Oil
Italy, then.
Elias knew how to say “hello,” “thank you,” “please,” and the speech he rehearsed every night before bed.
He practiced it once more with a woman in a café who giggled at him in amusement. Poking fun at his accent. Italian was her second language, too. German, her third, and Spanish, her first.
She said the scars on his face made him look “asustado y guapo”* and Elias flushed.
He could spend all his days in the company of women; how he loved them so. He loved the perfume they rubbed in their hair, their soft little hands, the way their laughs ranged from high and deep to low and throaty. How they were full of play, even when they got older.
His mother still rolled in the snow and threw snowballs if they made sure there was no work to be done.
There was a woman, Annie—born last century—who liked to put sugar in the church wine and play other small pranks.
The mothers at the tavern in his town would giggle and tease each other; the sound of their squealing made his heart ache.
He could have done this. Could have laid his head on a soft belly, nails scratching through his hair. If he wasn’t so utterly unsuitable. Unable to rise for them, and set to die young.
Elias ate this moment up, laved his tongue against it like rich cream from a spoon.
When the Spanish woman got off the train at Genoa, she pressed her hand in his and wished him luck. He kissed her fingertips.
Elias had told her he was trying to become an actor. His speech would have frightened her otherwise.