Day 21 - Only Laugh - Chapter 21 (1627 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

ONLY LAUGH WHEN IT HURTS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 21

“I just wanted to thank you for letting Vittorio and his friends have a chance to play their music for someone other than me.” Aida said finally.

“Vittorio, that's his name. Sorry I was blanking on his name, I knew who he was, but I forget names.” Tony was not usually much of a talker these days, like all good bartenders he was a listener, that was the need they fulfilled. With Aida though he wanted to talk. To extend the conversation as far as he could. If she was so infrequently out at night, and this was the first chance he had to meet her in nearly 3 years here then he should use that opportunity. “Usually a good thing in a bartender, forgetting the details.”

“I can imagine.” Aida was not leaving either. Her son had said plenty about Tony, the man of mystery who ran Solo Ridere and said virtually nothing himself. The kids in the village, made up all sorts of stories about his past and who he was, not one of them guessed at the truth, and few of them would have made the connection at their ages. When he had disappeared from public life the oldest among them would have been eleven years old, and they did not hang out with the older kids who may have made the connection. That was a differential that worked to his advantage, the teens who were growing towards their twenties all followed the same path to the one of the Cities, Florence, Pisa, Milan or even Rome itself. The village life held little for young adults or families starting out and so the older set remained and the younger dreamed of the days of freedom coming their way.

Occasionally there would be an exception, Antonio the chef had come back to the Village to care for his grandparents after his parents had taken on a new project overseas, they were going to pass on the offer until Antonio found out and insisted on coming home, the Roman life of pressure and competition was just too much for him and he wanted a break, in this case for good. So he spent his days with his grandmother, frail but alert and spoke of the old days and the old ways, and that suited him, reminded him of his place and how life fitted together here. Most people chaffed under the yoke of village life but not Antonio. Tony had inherited him from the old owner of the cafe, when it was just named Giuseppe's after the previous owners desire for traditions. It never really thrilled Antonio but it was a job, until Tony came along and took him and the place all in one go. He closed it down, sat with Antonio and asked him how everything worked, what everyone liked and what they wanted. He asked Antonio what he would do with the place.

Then he ignored it all and quietly went about making the place that he wanted. He never shared the bookkeeping with anyone, he had made very little money in the first six months, because he didn’t care about money, money he had. He wanted a place to hide, to relax and to enjoy the quiet life. He wanted a bar or café to hang out in, one where he was at home. So he bought one for himself to be in, it just came with some extra responsibilities.

Antonio knew Aida's deceased husband, he had been a bit of a local star in the village, he had gone to Milan to try out for the football team, and had made it to a few professional games, never cracking the club scene as a regular but as close to the real thing as it was possible to get. He was a charming man, with wavy blonde hair, a healthy outlook and a slender body that was filled with ambition and dreams of bigger things. But he wanted those bigger things to look even bigger still in this, the smallest of ponds. Paolo had been working for a multinational corporate company, doing something in account management, Aida neither knew or cared what that entailed as long as it made him happy, which it frequently did. He spent his time impressing people and convincing them to do business with his company, he played on his time in football, grew his own legend but instead of being big headed and resentful he enjoyed every minute of his fame and enjoyed everything that it gave him afterwards as well.

He met Aida at an Opera in Florence, where she was living at the time. She was working there, not in the production but working the house. He had been working too, but entertaining clients, American ones looking for an authentically artistic Tuscan experience. They had done the usual tourist things, the David, the Uffizi and shopped the Ponte Vechhio. Then he took them to all the places where he knew people, where they would get treated like royalty and be told they were getting the local experience. Special entrance to boxed seats at the performance, Aida had seated them and once he had caught her eye that was it for him. He left his seat, left his clients and talked to her all the way through the first act, returning to the box with treats and wine for his guests, ever the perfect host, waiting patiently until the curtain rose and he could depart.

It was a whirlwind and they moved into a new house, a new build on the edge of the village. He had taken one of the houses that was built from the original village wall, five or six hundred years old, the age grew or shrank depending on who told the story to whom, and then added on a new design one that future proofed his position in the village and planned ahead for children they did not yet have. She travelled with him plenty when they first married, spent little time inside the house he had made into a nest for them. The she fell pregnant and Vittorio was on the way, she settled into village life and really began to enjoy it and make friends easily. A few years later, just before Vittorio started his first year of schooling, a sister was born. She named her Oriana for her golden hair, just like her fathers. She was the apple of her fathers eye and for a year or more things were perfect for them all.

Then he died. Tragically he was in a car accident when returning home from the airport, a heavy rain and a hillside slipped at the wrong moment, tonnes of dirt pushing into the side of his car, turning the wheels to the edge where the car sped off at a tangent, hanging peacefully for a moment before plunging earthwards to the gully below. A copse of trees snagged the car halfway down and flipped it over on itself. He was likely unconscious and never woke from the head wound he sustained in the first hit. It gave her and the family a little solace, but their daughter never knew the man from which she had got the golden aspect and attitude. Their son understood and never got away from the fact that people can die. It was an early lesson to learn and it shaped his formative years. He was not reckless, but he was impatient for life. He was filled with sorrow and hope in equal amounts, mourning the loss of what might have been, but pointing towards what could yet be.

He had initiated the idea of the live music, he was not the performer, that was the girl and her boyfriend, his closest friends growing up. He wrote, prolifically songs of joy and sadness, ones that suited her clear and piercing voice, one that rang clear like a knife striking a glass. Pure, but painful. Perfect for his songs. He would accompany them and provide melody, and it satisfied him to hear his words coming to life.

Aida had turned to her friends when her husband died, but found that she had been placed into the widow's box almost immediately, by the elder widows and by her younger friends who did not know how to process the change well at all. She rebelled, rejected the black clothes and black attitude that came with the territory. This won her precious few friends, and lost her some of the ones that she thought she had. So her kids, her family and the legacy of Paolo's place in the world, in the heart of the Village wall, the core of that town, became her refuge and her life. She centered on Oriana and Vittorio, they had the money from insurances, the money he had saved from football and the money the company paid on his death, even though it was not their fault, he had that effect on people and they cared for him in his passing, and provided well for his family.

Now her son, a few weeks from turning sixteen, bursting with talent and with content spilling out of him into napkins, notebooks and screeds of paper, was ready to have his moment.

She came to see it, to see if the Patron was truly that or something to be warded against. She was unsure what she found when she spoke to Tony, she sensed a sadness that could only have enhanced his connection to Vittorio, in her son's eyes alone undoubtedly. Now she had met him, she wondered who he was.

For the first time in a long time, she wondered about someone else outside of her home.