Anyone But You (14 page)

Though we were silent for the next few minutes, the air around us buzzed with electricity. Roman helped me tilt the frying pan, and we watched the egg mixture flow evenly over the mushrooms and begin to set at the edges. Then, gently grabbing onto my waist, he directed me to one side so he could put the pan in the oven. “So, I’m just going to say this,” he finally blurted out, glancing tentatively at me as if he was about to bare his soul. “I don’t want you to leave. I know it might sound crazy, since we only just met, but here’s the thing: I’ve never felt this way about anyone.” His face looked more resolute now, as if he was relieved to have just shown me all his cards.

“I don’t want to have to leave, either,” I whispered, feeling a frisson of anticipation as he pulled me closer. “Especially not now. Now that I’ve … found you.”

I’m not certain how long we stood there in the kitchen kissing after that, but the dinging of the oven’s timer eventually brought us back to reality. Using a dishtowel to grasp the handle, Roman removed the pan from the oven and set it on the range before returning his focus to me. “You’re staying, and so is Cap’s,” he said, his voice sounding determined. “We just have to figure out how. And we
will.
”

Minutes later, he escorted me to a two-top in the dining room.

“Your lunch, m’lady,” he said, placing the frittata in front of me with an exaggerated flourish.

“Mmm,” I said, after taking a bite. “It’s delicious. Maybe I’m a decent cook after all.”

“Or maybe you just finally found your ‘passion,’” he said, raising his eyebrows suggestively. I smiled, and lifted my glass to him in flirting assent. His culinary remedy had worked, allaying both my rumbling stomach and my frazzled nerves. Now, instead of dwelling on my earlier anguishing news, I focused on getting to know Roman as we chatted at length about our crazy Italian families, school, and work. We even got into a good-natured debate about whether the Caputos or Montes could truly claim bragging rights on the best pizza.

“I’m telling you—my
bisnonno
, he pretty much invented the deep-dish pie.”

“Your
bisno
-what?” I said.

“My great-grandfather. That’s what we call him. Are you
sure
you’re really Italian?”

“Hey! Them’s fightin’ words,” I teased, picking up a sprig of arugula and tossing it at his face. He dodged the airborne roughage. “I’ll have you know my blood runs marinara red!”

“Truce! Truce!” he said, laughing. “Let’s not add any more fuel to our families’ fire.”

After helping him wash up the dishes, I held my glass of Pellegrino and scanned some of the family pictures hanging up in the small cupboard-sized office located off the kitchen. On a cork bulletin board, I identified a photo of Roman wearing a cap and gown—his eighth grade graduation, no doubt. The tall, lanky blond boy standing beside him was clearly the guy in the faux tux T-shirt that Ty had almost pummeled last night.

“How’d you get a blondie in the family?” I asked, tapping the picture.

“Oh, that’s Mark,” he said. “Not related, but he’s a waiter here. We go to school together, too. He’s the funniest guy I’ve ever met. He loves to hear himself talk, and mocks me endlessly, but there’s no one I trust more with my secrets. He already knows about you, actually.” I faintly detected the color brightening on Roman’s cheeks, and I was certain that I had just blushed even deeper.

“Well, in any case, you looked cute in braces. What a baby face!”

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious!”

I glanced again at the wood-paneled walls, which featured a laminated poster detailing how to perform CPR and the Heimlich maneuver, a computer-printed schedule of the staff’s upcoming shifts, framed but faded newspaper write-ups, and a whiteboard on which someone had scrawled, “Mario Puzo is my homeboy.” A Chia Pet showing no sign of its promised plant life sat atop the dented gray file cabinet in the corner. On the shelf above it, old bowling trophies cohabitated with two stacks of blank food order pads and a bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills. More yellowed snapshots were taped onto the side of the file cabinet, and I didn’t pay them much mind until one, in particular, caught my attention.

“Who is that?” I asked. “This pretty girl with the blonde hair?” The face smiling back looked somehow familiar to me.

“I don’t know. It’s been up there for as long as I can remember. I assume she’s some distant relative, but I couldn’t say who,” he said, before pointing at a clock on the desk next to the filing cabinet. “Hey, it’s one-forty. Didn’t you say you needed to be somewhere at two?”

My heart withered a little. I didn’t want my first date with Roman to end just yet. Then again, maybe it didn’t have to. The sleuthing I planned to embark on this afternoon
did
involve him, after all. Asking him to accompany me was a little risky, but then again, good judgment is never the hallmark of one newly in love.

“What time are you due back here for work?” I asked.

“Four-thirty.”

“Here’s the thing: I’m curious to find out what sparked our families’ legendary feud,” I said. “It probably won’t amount to anything, but at this point, there’s no harm in trying. Wanna come along?” He took a wide stance in front of me so that our faces were on the same level plane. Grabbing both of my hands, he looked deep into my eyes as if he was trying to say so much more to me than the two words that were about to escape his lips.

“I do.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Benny and I stood among the jumbled throngs of other young men in a poor attempt at a line that extended almost four blocks in length. Our intended destination: the Army Air Corps recruitment office. Enlisting for our country was a given, as natural a reflex as blinking in the wind. And while I was champing at the bit to have a go at Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, I simultaneously harbored some intense qualms about the route we were taking to do so.

“I don’t know, Benny. When I get my marching orders, I prefer to be, well,
marching.
I was thinking infantry, or maybe a nice armored tank division.”

My pal brought his arm down heavily on my shoulder.

“Where’s the glamour in that? Give me the ‘wild blue yonder’ any day.”

“Easy for you,” I said, craning my neck to note our progress in line. For my friend, there was no question about which branch of the military needed our able bodies. Growing up, Benny had kept a veritable squadron of model airplanes on shelves in his bedroom, not to mention scrapbooks full of flying machine pictures he’d clipped from various periodicals. He could still spend hours sticking his nose through the fence at the Municipal Airport watching planes land and take off. As for me, the only thought worse than spending the duration of the war 25,000 feet off the ground was the thought of spending the duration of the war without Benny, which is why I stood anxiously in line with him. I knew there was no guarantee we’d get to go through this thing side by side, but one thing was certain: I’d stick with him for as long as I could, come hell or high altitude.

“In my pilot’s uniform, I’m going to need my
own
armored tank division just to fend off all the babes who will be throwing themselves at me,” Benny boasted, before glancing at me hesitantly. He knew immediately what I was thinking. “And, seriously, Nick, just think of your wedding day—how spruce you’ll look in your dress uniform—probably decorated to hell with medals when this is all over.”

Proposing to Stella had been out of the question following yesterday’s earth-rattling news, and it now remained off the table indefinitely. In the blink of an eye, the future of millions of Americans had been branded with a giant question mark. Naturally, no one wanted to think the worst, let alone voice it aloud. I hoped that Stella would wait for me, and I was certain that I would return home—no Axis power could keep me from her after all I’d already endured. Still, given the nature of war, baiting Stella with the potentially illusory promise of a life together just didn’t seem fair. That discussion would have to wait. So, too, would the business. Pizza was no longer our priority.

We finally made our way inside the packed recruitment office, and Benny and I each checked in separately with harried officials who sat behind makeshift folding tables. I removed my homburg hat out of respect—unnecessarily, as it turned out. The uniformed gent sitting across from me didn’t so much as look up from his paperwork as he quickly rattled off a series of questions that didn’t stray too far from name, address, and date of birth. (Since he didn’t inquire and seemed disinclined to care, I opted to not point out my paralyzing fear of heights.) After ceremoniously stamping an official-looking form—
ka-chunk!
—the Army clerk unceremoniously pointed to the far end of the room, where makeshift medical exam rooms were cordoned off by gray-green hospital curtains. An eye chart recitation, blood pressure check, and stethoscope sounding later, I was back out on the sidewalk waiting for Benny, having been instructed to await my assignment, which would arrive via mail in four to six weeks. Considering I was still slightly shell-shocked from my hasty enlistment, I wondered how I was ever going to cope with the
real
chaos surely awaiting me in battle. I figured Benny would emerge mere seconds after me, but a good fifteen minutes later, I was still waiting. No doubt the loudmouth was already trying to buddy up to those recruiters in the hopes of skipping ahead from aviation cadet to sergeant. That’d be just like him.

“Thank God,” I said when he finally appeared. “Let’s go get lunch—I’m starving.”

“I’m 4F,” he said, his face ashen.

“Like hell you are,” I said, pushing him in the back, which sent him stumbling forward a few paces. If Benny was physically unfit for service, then I was a monkey’s uncle. “Let’s hit up that deli my ma’s always raving about.”

“They didn’t take me, Nick. They said … they said something’s wrong with my ticker.”

“Wrong how?”

“It doesn’t beat in the right rhythm,” he said with a sad shrug.

“What, so you’ll never be a jazz drummer? Malarkey. You’re
fine,
” I said. “Better than fine! You always have been!”

“That’s what I told them! Who cares how it beats, if it beats for the red, white, and blue, dammit!” He placed his hands and forehead against the side of the brick building. I walked over to him so that I could lower my voice.

“Okay, so maybe they don’t want you flying a plane. Then you’ll do something else. They’ve got to need plenty of tactical support on the ground, right?”

“They won’t take me,” he said.

“Then you try the Navy. It doesn’t matter which—”

“Stop, Nick. The docs in there—they said I could drop dead in an hour or, more likely, seventy years from now, but that no branch of the service was going to take that risk.”

I swallowed hard and stared at the ground, crestfallen on Benny’s behalf, and only just beginning to comprehend how ironic our situation had become. I, the guy who couldn’t stand on my toes without feeling lightheaded, was heading into the Army Air Corps to fulfill all of Benny’s childhood fantasies, while he’d just been permanently grounded.

• • •

“But all that perfect Italian hair,” my mother lamented on the afternoon of my departure for boot camp. “Why would they want to shear it off like they’re farming you for wool?”

“Don’t worry, Ma,” I said, smiling as I sighed. “I’m pretty sure it’ll grow back.”

“Well, you’ll still look handsome in your uniform, of that I’m sure,” my mother crowed. “Isn’t that right, Stella?”

“I’ll say,” my girl answered quietly. She hadn’t spoken much today, and I understood why. We had been saying our tearful goodbyes for the last five weeks, and the anticipation of my imminent departure was near excruciating for us both. It’s why we had mutually decided that Benny would be the one to see me off at Union Station. Stella didn’t want to risk going to pieces on me in public when I boarded the bus; instead, she’d agreed to stay behind with my ma, whose combination of pride and grief rendered her an emotional shambles. Cooking food was one of the few ways she knew how to express her feelings, which is why she’d packed me an embarrassing smorgasbord to take on the bus ride to Missouri, despite our just having eaten the home-cooked lunch to end all lunches.

“I hope my seatmate doesn’t mind the smell of garlic and oregano,” I said, leaning down to give my mother a peck on the cheek as she handed me my care package. Benny’s whole family had come over from across the hall to wish me well.

“We’ll miss you, Dominick,” said Mrs. Caputo, giving me a hug.

“Give ’em hell, kid,” mumbled Benny’s dad, his teeth gripping a cigar. Benny had been downright mortified to tell him that the United States military had rejected him, as if his so-called “ailment” branded him an ineffectual weakling. Unfortunately, I knew my departure would be yet another opportunity for Mr. Caputo to belittle my best friend.

“I guess we’d better be shoving off, eh, Ben?” I said, bending down to grab my small, beat-up suitcase. I caught Stella’s eye, and she blinked hard, then shifted her gaze to the floor. She reached her small arm around my mother’s ample shoulders, which had begun to shake as her tears started. I knew Ma was remembering my father’s death and wondering if the same thing was going to … well, never mind.

“I’ll only be one state away, Ma,” I said. “It’s just basic training. You could probably shout out the window and I’ll hear you.”

“Just be safe,
tesoro,
” she sobbed into the rose-embroidered handkerchief Stella handed her. I caught my girlfriend’s glance one more time and made the gesture of scribbling with a pen in the air.
Write me?
She nodded her head fervently and smiled, tears now escaping from her eyes, too.

The bus’s engine idled at the terminal as the driver loaded luggage into a compartment underneath.

“Be ready to work when you get back,” Benny instructed me. “I’ll probably have pizza parlors open all over the city by then.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Now remember, you’ve got to leave the faucet on a trickle when the weather’s below freezing, otherwise those pipes will burst.”