Dante sits down in front of me, I don't let him out of my sight; he uses fine, delicate movements, I hate that; I don't recognize him. Then I notice that he's not sitting down, not really, his back never touches the back of the couch, his hands are resting on his knees.
“Man, what the fuck?”
“I don't understand,” he expresses confusion with his eyebrow.
“Look at yourself! Why the fuck are you sitting like that?”
“Like what?”
He just doesn't get it.
“Like you got a streetlight pool stuck up in your ass, man! Look at you!” God, my fucking eyes hurt. “Look at me, copy me.” I open my legs a little wider and I rest my back. “See? This is what relaxed looks like.”
Dante studies me as if he is about to draw a portrait and tries to imitate me. He looks uncomfortable and lost in that posture.
“Like this?”
Oh, Christ.
Fuck, I feel sorry for him; I want to bury my head in the couch and scream.
“You got your brains fucked, forget it, sit the way you want.”Fuck!
“No! Tell me, I want to change, help me.”
I walk towards him and I hold his arms, grabbing them from the tips of his fingers, moving them like jelly.
“See? It relaxes the joints.”
He’s still stiff, but I know it’s going to take time.
“Well, now you don't have a streetlight pool, you have a baseball bat, that's progress if you ask me.”
Dante takes a deep breath, filling his lungs with air, and then exhales languidly, causing his body to feel comfort to the couch.
“Thank you.” He replies happily.
This is going to be hard, not that I mind, but I have to teach him to be Dante again. I can't put myself in his shoes. They had stripped Dante of absolutely everything, his family, his life, his country, and according to Bruno, even his fucking name,motherfuckers.
Well, my life wasn’t perfect, but if I have to compare with his, mine was a fucking sitcom show.
“Am…, if you ever need to talk...about anything, I'm not good at giving advice, but I have two ears that are good for something, so, I don't know, if you need to...”
“Thank you, the same goes to you, and I think you need to talk more than I do.”
Seems so wise that it bothers me a little.
Damn, this guy can read.
“This,” I say, pointing at my vest. “will get me in trouble with Bruno, I know it, he's going to threaten my life, like he did the other three hundred times before.”
“Why? What does that vest mean?” he asks, confused.
Where to start? “To make a long story short, when Bruno went looking for you, I decided to get involved with a biker group, it seemed like a good idea at the time, it had gotten pretty lonely around here and they made me feel good, like family, you know? Something I never truly felt,” I whisper, thinking about cameras and microphones.
“I don't understand why Bruno would get angry, you seem happy.”
Naïve child.
