CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (44 page)

“OK, I’m going inside to sit with
Carlotta.”  Dario had met him at the entrance of the theater to give him his
tickets.  “I’ll see you during the interval.”

“OK.”  Matteo put his wallet back into his
pocket and got into line.  He was nervous, the same way even the greatest
soccer players in the world get the jitters when they hear the anthem of the
UEFA Champions League played before a match.  “Thanks for getting me the
tickets,” which were for himself and two Brazilian players from
San Carlo
,
who were currently on vacation until the team’s summer retreat began next
month.

“Forget about it!  I... ummm....”  Dario
was tongue-tied in the presence of those two, large, handsome, athletic guys
and their shining skin, from which wafted the pure essence of professional
soccer.  “Ahh... I gotta go.”

The show had started, the lights dimmed,
and the spotlight illuminated the blue fabric backdrop, behind which dancers
and actors passed silently from one side of the stage to the other without
being seen.  The scenery was basic, and could be adapted to the needs of every
different piece, representing nothing more than a starry night.  First on stage
was the baby group, made up of girls from age three to six, who performed a
dance from
The Lion King
, which was then followed by
Beauty and the
Beast, Swan Lake
performed by the classical dance class,
Patito Feo
,
and then
Cats,
which was performed by the neoclassical ballet.

“
The lights come up in the middle of
auditions for a new Broadway show
,
” scrolled the words projected
against the backdrop.  “
The director must decide which of the dancers in
front of him will make up his chorus line.
”

“OK, everybody on stage.  Let’s do the
whole combination from the top.”  Mr. Maller was performing the off-stage voice
of
Zach
, the musical director.  “Right!  I want it strong.  Make it
sharp!  Take it on the downbeat!  Ready?  And five, six, seven, eight!”  To the
notes of
I Hope I Get It
, spins, jumps, slides, energy, and passion came
together to create a choreography that dazzled in its velocity and clean lines.

“There she is!”  Matteo felt a jolt of
emotion when he saw her at center stage, wrapped up in a dark leotard with
fringe and interwoven back straps.  “In the front,” he pointed out to his
friends, trying to break free of the spell cast by seeing her after so long.  “
Way
to go, bravo!”
  And she was indeed very good, one of the best in her class.

They finished act one, the interval, and
then the second act with a final chorus from
Mamma Mia!
  The lights came
up once again on the spectators, who launched into a final round of applause,
while the mothers of the youngest dancers headed backstage and the crowd began
to thin out, leaving behind them only a few small groups of friends.

“We were fantastic, the entrance was
perfect!”  The dancers celebrated among themselves backstage.  “Where’s my
bag?  Oh, there it is!  And my ballet slippers?”  Time had come to say
goodbye.  “See you all next year.  Have a great summer!”

“You too!  Talk to you soon.”  Rushing
down the steps at the side of the stage, her hair sparkling with gel and her
face heavily made up, Marika said goodbye to her dance partners and went to
join her family.  “That was really amazing,” her grandparents said, tears in
their eyes, while her father freed her from the weight of the heavy gym bag.

“You were fabulous!... Fabulous...
fabulous!”  Carlotta ran over to give her a hug, followed by Dario, Sandra, and
Giacomo; a flood of congratulations, compliments, and admiration, but no one could
find the words to tell her about Matteo....

“Terrific!”  The
S in S
joined in
on the celebration.  “You were awesome on stage,” Eve said, beating Federico to
the punch, though he concluded by saying in a trembling voice, “You’re always
awesome.”  He saw her blush underneath all that makeup.  “Everything still on
for tonight?”

“Yeah...,” Marika said hesitatingly, her
fingertips beginning to tap nervously against her thighs.

“Is there any problem?”  He looked
worried.  “Something come up?”  Federico didn’t know about Matteo, but his
instincts always kept him on edge.

“No, absolutely not.”  Marika caressed his
forearm.  “Just let me remind Carlotta about what she has to say.”  Carlotta
was a crucial piece of the puzzle, and had been given the job of telling her
aunt and uncle that Marika would be sleeping at her house that night.  “Let me
talk to her, and I’ll meet you out front.”  Asking her parents for permission
was out of the question, and so she had taken a shortcut, making everyone
happy: she would spend the night in Marostica at Eve’s house, and her mother
wouldn’t have to worry.

“Whatever you want,” he whispered, placing
a gentle kiss on her cheek.  He nodded at his friends that it was time to go.  “But
be fast.”

She was running through the entire
scenario again with Carlotta and Dario when a voice called her name.  Suddenly,
she couldn’t breathe.  She thought she might faint if she turned around and
faced her destiny.  She tried to ignore it, but he called her once again.  She
turned around slowly... and it felt like the floor had fallen out from under
her when his eyes met hers.

“Hey Marika.”  He was gorgeous, even more
than she remembered.  “You were really great.  A couple of missteps in the
second part, maybe, but all in all, a great show.”  He did his best to make
light of the situation, even though he felt more uncomfortable than her.  “Let
me introduce two of my teammates to you.”  He pointed to Ninho and Pão.  It all
seemed so surreal.

Marika shook their hands mechanically, her
brain having stopped sending signals to any part of her body.  She didn’t
understand why, all of a sudden, everyone had disappeared, leaving her alone
with him.  “
Help!
”  Her heart was on fire, but no one could help her
now; the only way to temper that passion was to avoid looking at him and try to
break the spell that he had cast over her. 
It’s absurd how crazy love can
make you
!...

...
but even more absurd how stupid
jealousy can make you
!  “I guess have to congratulate you twice,” he said,
his voice openly sarcastic.  “You’ve gotten very good at lying, too.  Really
good.  What else have you learned while I was gone?”  Matteo had overheard her
intentions for that evening, and the words had shot into his veins like a
drug.  “How to roll a joint?” 
Why does love make you act like such a fool
? 
“Did they teach you how to do that yet?”

“No.”  The insinuation was like a poison
dart.  “How dare you?” 
Make vile allusions like that about Federico and his
friends!
  “Just because they don’t dress like preppies like you they must
be a bunch of druggies who get high from morning to night, right?!”  The poison
had entered into circulation.  “Federico has never smoked so much as a
cigarette in front of me, and I’ve never even seen him drunk, which is more
than I can say about you,” reminding him of his performance at the
Ball de
Casanova
, when he’d been as drunk as a skunk.

“Federico has never been drunk... well,
you don’t say!”  Those shots from Mardi Gras were like holy water compared to
the bitter glass of envy and rivalry that he was currently choking down.  “He’s
a real catch!”  His sarcasm was as cutting as a whip.

“You’re such an asshole!”  She hated him,
because she couldn’t stop loving him.

“
I’m not an asshole
,” he would have
liked to tell her, “
I’m just jealous
.”  But he let his pride take over,
and it demanded that he keep his emotions in check.  “Are you so sure?” he
jibed.  “Do you know him so well?”

“Certainly better than you know him,” she
blurted out.  “Who the hell do you think you are?  You show up here with your
fancy jacket and shiny shoes and think that gives you the right to judge....” 
Matteo had spent more than thirty minutes shining those shoes and had had to
convince his mother to let him borrow his father’s blue sports coat for the
theater.  It was elegant, but nothing over the top... truly irresistible!  “My
God, you’ve become a shadow of your former self.”  The more Marika tried to
detest him, the more she wanted him.  “You’ve changed.”

“No,” he said decisively.  “You are the
one who sees me differently.”  He looked at her fleeting eyes.  “Maybe it makes
it easier for you to ignore me.”  He undid the top button of his shirt.   “I’ve
been back for nearly three weeks, and you haven’t called me once....”  His
voice began to waver.  “Is there something going on between the two of you?”

“And what do you have to say for yourself?”
she barked.  “Have you been with anyone?”  The imaginary picture of Matteo with
an entire bevy of television starlets pulsed painfully in her brain.

“No, I haven’t.”  He didn’t ask what she
meant exactly, and it didn’t even matter who she might be referring to.  “So,
are you going out with him, or what?”

Marika sighed, picking up the broken
pieces of her heart from the floor.  Not a soul was left in the theater except
for some indistinct voices coming from the balcony, perhaps someone cleaning up
after the show.  Outside, Carlotta was doing her best to keep Federico from
going inside to get her. 

“It’s none of your business,” Marika
said.  He stiffened.

“How can you say that?  You will always be
my business.”  His natural capacity for seducing her was limitless.  “Why do
you think I came back to Orgiano only half-way through my try-outs?”  Matteo
knew that he had made his mistakes, but he hadn’t forgotten how much they meant
to one another.  “I was there, for you.  Even now, the only reason I am here is
for you.”  He stared at her with that aquamarine light that shone from his
eyes.  “Even the fancy jacket and shiny shoes are for you.”

“I didn’t ask you to do anything for me
then, and I didn’t invite you here tonight.”  Marika could feel herself cocking
the trigger of a loaded gun and pointing it at herself, because the truth could
be too shocking a revelation, something that would shake their lives to the
core... but lies were just a dead-end alleyway that offered no way out.

“What game are you playing?”  A
melancholic note filtered through his voice.  “What is all this?”  He could no
longer pretend not to have been brought to his knees by her blows, and he could
no longer avoid the sentiments that his heart forced him to feel.  “I almost
ruined my entire future, and I did it all for you.”

“If it was so hard for you, then you
should have just stayed in Milan.”  Marika sunk deeper into the still blue
waters of his eyes, terrified of what she hoped she might find there.  “I would
have been just fine on my own.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” he mocked.  “You were
doing just great.”  He gave her a thumbs up, a cruelly false compliment.

“Did you come here to throw this all back
in my face?”  She noticed his
San Carlo
teammates coming back towards
them and wanted to strike fast.  “Do you regret it?”

“No. Absolutely not.”  He  moved in front
of her so she couldn’t walk away, impervious to the arrival of his friends.  “I
don’t regret a moment of it.  I’d do it again this second if I had to.”  He
would have liked this moment to go on forever, because everything else was
nothing without her.  “Nothing has changed for me.”  Every time he looked at
her, he knew that what he saw was neverending.  “You know me, Marika.  I’m the
same guy as I was two months ago: the fool from the Carnival party, but also
the one from Castle Road.”  He wanted to embrace her and never let her go.

“Exactly!”  Guided by her fear of
suffering, Marika had forgotten how to live.  “That same guy who humiliated me
on Castle Road.”

“What do you mean,
humiliated you
?”
he answered nervously.  “Do you want to hear me tell you I’m sorry?  That I
screwed up?”  Matteo set his jaw, drowning in that beautiful lie that was her
smile.  “OK, fine, I screwed up.  But try, just for a minute, to understand my
position, for God’s sake.”

“Understand you?”  Her heart was telling
her to trust him, but it wouldn’t be the first time that that foolish muscle,
there in the middle of her chest, had betrayed her.  “It’s impossible to
understand you.”  She was afraid of giving in to that overwhelming, absolute,
unconditional love, a love that had shown her the route to heaven, but which
had also taught her how much one could suffer, to the point where even the
sound of your own tears became deafening.  “
Every time I think I understand
you, you destroy me
.”  She pulled away from him with a disjointed,
automatic movement that sent her flying into Ninho, who was standing silently
behind her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Matteo
yelled at his friend, accusing him of having bumped Marika too hard.  “Is that
any way to treat a girl?” he said quietly to him.

“
A
girl... or
your
girl?” 
His teammate was speaking the hard truth, looking back at the retreating
Marika.  “You’re just a problem for him,” he shouted to make himself heard.  “When
are you going to get that through your head?”

When it is the battle that chooses its
combatants, history can change in the blink of an eye.