by Arvin Ahmadi
Back.
In.
The whole story flashed through my head, with Valerio on my bed, shirtless. It was like a movie montage.
“What is it?” he said, staring at me.
I shook my face. “Nothing.”
Valerio and I made out a bit longer. I avoided his chest area altogether, focusing on the waist just like I had done on his motorscoodoodle. At one point, Valerio ran his fingers gently through my hair, and that small act reminded me of Jackson—how he used to do the same thing, and I would do it to him. How I’d sometimes find strands of his blond hair on my sweatshirt and smile.
Moments later, I fell asleep.
Interrogation Room 38
Soraya
AMIR MIGHT HAVE fought with my parents on the phone, but I was the one sparring with them in person. After those phone calls, I would pick up where Amir left off and fight with my parents, defending Amir. It was a lot of yelling. It was exhausting. Between the drama at Cats rehearsal and the drama at home, I was getting tired.
I kept looking for Amir. I went back to Jake in the mall. I kept going back almost every day. One day I just snapped. “Seriously, it’s sad how you’re here every day,” I said angrily to him. “Is this what you’re going to do with the rest of your life?”
Jake was visibly hurt. “If Amir had just given me the money, I wouldn’t effing be here.” I can’t really repeat the word he used in front of my mom, but just know that my face looked pretty much like hers does right now.
I realized this stupid kid had blackmailed my brother. He tried to come up with excuses in front of me—if Amir had just given him the money, Jake could have afforded community college, and Amir’s secret would have stayed safe, and they both would have been better off—but I shook my head. “You’re a coward,” I told him.
I wanted to storm off, but I stayed. Jake might know something, I thought. I asked him why in the world he would think my brother made money off of Wikipedia pages, and Jake said he saw Amir editing a page back in the fall. I asked, “What about Jackson? Did you blackmail him, too?” Jake looked at me like I was insane. He went on about how the Preachers were good people and did lots of good things for the community. I rolled my eyes. “You won’t exploit the Preachers, but you’ll exploit the new Muslim kid,” I said. “Nice one.”
At this point I was really ready to leave when I asked Jake one more thing: “What page was Amir editing?” Jake laughed and said it was the Real Housewives of New Jersey page. I asked him why he was laughing, and he said no, don’t worry about it, and I said no, tell me. He said he and Ben liked to joke that they should have known Amir was gay when they caught him editing that page. I told Jake he was an idiot and to fuck off.
Language. Sorry, Mom.
When I got home, I jumped on the computer and looked at the edit history for the Real Housewives of New Jersey page for back in the fall. I found my brother’s Wikipedia username. He’d been editing pages as recently as yesterday. He had edited multiple pages in Rome.
Ten Days Ago
I WAS MORTIFIED when we woke up in the morning.
“I mean it, do not worry,” Valerio insisted.
“But I fell asleep while we were kissing,” I groaned, wiping the sleep out of my eyes. My face felt heavy, my head cloudy. Meanwhile, Valerio was just lying there on his side, looking perfect. “I just—uggghh.”
Valerio leaned in and kissed me on the forehead. “It happens,” he said. His lips brought my face back to life. Lips like that cured diseases. Lips like that were an art form. Lips like that deserved full, undivided attention.
“I was so tired,” I said. “And so full.”
“Blame it on the Italian food, yes.”
“It’s true! How are people expected to hook up after an Italian meal?” I raised my voice, letting out a violent cough. Valerio looked at me, amused. “I mean, there’s the antipasti, the primi, the secondi, and then, as if all those courses weren’t enough, dolci. Plus, there’s all that wine. Of course I’m going to pass out.”
“So what you are saying is … it is not me, it is the pasta?” Valerio teased.
“Valerio.” I gave him a very serious look. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t working.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not you. It’s the pasta.” I snorted, and we both burst out laughing. We rolled around in bed for a while, and then Valerio got dressed and left.
Jahan had left me two voice memos on WhatsApp last night. The first one was while I was at dinner with Valerio. “Amir agha, I can’t remember if your date was tonight or tomorrow? Hold on, one second. I have to go. We’re splashing around in the fountain in Piazza Testaccio, and it looks like a Carabiniere is approaching. Maybe he wants to join the fun, maybe he wants to arrest us … you never know!”
I nearly spat out my water. And then a few hours later, “All right. We’re fine. No one got arrested. So I can only assume you’re on your date right now. I hope it’s going splendidly. I just wanted to remind you that you promised you’ll read something at Garbo tomorrow night. No excuses!”
Right. I did promise him that. This would be Jahan’s last reading at Garbo, after nearly four years of hosting them. It was a bleak reminder that he would be leaving Rome in less than two weeks. In two weeks, there would be no one to convince us to drink prosecco in the afternoon, no one to spread the gospel of Joni Mitchell, no one to determine which cheeses were gay, straight, or asexual.
What would Rome be without Jahan?
I went to Tiberino to try and write something for tonight. Mr. Pedrotti brought me a glazed apple pastry, which was delicious and sweet but did nothing to get my creative juices flowing. I wanted to pull my hair out. I didn’t have a creative bone in my body. I preferred sticking to the facts on Wikipedia—hard, citable facts.
Suddenly a shadowy figure appeared over my notebook. I looked up. It was a girl, and she had short hair, almost a buzz cut, and an extremely angular face.
“Whoa! I know you!” I said.
It was Laura Pedrotti.
Laura dumped her shoulder bag on the table, nearly knocking off my laptop, and sat down. She kicked up her feet.
“You look just like your pictures,” I said.
Laura folded her arms. “Oh, do I?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I stammered. “You’re just—you’re very pretty.”
“Oh, please, go on,” she said, sweeping her hands. “I love nothing more than to be objectified, especially when it’s by the nerd who made my Wikipedia page.”
“No, no, I’m not objectifying you. I’m actually—”
“I’m just playing with you,” Laura said. She had a very tiny accent, though she sounded more American than anyone else I’d met in Rome. “Thank you for that page. I don’t want to sound like a narcissist and say I appreciate it, but … I appreciate it. So my dad tells me you’re struggling to write a poem? Is this for a class or something?”
“He told you that?”
She showed me the texts, which were in Italian but loosely translated to BOY WHO WROTE YOUR WIKIPEDIA PAGE IS TRYING TO WRITE A POEM, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL WRITER, PERHAPS MY BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER COULD DO FAVOR FOR THIS POOR AMERICAN.
“Trust me,” Laura said, “his texts are even more ridiculous when I’m at school. He gets a little carried away when he texts. He’s convinced I inherited his way with words. You can put that on the Wikipedia page.” She winked.
Oh my God.
Was she flirting with me?
Did Laura Pedrotti want to get with the creator of her Wikipedia page?
“Thankfully he doesn’t have my girlfriend’s number,” Laura continued, “so she is not victim to his texts. Yet.”
I smiled. “I didn’t read online that you have a girlfriend. I’ll have to add that to your Personal Life section.” Laura’s face turned slightly horrified. “Just kidding,” I quickly blurted. “I can’t add anything without a citable source. Anyway. This poem.”
“This poem,” she repeated.
“I need inspirati
on.”
Laura laughed and took a cigarette out of her bag. She flicked the lighter and gestured toward the church.
“See that church over there? It’s called la Basilica di San Bartolomeo. The Basilica of Saint Bartholomew. The guy got skinned alive and beheaded. A lot of times when he is depicted in statues, you will find him holding his own skin, his body skinless, just veins and raw flesh.”
“Gah!” I gagged, making a retching sound. “That’s not inspiration! That’s blatant torture!”
Laura smiled. “Made you feel something, didn’t it?” She shook her head. “Just write something personal. From the heart. Put yourself out there and make yourself vulnerable … vulnerable as fuck.” She had a point; after her Nespresso commercial song, Laura’s second most popular song was a subtle-but-not-really ode to periods. She said in an interview that she hated how women weren’t supposed to talk about them.
“Vulnerable,” I said. “Got it.”
“Vulnerable as fuck. Raw. Like Bartholomew.”
This time Laura clapped her own hands over her mouth in disgust and made a sound. We laughed.
“Do you want to come to the reading tonight?” I asked. “It’s at this bar, Garbo. You could sing something—”
“I’m good,” Laura said. “I have plans with friends.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I appreciate the invite,” she said, raising her chin. “And I’m a bit impressed? The American inviting the Italian girl to a party in her own town. You’re already hanging out with the artsy crowd.”
“Trust me,” I said. “It doesn’t feel real to me, either.”
“I bet. Good luck with the reading,” Laura said. “In bocca al lupo. You’re supposed to respond—”
“Crepi,” I said.
Laura looked even more impressed now. “Someone learns quickly,” she said with a flick of her wrist.
My nerves kicked in as soon as I stepped into Garbo. I squeezed through crowds of people, swirls of Italian and English and French being spoken around me, and found Jahan exactly where I expected to find him, at the bar.
“I like the outfit,” I said when I managed to squeeze between two people. Jahan was wearing a vest with little gold flowers and vines on it.
“Of course you do,” Jahan said, cracking open a metal shaker. “It’s from the Safavid/Qajar era. My favorite dynasties. They had their hands full fighting the Ottomans, and they still had time for fashion.”
“Damn. Repping the squad,” I said.
“Squad goals,” Jahan said ironically, and I raised my hand for a high five, because he had actually remembered something I had taught him.
+20: Indoctrinate Jahan and his friends with pop culture references and other millennial theology.
Jahan topped the drink he was pouring with a lime wedge and passed it to a woman down the bar. “So do you know what you’re reading tonight?”
I pulled out a folded sheet of paper from my pocket. In the end, I wasn’t able to come up with anything on my own, but I found a really beautiful Rumi poem in a book Jahan gave me the other day.
“It’s a surprise,” I said. “But I think you’ll like it.”
Promptly at eleven thirty—a first in Garbo history, from what I understood of these weekly readings, and of Italian and Iranian culture in general—Jahan stood up and introduced the evening.
“Thank you everyone for coming tonight. I’m going to try not to cry. Not because I’m a man—fuck that—but because I don’t want to ruin this gorgeous Persian vest I have on.” Jahan flapped the vest and gave it a twirl, and everyone clapped and cheered. “You know, I wore this vest because I wanted to honor the Persian tradition of oral storytelling. We Persians, we can’t just write stories like everyone else. We have to tell them out loud, epic and dramatic, much like we’ve been doing in this little bar for several years now. Thank you for indulging me in that tradition. I’m going to miss it.”
And so the night began. People read stories. They read poetry. They put on fake accents and galloped like horses and made the room burst into laughter. It was a night for the books. The room was floating, and Jahan was on cloud nine.
He squirmed every time one of the presenters thanked him for Garbo. For the gift of this bar, these reading nights, his presence. Some people read poetry for Jahan: an Edward Lear limerick, a Shakespeare sonnet, a Rumi quatrain.
Then someone else read Rumi. And another person. Jahan quipped, “What’s with all the Rumi tonight? A bitch loves her mystic Sufi poet, but how about some Hafiz or Saadi, people …”
I gulped.
Gaetano, a boy with bright red cheeks whom I hadn’t really talked to much, stepped up to the front of the room. Instead of reading, he talked about how he had struggled to come out just two years ago. He spoke in Italian, but one of Jahan’s friends translated into my ear.
“I used to come to Garbo … and drink alone in that corner over there … If at any point in the night, someone ‘obviously gay’ entered the bar, I would leave … I was not comfortable in my own skin … let alone in a bar like this.”
Gaetano paused to make eye contact with Jahan. “One evening, Jahan approached me … ‘Come sit at the bar,’ he said … he was very obviously gay … such a fruit, so flamboyant … but there was something about him … something genuine … I joined him, and very quickly, he won me over … he was magic and laughter … the kind of presence that made you feel special … at that time, my own family was having trouble accepting me … I was angry, hateful, most of all, I hated myself … but Jahan, you saved me … It was because of you … I was able to accept myself after the people I loved could not … We will miss you.”
Tears welled up in Jahan’s eyes. He nodded at Gaetano, mouthed, Thank you, and called up the next presenter.
The next presenter was me.
I felt my heart thumping. Was it excitement? Was it nerves? I stood up slowly as Jahan introduced me. “Our next reader—he’s only been in our lives for a couple of weeks, but it feels like we’ve known him forever.”
The room was golden. It was glowing honey yellow, nectarine orange, the warmest, most inviting colors. I melted into the whole thing. Everyone looked at me so welcomingly, and I felt at home.
“Ciao. My name is Amir.” I took the sheet of paper out of my pocket and unfolded it slowly. “A lot of you don’t know me. I ended up in Rome by accident, in a way, and became friends with Jahan and Neil, and all the others. They’ve been the nicest people in the world to me. I’m really thankful for that.”
My hands were shaking. I couldn’t believe how many people were packed into this bar, listening to me.
“It really is a tribute to what an incredible person Jahan is,” I continued, “that we all get to be in this room tonight. Together. We could have been complete strangers, you know? We could have been standing behind one another in line at a bus stop. Or on a plane, filling the rows and seats, watching in-flight movies over one another’s shoulders. We could have never met. But tonight, we get to meet. Because of Jahan.”
My sweaty fingers clenched the poem I had yet to read. “You know, I just realized something,” I said. “I think, someday in the future, I’ll romanticize this moment. Standing in front of all of you. I won’t remember the sweat dripping down the back of my neck. I won’t remember how nervous I got each time Jahan called another presenter, thinking it would be my turn. I won’t dock points for those little things, even if they meant something at the time, because I don’t want them to define a beautiful moment. Life’s not about keeping score like that. It’s just not. It’s about finding people who see you—because the minute they do, everything else goes away. All the points even out.”
Suddenly, the room filled with applause. I looked over at Jahan, who nodded at me. I was still holding the Rumi poem in my hands. I folded it back up and put it into my pocket, and I went and sat down.
“That was a hell of a speech, Amir.”
Giovanni had asked if I wanted to go outside for a sm
oke. I didn’t, but I did want to go outside for some air, so I joined him.
“Thanks,” I said, leaning against a motorcycle. “Where’s Jahan?”
“Oh, he is going to be in very high demand tonight.”
Giovanni took out a lighter and flicked the wheel, bringing the flame close to his cigarette. He took a deep drag. “I am going to miss him,” he said.
I shoved my hands in my pockets. “So am I,” I said. The cigarette glowed in the darkness, lighting up Giovanni’s face like a Halloween jack-o’-lantern. I had always liked Giovanni, ever since he gave me that shirt at the first dinner party.
We talked about his novel, which Giovanni had been working on for years, and he droned on about fifteenth- and sixteenth-century queer Italian history for so long I lost track of time. I told him I wanted to read his book. Giovanni smiled, eyeing me with the precision of a hawk, and he said I could read it as soon as it was finished.
“I have not even shared it with Jahan yet,” Giovanni said, taking another drag of his cigarette. “It is a shame we are losing him.”
“You’re telling me. He’s pretty much the only person I have here,” I said.
Giovanni frowned. “Stick with me and we will suffer through this loss together,” he said. “In fact, a few of us are going up to my house in Umbria next week, right after Jahan’s last day. It is a beautiful part of Italy, lush and hilly. My family has a villa there. You should come with us.”
“Really? Would that be okay?”
“Of course.”
Someone from the bar came out and asked us to come back inside. Apparently, the neighbors upstairs were complaining about the noise.
“Maybe my life won’t be over after Jahan leaves,” I said to Giovanni on our way in.
“Of course it will not. You will start a new life. A new new life. I am an expert in new lives. I have had a couple of them myself,” he said with a wink, “and I am intrigued by yours.”
Interrogation Room 38
Soraya
ONE OF THE pages Amir had edited on Wikipedia was for a singer named Laura Pedrotti. He had also edited some pages for a neighborhood called Trastevere. He had added a couple of locations to the page—a park, a bar—and I cross-checked those on Instagram to see if anyone had posted a picture of him or something.