Love is Just a Moment (3 page)

When she looked up at him again, he was smiling with a mixture of sympathy and affection and then his gaze carried down to her lips and rested their for a moment with a faint heat that had slowly entered his eyes. It was almost as if he was admiring a magnificent, passionate (and yes perhaps even erotic) work of art and yet somehow Rebecca didn’t feel at all like she’d been affronted. She was happy to just sit still and be admired by him.

Piero looked up at her again, his passionate gaze smoldering directly into her eyes.

“You are so beautiful,” he said, “I cannot express how honored I feel that on this day of all days, I should have the chance to be the one to hear you speak at last from the soul.”

“Well,” Rebecca shrugged, blushing and glancing down at her coffee cup, “I don’t know if I’d call it an honor, but it’s definitely a first anyway. For both of us.”

“And let me see if I can finish the story,” Piero said, “after suffering so much in silence, pain that you didn’t think anyone could or should understand, finally you stood up and said: Enough! I can take no more of this, how you say, bullshit! And then, not knowing exactly what to do, you set out from Naples and eventually found yourself here. Am I correct?”

Yes, he was correct. Giggling with delight at the passion Piero showed in expressing her viewpoint in a way that was somehow both blunt and elegant, Rebecca nodded emphatically. “Yes,” she said, “that’s pretty much it.”

“Then you have cast off the first of the chains that have bound you up until now. You are making yourself free.” He stood slowly from the table and looked down at her, Rebecca admiring the slender outline of his well-toned body beneath the flimsy material of his shirt. “I must ask that you excuse me while I use the restroom,” he said. “Will you be here when I return?”

“Um… yes?” Rebecca said, “Like, definitely yes?”

“Excellent,” Piero smiled and then made his way inside the café.

Rebecca sipped her coffee and looked down the hill, at the sun-bathed winding road that disappeared around the scraggy curve of the mountain. She felt more confident and open than she ever had in her entire life. Even though she knew there were small patches of sweat beneath the armpits of her light white t-shirt and that her forehead must have been more than a little shiny by now from the joint heats of the sun and the excitement of being in Piero’s company, she didn’t feel even the least bit self-conscious. After all, people sweat, they get hot and sticky sometimes. To pretend otherwise would be the kind of pointless dishonesty that probably offended a guy like Piero right down to his sweet, simple-hearted soul. Oh boy, what had she done to deserve him?

When he returned from the dark doorway she saw that he had a small stringed instrument in his hand, like a tiny almond-shaped guitar. She raised an eyebrow at him with delighted curiosity.

“They had a mandolin hanging on the wall,” Piero said, “I don’t think they will mind me borrowing it for a moment, but we spoke of the blues earlier and I wanted to sing you a song of the island. These are the blues of my people.”

“Piero,” Rebecca gushed, “I don’t know what to say. I’d be honored.”

Seeing that she meant her words, Piero smiled and then, with surprising strength for a man with such slender arms, he lifted his chair closer to hers and set it down beside her.

“This is a song my father used to sing for me when I was a child,” Piero said, “it was many years before I could bring myself to sing it and it fills me with regret that I waited so long. When I play it now, I feel his strength inside me, his nobility. I feel like I am his son.”

With deft, gentle fingers, precise and yet also totally free, Piero brought the guitar pick to the strings and began to play an elegant, slow and sorrowful melody. His eyes glazed over as he lost himself in the music and Rebecca felt its enchanting embrace draw her in too. Her lips parted as she listened, following the sorrowful lilts and turns of his tremolo-picking. Now he began to hum, quiet and low at first but rising in volume as his rich, expressive voice joined the elegance of his playing. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to feel that power with her hand, but she was afraid to put him off so instead she just sat, spellbound, and listened as he sang in Italian. The pathos of the song, the pain of peoples long past and times forgotten, was too much for her to bear and she felt a tear roll down her cheek as he gently finished playing.

“Did you feel it?” he said, looking at her closely, distant flames in his eyes.

“…yes,” she replied, her voice a whisper.

Piero placed the instrument gently on the table and then he took her hand. They moved to their feet together as if they were one being. He looked down into her eyes as he brought his other hand to her cheek and softly brushed away the trail left by her tear with his thumb. Her whole body trembled at his touch and she opened her lips for him, inviting him, begging him to kiss them and wipe away the pain that had brought them here, together to this moment. Understanding perfectly, without a word, Piero leaned down and placed his warm, luscious lips over hers.

6

The sky was beginning to turn a deep orange now as evening descended and when they stepped back from their embrace—which had seemed in itself to last for a lifetime—Rebecca saw that they were no longer alone. Other villagers were joining them at the tables in the courtyard, as the elderly woman and an equally elderly man moved amongst them taking orders. Somehow none of them seemed the least bit interested in the passionate young man and woman embracing at their secluded table over in the corner. This was Europe after all, people probably showed their passion like that every single day.

Still holding her hand in his, Piero slowly sat back down and Rebecca did the same. She felt like there were no thoughts in her head, no words to speak, the kiss had wiped it all away.

“You must be hungry now,” Piero said, “I would like to share with you my favorite meal. It is not complicated, quite simple in fact, but it is the thing that I would most like to eat before I face my destiny.”

There he goes again speaking about “destiny”, Rebecca considered, a surge of discomfort now diluting the heady and pleasurable afterglow of their kiss. Was he really only being fanciful, like she’d imagined earlier? Now it seemed even less likely than before. Everything about him seemed to intimate a man facing his final demise—from the sorrowful, gentle power of his song to the burning passion of his kiss. She felt a new kind of anxiety, one that was tinged this time with a powerful determination. It was the will to save him, to stop him, to bring him back from the brink of the abyss before he threw himself willingly over its edge and was gone forever from this world.

“Have I lost you to your head once more?” Piero asked, a thoughtful glint in his eye.

“Oh… um no,” Rebecca answered, “that sounds very nice.”

“You are sad again,” Piero said, “I do not wish to make you sad. I will go make the order but please, I only wish that you enjoy it when it comes.”

Rebecca nodded, forcing a smile that quickly disappeared as he left to re-enter the café, the mandolin gripped casually in his palm. Yes, she was sad again, of course she was. How could she not be sad to hear that such a beautiful soul was truly planning to just throw it all away?

The courtyard was now well populated with locals from the village, though they paid her little heed as she watched them from the quiet corner table and she too had little interest for them. The sky was darkening and she sensed that her time with Piero was coming to an end—unless she could do something to hold onto him, but what?

A moment later, he returned, solemn and gorgeous as he carried a small tray piled with what looked to be tiny sautéed peppers, onions and olives, surround by jagged hunks of fresh white bread. She forced a smile again as he sat, and looking at her, sighed: “Perhaps you are right to be sad. The time for joy may be behind us now, it would serve no purpose to deny.”

He gestured to the meal. “Please, help yourself. This was my favorite thing to eat growing up, though of course nobody can make it like my mother did.”

“Thank you Piero,” Rebecca said, carefully scooping up some of the vegetables onto a piece of bread. Yes, it was delicious. Yes, she was sad.

“Do you enjoy?” Piero asked.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s amazing. But you’re right, I
am
sad and I don’t think anything can change that. Not if you really mean it when you say what you plan to do.”

Piero nodded grimly. “Yes, I mean it,” he said. “I am sorry that it makes you sad. For me too, it is sad.”

She stared at him now openly, completely free and ready to speak her mind. “But you don’t
have
to,” she said, “you don’t…”

“I don’t have to?” Piero repeated, with silent wonder as if amused at the absolute absurdity of the proposition, “For twelve years I have waited, knowing that it was my destiny, knowing what I would one day be called to do. There is no choice now. I must.”

Rebecca sighed, dejected, and gazed into the dish between them. The food was delicious, it was true, but she no longer had much of an appetite and, judging by Piero’s grim demeanor, neither did he. As she sat there turning ideas and phrases over in her head, looking for a way to get through to him, a sleek black limousine caught her eye, cruising up the mountain road. Its menacing, shiny surface made a stark contrast to the pastoral, picture-book village around it.

Piero turned to follow her gaze and as he did his entire composure changed. His body tensed and he lowered his brow as he watched the car. The hatred and anger he must have now felt was so strong that it seemed to radiate from his entire body.

“Rebecca,” he said, “you must go now. The bus returns to Palermo in twenty minutes. I will wait until I know it is gone before I act. I would not have you see what happens next.”

Her brow furrowed instantly. No, no she couldn’t let this happen. Whatever he had in mind she knew it would be bad, whoever was in that limousine wouldn’t back down to anything less than murder, somehow she just knew it was true.

“No,” she said, her voice quiet but firm, “I’m not leaving you.”

His eyes were wide as he implored. “But you must! You cannot stay here now, I will not allow it.”

“I’m not leaving Piero, I’m not going to let you do this.”

He watched her with his big, shining eyes for a moment that seemed to stretch to eternity as she stared back at him, quiet, passionate and determined not to back down. Finally he sighed.

“But I must,” he said.

Rebecca shook her head. “Then I’ll sit here and watch you do it. If you want to go against all the good that I know is inside you, then let me see it. There can be no other way.”

7

“Look,” Piero said, “here they come. See them now and tell me you wish to stay one moment in the presence of such terrible evil.”

Rebecca turned slightly on her chair as three men dressed in rich, perfectly tailored suits, wearing sunglasses even though it was almost dark now, stepped like renegade soldiers into the courtyard. An uneasy silence seemed to settle over the entire area and the opulent nature of their clothing did nothing to diminish the brutal hostility and roughness of the men who had brought it in their wake. They were Mafiosi, she knew, they had the exact same way of walking as the ones she would occasionally see when passing through the Orange Grove neighborhood and surrounding areas back home in Chicago.

They took a table far across the courtyard, leaning back in their chairs with aggressive confidence as one of them barked an order to the old man who had hurried over to serve them.

“No,” Rebecca said firmly, turning back to face Piero whose burning gaze was still on the men across the courtyard, “I
don’t
want to stay and I don’t want you to stay either. We could leave now, return to Palermo…”

“The one in the brown is Fedro Santini,” Piero said, ignoring her plea and watching the men as if there were nothing else in the world but he and them. “He is a vicious, cruel man whose penchant for violence is only matched by his own brute stupidity. The bald one across from him is Frankie Falcone, an American, though he has lived here for as long as my own life. But it is the one in the middle who I have come here to face. That is Libano, the man who killed my father.”

Helplessly, Rebecca looked back at the gangster who had so consumed Piero’s mind for more than half of his life. “Libano” wore a thick dark beard around his sagging jowls and his lank, slicked back hair spilled down greasily all the way to his shoulders. Rebecca did not believe true evil existed in the world, but if she did she would be sure that she was looking at it right now. Everything about the man seemed hateful, angry and cruel.

“Please leave Rebecca,” Piero said, a slight quaver entering his low, determined voice. “please go now, before it is too late.”

“No,” she said, “not unless you come with me when I do.”

Piero’s shoulders fell with defeat, but it was not a defeat to her wishes. It was clear that he would not be stopped and if it pained him so much to have Rebecca there, perhaps he had decided that there could be no other way.

“Very well,” he said, “if you must see me when I act—if you must see what my destiny demands of me—then I will make sure at least that you know why it has to be so.”

He focused his attention back on her and as the anger went out of his eyes it seemed to leave a great, painful exhaustion in its wake. The power of his hatred for the men who had wronged him was so overwhelming that it was like it was draining him of his very soul, like his young, lithe twenty-two-year-old-frame was simply not strong enough a canticle to contain such powerful negative emotion.

“Like I told you earlier,” he said, “my father was a simple farmer—an honest man who made his living through honest means—he did not have greed or desire for anything more than what he already had, a wife who loved him, a son who adored him, and the humble means to provide a good living for them both. A man like that inspires nothing but fear and hatred in such a killer as Libano, because he knows there is nothing he can do to coerce or control him.