The Sun and Other Stars (10 page)

“Yes, yes, I will put my name. Zhuki.”

“Again?”

“Like ‘zoo,’ except ‘zhoo’ and ‘key.’” She makes a twisting motion, like a key in the lock. “Z-H-U-K-I.” She traces the letters on top of the register.

“Zhuki . . . ?”

“Yes, Zhuki.”

“No, I mean, what’s your surname?”

“My surname?”

The blond woman behind her starts to laugh. She takes her sunglasses off with a flourish and stares at me as if I’m supposed to recognize her. “Yuri Fil,” she says, tapping the register with one long fingernail. “Money. Pencil. Yuri Fil.”

She snatches the hand of the little boy and pulls him out of the shop, leaving the girl, whose face turns bright red.

“Grazie. Arrivederci.” She tries to say it as smoothly as she can, but she stumbles on every single syllable.

“Arrivederc’.”

My hand hangs in the air, midwave, as I watch them disappear beyond the edge of the window, the blond woman and her stroller leading the way, the girl—Zhuki—hugging the package of tortured meat under her arm like a calcio ball.

I
t’s probably unnecessary by now to explain who Yuri Fil is. My lack of enthusiasm for the game of calcio aside, he is, I will grant you, one of the greatest strikers out there today, one of those players who can’t be quantified by a simple recitation of statistics or loop of clips replayed on
The Monday Trial
and YouTube. It would be beside the point, anyway. Because the point is not how much he means to the Dynamo fans, the Tottenham fans, the Celtic fans, the Genoa fans, or the fans of the next team who will inevitably buy him for a sack of euros. The point is Papà’s unwavering devotion to him. I think he would sell me, Nonno, Silvio, the shop, all of us, for an audience with Yuri Fil. After all, this is a man whose photo has earned a coveted place over the grinding counter in back, sharing company only with Dino Zoff, Maradona, and a handful of others. A man whose first three teams have been the only foreign scarves to hang above Martina’s bar. A man whose transfer to the Italian leagues inspired another man who has never been east of Trieste to teach himself the fottuto Ukrainian national anthem and keep singing it over and over until his son learned it involuntarily, through osmosis.

Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina, ni slava, ni volya.

When Papà bursts through the door, I’m still sitting on the stool behind the register, my mind digesting the situation. Papà doesn’t even say ciao—he simply continues his perpetual list of things I haven’t done. Grind the bucket of scraps for the sausage. Clean the gunk out of the cracks in the sink. Reorder the vacuum-pack bags. Make the involtini. He counts them off, levering his fingers back so it looks like they might break off.

“Did you hear me, Etto? Did you hear anything I just said? What’s the matter with you? You look like you’re barely there. Are you drunk?” But he doesn’t even wait for an answer. “I know you can’t be tired. You’ve barely done any work around here. Why are you sitting around like that?”

And maybe this is why I let the moment pass. Because it’s a rare chance to withhold from the know-it-all the thing he would most want to know, a way to finally torture the torturer for holding me hostage in this shop, for treating me like a slave instead of a son.

That doesn’t mean I do it easily, of course. The guilt of it hangs over me for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening as I sit on the sofa in our apartment listening to Nicola Nicolini getting ready on the other side of the wall, the darkness collecting in the spaces between the shutters, the footsteps of the crazy divorcée who lives above us clacking back and forth across the floor, back and forth, back and forth, enough to make you go crazy yourself.

My phone lights up.

ME AND BOCCA ARE LEAVING IN HALF AN HOUR.

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

YOU’RE KIDDING, RIGHT? THE AUSTRALIANS. LE ROCCE. I’VE BEEN TELLING YOU ALL WEEK.

I DON’T FEEL LIKE IT.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO FEEL LIKE IT. JUST COME.

YOU JUST WANT ME TO TRANSLATE.

OKAY, WE JUST WANT YOU TO TRANSLATE. COME ON. FORZA. DAI. DON’T BE A FINOCCHIO.

I never should have taught Fede how to put that fottuto word anticipation on his phone. I should have left him to sweat for every letter like the ten-year-olds and the old people.

I open the shuttered doors to the balcony and listen to the clinking of dishes as the tourists finish their Saturday-night dinners up and down the passeggiata. The waves are weak tonight, slapping halfheartedly against the pylons all the way down the molo. I stare at the sign on the lamppost between the bagni and the Mangona brothers’ huts. Silvio put it up the week after they pulled Mamma’s body from the water, as if that would have protected her. As if she would have obeyed a fottuto sign.

VIETATO TUFFARSI—
PERICOLO: TUBAZIONI AFFIORANTI DAL FONDALE.

And in English, for the tourists:

DIVING FORBIDDEN—
DANGER: PIPELINE EMERGING FROM THE SEABED.

The morning Mamma disappeared was one of the coldest and rainiest of any June I remember. She came into my room before dawn, a dark shadow perched on Luca’s bed, cupping one of his cleats in her hand. When she stood up, she seemed taller in the darkness, and the thick material of her wet suit pinched her body into an alien shape, her middle spread, her limbs scrawny since the last time she wore it. I don’t remember what either of us said. I only remember her standing there in the dark, pulling the piece of fishing net off her wrist, and leaving it on the dresser. I only remember her hands ruffling my hair and pulling the blanket over me, the rain pinging against the roof outside my window.

When I woke up the second time, it was already light out, and the rain had stopped. I took my time getting up. It was a Sunday, and when I went downstairs, Mamma and Papà were both gone. I remember thinking maybe they had gone for a walk or to Mass or to get a coffee. But I should have known. Her first swim in months and she took it in the rain.

My phone lights up again.

COME ON, ETTO. DAI.

You have to believe me, the last thing I want to do on a Saturday night is go to a disco and watch a thousand kids on Campari and hormones rubbing up against each other to the “Macarena” or “La Vida Loca” or whatever cazzate the posers are listening to these days. And I have zero desire to stand around and watch as Fede and Bocca bludgeon some Australian girls into submission with their stupid lines and their bad English, dragging them to the back door of the Hotel Paradiso by their thong straps. But I think about Papà coming home, and having to sit in the empty apartment all night with him, staring at the television, my omission squatting on me like a goblin or an imp.

“Okay, okay. Cazzo, Fede. I’m coming, I’m coming.”

I put on my Chuck Taylors and tie Luca’s favorite hoodie around my waist. As soon as I step out the front door, I get sucked into the current of tourists on the passeggiata, the faces of my neighbors surfacing like shining fish.

“Hey, Etto!” Pietro and Bernardo call out to me as they pass. They are carrying their tackle boxes and poles out to the molo for a bit of night fishing. “Fede is looking for you. He says to remind you not to chicken out on him tonight,” one of them says, their cackling laughter fading into the darkness.

Silvio is the next to appear, clomping along in his thick police-issue shoes even though he’s off duty.

“Ciao, Etto.”

“Ciao, Silvio.”

“Fede’s looking for you.”

“I know, I know.”

I look up at the hill, the terraces stacked to the sky. My phone lights up again.

“Porca puttana. I’m
coming.
”

“Everything okay, Etto?”

“Ciao, Franco.”

“Where you headed?”

“Out with Fede.”

“God help you.”

“I know.”

Bocca rents one of the boxes at the other end of the passeggiata, and when I get there, Fede and the girls are gathered around outside, waiting for Bocca to pull his precious truck out.

Fede puts me in a headlock and rubs my head. “I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t pussy out on us.”

He introduces me to the three girls, who are actually from Austria and not Australia. They’re students, and their English is all right except for their sharp little swastika accents. One of them is pretty, but the other two are just so-so and trying to make up for it by dressing slutty.

“Out of the way!” Bocca hangs one arm out the window and backs out of the garage, the brake lights flashing as he taps at the pedal like one of the nonne.

“So you decided to show up after all, eh?” Bocca says.

“What the cazzo did you do to your hair?”

“It’s a fauxhawk.”

“It’s ugly.”

Bocca pushes his tongue into his lower lip and grunts, caveman-style. “Euh. It’s the style now, idiot.” I guess this is Bocca’s burden in this world, to change his style whenever any magazine or television show tells him he should. Now it’s a fauxhawk and Pumas; last summer, retro Nikes and seventies shag; before that, Adidas slides and a buzz cut; and—for the month he endured the merciless teasing—sandals and a Bob Marley slouch hat. When we look at old photos, we only have to look at Bocca’s hair to tell which summer it was.

“Wipe your feet before you get in. And don’t smudge the handles. I just had it detailed.”

There isn’t a word for this kind of love. Disturbing. Maybe that’s the only word for it. Bocca loves this truck more than anybody or anything in the world. It’s the thing that gets his tent poles up, the thing that completes him. It’s an American truck. Imported. White. It’s already three or four years old, but the bumpers are still unscuffed, the bed virginal. Bocca lives, dies, and suffers for this truck, washing it, polishing it, and buying it little accessories so it will know it’s loved. It nearly killed him when he had to use it every day to drive us all to Albenga our last year of high school. When the starter needed to be replaced a few months ago, Beppe ordered one from America, and he had to enforce visiting hours at the shop because Bocca went to see the truck every day like it was in the hospital.

I climb in back, where there are two small seats facing each other, and the girl who pulled the short straw climbs in after me. Fede and Bocca start arguing about where the other two girls will sit, but Bocca should already know it’s pointless. Whenever we meet girls, there’s a silent division that takes place. As soon as I walked up, I knew which one Fede would get and which ones were the scraps Bocca and I were expected to fight over. The girl facing me arches her back and sits up straight. She’s wearing a silky black top cut almost to her belly button, and if I were a complete stronzo, I could reach in and touch her breast on either side as easily as reaching behind a curtain.

“I am Tisi,” she says in English. She reaches her hand over the space between us, stiff like a businesswoman, just to confirm that she’s not interested in me in the slightest.

“Etto.”

“This is a strange name.”

“So is yours.”

“I am named after a princess.” She giggles. Deficiente.

“It’s my truck, stronzo, and I say she sits next to me.” Bocca is trying in vain to put the prettier girl next to him.

“Not a chance. That one gets the seat belt. You want that pretty face to go through the windshield, you selfish bastard?”

“So the other one does?”

You can see the lights of Le Rocce as soon as you pull onto Via Aurelia, and Fede points it out to the girls, who coo and sigh. I guess it’s pretty from a distance—a wide circle of lights on top of an open cliff. When the Cavalcantis decided to make a disco, it was just a piece of rock, but they blasted seven levels of staircases leading down to the water, and if you walk all the way down, you end up on a private strip of sand with caves carved out like small pouches, the perfect size for two people. Three if you’re messed up like that. In the winter, it’s mostly locals and a couple of bored French kids who follow the lights, but on summer weekends, everyone is here. People will drive all the way from Milan just to crowd in on the dance floor and make out on the staircases. Fede says he’s seen the Botox anchor from Rai Uno here, and the goalkeeper for Sampdoria.

Little Mino is one of the bouncers tonight. They call him Little Mino, but he’s as big as a bull. “Ehi! Ciao! Etto! What are you doing here? Haven’t seen you in a lifetime. I can’t believe they got you to come out.” He shakes my hand, squeezing it into powder.

“Yes, yes, ciao, Little Mino.”

“I’ll let Guido know you guys are here. He’ll be glad to see you.”

The wind is fierce up here, whipping over the open cliff, and the dance floor is a mass of untucked dress shirts and long hair flapping around in the wind. We shuffle around inside the entrance gate until Guido appears wearing a cream-colored suit and a Patek watch so large it could knock a man out with one blow. He’s followed by a couple of salon blondes, their bocce pushed up to their chins.

“Well, well,” he says. “Look at what we have here.”

Fede introduces the Austrian girls, and they swoon over Fede and Guido as if me and Bocca don’t exist. Bocca puffs out his chest and tries to look taller. I look around for Zhuki and Signora Malaspina’s niece, but there must be a thousand people here tonight, all of them dressed identically.

“Welcome,” Guido says to the Austrian girls, with perfect tact and that sissy British English he brought with him from Milan. “You are in very good hands with these three,” he says, “but if you find anything lacking, your every wish is my command.”

The girls clinging to him giggle and clap their hands like trained monkeys.

“I have no idea what any of that meant,” Fede says, and Guido laughs and switches back to Italian, turning his full attention to us and leaving the girls to dissolve into the night.

“I can’t believe they got you out here, Etto-grammo. Nice of you to stoop to hanging out with us posers tonight.” He slaps me on the back. And this is what makes it hard for you to hate Guido, even with his preppy, branded clothes, his loaded parents, and his snotty English. Even when he swooped in from Milan with his transfer-student mystique and became the Benjamin of every teacher and the crush of every girl in our class, you couldn’t help but like him. He was the kind of guy who made up nicknames for everyone, always shared whatever exam questions he had, and spoke well of us to whichever girl we liked at the moment.