CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (41 page)

Descending slowly from the top of Mount
Berico, Federico and Marika first arrived at the Villa Valmarana ai Nani, with
frescoes by Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, then they continued on down
a dirt path that went past high walls and thick vegetation before arriving in
front of a wrought iron gate through which La Rotonda could be seen, that
masterwork of genius and classicism, considered by many to be Palladio’s finest
building.

Villa Almerico Capra Valmarana – better
known as La Rotonda – is a perfectly symmetrical suburban residence; each of
its four sides has an identical facade based on the model of Roman temples.  At
the point where its sloping roofs come together, a slightly shortened dome
covers the circular central hall.  This palace-temple with its perfect
proportions and classical columns, surrounded by gardens and fields of grapes
vines and willow trees, was the ideal place to find inspiration and compose.

Immersed in the serenity of the Vicenza
countryside, they sat down on a low dry-stone wall in the shade of scented
branches. “I downloaded your live show at the
Exodus
from YouTube onto
my cell.”  Marika was trying to distract herself from Matteo and all of her
delirious obsessions about why he had done what he did.  “The video is good,
but not the audio.  If I give you my iPod, will you upload the songs onto it?”

“Sure.”  Federico smiled at her, as sweet
as ever.  “If you give me a second, I’ll let you listen to something now.”  He
got up to get his guitar out of the car.

“I could give you a hand with the lyrics,”
she called out behind him.

“Would you really help me?”  He arranged
the instrument on his right leg, turning the tuning pegs as he tried to get it
in tune.  “In that case, you’ll experience the same emotions I do when I play.” 
He stared at her with a new look in his eyes.

“
Ehm
!”  A
slight cough, or perhaps the first sign of suffocation, tempered the sexual
tension that his comment had created.  “So... can you play pop music with this
thing?” she digressed, picking at the strings with her fingers.

“What kind of pop
music?”  He reacted by crinkling his nose, as if he had just been hit by an
unpleasant odor.

“I don’t know.  Surprise me!”  She watched
him thump his hand on the soundboard, finding the right tempo, feeling flirty, then
posed a question she had wanted to ask him for a long time.  “You’re emo,” she
murmured, biting her lip, “right?”

“And what makes you think that?”  Federico
lifted his eyes to her face.  “My hair?”  He smiled.  “I’m just myself,” he
said, staring, “and my music is my life, my story.  You can call it emo if it
makes you emotional, or rock, or punk if you prefer.  It doesn’t make any
difference to me.”  He strummed the guitar.  “If you want, I’ll do an
improvised Lady Germanotta for you: 
Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah!  Roma, Roma-ma-maa.
” 
His voice emitted cacophonous sounds, much like a dishwasher with a squeaky
belt.    He detested that kind of music, and the result was awful.  “
GaGa-ooh-la-la! 
Want your bad romance
.”

“Nooo... you’re
hideous!”  Marika covered her ears so as not to submit to this torture.

“
I want your ugly, I want your disease... I want your everything as
long as it’s free....
” 
From drumming on pots and pans, he now turned to the nasal sounds of a
sopranino sax.  “
I want your love, love-love-love...
I want your love....
”

“Stop it, I’m
begging you,” she cried, trying to cover his mouth with her hand.  “It’s
ear-splitting.”

Federico placed
the palm of his hand over the vibrating cords, creating a thudding sound, like
faraway thunder, in order to change styles.  “
He’s not yet realized that by
giving away nothing but barefaced lies he’s come to wither and rot inside. But
she’s still looking for him into the void of his cold heart...
” he sang,
the lyrics to the new piece that he was trying to set to music.  “Do you like
it?”

She nodded,
enthralled.  “I got lost in the English there for a while,” not to mention the
mysterious mood that had come over him while he played it, a mystery that she
would have liked to understand better by understanding the meaning of his
words.  “Your pronunciation is perfect!  Ms. Baker would marry you on the spot
if she heard it.  Twice!”

Federico had learned Her Majesty’s
language very well after spending the previous summer working as a waiter in a
Whitechapel pub – one of those with frayed carpets and prints of the English
countryside on the walls, a polished mahogany bar, and the smell of beer and
barbeque sauce.  It was an experience that gave him the chance to hear the new,
underground sounds being created far from the centers of popular music.  “We
stayed at Eve’s mother’s place.  She lives in the East End with her new
boyfriend.”

Starting in the 16th century, the zone of
Whitechapel and its surrounding neighborhoods, to the east of the medieval
walls that surrounded the City, started to become “the other half” of London,
that part which would eventually become the East End, inhabited by the lower
classes and immigrants.  This was the working class area that extended along
the banks of the Thames, the infamous zone of depravity which would become
synonymous with crime and social decay: the London of Dickens, the  chaotic,
multicultural center of London laborers, which contrasted so starkly with the
rich western boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea.  Whitechapel, rendered famous
by the crimes of Jack the Ripper, so different from the rest of the city, has
now become home to artists and musicians, a land of a thousand cultures and of
wandering spirits.

 “That’s about all,” Federico said,
concluding his brief historical excursus, carefully constructed so as to
highlight the cultural and sociological facts and leave out the personal
details of his own experience... details that Marika was quite curious about,
but which she didn’t ask.  “Can we get together again tomorrow?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Marika agreed, thinking about
other things. “I mean, no, I can’t.”  She came back down to earth.  “I’ve got
dance class.”

“So Friday night?” he pleaded.

“OK, but only if
we can watch the season finale of
Friday Night Lights
... I’ve been putting
it off for ages.”  She pretended to throw a football.  “End zone, touchdown!”

“No problem. 
Teen
Wolf
or
FNL
, we can watch whatever you want.”  He smiled.  “So...
after the vampires, werewolves, supernatural creatures, ETs, and vigilantes,
you’re a big sports fan as well.”  He watched as she nodded yes.  “You aren’t
just one of those who only wants to look at the players, are you?”  He
immediately wished he hadn’t said it.

“Excuse me?  What
are you insinuating?”  She glared at him.  “I like sports, so what?  I don’t
see what you are getting at.”

“I misspoke,” he
said, biting his tongue and looking down at the ground.  “Forgive me.”

“And you?  Is
soccer all you care about?” she continued, still pissed over his comment.

“In truth, I care
about music.”  He tried to take her hand in his, upset that he had hurt her
with that juvenile allusion.  “I only play because my father was a star player
for
Dogado
for years when he was younger, and he’s now the assistant
coach.”

“You’re kidding!” 
Marika’s excitement returned, and she forgot all about the argument.  “So that
means he was sitting on the bench that game against
Brenta
, when you...!?” 
She felt suddenly uncomfortable talking about that moment, when he had so
enthusiastically celebrated his goal against the home team.  “By the way, I
never thanked you for dedicating it to me.  Thanks.”  She blushed.

Federico looked
at her lovingly, stroking her fingers.

“You have to tell me,” she said, letting
him caress her, “how did he react to your celebration?  Did he say anything to
you?  Was he angry?”

“When I showed him who you were,” he said,
removing his guitar from his lap so as to get closer to her, “he congratulated
me on having such good taste.”

“Shut up!”  She swallowed nervously.

“I swear.”  He couldn’t stop smiling at
her and touching her bare skin.

“Why did you do it?”  Marika was curious,
and longed for more attention.  “You didn’t even know me.”

“Because I have good taste.”  Federico
stood up and faced her.

“Good answer!” 
Salivation: level zero
.

“Good question.”  He stayed where he was,
practically pressed up against her.  “One of these days I’ll introduce the two
of you, and you can ask him yourself.”  All of a sudden, Federico’s face fell. 
“Even if he has excellent taste in women, he’s a real asshole in every other
way.”

“Don’t be vulgar.”  It saddened her to
hear him speak so.  “Why do you say that?”

“Because he cheated on my mother.”  He
pulled away from her and leaned against the wall.  “They got back together last
year after being separated for almost six months.”  His eyes darkened.  “My
father Giorgio, that genius, got drunk one night at the bar with his friends
and lost his head.”  He stared out into space, observing his memories.  “He’s
not a drunk, but he also doesn’t need a lot of encouragement to raise a glass,
especially not when he’s with his friends.  But then the woman, an immigrant
from Eastern Europe working here as a caretaker, started calling us at home...
who knows what that moron promised her!”  He shook his head.  “I’m not angry
with her.  She owes me nothing.”  His voice became ever more bitter as he told
the story.  “He’s the one I just can’t bring myself to forgive.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not knowing
what else to say.

“I don’t know how, but my mother was able
to do it, to forgive him.”  He sounded critical of her choice.  “God knows how.”

Marika hopped off the wall and hugged him
tightly to her, smothering him with her own heat, letting their breath speak
for them, while he fell deeper into her arms and thrust his hands into her
hair, embracing her even more intensely.

“Are you an only child?” she stuttered,
trying to find the right words that would soothe his pain.

“No, I’ve got an older brother who lives
in Padua with his girlfriend.  Three years now.”  He breathed in deeply, but
without moving a millimeter away from her.  “I was thinking of going there
myself, of enrolling in the university: art history, or musicology.  I’m still
not sure what I’m going to do with my life.”

“I want to go to the University of Padua
too, to law school.”  She smiled at him with all the sweetness she could
muster.  “In a year or so, we might be able to hang out together in the Caffè
Pedrocchi and talk about music all day.”

“That would be amazing.”  He hugged her
again, refusing to let her go.  “Let’s stay like this, just a little longer.” 
He held her close, shaking his head, when he blurted out, passionately, “I’d
never do a thing like that.”

“What?”  She looked at him attentively,
brushing aside the long locks of hair that hid his intense honey-brown eyes.

“Marika, I would never cheat on you.”  His
heart was on fire for her.

Those words resounded in her head the
entire drive home, and then some; all the way until Friday, in fact, when their
plans to get together were irremediably dashed by their respective
responsibilities: she had to study for a test, and she had to placate her
mother as well, who disapproved of her going out so often with “those kids we
don’t even know,” while Federico was busy with rehearsals for the Contest, and
had been sequestered in Denis’ attic.

That was the way that Marika found herself
alone in her room, alone with a tasteless piece of chewing gum, alone with the
telephone and her desire to call him.  Almost a week had passed, and maybe it
was finally time to speak with Matteo about what had happened at Pellico High. 
Without overthinking it, she picked up the phone and rapidly dialed his number.

Ring... ring
....
  She wiped
her sweaty palms on her jeans while her heart leapt into high gear, pumping
wildly.  She hadn’t felt this way in more than a month, hadn’t felt her senses
lose contact with the world, hadn’t felt the thrill of losing control.  She
knew nothing about his new life, having gone so far as to distance herself
whenever she heard Dario speaking with him on the phone.  But all she wanted,
all she craved, was to hear his voice and go back to where everything had
ended, there on Castle Road, where another version of the future was still possible. 
He was still Matteo, the only guy who could make her knees weak just by looking
at her, the guy she knew unlike any other, yet was capable of astonishing her
all the same with a simple smile.

“Olá!”

She heard an incredible din on the other
end.  “Matteo??” she mumbled hesitatingly through anxious lips.

“No, Matteo’s busy.”  Ninho had seen her
name on the phone display and had immediately recognized it as the name of the
girl who had made his friend risk his entire future as a professional soccer
player.  “You want to leave a message?”  He did not look kindly on their
relationship ever since the incident with Braidi, which is why he didn’t hand
the phone over to Matteo, who was just around the corner, but too far to hear
what was being said.