AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What?”
She flagged down the waiter with a wiggle of her fingers and nodded, a code informing him to bring more food.
I repeated myself. “Did Rose know about her mother?”
“Your aunt was an older woman. I didn’t want to alarm her.”
“If this really happened. And it’s a horrible, horrible thing if it did, but if it did it happened nearly a hundred years ago. What good is it to dredge it all up now? My aunt, God rest her incredible soul, is dead and I’m not here to solve a mystery.”
“But I think you are.”
Then my memory got foggy. I could remember Giusy pulling a crumpled piece of paper with text on it out of her pocket. I remembered a platter of tiramisu coming to the table, the waiter plunking it down on top of the words. Giusy asked me if I knew what tiramisu translated to in English. I told her I didn’t.
“Pick me up, or cheer me up.”
“Is this supposed to cheer me up?”
“That’s up to you. It is delicious.”
She was about to show me the piece of paper again when two espressos arrived. The chief of police stood up and made his way to our table. He leaned down to kiss each of Giusy’s cheeks.
“You two look up to no good,” he said in Italian.
“Always up to no good,” Giusy replied with a flirtatious wink.
“Introduce me to the American,” he’d said. I gulped down my glass of wine. The officer started massaging Giusy’s shoulders with his meaty fingers. It all got even blurrier. We sipped some shot glasses filled with a fortified sweet marsala wine.
“It is your namesake!” Giusy kept saying. “You and this wine are like one.” The subject of Serafina’s death was dropped. We went to another bar or maybe it was someone’s house with a bar. The three of us traipsed back through the streets arm in arm singing “Volare.”
As we stood outside the hotel Giusy fumbled for her keys and went through the door first. I sort of remembered the police officer leaning close to my face, his tipsy smile turning brutish in a flash as he whispered in my ear, “Go home, little girl.”
Maybe he didn’t. Maybe I imagined it. But hours later I could still taste his hot stale breath on my lips.
I hated myself for getting so drunk. I’d stopped drinking too much after I opened my restaurant and had Sophie. I couldn’t handle the hangovers and the responsibility of keeping two fragile things alive, but lately I’d been reckless during the times when Sophie was with Jack, drinking more than I had in my early twenties. The night before had been no exception.
I needed to find that piece of paper. I needed to find Giusy.
But first I had to get myself upright and clean. I crawled into the shower and turned on the water, letting it run over me as I sat with my bare ass in the basin. Somehow, I made it out and into a vaguely presentable outfit before heading downstairs.
Despite the small number of guests staying at the hotel, a buffet worthy of a royal visit was laid out in the dining room. There were five different kinds of cake alone, each labeled with a little card, a torta ai cereal, a torta mele, a plum cake cioccolato, a torta al cacao e caffè, and finally a torta al cocco. The only other visitors, a German couple in their fifties who looked like Victorian fossil hunters in matching khaki shorts and thick-soled loafers with knee-high socks, gave me stiff nods as I walked over to the buffet to make up a plate of salty cheese, salami, olives, tomatoes, fluffy scrambled eggs, and stubby sausages in the shape of little thumbs. I lathered a flaky cornetto with pistachio cream jam and local honey. It took less than five minutes for me to scarf everything down before Giusy emerged from the kitchen looking no worse for the wear from the night before, wearing a tight black bodysuit under jeans that hugged all of her curves. She’d piled her hair on top of her head in an elaborate braided topknot. Gold hoops hung from her ears, so massive they practically grazed her shoulders.
“You almost missed the food,” she said when she reached my table with an espresso and a glass of liquid the color of a sunrise with a glistening orange blob floating in it.
“What the hell happened last night?” I whispered.
The polite expression on Giusy’s face didn’t flicker. “I think our Sicilian wine might be a little too strong for you and you drank all of it.”
“Are you messing with me?” The German couple looked over with disapproval. Giusy smiled at them with a roll of her eyes as if to say, Americans, aren’t they always the worst?
“Let’s not bother the other guests. Take a walk with me after breakfast?”
I dropped my voice even lower. “Do you remember telling me that one of my relatives was murdered last night?”
“Let’s take that walk when you’re finished eating. Wear comfortable shoes, OK?” She patted me on the head in a way that would have been condescending if it weren’t so motherly.
I had no choice but to sip my coffee and eye the neon fluid in front of me while Giusy attended to the Germans, who had pulled out a dog-eared guidebook and were pointing to some landmark.
Giusy only stopped by my table again briefly to nod at the concoction. “Drink the entire thing and you’ll feel like a better woman.”
