“I’m not becoming a prostitute.”
“Not a prostitute.” Fabrizio held up his palms. “An escort. That’s completely different.”
“How’s that different?” Enrico snapped.
Fabrizio ignored him. “Oh! And don’t forget, Tata is the greatest cook this side of the Alps.”
“Yeah, but how are we going get a bunch of rich Americans and Germans, word of mouth?”
“No, cretino, with our webpage.” Fabrizio held out his hand toward the screen.
“Well, we’ve got a long way to go before the old house looks anything like what’s on that webpage.” Enrico shrugged. “So we’re back to the main problem. Money.”
“Look, if we get a few guests, we can start to earn extra money and fix the place up. You know it’s true; you always go in assfirst while I come at something face-on.”
“We’ll need to work out a proper business plan and everything. Let’s talk with Francesca and see what she says.” Enrico kneaded his brother’s shoulders.
“You’re right, and if we’re going into business, it’s time we separate our part of the inheritance from hers.” Fabrizio turned back to his screen. “Come on, let’s celebrate with some porn.” Fabrizio pulled up YouPorn.
“Forget it.” Enrico plunked down on the bed behind Fabrizio. “Besides I’m not into hetero porn.” He picked up his book and began reading.
Fabrizio fiddled with the keys. “Here’s one. It’s an ancient Roman orgy with both guys and women doing it. Look, there’s even a donkey.” Fabrizio leaned back in his chair and began rubbing his crotch.
“How can you get hard to that?” Enrico glanced up. “It’s so fake and the guys are really ugly.”
“Yeah, but the donkey’s pretty hot,” Fabrizio taunted.
“You know sometimes it frightens me to think that we share identical genetic material,” Enrico said without looking up from his book.
“Hey, you remember when we were kids, we used to watch porn together all the time,” Fabrizio said with his eyes fixed on the screen. “You used to fantasize about Dario at the boatyard.”
“What about you!” Enrico looked over the top of his book and sneered at his brother. “You had the hots for Signora Bianchi!”
“Still do. I’m thinking about her right now, bent over the sofa with her tits dangling, wearing nothing but a garter,” he said in a low raspy tone.
“Yuck! She’s old enough to be our mother.” Enrico tossed his book down onto the bed.
“Yeah, but I’m imagining her husband hiding in the closet watching me fuck her.” Fabrizio slipped his hand down the front of his sweatpants.
“You’re a freak, you know that, don’t you?” Enrico got up from the bed.
“When did you become such a prude?” Fabrizio briefly glanced over as his brother marched toward the door. “Hey, where are you going?”
“I’m leaving you and Signora Bianchi to finish your business alone!”
“Don’t forget her husband watching in the closet.” Fabrizio grinned.
“Whatever,” Enrico said. “I’m hungry and Tata said she left a pan of tiramisu in the fridge.”
“Save some for me. I’ll be down in about ten minutes.” Fabrizio repositioned himself in the chair but kept his eyes fixed on the screen and his hand buried deep inside his underwear.
As he was partway out the door Enrico heard Fabrizio say in a throaty whisper, “Oh yeah! Come on, Signora Bianchi. Take it baby. Yeah, yeah!”
“And don’t get anything disgusting on the computer!” Enrico barked.
“Hey, like you said, it’s all the same genetic material!” Fabrizio called back.
Enrico shook his head and continued down the stairs to the kitchen.
Chapter Four
JESSY’S PARENTS had always considered Owen one of the family and hardly took notice when he moved into Jessy’s room for the summer. If Jessy’s parents were disappointed when he declined the swimming scholarship at Michigan State, they never let on. Or if they were relieved when he also turned down circus school in Montreal, they never let on either.
“Do you know what chlorine does to my hair?” Jessy said to Owen and Maggie as they hung out in the park down at the waterfront. “As for circus school? Love the outfits—hate the elephant poo. Besides, who needs the bearded lady and the dog-faced boy when I have the two of you?” That irrepressible smile spread across Jessy’s face. “So, it’s Syracuse U and the creative writing program for me. Besides, how could I abandon you? You’d be lost without me.”
Owen’s heart just about exploded out of his chest with the news. Jessy would stay with him for a little while longer.
“Just promise us you won’t wind up being a creepy English teacher like Mr. Scrivenor,” Maggie said.
Jessy flung his arms open wide. “Ney, but to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love over a nasty sty,” he said, reciting one of his favorite lines from Hamlet.
“I can see we’re too late. The transformation has already taken place.” Maggie sneered. “Pig Boy!”
“I am the one, Mr. Tun, that comes to tell you your daughter, Maggie, has fallen in with the beast with two backs.” Owen rolled out a bastardized quote from Othello.
“Oh, get thee to a nunnery!” Maggie, quoting Hamlet, gave Owen a mock shove.
That summer, while Jessy worked at the pool as usual, Owen’s after-school job at Party Harty’s Party Supplies and Balloons became a full-time job and Maggie got a desk in her father’s office next to Pathetic Patty and her collection of manga figurines. By September they had saved up enough for first and last month’s rent on a two-bedroom ground-floor apartment in a dilapidated two-story clapboard house in downtown Syracuse. Maggie took the small room and Jessy and Owen shared the larger one.
While the leaves turned burgundy, orange, and yellow, Jessy was immersed in classes at Syracuse U and Owen and Maggie were learning what life after high school, on minimum wage, eight hours a day, six days a week, was really like. As the days grew shorter, cold rain stripped any remaining leaves from the branches and everything outside appeared dead—except maybe the famous Christmas tree in Clinton Square. With the new year, bitter Canadian winds swept across Lake Ontario, covering everything in snow and ice. In the evenings, while Jessy was at the library, or swim practice, or out with friends, Owen and Maggie, wearing pile pajamas and woolen socks, took refuge in the kitchen with plastic containers of Ichiban shrimp-flavored instant noodles or under a blanket on the sofa in front of the TV.
“Eat up, our show’s on in five.” Owen looked across their chipped linoleum kitchen table at Maggie.
“Honey, if we don’t do something soon, our lives will go from dreary to downright dreadful.” She slurped up a noodle. “Are these the bold new horizons you talked about in your valedictorian speech?” Maggie watched Owen chase a noodle around with his fork.
Owen stuck the noodle in his mouth, then stabbed a dehydrated onion and held it up. “I feel like this onion. Limp and soggy, laying in the bottom of a plastic cup just waiting for someone to eat me.” Owen popped the onion into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “There, I’m all gone.”
“Another evening of fine dining?” Jessy said as he strolled into the kitchen. “Well, wet noodles, I have fantastic news that’s going to change your lives forever!”
“Does Ichiban have a new flavor?” Maggie brooded.
“No, better!” Jessy tossed his books onto the kitchen counter.
“Coke has just brought out a new, new Coca-Cola that tastes exactly like the old new Coca-Cola?” Owen pined.
“No, not quite that earth-shattering, but I have a great idea.” Jessy took the fork from Maggie’s hand, scooped up some noodles, and popped them into his mouth.
Owen furrowed his brow and looked at Maggie, who grit her teeth. Jessy often had grand ideas, like when he decided they should sell T-shirts at Pride last year. Ever since that disaster the word T-shirt had been taboo. Jes
sy opened the fridge, pulled out the milk container, and took a big swig directly from the carton.
“Ahh, gross!” Maggie said.
“I don’t want to know what’s been in his mouth over the past twenty-four hours.” Owen curled his lip.
“Or who,” Maggie added.
Jessy bent over and planted a big wet milky kiss on Owen’s lips.
“Bluk!” Owen pulled his head back with a contrived look of disgust and wiped his mouth.
Jessy grinned while Maggie just rolled her eyes and shoveled another fork-load of noodles into her mouth. “So, what’s your great idea?” Maggie said with her mouth half-full of noodles.
“It’s simple! With your experience and connections, the two of you could put together something really great,” Jessy said in his usual optimistic tone.
Owen and Maggie looked at each other, then at Jessy.
“Are you kidding me? I work in a balloon store,” Owen said. “I’m just one step away from a birthday party clown.” He pointed at Maggie. “And she’s been taken hostage in her father’s real estate office by manga figurines.”
“You can spend the rest of your lives eating freeze-dried noodles and lamenting the disappearance of classic Coke, or you can get up off your butts and do something.” Jessy’s tone was now serious.
“Like what?” Owen said.
“Like special event organizers.” Jessy held up his palms.
“You mean, like wedding receptions and parties and stuff?” Owen said.
“Yeah, like that,” Jessy said.
“We live in Syracuse—land of tailgate parties and backyard barbeques, not New York City!” Owen threw his hands in the air. “Who wants a special events organizer?”
“I organized my thirteenth birthday party and it was a disaster. Nobody came! Not even my sister.” Maggie moaned.
“What could we possibly put together?” Owen said.
“You’ve already put together a number of special events,” Jessy said. “What about Joe Spenser’s birthday party at the skating rink, the Henderson’s twentieth anniversary on the riverboat? Oh, and let’s not forget how Maggie found that amazing horse ranch for Julia and Lena’s wedding.” Jessy dashed out of the room, leaving Maggie and Owen still sitting at the kitchen table in front of their empty Ichiban noodle containers.
Maggie and Owen looked at each other and hunched their shoulders. “We were just doing some favors for some friends. No biggie,” Owen said.
“Special events?” Maggie snorted.
Chapter Five
IT WAS only May, but spring had come early to the lake this year. Fabrizio wrapped his arms around his brother’s waist and squeezed his legs tight against his hips. After a winter of gardening with Angelo, their bodies were lean and their muscles were hard. Enrico torqued Angelina’s throttle and the two boys, like two kayakers riding the surf, sailed south down the lakeside road along the shoreline beneath the platani trees, leaning and bracing as if they were one and the same. They flew through the gallery and down the hill into the town of Laveno. They raced past the church and rounded the curve by the now-quiet Old Milano Pub. Enrico cruised along the street, dodging a woman having an animated conversation on her cell phone while she stepped mindlessly into the crosswalk. They zipped past the boats moored in the harbor, coasted up to the lamppost near the ferry ramp in front of the station, and sputtered to a stop. Fabrizio climbed off the back, removed his helmet, and fluffed his hair while Enrico jerked Angelina up onto its kickstand.
At the end of the parking lot, a man in his midforties, with silver hair and designer sunglasses, stood beside a new blue Lancia and watched them, while a woman on the other side of the car with a large Gucci purse slung over her shoulder opened the rear passenger door and extracted a ten-year-old boy by his arm. The boy squirmed and jerked from her grip as she steered him away from the car. The man walked up to her, and the three of them, looking straight ahead, marched across the piazza. Fabrizio stared at his brother, who turned and hung his helmet on the steering bar of the bike as if he hadn’t noticed them. Fabrizio hung his helmet on the other side of the bar, not breaking his stare.
Up ahead the man was saying something to his wife. She stopped and propped one hand on her out-thrust hip while firmly gripping the child’s hand with her other. The man turned and rushed back to the car with his keys jingling between his fingers. He opened the door and leaned in. A moment later, he stood up with his cell phone in his hand, waved to his wife, and started back toward her. But this time, as if drawn by some magnetic force, his path took a decided bend toward the boys. As he neared, he slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose. “I’ll call you later, Enrico,” he whispered and winked. Then he trotted up to his wife and child.
Fabrizio breathed in deeply and exhaled loudly. “Why?”
Enrico held out his hands. “I know he’s an idiot but what chance do I have to find someone other than a Grindr hookup?”
“He’s an old married idiot. You deserve better than him.” Fabrizio rolled his eyes.
“I know. Come on.” Enrico shrugged and stuffed the keys in his pocket.
The ferry from Verbania, the city on the other side of the lake, had just docked, and a group of university students rushed up the ramp, across the platform. They joined the other students already waiting to catch the 7:00 a.m. train for Milano, as they did every morning, starting with the shrinking days of autumn, all through the cool drizzle of winter, until the long glorious days of spring returned. Enrico and Fabrizio might have been part of the flock, studying business at Bocconi University, or computer science at State University, or even fine arts at the Brera Institute, but Papà was on disability with a small pension, and according to their half sister, Francesca, their grandmother hadn’t left them enough money for university. They had to work.
Fabrizio stood in line behind the trail of students shuffling into the station through the double wooden doors toward the one working automated ticket machine.
Enrico nudged up to his brother. “Come on, we’ll have to get the tickets from the newsstand or we’ll miss the train.” They jaunted back out the door, over to the newsstand, and pressed up behind the cluster of students in front of the kiosk buying tickets, cell phone cards, and cigarettes.
With their tickets in hand, the two boys rushed out onto the platform to join the students boarding the train.
Two hours later they stepped off the train at Cadorna station in Milan. The distinctive odor of diesel and dog poo hung in the smoggy air. For most of the year, Milan was a car-clogged chaos of stressed-out people always in a hurry, all trying to scale the social ladder one designer label at a time. It was hard to believe that in little more than a month the city would feel semideserted. With school out, those privileged Milanese housewives and their children would retreat to the west coast towns of Liguria and the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia, or along the east coast’s wide, flat beaches of Rimini on the murky Adriatic Sea, for three months of tennis and sailing lessons for the kids, and yoga, tanning, cards, and gossip for their mothers. On Friday evenings, their husbands would hop into their Mercedes and Audis and motor westward, or into their Fiats and Škodas and drive eastward, to join their seaside families. As for less privileged working men and women without a vacation home, they would remain at their desks and on assembly lines during the weekdays and hang out in the parks and public swimming pools during the weekends, dreaming of Ferragosto, that most venerated of Italian holidays in mid-August, when they, too, would inch bumper to bumper along the highway on their way to spend three weeks on a beach under a rented umbrella, leaving the city to the Latino and Filipino immigrants.
Enrico grabbed his brother’s arm and steered him over to the outdoor coffee bar beside the station. “Two coffees.” He held up two fingers to the barman.
Fabrizio took out a cigarette from his pack, lit it, took a drag, then passed it to his brother before taking out another for himself.
After throwing back their coffee and snuffing out t
heir cigarettes, they walked out to the piazza in front of the fiberglass sculpture of the large needle with its rainbow-colored thread, a nod to the fashion industry even though everybody knew that the clothes designed in Milan were actually sewn in sweatshops in Naples or China. They stopped at the street corner, keeping their heads pointing straight ahead so as not to appear like tourists or countryfolk from the south new to the city, even if their eyes darted back and forth at the unfamiliar sites. A giant double-decker bus full of Chinese tourists belched out diesel fumes as it growled past. Along with the flow of office men in black and dark gray business suits and shiny black shoes and office women in impossibly high stilettos, tight skirts, and low-cut blouses, all talking on their cell phones, the boys crossed the street and the tram track. Fortunately, their sister, Francesca’s apartment was just off Via Dante, one of Milan’s better addresses, close to Cadorna station and easy to reach.
“It certainly sounds like you’ve thought about this quite a bit,” their sister said after Fabrizio and Enrico had outlined their idea to start a B&B. “And you know I want to support you in every way I can. After all, you’re my only family.” Francesca lounged elegantly on the velvet sofa with a crystal wineglass in her hand. Her forehead was as smooth and immobile as marble, and her glossy red lips protruded outward like a goldfish’s. The maid came in and placed a tray of little sandwiches on the art deco coffee table and retreated back to the kitchen.
“So, we’re back to the same old problem,” Enrico said as he reached for a sandwich.
“Money.” Fabrizio placed his wineglass on the table and reached for a sandwich too.
“I hate to say it, but as you know there’s not much left in the inheritance fund. From my side, the Italian stock market has not been doing well and my investments are all tied up right now.” She clicked her tongue. “That old house is so large it would take a small fortune to fix it up.”
Tiramisu After Midnight Page 3
