All I Believe (30 page)

I turned to Jessie and asked, “Someone had pot brownies at the club?”

“My friend Dev. He and his bandmates had been baking. And now, well, most of the crowd is baked. Not me, obviously. I was the designated driver. Plus, I don’t really do that. But a lot of our little party indulged.”

“Does that include…ah, never mind.” My question was answered when my grandmother wove over to me and grabbed me in a hug. She wore a pair of tighty whities over her jumpsuit, along with a red satin superhero cape, a mask made by cutting two holes in a long sock, and a police officer’s hat. I could only wonder where she’d gotten the latter.

“Nicky! My sweet grandson. I love you, Nicky. I love Luca, too. He’s so pretty! You two enjoy the party, okay? I need to go make some more brownies, on account of the fact that we ate ‘em all. They were
good
! Jessie’s friend Dev, that cute little rock and roll star, is going to show me the recipe. He says he brought along the secret ingredient.” She pressed a finger to her lips and said, “Shhhh. It’s a secret! Jessie, let’s film it for my cooking show, but we’ll have to tell our viewers to keep it a secret, too.”

She smiled at me, then climbed up on the couch and kissed my cheek. Luca got a kiss on the cheek, too, but then Nana jumped on him and yelled, “Piggy back ride!” He took off at an exaggerated trot. I was laughing as I followed them into the kitchen.

Six Weeks Later

In typical Nana style, Luca’s birthday had turned into a lavish celebration. We didn’t quite know how or why she’d hit upon the idea of a circus theme. But, as with most things Nana, we just went with it. “This is astonishing,” Luca said, taking in all the activity as we stepped out into her big backyard.

It was a fairly brisk night in November, but no one seemed to mind the cold. A less than full-size but still quite large red and yellow circus tent provided warmth and a whimsical setting. Kids and dogs ran around, circus performers entertained the crowd, and Jessie’s musician friends played alternative rock as our friends and family danced.

Among the acts were contortionists, acrobats, jugglers, a fire breather, and a sword swallower. There were also clowns. Lots of them. Some waded through the crowd on stilts, and when we ran into my friend Chance and his husband, Finn said, “I’m scarred for life. Giant stilt clowns? Really? That’s the stuff of nightmares.” Chance’s younger brother Colt and his boyfriend Elijah talked some of the clowns into following Finn around, and thought the big, tough cop’s double-takes were completely hilarious.

Nana was dressed like the ringmaster, which seemed appropriate. She wore a top hat, ruffled shirt, red velvet coat, riding pants and tall black boots. Tom Selleck, her big, brown mutt, was at her side, festooned with a huge faux-fur lion’s mane. He seemed to like it and held his head up proudly. Right beside him was Diego Rivera the Chihuahua, wearing a red velvet vest and tiny fez. The dogs had quite the bromance going and had been inseparable from the moment they met.

“Happy birthday, honey bunch,” Nana said, pulling Luca down so she could kiss both his cheeks. “Are you having fun?”

“Of course! This is incredible. Thank you for going to all this trouble,” he said.

She waved her hand at that. “This was no trouble at all!”

“Where’s Ollie?” I asked her.

“My sweetie’s around here somewhere,” Nana said. “He’s been practicing some sort of act with the circus performers, said he wanted to surprise me. He’s a firecracker, I tell you what. That’s true in the bedroom, too. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but that man is a tiger between the sheets! Rawr!”

“Oh lord,” I whispered.

“I never would have met him without you, Luca, so that’s one of two big thank yous I owe you. The other is for making this one so happy!” She smiled at me affectionately as she patted my cheek.

“I’m glad you’re happy, too, Nana,” I told her.

“Always! It’s the only way to be! Now I gotta go check on the caterers. Have fun boys, and Luca? Have the best birthday ever.”

“Definitely,” he said. She waved at us before disappearing into the crowd, her lion dog and his buddy right beside her.

“Somebody’s been looking for you,” Jessie announced, coming up to us with Ignacio Mondelvano in tow.

“Iggy!” Luca exclaimed, and he and I both hugged our friend.

“
Feliz cumpleanos
Luciano,” he said, kissing Luca’s cheeks. “I’m so glad I got to be here for this! It’s some party, no?”

“Nana at her finest,” I told him. “When did you get in?”

“Just three hours ago. My body doesn’t know if it should be asleep or awake!” Ollie had been working with Christopher Robin Andrews, a friend of the family who owned a gallery (and was a brilliant artist in his own right) to host Ignacio’s first U.S. show. It was still a few weeks away, but Iggy had decided to come to San Francisco early, rent a studio space, and find some fresh inspiration for his paintings.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Luca told him. “You’re staying with Ollie, right?”

His friend said, “I am, but from the look of his apartment, I think he must spend all his time over here. It’s pretty empty. Not that I’m complaining! It’s very generous, all he’s doing for me.”

Andreo joined us a few minutes later. He carried a brightly wrapped package, and gave his brother an awkward hug as he wished him a happy birthday. He’d returned to Rome after the situation with Jerry was resolved, just long enough to wrap up a few things before moving stateside to be close to his brother.

“Can I steal you and Nico away for a minute?” Andreo asked. He told our friends, “I’ll bring them right back, I promise.”

“Come on,” I said, “I know someplace relatively quiet.” I led them through the circus tent and out the other side, and we followed a path through a hedge to a beautiful little Victorian tree house. “This has always been one of my favorite places,” I told them as I led the way up the built-in ladder.

When I poked my head in the door, Vincent and Trevor’s son Josh greeted me with, “Hey. Welcome to introvert central.” The thirteen-year-old was reclining in a sea of pillows with a paperback.

Across the room, Chance’s friend Zachary was sitting in a window seat, savoring a plate of appetizers. “I can clear out if you need me to,” Zachary said. “I just…you know. It was a lot out there.”

“It’s fine,” Andreo said, “you can stay. I just wanted to give my brother his birthday present.”

As he handed Luca the flat, square package, his brother told him, “I thought we agreed, no presents.”

“I never agreed to that,” Andreo said. “Nico didn’t either. This is from both of us.”

“Even though Andreo paid for it,” I said.

“But the idea was all yours,” Luca’s brother countered.

Luca tore off a strip of the paper, and then he went very still. “It can’t be,” he whispered. He tore off a bit more paper, and then he sat down abruptly on one of the floor cushions. “It…it just can’t.” He removed the rest of the paper carefully, then held the wooden frame between his hands, an absolutely stunned expression on his face. Andreo and I exchanged grins and gave each other a high-five. “How? How can this be here?” Luca murmured.

I walked around behind him and looked over his shoulder at the tiny Cezanne. The painting itself measured just six-by-six, but the frame bumped it out to a square foot. The landscape was bright and exquisite, an entire little world captured on canvas. “It didn’t belong in a douchebag’s bathroom,” I said. “That was just wrong. It needs to be with someone who loves it. Andreo and I hope you’ll keep it, Luca, and will it to a museum as part of your estate years from now. It hasn’t had an owner who truly appreciates it in a long time, and it deserves that before it goes on public display.”

“I just told you about this once, a long time ago,” Luca said, his wide eyes meeting mine. “I didn’t even name the movie star who owned it. How on earth did you track it down?”

“It wasn’t too hard,” Andreo said.

As Josh and Zachary got up and came over to take a look at the painting, Luca asked his brother, “How could you afford this? It must have wiped you out financially.”

“Actually, I got a hell of a deal on it. That movie star you bought it for, Jason Jax, was strapped for cash. He’s on his way to prison. There’s some huge scandal, I didn’t catch the details,” Andreo told him. “I got it for pennies on the dollar, compared to what you paid for it.”

“That’s crazy! How could he let it go for that?” Luca asked.

His brother just shrugged and said, “Lawyers are expensive, and Jax wasn’t the type to save for a rainy day. I paid him cash, and he seemed glad to get it.”

“That’s really cool,” Josh said, indicating the little canvas. “Who’s the artist? I can’t quite make out the signature.”

“Paul Cezanne,” Luca told him. “He was French, and one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. He was the greatest of the post-impressionists, in my opinion. This is one of his later works, you can tell at a glance by the vibrant colors. His earlier paintings were much darker.” Luca launched into an art lesson as Zachary and Josh paid close attention. He was animated and passionate, and it was a joy to watch him.

After a while, Luca cut himself off and got to his feet, then embraced Andreo and me. “Thank you. I can’t even tell you what this means to me.”

“There’s no need to tell us,” Andreo said. “It’s written all over your face.”

He stared at the canvas for another long moment and shook his head, as if in disbelief. Finally Luca said, “We should get back to the party, Nana’s done so much to make it special. Now this, on top of an already perfect evening! I’m overwhelmed.”

Josh and Zachary elected to remain where we found them, and the rest of us ventured back into the chaos. Luca hugged the painting to his chest, and every time someone asked him about it, he’d show them the canvas and give them a mini history lesson. After a while I asked him, “Why aren’t you teaching art history? I’ve never seen someone so passionate about a subject. You should be inspiring the next generation.”

“It’s an idea,” he said. “I might look into it, actually.”

We ran into Dante and Charlie a few minutes later. They wished Luca a happy birthday, and then Dante turned to Andreo and said, “Thank you,” as he shook his hand.

“For what?” I asked.

“Andreo sent a gift to my office,” Dante said. “Two cases of very nice Italian wine.”

“I owed you that,” Andreo said with a rueful grin. “The part I left out about our family’s feud was that Vido Natori was absolutely guilty of the theft your ancestor accused him of. They aren’t the same two cases, of course. Nonetheless, I felt I should make amends.”

“I appreciate the gesture,” Dante said. “I brought a few bottles along so we could drink a toast to your brother on his birthday. It seemed like something that should be shared.”

Sometime later, we were told to come out to the street in front of Nana’s house. My grandmother and Jessie lined up on the sidewalk with us and the rest of the party-goers, and she said, “Well, what do we have here?” Jessie didn’t answer, but the fact that he was grinning and had started recording with his phone suggested he might be in on whatever was about to happen.

I muttered, “Oh no,” when I saw that a couple large ramps were set up in the middle of the street. In between them was Nana’s rainbow limo. A man quickly wheeled in some sort of big, black billboard and positioned it as a backdrop behind the car. Another man in a white jumpsuit ran forward and held a torch to a huge hoop beside one of the ramps, which lit up the night when it ignited. I looked around for the inevitable arrival of the SFPD while a lot of Nana’s neighbors came outside to witness the spectacle.

A few more men in jumpsuits were cordoning off the block on both ends with rope, and as rock music started blasting from a couple big speakers, the rope to our far right was dropped to the ground. A roaring engine could be heard down the block, and after a moment, Ollie shot into view on a motorcycle. He was wearing a rainbow jumpsuit and crash helmet, and fireworks were blasting out of the back of the bike.

As he hit the top of the first ramp, the black billboard crackled and sparked, and the words ‘Marry Me Stana’ were spelled out in hundreds of sparklers. Beside me, my grandmother exclaimed, “Holy shit!”

Ollie sailed over the limo easily, and after he coasted down the second ramp, he whipped the bike around in a tight arc and drove up to Nana. “What do you say, hot stuff?” he asked her, producing a jeweler’s box from the pocket of his jumpsuit and opening it to reveal a diamond ring. He unhooked a pink crash helmet from the back of the bike and held it out as well.

“What’re you, nuts? We’ve only known each other a short time!” Nana said.

“Yeah, but so what? Life is short, especially at my age. I love you, Stana Dombruso, and what time I got left I want to spend it with you.” Sirens could be heard in the distance. As Nana stared at him, his pit crew rolled away the ramps and billboard, and pulled the limo back into the driveway.

The police were getting closer by the moment, and finally Nana tossed aside the top hat and put on the crash helmet. She snatched the little velvet box and climbed onto the back of the motorcycle as she said, “I love you too, Olivio Caravetti. Let’s do this thing!” The two of them kissed before the bike shot forward and my grandmother and her fiancé raced into the night.

*****

Luca and I were among the last to leave the party, several hours later. Nana and Ollie had returned to the celebration eventually, no worse for wear. I wasn’t sure if they’d ended up getting chased by the police because they were pretty vague when I asked them, but they both seemed exhilarated. Maybe that was because of their pending nuptials though, which Nana had already started planning.

It was a ten-minute walk from Nana’s house to the apartment we were renting month-to-month until we knew where medical school would take us. Luca pulled up the collar of my wool overcoat against the cold, kissed my forehead and took my gloved hand in his before we started walking. The Cezanne was right where it had been all night, hugged protectively to his chest.

When we got home, he positioned it on the fireplace mantel, next to the painting of the two dancers which he’d given me in Viladembursa. “That’s the start of a damn fine art collection,” I told him as we stood back to admire the canvases.

“We should keep collecting,” he said, taking my hand. “I spent so many years building collections for other people, and it would make me happy to do the same for you and me.”

“Are you going to hold on to the Cezanne?”

“It’ll eventually end up in a museum, no question. That’s where it belongs. But I’m just going to indulge myself for a little while and love it every day it’s mine.”