13. Truly, Madly, Deeply #2
“Suwarna, I know. This isn’t about me, it’s about us. It’s about what happened to Emma-Lou, and the station fire, and Emma-Lou’s parents and the body bags of money. It’s not really a date,” Japheth smiled and did his best to push down the excitement he’d felt just moments before. “I know.”
“Unless it is,” Suwarna assured him with gentle encouragement. “Either way, you won’t know for sure, until it’s too late. Break a… er.. Good luck Japheth.”
Japheth coasted his bike down the small hill toward the river, black silk embroidered blazer fluttering behind him like a nervous angel’s wings. The sun was sinking fast toward the tree line, gilding Greater Napanee in that golden hour glow that made even the Canadian Tire look a bit cinematic.
Ahead, the underside of the bridge yawned open like a whale’s jaw ready to swallow Japheth whole.
The concrete ribs, rusted iron rebar and graveyard of trash castaways in its belly didn’t quell Japheth’s disquiet about the myriad directions the night might take.
As he slid to a stop under the elongating shadows of the bridge, the lazy slip of the Napanee River whispered as it swirled surreptitiously around the piles, like it was charged with keeping everybody’s secrets submerged.
Japheth’s heart was beating fast enough to qualify as cardio, but it wasn’t the cruise on his ten-speed that was sending his pulse into overdrive.
In the last twenty-four hours, his life had turned into a mashup of a telenovela and a Lifetime movie: the WWJD radio station had burned down, his lawyerly lover turned out to be neither worthy of his love or the law, their boss Emma-Lou had taken an unannounced sabbatical (or been disappeared), and yet the celestial matchmakers had still found time to schedule…
a date. With Rino Ferrari. His heart did a triple kick just to ensure he was still present and accounted for.
“You’re not getting murdered, or disappeared, or misplaced, or vanished,” he muttered to himself as he rolled up to the chain-link fence and unhooked his lock. “You’re getting picked up. In a discreet location. Because… the man who asked you out is…?”
He hopped off the bike and tried to chain it to the fence as casually as someone who believed both the bike, and he would not be missing by morning. He hadn’t yet thought of a word to finish his last muttering to himself. The man who asked me out is…?
His hands shook; the lock clicked against the metal, and he struggled to close it.
Above him, the bridge hummed with the occasional passing truck, the sound like a giant clearing its throat.
Finally, the lock clicked into place, but he still struggled to complete his thought, The man who asked me out is… ?
The agreed-upon meeting point wasn’t exactly the 10 Things I Hate About You scene with Heath Ledger publicly declaring his love by singing Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You accompanied by a marching band.
In that movie, there was singing, there was dancing, there were dozens of other people to witness anything that might happen, and nothing went wrong.
In fact, everything went right. He scanned the dark river, it was devoid of swans, let alone hundreds of the white birds to work as background actors for a romantic moonlit paddle in a rowboat.
His only company was a lone loon who called its haunting howl before diving below the surface to take cover.
The bridge underbelly smelled like wet rocks and driftwood, distant French fries from Spud’s Restaurant and all manner of teenage rebellion.
The air, cooling now, slid under Japheth’s jacket and over the small of his back, raising goosebumps.
Across the water, the town took on a tremulous glow: a bowling alley sign, street lamps flickering on, a cross on a church steeple outlined against the last pink of the darkening sky.
The sun had stopped glinting off the water in restless shards and was retiring so as not to unwittingly bear witness to anything untoward that might happen under a darkened bridge at night on the outskirts of town.
Suddenly, headlamps swept the underside of the bridge, bright enough to make Japheth flinch.
A sleek, glossy black Maserati nosed down the gravel, its smooth lines demanding attention like a menacing moving magnet.
It rolled to a stop with an expensive sigh, as if it too judged the location to be beneath it.
The jowls of the bridge glowed red in the sweeping LED arcs of its boomerang brake lights that appeared like holier-than-thou eyebrows curved around its backside like a two-faced scowl.
If it weren’t quite so scary, it would have been a kick-ass place to shoot a music video.
The headlights’ high beams briefly illuminated Japheth like a spotlight before fading to running mode.
The engine quieted to a purr. He took a deep breath, hopefully not one of his last, and walked toward the car.
Japheth swallowed and whispered to himself, “Either a romantic evening and anxiety ridden game of meet the parents or a hopefully polite and not too rough and tumble abduction. You can do this, Japheth. Don’t go belly-up now buttercup, show ‘em all what you’re made of.”
The driver’s window slid down with a soft zzzzt, releasing a wave of scents that curled around him and pulled him a step forward: leather seats warmed by the day, a hint of chocolatey espresso, and Rino’s cologne–something deep and expensive that Japheth hadn’t sniffed on the man before.
“Polpetto,” Rino said seductively, leaning an elbow on the door.
The nickname rolled out of him like velvet.
Tonight, he wore a navy dress shirt open at the throat, a gold chain glinting against tanned skin, a leather jacket folded neatly on the passenger seat beside him.
His dark wavy hair was slicked back, not a strand rebelling.
His freshly shaven jawline could have cut marble.
“You get more handsome every time I see you. It’s very inconvenient, especially tonight. ”
For a moment, everything went still. Then Rino stepped out of the driver’s side, closing the door with a soft, luxurious click. He walked around the nose of the car and his silhouette paused in the lamplight. Then he froze, really froze. As though God Himself had pressed pause on the remote.
“Madonna Santa,” Rino breathed reverently, like a man witnessing an eclipse he’d not expected. “Stai benissimo.”
Japheth swallowed and looked around, ensuring it was still just the two of them under the bridge and he hadn’t been unknowingly surrounded. He stuttered, “Is… Is that good? Or… Or is that bad?”
Rino’s eyes traveled slowly over Japheth, drinking him in.
From the glint of the gold-threaded lapels, down over the hint of skin glowing with a sheen of anticipation beneath the black mesh mock-neck, to the sleek fall of the trousers hugging Japheth just enough to derail reasonable thought, and finally down to the polished black boots, where Japheth stood uncertainly, shifting his weight like a choirboy waiting for judgment after completing an aria.
Rino blinked, realizing he hadn’t answered his date who was captively waiting and seemed like himself, unable to move.
He stepped closer, gravel crunching beneath his own Italian leather boots.
Japheth swallowed and asked again, “Good? Or… or bad?”
Rino shook his head, slow and deliberate, like he was trying to clear static from a radio station buzzing through his brain.
He stepped even closer, so close that Japheth could now fully drink in his uniquely Rino scent–that warm, expensive blend of cedar and bergamot.
It was vigorously earthy and sweetly orange and lime sour in a heady concoction that could absolutely ruin a man’s life.
Finally, Rino’s throat worked around something he would be too proud to call a choke and was able to rumble and tumble out enough words to be called a broken sentence, “Not good. Not bad. Trouble.”
“You mentioned I’m inconvenient? And trouble?
If it’s not a good night for… whatever you had planned, I can just get on my bike and head back up that hill and we can forget this ever happened.
You don’t need to see me again. I don’t want to inconvenience you.
And I can absolutely hide if required? Like I don’t need any help disappearing if you think it’s more convenient if I’m not around for some reason?
You know, if I’m too much trouble…” Japheth babbled.
His eyes flicked meaningfully to the shadowed riverbank, to the lonely underside of the bridge, to the vague sense of this is where the remains of people on true crime shows get found by dog walkers.
“You’re inconvenient because I don’t want to do what I’ve promised. But there’s really no way around it. And you’re trouble because I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about you until it’s done,” Rino said with a shrug, as if this explained everything.
Japheth was only getting more agitated by the vagueness of Rino’s statements and the way he was looking at him hungrily, like a perfectly seasoned lamb shank.
Japheth laughed, a little too high and brightly, “Is this where we’re meeting your family?
I thought maybe we’d be going to a restaurant.
It’s a very interesting meeting point you’ve selected. ”
“We will meet them,” Rino said calmly. “Eventually.” His smile flashed, sharp and brief and he sighed, “But first, I wanted to prepare you.”
“Like a sacrificial lamb?” Japheth tried to lean into the question with a detached sangfroid, like he was equally comfortable to meet up in perilous points of no return under the cover of darkness.
It landed more squarely as a panicked altar boy.
“Under a bridge? As it’s getting dark? How will you…
prepare me? Surely, it would be better to have some bright lights for your work? ”