by Anna Chillon
“At the studio...”
“You’re still insisting? It’s not true that I might lose the studio. End of subject. Leave my work, I don’t want to talk about it, let’s just try to enjoy dinner, please. Eat it before it gets cold.”
I puffed my chest out and picked up my fork.
“You eavesdropped. Don’t think you’re going to get away with it” he continued, alternating his gaze between me and his plate. “Sooner or later I’ll find a suitable punishment for you.”
I swallowed the fork full in my mouth, stuffed with bitter promises.
One minute he was angry, the next he was laughing, then he asked me to eat then he struck me with a word or a glance that left me gasping. There was no one more complicated than him and unfortunately I had to put up with him as my guardian. I needed to find a way of dealing with him straight away if I was to succeed, I wasn’t asking to enjoy it, but at least to survive these weekends.
Once we had finished eating we put the plates in the dishwasher and Vincent looked at his watch and said he would stay another half hour.
We sat on the sofa to finish off our beers. I took off my shoes and put my feet on the coffee table, he crossed his shin over his knee leaning back into the sofa, making himself comfortable.
The thing that fascinated me about men of his age was that air of virility that radiated out of them, that said ‘I’m a man and I’m comfortable in my own skin.’ This was very obvious in Vincent and it was one of the traits that made me most in awe of him, rising above the fact that he was full of imperfections. Not all men were equipped with it. I asked myself if Simon would flaunt it when he was forty three. I thought so and thought it would be worth keeping him close even if only to see that moment. I understood that letting myself become bewitched by that aura was what I desired the most; I would’ve put up with inferior looks, but I wanted that aura.
“I need to ask you something else.” Kneeling on the sofa I bit my lip. I didn’t know how to put it.
He tilted his head taking in my expression and something put him on edge.
“Careful” he warned me.
I took a deep breath. “I wanted to know if... basically, if you think I’m pretty.” I put my hair over one shoulder and started to play with the tips. My little round face took on an expectant expression.
“Giadaaa” he urged me in a fatherly voice.
“Go on, tell me!”
“Have you asked Aron?”
He took me seriously because my question was serious. “Do you think that’s the kind of question to ask him?” He’s my Dad: he’d tell me I was pretty even if I was a cockroach.”
Vincent put his hand on his forehead and through his hair that was trying to curl but was too short. “Do you really want to know if I think you’re pretty? Pretty like a little posy or like an abandoned kitten? Or why not, like the little skirt you’re wearing now?”
“I mean pretty like a woman. I don’t want to remember it, but it’s happened now and I need to think of it philosophically: you’re a man and you’ve seen me in the shower.” I couldn’t stop myself blushing. “Do you think guys will like me?”
“Giada!” He repeated in an exasperated tone.
“Simon thinks I’m pretty, he told me so.”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that there’s a line of girls running around after him. Why would he be interested in me if I don’t...”
“...Sleep with him?”
“Exactly. Let’s be honest. Why should he wait for me?”
“I won’t lie to you and tell you a fairytale that if he’s the right one he’ll wait.” He paused briefly, grasped for who knows what reasoning. “But probably it’ll happen. If he really has got all the choice in the world, he’ll want the one he can’t have, that’s why you could end up being his steady girlfriend.”
Me, the steady girlfriend of a hottie like him? Madness. “But, I mean, am I pretty enough or not, in your opinion?” I insisted batting my eyelashes, knowing full well that a week ago I would never have dared to talk to him about something like this.
I really wanted his answer and I realized that I wanted to know regardless of the Simon issue.
Vincent looked into my eyes, letting his arm drop and getting a bit more serious. “You’re insolent and itchy, that’s what you are.”
Offended, I crossed my arms nestling into the angle of the sofa. “Itchy?” what you said doesn’t even make sense.”
He smiled and didn’t move his heavy gaze from me. “Itchy means that you’ve got an itch inside your body that you transmit to whoever gets close to you.”
I just knew that he hadn’t used the word ‘pretty’ let alone ‘beautiful.’
I drew my legs close and sulked. “So you don’t like me” I murmured, taking the discussion in a dangerous direction.
Vincent raised his eyebrows, closed his eyes and sighed. “I didn’t say that.”
“So, what then?”
“What are you trying to get at Giada?”
Hearing that question my heart started to beat faster. I swallowed thinking of what he could have imagined in his head, that I didn’t want to know if Simon could like me, but more if he did.
Him.
I almost lost my voice. “What I said. If I wasn’t Aron’s daughter...”
“If?” he interrupted me annoyingly. “Aren’t they teaching you the signs at driving school? You see them, you understand them and change direction, because you know that the road you’re on is not the right one.”
“We’re only talking.”
“Don’t go there, Giada!”
I didn’t give up, keeping my gaze on him, as difficult as it was. “You’ve never been in a restricted zone?”
He nodded. “In many different ways. That’s why I can warn you now.”
My phone, abandoned on the coffee table, beeped telling me there was a new message. I reached out and picked it up. I was Simon.
“How’s it going with the louse? I want to see you. Me and you, tomorrow. Alone.”
It was so simple to communicate with Simon, it wasn’t complicated, with him we didn’t risk doing or saying the wrong thing nine times out of ten. I typed as quickly as possible, wanting to get back to the conversation with Vincent.
“Everything as planned.”
I pressed send and at the exact same time my phone was ripped from my hand. I didn’t expect it at all; my parents never dared, for any reason to invade my privacy in that way.
“I was talking to you” he contested with annoyance.
I tried to get the phone back jumping on him, but he squeezed my waist pulling me to his side while he kept the phone out of my reach reading my words.
He started scrolling through the history of Simon’s messages.
“You can’t do that” I mumbled.
“I wanted to be kind and understanding with you. I was making an effort.” He snorted pressing his arm against my stomach, his sleeves were still rolled up to the elbows showing the tension in his muscles.
I remained speechless for a moment, incapable of thinking of anything other than the unexpected contact with his body. The next instant I recovered my brain and strength, I pushed with my feet to launch myself and grabbed the phone. Pointless, Vincent literally got on top of me, without talking his eyes of the tiny screen, until he got to the message I sent the previous week: “Next time we need to be more cunning.”
I was convinced that I saw smoke come out of his ears. “Do you think this is a mature way to behave? Plotting behind my back?”
“I didn’t plot.”
“Liar.”
He didn’t let me go, he continued squeezing me to one side with the phone to the other, angrily. “You’ve got a long way to go before you’re grown up, Giada.”
A moan caused by the pressure came out of my mouth. If I wanted proof of his strength I had it at that moment: one arm was enough to render me defenseless.
&n
bsp; “Don’t think you can play me for a fool” he said. “It’s one thing that makes me go nuts.”
Unable to fight him, I gave in with a sigh letting myself relax into his grip, against him, against his legs, his hips, his chest.
Feeling my body resting softly against his, Vincent reacted: he freed me pushing me away with his palm against my back, as if he had just woken from a dream and realized that something very wrong was happening.
I’d been captured and pushed away in the space of a few seconds. Damn confused and panting, I crawled back to my corner of the sofa. Loads of mad ideas flashed through my head, but I tried to be logical and stick with the subject. I absolutely needed to show him that I wasn’t as childish as he thought. “I can’t take the road that you say if I get held back like a doll: I need to do it on my own and you’re not responsible for me as my Dad wants you to think.”
Visibly restraining himself, Vincent sucked his cheeks in between his teeth; his face became more hollow and his expression lines deepened, ploughed by serious thoughts, unknown to me.
“You’re right. We can’t avoid you growing up” he added a bit later, surprising me, “but in adult life which you so aspire to, actions have consequences that can change a whole existence, Giada; yours or that of others. Try to remember that.” He got up, walked away and took his jacket from the hanger as well as mine. “Let’s go.”
“Where?!”
“Outside. To get some air.” He was already off.
“Haven’t you got to go out?”
He put my phone in his pocket and took his out of the other, typing a message. “Not anymore” he stated before putting it away.
I jumped off the sofa to put my boots on. He stopped me. “Leave them, no shoes, come as you are. You said you prefer to travel the road using your own strength, so no making it easy.”
“You’re joking!”
“Not at all.”
He waited for me to argue back, a serious expression on his face.
I was about to ask him if anyone had ever taught him the difference between a metaphor and reality, but I didn’t. Full of pride, I left my boots on the floor with a thud and followed him.
So the punishments that he had spoken about weren’t just empty threats. I had wondered if sooner or later they would’ve arrived in some form, and here was the beginning; strange and certainly not what I’d expected. Who wanted to go barefoot for a bit?
Once out of the garden, I thought he would go towards the car, but he looked up to the moon in the clear sky and started to walk on the pavement, with his hands in his pockets. He wanted to walk.
I caught up and walked at his side. “Can I ask what we’re doing in a deserted street at night, when the city is full of shops and bars? Here we’re not going anywhere.”
“You’re wrong, this street isn’t deserted, if you open your eyes you’ll realize that it’s full of life and besides, all roads lead somewhere. Be present, listen to yourself and what’s around you, or life will escape you without you even realizing.”
It wasn’t exactly the conversation that I’d imagined. Anyway I was able to appreciate the little displays that nature created, so it wasn’t difficult for me to be aware of the smell of wood in the air, the owl’s song, the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind and of a car in the distance, visible on the main roads. From the height of the hill those columns of vehicles looked like luminous snakes, frenetic; the whole of Rome in glimpses of the houses, appeared like a fermentation of sound and light, full of the life I dreamed of, but it felt like I was watching it from a long way off.
“Life is down there and we’re relegated up here” I underlined the concept.
He turned, staring at me with a glint in his eyes. “You are life.”
Oh.
Mission accomplished.
That said, he quickened his pace so that I was behind him and couldn’t see his face. I struggled to keep up with him jumping on stones that poked the soles of my feet.
Those words, said in that particular way, had stunned me. I didn’t care at all if I was bare foot, I was happy to be there, with him, although not completely realizing it. I seemed much smaller at his side, so I jumped onto the wall making myself half a meter taller than him. He was still angry with me, I felt it: without raising his voice, he managed to make me understand how much my plotting had irritated him.
“Have you at least got the silver dagger?” I asked to break the ice that was expanding around us as if it was a fridge.
“What?”
“We need it for the werewolves.” I pointed at the sky, going back to the fantasy novels that’s I’d read. My favourites were about werewolves and vampires. “The full moon is about to rise.”
“No, I didn’t bring it.”
“What a nightmare” I replied dramatically before stopping. “Unless... ahem, you’re not actually a wolf yourself?” I jumped down from the wall howling from the pain. Seeing me swerve, he took my hand until I got my balance.
“I’m afraid I might really be” he declared.
We both craned our necks looking up to the sky as a cloud passed across the moon, leaving it full and bright. Then we looked into each others’ eyes, standing in front of each other, he was tall and dark, elegant but rough, with those thick eyebrows, a bit animal.
“I’m not surprised” I said calmly, despite the shivers down my spine. “I always thought you were hiding something.”
He smiled, suddenly making a face, growling and showing his teeth, lifting his arms and opening his eyes wide; in the dusky light I got the fright of my life. I screamed, running away and laughing, although with my heart beating fast.
Vincent grabbed me after a few steps. “No, don’t run, you’ll hurt yourself.”
Really I had already hurt myself, I carried on laughing through the grimaces of pain. “Shit, you gave me a fright!”
“And I didn’t get my claws out…”
I glanced at his hand on my arm expecting any moment to see sharp claws scratching my flesh, but he simply let me go.
So we carried on walking and I broke the silence again that appeared between us in the least likely moments. “So, you could tell me how you became a wolf.” I was incredibly chatty, I don’t know what had come over me.
Vincent kept looking ahead while we walked, still playing the game, actually taking it very seriously. “I was born like it. I felt certain instincts and I noticed them sharpening over time: I only understood in my teens what it meant, after my father’s death.”
“...That there was a wolf in you.”
“Worse. I was the protector of the werewolves” he specified.
“Ah, right, the criminal lawyer.”
“Well done.”
“So you were a sort of devil’s lawyer?”
“Exactly” he hit a stone with the tip of his shoe, sending it flying.
“But you’re a good wolf.”
“I like to think so.”
He kicked another stone that I watched rolling further than the first until it ended up in a bush. “I mean good so far as wolves are concerned. I think that an animal like that always needs to stay a bit wild, otherwise it becomes too tame.”
“In any case, living in captivity, the wildest instincts get lost over time.”
“I don’t think so.” It was a subtle insight, that should never come the mind of a young girl like me. “If you had lost them all, I wouldn’t be walking bare foot.”
He bit his cheek again. “I’m just trying to teach you something.”
“Which is?”
“You tell me, Miss.”
“That the road is long and hard and full of obstacles” I deduced putting one ice cold foot on top of the other.
The pavement came to an end, further on were hillside areas leading to a few farms. I saw a particularly pretty glimpse of the city and grabbed Vincent’s sleeve, pulling him. “Come here!”
We went along a path that led to a clearing to enjoy a better view. We got to a fence t
hat bordered a wide meadow, under it extended a triumph of lights that obscured the stars in the sky. I leant forward against the wood drinking it in. “It’s the most beautiful city in the world.”
He leant against the fence with his back to the view and crossed his arms. “You don’t want to leave, do you?”
I squeezed my eyes against the threatening tears. “No.”
“You could always come back when you’re independent.”
“I can’t leave. I want to be a set designer and stage technician, It’ll be a really long time before I can earn a salary and also this is the best place for that type of work.”
“You want to be in the show?”
“Absolutely not” I want to be behind the scenes of the show. I’m not interested in being an actress or a director, but I want give life to the sets. I want to build a fantasy world” I said as I admired the panorama full of dreams, as if it was the most beautiful set ever built.
And Vincent looked at me… in the same way.
“You’re so young and full of expectations” he murmured shaking his head. “If you use the same determination for that as you have trying to go to bed with Simon, I’m sure you’ll make it.”
I puffed my cheeks. “What have you got against Simon?”
“I haven’t got anything against your little friend. I simply don’t want your father to put the blame on me for not having taken care of his daughter.” He grinned bitterly, talking to himself again. “He could never accuse me of that.”
We put an end to the discussion that we would never have agreed upon and started along the path leading to the main road. Vincent didn’t seem to have any intention of turning around and I started to worry about the distance that we would have to walk to get back. The surface of the road seemed harder and colder every step, the bumps, getting even spikier seemed to be competing to go deeper into my foot. My feet felt like bruises, I was walking un-naturally, but he didn’t stop, he paused only briefly for me to pick out stones or chips that seemed as enormous as they were minute. Yet I carried on obstinately and avoided asking him to stop.
After a couple of kilometers having only passed a couple of cars, I couldn’t even follow the conversation, I was just frightened of taking even one more step. So I made a drastic decision. I stopped and came down from the asphalt, and sat on the damp grass holding my feet tightly in my hands, like a little girl. My bottom got wet instantly from the dew.