The Breaking of a Wave

by Fabio Genovesi

  Mr. Ferro carries on wagging his finger. Then he stops talking. No one talks. Only a death rattle rises up from the fridge, which I don’t think works seeing as it has no door. In fact, the noise dies immediately. Ferro grabs a chair from the table, swivels it around, and sits down in it, like that, with the back facing forward. He looks at us.

  “Well, what the hell do you want?”

  “Nothing, Grandfather. I only wanted to tell you that I’m going over to Luna’s and that you needn’t fret about me.”

  “Fret?”

  “I thought that perhaps if you didn’t see me coming. Or perhaps you were preparing lunch and I hadn’t . . . ”

  “What the hell do I care? Besides, there’s nothing to eat. You didn’t go shopping this morning and it’s not as if I can go. Who would watch over the house?”

  “I was at school. School reopened today. But I have to admit I am a touch famished.”

  “And I’m not? Too bad we don’t have squat. But what does that matter to you? You’re off to eat at your girlfriend’s.”

  “We’re not boyfriend-girlfriend!” I blurt. “And I don’t think there’s anything at my place either. Maybe breakfast things, like cookies or biscuits. If there’s nothing for lunch, we could have breakfast again.”

  Zot raises his head and looks at me, and by the whiteness of his face I can tell he’s smiling real hard, with all his teeth showing.

  “Bravo, now get lost,” says Ferro. “And while you’re out, stop by the grocer’s and pick up some stuff so maybe we can get some dinner around here tonight.”

  “All right! What should I get, Grandfather? Would you make me a list?”

  “Bread, mortadella, spaghetti. And pecorino.”

  “Can we get cookies too?”

  “Bread, mortadella, spaghetti, pecorino.”

  “And biscuits?”

  Mr. Ferro doesn’t answer and turns to me instead. “Do me a favor, kid. Would you answer this pain in the balls?”

  I turn to Zot. “Bread, mortadella, spaghetti, pecorino.”

  “Thank God your girlfriend’s got more brains than you. Now off you go, for real this time, I have to hit the crapper.” He claps his hands, wipes them on his pajama pants, and lifts himself up off the chair with a few phlegm-filled groans. He picks up the rifle and walks off, bent in two and clutching his stomach.

  “Are we going?” I ask, heading to the door.

  “Yes, just a minute. I want to wait for Grandfather to return so I can say goodbye. I’d feel bad otherwise.”

  “What do you care? He’d be happier to find us gone.”

  “You don’t know him. He can be a bit brusque, but deep down he’s affectionate.”

  “Deep down where?”

  Zot doesn’t reply and I don’t say anything else. The bathroom must be just on the other side of the kitchen wall, and the wall must be made of cardboard, cause it feels as if you were in there with him: you can hear the lid being lifted, the seat slammed, another groan like the one he’d made getting up from the chair. I think I even catch a whiff. I’m suffocating. If I stay here a second longer, I’ll be sick.

  “We’ve been here a half hour, Zot. Let’s go!”

  “Be patient just a minute, we’ll say goodbye and then we’ll go.”

  “Ugh, Zot, why did I come here? Why do I hang out with you?”

  At first he doesn’t say anything, just approaches the door. Then: “Luna, much as it pains me to say it, it’s clear that you hang out with me because you are marginalized and no one else wants to be in your company.” He says it normal, as if it were so obvious everyone knew.

  “Hey, the same goes for you, you know?” I say. “You’re at least as marginalized as me.”

  “I know, it’s true. But I am happy to hang out with you. And that makes all the difference.”

  I turn and face him but fortunately he opens the door and the light outside engulfs me and keeps me from seeing, keeps me from thinking any longer.

  THE THREE FACES OF SATURDAY NIGHT

  Bye-bye, Bachelorette, Bye-bye

  It’s Saturday night and Cristina is dancing and laughing, and when she knows the tune she sings along with all the voice she’s got, hugs her friends tight, takes a sip of her drink every time the deejay says, “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for Cristina, tonight’s her night!” She raises her glass and dances, sings, drinks, shouts. Because the deejay is right, tonight is her night. Her last night.

  Tomorrow Cristina is getting married. In the little church in town called Our Lady of the Waters. She was born and raised here, and after the wedding she and Gianluca will move 200 yards down the road, into his parents’ place, now converted into a two-family. Gianluca is the man of her life; they met when they were eighteen. He works in his uncle’s electrical supply store and Cristina manages a shoe store in downtown Pisa. In the twelve years that they’ve dated—twelve—not a day has gone by that they haven’t seen one another, apart from a weekend when he went to Sardinia for a car rally, and once when she went with her mother to the hot springs in Saturnia. Tomorrow they head for the altar, and Don Aldo, who presided over her baptism and confirmation, will turn to Cristina and ask her if she will take Gianluca forever, and she will say yes, till death do them part.

  Her friends, on the other hand, tell her she’s a fool. They always tell her that, but tonight they really let her have it as they made their way to Versilia for the bachelorette party.

  “How on earth do you do it? How are you not curious?”

  Aside from Gianluca, Cristina has never been with anyone.

  But who cares? What’s the harm? That used to be totally normal: girls married the first guy to kiss them and carried on just fine, and the world with them. That’s the way Cristina is, like her mother and especially like her grandmother Maria, the person who raised her, the person she loves most in the world. Almost more than Gianluca. Sure, it would be interesting to see how another guy is wired down there, to find out if there’s a big difference. But look, she met the man of her life when she was eighteen and that man loves her and has never hurt her. Got something to say about it?

  Yep, her friends do. They act all hip and superior yet for years they’ve been desperately bouncing from one asshole to another, and every time they get burned they say enough’s enough, I’m through being a sucker, and all the while they’re holding their phone and quaking in anticipation of the next text message or for someone to “like” the latest photo of them stretched out, soaking up the sun. So when her friends tell her she’s making a mistake giving up all that, Cristina can’t help but smile.

  Only tonight her grandmother said it too. Cristina was making herself up in the bathroom for her evening out. She didn’t even want a bachelorette party, but her friends had kept insisting, and yesterday Gianluca told her he was being taken to dinner at Caprice, a place in the hills where they serve meat and, more importantly, where Eastern hookers strip. “You know, for a lark,” he’d said. So Cristina had said she was going out too, for a lark, and was looking at herself in the bathroom mirror wearing this skimpy, slinky red dress her friends had gotten her, and together they would all head out identically clad to see what was happening in Versilia.

  She bent over the mirror then backed up to get the full view, and maybe it wasn’t her place to say so, but she had a really hot body. And beautiful blue eyes. And full lips her friends made a lot of dirty jokes about. But those lips had a problem, a serious problem parked right above them—her nose. Too long, slightly humped, it sat right in the middle of her face, casting a shadow over her lips and burying her smile. Cristina stared at it and brooded.

  Gianluca broods over it too, a little. Lately he keeps repeating, “Did you know that fox on TG1 had her nose done?” “Did you know the wife of that soccer player had her nose done?” “Guess what Gianni’s sister had done?”

  Finally Cr
istina told him maybe she should get hers done. But she said it to say it, in the expectation that Gianluca would immediately tell her she was crazy, that she was beautiful the way she was, that her beauty was natural and that he loves all of her, nose included. Instead he’d sat there silently for a second before saying it might be a nice idea.

  Nice idea!

  Tonight Cristina had studied her profile in the mirror, first normally and then with a hand over her nose. Who knows, maybe she would look better? Or maybe the problem was that Gianluca was an asshole and other, more sophisticated men in the world would love her for who she is . . .

  Just then, without knocking, her grandmother had come in. She looked her over, from her high heels to her thighs to the morsel of flesh covered up by that dress. Then she looked deep into her eyes. “Cristina, you’re a beauty,” she told her.

  “Thanks, Grandma, I love you too!” High on her heels, she bent over to hug her little grandmother, who, smothered in her embrace, added, “Beautiful and stupid.”

  “Grandma! Why would you say that?”

  “Because it’s true. If you were ugly I’d understand. But not this. I’m coming to your wedding tomorrow because I love you to death, but I’m telling you, I’m not happy about it.”

  “Why not? You don’t want me to get married? You don’t like Gianluca?”

  “No, that’s not the problem. Even if I did like him, you don’t.”

  “Are you joking? I love him. He’s the man of my life.”

  “Oh, shut up, what do you know? You ever try another?”

  “Not you too, Grandma, I’m begging you. With my friends, I get it. But not you.”

  “Why not me?”

  “Because, like me, you and Mom have only been with one man before.”

  “The hell I have!” Her grandmother looked over her shoulder and, seeing no one coming, continued: “Maybe your mom never, but I certainly supped my fill.”

  “Grandma! You were married when you were sixteen.”

  “True, but then there was the war. And, baby girl, you’ve no idea what war means.” She shut the door and continued, softly this time. “Your grandfather shipped out to the front when I was eighteen. Three years I waited for him. Never even wrote. And I was pretty, young . . . I didn’t know if he was still alive. I didn’t know if I was alive. And at night I felt like I was on fire.”

  “So you slept with someone else?”

  “Lower your voice,” she said, nodding in the affirmative.

  “Who was he?”

  “You wouldn’t know them.”

  “Them? How many were there?”

  “I couldn’t give you an exact figure. Ten. Eleven. Let’s say ten and half.”

  Cristina stands there, leaning against the sink while this terrible scene plays in her mind: her grandmother as she is now—her close-cropped bluish hair, her legs wide as air ducts, her skin like a sheet just fished out of the washing machine—surrounded in bed by who knows how many men tugging her from all sides.

  Instead it was her grandmother who tugged at her. She hugged her tightly and whispered in her ear, “Think about it, baby girl, think hard on it. I mean really hard. I’m not saying another thousand, not a hundred, but at least one, just one, so you know. Otherwise it’ll stick in your throat forever.”

  She kissed her on the cheek and told her she loved her. Then she left and the bathroom suddenly became quiet and cramped, closing in around Cristina.

  Who’s dancing now, drinking, sweating in the middle of the crowd on the dance floor at Capannina’s. She raises her head toward the ceiling, where men hover, looking out, looking at her. And Cristina laughs and waves and only occasionally thinks about shielding her nose, then hugs her friends one at a time.

  They’d gotten her a gigantic black vibrator so big that at first Cristina had thought it was a baton, and seeing as she and Gianluca were moving to the end of a badly lit street, keeping a contraption like this in her purse when she returns from work at night might come in handy. Except it won’t fit in a purse. It won’t fit anywhere. In fact, a thing this big can’t actually exist. Right? What does she know? Maybe it’s not even that over-the-top. Maybe she thinks Gianluca is normal because the only one she’s seen is his and in fact he’s poorly endowed. Cristina is about to marry a poorly endowed guy and she’s only going through with it because, fool that she is, she’s never seen another. What does she know? What indeed?

  Nothing. Not one nothing. And over the music and shouting she can hear her grandmother repeating: “I’m not saying another thousand, not a hundred, but at least one . . . ”

  Cristina shouts for another glass of champagne. Chiara runs to fetch it but rather than head for the bar, Chiara goes up, or down, or maybe Cristina is just drunk. Her head spins and all these strange men standing around her appear above her too, and below her, and almost on top of her.

  There’s a group of African guys—what’re they like? Is it true they’re so well equipped? What would sleeping with a blond be like? With someone who doesn’t speak your language? She doesn’t know. Cristina doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know the feel of another person’s breath on her skin, the taste, what happens to another man’s eyes when he enters you, what he says to you and—

  And if she doesn’t know now, finding out the day after tomorrow will be a thousand times more difficult. Because tomorrow she gets married and marriage is sacred; after you’re married it’s a completely different thing—serious, inviolable. But that’s after. Not tonight.

  So Cristina dances, dances and laughs; her head spins but she doesn’t feel sick. Actually, she feels great. Again the deejay calls out that tonight’s her night then puts on a song she loves, one she used to hear on TV when she was a little girl and still knows by heart, especially the chorus:

  Come on, shake your body, baby, do the conga

  I know you can’t control yourself any longer

  Come on, shake your body, baby, do the conga

  I know you can’t control yourself any longer.

  Cristina raises her arms and shakes her stuff as hard as she can. Her friends start pointing. They can’t believe it. They shout that she’s the queen, a legend, the hottest bitch in town! And it’s true. In fact, men are circling her, clapping, edging in, attempting weird dance moves to get her attention. Weirdest of all is this boy in a white shirt, younger than her, hopping up and down and swaying, one hand over his heart and the other on his hip. She looks at him, smiles, and applauds. So he does a twirl then sidles up to her, real close, gets right in her face, puts his mouth to her ear and utters, softly yet resoundingly amid the confusion, the most beautiful words Cristina has ever heard.

  Balmy and smooth, they enter her ear and massage her temples, slip down her throat and past her chest and reach her heart before trickling down to her stomach all the way to where Cristina’s thighs meet, and they’re so wet so quickly that she has to pull away from this amazing boy for a moment before wrapping her arms around him and clinging to him, to his unfamiliar scent, increasingly trembling, all lit up inside with the wonderful words he just uttered:

  “Hey, I sure dig your nose.”

  El Cocktail del Amor

  Godzunkle, it works! Godzunkle!

  All summer his friends had given him shit for throwing away his money and wasting his nights in some rank gym. Dancing was for total fags, they told him. But man does it work—and then some. Godzunkle, it slays! Daniele was totally right to have taken Maestro Hugo Rose’s Caribbean Dance Class at the arena in Fivizzano. The name might mean nothing to normal people but if you find a fan, you can tap that chick no sweat. It’s like saying Legend taught you to sing or Bourdain to cook. When Daniele saw this half-naked girl start thrashing about to a salsa, he knew she was hip to it. So he showed her two or three serious moves, put his lips to her ear, and whispered those magic words, “Hey, I studied with Hugo Ros
e.”

  And, godzunkle, this girl lost her mind.

  Actually, then and there she froze. She looked at him wide-eyed and said, “Are you kidding me?” He didn’t know how to respond. Not only had she known about the class, not only did she know who Hugo “El Suave” Rose was, but she’s such a big fan she couldn’t believe she was standing face-to-face with one of his students. In fact, a minute later she jumped him and squeezed him tight. Thanks to his master’s instruction, Daniele immediately took the situation in hand, pressed her to his chest, and started to dance.

  Feel the fire of desire

  As you dance the night away

  ’Cause tonight we’re gonna party

  Till we see the break of day . . .

  She’s over the moon. And she’s hot too. Nice ass, nice tits. Too bad her nose is so huge it looks fake. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Daniele holds her nice and tight so he can’t see it. Plus it’s a scientific fact that girls with big noses have hot bodies. And his hands are all over that body as the two of them sway this way and that and back and forth, and the deeper he probes, the more she thrashes about.

  Godzunkle, Maestro Rose really knew what he was talking about: “A woman changes her minds a thousand times a segundo. She thinks she wants one thing and then she wants another. Pero she gets it in her cabeza that she wants something else. When really women want just one thing: a man who’s seguro, who’s presente, who grabs her by the hair and makes her bailar.”

  Tonight that man is Daniele and an outing with friends organized at the last minute is turning into the colossal reward for a summer of lessons and exercises.

  To think, he hadn’t even wanted to come to Versilia. They’d taken his car and he’d wanted to go all the way to Montecatini, a place full of grannies. Time was, you had to pick them up in secret and pretend you didn’t remember the next day, but now that they’re no longer called grannies, now that they’re called MILFs, you can talk a big game to your friends the day after. Right, his friends, who nevertheless nixed Montecatini. Tonight they were going to Versilia. End of story.