Chapter 19 Michael #2
“Oh, what a poet! Who do you think you are, Dante?” Max mocks him. “Drop your card and shut the hell up!”
“You have a lot to learn from me, dufus.” Luciano swipes back.
“And while you two were busy philosophizing, I won,” exults Vanni. “I told you: Fuckers win with swords.”
“In your dreams. You can barely take it out to piss!” Okay, Luciano is a genuine romantic.
“Ask your sister if that’s true or not.” Vanni shuffles the cards, proud of his victory, and deals them out. “Cups, the drinkers. That’s you, Max! On the table.”
“Go ahead and laugh,” he says. “Alcohol may not have the answers, but at least it makes you forget the questions.”
While the three men continue to make fun of each other, my eye falls on a couple sitting next to us: They must be around my age, they’re wearing wedding rings, and she’s caressing her belly.
But what caught my attention was her thick, curly hair: I remember there only being one redhead in Belvedere.
“Margherita?” I ask without wanting to seem intrusive.
She turns. “Yes?”
Then the man must be Lapo, the famous climber. There was nothing he couldn’t climb as a kid: trees, gutters, tractor tires, hay bales . . .
“Lapo, Maggie!” I greet them with more conviction, leaving the card table. “I’m Michael. Michael D’Arcy.”
Their previously suspicious faces brighten. “Oh my goodness! What are you doing here?”
For the first time, I sigh with relief in seeing that my arrival was not the subject of gossip for everyone. “I’m here with Charles to evaluate the estate.”
“Ah, did he inherit it in the end?” asks Maggie.
“Yes, well . . . I don’t think they’re talking about anything else in the village.”
“We came back from Massa yesterday. We were at the seaside for one last peaceful holiday. Sara will be born at the beginning of September.”
“Congratulations, guys . . . Elisa told me you got married.”
“Yeah.” Lapo nods with an ear-to-ear smile.
“Just think that I went to study in Madrid, and she went to do a master’s degree in dance in Toledo.
We met in Barcelona and had an instant spark.
Sometimes there’s no need to go and look for destiny in God’s house when you have it just a stone’s throw away. ”
“I’m very happy for you,” I say. I really am, because the two of them are the picture of joy.
“What about you? Married? Kids?”
“Free on all fronts,” I reply. I usually recite this line with lively and vibrant satisfaction, as if I were a heroic survivor of a catastrophe, but it makes me feel incredibly lonely at the moment.
No women, I systematically reject them all; no children, and no prospect of having them.
“But never say never,” I find myself adding.
“Maybe we should organize a dinner while you and Carletto are here, with Elisa and Giada, like old times!”
“I would very much like that.” I really would like that.
We say goodbye, and I go back to the game. “Sorry, two old friends of mine.”
“Maybe the only two who actually came back to Belvedere,” comments Max. “And over the years, I have seen a lot of people leave. I win again,” he says, closing the game.
“Have you always lived here?” I ask him.
“Yeah. I took over my father’s workshop,” he replies dryly.
“And you never got married?” This piques my curiosity, because according to the standards of the village, he would have been quite the catch.
“He missed the kind of train that only comes once in a lifetime, and he’s still standing on the tracks, crying,” Vanni interjects.
“There was a woman I would have taken to the altar with my eyes closed. I proposed to her, she said yes, but she wanted to go live in Florence. She’d studied languages and had a good job there as a guide.
That year my dad had a lung problem, and so he had to decide whether to pass the workshop on to me or close it.
He knew Laura wanted to move and urged me to go with her, but I knew that it would kill him to close up shop, so in the end I chose to stay. ”
“And Laura married someone else,” concludes Luciano.
“You never forgot her, did you?” My question is more a statement than a question.
“You can’t ever forget someone like that,” admits Max.
“But it’s the harsh law of the village: As kids it seems like the whole world is here.
Friends that meet every day; Wednesday nights watching Real Madrid matches on the TV at the bar; the summers, when the most important event of the week is the open-air cinema in the parish courtyard; racing up and down the hills two at a time on our Ciao bikes without helmets.
When someone came back from Florence with a pair of Roy Rogers, he was so cool, a rock star.
People talked about him for a week. Those years seem never-ending, like nothing will change, and you’ll all be friends until you’re old. Then it happens.”
“What happens?”
“One after another, they all leave, and when you run into them later, you’re missing something. Just like you, before, with Margherita and Lapo. I saw it on your face.”
“I didn’t have any face,” I reply, even though Max’s speech touched a nerve I didn’t think I had.
“The beautiful ones go home rich,” says Luciano, winning a third game. “And with your ugly faces, there was no competition.”
Vanni deals another round of cards. This time he trumps clubs, and in my hand I have the ace and the three.
“In life, it’s better to have remorse than regret,” reasons Max. “Remorse is over something you regret having done. Regret, on the other hand, is about the things you never did, all lost to time.”
As we continue to play one round after another, I notice Elisa and Elmo coming out of the bakery, his hand on her back. “Maremma impestata ladra!” I blurt out, dropping my ace with a violence that makes the cards on the table jump.
“Oh, you old farts, in less than an hour, he’s already become as bad as the rest of you!” the bartender remarks, hearing me.
“No, no, he’s bothered about his own problem,” says Luciano.
Irritated for no apparent reason, I stare at the edge of the table and force myself not to follow Elisa with my gaze and—dammit—I couldn’t have made a bigger mistake as to where to look.
Michael + Elisa Friends 4 Ever
The crooked letters we scratched into the plastic table with the tab of a can, now tattooed in my brain. It’s barely legible, but to me it’s like a neon sign.
“This hand is mine!” I exult. I count the points, and I hit the jackpot.
“Sorry for putting you to shame! Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure.
Whenever you need a fourth, you can find me at Le Giuggiole.
Now, I regret to say I must be off,” I excuse myself, with fire under my shoes.
“Oh, who wins with clubs?” I ask, turning back toward the trio.
A satisfied grin appears on Vanni’s face. “With clubs? Fools win!”
Not this time.
Where the hell did Elisa go?