CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (30 page)

“Are you making fun of me?”  She felt
disdain for the mere fact that she had to talk about him.  “Matteo doesn’t feel
a drop of what I feel for him,” she pronounced, leaving no room for appeal.  “Do
you have any idea what that means?”

“More than you can know,” he mumbled. 
What
should he do?  Tell her the whole truth, confess his best friend’s undying love
for her?
  His mind was racing. 
No, absolutely not
.  He had no right
to do so.  It wasn’t up to him.

“This story ends right here and now.” 
Marika wanted to cut this short before Carlotta got it into her head to join
them.

“OK, OK.”  Dario nodded his head,
scratching the back of it in disbelief and unease.

“As I said to him, I hope he finds what he’s
looking for,” she concluded caustically, turning and heading into her house.

No one slept much that night.  Marika was
the prisoner of her own rancor and shame, still hopelessly linked to the one
who had rejected her.  Matteo suffered from anxiety about leaving home and
disgust toward himself, crushed by the knowledge that he had lost the one
person who he loved more than anything else in the world.  And Carlotta and
Dario, overwhelmed by the crashing waves of this love story gone bad, felt even
closer than ever to one another, and took their relationship to a new level of
sublime physical and spiritual symbiosis.

The poet genius once said through the
eternal voice of his Romeo, “
He jests at scars, that never felt a wound,
”
because love can be as cutting as a sword, and its gash as agonizing as death.

SEXGATE

The alarm clock at
6:45 rang for everyone that Saturday morning, though with a different timbre
for each.

Carlotta and Dario, a few miles away from
each other but bound by the intimate experience they had shared that night, a
two-man show of pleasure that left no room for monologues, awoke to the sweet
melodies of connubial love.

In the silence of a crowded room in a
modest two-story house located in an old country courtyard, the dry, rapid
beeps of the alarm knocked at Matteo’s brain like high-heels on a wooden floor. 
Clumsy and aimless at that early hour, surrounded by his family, Matteo
hurriedly placed all of his most precious belongings into a suitcase, knowing
full well that he was leaving behind his heart, and not knowing where and when
he might find it again.

The only alarm clock that didn’t ring was
sitting on a bedside table next to
Breaking Dawn
in Marika’s room.  “
What
was the beginning of the end
?”  Her unconscious thoughts, dictated by a
final phase of REM sleep, couldn’t help but return to Montecchio Maggiore and
to the emotions she had felt at that moment.  Her brain was like a blender
running out of control that gave birth to incessant and ever-multiplying
questions that had no answers.  And in the meantime, images kept flashing in
front of her eyes like lightning.  She remembered distinctly how, when her lips
had locked with his, she had had to order her heart to be quiet so as not to go
crazy from excitement, and then her memory flashed forward to the moment his
Alfa roared to life and drove away with a dark, mournful sound in the hills,
leaving behind a painful sensation of iciness.  She had demanded that he leave
her alone, almost pushing him away, but at the same time she had felt that
irresistible attraction feed her instinctive need to look into his eyes at
least one more time before Dario’s Mini drove a wedge between them forever.

“Time to get up!”  Her mother was a
faithful and reassuring handmaiden.  “You still asleep?” she whispered, gently
stroking her hair.

“No, I’m awake.”  Her tone was a
monotonous cadence that left no space for pain or anger.  She raised herself
out of bed, concealing the dark bags under her eyes from her mother, and headed
straight for the bathroom where she used a thick layer of makeup to hide the
signs of her humiliation, as well as a huge zit that had taken up residence on
her chin during the night.

“There are parent-teacher meetings at
school tonight....” Her mother had to chase her down the hallway.  “Remember to
take the house keys if you go out.  Your grandparents keep getting deafer and
deafer, and if you lock yourself out, they won’t hear you and you’ll have to
wait outside until we get back.”

“Uh-huh,” her daughter muttered through a
mouth full of toothpaste, assailed by her own obsessions and captive to that
wretched kiss that was now burned into her flesh.  She could hardly believe
that she had resisted the temptation to run after him in his car, throwing
herself in front of it, and imploring him to stay, to give up on a life in
which she could never play a starring role, all because what there was between
them was bigger than anything else.

How long would she still have to pay
the price, its taste still lingering on her lips, before she would free herself
from such a sweet burden?

Everything brought her sadistically back
to that place beneath the wooden balcony that jutted forth from the stone walls
of the castle, where she had experienced a pleasure so seductive and deadly
that she barely believed it to be true.

The summer when she had gotten her very
first kiss, the embarrassment of not knowing how to do it had been more
powerful than any other perception, and her inexpert curiosity had impeded her
from fully enjoying the excitement.  And then of course, it hadn’t been with
Matteo.

And so, just how strong must the effect
of human intimacy be if two identical physical events can be so enormously,
essentially different?

“Marika, get a move on!”  Her grandfather’s
musical voice, a mix of broken Italian and his beloved Vicenza dialect, was calling
her from the front door.  “Carlotta’s here.”

His granddaughter dragged herself down the
stairs, forcing an expression of complete normalcy to her face, pushing down
every emotion until the only thing left was indifference.  “We’re going.”  She
said an overly-quick goodbye and made her way towards the front door, totally
unaware of the bomb that her cousin was about to drop on her.

Carlotta, in fact, was ready to forgive
her for her impoliteness the previous evening.  All she wanted to do was tell
her about her initiation.  She had been preparing just the right words for
years for this moment, but all she was able to blurt out was, “Dario and I made
love last night.”

Marika looked at her, breathless, her
mouth dropping open like some kind of emoticon expressing shock and surprise.  “Wow!” 
She had been sure that nothing that morning would be able to shake off her
torpor, but she hadn’t taken news of this kind into consideration.

“Is that all?”  Hoping for a slightly more
interesting reaction, Carlotta pouted while resting her thumb on the start
button of her scooter.  Marika climbed onto the rear seat.

“I’m speechless.” 
What else could she
say?
  “Really!”  Her eyes became liquid as she fully realized what Dario
felt for Carlotta.  How she would have loved to trade in the past and return to
that moment just before Matteo pulled away from that kiss.  “So it’s true love,”
she said, smiling and slightly uncomfortable, while her cousin looked radiant,
proud, and not the least bit embarrassed.

“Yeah... right,” she said, totally
uninterested in the romantic implications of that moment.  “I don’t even know
if I would say that I liked it.  But it was definitely interesting.”

“
Interesting?  Would you like to be
more specific?
”  Thoughts crowded her head as she listened to Carlotta’s
absurd story.  “
I’m curious to know how to make love in an interesting way
.”

“The foreplay and the afterglow are much
better.  The actual
act
, though....”  Carlotta made a face and twisted
up her nose.

“Stop, stop, stop!  I think I’ve got the
picture.”  After all, Marika knew all about that part, at least theoretically,
and she had no desire to spend too much time on the
mechanical
details.

“Fine!”  Carlotta finally started up her
scooter and slid her strawberry pink helmet with an enormous powder puff heart
over her head.  “I’ll have more to tell you after the next time.  Everyone says
you need a bit of practice.”

“I can’t wait.”  Marika tried her best to
hide a silly grin that came to her face; imagining her annoying cousin in
erotic couplings with her friend Dario was so bizarre as to seem almost funny! 
The good thing was that by focusing on this news, she was able to avoid
Carlotta’s otherwise inevitable third-degree about the previous night at the
Castle of Montecchio.

School dragged on during the hours between
an oral test in English Lit on the most famous novel by that eccentric writer
from Dublin,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, and a surprise multiple-choice
exam in physics from the young Mr. Perrone.

“
There is only one thing in the world
worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
”

–
Lord Henry Wotton,
The Picture of
Dorian Gray

...that celebration
of the cult of beauty.  Decadent aestheticism taken to the extreme as a method
of payment for one’s immortal soul.

“C+ out of generosity,” was the grade that
Ms. Baker gave to Marika, saved by the film version of the Oscar Wilde classic,
staring that wondrous Ben Barnes.

The test on magnetic fields produced by
electrical currents, however, was more of a challenge, and she could do no
better than place herself in the hands of the gods of physics.

She was lying in her room after school,
watching the shadows on the walls, when she realized that it was Saturday, and
that the only pleasure she had had all day was to poke, prod, squeeze, and
squish that awful zit on her chin.  Matteo would be leaving for Milan on the
5:35 Eurostar, and the very thought of it pained her, like a rat gnawing on her
soul.  And so she avoided her parents by telling them she had a lot of homework
for Monday, and invited Carlotta over for a desperately needed rendezvous of
karaoke in the furnished cellar of the Vendramini Winery.

Her friend was there in less than fifteen
minutes, saying that she had already been in the area.  “What the hell have you
done to your face?”  Carlotta looked at her, disgusted.  “It looks like you got
stung by a swarm of bees.”  She sat down and pulled from her bag a first aid
kit for broken hearts.  “I’ve got everything.  Don’t worry, it’ll be a blast!” 
She knew that she was going to have to coddle Marika for a while, and the best
medicine was a stack of CDs and DVDs, a family-sized jar of Nutella to drown
her sorrows, and more patience than she would have thought possible.  She
fished out a copy of
Thriller
, the best-selling album in the history of
music.  No sappy love songs today, only the unforgettable rhythms of the
moonwalk to keep warbling crooners and R&B ballads at bay.  Her strategy
was based partially on the theory that someone with a C+ in English could never
understand all of the lyrics, and so even a sentimental song could be
transformed into something as innocent as a nursery rhyme written to help
children fall asleep, rather than a sad lament that was trying to tug at heart
strings.

Marika, though, felt like she would
implode if she didn’t scream out her loneliness, and so she beat her
complicated cousin to the stereo and put on a song by Sonohra: “
Cut me
loose, I can’t breathe.  Show me how I can be stronger.
”    Taking the
karaoke to heart, she threw herself into a dramatic, exaggerated rendition of
the offensive pop rock song.  “
Hear the sound of my heart that’s beating
loud!
”

“Now
that’s
a total buzzkill song!” 
Carlotta couldn’t decide if she should weep in front of this pathetic spectacle
and just let Marika get it all out of her system, or if she should intervene
forcibly to calm her down.  Fate came to her rescue when a cell phone rang,
giving her the perfect excuse to lower the volume.  “Your phone’s ringing.” 
Curious as a cat, she peeked at the number.  “Hurry up!  It’s Federico!”  She
gladly passed the smartphone over.

“I’ll call him back tomorrow.”  Marika
grabbed the device from her cousin’s hands, turning the music back up.

“Why don’t you want to talk to him?” she
muttered.

“Who said I don’t want to talk to him?” 
She tried to keep her voice under control.  After all, it was logical that
sooner or later she would have to give some sort of explanation about her
behavior.  “I just want to talk to him later, calmly.  He certainly won’t get
offended for a little thing like that.”

“As you wish.”  Carlotta was looking at
her with such pity that she was afraid of embarrassing her.    “But don’t lose
Federico just because you can’t forget Matteo.  He’s gone.  He’s made his
choice.”  She shook her head.  “I know everything about last night!  I had to
really push Dario for it, but it was necessary... for your own good.”  She
wanted to make it clear that she was acting in Marika’s interests.  “In the
end, Dario confessed that Matteo thinks of you like a sister... no kisses, no
passion... just friends!”  She was making Marika’s thoughts her own.

“Would you just stop it?  You know
absolutely nothing about it.”  Her chest was heaving and only a superhuman effort
allowed her to hold back the tears.  “Your point of view is crystal clear, but
would you just let it go for one day?”  She sat down on the wooden bench in
front of the long table, the exact place where the meeting with the
San
Carlo
representatives had taken place.  “It’s no big deal if I don’t answer
Federico’s call just one time.”  She tried to throw Carlotta off the scent.  “For
all he knows, I’m just really busy,” though it would be difficult to believe
that after five unanswered calls throughout the day and a couple of texts
saying things like:
“Hey
gorgeous ;-) Something wrong?? Write me! :-c”

“Right,” Carlotta admitted.  “So we can
get back to our performances?”  She handed over the pad of paper and a pen.  “It’s
your turn to rate my singing.  Let me see, I’ll do...??”  She flipped through
the pile of CDs, muttering, “Not this one.  This one sucks.  This one?  Yeah, a
classic that keeps getting better and better: Madonna,
Like a Virgin
.”

“
The soundtrack of my life,
” Marika
said to herself sarcastically as she penned the categories for judging Carlotta’s
performance: tone, rhythm, interpretation.  “
Just look at who’s sitting next
to me at this table!”
 Her soliloquy continued.  “
No less than the
phantom of the Corsairs... Pirates!  Buccaneers!... No name was ever more
fitting than this one to describe the team that has pitilessly stolen from me
the things that I valued most
.”