Page 95 of Lorenzo

Yet given my own hard-on and the excessive speed of this car, it would lead to a tail-spin direct to heaven.

Or hell.

It’s good to see prim, Bostonian Emily with the French twist and occasional disapproving scowl loosen up like this.

In that first photo Dante showed me of her, no one would ever guess that Boston bluestocking could lose her shit over a “bad boy” like me.

But she’s proven it more than once.

But when I’m hitting nearly ninety miles an hour, any sex talk can lead to unwanted consequences.

“Your scarf makes you look like a gun moll. The Bonnie to my Clyde in the 1930s.”

“Who are they?”

“One of the original gangster couples. Romantic and tragic.”

Emily laughs and turns her attention to the passing landscape.

I love seeing her like this. Joyful. Carefree. Unguarded.

Em puts her hand over mine on the stick shift.

Em.

That’s how I like to think of her now.

Just plain Em.

A short name of endearment. A burning ember. Every time I look at her, I feel her heat.

“Hey, look at that fruit seller,” Em says. “Can we stop for fresh cherries?”

I swerve off the side of the road, a blur of red.

The old guy behind the upturned crate is with a young kid, maybe his grandson. The kid tries to upsell us on alcohol-free homemade fruit wine in addition to the cherries.

“For an extra five bucks, you can take a look at our goats. We have a few of their kids that are as cute as heck.”

“Let’s see them, Lorenzo,” Em says.

Though I’d rather be back on the road, we find a low bale of hay and take seats by the baby goats.

“It’s nice here,” says Em, after I’ve poured out the wine and divided the cherries. “I wish we could have brought Teddy here.”

“Another time. It was all I could do to get permission to see him on such short notice.”

Em smiles and puts her hand on my thigh. “Thanks for arranging this. It seems like forever since I’ve seen him last.”

“On the phone last night, I overheard him call you MiMi. How is that?”

“Oh,” says Em, blushing. “There’s only seven years between us. But since he was only a year old when our parents were killed, he started calling me ‘Mama.’ “

She pauses.

“Since I was only eight at the time, all the mothers at the playground would stare. So I trained him to call me Mimi instead.”

“That must have been rough,” I say, taking her hand and feeling each of her fingers in turn. “Being a child, but having no childhood.”