Advice for Italian Boys (23 page)

Bella made an anxious moue, but arranged herself gingerly on top of the purple ball, leaving the pink one for Phil. He stood with his hands at his sides and gazed at it balefully.

“It is ridiculouss,” he said.

Bella bounced her narrow bottom cautiously on the top of her ball. “Try it, Phil,” she encouraged. “It is more comfortable than it looks.”

“Come on, Phil,” said Nicolo. “See how well Bella is doing?”

Bella gave her ball another couple of experimental jounces and began to slide off toward Nicolo. “Oops,” she said, and
righted herself again. She spread her legs and planted them firmly on each side of the ball, and then put her hands flat on the ball between her legs to control it if it suddenly started to buck or roll. She kept her eyes turned downward, watchful against any unexpected movement.

Phil turned around, bent his legs and lowered his bottom toward the pink ball. His aim was flawed, and he slipped off and landed on the mat.

“Imposssible,” he protested.

Bella jolted herself on the ball again, an inch or two up and down. Her mouth stretched into an uneven smile.

“Try it again,” she urged.

Phil stood and contorted his body into an exaggerated Z shape. He jutted his rear end over the ball and bent his legs slowly. At the moment of contact, his speed increased and the ball rolled and squirted off to the side. Phil landed heavily on his side on the mat. He lay there breathing rapidly and blinking. Nicolo knelt down beside him on one knee to make sure he wasn’t injured.

Bella allowed herself a deeper bounce into her ball. Rebounding, and with her close-set grey eyes open as wide as she could force them, her pale mouth formed into an almost coquettish oval, and her tongue extended, she was thrown from her ball and landed fully on top of Nicolo, who was forced in turn to fall face down onto Phil.

“Oh,” said Bella.

Her entire weight sank down on Nicolo. She was unexpectedly heavy—like a sack of hammers, Monica would have said—and her shoulder, hip and knee were very sharp.

“Oh,” she said again, almost dreamily.

She seemed to descend again, more solidly, almost determinedly, so that the length of her body pressed down on Nicolo, who felt Phil begin to writhe and twist underneath him. Someone’s hand reached out, grasped Nicolo’s upper inner thigh and squeezed very hard. Nicolo grabbed the hand and tossed it away, and then they all three surged upward, disentangling, sorting out legs and arms.

Nicolo didn’t know what to say, and neither Phil nor Bella said anything at all. Nicolo herded them to the elliptical trainers, which was the equipment they tolerated best, and allowed them to spend the last half-hour of their session working on cardio. They skipped the final cool-down and stretch entirely.

“Hour’s up,” he said at 7:59, and Phil and Bella evaporated from his view.

In the change room later, when he pulled off his shorts, Nicolo saw the shape of reaching fingers forming a bruise underneath the skin at the top of his leg, reaching almost to his groin. He thought with distaste of the hand he had held for less than a second—cold, damp skin over a shifting assembly of sharp bones. He caught himself scrubbing at the bruise in the shower as if he could wash it away. It reminded him in some way of Vito, someone who had worked at his father’s barbershop years ago when he was a boy. He hadn’t thought of Vito in years. He must have shaken hands with Vito back then; he could almost sum up a memory of Vito’s long, cold fingers and moist unpadded palm.

“Whatever happened to Vito?” he asked his older brother Enzo the following Saturday afternoon. It was the day of Gordon’s wedding and Nicolo had dropped by to borrow
Enzo’s shoes. His brother was on his knees, searching in the back of his closet.

“Jeez. Don’t ever mention that name to Dad,” Enzo said. He turned around and looked at Nicolo. “Or Ma. He’s the only person Dad ever had to fire from the shop and it just about killed him.”

“Why did he have to fire him?”

“I don’t know. Something like stealing, I thought. Nonna told me once that he was a very bad man. What I remember was that he was there one day and then gone the next, and no one ever spoke about him after that. I remember seeing his station cleared out—Here they are. They’re dusty and they could use a polish but they’re good shoes. They’ll look good on you. Greco. That was his last name, remember? Vito Greco.”

“
W
hen we got the divorce, he kept the club membership and I kept the kids, which seemed more than fair to me. He always preferred golf anyway. That’s when I went out and joined Caruso’s. I needed somewhere new I could go to work out where there’d be zero risk of running into him and Miss Chantilly Lace. The kids are over in the reception room with the happy couple getting some pre-event photos taken.”

Nicolo and Monica were in the broad, bright, gold-carpeted lobby of Gordon’s golf and tennis club, where the wedding and reception were taking place. Nicolo was wearing a new dark grey suit, bought with younger Enzo’s help, a blue and white striped shirt, a navy blue silk tie with a
repeating design of linked red and gold circles, and his older brother Enzo’s good pair of shoes.

“What do you think?” said Monica.

She opened her arms wide and turned around slowly. She had managed to come within an almost satisfactory seven and a half pounds of her goal. Her stomach was flat, her upper arms solid. She was wearing a purple silk sleeveless sheath dress, size eight petite, cut low at her chest and tight across her bottom, which looked just a little bit packed in, like ice cream in a tub. That last seven and a half frustrating pounds would have made all the difference, she pointed out to him; she might even have achieved that inward slope of flesh above her pelvis and between her hip bones that was the hallmark of serious self-deprivation. She opened her purse, brushed a fresh sweep of bronzing powder across her nose and cheeks and cranked her lipstick tube to reinforce the wide pink swath on her lips.

Nicolo was surprised at how protective he felt of Monica, balanced before him in her high heels, and by the realization that he also felt sorrowful for her, although this wedding was an ordeal that she had set for herself. He leaned down and brushed his cheek against hers. Monica smelled like lilies of the valley, the spring-flowering plants that grew in clusters along the walls of his family’s garage.

“You’ll be all right?” he asked her.

Monica breathed so that her breasts puffed like the chest of a bird above the lilac trim at the top of her dress, and then nodded. He reached for her arm and tucked it under his, and they walked together into the Mallard Room, then up the centre of the room to the front where two rows of chairs had
been labelled “Reserved for Family and Special Friends.”

Monica nodded to friends from her days with Gordon. She squeezed Nicolo’s arm and looked up at him through her lashes. He was, after all, a very sweet guy. Not her type, of course. She liked them older and hapless, but he was a sweetie, especially for seeing her through this ridiculous wedding. She chose seats at the end of the second row in front of a supporting column that provided some shelter from scrutiny.

Within a few minutes, Hayley, plump and pink and dewy in a cascading confection of princess-cut eyelet lace and with her grandmother’s long silk veil fastened to her blonde head by means of golden butterfly-shaped pins, made her procession up the centre space between the rows of chairs to the front of the room, where she was joined by Gordon. The bald spot on the back of his head had grown larger over the past year, Monica observed. And it was shaped almost exactly like the hole-in-the-ozone satellite shots over Antarctica that her son Noah had glued to bristol board for his science project this past winter. What did sparkly little Hayley, not twenty-five yet, want with an ozone-headed man in an outgrown tuxedo with two kids he never wanted to see and a selfless but sardonic wife so freshly but not yet completely excised from his past? Nicolo wondered. And did Gordon believe that some magic would be achieved through these new pledges, some alchemy that would transform him into someone else entirely, someone who would cleave forever to wife and hearth?

“Today I gladly and with my entire heart take you for my spouse,” they each intoned, Hayley first and then Gordon a beat behind. They continued through the promises in turn.

“I promise to love you without reservation.”

“I shall bring you flasks of wine, comfort you with apples, and never tire of love.”

“Let our love be like bread, made new with fresh yeast every day.”

“Our love will be the morning and the evening star.”

“I will share your burden in times of distress, laugh when you laugh, and cry when you cry.”

“I pledge to grow along with you in mind and spirit, always be open and candid with you, and treasure you for as long as we both shall live.”

“I take you now, before these witnesses, and pledge my love.”

Nicolo felt Monica’s shoulder shaking against his elbow.

“So stupid, I know,” she whispered when he inclined his head toward her. She batted at her nose with a crumpled salmon-coloured tissue.

Nicolo reached out for Monica’s hand and squeezed it. “It’ll be all right,” he said into the thick wave of pinned hair that concealed her ear.

“No,” she whispered back, her voice raspy with suppressed exasperation and sorrow. “It won’t be all right. Not really. They think it’s a game. Like those rides at Disneyland that just keep on going, and you buy the kind of ticket that lets you get on and off and on again whenever you like. I married him for life. For better or worse. That’s how it is with me. You shouldn’t commit until you know for sure, but once you commit, that’s it. For life. Like those parking lots downtown. No in-and-out privileges. It’s a game to them, but to me it was serious.”

Nicolo nodded. He put his arm around her shoulders. His chin pressed against the top of Monica’s head.

“It’s too late for me; I won’t do it again. But you, you shouldn’t go through life alone. Marriage gives you ballast. Having someone else there every day balances you. When we first met, Gordon had a motorcycle. On our second date he bought me a helmet and taught me how to ride behind him. At first, when he took a corner, my instinct was to pull away from the turn because I was afraid that the bike would fall over. But what you have to do is sit as close as possible and lean together. I fell in love with him when we were out on that stupid bike. I thought that was what our marriage would be like, leaning together. That’s what a marriage
should
be like. When you find a good one, whoever it is, grab them. Take the chance. Hold on tight. No matter what, it’s worth it, it really is.”

“Do you know what this is?” Broad-beamed James stood, legs planted wide, in the middle of the hall on Monday morning when Nicolo arrived at Caruso’s, holding out several pieces of paper stapled together. James jerked his thumb over his shoulder, gesturing for Nicolo to follow him into the office. He kicked the door shut behind them, dropped into the chair behind his desk and signalled for Nicolo to sit. Then he pushed the papers at Nicolo. Sarah came from her adjoining office, really a rectangle of space between a row of filing cabinets and the far wall, and positioned herself behind
James. She observed Nicolo closely, worrying with her teeth at a few strands of hair that she pulled across her cheek.

Nicolo remained standing and picked the papers up from the desk. He read the heading and scanned the first page silently. “It’s the harassment policy,” he answered. He could see from the multiple staple and pin marks that this was the copy that usually hung on the bulletin board at the main entrance to the gym.

“Read the first part out loud,” said James.

“‘Caruso’s will not tolerate, ignore, condone, allow or permit workplace harassment and considers harassment to be a serious offence, which may result in disciplinary action up to and including dismissal,’” Nicolo read.

“Go on,” said James.

“‘Workplace harassment can include a single or a series of incidents involving unwelcome or offensive behaviour, gestures, comments and conduct directed specifically at an individual.’” Nicolo paused. “It goes on after that for pages. Five pages. What’s up?”

“There’s been a complaint,” said Sarah.

“Against you,” said James. “Sexual touching. See here?”

He pulled the papers out of Nicolo’s hand and flipped the top page. “Like it says right here. ‘Unwelcome physical contact, intentional or unintentional, such as touching, kissing, patting, contact or pinching.’ That’s prohibited.”

“And discrimination,” added Sarah.

“‘Refusing to work or cooperate with a member of the public or fellow employee because of their ethnic, racial or religious basis,’” James read again from the policy.

“Me?” said Nicolo. “Discrimination against who?” He was thinking, however, of the Fells.

“See?” said James. His voice, always high pitched, soared into falsetto range. He pointed at Nicolo’s face and gestured with his chin toward Sarah. “See that? That look right there? You know what we’re talking about, don’t you, eh?”

“We’re supposed to let him tell his side of the story,” Sarah pointed out. She stepped around James so that she stood closer to Nicolo. Nicolo and Sarah were the same height. She fixed her eyes on his. “Do you know what this is about?”

“The only thing I can think of is what happened last Thursday,” Nicolo said, and he described the sequence of actions that had led to him tumbling on top of Phil and underneath Bella. “Was that it? I can’t think of anything else. But it wasn’t intentional. It was awkward, but just as much for me as for them.”

“You should have reported it,” said Sarah. “Any physical contact, intentional or unintentional, by a member of a staff with any client has to be reported immediately.”

“If that’s even what happened,” said James. “And I can tell you right now, Nicco-boy, that your version of events isn’t at all the way we’ve heard it.”

Nicolo closed his eyes. Exactly what had happened on Wednesday? The experience had been as much dispiriting as humiliating and he had tried to put it out of his mind. In any case, even at the time it hadn’t been entirely clear how he had ended up in a pile on the floor like the filling of an unsavoury sandwich with the Fells on either side of him. Being
forced to consider it now brought a shot of bile into the back of his throat. He didn’t like the Fells and—it occurred to him for the first time—they didn’t like him.

He opened his eyes and in an instant of clarity, perceived that James disliked him as well, and very probably for the same reason. Nicolo was one of the world’s blessed. He had been provided with sufficient resources, more than sufficient in fact. He was healthy, well-adjusted, well-housed and well-guided. He had always had people who loved him, and as a result he had always had at the ready the confidence—doubtlessly naive—of someone who expects to be liked and generally is. James and the Fells must have begun life as deserving—what infant can possibly be born unworthy?—but the workings of the world, whatever they were, and however it worked, had been stinting with them. The world had provided them with miserly doses of many of the advantages that Nicolo had been allotted in abundance. It could be no consolation to them that Nicolo was both aware of and grateful for this plenitude. And Nicolo realized that part of his fortune had been to live in a manner uncircumscribed by rules. His own moral system was enough of a rudder; the rules were almost all superfluous. James and the Fells would struggle for their entire lives with the question of what and who and whose rules should have authority over them, and who they could dominate in turn.

“Just what did they say?” Nicolo asked James. He remembered how Salvatore had asserted charge over a set of difficult facts. He sat down, pulled his chair close to the desk, took the pages of the policy in his hands and straightened
them by tapping their edges on the desk, first the long side and then the short.

“That’s for us to know,” said James. “None of your business at the present time is all you need to know. Our investigation is ongoing.”

“But I’m entitled to know the facts. In fact, I need to know them in order to respond to them, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, of course we’ve asked for a written description of the exact allegation,” said Sarah. “We’ll give a copy to you as soon as we have it. I’m sure it can all be—”

“Are there any witnesses?”

“No. But it’s two against one.” James folded his arms across his chest. “Only your word against theirs. Two
paying
customers.” He wore the satisfied expression of a professional torturer.

“So you have nothing in writing at all. All you have is a complaint against someone who’s worked for you for five years so far with no problems?”

“What we have is an allegation that you engineered a situation in which you had contact of a sexual nature with both of the Fells.”

“Both? At once? Here in the gym? In a workout room that anyone could have walked into at any time? That’s quite a story, don’t you think?”

“You’ve already admitted to the incident and you’ve also admitted to failing to file a report about it as soon as it happened, as required by the gym rules.”

“I have described to you a
collision
that was not my fault and in which no one was injured. There was nothing even remotely sexual about it. If nothing happened, then there was nothing
to report. Is that all you have? An allegation? No injury and nothing in writing? Do the Carusos know about this?”

“There is in fact an injury.”

“Who? What kind of injury?”

“We have a picture of it, Nicolo,” Sarah said.

“Let’s see it, then.”

Sarah pulled a large photograph from a file folder and passed it across the desk to him, dodging James’s obstructive reach. The photograph showed a long blue-white thigh with a bruise almost identical to Nicolo’s, but lower down, just above the knee.

“Bella?” Nicolo asked.

“No,” said James. “This is a picture of Mr. Fell’s injury. He came to see us this morning alone, without Ms. Fell. She was apparently too upset to come in.”

“Who took the picture?”

“I did.” James rattled his desk drawer. “I keep a camera in case there is ever any need to document an incident. The insurance company makes it a requirement of our liability policy. I keep the batteries charged and fresh film in it at all times. Just in case. The Carusos rely on me to play this kind of thing entirely by the book.”