“Yes!” I had the dress in mind, and I hoped I could find it.
He grinned and set his hand on my lower back, directing me through foot traffic, making sure no one ran me over. On our way, though, I saw a bunch of donkeys climbing a steep street, tourists on their backs.
“Pay the man,” I said to Capo, stroking one of the unclaimed donkeys. I worried that the weight would be too hard on them, but they were all healthy, their coats glistening in the sun, and they seemed well taken care of. Still, I didn’t want to burden it, just take it for a walk up the street.
Capo gave me a look, the same one he had when he’d called me bossy in Sicily, but he paid the man. He only paid for one.
“You going to walk it?” he said, watching me take the reins and lead the ass up the first step.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m giving, er—” I went to look behind me but couldn’t see that far.
“Him,” Capo said.
“I’m givinghima break.”
I called him Donkey II, after the one in Shrek. (I’d watched the movie in New York with Capo. Though watching it with Capo was a stretch. He’d fallen asleep.) Donkey II was a mellow ass, except for when we went to pass another donkey coming down and he tried to bite him or her.
“Not today,” Capo said, tightening his grip on the reins until we passed Donkey II’s nemesis.
“I guess everyone, even asses, have enemies,” I said to Donkey II. He nodded his head and made a noise that made me laugh. “‘In the morning, I’m making waffles!’”
“Do you even know how?” Capo said, giving me a narrow look. Probably trying to figure out why I’d just thrown that out there.
I laughed at the clueless look on his face, and Donkey II heehawed and nodded his head again.
“It’s from a movie,” I said, sighing. “But I could learn how. To make waffles, I mean.”
“No doubt,” he said. We were quiet for a while, moving at a nice pace, enjoying the view while we climbed higher and higher. “No one has ever laughed around me as much as you do.”
I thought maybe he was kidding, but one thing about Capo: he didn’t have much of a sense of humor. When he was looking at me like he was—totally thrown off by my…charm, or whatever he wanted to call it—his reactions to some of the things I did and said made me laugh. He watched me like a wolf would watch a fluttering butterfly dancing around his head, not sure if he was intrigued or wanted to swallow her whole.
Stepping to the other side of the road, looking out over the island, I took a picture. I was trying to figure out how to respond to his comment. To tell him that I didn’t laugh much, but around him…I felt the freedom to be happy. In my head it sounded okay, but it felt cheesy to say aloud. I wished I had words to offer him that weren’t. He did romantic things for me all the time, but he did them in a way that seemed…deeply romantic—comparable to roses, wine, and chocolate, but in a subtle way. No fucking cheese.
I turned back and snapped a picture of him and Donkey II. Maybe he saw something on my face that I didn’t realize I was showing him, because he cleared his throat and said, “I like it.”
“That I laugh?”
“Around me,” he said, giving a quick shrug.
He’d worn a dark blue shirt and light-weight pants (a gun tucked behind the waistband). Light broke around him from behind, rays blinding, and I lifted my camera and took another shot, hopefully catching him likeIsaw him. Full of light in a world that had been more nightmare than daydream.
I mimicked his shrug, but not in a sarcastic way. “I like it, too,” I said, and then went and stood next to him. I fixed my hair, pulled out my phone, and snapped a selfie of the two of us, then the three of us.
Without either one of us saying anything, we started leading Donkey II higher, our steps in sync as we continued to climb. A slight wind blew, cooling my overheated skin, and I took a deep breath of it. It mostly smelled of donkey, and I knew I probably did, too.
“I might have to wait on the new dress,” I said, sniffing myself. “They’ll probably put me out of the store.”
“We’re leaving for a private island this afternoon,” he said, nodding over his shoulder, like that was the area we’d be heading to. “But it doesn’t matter if you were wearing a diaper when you walked in—they’ll only smell money.”
“True,” I said, and we said no more as we reached the top.
It felt like I was standing on top of the world.
Then Donkey II gave a screech and turned around faster than I thought he could on the step, nudging other donkeys out of the way, trying to get to one going down.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “I hope he isn’t going to attack that other one!”
“Nah.” Capo eyed the scene, not bothered by it. “He’s going after his Jenny—his girl. Probably the cause of his war with the other Jack.”
