The Breaking of a Wave

by Fabio Genovesi

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Franco. From the veggie mart downstairs. I’m looking for Ms. Lidia.”

  “Sorry, the lady isn’t in.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Not in. She’s gone on a trip.”

  “She’s been gone two months for crying Cain’s dog. Just how long is this trip?”

  At first Sandro nods, then he shakes his head, still peeking from the chink. Rambo comes up from behind him, shoves the door open, and puffs out his chest. “We don’t need any produce. We just got back from Eurospin. Thanks anyway.”

  Franco looks at him then at Sandro then hangs his head. With a hand he smooths down his hair from his temple across his skull. Then his hand drops to his face and shields his eyes. All Franco manages to say is, “I see,” before bursting into tears, stifled tears that sound more like coughs and make his apron jiggle.

  “Please don’t take it so hard,” says Sandro. “We just happened to be at Eurospin and figured while we were there we’d pick up some produce too.”

  “It was convenient,” says Rambo, “plus they’ve got deep discounts.”

  “I know,” Franco says between hiccups. “It’s a question of quantity. They . . . they’re a big operation, they make big orders, they can afford to charge those prices. Not me. I can’t, for the love of Cain’s dog. I’m—all—alone.” An even bigger flood of tears drowns out his voice.

  “We’re alone too,” says Sandro. “Next time we’ll get our produce from you. Rambo eats a ton of fruit.”

  “Bet your ass I do,” says Rambo. “Fruit and vegetables are the bricks that form the foundation of a healthy body. Next time we’ll go to your place. So will the lady of the house, when she’s back.”

  Franco shakes his head. “No, she never comes. She always sends her son.”

  “Marino?”

  “Yeah. But I haven’t seen him in a while either.”

  “Of course not. He’s in the hospital.”

  “What? Cain’s dog! What happened?”

  “Hit and run. But he’s fine. He comes back home the day after tomorrow,” says Sandro.

  “Ah,” says Franco. He takes his eyes off the ground and looks at them again. “He’ll be back the day after tomorrow?”

  Sandro nods and, without knowing why exactly, senses he’d have been better off not doing so.

  “I take it Ms. Lidia is looking after him at the hospital.”

  “Yeah, sure, yeah.”

  “So the day after tomorrow she’ll be back too.”

  “No, her no,” intervenes Rambo, “she was at the hospital with Marino, but then she had an emergency to attend to.” For a moment it’s silent.

  “How can she go out of town when her son’s in the hospital?”

  “It was an emergency. She has an aunt who isn’t well, an aunt in Milan.”

  “I see. But, in the name of Cain’s dog, her son gets run over by a car and she goes to Milan?”

  “Exactly. Besides, we’re here to help,” says Rambo. “This aunt on the other hand, she’s alone, and Ms. Lidia really cares about her. This aunt saved her life. Back in World War II. The SS were aiming to shoot and rape her, but her aunt hid her in the back of a closet and they never found her.”

  “Why would they have wanted to shoot her?”

  “Because . . . because she was with the Resistance. Ms. Lidia was a partisan. They used to call her the Wolf of Versilia. She’s mentioned in a bunch of books. History books.” Rambo stops there. He sneaks a look at Sandro but Sandro is a horror show, so he goes back to looking at Franco, who’s now staring at him more intently.

  “Listen, boys, you’re not selling me a bill of goods, are you?”

  “What?” says Sandro. “What bill of goods, Mr. Franco? The Resistance is nothing to joke about.”

  “You sure? Because Lidia was born in ’46. Cain’s dog, at most her mother could have been the Wolf of Versilia!”

  Nothing. Just silence. Sandro looks at Rambo, Rambo looks at Sandro. Then a couple of grunts: yes, of course, the Wolf was her mother.

  “Right, obviously the aunt didn’t save her; she saved her mom. But Lidia was still indebted to her. I mean, it’s not like Lidia would have been born had her mom died. She may as well have saved her is what I mean.”

  Franco studies them, his head tilted forward, his eyes dead serious under eyebrows so bushy they look as if two hairy caterpillars were ambling across his forehead.

  “Boys, please, tell me what’s really going on.”

  “We told you. That’s the truth.”

  “Please, boys, cut the crap. Humping Cain’s dog, I’ve a right to know what’s going on.”

  “Look,” says Rambo, “enough. We told you what’s going on. What right do you have anyway? What’s it to you? A woman goes away for a couple of days and she’s supposed to alert her grocer?”

  Franco doesn’t answer right away. First he fixes his comb-over and takes a few breaths, then the words tumble out as though they’d been pushing at the back of his teeth for too long, trying to emerge into the light. “I’m not just her grocer; Lidia and I are lovers.”

  His absurd words bounce off the landing like berserk rubber balls. Rambo and Sandro turn their heads this way and that, trying to follow their trajectory or at least avoid getting hit in the face.

  “Boys, that’s the truth. There’s nothing wrong with it. We met and we liked each other. We took it to a physical level. No strings, just good times. This is the 2000s. It’s normal. Lidia and I are fuck buddies.”

  Rambo and Sandro don’t say anything. They don’t move. They stand there clinging to the door. At first they’d been keeping the door from opening all the way. Now the door is keeping them from falling.

  “But we haven’t seen each other for two months. No message, no nothing. I waited a bit. I didn’t want to come here and bump into her son. But after a while I got worried maybe she was sick or something happened, so I mustered the courage to come here, but no one was ever home. Cain’s dog knows I know we agreed no strings attached, but we were happy together, she was happy too, or at least she seemed that way. People don’t up and disappear like that, do they?”

  “Women are wired weird, man,” says Rambo. He extends his arm and almost props it on his shoulder but hesitates and winds up leaning it against the wall.

  Franco nods, his eyes on the ground, and wipes the sweat running from his forehead to his eyebrows. “It’s true, boys, they really are. Cain’s dog, they’re huge sluts. No offense, eh? You’re not related, are you?” They shake their heads. “Can I level with you?” They nod, even though they’d rather he didn’t. “Well, you’ve got to understand, that lady was a crazy whore, a pony without a bit.”

  “Are you talking about Ms. Lidia?” says Rambo, emitting a whimper.

  “The very one. In the name of Cain’s dog, she’d come to my shop, pull down the shutters, and showtime.”

  “I thought Marino was the one who did the shopping,” says Sandro.

  “Yeah, yeah. He’d fetch the stuff in the morning and she’d come in the afternoon to complain about how it was rotten. You tell me, wouldn’t it have been easier if she came down herself, without sending her son first?”

  In all honesty, Rambo and Sandro hadn’t thought of that. They can’t think of anything. They just stand there quietly listening.

  “No way in Cain’s dog. She’d send her son cause it turned her on. She’d come in the afternoon wielding that sack. ‘Look, Franco,’ she’d say, ‘what kind of nasty fruit did you give that dumbass son of mine?’ And afterward, while I was harpooning her, she’d scream, ‘Yes, yes, you take advantage of that dumbass, huh, you really take advantage of him, don’t you?’”

  Franco’s words pierce Sandro and Rambo’s ears and cut a path to their brains, despite all their effort to shut them out, now and forever. />
  “Can you believe that?” Franco casts his eyes on the floor again, his hand covering his face. “But for all Cain’s dogs I can’t get her out of my head.”

  Sandro would like to say something to console him, but he doesn’t know what. He tries to hug him but after having pictured him and Lidia naked, the whole idea of physical contact makes him want to throw up, so he stands with his arms extended toward this desperate runt of a man, like a mummy in an old horror movie. But few movies are as gory as this one.

  “Apologies, boys, apologies,” says Franco, his voice cracking. “These are my problems and I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Actually, we feel really bad. If we can be of any help . . . ”

  Franco tries to smile, shakes his head. “Thanks, I don’t need anything, boys.” Then he coughs, once, twice. “Actually, could I get a glass of water?”

  He motions for the door but Rambo slides in front of him and spreads out his arms.

  Franco looks at him and coughs again.

  “A glass of water and I’ll be on my way.” He tries to get by Rambo but Rambo blocks him. “No,” he says.

  In hindsight, even a second’s worth of hindsight, he could have said, “Sure, Franco, go on in, make yourself comfy.” He could’ve shown him a seat in the living room, brought him a nice big glass of water or beer they’d just bought. Patted him on the back after offering various manly consolations about how women are all sluts, especially those who don’t put out, then goodbye and good riddance.

  Life would be just like that, simple and fair, if you could have that extra second. Except that extra second is an eternity, and its errors crushing, its bad decisions, its poor choices of words: they’re the treacherous animals that live in the wrinkles of now, that slip through and wreak havoc. A second later is too late. By the time a second later arrives one’s life is in serious need of repair.

  Sandro tries to repair things by going to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water while Rambo blocks the door. The water is brown and rusty. So what? He fills the glass and returns to find the two men mutely staring each other down. He passes the glass to Franco, who takes it but doesn’t drink.

  “Everything’s okay in the house then?”

  “Yeah, just swell. We’re cleaning up before Marino gets back.”

  “Ah. Good to hear. But Lidia’s not in there, is she?”

  “Nope. Like we told you, she’s at her sister’s in Milan.”

  “I thought she was at her aunt’s?”

  “Her aunt’s. Of course.”

  “I see,” says Franco. “And when is Ferdinando coming to see his nephew?”

  “Ferdinando who?”

  “Come on, boys, Ferdinando Cosci, Marino’s uncle. You must know him. He’s the chief of police in Forte dei Marmi. Happens to be a close friend,” says Franco, all the kindness gone out of his eyes, replaced by a glint far different from the light in his eyes when he was talking about fuck buddies and harpoons. Colder, more cutting, it continues to shine while he walks backward toward the elevator, presses the button, and the doors open immediately, as if the elevator had been waiting for him the whole time. Franco gets in and the doors close on him, on his comb-over, on his fixed and pointed stare.

  Sandro and Rambo stand there, alone and terrified, like a pair of thrushes locked in a cage the night before the hunt.

  Cain’s dog.

  ALL ABOARD

  The road is dusty and full of potholes but leads straight to glory.

  Finally Luna and Zot had gone to the hospital to see Marino and ask for Sandro’s phone number. They’d called him and told him about a trip they felt they needed to take, a formative and religious journey that required his presence as their spiritual guide. So here comes Sandro, their spiritual guide guiding this killer jeep, gripping the wheel tightly with both hands while the hood swallows up the pavement in front of him, his eyes point straight toward the horizon, the power of the four-wheel drive sinks its teeth into the road, the engine thumps like a helicopter terrorizing a village and an earth-shattering feeling of power shimmies down his spine.

  Even with Rambo sitting next to him busting his balls.

  “Firmer with the stick. Slam the clutch nice and hard. Don’t waste your time signaling. When this beast wants to turn everyone knows it. There’s no point in switching on those gay lights.”

  And Sandro, who would usually tell him to go fuck himself, listens to him today. He even asks random questions about useless information, because Rambo is a lifesaver for loaning him his beloved jeep; it’s not as if he could have taken everybody to Pontremoli on his Vespa, or worse, asked Serena if they could take her car. No, that would have signaled the end before they’d even hit the road.

  A man can have the most chilling defects in the world without there being a problem. Men who don’t wash, men who don’t listen or look right through you and only open their mouths to say what they think and what life is like and what you should do better: women, with their taste for suffering, always find a way to put up with them. But the one thing a woman cannot accept is a guy who doesn’t act like a man. For that you get a cringe of sympathy, and the slightest whiff hormones is strangled in its cradle. Sandro doesn’t want to end up like that. Sandro wants to be a man in Serena’s eyes, and a real man shows up in a real car. That’s why this jeep is perfect and why his friend Rambo is letting him borrow it.

  And to show his gratitude, Sandro is leaving his friend to his own devices. Today of all days, when Marino is being discharged from the hospital and they have to take him home and keep an eye on him and an eye out for Franco, who could show up at any moment, perhaps with his friend the chief of police.

  In short, Sandro should be staying today. Yet he can’t. Therefore neither can he go hard on Rambo, who has spent the last half hour saying he’s abandoning him in the trenches, that at the start of the battle he’s leaving him to face the enemy just so he, Sandro, can screw some chick.

  Rambo has a point. Especially about abandoning him in the trenches. About sleeping with Serena, however, he’s way off. Some men aim to sleep with a woman on the first night out and others aspire to snag a kiss and a second date; Sandro would settle for not getting punched in the nose.

  That might sound desperate to some, but as he grips the wheel and feels the tires hugging the road the tenements and the large plazas and the sheet-metal warehouses behind him, Sandro may not know exactly where they’ll end up or what will happen, but, Christ, today he has the road ahead of him and direction in his heart. And a man seeking hope needs nothing else.

  “Hurray! Hurray!”

  Zot is already on the curb, jumping and shouting. He has an Italian flag in his hand, a blue bag over his shoulder, a handkerchief around his neck, and a gigantic straw hat on his head. When he sees the jeep he leaps to his feet. The first time he jumps he loses his hat, and with every subsequent jump, something goes flying out of his bag, falls to the ground, and makes a noise like something breaking, yet if you close your eyes it sounds a lot like the clatter of happiness.

  “Hurray! Luna! Luna! Come see this amazing car! It’s a military jeep! A military jeep! Lord almighty what a fantastic day! Lord, what a wonderful day this is! Blessed Jesus, my heart’s beating fast!”

  Sandro and Rambo climb down and Zot is immediately at their side. First he shakes their hands, but a handshake is too trivial for what he has inside of him, so he hugs them tightly, even though Rambo is so big that hugging all of him proves difficult.

  Then Luna passes through the gate. She, too, stops to admire the jeep, and Zot runs over to her.

  “Yo,” says Rambo, “I’m taking the bike and getting out of here.”

  Sandro doesn’t answer. He hadn’t even heard Rambo. He stands there staring at the gate, his hands now in his pockets, now behind his back, like they were trash he’d picked up off the road but didn’t kn
ow what to do with. And he waits to catch a glimpse of Serena.

  Meanwhile he feels ants mounting his feet and climbing up his legs under his pants, running up his sides to his chest, where they begin patiently sucking the breath out of him.

  But here she comes. A shadow from the dense brush of the yard stretches past the gate and across the road, spreading longer and longer, and that’s enough for Sandro to recognize her. Rather, than he recognize her, he simply knows it’s her. That gait, that way she cocks her head to one side a little—Sandro doesn’t know whether to gape or squint, since there’s no right way to prepare himself for looking at someone that stunning.

  Only it isn’t her. Nor is it close to stunning. Out strolls this old guy in slippers, pajama bottoms, and a stained camouflage top, and when you can discern stains on a camouflage tee, you know those stains are serious. He has on a red beret too, with something written across it that Sandro can’t quite make out yet isn’t all that interested in either, since the matter of most importance right now is that this old guy is pointing a rifle at him.

  “What the hell’s going on here? What the hell do you want?”

  Rambo sees the gun and dives behind the Defender. “Get down, Sandro! Get down! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!”

  Sandro turns to look at him but remains standing, his arms hanging limply. First he had been worried about Serena’s fists, now he was going to be gunned down by an old fart in PJs. Life is one never-ending surprise.

  “This is private property. Hands up!” says the old man, his voice sandpaper rubbed against sandpaper. He comes closer, and Sandro raises his hands as high as he can, and the last words to cross his mind before he dies will be the ones written on the old man’s beret which he can now read clearly: PARIDE GIANNOTTI’S PAINT ’N’ PROVISIONS. If there are worse ways to die, he can’t think of any now.

  Yet the whole time Zot and Luna are totally cool. They keep loading bags and rucksacks into the back of the jeep, taking care not to step on Rambo.

  “This is my house,” says the old man. “Go back where you came from. Go back to Russia.”