Giuseppe gently removed his arm from Magda’s grip, murmuring that he needed to pick up arugula and get back to the shop.
“Okay, ciao, Giuseppe! Ciao! Salutami a Patrizia, send my greetings to your wife!” Magda turned back to the tourist and added with a chuckle, “His wife is very adorable. I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like because, you know, I’m always so busy, but whenever I do, she tells me about how grateful she is for all the business I bring to Santa Lucia and to their shop. She sometimes works in the shop, of course, but she’s often gone visiting her daughter. Her daughter’s son is retarded or something. I can’t remember.”
The tourist flinched at the word. Magda shot a worried glance at her and asked, “Wait, am I speaking Italian or German? Sometimes I can’t tell anymore.”
“Italian, but that’s fine, I studied in Italy and my sister married an Italian.”
“She did! From where?”
“From Bologna.”
“Ach. Terrible city. So much traffic. Do your sister and her husband live there?”
“She does. They’re not married anymore.”
“Then why doesn’t she go back to Germany? Your family is from Berlin, isn’t that what your documentation said? That’s a rather grim city, but it has plenty of attractions for a young divorcée.”
The tourist pulled her arm away from Magda and wrinkled her nose at a sudden foul odor. She began walking back to the apartment, muttering that she wanted to get her camera.
Magda followed. “Well? Why is she still here?”
“If you must know, they had a son, and the court won’t let her take him out of Italy, so she’s stuck here.”
Magda’s face went white. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Well, there’s nothing to be done.”
“Do you need the name of a lawyer? I know several famous ones in both Italy and Germany that owe me favors.”
“No, but thank you.” The tourist gave Magda a more genuine smile. But kept walking.
“Are you sure?” Magda hurried her pace to keep up. “I have family that’s rather high up in Germany. They have power.” The box under the bed flashed in her mind, but she blinked rapidly and tossed her hair off her face, and the image faded.
“Yes, I’m sure. We’ve consulted with multiple lawyers. There’s no chance of getting her and her son out. Now we’re just trying to help her enjoy her time here. Which is complicated since she hates Italians at the moment.” The tourist tried to laugh but the sound got caught in her throat.
“Well. Italians can be difficult.” Magda thought about all the Italians she knew that never took her up on her offers to sit in her garden and gather cherries from her trees, that kick she felt in her chest at every rejection. “But! Your sister will need to look on the bright side! She has a child! She is living in a famous, if overly trafficked, city! She must learn to make the best of every situation.”
The tourist stalled and considered Magda who stopped alongside her. After a pause, she began walking, but more slowly, “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
The light blared through Edoardo’s eyelids. A visual foghorn that sent him pressing the covers over his eyes. Until his own rank breath forced him to whip the sheets away from his face as he panted to catch a full swallow of air. It wasn’t just his breath, his whole body stank. Edoardo looked down at his bare chest. Was it his imagination or was his skin coated in a thick layer of something shiny and slick? He rubbed his eyes and thought, what happened last night?
Sketchy images danced across the screen of his mind. Pounding music. Strobe lights skittering across bare skin. Foreign-sounding drinks. Pills people kept pressing into his hands. And the drive home in the morning. The car, the crunching shock.
Oh, Madonna, his head hurt.
Gingerly, Edoardo shifted his legs over the side of the bed and planted his feet on the floor. Where was this pain in his legs coming from? The accident? But the airbag had inflated, he remembered the flying wall of white. He didn’t even have any scratches except along his forearm when he winched himself out of the car and scraped himself along the road. His left big toe though, that was oddly swollen. And purple. He sucked in his breath as he remembered a large man, possibly Spanish, reeling backward and stomping on his foot as he windmilled over a table, crashing in a heap. The left toe throbbed helpfully, as if in confirmation. It was discolored and a bit swollen, but other than that, didn’t look terrible.
Nothing really looked too terrible. But the inside of his head seemed to have been filled with mildewy cotton batting. His left hand gripping the headboard, he pulled himself to standing.
Whew. Mission accomplished.
The contents of his stomach lurched dangerously, and Edoardo lunged for the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet in time to void the liquid contents of his belly.
Shower, he needed a shower. But first, he waved his hand through the medicine cabinet until he clutched the packet of pain reliever.
As he swallowed the powder with warm water gulped from the faucet, he wondered what possessed him to go so overboard. He knew how to pace himself, how to eat and drink so that he never got carried away. Something prompted him to attempt oblivion. Edoardo decided he didn’t want to remember what it was.
He stumbled to the shower and turned it on. Gripping the side of the stall he waited for a fresh bout of nausea to pass. Would he need the toilet? No, this one passed with only a twisting of his stomach. Pulling off his underwear, he stepped
