“Your mouth says one thing, but your eyes say different.Dimmi,Paolo, do you have similar feelings for Giovanni as I do? Would you also die for him?”
He shakes his head. “No, sir, I would not like to… die for him.”
“Nor should you have to, right? I mean, that’s insane.”
Paolo nods, then shakes his head, looking a lot more sober than he did ten minutes ago.
“You see, Paolo, Gio makes me crazy in the head.” I knock my temple to illustrate my point. “There isnothingI wouldn’t do for him, and I hope you’ll reflect on this conversation and learn from it. I don’t have a lot of patience for men who can’t be taught.”
“I understand now, Silvio, sir. Perfectly, I swear.”
I slap his back so hard he stumbles, then turn on my heel. Now for the hard part.
“Youtoldme to make friends,”Giovanni says snottily. We are back at the villa, in the kitchen where I have poured him a glass of water and told him to drink.
“I didn’t tell you to go drinking with Paolo.”
“How else am I supposed to make friends?”
“Sixty-two thousand people on this island and you have to be friends with the one person I told you explicitly to avoid?”
“Who else would want to be friends with me?”
“You can do better than drug dealers, Giovanni. And you did it to hurt me.”
His eyes flash with guilt, but he’d rather die than admit it. “Not everything’s about you,Silvio.” He spits my name like a curse.
“Che palle, Giovanni,” I say in frustration.What balls. Giovanni responds with the rude hand gesture that goes along with the phrase and stalks off toward the guest bedroom where he climbs the platform and goes directly into his box, slamming the door behind him. This is his sacred space where I’m not allowed to enter, but he also doesn’t like being left alone, so I stand inside the room so that he may continue to glower at me from inside his see-through container.
“I’d like to talk to you about this,” I say, gentler this time.
“What’s that?” he says just to fuck with me. “Sorry, can’t hear you.”
I walk right up the transparent pane and say to him, “I’d like to talk to you about this, Giovanni, when we’ve both calmed down and you’re ready.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” He glares at me with such bald hostility. “Youleft.”
There is no reasoning with him when he’s feeling this way. I’ll only make it worse. I back away from his box and ask Anthony, who’s been hovering since our argument began, to bring in a table and chairs and start preparing dinner. I’m not leaving this room until Giovanni comes out. He is stubborn, but so am I. I put in my ear buds and resume my English lessons while Giovanni broods, pretending to read a book without turning the pages.
An hour or so later when the food is ready and Anthony has served me at a small table covered in white linen and set with two places, Giovanni says. “Are you planning to starve me?”
“You’re welcome to join me.” I motion to his seat across from mine. “I’ve been looking forward to having dinner with you all week.”
“Ten days,” he corrects savagely and turns his back on me once more. My absence has put him in a tailspin. I hold myself responsible for breaking my promise and upsetting his delicate balance, but if I give in to his tantrum, he will not respect me, and that would be far worse.
I finish my meal in silence, having set my English lessons aside, with only the scrape of silverware against my plate to keep me company as I cut into my chicken Marsala. Anthony has become a pretty decent cook thanks to Ma’s instruction, and I compliment him on the tenderness of the meat.
“I pounded the shit out of it,” he says with a grin. Giovanni watches our exchange, becoming more infuriated at what he probably views as two-against-one. I know he wants to say something nasty, and I almost think it will work as a lure to get him out of his box, but he only scowls at Anthony before glaring at me again.
“What’s for dessert?” I ask, knowing the answer already because Ma told me.
“Panna cotta,” Anthony says.
“Ma made it?”
“Yeah, for Gio.”
“How thoughtful.”
