4. TRUTH SERUM
GIOELE
My father didn’t like the thought of me moving to San Francisco. I’m twenty-two, so obviously, he has no say, but once mafia, always mafia, and when you’re in constant danger due to warring famiglie?
The Nascimbeni and the Santa Colombini stick to separate territories for the most part, but with both families strong, we look at it as ceasefire more than peace. It was my father’s reason for wanting me to remain in the Valley.
“Silvina? Hey.” I’m still on edge after her disappearing act last weekend and relieved to have her on the phone; a quick text message doesn’t cut it when you need to know that someone’s all right. “Classes today?”
“It’s Wednesday, so yes.” Said in the right tone, she could have sounded insolent. Instead, she sounds like she’s touching me. I let out a slow exhale.
“Cool, so you’re done at four, then? Have you eaten anything?”
“I’ve had my cappuccino.”
“That’s all?”
“It had milk in it.”
I look at my watch. It’s two twenty-five, and she’s going into class in five minutes. “Goddammit, baby.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Goddammit, Ina mia. You’re going to get a sugar crash in class.”
“I won’t. I’ll be fine. Plus, all it does is make me a little weak.”
“Which you hate. Did you bring a protein bar?”
She doesn’t answer.
“I’ve told you so many times.”
“Gioele. I’ll be okay.”
“You’re in the Sundown Building, correct? Still two-oh-four?”
“Yeah.”
“Just come out when I text you.”
I’m not mad at her. There couldn’t be a better reason to get out of my seat, having Professor Farkwool send me a harsh stare from the front of the auditorium. I wave. Tack on my most charming smile. “My dog got out of the yard. I’m so sorry, Professor. He’s going on fifteen and rheumatic. The humidity would get him even if the traffic didn’t.” I bat my eyes too, and a few girls giggle.
“We’ll be going through the most important sections for the test tomorrow,” she warns me, and I bob my head, turn, and give Marla a tender look.
“Professor, I’ll take down notes for him,” Marla says, hand lifted and everything. It’s like we’re in elementary school. I pout out a silent thank you.
“Okay. Get your dog indoors.” By the way Professor Farkwool arches her brows, she doubts my emergency.
I knock on two-oh-four instead of texting Silvina. I do it because I like the hushed come-in from the teacher and the way everyone stares when I open the door. A few dozen faces turn to me, wondering what I need. Some of the girls freeze and let their cheeks go rosy.
“Sir, I have an important message for Silvina di Nascimbeni?” Teachers find me less imposing if I add a question mark to my statements.
Silvina is the most beautiful woman in the room. Long, dark, straight hair falls over her shoulders and fans down her sweater. The perfect oval of her face, high cheekbones tingeing bright with embarrassment, and her eyes glinting with suppressed fury.
I devour her mouth with my eyes. If raspberries faded without going bad, that would be the color of Silvina’s lips. The center of her upper lip curves in the most insolent way. It’s as if she was made by some artist in a far-away country. He kept her in his studio, painting, erasing, painting again, not giving up until her doll’s mouth was perfectly stubborn, until it shone with eternal moisture. She wouldn’t be Silvina without that mountain peak dipping in rushed avalanches on each side of the pinnacle.
“Miss di Nascimbeni.” The professor nods to her, letting her escape with me. I close the door behind us and take her hand. She’s hesitant, as she always is, but then she forms her fingers in my hold and allows me to take her away.
“Hey, you.” I sigh out my relief at seeing her again. Yesterday, I left when she started to look uncomfortable. I wanted her happy, even if that meant without me. I stop by the panorama windows giving toward the parking lot.
“Hey. You shouldn’t have done that.”
“As in what? Come here with this?” I put the chicken ciabatta sandwich in her hand. Watch my favorite glossy nails close around it before I let my gaze flow up to her eyes.
“Yeah, that, and not texting me to come outside like you promised.”
I exhale through my nose, study her as she chomps down on my offering. Nothing could give me more pleasure nowadays. It used to be different, of course. She notices my smirk but doesn’t comment, probably getting where my thoughts are.
“You’re cute when you’re embarrassed,” I say.
“Right, so you embarrass me every day.”
“Not every day. And if you wanted to, you could clear it up that I’m your cousin.”
The bite she has in her mouth seems to grow at that.
“Sorry, baby,” I say.
“Don’t ‘baby’ me.”
“Sorry, Ina mia.”
“You shouldn’t say that either.”
I shrug. “But you are my Silvina.”
She swallows. Then, she takes a fresh bite. No one knows her tastes better than me; the sandwich has red onions in it, which according to Silvina, has a sweeter taste than other onions. I’ve also added sprouts of the fresh, crunchy variety. If they go limp, they make her gag. As cute as that is, it keeps her from finishing her sandwich.
“What are you doing tonight?” I ask while she chews. She lifts her shoulders, showing me her lack of plans. I’m glad she doesn’t go clubbing on weekdays.
“That superhero movie’s still playing,” I say and look away.
“I know.” She’s answering and swallowing at once. She used to do that when we were little too. I love her.
“You like that actor, the Aussie, right?”
“Mm-hmm.” Her eyes brighten. “He’s the opposite of you, all blond and blue-eyed. Cool and calm.” She looks at me like there’s nothing she wants more than to touch my face.
“I’ll take you to see him, then,” I decide. “Want to bring Tracy?”
She snorts. Then she coughs, trying to get whatever-it-is out of the back of her throat. I grin, watching her eyes tear up while she coughs.
“You okay, Ina mia?”
“I’m fine.” She coughs again, so I scoot closer on the window sill and play-hit her between the shoulders.
“So no Tracy, then? How about Morpheus?”
“That’s not even his name,” she laughs.
“He likes it. Makes him feel philosophical,” I invent, which doesn’t help. She hunches forward and cough-laughs quietly over her knees.
Smiling, I lean her over my knees so I can get to her back and whack it gently.
I love it when we’re at the theater together, just the two of us. It’s dark in here, and tonight we have the first ten rows to ourselves.
I purposely picked the Markheed’s, a small theater that specializes in artsy films no one in their right mind would watch. Strangely, they still show this commercial super-hero movie. Maybe because it flopped when it came out a few years ago? The main dude is in a small-run art film coming out sometime this year. That could be it too.
Silvina loves to be as close to the front as possible. She’s aware how illogical I find that; you have to move your head from side to side to watch movement shifting across the screen, and you lean back in the chair to catch what happens at the skyline.
I’ll complain that it makes me dizzy. She’ll suggest we go farther back, and I’ll turn down her offer because my experience of her won’t be the same; Silvina’s emotions don’t flow as openly as they do up front.
This movie is eighty-four minutes long. Sometimes, Silvina relaxes against me early on. At other times, it takes a while for her guard to crumble. Tonight, she’s keeping her hands to herself, folding them in her lap like someone holy. She’s always holy to me, even when she lets me touch her.
Our hero is sad in the beginning. He’s lost a beloved pet, a cat who’ll later turn into a mutant, according to the description. It causes Silvina to dab at tears. They pool so quickly at the corners of her eyes, she’s making me chuckle. I lift the armrest between us and invite her into the crook of my arm. She sighs and sinks against me without any more prodding, and the world suddenly became all right.
When Ina mia molds to my body the way she does now, the lack of space between us makes all the sense. It wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. I’d watch a romantic comedy, a fucking Bollywood movie, as long as my arms are around her like this.
Beneath my nose, her hair smells flowery. It’s silky with a subtle sheen of coffee you won’t notice unless you study her for hours. I pucker my mouth quietly. It’s how I get in small kisses without her realizing it.
“Good movie, huh?” I ask when we walk out of there. Silvina doesn’t take my hand. It’s cold in San Francisco, and I’d like to keep hers warm.
“It was awesome. You know what I liked best?” she asks, looking up at me with her happiest, most genuine stare.
“That the kitty came back to him and he accepted it even though it had turned into a murderous mutant?”
“No!” She sends me one of the serious-playful looks she’s perfected. “The kitty wasn’t murderous anymore. All she needed was for him to love her right. Sure, she’s a mutant, but she can be kept from killing people as long as he’s there for her. She just needed him to accept her as she is. You know?”
I nod and want to say that I accept Silvina as she is. Which reminds me of the dude from the club. Her cell lit up with a text from him during the movie. I should have destroyed him a little harder.
Jealousy’s a bitch when you have no rights. She’s been saying the same thing for weeks now: “Gioele, per favore. Since we can’t be together, let’s live our lives. We need to find our person in other places. We just have to look a bit wider—there are awesome people out there for us.”
“Are you hungry?” I ask, and she smiles at me sadly. I can’t even think without her reading my mind.
“I’m okay. Can you take me back to the apartment, and not sleep over on the couch, scaring Tracy?” She adds the last part with a mischievous wink. She wants to be lighthearted, but I see through her.
“Yeah. You having those old raviolis, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Just don’t forget. It’s not good for you to forget.”
“I know, baby.”
It’s not often that she slips and calls me baby. I cherish it.