The Breaking of a Wave

by Fabio Genovesi

  As a matter of fact there is a café, but the only person inside is a lady behind the counter washing glasses, and the place is so empty I wonder who could have gotten those glasses dirty. But I’m more interested to know where the statues are, and the lady knows, they’re the town hall right next door. “It’s a cellar, sort of. Past the main building you’ll find stairs that lead underground. But you’ll have to hurry because in a little while it closes. You better run.”

  We say thanks and run for it but stop a second in the doorway because outside a guy rides by on a tricked-out Vespa making mutiny, and he honks the horn and sails off, and the woman at the counter yells, “Ciao, Silvano!” and tells us we needn’t rush, we can get comfy and have a drink: Silvano is the museum guard; if he’s headed home that means it’s closed.

  So we all quit smiling and thanking her and just stand there. Then I ask if I can pee and go to the bathroom. The bathroom smells like rose petals and medicine, and when I go back outside they are all standing quietly in the street. No one says anything. And if you ask me they haven’t said anything, not even while I was in the bathroom, they’ve just been listening to the wind blowing in the trees and the river running over the rocks.

  “I’m sorry, kids,” Mom says after a bit. She makes a gesture with her hand I can’t see but that may be a signal to go to her, and she takes me in her arms and hugs me. “I’m so sorry, Luna, really and truly.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom—”

  “I’m so awfully sorry. We came to Pontremoli, see, we tried. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Me too,” says Mr. Sandro behind me. “It’s disappointing, kids, but sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to.”

  “I know,” I say. “But it’s really not a problem for me. To be honest, I’m happier this way.”

  And it seems like the most normal thing in the world but maybe it’s only normal for me, cause Mom stops hugging me and keeps holding my arms but pulls away a little and looks at me. “What do you mean you’re happier this way?”

  “A lot happier, Mom. So is Zot. Right, Zot?”

  Zot doesn’t respond. He always agrees with me, but not this time. I mean, he tries to, he tries nodding but all I see is his hair tossing this way and that with no rhyme or reason.

  Ferro goes: “You knock your noggin, kid?”

  “No, no,” says Sandro, “don’t you get it? This is the perfect example of Christian acceptance. Sometimes earthly life presents us with setbacks and disappointments, but the Christian soul knows how to accept them with serenity and regard them as tests of faith. I’m impressed, Luna, and pretty proud of the work we’ve done together.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Sandro, but I don’t understand. I mean, obviously I’m happy. If anything I thought it would be a problem for you guys.”

  “Us, no way,” says Mom. “You won’t hear any complaints from us!”

  “Well then, awesome!” I say. “We’ll go to the museum tomorrow morning, and I’ll be super happy to spend the night here. It’ll be way cool.”

  I almost jump for joy. But everyone else stands there quietly, so I do too.

  Mom goes: “Hold it a sec, Luna. Hold it . . . We’re not spending the night here. We’re going home now.”

  “Huh? How can we do that, Mom, we haven’t seen the statues yet.”

  “I know, but we’ll come back some other time. We’ll be back one day.”

  “Sure, that means we’re never coming back!”

  “Don’t push it, Luna, one of these days we’ll be back. End of story.”

  “But we’re here now. And think about how beautiful it’ll be to sleep in the mountains. It’s like . . . like going camping!”

  “Three cheers for camping!” says Zot.

  “We’ve never been, Mom. We always said we would with Luca but then we never did. Even when he went to France we told him that it wasn’t fair that we always stayed home. And do you remember what he said? He said that we’d all go camping together this summer. Remember that, Mom? Remember that?”

  “Yes but not now, now we . . . with Luca, we were going to go camping with Luca.”

  “But Luca’s not around to take us camping anymore, Mom, so we need to take ourselves. You and me will do the camping. Come on, Mom, you and me.”

  “And me!” says Zot. “It just so happens I brought a tent in the event of an emergency”

  He talks and I raise my hands in the air. He joins me and together we start jumping, and while we’re jumping we get close, and I don’t know if I’m the one to make the last move or he is, but our arms cross and we end up hugging each other. And Zot immediately stops jumping. He whispers two or three words in my ear but I don’t catch them. One may be my name but I can’t be sure. Because after a second I let go of him and go hug Mom, and she doesn’t move either, which is fine by me. I jump for both of us, for all three of us, and for Mr. Sandro and Ferro too. Now that I think about it, we didn’t even ask them how they feel. Not that it matters. There are things so wonderful in the world it doesn’t make sense to ask questions. All that makes sense is jumping.

  I’M NOT A COOK

  The nine flights of stairs to reach Marino’s house are too few; Rambo climbs them and wishes there were ninety, or nine hundred, wishes they’d never end. Because in spite of his killing himself doing targeted exercises, his quadriceps are barely chiseled. On the contrary, for some inexplicable reason Marino’s thighs are more toned. Marino, who considers billiards a sport and has been lying in bed for almost a month.

  Those thin but strong legs, the heat of that smooth skin he touched without wanting to and can still feel on his fingers—it’s like when you accidentally brush against poison ivy and it continues to burn, and the more you scratch the worse it gets.

  Rambo reaches the ninth floor, looks over his shoulder, and scans the darker corners of the landing. The coast is clear. He pulls out the keys, opens the door, and enters Marino’s house, where there is all the stuff he and Sandro had bought to eat, back when they’d thought they would come live here together. Hardly a day has gone by yet it feels like another era, a happy and peaceful era. Well, happy may be an overstatement, but it was definitely a happier time than now, what with the goddamn veggie mart man watching over them, and it was even better before he and Sandro discovered Marino’s mom in the freezer. That’s life; every day brings one boot in the ass and another in the teeth, and the most painful blows are the ones that come when you start to relax and figure everything’s cool.

  Small wonder Rambo doesn’t turn the light on when he enters, silently creeping along the wall, crouching and skittish. He’s ready to answer fire with fire, and if there’s a special outfit of cops working for Marino’s uncle behind the curtains or the couch, Rambo feels sorry for them and the poor families back home pointlessly waiting up for them.

  But there is no one in the living room. Or the kitchen for that matter. There’s only the stale smell of cigarettes and the sound of the freezer, and maybe it’s just him but it seems to be ringing really loudly in his ears. No call for heroics, Rambo just has to fetch a few things to eat, throw them in a bag, and head back to Ghost House. Not that he’s happy about it. Right now he could use a good ambush, some mole who would force him to drop everything and sharpen his body and mind into arrows aimed at the enemy, leaving no room for other thoughts that were sick and pointless as the image of a man’s bare legs, his skin, the hair covering them.

  No, it’s all nonsense circling his head like a carousel he’d rather not get off of. Rambo doesn’t desire other men. Don’t be daft. He only wants to be like them. Muscular, toned—with all his exercising he’s earned it. It’s a question of justice, of hard work and the rewards you reap for hard work, and he is a man who still believes in certain values, that’s all. So when he thinks of these naked bodies, of bulging muscles and the heat those muscles give off, well, Rambo thinks of justice.

&n
bsp; Justice occupies his entire mind; he can’t think of anything else and, because of that, can’t find a good reason as to why the bodies that have the greatest effect on him, the kind that really attract him, are slender and pale and delicate. It shouldn’t be that way—it can’t be that way—Rambo mustn’t think about it. Anything else would be better.

  So it’s no surprise that on his way out with the bag full of food, Rambo is kind of pleased to look up and find a black figure in the doorframe, motionless in the dark, staring back at him. He drops the bag, slaps the light switch on, and sees the crooked smile of the goddamn veggie mart man trying to get in.

  Rambo switches off the light again, picks up his bag, and goes to face the man, chest to chest, propelling the man back, and this body-on-body contact has no effect on him, doesn’t give him the shivers, only a sense of the primitive clash between human beings. Nothing wrong with that.

  “Let me in, for Cain’s dog, let me in!”

  Rambo propels him out to the landing, closes the door, behind him and turns the key.

  “Enough,” he says. “Nobody’s home. You’ve nudged me too far this time.”

  “Why? I . . . ”

  “Enough, Franco. I’m sorry but I can’t help you.”

  “Cain’s dog, you can’t. Let me in the house. Just for a minute.”

  “But the lady of the house isn’t in, I swear, she’s not in!”

  Franco looks at him then at the door behind him. “Let me check the place out. It’ll ease my nerves.”

  “Look, there’s nothing to check out. There’s no—”

  “Listen, boy, let’s talk openly,” he says, and trains his eyes on Rambo’s again. “Look, I get what’s going on in there, okay?”

  Rambo stands there for a moment. He grips the bag firmly but shakes so much the plastic starts to rattle. “What’s there to get?”

  “Why hide it?” asks Franco.

  Rambo wants to say Marino is to blame; he’s the dumbass who hid her. Rambo didn’t know anything. He had nothing to do with this.

  “Look, boy, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “There isn’t?”

  “Of course not! I may look like an old bigot to you, but this is the twenty-first century, do you know how many guys like other guys and move in together? I’ve got a nephew like you, lives in Milan with a cook. What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “But I’m—but—but—what the fuck are you saying? Are you calling me a fag?”

  “No, of course not. I wouldn’t dare. Homosexual is what you say, right? Or queer.”

  “I’ll pop you in the nose, dickhead. What the fuck do you want from me!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it. You can tell by looking at you. There’s no point in hiding it.”

  “What the fuck can you tell?” says Rambo, bristling, waving his arms so wildly things begin falling out of the bag. “This is legit paratrooper camo, battle-issue. And combat boots. And my head’s shaved to the bone. What the fuck can you tell? What the fuck are you trying to say!”

  “Hey, my nephew’s boyfriend dresses that way, spitting image.”

  “Yeah but that guy’s a cook, a faggy cook! I’m not a fag. Cooking makes me puke. I couldn’t cook a bowl of spaghetti!”

  “Sure about that? You sure you didn’t come here to live with your playmate?”

  “No! That’s disgusting! I live at home with my parents!”

  “Ah. So the groceries aren’t for you guys.”

  “No! No they’re not for us.”

  “Fine then,” says Franco, “fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.” And the more he says it the less it sounds like things are actually fine. “But I mean, if you don’t live here and Lidia’s son is in the hospital, who are you guys always carrying around groceries for?”

  Rambo hesitates for a moment. Looks at the bag. Looks at the provolone and hunk of prosciutto on the ground. “Well, all right, they’re for me. But I didn’t bring it here. It’s stuff I picked up here to take away.”

  “But of course, it’s all clear now. You do your shopping in other people’s houses.”

  “Yes. I mean no. It’s Marino’s stuff. They’re discharging him soon and . . . ”

  “Sure, they’re discharging him from the hospital and his mom doesn’t care. She’s gone to do her own thing and adios, right? I’m not buying that bullshit. Let me in so I can have a look around.”

  “No,” says Rambo. And he plants himself in front of the door.

  “What’s it to you if everything’s kosher? I go in and take a good look around, two minutes tops, so I can put my heart at ease and stop busting your balls.”

  “No. I’m sorry but I can’t let you. This is private property. When you were at the door earlier it was almost trespassing, got that?”

  “Oh, I get it,” says Franco. “Guess I’ll have to wait for my friend Ferdinando to get off work. I can enter with the police chief, can’t I?”

  “Nope! You cannot. Mussolini isn’t in charge anymore. There are laws. Private property is private, and . . . ”

  Rambo stops talking. He stares at Franco, his eyes two slits, his teeth clenched. Something ought to be done here and pronto. But he doesn’t know what.

  “Listen, I’ve got to get going. I’ve got stuff to do.”

  “Me too. I’ve got a store to run,” says Franco, and starts smiling again. He walks to the elevator, pushes the button, the doors open immediately, and he signals to Rambo to get in first.

  “No thanks, I prefer to take the stairs.”

  “Ah, right,” says Franco, raising his hands. He enters the elevator and the doors begin to close. “My nephew always takes the stairs too. Strengthens the glutes.”

  PANDA ITALIA ’90

  Rambo handles the wheel as if it were a neck he were breaking, but after a right-hand turn he has to loosen his grip because the plastic cracks and he realizes he really is breaking it. Even if the damage were minor, he has enough problems as it is; now’s not the time to create more for himself. He has to scope out his surroundings, especially in the rear, make sure no one is following him, and get to Ghost House in one piece. Tonight of all nights, when he’d lent Sandro his jeep, all hell had to break loose, and he has to get through it in this busted tuna-fish can.

  A Fiat Panda specially manufactured for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, white with a thin Tricolore running along the exterior, plastic hubcaps with black and white diamonds made to resemble soccer balls, and on the door a decal of the ’90 Italia mascot, this stick figure with red, white, and green squares called Ciao that sucked serious shlong. The whole car sucks shlong. The twisted designers who cooked it up were champs at capturing the spirit of that shitty World Cup, which was finally being played in Italy again and that meant we had to win, but like always when everything is organized and all that’s called for is a little order and fair play and no fuck-ups, Italy cut a sorry-ass figure. Because we’re only good at pulling off miracles, at scoring the desperation goal, when there’s no hope left to do and a final flash of wickedly grandiose inspiration is unleashed. On the other hand, when all is going swimmingly and winning merely calls for not messing up, we revert to our devastating incapacity to be decent, to be consistent, to be average.

  And that fact has always pissed Rambo off. But not tonight. Tonight he is clinging to that very moment-of-desperation genius, because if ever there were a desperate moment, this is it, him driving a tin can that stinks of smoke, and floating in the air are the ashes from years and years of cigarettes sucked down by Marino’s mom, wrapped in two blankets in the backseat.

  Rambo knows it’s crazy. He thinks about it and feels a cold shiver down his spine, partly because of fear and partly because Marino’s frozen mom is in fact expelling cold air like those plastic thingamajigs you put in your cooler when you go on trips. But those things expire quickly; you open the cooler and
get ready to drink a cold Coke and find yourself sipping broth, and that’s what’ll happen to Lady Lidia, who was rock solid when Rambo took her—she wouldn’t come loose on account of her butt being stuck to the bottom of the freezer—but is slowly melting now and threatening to make a much bigger mess.

  But what can he do? He’d called Sandro, he’d called Marino, the telephone kept ringing but neither friend came to his aid. Rambo kept calling and getting dead air. Sandro is busy playing the fool with some girl and couldn’t care less. Marino is stuck in bed or maybe sound asleep after the medicine Rambo had given him before leaving; by accident he’d given him too much, but hell, better too much than too little, at least he won’t feel the pain and can rest. That’s just how Rambo is. He cares for other people. On the battlefield he has his friends’ backs. But when he’s the one who could use some help, there’s no one to turn to.

  He’d gone back upstairs and entered the apartment not knowing what to do. All he’d known was that he needed to act; time was running out and any minute the police chief could get off work and ride up there with Franco, and then it would be all over. For Marino as well as for him and Sandro, accomplices in this stinker, up to their necks in shit. Just as things seemed to be getting better, when they’d had a house and a stable pension to forge ahead. Rambo had thought about it while wandering through the rooms of the apartment—not huge but comfortable—perfect for the three of them. And every noise, every blip of the elevator, had made him twitch. Then he’d walked through the living room and seen the keys to the car with the original cloth Fiat keychain still attached and another one with the face of Padre Pio and above that the words DON’T RUN, THINK OF ME. And rather than think of Padre Pio, he had thought of Marino’s mom’s Fiat Panda Italia ’90 still parked down below with those hideous soccer-ball hubcaps. Then he’d taken the keys, grabbed the old woman, gone down the stairs with his legs shaking at every step, hopped inside the car, turned the key, and taken off.