“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.
“Over here,” he says, leading us toward the dance floor and the VIP cabanas. He takes the Reserved sign off one of the tables and calls a cabana boy over.
“Whatever they want. Gratis.”
“Thanks, Guido.”
“Anything for friends. Have fun! Drink! Dance! Drink some more! And I’ll be back to check on you soon.”
He disappears in a wake of blondes, and soon the cabana boy brings over two bottles of champagne. We drink a few clichéd toasts that Fe
de and Bocca make me translate, and everyone starts stretching and preening and jockeying for position. The music is moaning and wailing out of speakers as big as the walk-ins in the shop, and before I know it, Fede and Bocca have dragged Hansel and Gretel off to the dance floor, leaving me with the same one from the back seat of the truck. She must be freezing, even with the generous padding on her arms, but I don’t offer her my hoodie. She arches her back, and I can see she’s rubbed glitter or something into the downspout between her bocce.
“I don’t dance,” I say, cutting off any ideas she might have.
“No?” She grabs her shoulders and shivers, like Jessica Lange in King Kong. I know it’s not for me. I know she’s just biding her time and using me as a prop so another guy will look over and see how much fun she is. Well, he can have it. The giggling, the half-open shirt, all of it. The wind picks up, flapping the edges of the cabana.
“So, then, Etto-who-does-not-dance,” the Austrian girl says, trying to create a conversation where there is none, “what do you do, then?”
I shrug. “Try to put one foot in front of the other, you know. Try to make it from one day to the next. But that’s basically what we’re all doing here, aren’t we?”
She smiles, a tight-lipped, condescending smile, as if she’s sliding it grudgingly over a counter. “I mean, what is your profession?”
“Oh, you mean how much money do I make and how interesting am I, and am I worth the time it took to put your makeup on?”
“Do you always invent what other people are thinking?”
“I work for my father. He’s a butcher.”
“See?” she says. “That wasn’t so bad.”
She’s actually not as ugly as I first thought. She’s got loads of makeup on, but I’ll bet if you shot a fire hose at her and put her next to an uglier friend, she might make out all right.
“Actually, it’s pretty soulless,” I say. “Maybe not as bad as being a lawyer or something, but all you’re doing is chopping up dead animals and trying to make them look nice.”
She smiles widely—again, not for me. I look toward the dance floor, but all I see is clothes and hair, tanned limbs and flashes of jewelry. No sign of Fede or Bocca or anyone else.
“Well, it’s probably interesting to talk to everyone who comes into the shop, then,” the Austrian girl continues. This must be torture for her, but we both know she has to keep the conversation aloft at whatever cost. I could get up at any moment, leaving her to sit alone like a zero, and everyone knows zeroes don’t get hit on.
“Not really,” I say. “It’s basically the same conversation over and over, forty times a day, six days a week. Buongiorno. You’re looking well, signora. How can I help you? Why don’t you try the chops? Have a nice day. See you soon. Nobody really means any of it anyway.”
She stares at me, her mouth slightly open, deciding what to say. She has those prominent dog fangs a lot of Germans and Austrians have, just to the right and left of center.
“You know,” she finally says, “you’re not a very nice person.”
“I know.”
We lapse into silence. I down two glasses of champagne like shots, one after the other, and she lifts her glass delicately and sips her champagne like she’s giving me fottuto etiquette lessons. Each time she takes a drink, she lets her eyes roam the room, looking sullenly for her escape, but then, it’s as if she realizes this is not the fun! fun! fun! she wants to project, so she forces her pout into a smile. She glances down to check that her shirt is appropriately slutty but not downright whorish, then fixes her eyes on a spot over my left shoulder.
I turn around to see who the poser is.
“Ehi. Ciao, Etto.”
“Aristone?” And not only is it Aristone, but Aristone-back-from-university-and-twenty-kilos-lighter-with-new-glasses Aristone. Shit, he actually looks good.
“It’s just Aristo now. You know . . . lost some weight.”
“Shit, Aristone, you actually look good.”
“You mind if I sit with you?”
“I think you would be her savior if you did.”
“Aristo,” he says, leaning over and taking the girl’s hand.
“Tisi,” she says.
“German?”
“Austrian.”
And then Aristone, he kisses her hand and says, “Es ist eine Scheisse deine Wiener zu schnitzeln,” or something that sounds really überpolite and makes her bocce stand up and take notice. And before I know it, they’re jabbering away in German or Austrian or whatever, and I remember that Aristone has been in Genoa studying languages for the past three years, though none of us ever thought to ask him which ones. The girl leans forward and hunches her shoulders. I think for a second that her shirt is going to part like the Red Sea, but she must have some secret contraption holding it together. Ah, Tisi, you have gotten the last laugh. I feel the champagne swirling around and coating the inside of my skull.
“I didn’t know you studied German, Aristone,” I mumble, but I might as well be invisible. Aristone orders a bottle of vodka, that skinny big shot, and when the cabana boy comes, he pretends it’s a surprise to him that Guido is comping us, and he gives the cabana boy a big tip like he’s an American, flipping his wallet wide open. Good for you, Aristone. Good for you that you are thin now. Good for you that you speak Kartoffel and that you might get something tonight. Tutto bene. Salute. Cin-cin. Vaffan’.
We do six shots. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Actually, they do one, I do six. And it helps. It waters down my vision, making all these obnoxious stronzos on Campari blur into a nice, soft, harmless haze. I can feel the hard edges inside me melting a little, until I’m actually happy for Aristo. I should drink more often. I’m not much of a dancer, but I’m a pretty good drunk. At least I don’t get obnoxious like Bocca.
“May I have this dance?” Aristone asks the Austrian girl. This time in English. Show-off. She leans back and crosses her arms. “I don’t think I’m in the mood to dance,” she says.
Aristone stands up, holds out his hand, and pouts. “Oh, please. Just one. One tiny, little dance.” So pathetic. Aristone, please don’t beg. Everyone knows it’s an amateur move. It’s much better to pretend you don’t care. Ignore a girl long enough, and she will come to you.
“Well . . . okay,” Tisi says, grinning, and she’s on her feet.
They walk out under the circles of lights. The song is a fast one, and everybody’s hopping up and down and slamming together like idiot prisoners on some chain gang assigned to have fun. I spot Griffolino and Capocchio circling around, looking for customers.
“Hey, Etto, you want to fly tonight?” Capocchio asks me on his fourth or fifth lap.
“I’m high on life, can’t you tell?” I answer, and Capocchio laughs, the pockmarks that riddle his cheeks stretching into lines.
I take another shot of vodka and wait for the song to end, but when it does, they stay out there. Two songs. Three. For every song, I take a shot. Couples on their way from the dance floor to the staircases stare at me in pity, and the cabana boy starts to smirk every time he passes. But just as I’m about to feel sorry for myself, I happen to look up at the deejay booth, where Guido is standing behind Nicola Nicolini, who, when he’s not turning people’s living rooms into fashionable deserts, moonlights as a deejay. It’s hard to tell if Guido is looking at Nicola Nicolini, the soundboard, the crowd of thrashing people, or out onto the endless sea, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as lonely as Guido in that moment, hovering high above the dance floor, unmoving in the wind.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Etto.” Signora Semirami slides onto the divan next to me, her hand already massaging my knee. Shit. I feel my jeans pull tighter, and I slide farther down the divan.
She laughs, flashing her teeth. “What’s the matter, Etto? I won’t bite,” she says. She’s about the same age as Mamma would be, not unattractive, but with the look of a bad remodel that shows the previous attempts.
“And what brings
you to Le Rocce, Signora Semirami?”
She laughs again, flipping her long, dark hair over her shoulders like a curtain. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m here because I heard there is a too-serious but not unattractive young man who needs to be not so serious for a little while.” She slides over until she’s pressing up against me. She’s wearing a short, white denim skirt, the bony valley between her breasts framed by an open white shirt and a black bra, the aging flesh falling off her chest and thighs. “And you can call me Valeria.”
“Your bra is showing, Valeria.”
Again the laugh. She reaches over me for the bottle of vodka and two shot glasses. “You know, Etto, your friends did not complain when Valeria came to cheer them up. Your brother did not complain.”
“As if.”
She raises her eyebrows at me. “Believe what you want, then.”
They say Signora Semirami keeps the newspaper lists of the middle school graduations, seducing the boys one by one through their years in high school. No one admits to having been with her, but I know from how she pursues me that I am one of the few left on a list she wants to retire. She pours two vodkas and pushes one in front of me.
“Here,” she says. “Have a little drink. It will relax you.”
“And where is Signor Semirami tonight?” I ask.
“Ah, ah, ah, ah.” She wags her finger at me. “Don’t you worry about Signor Semirami.”
She grabs my knee and draws her nails slowly up my thigh. The hair on my neck tingles, the charge enough to ignite the pool of accelerant in my stomach. I jump up just before her hand reaches my crotch.
“I have to go.”
Signora Semirami shrugs and raises her eyebrows. I push my way through the crowd on the dance floor, still pounding out their reel, and I end up a couple of staircases down, facing the sea, on an empty stretch between the shadows of two couples making out. One of them is a girl from Laigueglia who went out with Bocca for a while, but the rule on the staircases is never to acknowledge anyone just in case they are not with the person they are supposed to be with. I light a cigarette and lean forward against the ledge. The cold stone hits my thigh, and I feel my pisello slowly deflating.
The Sun and Other Stars Page 9