Looks like I had a thing for bad boys even then.
Shama sniffs and wipes at her eyes. I turn curiously. I doubt it’s the snake-tongues that are making her cry.
“You okay, Shams?” I ask her.
Shama shrugs. “Yeah. It’s just...Quinn’s probably right. About Jason. He forgot to call me last night. Said he had a last-minute gig at Fat Black’s. But I called to see if he was there, and they had someone else booked.” She grimaces. “I sound pathetic, don’t I? Checking up on my boyfriend.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t want to be like Quinn, so judgmental, telling Shama what to think about her own life. It doesn’t sound good, it’s true. So maybe Quinn is right. But she might be wrong too.
“I think you need to just ask him,” I say. “And then trust your gut, not mine or Jamie’s or Quinn’s. You know what’s best for you.”
Shama sighs. “Do I? Sometimes I just want to fast-forward through this part of our lives. Get to the part where we know better already.” She stands up and grabs her rolling bag’s handle and gives me a one-armed hug. “Have a good break. Unless you want to change your mind and come home with me...you’ll get a lot of really delicious Indian food and only thirty-four questions about your major and career plans.”
I snicker. A little parental badgering doesn’t sound that awful. Actually, it sounds kind of nice.
But instead, I say, “I’m good,” and walk her to the door for another real hug. “Have a good break, Shams.”
* * *
An hour later, I’m awakened by the buzz of my phone on my desk. I turn off the Crybaby credits and look at the number. Giancarlo.
“Hello?”
“What are you doing?” His voice, as always, is abrupt and direct.
“I...I just woke up,” I say, sitting up and pushing a tired hand through my hair. A glance at the clock tells me it’s almost four thirty.
“Meet me at Rockefeller Center.”
He doesn’t make requests, I’m starting to notice.
“I just woke up,” I repeat. “What time?”
“I’m here now. Have you ever seen the tree?”
“No.”
“Then meet me here.”
I stare at myself in the mirror across the way. I look pale, with dark circles under my eyes. Even though I’ve been sleeping more than usual, I always feel tired.
I think of Giancarlo’s intense energy––the way he seems like he knows exactly what he wants. From me. From his life. His direction is invigorating. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all last night, but I can’t shake off the fact that being around him made me feel something other than half-asleep for the first time in weeks. Maybe he’s what I need to wake up.
I push off the bed and walk toward the closet. “Okay,” I agree. “I’ll be there in about an hour.”
* * *
Fifty-five minutes later, I step out of the Forty-Seventh Street stop dressed practically in jeans, boots, and my parka, looking around for Giancarlo, who said he would meet me at the stop. Feeling self-conscious, like I’m being watched, I see nothing. I don’t really want to wait by myself here forever. Rockefeller Center is always busy, especially this time of year. But for some reason I feel like a sitting duck just standing here beside a subway stop.
“Did you think I wouldn’t be here?”
Giancarlo steps out of the shadows of a building next to the stop, one hand shoved into the pocket of the same long black wool coat he wore yesterday. He dresses a little more formally than most guys his age—like he’s forty-three, not twenty-three. He carries a large brown paper bag in his other hand.
I shake my head. “I wasn’t worried. What’s that?”
“You’ll see.” He places an authoritative arm around my shoulder and pulls me close. “Don’t worry. I would never forget about you.”
We walk down Forty-Eighth and across the street. Giancarlo guides me around the iconic buildings until we reach the familiar skating rink. It’s one of those surreal places in New York where you don’t really feel like you’re in a real city, but on a movie set—a place you’ve seen so many times in so many different films that when you see it, you can’t escape the déjà vu.
“You know, you’re lucky to meet me,” he says as he guides me around the rink. “A lot of boys might want you to look perfect all the time, but I don’t mind the ‘natural look.’”
He looks pointedly at my hair, which is arranged on my shoulder in its air-dried waves. I tried to tame it, but it wasn’t cooperating, so I just shoved a hat on top and left.
“Um, thanks,” I say, trying to ignore the way his compliment doesn’t really feel like one.
We stop and watch the skaters below. The rink is pretty full, with a long line of people waiting. Giancarlo looks bored.
“Do you want to skate?” I ask playfully.
He rolls his eyes. “I would never do that. They look ridiculous. Only a few of them can skate at all, and the others look like clowns.” He shakes his head. “I don’t waste my time on things that don’t matter.” He looks down and gives me a sly half-smile. “Not like you, of course. Don’t worry.”
He keeps saying that. Don’t worry. I want to say that I don’t, but I’m not sure it’s true.
I turn toward the rink. “I don’t know. It looks kind of fun. Don’t you like to try new things?”
“Only when I know I’ll be good at them,” Giancarlo answers. “Otherwise, there’s no point.” He pushes off the railing and takes my hand. “Come.”
He leads me to the other side of the rink, where crowds of people are all posing in front of the famous Rockefeller Christmas tree. I’ve never actually seen it in person even though I’ve lived here for the better part of three years. It’s another phantom from movies, a glittering giant of golden light.
“Too much,” Giancarlo mutters as he surveys the tree.
I blink. “You think?”
“Look at it. A hundred feet tall, covered in gold, sparkly fake presents. It has, how do you say, no class. Like what Americans think rich looks like.”
“Why did you take me here, then?”
Giancarlo shrugs, reaches down for my hand, but before he can take it, I put it in my pocket. “You wanted Christmas,” he says with a slight frown at the movement. “This—big tree, lots of presents—is Christmas in America, no?”
I turn back to the tree. Even though I never came to see it last year, there is actually something comforting about it. How many movies have I seen it in? And how many trees have I decorated with my mother, albeit on a much smaller scale.
“I suppose it is a little,” I admit. “But I’m not just an American.”
Giancarlo snorts. “Yes, you are. Your father went to Brazil by himself, didn’t he?”
I open my mouth with a quick retort, but find I have none. Maybe he doesn’t mean it to, but the comments sting. Granted, Giancarlo knows only a little about my family’s situation—little bits and pieces I’ve told him. Maybe not enough to use it as the weapon it sounds like.
We stare up at the lights for a few more minutes. I want to enjoy the beauty of it, but I can feel Giancarlo’s disdain, even though he doesn’t say anything else. I’ve never been to Argentina, even though it borders Brazil. But I know that economically, it shares a lot of the same problems as my father’s country. A lot of concentrated wealth, and a lot more poverty than here.
But Giancarlo’s family isn’t poor. His tastes, styles, even his casual entitlement belies an upbringing that’s pretty far from the slums. I glance at the sturdy gold ring on his index finger, his shiny black shoes, then look back at the tree, trying to see what he sees.
“Are you finished?” he asks a few seconds later.
I sigh. If it were just me, I might have stayed longer. Found a seat on a bench with a coffee, spent some time watching the crowds. Tried to have a conversation. It’s the kind of thing Nico and I would have done together, content just to be in each other’s presence, no matter where we were.
* * *
To my surprise, instead of leading me to the street for a cab or even to say goodbye at the subway, Giancarlo guides me up Fifth with a firm hand at my elbow. He stops in a deli for a couple of hot teas, which we carry up the street as we walk. I’m still thinking about his reaction to the tree, and finally, I can’t keep back my questions anymore.
“Your family in Argentina,” I start slowly. “What do they do?”
Giancarlo frowns. He does that a lot, and it makes his thick black brows furrow over his glasses, like a scholar deep in thought. It’s attractive...but intimidating. Which is basically him in a nutshell.
“Why do you want to know?” he asks.
Now it’s my turn to frown. “Curiosity. I just want to know more about you, I guess.”
He presses his lips together, like he’s trying to decipher if I’m telling the truth. Then his shoulders seem to relax. “My father, he owns a shipping company in Buenos Aires. It controls almost ten full percent of Argentinian exports.”
“Oh...so it’s...a good business?” I don’t know how to ask if his family makes money without sounding like a gold digger or something equally awful. I have no idea if ten percent of Argentinian exports is a lot, but I assume it is.
Giancarlo smirks. “It’s excellent. My father is one of the most successful men in Buenos Aires. They have asked him to run for mayor. There has even been talk of him becoming president, but he said no. His work is too important. And one day, I will take over.”
“Oh,” I say. “Well, that must be...nice.” I’m not sure how to respond to that. “Then why do you live in that apartment?”
The question jumps out before I can stop it, before I realize how terrible and rude it is. But I’m still curious. If Giancarlo’s family is wealthy enough to send him as an international student to study in the U.S., he obviously isn’t poor. It’s a little strange that he lives in such a brittle little place. Close to his school, yes. But there are nicer places in that part of the city too. Places where a shipping magnate would seem more likely to house his son.
He shrugs. “He pays for my tuition,” he says. “But my father insists that I earn the rest of my money. I don’t have a golden fork like some people.”
I twist my lips. “What?”
“You know. The golden fork. That rich children have. It’s a saying, no?”
“The golden...” I trail off, thinking it through. “Ohh! You mean a silver spoon!” I erupt with laughter. “It’s ‘silver spoon,’ not ‘golden fork,’ silly.”
Now he scowls, confused. “Why would it be silver? Gold is the more valuable metal.”
I shrug, still giggling. “It just is. The saying is, ‘born with a silver spoon.’” I nudge his shoulder, although my shoulder only comes just above his elbow. He really is tall. “It’s okay. I figured it out in the end.”
Giancarlo grunts. “It’s not polite, you know, to tease a person still learning the language. I am trying my best.”
At first I think he’s joking, but his black look tells me he’s not. Instantly, I feel awful for teasing him.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” I say, tugging on his sleeve. “Really, I am. You’re right, that was mean.”
Giancarlo examines me skeptically over the rim of his cup, and for a half-second, I think he’s going to tell me to fuck off (albeit in a much more refined way). My parents would like him. He’s strong and solid, just like my dad. He’s cultured, on his way to being educated, and comes from money. Motivated. Everything my mom wanted to marry, and my father wants to be. Or wanted.
Suddenly, I feel really scared about what would happen if he told me to fuck off. Suddenly, I really don’t want him to.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, more softly.
At last, Giancarlo smiles, a broad smile that completely transforms his otherwise stern face into something much more charismatic. “What, you think I can’t take a joke?”
I’m awash with relief—more than I should be, considering I don’t really know this guy very well. I shouldn’t care so much what he thinks.
We keep walking, sidestepping around a few homeless people piled under an awning. I glance back at them, considering whether to give the extra dollar or two in my purse, but Giancarlo tugs me onward. Across the street, several closed designer boutiques are still lit up with ostentatious Christmas displays in the windows: sleek mannequins in the front posed in thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise. It’s the haves and have-nots in this city in high relief.
Giancarlo ignores the sleeping people, but glares at the boutiques. “You see, in my country, it’s not like here.”
“No?”
Giancarlo shakes his head, and the movement causes a lock of thick black hair to fall over his brow. He tries to give me another smile, this time less genuine. It’s obviously not a natural expression for him, since it looks more like a grimace. Then he pushes his glasses up his nose, looking halfway between a librarian and a rake.
“Not so many gifts,” he continues. “We have presents, of course, but most people make them instead of buy them. And maybe only a few. The rest of the time, we do other things. It’s not so much a holiday about presents, all of these flashy things”—he gestures in the direction of the stores—“but more about family. God. The soul.” He looks directly at me, and his eyes practically flash under a streetlight. “The things in life that really matter, don’t you think?”
It’s hard to look away when he stares at me like that. Searching, like he wants to know the depths of my soul; the soul he’s talking about.
But eventually, I nod. “Yes.”
Giancarlo turns, like I just passed some sort of test. We keep walking steadily north, up toward the park. The Plaza Hotel looms in front of us, with its gold-lit green roof and gold-leaf trim. Another famous symbol of wealth and status in New York.
“My parents are like yours too,” I tell Giancarlo after I toss my empty cup into the trash. “They have money, but they really wanted me to make my own. I ended up sick last year trying to make enough to live in this city. It’s so expensive.”
Giancarlo grunts in agreement. “And now?”
“Now...I’m getting help from my mother. They aren’t as...strict as they were before.”
I don’t mention that my parents are also too busy wallowing in their own misery to pay attention to mine. I try to focus on the silver lining. No one is breathing down my neck anymore. I can live my own life.
My roommates never understood why I had to work as much as I did, and even Nico sometimes treated me like a spoiled princess just for struggling through it. But Giancarlo clearly knows. He knows how hard it is to have had something once and to have to go without it. To figure out that life on your own, all at once.
“What about you?” I ask. “You said your father insisted that you work, right? Where’s that?”
“Yes, I work,” Giancarlo replies slowly, almost like it’s a secret he shouldn’t share with me. “But it’s complicated.” He pronounces the word slowly, one syllable at a time in his thick Argentine accent: “com-plee-cay-ted.” “My visa doesn’t allow me to work outside of the campus. And those jobs don’t pay very much money.”
I frown. “So...what do you do?”
“I work for a club promoter downtown. Help bring in people. Go out and get college girls, young people to come to his events.” He looks at me meaningfully. “So, if sometimes I don’t answer the phone late at night, that’s why. Sometimes I am at work. It’s cash, so I have to do what they say.”
His words are foreboding somehow, even though nothing specific about them is a threat. Like he’s warning me against something, but I don’t know what.
I continue to brood about this a few more blocks, until I realize that we’ve crossed the street, right under the lit aw
nings of the plaza, and are standing at the corner of Fifty-Ninth Street: at the entrance of Central Park. I look around the corner, bewildered, then at Giancarlo, who stops a few steps ahead of me, like he was about to pass into the trees and only just realized that I hadn’t followed.
“What?” he asks impatiently. “What’s the problem?”
I peer into the trees, toward the blackness beyond them. “Um, it’s the park.”
Giancarlo looks at me like I’m missing some brain cells. “Yes...”
I frown. “It’s after dark. In New York City. And you want to go into Central Park?”
He says nothing, just crosses his arms over his lapels and waits. I glance down the path, which is unlit and opaque. I feel like a storybook character trying to decide whether to go down the friendly, well-lit 6 train entrance across the street, or the foreboding, wolf-ridden path of Central Park at night.
Giancarlo sighs, then takes a few long steps back to me. He picks up my hands and holds them to his chest. “Do you really think I would ever let anything happen to you, mi joya?”
I bite my lip and try to pull my hands away, but he doesn’t let me. “Joya? What does that mean?”
“It means you are a jewel. A precious gem. I would protect you always.”
He squeezes my hands, then waits for me to respond. When I don’t immediately, he just sighs and kisses me lightly on the forehead before releasing me. It’s the first gesture that’s actually been sweet with him, not tinged with a little too much intensity, or something else I can’t quite name. It melts me a little. Enough to do something I know I shouldn’t.
But really. Who’s even here to care?
I follow Giancarlo into the park, which eventually doesn’t seem quite so dark as my eyes get used to walking without the glare of the city streets. As we progress, the sounds of the city dim. I actually hear a couple of squirrels scamper here and there, even a few birds getting ready for bed. It makes me wonder why people always tell you not to go into the park at night. It doesn’t seem scary at all. The quiet is actually really nice.
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