CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (38 page)

For a moment,
everything stood still in her red-cheeked embarrassment and naughty heavy
breathing.  Then the echo of her charming host’s voice broke through the
silence.  “Hey there!”  She was carrying yet another tray of sweets.  “Would
you stop flirting with my guest?  You should remember that if it weren’t for
her, I would have left you outside to rot,” she reproached him good-naturedly.

 Eve was the
perfect Baroque image of the rebellious angel of light, with her porcelain skin
and dark eye makeup that she put on first thing in the morning.  Unlike what
Marika had believed, Eve wasn’t a senior in high school like the other members
of the band.  She had dropped out at age 16 and lived on her own, renting this
remodeled loft for more than two years now, and paying for it through odd jobs
that made up for her meager earnings as lead singer for the band.

Federico had
filled her in on Eve’s biography, justifying his earlier story this way: “
I
know that when we met I told you we were four guys from Marostica in their
senior years... but we don’t go around gossiping about each other to everyone. 
What she does is her business, right?
”

Right!  And after
all, it’s not like she had never gone to high school... so it was really a
half-truth in the end.

Eve’s life could
be summed up through a few, difficult episodes.  She had been very young when
her parents split up.  Her mother abandoned her and returned to London, where
she was from, and Eve had had a complicated and conflictual relationship with
her father.  At sixteen, with nothing in her pockets but dreams, she left home
and set out on her own.

“What on earth
made you think that you could just show up at my house at 9 in the morning?” 
This bewitching Lolita, more Goth and less adolescent than the original,
lowered herself onto a wrought iron chair between her long-time friend and her
new guest.  “Don’t you know that Saturday is sacred to me?” she continued,
stretching out her back.  “We were up really late last night, and you
....
”

“OK, I got it!” 
She quit nagging.  “I humbly ask your forgiveness.”  Federico smiled at Marika
as he lifted himself catlike from a folding chair.  “So... were you really out
that late?” he asked, slightly jealous.  He took a step towards Eve.  “Where
did you go?”

“Fede!”  She
rapped his knuckles with the flat of her hand.  “Cut that out.  Don’t worry, we
were here all night talking about nothing but you.”

“Ah.”  He ruffled
his unkempt, straightened hair.  “And is that a good thing?”

The girls burst
out laughing at an inside joke, making fun of him.

“OK, that’s
enough, I get it.  You’re women... enough said.”  He retreated due to numerical
inferiority.  “But at least I didn’t show up this morning without an offering
....
”  He had
brought a bag of double-chocolate croissants from the pastry shop.  “I think I
at least deserve your forgiveness.”  He grabbed Eve and sat her down on his
lap.

“OK, fine.  We
forgive you.”  She squirmed around to get away from his grasp, landing a slap
to his head while doing so.  “Now stop acting like a jerk.”

Marika watched
how comfortable they were with each other not without a sense of longing for
the past and a hollow feeling in her stomach: that magical and ancestral dance
brought her mind violently back to Matteo, who, unbeknownst to her, was at that
very moment just about to introduce himself to the roaring crowd at Pellico
High.  “Good morning everyone!”  He felt strangely at ease there at the center
of the court with a microphone in his hand.  “My name is Matteo Zovigo and I’m
here today to
....
”

The roar of the
crowd interrupted him, rendering homage to his glory and honor in the eyes of
the local population.  Silence only returned after a stern warning from the
principal.

When order was
reestablished, Matteo read a brief speech that had been provided for him by the
gym teacher about the benefits of sports for adolescent growth both physically
and mentally.  He then opened the floor to questions about
San Carlo
,
Milan, practicing with a professional team, fashion models, and – above all – his
private life.

He was dressed in
jeans and his
Brenta Soccer Club
jersey – number 10 – and spoke only in
first person, carefully avoiding all reference to the
San Carlo
organization and obviously not wearing his new
white and blue
uniform
since he had no permission to do so.  He was already running a huge risk by
being there and it might cost him his place at
San Carlo
, so despite
everyone’s desire to see him in the uniform of a Serie A club, he wisely had
left it behind in Milan.

A thin blonde
sitting in the front row raised her hand shyly to ask a question.  “Do you have
a girlfriend?” she asked, her voice shaking and her fluorescent fingernail
polish scratching nervously against her jeans.

The whole crowd
laughed at her, and her face blushed a deep vermilion.  “Do you have a back-up
question?” Matteo said, smiling kindly as the crowd noise dwindled.  “That’s
the answer I would have given you just one month ago, but I’m actually glad you
asked me that today.”  He looked gently at the blonde girl before meeting eyes
with Lucrezia, who was puffing herself up like a proud peacock.  “It gives me
the chance to tell you all why I came here.”  The gym fell strangely silent as
people wondered what might be coming next.  “What’s everybody been saying about
me?”  He was testing the waters.  “Come on, I’m asking for your help, because I
know that everyone here knows all the rumors.”

“They say you’ve
got a girlfriend,” someone called out from the safety of the masses.  “Yeah,”
came an echo from the top rows, “a chick from Pellico High.”  They were
starting to lose their inhibitions.  “11th grade!”  Unbelievable... the gossip
machine was out of control if they all knew even which school and grade
Lucrezia attended.

“Wrong!”  His
voice bellowed through the rafters.  “I didn’t have a girlfriend when I left,
and I don’t have one now,” he confessed.  “Right or wrong, all of us guys go
for the easy girls who want nothing special from us,” he said, referring to the
males in the audience, “and the same goes for all of you girls.”  He tried not
to step too far out of line so as to avoid being cut off by the principal, who
was already looking uncomfortable.  “And I was no better.”  The fact that he
used the past tense only served to raise the level of curiosity.  “Whoever
tells you that she is my girlfriend is quite simply lying to you.”  Everyone
turned with his own gaze, which was fixed on Lucrezia.  “But oh well.”  He
shrugged his shoulders.  “That wouldn’t be such a big deal.  But there’s more.”

You could hear a
pin drop.

“You all know the
rumors involving a girl from this school, a girl who is very important to me.” 
Carlotta suddenly felt her eyes swell with tears as she listened to Matteo’s
words.  “But I don’t know how many of you actually know her.  But I’m certain
that I know her better than anyone else in this room.”

Not even the most
squalid mind was tempted to read more into those words than the simple truth.

“You can’t find a
single person, neither here nor anywhere, who can honestly say that he saw
those videos or photos that have been so talked about, because they don’t
exist!  And I’m disgusted by the way that everyone has let themselves believe
the stories created by envious people who aren’t even worthy of pronouncing her
name.”  He cleared his voice: “Marika Vendramini has never done anything of the
kind, neither for me nor for anyone else.  She doesn’t need to.”

The teenagers in
the stands began to shift about uncomfortably in their seats, whispering to
their neighbors.  “We should have known it was just a prank.  It was too
ridiculous to be true.”  Other comments included, “She’s too prudish for
sexting,” and “She’s not slutty enough for a webcam.”  They began to seriously
doubt the information that had traveled on the wind from one school to
another and silently criticized themselves for having been overly
thoughtless. “We were mean to her.  We never should have done those things.” 
Carlotta practically
crushed
Dario’s hand in hers from all of the emotions racing through her as she
listened to Matteo defend her cousin.

“But if you feel
the need to blame someone,” he
continued, raising his
tone, “blame someone who would be capable of betraying you if it served their
interests... or just take it out on me!”  He slapped his hands to his chest. 
“You have one of the guilty parties here in front of you.  Because I’m the one
who was trying to hook up with Marika
, not the other way around.”  He lowered his eyes.  “But I wasn’t trying
to fool anyone
....
”  His irregular breathing was amplified through the
entire building.  “No one but me,” he whispered.  “Anyway,” he continued,
deciding to bring everything to a close now that the principal had joined him
at his side, “in conclusion, I want to wish you all the fortune never to end up
the butt of everyone’s joke, marginalized and hurt by idiots and their rumors,
because there is nothing worse at our age than being pushed away,
discriminated, and isolated by the very people who just days before you
considered friends, classmates, and confidantes.”

The moral slap to the collective
consciousness reduced everything to silence again, until from somewhere within
the crowd came the first timid applause, which quickly grew into a standing
ovation from the entire audience, Dr. Cazzaniga the first among them. 
“Attaboy, Zovigo, way to go!” was heard from all parts of the gym.

“OK.”  He swallowed down his emotions,
which were making his muscles shake, and threw away the last scraps of his
anger.  “Let’s have some fun!”  Matteo handed the microphone to the principal
and headed toward the locker room to change into the blue and gold shorts of
Brenta
.

“Yeah!”  The guys
couldn’t wait to take the court against a semi-professional, and practically
all of the girls had already fallen in love with him and what he had just done.

The only person
who wanted to have nothing to do with it was Marika herself, who had imposed a
misty curtain between her past and her present in order to survive the unwanted
attentions from strangers and to gradually distance herself from Matteo.  And
so, while Matteo was publicly declaring his feelings in Lonigo, she was
drifting along obliviously in the comfort of her host’s home, drinking a glass
of water from the River Lethe that erased all of her memories.

“You haven’t
joined the group on WhatsApp in ages,” Federico was saying, surfing the web
while he waited patiently for the girls to finish getting ready.  “Marika!” he
called to get her attention as she paced back and forth through the apartment. 
“You’ve been signed off all month.”

“And why should
you care?”  Marika stuck her head through a doorway with a flirty smile on her
face.  She enjoyed this game with Federico, letting him pursue her, feeling his
eyes devour her while she pretended to be looking the other way.  “You been
looking for me?”

“You know I’m
always looking for you.”  He stared at her, defeated.

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed, blaming herself for
not taking his emotions seriously enough.  She didn’t want to hurt him, even
though everything he did was flattering.  “I had to abandon the internet.  Too
much trash.”  She pinched her nose.  “That same old story.”

 “What story?”  Eve butted in, sidling up
to Federico to spy on his touchscreen.  “Oh yeah, the legend of the Cam Girl of
Berici Hills,” she said, irreverently.

“Just drop it.”  Marika didn’t appreciate
Eve’s making light of the situation.  “It’s bad enough without having to hear
any more about it.”

“I know, I heard the whole story, I’m
sorry,” she said, still snickering.  “But you have to admit it’s pretty
entertaining!”  She winked at Federico, who was shaking his head and kicking
himself for having told Eve about it.

“I don’t see what’s
so funny about it,” Marika lashed out, annoyed.  There had been nothing nice
about having to take refuge from the world that she had always known and loved.

“I admit, I’ve
thought about doing it myself once in a while, though never too seriously.” 
The temptation of easy money.  “It’s better than working for two fucking euros
an hour in a shitty call center!”

“I don’t follow
you.”  The conversation was taking a turn that she didn’t appreciate.  “I never
considered putting myself up for sale that way.”

“What big words!” 
Eve didn’t back down, despite Federico’s obvious attempts to get her to drop
the subject.

“What big words
my ass!”  Marika wanted to make things crystal clear.  “I’m not judging anyone,
but how much do you really earn by selling your self-respect?”  Her statement
echoed through the apartment, interrupted only by the chirping of Eve’s
canary.  “Just enough to cover up a body that you’re ashamed of.”

“Well, it’s easy
to talk when you’ve got your ass covered by mommy and daddy,” Eve replied.

“Eve, cut it
out!  That’s going too far.”  Federico openly disapproved, cutting her off.  “And
shut your big mouth!”