“A Clydesdale,” my uncle answers.
“Verga is a Neapolitan mastiff,” I correct, patting his head with my free hand. He was a gift from my Zio and Zia.
“You named him Verga. How dark. Why’s his face all messed up like that?” she asks, then shoves an impossibly large bite of pasta into her mouth. She chews slowly and her lids fall closed, the first bite of Nina’s pasta temporarily flooding her senses. Her expression sends me spiraling back to my first bites here, Nina beside me in the kitchen directing me what to taste and how.
Ava lets out a soft sound and I have to look away, choosing Verga as the safest landing spot. Handsome, loyal boy.
I lift a brow at Ava.
“His face is perfect. Mastiffs have wrinkles. You know who Giovanni Verga is?”
She stops chewing and meets my eyes. Swallows hard. I follow the line of her neck back up to her mouth.
“You assume because I can’t speak the language, I can’t read the country’s authors?” she asks.
I shake my head, but hold her stare and say, “Of course not. Only an ignorant ass makes assumptions about language abilities.”
She narrows her eyes at me, clenches her jaw until a tiny divot appears at the corner. She looks like she wants to kick me in the balls. I hurry out of the dining space before she can get up to do so and nearly trip on Verga, who is waiting for me to put the plates down so he can lick them clean. Conversation continues at the table and I make sure to make a lot of noise so it doesn’t seem like I’m eavesdropping.
“I’m so excited to meet the lawyers and professors I’ll be working with,” Ava says.
Brown-noser.
I imagine my Zio smiling kindly at her as I try to grab the licked plate off of the floor and Verga shifts his hind quarters to block me. At least he didn’t snarl like Massimo.
“Actually, Ms. Graham,” Zio begins, “we have some sad news about this year’s seminar. It seems that most of the lawyers were at a conference in Nuremberg this past week and have fallen ill with some sort of contagion.”
Everything is quiet for a moment. No forks on plates. No polite chatter or pass the pecorino. I realize I’m bent over, stopped in mid-motion, both hands on Verga’s flank ready to push with my eyes so wide they might fall right out of my head.
Ava’s voice finally breaks the silence, shaky and soft. “Surely the seminar is just postponed for a week?”
Silence.
“Right?” She’s barely audible.
My Zio lets out a long sigh. “Sfortunamente, no. We just got notice that the seminar is canceled completely.”
I flinch a little, waiting to hear the sound of Ava’s head explode. She’s had a day. Asshat boyfriend giving her a hall pass. Apartment rental a no go. Now her program of study canceled. Shit—and me. I played a part in her hellish day. I don’t have a second to sit quietly in my guilt before Zio Leo’s booming voice reaches me again.
“Not to worry, cara. Pastore has given me explicit instructions to take care of you, and I have worked out a course of action, which I’m sure he would approve of, but he is a bit off the grid at the moment. You will assist in un’altra classe and receive all the credits that were promised for matriculation. No problem at all. Any professor here would welcome a student like you.”
I can feel Ava’s reluctant relief through the stone wall and I find my own shoulders loosening with my uncle’s words. This woman does not seem to flex and shift easily. I wonder how many pages of that absurd planner she’ll need to rip out with these changes.
I wrestle the plates from Verga, who, in all honesty, has given up the fight, and stand to wash them. I turn the water on and refocus on the task at hand, washing hard like I can scrub away the nagging guilt for adding to this poor woman’s shitty Italian welcome. Surely, Zio will take care of her at our university. There are many political science classes to choose from—Professore Giugno teaches one on Italian government. The American will be fine.
I turn off the water and leave the dishes to dry, turning to find my camera on the butcherblock counter. That camera was once the only thing on the planet that could make me miss dessert. I tell myself it still is. I have not been chased away by a sharp-tongued hellion.
I lift the strap over my head, roll the lens twice between my fingers, then turn it in my hand to look at the picture Zio took earlier on the display screen, for the thousandth time today. The picture of the scene in the driveway comes to life when I turn the dial.
Ava is partially concealed by my shoulders, her eyes tiny slits of fury, her skin flushed, her finger pointed at my chest. There’s the hint of my dimple beneath the dark stubble on my cheek and part of the profile of my nose—the bump on the bridge from being kicked in the face during a calcio match—apparent from my Zio’s angle. He captured the exact moment that she called me a gorilla. I chuckle at the image and bring the viewfinder to my left eye as I walk outside.
Time to scratch that itch.
SETTE
Ava
Someone has tipped over the fuck-with-Ava dominoes, and I’m wondering how many more are left to fall.
