.”

I get out of Piero’s feeble hold and stand. The man is hovering above the

Albanian. I yell across the street, since no one else does.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The man tums to me. “A favor.” H e grins, a friend of his pats him on the back

and laughs. I’m in the middle of the road. The man, still staring at me, kicks the

Albanian in the ribs. No sound comes from the poor man. Nothing.

“You dirty piece of shit,” I yell. People begin gathering around. The man kicks

the Albanian again. I stumble toward him. I’m gonna fuck him up. “You pussy-waste.

Fucking pretty-boy, dickless, pussy-waste. Come here. I’ll show you a what-for if

you’ve ever seen one.”

“A what?” the man says.

“Exactly.” I’m fucking him up if he touches me.


210

I am standing, barely, aware that more people are gathering around this scene. I

turn to look for Piero. He’s sitting, his eyes are fixed on the Albanian. He has no idea

what’s going on. He’s going to miss a great show. I’m going Miami style.

I turn back to this asshole, he’s right in my face, nostrils flaring, chest heaving,

fist clenched. He has a good three inches on me, wide shoulders, cock-sucker I challenge

you.

“Why,” I say, “do you do such a thing, you pussy?” I’m fucking cool. I should

have a cigarette in my mouth.

Trouble is, I don’t see it coming, not in the least. His punch hits my left cheek

and I crumble. Some laughter, a few hoots, a holler, but I see nothing. Out.

I awake in Sacchi’s apartment, the bed I slept in with Vittoria. Piero’s sleeping

next to me, on Sacchi’s bed. I wish Vittoria were here, making me feel good, putting ice

to my head—God! My fucking head! I try to sit up, but immediately plop back down.

That motherfucker did me good, worked me real good. I wake Piero, ask him what

happened.

“What?” he says.

“What happened?”

“Got me. I don’t remember walking home.”

“Remember me getting slaughtered?”

“What?” He sits up. “Holy shit! Your face!”

“Bad?”


211

“Not too bad, but still. Who did that?”

I say nothing. I feel my face, it hurts. I wonder if it’s black and blue, or red, or

purple. I think of what my mother will say when she sees this, whatever color, and what

Vittoria will say, and what she’ll do to make me feel better. It’s three in the afternoon,

Sunday. I wish I could see that bastard one more time and break a brick on his face, in

front of his friends, in front of the Albanian, in front of the world. Instead, I close my

eyes and think of Vittoria, and when I sleep, I dream of Veronica. W e’re in a car. I’m

driving, there are mountains, and she’s holding my hand.

* *

“Hey, fighter!” Sacchi yells.

I open my eyes, see his tan face smiling. “What happened?” I laugh.

This is how the story goes: he and Bacchus, alone, leave the Paradiso and head

home. Bacchus is annoying the shit out of him— has been all night— and Bacchus wants

something to eat, and begins an insupportable whine. So they stop at a cafe to eat some

pizza. Walking, again, Bacchus fat and happy, Sacchi spots Piero lifelessly sitting on a

curb, and he notices a small mob of people crowded in the middle of the street. He walks

up, and sees this big bastard punch me in the face. I fall in one lump. A few laugh, and

the guy is preparing to kick me, but Sacchi steps in and is able to get himself and me out

of there without anymore damage. Police and ambulances soon come. Everyone

scatters. The carabbas ask a few people questions, load up the bloody Albanian on a

stretcher, and leave.


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“You’re lucky,” he tells me. ‘T hat guy was ready to beat you like an egg. Those

sirens came to the rescue.”

Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank luck. If not for Bitchy Bacchus’ hunger we wouldn’t

have been on that street.” He laughs. “You got lucky, you would’ve been pulp like that

poor fucker they took away.”

Sacchi kicks Piero. “Oh! Good looking out for your cousin!”

Piero rolls over. “What?”

“Precisely my point.” Sacchi hasn’t stopped laughing. “What a family!”

Driving back to Vignola, the Albanian is on my mind. W onder what’s broken,

wonder what they’ll do with him. Wonder if he’s glad to be in Italy, wonder if he

wonders he’s made a mistake to leave poverty for a chance at just one day of sun. He

traded starvation for humiliation. He’s nothing here, will never be anything. He’ll end

up in Milan, by the Duomo, and die on the church’s steps, covered in pigeon shit. My

hero, dead at birth, never a chance for sun. You bitch. You make us all want, you give

us all hope, raise us higher so when we fall it takes longer to hit the ground. Bitch.

Bloody bitch. My cheek is swollen and blue because of you. Hi, M om. Paris was great.

Yes, I’m fine, don’t worry. Sun made me do it. No, really, I’m fine. I ’m going to bed, I

need to cry. See you in the morning. Yes, I’m fine. Oh, yeah, so fine.


213

No note.


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CHAPTER XVI

INTERLUDE: DECISION AND REVISION

Tommaso calls Vittoria once, twice, she never returns the calls. Finally, over a

week after their encounter in MMR, with his stay in Vignola dwindling down, they run

into each other at Bonno’s pub. His heart races when he sees her, unsure which action

might be more effective: ignoring her or acting as if nothing happened. She walks up to

him, shyly, asking if he wants to go for a walk.

They walk around the piazza, under the old porticos that will never reveal their

secret, and he tells her he’s missed her. She stops, her face in darkness. She says she

can’t. She can’t begin to think about him, to keep him in her mind, to send the past years

of her life with Germano to hell just because o f an impulse that got the best of her. She

can't risk all this for another week of intense love, love that would end bitterly on the day

of his departure to America and leave her once again immersed in the quotidian agony

that had been her life up until their meeting. She just can’t do it.


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Brandishing his courage to confront her like a man, Tommaso tells her he’s

considering to make Vignola— at least Italy—his new home. Her face lights for a

second, her pout partially gone, and she asks him what brought this news.

He had gone to the Graziosis for dinner a few nights back, and in between

discussing the world’s future, life in Washington, and Italy’s deficiencies as a futbol

team, Tommaso’s own future became an issue. He said he didn’t know what he was

going to do. Claudio Graziosi told him it didn’t sound like he enjoyed American life, to

which Tommaso agreed.

‘Then why don’t you move back?” Veronica blurted.

“And do what, precisely?”

Silence, everyone’s thinking cap was on. Her father asked him what he’s been

reading lately, and Tommaso told him it had been months since he last picked up a book.

Why? Because they said nothing, they had lost their meaning.

“What happened? You used to be hungry for them.”

“I guess I got hungrier for other things.”

“Listen,” Mr. Graziosi said. “You could definitely teach English here. I could

call some people in Modena and Bologna and see what’s out there. It might be a starting

level position— ‘English for thick-skulls’—or something like that, but it’s a start. If

things worked out, and with your knowledge of literature. I’m sure you could teach some

real classes down the line. Maybe not in this area, but Ferrara or Verona. I don’t know.

I’m not sure.” He took a swig of Lambrusco. “Would you want me to check tomorrow?

It wouldn’t be of trouble.”


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Tommaso smiled, immediately thinking about the wonders of being back in Italy

for good, and told Claudio Graziosi that it’d be nice if he could check with some people.

“ It’s such a simple, logical idea,” Tommaso tells Vittoria. “Yet for whatever

reason, I had never considered it. I have gotten so used to being over there that anywhere

else seemed inconceivable.” He smiles and takes her arm. “But it’s not. And I think I’m

going to do it. To be near my mother, near my friends, near you.”

Under the dark portico, near Vignola’s castle, Tommaso stretches himself out for

Vittoria’s taking. He wants her to grab him, hold him, tell him she’d jump off a bridge

for him. He wants everything. He doesn’t tell her that during the night at the Graziosis’,

after dinner, he and Veronica paired up in a game of cards, and while playing her brother

and father, their feet touched under the table, and she rested her bare toes on his shoes for

more than half an hour. He doesn’t tell Vittoria that during that entire evening all his past

fantasies about Veronica bloomed and at the end of the night, in front o f her parents and

brother, all their emotions culminated in the oddest of goodnights: Tommaso and

Veronica fully aware of each other’s presence yet they could not make any eye contact.

Tommaso stood outside the Graziosis’ door, thanking them and telling them they’ll be

seeing each other soon. Veronica lagged behind everyone, just staring at her feet,

mouthing buona notte, searching for meaning somewhere below her knees.

She had blushed. He had tried not to look at her, afraid her parents would notice

something, afraid he could finally reach the impossible, and because of that, act callously

in response to the confusing sexual tension that in all likelihood was just a delusion on his


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part. He doesn’t tell Vittoria that afterward, in his own bed, he saw Veronica naked, soft,

all his. He should tell her, but he doesn’t. It’s his secret.

Instead, he caresses the back o f Vittoria’s head, pulls her into him, and they kiss.

And they kiss. And Tommaso tells her he wants her now, and he’ll want her later,

always. “It’s worth our try.”

But she can’t. She pushes him away, tells him she can’t rely on a half-promise,

she can’t do this to Germano— who regardless of her doubts, has been and always will be

there for her. He is a rock. Tommaso is just a dream. “I’m sorry.”

She walks off, back toward the pub, her silhouette getting longer and longer under

the dimly lit porticos. Tommaso takes a cigarette and sits on the steps of a doorway, in

the dark.

The other night, while eating at the Graziosis’, Veronica had asked him about

Shery and other possible love interests. She was her usual nosy self, probing Tommaso

to the limits of a conversation between a brother and a sister. Her parents jokingly

scolded her, saying it was none of her business. But Tommaso, playing the good brother,

answered.

“I could equally ask you about your boyfriends, but I have enough tact not to ask

that question in front of your parents.”

“Oh, you’re so thoughtful.” She smiled. “C ’mon, tell.”

“What can I say? I loved my utter independence from everyone but her. I loved

not needing anything.”

“Do you still love her?” she had asked.


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“Uhm ...”

“You do, you can say it.”

“No. No, I don’t think that’s it. Well, yes, I suppose I do still love her, but I’m

beginning to see that I don’t need her.”

“You want her.”

“No, I don’t think so. I want that feeling, not her. Huge difference.”

“Really?” She half-rolled her eyes.

“Yes. Whether I find that feeling once again, that’s another thing. But do I need

it to be with her? I don’t think so. Not anymore.”

On the steps, Tommaso puts his cigarette out and drops the butt down the sewer

grate at his feet. Did he really mean it?

No, because the flame was still there, would always be there, however small.

Yes, because everything lives elsewhere, not only in Shery. Everything lives

everywhere.

This is what he tells himself. He sops up these juicy morsels with all the bread he

can find, eats them as if they were the last ones on earth, and believe. Forget himself.

Believe.

He believes in Veronica, he thinks. All the signs are there and have always been.

It’s just a matter of having those floating molecules become concrete; become something

that can be touched, pressed against, held.


219

His flight back to Washington is in a week. The day after tomorrow he’s going

porcini hunting with Maurizio, Veronica, and their father. He must talk to her then and

settle this matter. Whatever the risk, he must.


220

In first grade, during recess, a fe w friends and he placed a smooth rock in the

middle o f a puddle, making an island.

The kids then found two big black ants and stranded them on the island.

The ants paced around, not doing much o f anything, so the bored kids flicked one

into the ocean. They watched that big black ant struggle a bit, and then it

disappeared into the murky depths.

Not even a minute passed, and the ant on the island walked to the shore and

into the water. It sank. The kids stared. Tommaso fe lt like crying, but he held it

in.

A few minutes later, the second ant, noble ant, emerged from the puddle with its

fallen companion.

The drowned ant twitched on the rock until it encountered death in the form o f a

six-year old thumb.


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CHAPTER XVII

FUNGHI

I’ve been sweating like a dog in search of porcini since five-thirty this morning,

and I’m sick of it. My eyes are beginning to mess with me. I feel like I’ve been fishing

all day, staring at the bobber for so long that I start hallucinating, seeing it jerk up and

down with delusions of biting fish. But instead of the bobber it’s the leaves. Dark brown

ones, light ones, by the feet great mossy oaks, in ravines, under shrubs. Leaves

everywhere, no one rakes the woods, and I’ve got the Vietnam syndrome, kaleidoscope

sight. A mushroom can be anywhere. Every fucking where.

But Mauri and his father are trying to tell me otherwise, “you find them near

moss, in delicate concave ground near a tree’s base, under leaves,” and on and on. Their

walking stick jab the ground lightly. There’s a system. It’s a patience-oriented hobby.

My patience has been Veronica. A white t-shirt, just a bit short, perfectly tight.

A pair of the snugliest ‘woods’ jeans I’ve ever seen. The lankiest, single most


exceptional frame to ever grace this side of the Apennines. Her legs are strong and they

go sky-high. Her square, narrow shoulders are erect for ultimate ground coverage—it’s

obvious she’s been studying her father’s technique: “neck high, flexible chin, eyes like a

hawk,” not mine: shoulders hunched, walking stick supporting my dead weight, eyes like

a mole. Veronica wears white cotton undies. She must. All my dreams rely on this.

With the expert movements of seasoned hunters who instinctively know where

prime conditions and locations collide, Mauri and his father have been leading the way

up this gentle bell-shaped slope that’s been whipping my ass. I’m sticking next to

Veronica, getting her to laugh when I can, betting her money I’ll find the next mushroom,

be it a porcini, a galletto, or whatever.

But they know these woods like their own cupboards; all seventeen porcini in the

plastic bag have been found by them. I have only spotted two, and they were both a

bastardly initiation into the art of mushroom hunting.

The first one was near the beginning of the ascent, over three hours ago. It was

half-eaten, mangled by tiny bites, sitting injured under a cluster of leaves by the base of

an old, decrepit tree. Claudio patted me on the back and said it was a good sign. ‘Where

there are worms, there are mushrooms.’

The second one was a dangerous bitch. It looked like the real thing, and

immediately I began to boast, telling Veronica I was “the mushroom king, and I could do

anything.” As instructed, I alerted Mauri and his father, and they rushed over, eager to

see. I grinned at Veronica, lightly elbowing her arm, doing brotherly flirtations to get


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under her skin and stay there. Maurizio kneeled, prodded the mushroom with his stick,

and then shook his head.

‘This is what I was telling you about,” he said to Veronica and me, the two

novices.

He broke the mushroom with his stick, never touching it with his hands, and

prodded its meaty head.

“It looks nice now, but just wait a few seconds. Look. See, it’s turning purple.

Poison.”

“Mushroom king,” Veronica said. “Most certainly.”

Now, closing in on ten, I just want to sit and smoke. Take a break, let the sweat

dry a bit, perhaps watch Veronica while she talks, fix on her mouth, her soft lips. Smile

at her. Let her father and brother go on ahead. Let her and I speak like we need to.

There are simply too many signs, this is not an illusion. She wants me just as much as I

want her. I’ve loved her since I was twelve, and she absolutely desires me. When she’s

ahead of me, she always turns to check where I am. She hums, she tells me o f restaurants

and roads in Tuscany she’d like to go back to. I tell her when I come back, if she wants,

we can go for a long Sunday drive, and if I don’t have a job I’ll get my mom to front me

the money and car. She laughs. Says I’ll have a job eventually, and if not, she’ll hire me

as her personal errand-boy.

“In English it’s called a bitch," I say.

“Doesn’t that mean prostitute?”


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“Yes and no. It’s a female dog and slang for a bad tempered woman. A whore

can be a bitch, but a bitch isn’t necessarily a whore. Get it?”

“Yes, dear bitch." She smiles. I want to squeeze her.

“I never thought about the idea of being a bitch's bitch. What bitter-sweet irony.”

“Yes, mushroom king. It’s ironic that you’re my bitch.”

But it really isn’t. I’ll always be her bitch.

Earlier, Veronica, as inexperienced as she is, found the biggest mushroom, and

two more. She had smiled at me, and then scratched an itch she had on her elbow. A

mosquito bite. The silly face she made when rubbing her arm furiously made me happy

to be near her. That baby look was only for me, all mine. It wasn’t done for her father, it

wasn’t done for her brother. It was all mine.

“You sure you don’t want my help, mushroom king?”

“Positive,” I had told her, once again. My eyes were fixed on her, telling her *of

course I want your help. Anything I can get, everything.’ She might have caught on to

the look; she blushed a bit and began to march up the slope.

We are now spread out like a big T: the father’s leading, Veronica and Mauri to

the sides, and I’m behind, trying to cover all untracked surfaces. I didn’t drink enough

coffee, and however hot and sweaty I might be, coffee sounds exquisite, just delightful.

Two lumps of sugar, steaming hot, creamy coffee. Then a cigarette, Veronica on my lap,

pinching her thighs, her face in my neck, like teenagers in a piazza. I just want to go


225

back to the Graziosis’ mountain home, back to the rustic comforts of that old, old home,

sit in the cool kitchen, rest my bones, a sip of wine, a few tagliatelle with a porcini sauce,

and close my eyes.

We had arrived up here yesterday, near dusk. On the drive, right outside

Vignola’s city limits, Claudio Graziosi pointed out the cluster of trees where in 1945 the

S.S. hung eight partisans and left them to rot for almost three months. He told me my

father’s father was one of Vignola’s bravest; he had confronted the mayor and appealed

that the bodies be taken down, if for anything else, the city’s dignity. “Your grandfather

was a great man. Noble.” His grave is right next to my father’s.

In the Graziosis’ station wagon we climbed the foothills of the Apennines,

following for a few kilometers the Panaro’s origins before we turned into the mountains

to our left and proceeded towards Zocca, the little village where the Italian pop-icon

Vasco Rossi is from. From what Mauri has told me, Vasco is up there frequently,

playing cards in the bar with his old friends, drinking beer and shooting up, having sex

with his underage fans and escaping imprisonment.

“What a bastard,” I said.

“But he’s a god,” Mauri said. “Guy can do whatever he wants. Loathsome, very.

But musically brilliant? Of course. He’s genius.”

After Zocca, winding up dark little roads lined with ferns, we reach an opening—

a sort of plateau— in between two steep bulges of forest, and gently cruise down to the

end of the road, into Rondinone, a cluster of Five or six country homes. The neighbor’s

chickens ran amuck in the road, cats everywhere, a mutt chained at an old tree, a plump


226

woman hanging clothes from a big galvanized basin, letting them dry overnight and with

the cool morning breeze.

We got out of the car and the Graziosis went inside their house, the last house on

Rondinone’s one hundred meter strip. I stayed, looked at a few kittens scatter, looked at

the plump woman’s hips, looked at the incline above this village— the forest where in the

morning we’d be hunting.

Last night, after a few glasses o f Lambrusco, we went to bed early. Mauri,

Veronica and I shared a bedroom with three little cozy beds. I tried not to listen for her

breath, shuffle in her sleep, clear her throat. But I couldn’t resist keeping my eyes open

and watching her, over Maurizio’s sleeping body, to see if by chance she would look my

way. She didn’t. She slept like a baby.

Looking at the ceiling, something came over me, something I hadn’t experienced

in centuries. The last time I had contact with nature, with pure air, with ancient greens

and rolling hills, was the summer before Shery and I had moved to Washington, over two

years ago. Centuries. We had driven to her parents’ home in a Chicago suburb to unload

and pick-up some of her belongings before the big move, and while rummaging in the

family’s basement, Shery stumbled across a tent and some camping gear.

“Honey,” she had said to me while I was sifting through a box of Shery’s Bat

Mitzvah photographs and memories, “we should drive to Wisconsin and camp

somewhere on the lake, or in woods.”

A sweeter city-slicker I couldn’t have ever met. Shery, in shorts and a tank top,

flip-flops and her red ‘moving’ bandana, kneeling over her parents’ Coleman stoves, pots


227

and kerosene lamps, knew no limits. What she wanted to do could and should be done.

That is why I loved her.

“I haven’t camped since I was a child,” she continued. “W ouldn’t it be fun? We

could pack a cooler, bring some beers and marshmallows, a flashlight and a Zippo, and

rough it for a day or two. Here’s a little fishing pole. You could even do a little of this,

while I read on the banks of a lake and watch you catch us our meal. Wouldn’t it be

great?”

I knew it would be great. Everything with her was great, from going to the

symphony to watching re-runs of Seinfeld, everything. Nighttime, before bed, we’d go to

the bathroom together, brush our teeth and wash up. I’d watch her meticulously soap her

face with rapid hand movements, scrub, rinse, and dry with soft pats of an old hand

towel. She’d complain about a little pimple, and I’d kiss it, and tell her it’s one lucky

pimple to be living on her sweet chin.

That night after dinner, Shery and I brought out the map and spoke to her father,

Mr. Steiner, about possible campsites. Mr. Steiner, with a slight tone of embarrassment,

confessed that he hadn’t gone camping in at least ten years. The last time was the

summer before Shery’s seventh grade trip to Israel. I knew that Shery’s father worked

too hard, was too stressed, and with an increase in capital and lifestyle, his idea of

vacations no longer felt that camping was adequate. He was winters in Aspen, summers

in Maine, or Key West, or Martha’s Vineyard, depending on the mood. He had begun to

follow the Jones’ and keep up with them, partially out of desire, partially out of a

conformist’s boredom; the kind of boredom only the nouveau riche tend to experience.


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Mr. Steiner, nursing a twenty-year-old scotch with particular gusto, pointed at

Lake Michigan’s coastline, naming a few random places off the top of his head. ‘The

best place you mother and I ever went though, is up a ways. Right here, on the peninsula

that edges out onto the lake. There it is, Ellison Bay, Newport State Park. It’s a long

drive, but frankly, it’s well worth it.”

And so that night we packed Shery’s car, and left Chicago at sunrise, heading for

the Wisconsin state park that was to become the best time we had ever had. Even

afterwards, in the bustle and boredom of Washington D.C., pre-and-post Shery, this

excursion remained lodged in my mind as it is now, here in Rondinone. We laughed, at

my awkward yet effective means of creating a fire, at the unspeakable serenity that

engulfed us, and at the crickets’ purr that instilled in me a comforting reason for living.

To judge our lives according to those days on the edge of Lake Michigan, one could

assume that death would never come, that the secrets to immortality rested in a campfire,

a few smiles, and the sound of water gently rolling upon the shore.

But that was an over-idealized assumption of an extremely hopeless romantic who

thought to have found everything I ever needed— ever. Now I can call that a mistake, I

can see how its design was faulty from the beginning. And all those nights in the gutter

in the aftermath of her departure, and all my open-eyed blindness, and all my deficiencies

to make decisions and confront situations, causing hurt to myself, the detachment and

shrinking of perception, now, finally, I can at least accuse myself of sheer idiocy—sheer

unguided idiocy. I still have no direction, and I’m not sure I want one. But that was not

the problem. The problem was that I was keeping a flame alive within the dank pit of my


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chest instead of finding another candle altogether and lighting it. A simple difference

that causes immense changes. No more fooling myself. I know better now. Find the

new candle and kill the continuum of memory.

“I found one!” Veronica shouts.

We reach Veronica, all smiles. Maurizio bends, and snatches the porcini.

“Beautiful,” he says, while holding it up for us to see.

Veronica asks to hold it, and she studies it with particular care, with the care only

a lover or mother possesses. “You see, Tommy? As far as these are concerned, this

might be— symmetrically speaking— the perfect mushroom. Not too big of a stem, not

too big of a head. Perfect!” And she smiles, pinches the stem to feel its freshness, and

then places her pearl into the bag of treasures.

“Mushroom king, sure I can’t help you look for some?”

“I’ll be fine, thank you.” I smile at her, that’s all I can do.

“I’m sure you’ll find one soon.” She looks at her father who is gazing at the

treetops far above their little bodies. “What is it, Dad?”

“Want to call it a day? We have plenty here, and it’s closing in on ten. By the

time we make it back to the house it’ll be near noon, and my stomach is asking me to

listen to his moans.”

Although I would like to find at least one of these stinking mushrooms, I want to

quit. I’m beat, my lungs ache, my back is sweaty and I need a shower. “I can go back,” I

tell them. “I’m pretty hungry and tired myself.”


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“C ’mon,” Mauri inteijects, “one more hour. Let’s climb to the top of this hill and

then stop. I’ll bet there are twenty to be found up there.”

“You know,” his father says, “Maurizio is right. Barely anyone ever makes it this

far in one day. The ground is fresh and ready for reaping.”

Tommaso is willing to continue, he can handle another hour, but before he can

utter a word, Veronica speaks.

“Why don’t you two keep going, and Tommy and I will head back. I’ll start

boiling the water and prepare the table.”

“Good,” her father says. “Make sure not to open the Lambrusco before we get

down.” He directs his attention at Tommaso. “I know how much this American likes the

juice.” And then he slaps Tommaso on the shoulder and gives him a warm smile.

“Don’t worry,” Tommaso responds, “I’ll wait for you before we start the

Apennine Alcoholic’s Club meeting. And that goes for you too, Maurizio!”

“I know that,” he grins. “Ok, Dad, let’s go. See you back at the house.”

Not even a minute later, Maurizio calls Veronica. “Come and get this bag off my

hands, won’t you? I have another empty one in my pocket.”

(GOD BRIEFLY NARRATES)

When Tommaso and Veronica begin their two-hour descent, they barely speak.

Tommaso is busy scanning the ground, he has gotten addicted to its allure. He is also

thinking of Shery, and how much he imagines she would’ve enjoyed this excursion three


231

years ago, and how unbearable she would have been on it now. Shery changed. The

matte o f a green leaf is no longer more impressive than the shine of a new car. This fact,

however, had also plagued Tommaso. He had lost himself, o r more precisely, he had lost

whomever he might have been. He knows he has no more o f an idea about himself and

his identity than he has about the economy, or politics, or his father’s suicide. He knows

nothing except that somewhere, somehow, he got off the road that felt kinder, and

ventured onto one that cheaply disguised itself as the veritable path. At first he felt

confident in his ability to distinguish between the two, but as time passed, the fork grew

larger and larger, and shipwrecking his way through life’s sea no longer felt as sweet as it

once did. Shery rescued him, reeled him back, but once she left, the old habits levitated

from their grave and took him for another spin.

But he can feel it; this uncontrollable ride is near finished. There is a goal,

although unknown, although unseen. All he knows is that the right road is not the one

he’s on. That the flame must be extinguished, and a new candle lit.

He also senses the imminent presence of a porcini. The mushroom is waiting for

Tommaso’s keen eye to spot it, gently pluck it, squeeze it with a delicate, fatherly touch.

‘This is fun, isn’t it?” Veronica asks. Her lanky frame strides next to him,

sometimes their elbows meet, sometimes the shuffling bag in her hand grazes his thigh.

“Very.” And he has nothing more to add. He wants to tell her about when he was

younger, and she was small, and that he’d always wish for her to be older, and not his

best friend’s little sister. She used to draw stick figures and flowers on a yellow notepad,

and give her art to him, as a sign of love, as a symbol of her girlish dreams, and at night.


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in his bed, he’d look at the collection of drawings he had accumulated throughout the few

years since Veronica was old enough to express herself with such confidence, and he’d

imagine her rested on his chest, his little, hairless, boyish chest.

He liked her straight brown hair that nestled on her thin shoulders, he liked the

puppy eyes and purity in her smile, a smile that managed to light even his darkest of

rooms. He remembers her at his father’s funeral, she must’ve been no more than seven.

The Graziosi family had come up to him and his mother after the ceremony and hugged

him, and told him they loved him. Tommaso cried on Mr. Graziosi’s chest. In between

sobs he felt someone tugging at his pants. It was Veronica, minuscule, dressed in white,

holding a white carnation. She was frightened, this was her first funeral. Tommaso,

aware o f the child’s hurt, confusion and fears, took the flower, and forced a smile.

Veronica is now twenty-two, still living in the same house, still drawing flowers, only

now i t ’s at the University of Modena.

“Do you remember what I told you at my father’s funeral?”

“ ‘Thank you, little one. I will put this in my box with the rest of your stuff.’”

She looks at him and smiles timidly.

“How old were you?”

“Five and a half.”

“And you remember?”

“ It was the first time I saw you cry, and it was also the last time. It was the first

funeral I ever went to, and it was also the last one. I never want to go to another one.”


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And then silence. Tommaso thinks about the other times when he saw Veronica,

after he had left Vignola. Every year he’d come back, she’d be blooming as he’d

imagined she would. Nothing changed, except for the better. Her features remained

fragile, and her frame became more and more feminine. Every summer, every time he’d

go to the Graziosis for dinner, she’d be there, even when she was in high school, at an

age that Tommaso knew all too well as being a period of independence and self-

discovery. She should have been out with her friends, driving in cars with an older

boyfriend, one who could legally drive. She should have been kissing him, loving him in

the backseat, their car parked on a solitary hill overlooking Vignola. She shouldn’t have

been around her parents, her older brother and this friend of his who was about to start

graduate school. But that was Veronica. A child, in a young girl’s body, remaining

faithful to simplicity and purity.

“So you remember the time that neighbor kid ran over your foot with his scooter,

and I carried you upstairs to your Mamma?”

“Of course,” she says. “I was twelve, you had just finished your first year at the

university. You told my mother to put ice on it, and before you left, you ruffled my hair.

That’s when you had long hair and an earring, and said you wanted to learn the guitar.

You had brought Mauri a cassette of Jimi Hendrix. I listened to it a lot. I still have it.”

He feels his face getting hot. “I didn’t Ieam the guitar.”

“I know. Nor the violin o r piano. You never went fishing in South America, and

you never, ever got me the My Little Ponies, or the Minnie Mouse shirt you promised


234

every time you left and went back to Miami. All you’d do is give me a piece of that

chewing gum in the yellow wrapper, and act as if it were a benevolent act.” She smiles.

His eyes are still scanning the ground, near rocks and moss and clumps of leaves.

He wants it all right now, and wants to keep it. He hopes that she doesn’t ask him about

the box where he’d store all her drawings because he can’t remember if it still exists—

though it does.

“You know,” she says, a little further down the path, “I have never seen you as a

big brother. Never even once considered it.”

“I had to see you as a little sister.”

“I know. I knew that ever since I turned eleven. I had found a pom magazine

under Mauri’s bed, and I leafed through it. Do you remember the first time you’d seen

things like that? Talk about a page-tumer!”

Tommaso thinks back, and doesn’t have far to go. His father had a small

collection in the last drawer of his desk. “Yes, you little louse. A page-tumer.”

She playfully slaps him on the arm. “And Mamma saw me looking at it, and she

explained it the way a young child ought to hear it, and then Maurizio got a huge lecture

when he came home. I remember dad was working on his book about Ezra Pound and

Ungaretti, and at the dinner table, uncharacteristically rampant, he recited part of a poem,

sending it to hell, and told Mauri that he was going to stop working on such trifles and

start writing stories about his jack-off son! Anyway, Mom said that only older people

who love each other should do that, and the ones who don’t and treat it like a futbol


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match eventually get sores all over the body and grow nubs on their forehead. And that

was if it all went well!” She laughs at her mother’s greatness.

Tommaso’s heart is beating faster than it should. He keeps his eyes focused on

the ground, embarrassed that this beauty is talking to him as never before, talcing their

relationship to an utterly different stratosphere. On this shaded hill, they are no longer

children.

“And so,” he said, “you believed her?”

“Oh yes, for a long while. And then, you know, a boyfriend here, a boyfriend

there, and kissing and all those good things, but I could never bring myself to give it. It

wasn’t time.”

She looks at him proudly, and he turns his head to his far left, away from her. He

wants to hide under the moss, because he knows this infatuation he’s always had for her

would have been considered wrong at one time, and even worse as time passed, and now,

now he can finally have it, his boyhood fantasy that had always been suppressed by his

conscience. While he’s looking for some moss to crawl under, he smiles, and then his

eyes catch something falling from the treetops.

“Follow me,” he says, and she follows. Off the path, up the hill just a bit, he

looks at the ground beneath a shrub.

Veronica walks up to him. “What is it?”

“A little bird.”

The two crouch next to it and admire its fuzzy white baby feathers. The bird on

its side and a little wing twitches its last useless flaps.


236

“Poor baby,” she says. They both look up at the trees above, but can’t seem to

locate a nest. She pokes it a few times, and when she’s secure enough that it can’t gnaw

at her hand, she gently picks it up.

“Poor, poor baby. Feel how warm she is.” And Tommaso rests his hand on it.

The dead baby bird fits perfectly in Veronica’s palm. “I can feel something

lightly beating. Sweet, poor thing, it must be her heart.” And she begins talking to the

bird, while Tommaso just stands there, speechless, watching Veronica offer condolences

to its invisible parents and siblings. “It’s stopped. It doesn’t beat anymore, poor little

one.” And she looks at Tommaso, and hands him the bird.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

“I don’t know...something.”

“Bury it, you mean?”

“No. Just take it away from me, or I’ll rub it forever.” She pouts and looks down

at her feet. A bird screeches above them, and they know it’s the mother.

“I’ll put it back where we found it, right here.” He bends and places the dead

baby on the bed of leaves. He stands and they both look at the bird, letting this moment

of silence linger longer that it should. Neither of them wants this feeling to end, however

morose it might be. It reminds Tommaso of the only other time he went to his father’s

grave, a long time ago. He had gone there to tell him something, and when he realized he

had nothing to say, he turned and left the cemetery.

Tommaso gazes at the wood ahead, thinking about the father he didn’t know, the

father who bought him all he wanted but who never gave him what he needed. He-Man


237

dolls were a cheap substitute. And then, Tommaso’s eyes sees a rock covered with dark

green moss a little ways further up the hill, and he his legs take off towards it. When he

gets to it, he brushes a few leafs aside and then calls for Veronica.

“Little babies!” She smiles at him and tugs his arm in excitement. She puts her

hand in his.

Little porcini babies, a cluster of them, all tinier than an infant’s fingernail.

“With this weather,” Veronica tells him, “I bet they’ll be ready for picking in less

than two weeks. Dad’s told me he often finds these. What he does is mark them and

then come back later. W e’ll come back, me and you, soon.” She looks around her,

memorizing their location, and then pierces the thick moss with a twig. Tommaso

squeezes her hand, and she looks at him. She takes a few steps up the hill, making

herself as tall as Tommaso, and when she leans into him, she closes her eyes to meet

Tommaso’s lips for a slight moment that lasts a lifetime in his heart.

“C’mon,” she says. Veronica begins to run down the hill. “Let’s get back to the

house.” She already has a good lead, and Tommaso has no other choice than to run after

her.


238

No note.


239

CHAPTER XVIII

INTERLUDE: HUGS AND KISSES

Tommaso’s mother lets him take her car out tonight. He has salutatory rounds to

do— at his grandparents’, at his aunt and uncle’s. At both houses he is offered some

dessert, some chocolates. He doesn’t eat anything, he’s full from the macheroni his

mother cooked him. And so he rushes through the pleasantries, kisses everyone, and tells

them he’ll see them real soon, and he can’t wait to start the rest o f his days in Bologna,

teaching beginner’s English Composition at the university. “See you at Bonno’s,’’ he

tells Piero.

He drives to the Graziosis. Mauri is there with his pretty girlfriend; she’s sitting

on his lap, dangling her legs, holding onto his neck. Veronica comes out of her room, her

long hair drawn in a ponytail, wearing a half-sleeve white dress that comes down to her

knees. She smiles, looking Tommaso square in the eyes.


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He sits at the kitchen table and shares a glass o f spumante with the family. Mrs.

Graziosi is unusually loud, speaking and laughing, proposing toasts for Tommaso’s new

beginning, “So nice to have you back, you’re like a son— but better! Because you don’t

live with us...” and such. She’s a little drunk, and Tommaso likes her like this. She

tends to be too quiet a lot of the time, playing the role o f the good, respectful housewife.

Tommaso looks at his watch and stands. He must go to the pub to say goodbye to

all his friends, and he still has to pack the few things he’ll need when back in D.C. It’s

going to be a long night.

He hugs Mauri. Hugs Claudio and thanks him again for helping him find a job.

Claudio tells him to stop thanking him, it’s completely unnecessary. He then hugs Mrs.

Graziosi, thanking her for the good meals and hospitality. Finally he gives Veronica a

peck on the cheek and a light hug. “See you soon, little girl.”

“I’ll walk you downstairs,” she says.

Tommaso, aware of how obvious this must seem to her parents, tells her it’s ok.

But she insists.

They cross the street and sit on the hood of the car.

“What was that?” he tells her. “I know your parents must be wondering what has

gotten into you.”

‘They know. It’s fine.”

“Huh?”


241

“I told my mom last night. I told her everything— well, not everything. I told her

I loved you, have loved you since I was tiny, that I always imagined you’d be my

husband.”

“And?” Tommaso must have looked like a fool upstairs.

“And nothing. She said she could always tell, and when she told my father, he

too could always tell. They told Mauri, who started making fun of me, but I guess he too

could always tell. They’ve known it even before we knew it.”

“Do they know that dress you’re wearing is for me? Or do they still think you’re

going out with your friends?”

“I didn’t tell them. But I bet they can guess. Whatever, I don’t care.”

She wrapped her arms around him. Tommaso looked up at the starry sky, almost

not believing the turn his life has taken: out of D.C., new love, new job, near good friends

and family. He’s aborted Shery out of his heart. She’s gone. A dead candle. In

Veronica’s arms, it’s the happy Hollywood finish.

He tells Veronica he’ll be back in an hour to pick her up. He’ll be waiting down

the street, just in case her parents might be looking out the window.

At Bonno’s simple, little, poorly-lit pub Sacchi greets Tommaso with a shot of

tequila. Selmi, Munta, Pozzi, Bacchus, Chiara, Elena, Piero, Bonno, all toast “to

Professor Giusti and May God have mercy on the soul of all university students who

cross his path.” Tommaso thanks them, and has to refuse all other offers to drink. He

needs to remain alert. He stays for less than an hour, telling everyone they’ll be seeing

him sooner than they might wish. They tell him to hurry back before the summer ends.


242

before their lives return to the normalcy of wet autumns and cold winters. Tommaso

hugs Piero.

“Don’t be late tomorrow morning. I have to be in Bologna by seven-thirty.

Latest.”

“Don’t worry. I’m going home soon.”

Exiting the pub, after all hugging and kissing ends, Elena catches up to Tommaso.

“Vittoria wanted to come,” she says, “but said she felt stupid. She wants you to

know she’s been thinking a lot about you, and that you should call her.”

“Ok,” Tommaso says. “I might. See you soon.”

But he w on’t call her. He won’t fall for her. He has a new rose in the garden that

needs utter care, utterly gentle care, and he doesn’t think twice about Vittoria anymore.

Everything is Veronica.

As planned, she’s waiting for him down the street. She hops in and kisses him

passionately.

“Where should we go?” he asks, while driving.

“Go up the Gessiere, we’ll find a spot where we can park.” She continues kissing

him, telling him she loves him, telling him she wants him.

Going up the Gessiere Tommaso has to coordinate each feel of Veronica’s thigh

with each shift o f gear. He decides to go up it slowly, in second gear, just so his hand can

be free. They tum into a dark wooded road that leads them to an open field. Crickets are

rubbing their legs, much like Tommaso is rubbing Veronica’s inner thigh— her soft.


243

edible inner thigh. It’s a warm, balmy night, and they make love in the backseat of the

car.

After, she tells him that this time really felt good.

“I told you it would get better.”

“I know. But I didn’t expect this much better. God, I’m still excited.”

“So am I.”

And after a few minutes of caressing, they make love again, on the hood of the

car, under the stars, their bed an empty field that belongs to them and only them.

While she picks her white panties off the dark soil and slips them on, she asks

Tommaso if this could be their official first time.

“Why?”

“Because the last three times hurt, and I did it for you mostly. This time, I did it

for us, and I’ve never felt like this before.”

He looks at her pink breasts, and while she slides into her white dress he tells her

this is their first time. He tells her this is his first time, too. He tells her that today is his

new birthday. “August second, 2002. A new man is bom, a new woman is bom.

Together, they are two. Alone, they are nothing.” He blows smoke in the air and they

laugh. He feels like nothing— nothingness, nothing, as in everything, as in nothing’s

worrying him, nothing’s needed, everything’s here in this field. He’s got the purest doll,

he’s got a life, he’s all good. Everything is good.


244

Past midnight, he drops her off a little down the street from her house. They kiss,

hug, she tells him to be good while he’s gone, tells him to take care o f all he needs to do

in Washington and hurry back to his new home.

Kissing her, unable to let her loose, he tells her not to worry, that history can’t be

stopped, the sun can’t either, and nothing will make them die.


245

CHAPTER XIX

CIAO, Cl AO

Deserted Vignola never felt so sweet— nothing’s ever felt so sweet. I’m in love

with a girl whose freshness can never be questioned. I have hit the mother lode, thank

you, Jesus, I have what it takes, right here, everything I want is mine. Smile on my face

bigger than all the gold in the world, yessir, it’s alive in me, fuck you all, thank you very

much, I’m in my California on the banks of the Panaro river. Sweet motherland, you

always do me good. Washington, vile cunt, you’re better off without me.

I park in front of our apartment building. I walk toward the front door and a

whistle catches my attention. I turn. It’s Vittoria, sitting in her little black car, smoking a

cigarette in the obscurity of Coppini’s old building. She waves, I wave back. It’s nice of

her to come and bid me adieu, how kind of her. She steps out, black skirt and a black top,

and stomps the cigarette.

“It’s about time you got here,” she says.


246

“Sorry,” I say, “didn’t know you were waiting.”

“Did you really think I’d let you leave without saying goodbye?”

“Considering you ran away from me the other night, yes.” I smile, I don’t want to

be an asshole to her.

“About that. Tommy. I’m sorry, so, so sorry. I made a mistake, a big one, a huge

one. I can’t get you out of my head. When I’m with Germano, I hate it. I open my legs

to him and hate it, him ...myself.” Her eyes water, she comes closer to me, staring at my

neck, her hand reaching for mine. Cinematic narration takes over in my head, as she

creeps to me, 'and Tommaso doesn’t know what to do. He lets her take his hand, it feels

so good, what a small hand she has. He looks around him, the empty street, the empty

building in front of his house; he’s so high, so untouchably high. She leans into him and

they kiss to make up for sister time whose been running rampantly. The careless wind

flowing among careful mountains has made its mark on tired tongues and longing hearts,

and when he lifts her skirt and they make love in the back of Vittoria’s car, it’s as if

Moses parted waters, and the Icarian bird soared with elegance to find its death in the

warmest of stars.

‘Tommaso turns to Vittoria, both dressed now. “I hope my mother didn’t look

down here, or she might have seen my pale ass pumping away.”

‘Vittoria laughs and tells him to stop bringing his mother into this moment. ‘This

is ours,” she tells him, “only ours.’”

I light a cigarette. My hand is a potpourri of fragrances, reflecting the experience

of a lifetime.


247

‘They tell me you got a job in Bologna,” she says.

“As of now, I should have one. Just two courses, but it’s a good start.”

“Aren’t you nervous to stand in front of all those students? God, I’d be.”

“Not really. After the first few days those jitters go away.”

“I bet young girls will fall for you.”

“One can only hope.”

She slaps my arm. “You’re supposed to say, ‘I don’t care. There’s only you.’”

“Oh, yeah. There’s only you.” I take a long drag. Secrets are my best friends.

“When are you coming back?”

“Classes start early September, not even sure when precisely. I’ll probably be

back in a couple of weeks.”

She leans into me and kisses my ear, sending chills all through me. ‘Then we can

start fresh?” Her face is sadly content, believing our words might actually be real.

“Fresher than a field of tulips in Holland, my tristezza. There’s a windmill, and

there’s us. Picking tulips. The wind makes us go round and round, and we laugh. And

please, don’t ever lose that sorrowful smile, Vittoria. I need that.”

“I won’t. Don’t worry.”

I get out of the car, tell her I’ll drop her an e-mail and perhaps even a phone call

here and there. She tells me to have a safe flight, and to be good. I tell her Germano best

not come near my woman, or he’ll have to answer to me. His name makes her eyes fade

a bit, and she waves a small smile at me, and drives away.


248

I walk to my room, close the door, can’t believe I’ve done what I’ve done, and

laugh. I pick out the clothes I’ll wear on the plane, and pack. While stuffing clothes in a

bag, ‘he laughs aloud, like a maniac, waiting for his nurse to bring him a pill. He laughs

because he knows a wall will be in front of him soon, and in one way or another, that

wall’s going to get jumped. He then sleeps a peaceful sleep. He’s tired.’

My mother kisses me goodbye. Unlike always, there are no tears in her eyes.

She knows I’m coming back. She tells me to hurry up. She hands me a hundred euros,

but I don’t take them. “Let’s save them for a rainy day, Ma.”

She smiles, kisses me again, and watches me and Piero put the bags in the car and

drive away. We stop at the bar for some coffee, and then we hit the road.

We’re silent in the car. Too tired, at least I am. Piero, from what he’s told me,

didn’t stay out too late. Out of nowhere, he asks me if I slept with Vittoria last night.

“What?! How am I to have done that?”

He smiles. “She told Elena she was going to wait for you outside your house.”

He sees my smile, I can’t hide it. “You lucky bastard! That girl can have just about

anyone she wants, and she picks you! Where’d you do it?”

“Her car. In the street.”

“Oh, man!”

“Hey, try not to tell too many people, please. Remember I’m coming back to live

here. I’m no longer a novelty in Vignola. I’m turning household.” I flick my smoke out

the window. “Most important thing is that Graziosi doesn’t find out.”


249

‘‘Why?” Piero’s sniffing for some dirt.

“I just don’t want him to know. I want no one to know. Got it?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, you lucky bastard. Man, if it happened to me I’d be yelling

it in the piazza until they took me to jail.”

“But it didn’t happen to you, so the lid must stay tight.”

“Is there something you’re not telling me, my dear American cousin who’s

turning Italian?”

I look him in the eyes. “Yes. Just swear you won’t say a word and I’ll let you in

on everything when I come back.”

“A secret? I wonder what it could be.” He taps his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Uhm, let me think. You don’t want G raziosi-”

“Please, Piero. I beg you.”

“But you’ll tell me later?”

“In detail.”

He slaps my arm and laughs. “You dirty, dirty bastard.”

“Speaking of which, Piero, you should clean this car. It’s fucking sick.”

At the airport. Magnificent Marconi Airport of Bologna. The best coffee an

airport could ever desire to grow. If all goes well, this is my last plane to America. Then

it’s back to Vignola, to sift my life out, pick the best option, and start a new one. Tears

might be shed, and however much I’ll dislike them. I’ll be fine, I’ll face them. Two

hearts in Vignola beat for me. They wait, not knowing about each other’s vicinity, they


250

wait for me to tell them everything’s ok. Veronica— my infatuation, my virgin.

Vittoria—my tristezza, my partner in crime. Both works of art, both responsibilities with

different needs, both willing to love me unconditionally, the w ay I am, the way I’ll be.

If by the time I reach Vignola my gut still hasn’t made up its mind, I’ll have Piero

take me straight home to my mother. I will talk to her, hear everything she's wanted to

say, tell her about my loves, tell her everything she needs to know about them. Then I

will weigh the scale with patience, and let our rivers wash us down the stream— the right

stream for both of us. And I will choose, because I have to, because I want to. Because

even if in the end it really doesn’t matter, this to me matters right now, it matters

everything.

It’s a bright day in Bologna. From my window the reflections of other aircrafts

blind me, so I close my eyes and keep them shut. Unless my plane crashes, there will be

more to my story. How it will go is for me to decide. Oh, yeah. Sweet decisions, come

my way, I will slash each and every one of you. I will.

Everything is in me.

R e p ro d u c e d with p erm iss ion of th e copyright ow ner. F u r th e r reproduction prohibited without perm iss ion .

251

In 1985, his fa ther was diagnosed with HIV.

A week later, on a business trip to Singapore, he hung himself in his hotel room.

No note.


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