Chapter 6 #2
I ended up back at the soft room.
It was exactly as it had been the night before.
The sheepskin rug, the rocking chair, the upright piano with the lid closed.
The room was warm, somehow warmer than the rest of the apartment, maybe from the radiator under the window, maybe from something else.
There was a low shelf of paperbacks—Agatha Christie, some old thrillers, a couple of modern ones with spines I recognized from airport bookstores.
Below that, a shelf of children’s books.
Picture books, Dr. Seuss, a battered edition of The Little Prince.
I went to the piano and ran my fingers over the closed lid. It was polished, heavy, real wood, not a toy. A basket of soft toys sat by the chair. I did not touch them, but I looked at them for a long time, picking out the animals: a lamb, a rabbit, a dog with one ear flopped over.
On the small table by the chair was a wooden box. Inside, a set of paints and brushes, some paper, a box of colored pencils sharp as needles. The smell of the box was like the smell of the art room in elementary school—wood shavings, pigment, the sharpness of tin.
Whatever you need it to be, he’d said.
I did not know what I needed.
I left the door open. I went back to the kitchen and made myself another coffee, the taste better than I remembered. The city outside was starting to glow with the first fake sunset, lights coming up along the river, headlights doubling on the water.
At five, the buzzer sounded. I froze.
Then a voice on the intercom: “Angela?”
It was not Pietro’s voice. It was higher, lighter, and behind it, a background chaos of someone negotiating an overexcited animal.
I pressed the button. “Yes?”
“Tonio—Pietro’s brother. With food. And Olimpo. We are coming up.”
Before I could answer, the elevator dinged and they were there.
The door opened on a man about my age, maybe a year older, with a face built for smiling and a body built for soccer.
He wore a tracksuit and carried a casserole dish with a kitchen towel wrapped around it.
Behind him was a mass of shaggy orange fur with paws like a lion’s and eyes the color of honey.
Olimpo was a dog. A very, very large dog.
He looked at me, grunted, and muscled past Tonio into the kitchen. He sniffed my bare legs once, then pressed his head against my thigh, hard enough to nearly knock me over.
Tonio grinned. “He likes you. This is good. He doesn’t like most people.”
He set the casserole dish on the counter, unwrapped it, and then, with a kind of ceremonial pride, revealed a slab of lasagna the size of a laptop. “Eat,” he said. “Pietro is worried you won’t. But Pietro about everything—he worries too much.”
I wanted to protest, but the smell hit me and my stomach growled. I took a plate, cut a corner off, and sat at the island while Tonio poured me a glass of red wine from a bottle he’d brought up.
Olimpo parked himself by my feet and, with a long, human sigh, slumped to the floor and rested his head on my instep.
Tonio watched me eat. Not in a weird way—more like he was just glad to see someone appreciate the work. The wine was good. The lasagna was better.
“You like?” he said.
I nodded, mouth full.
He looked pleased. “Good. Pietro says you are a very serious woman. But I see you are, in fact, a normal person.”
I did not know what to say to that.
Tonio shrugged. “You don’t talk, that’s fine. I can talk enough for both of us. Pietro, he does not talk either, but he listens too much, so I must make more noise.”
He poured himself a glass and drank half of it in one go. “Anyway. You are safe here. You can stay as long as you need. Pietro is very serious about this.”
Olimpo shifted, snoring lightly. How had he fallen asleep so quickly?
I said, “Thank you.”
Tonio grinned again. “Eat more. You are too skinny.”
He leaned back, looked around, then said, “I will be back tomorrow. I bring bread. And cannoli. Pietro does not remember these things, but I do.”
He left then, with the kind of suddenness that told me he did not feel the need for a goodbye. Olimpo gave me one last nudge, then followed him out, tail wagging like a flag.
Tonio grinned at me from the kitchen entryway, teeth white and even, eyes creased at the corners.
“He likes you. This is good. He doesn’t like most people,” he said, nodding at the mountain of dog still leaning against my leg like we’d known each other for years.
Olimpo the beast. I tried to imagine what it would take for this animal to dislike someone—a loud noise, a thrown elbow, a certain flavor of bad intent?
He looked up at me, then slumped all his weight into my side, like a sandbag with opinions.
Tonio had the casserole dish out, unwrapped with exaggerated care, hands moving quick and practiced.
“Eat,” he said, and it wasn’t a suggestion.
He produced a spatula from nowhere and carved a perfect rectangle from the pan, sliding it onto a plate.
The top bubbled with cheese and a little scorched bechamel, but underneath it was layers of noodle and sauce, the sauce darker than I was used to, almost maroon.
Tonio set the plate in front of me, then went for the wine like he was on a timer.
He worked the corkscrew with one hand, pouring without looking at the glass as it filled, then set the bottle down, wiped his hands on his pants, and leaned on the opposite side of the counter.
I tried the lasagna. It was hot, and the cheese stretched in perfect strands from my fork to the plate.
The first bite scalded the roof of my mouth, but it was worth it.
Rich, savory, the ricotta silky but not heavy.
I’d had restaurant lasagna a hundred times, but this was not restaurant food.
I could taste the hours in it—maybe even days.
My stomach did a little flip as it realized what was happening and started to remember how to be hungry again.
“Good?” said Tonio, watching for my reaction like it was a science experiment.
“Very,” I said. He looked pleased, almost relieved.
“I’m telling you, I could eat this every day,” he said, slicing off a piece with the spatula and popping it into his mouth barehanded, shaking it a little to cool before chewing. “Pietro is worried you won’t eat, but Pietro, he worries about everything. Always has.”
Olimpo, now fully committed to his position at my feet, made a sound like a sigh, then a low whine, his tail thumping the wood floor twice. I looked down at him and then back up at Tonio. “Is he allowed people food?” I asked.
“Allowed, no. Will he get some? Yes.” Tonio bent down and offered a piece of meat to the dog, who accepted it with almost royal patience, then resumed his post as footrest-slash-bodyguard.
I ate. The wine was good, dry, not sweet, and it cut through the cheese and salt perfectly.
The second glass went down faster than the first, and I felt it in the tips of my ears and my cheeks, a slow relaxation that wasn’t just about the alcohol.
The apartment was the same, but it felt less like a panic room and more like a place where a person might actually want to spend time.
The winter outside had turned from flat grey to the shimmer of city lights, the river reflecting a hundred scattered colors through the glass.
Tonio talked. He talked like he breathed, in long, effortless stretches.
He told me about the dog—rescue, from a guy who’d tried to train him for fights, but Olimpo had been “too soft, too cuddly, not a killer, just a big idiot.” He showed me a video on his phone of the dog as a puppy, already the size of a cinderblock, tripping over his own ears.
He asked me if I wanted to see photos of Pietro as a teenager, and when I hesitated, he took my phone and sent two anyway: one of a younger, grimmer Pietro in a racing singlet, standing at a finish line in the rain, and another with all three of them—Pietro, Tonio, and a third brother whose name I didn’t catch—holding up a trophy and grinning like idiots.
He filled the silence, but somehow it wasn’t oppressive. He left space for me to talk, and when I said things, he listened with total attention, like I was saying something that really mattered.
I told him about my job, as little as I could, but enough that he seemed to get it. He asked if I played piano, and when I said I used to, he said, “You should play again. That room is wasted without music.” I shrugged, not sure what to say.
He nodded at the shelves. “Do you read?”
“Yes,” I said. “A lot. When I can.”
He gestured to the books. “Take anything. Most are from our’s mother. She was a teacher. She liked stories with puzzles in them, because she said life is made of small mysteries you can solve if you pay attention. Some of them are in Italian, but you can ask me to translate if you want.”
I said, “Thank you.” It felt like the right thing to say, even though it didn’t cover everything.
Olimpo snored, the sound rolling out of him in waves.
The apartment was so quiet, except for Tonio’s voice and the dog’s breathing and the muted hum of the city outside.
I wondered if Pietro could hear us in the other room, if he was listening for trouble, or just letting his brother do the heavy lifting of human contact.
When I finished the first plate, Tonio refilled it without asking, then pushed the wine closer to my side of the counter. “Eat more,” he said. “You are too skinny. Pietro says you are a very serious woman, but I see you are, in fact, a normal person.”
I laughed, and it surprised me. A real laugh, not just the sound of one. Tonio grinned, satisfied.