CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (21 page)

Dario continued to look at him with one
eyebrow raised.

“Don’t get me wrong.  Wearing the
San
Carlo
white and blue
is a dream that I’m going to make real.  But I
can’t be with her, not right now.”

“Why not?”  Dario sat down on Carlotta’s
parked scooter.  “Don’t you think you are strong enough, or in love enough, to
be faithful?  Or do you just want to cut all of your ties to your past?”  He
shrugged his shoulders.  “Ahh, who am I to judge you?  No doubt everything is
different in Milan.”

“You know that’s not it.”  Matteo was
trying to put his most intimate doubts into words.  “What I feel for her is
real, OK?”

“You sure?”

“More than sure.”  He looked him in the
eyes.

“Then what on earth is your problem, boy?”

“Our relationship would be doomed from the
start,” he said emotionally.

“What are you talking about?”

“I would never be around, and she would
always be alone.  Just think if
San Carlo
decided to loan me out to a
team in France, or Spain!  I would only make her suffer, and I don’t want to
put her through that.  The mere thought of it pains me.”

“So it’s better to just let it all go. 
You’re just afraid of loving her.”

“It’s better than disappearing every time
she would like me to be near.”  His voice was heavy.  “She would end up hating
me, and nothing would remain of what we once were for each other.”

Dario clapped his hands facetiously.  “Congratulations! 
You sound like you actually believe all of that bullshit.”

“Fucking hell,” he exclaimed, exhausted.  “I
just don’t want to hurt her.  Is that so hard to understand?”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that she’s
thrilled about the way you are behaving now.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s different.  So
far, there’s never really been anything between us.”  He bit his lower lip,
splitting it.  “At least, nothing....”

“Nothing...?”

“Nothing.  Period.”

“OK... I get it.”

“Wasn’t that hard was it?”  Matteo tried
to end this episode of
Loveline
by raising his eyebrows and clapping his
hands once.  “Anyway, I’m sure that Marika feels the same way,” he said, lying
to himself.

“Whatever you say,” Dario commented,
openly skeptical.  “But I think it’s all an act just to protect yourself from
suffering, nothing more than an invisible shield.  No pain, no chance of
failure... but no gain either.”

“Maybe.”  He felt like he was suffocating
as he realized that he was on the edge of saying goodbye to her forever.

“All relationships are difficult, and if
you are truly in love, you run the risk of getting hurt.  But you can’t let the
fear of that keep you from moving forward.”

“It’s like nothing else matters to me,
like it all doesn’t make any sense.”  Matteo’s eyes had become glazed, and his
body limp.  “But I can’t stay here.”  He was speaking from the heart.  “I can’t
refuse
San Carlo
’s offer.  I have to go.” 
He had to do it!
  He
had to do it for his father, who had believed in him even when he doubted
himself; he had to do it for his family, who finally had a chance for glory
after years of sacrifice; he had to do it for his coach, who had dreamed of
this, and for Ferdinando, who had given his word for him.  But more than
anything, he had to do it for himself.

“Of course you have to go!”  Dario looked
like he had been shot.  “Marika never asked you to stay, did she?”

“Marika, no.  But I....”

“I won’t listen to this.”  Dario stopped
him before he could convince himself of any foolishness.  “This is your shot,
and I won’t let you screw it up.”

“Well then,” he concluded in frustration, “leave
me my invisible shield.”

“OK.  I guess you’re right.”  He glanced
toward the rest of the crew.  “And Lucrezia?  What is she in all this?”

“Lucrezia is nothing.”  Everything in his
world revolved around another name.  “I can’t concentrate on what I have to do
if my head is in another place.”

“You walk into battle alone, eh?”  Dario
was his second-in-command, his lieutenant.

“Yeah, something like that,” Matteo
nodded.  He knew he couldn’t perform the way he needed to in Milan if he was
constantly thinking about the one he loved.

“I gotta be honest with you,” Dario said,
bouncing his leg against the scooter’s kickstand.  “I was disappointed in you. 
I thought you were being an egotistical, superficial dickhead.”

“Don’t pull your punches!” Matteo replied
sarcastically.

“But I was wrong.”  He stuck a fist out at
him.  “I owe you an apology.”

A dark shadow of rain clouds rolled in
over
The Rook
, bringing silence along with it.  Only the wind was heard,
shaking the chestnut trees, while the last ray of sunlight had disappeared
behind the stately lines of the battlements.  Matteo snapped shut the collar of
his leather jacket, ready to leave.

“But why did you have to go and kiss
Lucrezia in front of everyone, especially in front of Marika?”  He wanted an
answer, unable to make sense of Matteo’s words compared to his actions.

Matteo turned back toward his friend.  “Let’s
just say that I wasn’t exactly all there at that moment, and seeing her
together with Marcello burned the few brain cells I had left.”

“You may have been hammered, but you
should have known that she’s not interested in that idiot.”  Dario knew this to
be true, and had gotten confirmation of it from Carlotta.

“I know, and I don’t think I even really
believed it at the time.”  He threw his arms up in resignation.  “You know,
something was getting started between us....”  He lowered his head and kicked
about the stones in the parking lot, looking for answers to his unresolved
questions.  “Or maybe something had always been there, I don’t know.  But she
wouldn’t understand all of the things I’m telling you, not even if I said them
to her face.  Seeing me with Lucrezia was the easiest, and least painful way
for our relationship to end.  I look like an asshole, and she has someone to
blame.  In the end, she’ll convince herself that I wasn’t worth having anyway.”

“And Marcello?”  Dario now locked on to
the thorniest question, like a bloodhound.  Carlotta would have been proud of
him.

“What about Marcello?”  Matteo pricked up
his ears, and automatically looked about to see where he was.

“You said yourself that he wants to hook up
with Marika.”

“He won’t.  Not in this lifetime, at
least.”  He changed his mind, and instead of going toward his car, walked back
toward the rest of the guys.

“You’re out of the picture!”  Dario
quickly tried to convince Matteo not to carry out whatever he was thinking.  “You
can’t get involved.”

“I just want to talk to him, nothing more.” 
Matteo turned his back on Dario.  “Obviously, Marika can’t know anything about
it.  Keep your mouth shut, especially with Carlotta.  I’m counting on you.”

Marcello was in the midst of retelling his
adventures from Mardi Gras, with the inevitable exaggerations, of course.  He
had declared that his new nickname from now on should be
Hook
.

“I still don’t get why you’re wasting so
much time on her?”  Valerio was a big fan, in theory and in practice, of the
quickie.  “She’s not worth the effort.  Just get in there and get out!”

“All in good time,” Marcello grinned at
him, extolling patience.  “I’m not used to girls who are still virgins at 18.”

“Ah-hah!  I get you,” Valerio laughed,
enjoying himself.  “You want to be the first.”

“Why not?”  Marcello said.  “That would be
a first for me too.”

“All hail Bassani!”  Valerio smacked him
hard on his upper back.  “It’s certainly worth trying.  Soon you can qualify for
a PhD in Fuckology.  Marcello, you are a truly deep man!”

“As deep as a latrine,” came a dry and
unfriendly voice from behind them.  “So deep that I can’t even understand what
you are trying to get at,” he growled, speaking to the very person who couldn’t
wait to go into further detail.

“Oh I think you understood just fine,”
Marcello said, amused.

“Yeah?”  Matteo squared his shoulders at
Marcello in such a way as to block his view of Marika,  about 50 feet away.  “Don’t
look at her, look at me!”  Matteo stared at him.  “Forget about it!”

“Who’s going to make me?”  He looked
around in a pantomime of searching.  “You?”

“You don’t give a crap about her.”  Matteo
was disgusted.  “All you want is a bit of pathetic retaliation on me.  You’re
still pissed about
San Carlo
, and so you’re going to hurt her to get
back at me.”  He took a step closer.  “What kind of a man are you?”

“You underestimate her,” Marcello replied,
trying to strike where he was vulnerable.

“Leave Marika alone!”  He was controlling
his breathing in an attempt to control his emotions.  Not even his voice
betrayed him.  “She’s not the right girl for you.”

“Look who’s talking!  Shouldn’t you be
worrying about the girl you banged the other night?” he said.  “It seems like
you’re going in for the used car market now.”

“That’s right,” Matteo said coldly.  “Why
don’t you do the same?”

“Oh, stop your worrying.  She’s going to
love it.”  He made an unmistakable gesture with his forearm.  “Just wait and
see.”

Matteo lost his self-control at that
squalid suggestion.  “What’s your fucking problem Bassani?”  He grabbed him by
the lapels and shoved him back against a parked car.

“You!” he yelled.  “You’re my problem!” 
He raged against Matteo, letting loose all of the venom in his body and soul. 
The shoving turned quickly into full-out punches as the two launched into each
other, landing blows to the face, the stomach, to the groin.

It took the efforts of everyone present to
pull them away from each other, getting in between and receiving a few punches
themselves for their labors.  The insults kept flying.

“Go fuck yourself, Zovigo.  Just fuck off!” 
Marcello was like a caged tiger, held back by Valerio.  He spit in Matteo’s
direction without hitting him as the others dragged him away.

Dario had gotten involved too, holding up
Matteo.  “Get back!” he ordered him.  “Don’t react!  Let it drop.”

As the minutes passed, the signs of their
battle became more and more evident, as bruises began to blacken and blood
began to coagulated.

Lucrezia flew to Matteo’s side like
Florence Nightingale, using her expert hands to examine every inch of him.  “Babe,
calm down.  Please calm down.  What’s the matter with you?”  She was an expert
at saying the wrong thing.  “You’re not jealous of me and Marcello, are you?”

As her words revealed, the girls of the
crew had not heard a word of the argument that led to the fight, and no one had
any intention of correcting Lucrezia, no matter how much she insisted on
knowing the  truth.

Even Marika couldn’t understand why this
had happened.  She stayed in the background, suppressing that blind impulse
that drew her towards him.  She sadly realized that she could never embrace him
tightly against her body and make sure that he was OK... or make sure that he
hadn’t really done all of this for Lucrezia.

Matteo looked at her with his gorgeous,
tragic eyes, while his personal nurse suffocated him under her attentions.

Why did he look at her like that?  What
sense could it possibly make to want her while he was in the arms of another?

“Would you give it a rest?” Dario was
saying to Lucrezia.  “Give him some space.”  He looked at Matteo.  “How are you
doing, bro?”  He helped him up from the ground, where he had sunk after the
adrenaline rush left him.  “Nothing too bad, but you’ve got a cut above your
eyebrow that’s going to need stitches.  I’ll drive you to the ER.”

“No way,” he coughed.

“Yes way.”  He forced Matteo into his car
and drove off.

“Don’t worry about him,” Carlotta said to
Marika, who had remained glued to her place, watching them peel away.  “They
were pulled apart almost instantly, so no serious damage done.  Just a couple
of cuts they need to sew up.  Nothing broken.”  She downplayed the whole thing.

“Uh-huh,” Marika murmured, following her
cousin down the path of broken pavement.

And yet another inebriated and senseless
day had reached its end.  The traffic started to get heavier as people came
home from work, and the streetlights cast a dull afterglow on the roads.

The first raindrops hit the arid ground,
and the dank smell of moss rose into the air.  A frigid wind came rushing down
the Berici Hills, saying:
When a boy becomes a man, he must let go of one
life in order to learn a new one.  Change can cause so much confusion!

Until a new balance is reached.

SCREAM IN THE SILENCE

After the endless
rains and overcast weather of February, there was finally a first, timid ray of
sun in early March, and the air began to feel slightly warmer, carrying with it
a scented, piney smell.

When the clouds head over the hills,
grab your hoe and get into the fields!
  The countryside was full of
proverbs that dictated a farmer’s life, and which had taken form of popular songs
that were handed down from generation to generation.  The rhythms of
agricultural life were always the same. 
A dry March and an April with rain,
bring smiles to the face of a farmer again!
  Marika’s grandmother,
custodian of popular wisdom, was humming a field song while she knitted a
sweater under the porch, her hair done up in rollers.

For many crops, like sunflowers and oats,
this was the sowing period, whereas for those fields where wheat and barley had
grown, it was time for rolling.  A good harvest depended on inconstant but mild
weather – an unexpected frost or a heavy storm could wipe out the seedlings.

In the northern hemisphere, March is the
month of the spring equinox, when daylight and darkness are equal, and when
daylight savings time begins.  Thirty-one days that grow steadily longer and
more mercurial, days dedicated to St. Patrick and to women.

It’s the time when animals awaken from
hibernation, like the dormouse, or from winter lethargy, like the red fox and
the weasel.  In the Fimon lake basin, the gray heron and the little egret
reappeared, and, flying above against the pastel blue of the sky, the honey
buzzard.  And then there was the European bee-eater, with its red eyes and
many-colored feathers, which made its nest in an abandoned quarry near
Orgiano.  And the blackcap, the great tit, the goldfinch.

At dawn, Ferdinando had gone down to the
wine cellars, like he did every single day of the year.  This building, which
had been constructed so as to blend in harmoniously with the terraced land of
grapes and orchards, housed all of the modern enological machinery that their
winery needed.  There was an aging room, dug straight into the chalky rock,
which had more than 90 casks between 60-gallon barriques and 130-gallon
tonneaux, and offices and a large, sunny, tasting room on the upper floor.

Marika, curled up on a wicker armchair on
the porch, was helping her grandmother snap the ends off of green beans for
lunch.  In less than a month, Matteo would be leaving for
San Carlo
, and
the hours droned by in an everlasting procession of nothing.

“You’re not going out with your friends
today?” Grandma Adele asked, leaning over to pick up her cane.

“They’re busy,” Marika murmured, not even
looking up from her overflowing bowl of vegetables.

“It’s been a while since that handsome boy
with the blue eyes came over....”

“That handsome boy with the blue eyes is
hanging out with other people now,” she replied, vigorously tearing off a stem.

The quick-sighted old lady got up from her
chair, taking the beans with her.  “
Love without travail quickly grows
stale,
” she toned.

“Arggggh.”  Marika twisted herself up like
a snake.  “What love are you talking about, Grandma?”

A bit later, a familiar voice called out
from the French windows that opened onto the back yard.  “Anyone home?” 
Carlotta’s face popped out from the kitchen, waving hi at her grandmother, who
was cooking at the outdoor stove.  “Here I am, your favorite granddaughter!” 
She gave her a kiss.  “The one who appreciates you the most!” 
Ass-kisser!
 
“We’re going to take a quick walk before lunch.  And faster than a
velociraptor, she grabbed her cousin, lifted her from the seat where she was
trying to hide, and pulled her off.

“Quit it, Carlotta, I don’t feel like it,”
she begged, dragging her feet.

But it was useless arguing with Carlotta,
and Marika knew it; ten minutes later they were in the center of town,
strolling the streets.

A herd of people pushed and shoved their
way past the makeshift stalls of the Saturday market, eyeing pieces of
furniture from the 1700s, books from the 1500s, antique coins, paintings,
engravings, vinyl records, comics, and a thousand other collectables.  A
telephone rang, like a xylophone from the past.  “
But you didn’t have to cut
me off. Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing. And I don’t
even need your love. But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
....”

Marika’s hand went immediately to her jeans
pocket, hoping that it was her smartphone making that sound.

“Hello?” answered an elderly woman,
carrying a beagle pup with large eyes and a damp nose in her arms.  “Oh, hi
Liliana.”

“Very chic for an old bag,” Carlotta said
snidely, trying to distract Marika.  But it was no use; her mood thermometer
kept plunging further and further toward absolute zero.  “We haven’t seen
Matteo around since that day...” she hazarded.

It was not an off-handed comment. 
Carlotta well knew that that song,
Somebody That I Used To Know
by
Gotye, was the ringtone that Marika had chosen for calls from Matteo.  They
were also the very words that she would have liked to scream in his face, even
if she did still need his love.

“To make up for it, though, he’s getting
tagged all over the place on Facebook!”  Carlotta was in desperate need of
getting an abacus and learning to count to three before saying the first thing
that came into her mind.

“That’s impossible,” Marika said, refusing
to believe it.  “He doesn’t have a Facebook account.”

“Duh, it’s a free tag,” her cousin said,
rolling her eyes.  “Careful, Marika, that old woman’s probably more tech savvy
than you are.”

“It makes no difference.  I don’t care how
much he gets tagged on Facebook, or even if he’s spending all of his spare time
with Lucrezia.”  She hunkered down inside a trench of indifference.

“Tagged is tagged, no matter what you
think,” Carlotta said, already daydreaming about the updates she was going to
make to her profile.  “But I’m pretty sure he’s not going out with Lucrezia.”

“Well I certainly don’t know anything
about it,” she said, rubbing her tensed shoulders.

“Dario said that Matteo keeps going back
and forth to Milan for medical check-ups, and as of yesterday, he’s there for
his first official meeting with club officials.”

“I’m thrilled for him.”  Marika sped up.

“Really?  You don’t look it.”

“OK, I’m not exactly jumping for joy, if
that’s what you mean, but deep down, I know he deserves this chance.”

“Yeah, I guess.  He’s put a lot of hard work
into it.”

“Not to mention talent.”  Marika strolled
distractedly through the stalls.  “He’s the best.”

“Oh, I completely forgot!”  Carlotta’s
eyes sparkled at her news.  “This afternoon there’s going to be a three team mini-tournament
at the Pigafetta Stadium in celebration of the one-hundred year anniversary of
the founding of the
Brenta Soccer Club
.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“No wonder!  You haven’t come to the
stadium in ages,” she hotly reprimanded Marika.

“I’ve been busy.”  Marika thumbed through
an 1895 first edition Fogazzaro’s masterpiece,
The Patriot
.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said doubtfully.  “Anyway,
you’re making a mistake by not coming.  Any  given Saturday without fail he’s
there looking for you in the stands, and turns away disappointed when he can’t
find you.  It’s so romantic!”

“I’ve heard that one before,” she said,
tired of the half-truths and placebos everyone kept feeding her.  “You watch
too much TV, cuz.  It’s as addictive as Vicodin,” she warned, referring to the
painkiller that was the bane of Dr. House.  “I prescribe an immediate reduction
in soap operas and talk shows, plus a one-month fast from reality shows.”  She
winked.  “And so long as we’re at it, a review of film history: the movie is
called
Any Given Sunday
, not Saturday.”

“Very funny!”  Her cousin smiled
sarcastically.  “Anyway, if he’s in Milan, he won’t be there today.”

“And so?”

“And so, you can go!  Please!  Pretty
please!  They invited
Dogado
and
Subiolo
to play with them.” 
Carlotta was all revved up and looked at Marika hopefully.

“
Subiolo
?  They’re in
second-to-last place!  Why didn’t they ask
Cambrai
to come?”

“Maybe because they want to be sure of
winning at least one game, seeing as how Matteo isn’t playing....”  She bit her
tongue.  “Oops, sorry.  I didn’t mean to say that.”

“It’s OK.”  With him on the field, there
would have been no need to fix the matches.  “I suppose winning is the best way
to celebrate.”

“So it’s on?”  She was shaking Marika’s
upper arm vigorously in anticipation.

“I don’t know, I’ve got to study for
Monday.”  She was flailing around for a decent excuse.  “OK, fine, we’ll go.” 
Her words were barely audible in fear that this momentary lapse might later
hurt her.  “Why not?”

“Awesome!  I’ve missed you,” she said
sweetly, hugging her.

When the clock towers struck one, they
hurried home on their scooter, belting out the old singles by
Lost
, a
teen band from Vicenza that had emerged on the scene thanks to iTunes and
MySpace.

“Marika!” Carlotta yelled to make herself
heard over the noise of the wind.

“What?”  The reply was equally loud.

“We just
have
to ask the principal
for permission to have
Lost
come to school one day.  It would be
amazing!  I’d finally meet Walter Fontana... aaaaaahhh!”  In her excitement,
Carlotta momentarily lost control of her beat-up old scooter.

“But didn’t they break up?”  Marika
squeezed her cousin’s waist tightly to avoid falling off onto the rough
asphalt.  “Ah, who cares, we’ll invite them anyway!”  For the first time in
weeks, Marika felt like she didn’t need to fear the future.

The sun was high and warm in the clear,
light-blue sky, and the smells of springtime filled the air, carried on a light
wind that was blowing in from the east.  Spending some time in the sunlight
would do Marika good, stimulating the production of serotonin, the most
powerful antidepressant that the human body produces.

She felt as if she had a renewed lust for
life, and had resolved to enjoy that March Saturday without thinking about the
future or the past.  It was a new day.  From the stands, she recognized number
7 from the
Dogado
team on the field, the same guy who had mysteriously
dedicated his goal against
Brenta
to her.  She met up with the girls of
The
Rook
, and with the seasoned assistance of Carlotta and Dario managed to
avoid Lucrezia and Livia, pretending to not be thinking about Matteo’s absence.

She had almost forgotten how great it was
to surround herself with people.  Before leaving her house, she had spent
practically an hour in the bathroom getting ready.  She had dusted off some of
her designer clothes and rediscovered the pleasure of making herself up
according to the latest fashion.  It was time for her to shed her sweatsuit,
which was starting to stink of oppression and made her look dumpy, and to show
her face, still young and fresh, to the world.

It was as if she had thrown off all of the
stress of the past months.  She sang stadium chants, screamed at the ref, and
laughed her heart out until the very end, when the home team, as predicted, was
presented with the plaque that was awarded to the tournament winner.

Then the sun set.  The teams headed for
the locker rooms, young couples wandered off, groups of friends and fans formed
in front of the snack bar, and the temperature plunged.

Marika sat on her solitary scooter,
sipping a soda.  Bored.  She hadn’t thought that she would fall back into bad
habits, not on that day, but being alone with her thoughts made her inevitably
return to sweet memories that cut her to the quick, to disturbing memories, and
to reflections about a past that was now gone and could never be retrieved.

“Hey there.”

She jumped as a voice pulled her out from
her dark hole.

“Oh, sorry.  I didn’t mean to startle you.” 
It was that Nietzschean melody again.  “I finished early.  Can I keep you
company while I wait for the others?”  Standing in front of her was a guy with
an unconventional look about him: gray t-shirt with black patterns under an
overlarge graphite sweatshirt and tight jeans, almost feminine looking.  His
hair was uncombed and his bangs hung down irregularly over his forehead,
emo-style.  The only color in his otherwise gray appearance was the
burnt-auburn shade of his hair when the stadium lights hit it.

“Pull up a seat,” Marika said, pointing to
the curbside next to her.

“Thanks.”

News travels faster than the wind; it
flies from mouth to mouth sticking to everything in its path. 
Dogado
’s
number 7 already knew about the interest from a club in Serie A for one of
Brenta
’s
players.  He had also remembered the altercation he had had with that very
player months earlier.  And he had put two and two together.