The Sun and Other Stars

by Brigid Pasulka

  I search her eyes for any sign of attraction. But she doesn’t dwell on Vanni Fucci any longer than necessary in order to read his next move, and her eyes stay straight ahead in such perfect concentration that it would make both Marcello Lippi and the Dalai Lama proud. You can tell, she’s in this one to win. Still, three minutes into the first half, Vanni Fucci manages to get behind her and score.

  “Goooooooooooooooool!” he shouts, making double figs with his fingers and running around the field, laughing in her direction as if it’s one of their inside jokes. “Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!”

  Like I’ve said, I’m no expert on women, but it seems like a poor way to win her over.

  And sure enough, I hear her mutter something in Ukrainian, which I convince myself means “stronzo among stronzos,” and it gives me a small pinhole of hope. If she can see the stronzos, maybe she can see the good guys, too.

  At halftime, Vanni Fucci replays his best moves for us, and Little Yuri starts doing his limp-limbed dance in the middle of the field that he does every night at this time because he’s six and should be in bed by now.

  “How long are you staying in San Benedetto?” I ask Vanni Fucci.

  “I’m going back to Genoa with them on Tuesday.”

  Suddenly the world stops spinning, and the stars swirl and fall from the sky in a burning rain around me. “Tuesday?”

  “Yuri must go for the process,” Zhuki says. “With the sporting judges.”

  Yuri hangs his head in shame.

  “Only for a few days,” Zhuki adds. “And then we’ll be back.”

  “Don’t worry, Yuri,” Vanni Fucci says, laughing and hitting him on the arm, “if it doesn’t work out, you can always retire to the glue factory in America.”

  Yuri looks up and shrugs. “I think America is not so bad place for calcio player. Not so much competition, and nobody on the street know who you are. Do you know Ronaldinho went to America last year, walked around for two weeks, and nobody recognizes this is famous man? Whole world know his face, his hair. Europe. South America. Asia. Africa. Australia. But not America. Can you imagine? Ronaldinho! Walking on streets in Los Angeles. No bodyguard, nothing.”

  “Sounds like hell to me,” Vanni Fucci says.

  “To me? Like heaven. I would go to America tomorrow. No problem. I have aunt in Chicago. She love Chicago. But Tatiana, she say she can no leave Europe. She think they are animals in America, eating with their hands and wearing cheap cloth-es.”

  Yuri backpedals into the center of the field, blowing the whistle for the second half to begin. Thank you, Tatiana. I take back every bad thought I’ve ever had about you.

  For the entire second half, I chug up and down the field like a referee. We are winning, mostly because Vanni Fucci won’t pass anyone else the ball. And then, in the last few minutes, he decides to chip the ball to me. I’m not expecting it, and I trip. I go down hard, nothing graceful about it, just tangled feet and whump! I look up at the sky full of stars, my whole body aching as Vanni Fucci swoops in and scores the goal.

  “All okay?” Yuri reaches a hand down to me and pulls me vertical.

  “I’m alive.”

  We watch Vanni Fucci take his victory lap, thrusting figs into the air.

  “You know,” Yuri says. “I know my sister very well. And Zhuki, she does not interest with Vanni. I tell you, since we are children, she never like strongest, most handsome man in room. When she was little girl in village, she always take care of three-leg puppy, two-head chicken, cow that give no milk . . .”

  “Thanks. I get the idea.”

  “Good.”

  Fede has let me know with an infinite number of SMS-es that he thinks I’ve been blowing him off, so after the match on Sunday night, I track them down at the Truck Show. The Truck Show is a small, cheap amusement park at the back of town with a giant picture of a truck at the entrance. It’s also Bocca’s part-time job. I try not to come here often because the clientele is mostly thirteen-year-old boys ramming into each other in bumper cars for hours on end or head butting the punching bag to see if they can get the lights to go halfway up. I guess it’s a good place to go if you want to see why the Roman Empire fell.

  “Well, if it isn’t Etto.”

  Bocca throws the basketball straight at my chest, and I catch it without flinching.

  “When did you get reflexes?”

  I throw it back at Bocca and sit down on the bench under Michael Jordan’s luminous foot, part of a giant light box. If you’re sitting at the exact right spot on the passeggiata, you can see it from pretty far away, his scissoring legs suspended in midair, the illuminated orange ball an extension of his arm. Bocca is supposed to be taking tickets for the basketball game. Instead, he and Fede are in the middle of a never-ending shoot-out.

  “So why aren’t you down at Camilla’s tonight, Fede?”

  “Eh. I need a break from watching Claudia and Casella make fish eyes at each other.”

  Bocca sinks a free throw. “Look at that! Look at that!” he shouts. “Seven!!”

  “That’s six,” Fede says.

  “What are you talking about? I’ve got seven, you’ve got six.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Where’d you learn how to count?”

  “From your auntie.”

  “Deficiente.”

  “Cretino.”

  “Finocchio.”

  “Vaffan’.”

  Bocca finishes up his round. His last shot bounces off the backboard and into his hands. He tosses the ball to Fede.

  “Thirteen–twelve. What’re we going up to?”

  “First one to a hundred. Winner plays Etto.” They both laugh.

  A crowd of thirteen-year-old boys has been forming a safe distance away, their arms crossed with their fists pressed behind their biceps. Some of them have cigarettes dangling at their sides, and they pinch them and inhale thinly to make it look like they’re smoking gangia and not tobacco. But you can tell they’re getting impatient, creeping closer and shifting their weight.

  Fede’s turn. He shoots another ten, and half of them go in.

  “Come on, you’re hogging the game,” one boy finally says, and it emboldens the others.

  “Yeah, Bocca, you’re supposed to be working here, not playing.”

  Fede throws the ball back to Bocca, and Bocca shrugs. “I’m testing the equipment. Safety check. And after that is my lunch break.” His first shot bounces off the rim.

  “It’s not lunchtime. It’s after midnight.”

  “You should be home in bed, then.”

  “Come on, let us shoot. If you don’t, we’re going to tell your boss on you.”

  “Well, we’re going to tell your mammas you’re smoking,” Fede says.

  “Then I’m going to say your mamma left the cigarettes on the nightstand after we . . .” The other boys laugh.

  “Come here,” Bocca says to the leader. He hesitates, so Bocca uses the magic open sesame of thirteen-year-old boys everywhere. “What’s the matter, you scared?”

  The boy can’t back down. He takes a few cautious steps in Bocca’s direction, glancing back at his friends. Bocca waits until he’s only an arm’s length away. He pulls the rims of his eyes down with his fingers until you can see only red, and he forces his voice up from the back of his throat.

  “I’m gonna eat your soul,” he says.

  The kid jumps back. “Freak.”

  Bocca and Fede double over laughing.

  “Loser,” the kid continues once he’s a safe distance away. “Grown men hanging out at the Truck Show. Probably don’t have any girlfriends.”

  “Yeah,” his friends chime in. “Losers.”

  “Come on, let’s go clobber the punching bag.”

  “Yeah.”

  Fede and Bocca are still laughing hysterically. They try to slap fives, but miss because they’re laughing too hard.

  “I’m gonna eat your soul . . . good one, Bocca, eh, Etto?”

  “Eh.�
��

  Fede stops laughing. He tosses the ball to Bocca and sits down on the bench next to me.

  “Okay, Etto, why the serious face?”

  “I’m not allowed to have a serious face?”

  “Not unless you tell us why.”

  “I’m just thinking, that’s all.”

  “About what?”

  “Nothing.” I can hear the Sicilian Bull Ride bellowing from the other side of the park. Ride it for ten seconds as it bucks and shoots fire from its nostrils, and you can win a stuffed bear. Fede stands up, walks over to the line, and eyeballs his next shot. It rolls around the rim and goes in. Bocca retrieves the ball and throws it back to Fede.

  “Have either of you ever thought about living somewhere else?”

  They both turn to look at me. Fede shrugs. “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere else.”

  “And do what?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing in particular. I’ve just been thinking lately that it might be nice to have the abstract possibility to leave.”

  “You can leave whenever you want.”

  “I mean, without the guilt trips or the gossip or becoming my nonno’s next cautionary tale. . . .”

  “I don’t know what the cazzo that word means, Etto. Abstract.” Fede sinks another shot and laughs. “Yes, of course, an abstract life would be easier. Abstract people. Abstract choices. But what’s so bad about your real life, Etto? What’s so bad?” Fede takes the rest of his shots, and all but one go in.

  “Lucky,” Bocca snaps, and he snatches the ball away.

  The shoot-out comes down to the last shot. Bocca makes a clean swish, his hands suspended in the air.

  “Eat it!” he says.

  “Double or nothing,” Fede says.

  “You’re on.”

  I sit through the next round, watching them, and I feel a little like Nonna must feel, like I’ve got my face pressed to the glass looking in on everybody else.

  On Monday morning I wake up to the sound of a door slamming.

  “Papà?” I call downstairs.

  Nothing. I look over at Luca’s bed and listen to the silence. Papà still has our cleaning lady, Rahab, change the sheets, so they’re always perfectly smooth, pulled tight like a drum. When Luca first went off to the academy, sometimes I would sleep in his bed just so it wouldn’t look so abandoned.

  I go downstairs. There’s a nice breeze circulating through the apartment. Papà is a big believer in fresh air, so he always leaves the windows and shutters flung open. I make a coffee and stand out on the balcony. The beaches are empty this early in the morning, the sea so flat, I could fold it up into an envelope. I remember when I was a kid and I used to look at the spread of the sea and pretend I was Marco Polo or Christopher Columbus, imagining all the possibilities. Now all I see is a vast, unending boundary.

  “Ciao, Famoso!”

  I look down, and there’s Mimmo waving at me from the beach.

  “I said, ciao, Famoso!”

  “Are you talking to me?”

  “Who else?” He grins. “Your papà is looking for you!”

  The front door of the shop is open. The banco is already set up, and Papà is standing in front of it, waiting for me, his arms crossed like a barricade. I go to the back, grab a clean apron from the crate, and put it on.

  “You’re here early,” I say.

  “I’m here early? It’s my shop.”

  “I’m just surprised to see you this early.”

  “Surprised? You are surprised? I’ll show you surprised.” He pulls out a magazine, gripping it in front of him like a hooligan he’s collared on the street. He thrusts it in my face, and it takes me a second to refocus. It’s a tabloid, Gente or one of those, folded open to a spread of photos, and my eyes scan the page: one of Cristiano Ronaldo’s girlfriends walking and drinking coffee from a paper cup. Francesco Totti and Ilary Blasi leaving some mall near Rome, the imperceptible bump circled in red ink. And then I see it. The bottom right corner of the page. Tatiana the Showgirl, her golden breasts eclipsing most of the frame. But down in the corner, my hair is unmistakable, the sliver of my profile, my pale hand reaching up to take the hundred-euro note, which is circled and magnified to five times its size with the caption “One hundred euros! What kind of meat is he delivering?”

  “Well? What is this? What?”

  I look at Papà. There’s no point in trying to talk to him now. He has the entire arsenal out. The Contrapposto of Impatience. The Small Pupils of Accusation. The Eyebrows of Disdain.

  “It’s a delivery,” I say, as quietly as I can.

  “Do you know who this is?”

  “No.”

  “No? How can you not know who this is? It is the wife of Yuri Fil!”

  “Oh.”

  “And you are taking money from her? Please tell me that is not you taking money from the wife of Yuri Fil.”

  “It was a tip,” I mumble. “I tried not to take it, but she made me.”

  “She made you? She made you?” he says. “She is a woman! How can she make you do anything?”

  “I’m sorry, Papà. It happened so fast. I didn’t know who she was. Some woman called for a delivery and I said, of course.”

  “You didn’t know who she was? The wife of Yuri Fil and you didn’t know who she was?” I consider changing my plea to temporary insanity on account of the breasts.

  “Well,” Papà continues, “even if, as you say—and I doubt it—that you did not know who this is, it does not matter who she is. We do not do our jobs for bribes.”

  “It wasn’t a bribe. It was a tip.”

  “Bribe . . . tip . . . respectable people don’t take either. If you want tips, go and work for Benito.” He hangs his head. “I am so ashamed. So ashamed.”

  “I’m sorry, Papà.”

  And then he says something he has never said before, not even in his worst bout of anger, not even when I came home the night of my sixteenth birthday, completely drunk with the front of my pants wet.

  “Go.”

  “What?”

  “Go.” He steps behind the banco and gestures to the portraits. “I can’t even look at you. I certainly cannot force your nonno and bisnonno to look at you all day long.”

  “I said I’m sorry, Papà.”

  He points to the door. And there it is—the Head Turn of Disownment. “Go.”

  I stand rooted for a few seconds and give him a chance to take it back, but I can feel the lump rising in my throat, and I almost strangle myself trying to pull the apron over my head. I fling it toward the back, and it hits the beaded curtain, which shivers as if to say, “Aya. You’re really in trouble now.” But I don’t care. After everything—all the hours I’ve stood behind that stupid banco just so he could sit at Martina’s and talk about calcio and other stupidaggini, all the deliveries and walking up that fottuto hill. Maybe if he were here to answer the phone once in a while, maybe if he made the deliveries once in a while, well, maybe it would be him in Gente, maybe it would be him making the acquaintance of the breasts of the wife of Yuri Fil.

  As I step out onto the passeggiata, the sun strikes me across the nose.

  “You okay, Etto?”

  I hurry past Chicca and everyone at Bagni Liguria, who must have heard the whole thing. I put my head down. I just want to disappear.

  “Hey, Etto, you okay?” Fede calls out.

  I don’t stop. Even if I did, they would all tell me the same thing. Don’t worry about it. That’s just how he is. He’ll cool off by tomorrow. As if he is the only one allowed to get pissed off, the only one allowed to lose his straps and say whatever he feels like saying, whenever he feels like saying it.

  I can feel my legs pumping through Via Londra, my breath emulsifying in my lungs, weighing them down. Yes, Papà, I took a tip from Tatiana the Showgirl. And you know what else? I play calcio with the man himself every night. And one of these days, I might even have the palle to try with his sister again. Suddenly, I feel strong, l
ike a steam locomotive charging through the gauntlet of tourists and busybodies, sweeping them out of the way with my cowcatcher.

  “Ciao, Etto, what’s the hurry?”

  “Nice picture in Gente!”

  “Ciao, Famoso.”

  “Ciao, VIP.”

  “Etto! I just saw it.”

  “What kind of meat were you delivering?”

  I light a cigarette and puff away at it up the hill. The sun feels like a firebrand in the sky, pressing itself into my forehead.

  “Etto, is everything all right?”

  “Sì, Signora Sapia.”

  “You sound like you’re stumbling.”

  “It’s only the heat.”

  “I know. Awful. And no rain. Heard about your picture in Gente. Everyone is talking about it.”

  “Sì, signora.”

  “I hear they caught you looking awkward.”

  “Who said that?”

  “But you always were an awkward-looking boy. Since you were little.”

  When I get to the aula, I lie down on the floor, but the cool wood does nothing to calm my anger. I look to the ceiling, but the drawings seem weak and impotent, the bodies limp, the expressions pinched and cauterized.

  “Vaffanculo, Papà,” I say through my teeth. You’ll see how hard it is to do it by yourself, to work the entire day alone, to be chained to that banco like a dog to a tree and have to ask Chicca to watch the shop when you have to run upstairs just to go to the toilet. He has never done it alone. First there was Nonno. Then Mamma. Then me. I don’t think he’s worked a full day in three years, ever since I finished liceo.

  The anger courses through my veins, and then I hear the words of Yuri Fil in my head. No afraid, no afraid. Enough of the catenaccio. Attack! Attack! Attack!