Va Fa Napoli

by kheelwithit

It's vicious here, in Napoli. Behind the sandy Amalfi coast, people drown in concrete shoes, and in the fields of pretty yellow sunflowes, poor suckers get aired out with the assassin's special. But Lovino's family is broke and he's willing to do anything to change it. So he joins the Mob.

Everything happens too quickly, maybe, because we make the decisions that matter most at the speed we blink.

Maybe people don't really act at all, just react to all the shit that gets thrown our way as byproduct of somebody else's decisions.

And it could all be wishful thinking, but it'd go a long way in helping Lovino Vargas feel like it wasn't his fault, but someone else's. In particular, a portly boy nicknamed Beppe.

"You must be really rich, Beppe. You always got cash to spare."

"Yeah, do your parents give you an allowance?"

"No, they made me get a job." Lovino doesn't know Beppe, he's too young to be in the same class as him, but the idea of getting his own money- well, that's enough to make Lovino want his friendship.

"How'd you get the job? What do you do? How much do you get?" Well, maybe not friendship, he probably doesn't want that. Just answers to his questions. And Beppe, smug and towering over the children that crowd around him instead of their lunches, seems all too happy to oblige.

"My parents gave it to me. They make me work in the Gelateria downstairs after school and I get twenty euros a week."

Twenty euros a week, fifty two weeks in a year- Lovino does the math against a pillar of the schoolyard on a corner of scribbled on paper. That's one thousand and forty euros.

"But I don' gotta work on Sunday. I go to Mass." Minus fifty two Sundays every year- which is eight hundred and ninety two euro.

Less than four digits, but it's still more than he's ever seen in one place in his lifetime of ten years.

Eight hundred and ninety two euro is enough to pay for his Grandfather's pills. Eight hundred and ninety two euro is enough to pay for water paint for his little brother. It's enough for him to buy them groceries for his little family of three for at least three weeks.

It's plenty.

And Lovino Vargas sits on the steps of his school, apart from people who aren't concerned with what eight hundred and ninety two euro can do and quietly stares at the digits at the corner of his reading homework with a determination to get a job.