Sorry this chapter is a bit late – I was at this band festival thing all afternoon and evening (I just got home half an hour ago) so I didn't get a chance to post it before now.
This chapter is actually one of my favorites of the chapters I've planned and/or partially written so far, not just because the song is one of my favorites (IT IS SUCH AN ADORABLE SONG I DON'T EVEN), but also because the last part of the chapter is the first part of this story I ever wrote. It's finally getting posted, after waiting over a year, being edited many times, and even changing songs! It's like the fetus of this story that grew into a baby story and now, finally, almost an adult story … He grew up so fast~!
…
Anyway, enjoy the chapter. :)
WE SING, WE DANCE, WE EAT TOMATOES
3. Who's Thinking About You Now?
Who'd care enough to send you flowers,
That you could call at all hours, and give your love to?
Somebody must believe, if they could see what I see,
If they haven't, they will, baby they all will.
THUMP.
"Dio, Felicia, are you okay?" Lovino Vargas asked, staring at the figure of his younger sister with concern.
The redheaded girl blinked lazily at him from the front step of Il Stomaco Felice, her grandfather's restaurant. "Veee~?"
She just tripped and fell flat on her goddamned face at eight in the fucking morning, and she's fine, Lovino thought. Of course.
Muttering about stupid, clumsy sisters that would die if he didn't watch out for them, he extended a hand to help her up.
"Grazie, Lovi~," Felicia chirped, prancing inside the restaurant with an unhealthy amount of cheerfulness for the time of day, leaving her brother to examine the item that had tripped her.
The item that had tripped her being … A large bouquet of flowers addressed to Aldrich Beilschmidt.
Of fucking course.
"Oi, Aldrich," Lovino hollered into the back recesses of the building. "Someone sent flowers for you."
An exasperated sigh was audible as Aldrich made his way to the front of the restaurant, wiping his hands on his simple gray apron as he went. He was a solid, stable sort of man – more of a rock molded into a man, really, with his long silvery hair, his simple clothes in earthen colors, his expressionless gray-gold eyes, and his constant not amused expression. He was usually either nonplussed, irritated, or (rarely) terrifyingly angry. If he was happy, then it didn't show – or it showed as irritation. Lovino often wondered how Aldrich and Roma – as enthusiastic and emotional at seventy-five as he had been at fifteen – managed to make their relationship work, but then he figured that Aldrich probably grounded the Italian, giving him a shoulder to lean on when he was depressed, and Roma saw the German as a challenge, always trying to find new ways to get that little, ever-so-slightly-amused smirk to rear its head, even after they'd been married eight years.
Either that, or the sex was truly mind-blowing. (For a couple of old guys, they were both surprisingly fit.)
But as Aldrich picked up the flowers, read the note, and complained about how much unnecessary money Roma was spending – "We were talking on the phone for five hours last night, and he sent me flowers yesterday and the day before, one would think he'd apologized enough to me for going to Paris without me by now" – there was this tiny hint of a smile on his face, so Lovino thought his former theory was probably true.
"Oh, by the way, Lovino," Aldrich said, stopping before he headed back to the kitchen, "Roma and I have been thinking about giving Louise and Felicia our apartment above the restaurant, and moving to a place with a bigger art studio a few blocks away. Would that be okay with you?"
"Why the hell are you asking me?" Lovino asked, a bit baffled. "I'm not the one moving."
"Yes, but you'd be living all alone if Felicia moves," the older man explained. "And besides, the circumstances are such that I can't ask her just yet."
"Huh?"
"I'll ask her after her and Louise's lunch break … But I'd like to know your opinion now, if you don't mind."
Lovino considered the question. To anyone else, he'd say that what the hell, Felicia could move, why would he care, she spent all of her time either out with Louise or on the phone with her, anyway – but Aldrich was observant; Aldrich could tell what Lovino was really thinking; Aldrich knew that Lovino would miss Felicia if she moved, the same way Aldrich missed Roma when he went off on one of his art promotion trips (which were getting more and more frequent, as his art became more and more popular.)
So, yeah. Lovino would miss Felicia if she moved. He'd miss hearing her chatter fill the space in their apartment from morning until night, and her bubbly joy lighting up the emptiness in his life, and her delicious pasta, and all of the stupid sibling rituals and secrets they had that he could never share with anyone else. And he'd be jealous of her, sharing an apartment with the girl she loved – because he knew she'd be much happier living with Louise than with him.
But Felicia deserved to be happy. She didn't need her brother dragging her down the way he had for pretty much her entire life.
"Yeah," Lovino said, "she can move. Whatever. I still don't see why you had to ask me first."
Aldrich rolled his eyes – he could see straight through Lovino, of course he could – and left, with a parting, "You'll find out what this is all about after her lunch break."
Just when you suspect that life couldn't get harder,
Something comes along and makes your dark day darker,
The weight of it all falls on you.
During her lunch break, Lovino was in the kitchen, awaiting an order of chicken parmesan, when the call came.
Felicia, read the caller ID.
He pressed the talk button on his ancient Droid with a sigh. "What is it, Sorella? I'm kind of working, y'know."
"Fratello! Fratello Fratello Fratello!" The Italian girl sounded as though she was jumping up and down as she spoke. "Louise proposed!"
"Oh, that's grea – wait, what?!" Lovino interrupted himself as the news sank in.
"I know, isn't it amazing, ve~?" Felicia asked, completely misunderstanding his reaction. "I just wanted to call you and make sure you were okay with it, because, you know, you're my fratelloand the closest family I have left, so I felt like it would be right to have your approval, ve~, and –"
The girl continued to babble, but her brother was no longer listening.
Lovino remembered one time when he was little – six or seven, perhaps – and his mother brought him and Feli to a park near their house. Deciding to rebel against traditional rules of society, Lovino had taken it upon himself to climb up the long slide reaching to the wood-chip-carpeted ground from the highest point on the playscape. After what seemed to be hours upon hours (in actuality, more like ten minutes) of selfless toil, discovering the best places to grab onto the slide, the best ways to position his feet, the best pep talks to give himself before attempting the feat once more, the boy had finally been nearly at the top when – disaster. Felicia, unaware of her brother's heroic quest, had climbed up the stairs, and slid down the slide, effectively knocking Lovino to the ground before her.
When the young boy had complained of the great injustice to his mother, she had looked at him coldly and replied, "Well, that's what you get for trying to go the wrong way. Everyone knows that you go down slides, not up them. You'll never get anywhere in life if you do things the opposite way of other people – you'll just get pushed to the bottom, the way you did just now."
Lovino had stuck his tongue out at her, then attempted to climb the slide again while Felicia had received compliments and a push on the swings for doing things the right way.
Now, years later, the Italian man thought that he shouldn't be surprised, really, that Louise had proposed to his sister. After all, they were obviously, disgustingly (if you asked him), adorably (if you asked anyone else) in love. The event was inevitable.
Lovino was selfish for wishing Felicia would be dumped horribly by her longtime girlfriendand travel the path of heartbreak, bitterness, and mistrust along with him.
She was doing things the right way, wasn't she?
So, he would do as his mother had before him – reward her and punish himself.
"Felicia, it's okay, I get it," Lovino heard himself saying. "I'm fine with it. Accept, for Dio's sake."
"Really, ve~?"
"Sì, really. I want you to be happy, and if Louise is what makes you happy … Well, I guess I can put up with her."
"Grazie, Fratello! Grazie, grazie, grazie!"Grrr…
"Prego."
As he hung up, Lovino felt himself get pushed down the slide again.
Who's thinking about you now?
If you were building a wall, who would tear it all down and pull you through?
Who's thinking about you?
Trudging home, much later that night, Lovino wondered what he would say if Sadiq proposed to him.
It was a stupid thought, of course – Sadiq had never really loved him; he knew that. But what if … what if he suddenly showed up, with a ring and an armful of flowers and pleas for forgiveness?
Nah. It would never happen.
That bastard was long gone, anyway. He'd left for college in New York City with his new girlfriend, Elizaveta, after he graduated, and hadn't been back to Philly since.
It was just as well, Lovino figured. He didn't need any reminders of how pathetic he'd once been.
Once been, right?
He wasn't pathetic any more. He was strong. He stood up to people. He had confidence. He was a fucking badass, damn it.
… Oh, who was he kidding?
Lovino kicked a conveniently placed street post, then cursed as an ache grew exponentially in his foot.
But he soon forgot the ache – and his unwelcome insecurities – as he turned the corner.
Because there he was – the Curbside Prophet in the flesh, leaning against the wall of the building, his guitar case lying empty in front of him, singing something about sunshine.
The Curbside Prophet had tanned skin marred with scars, unruly, walnut-colored hair that he kept tied back in a short ponytail at the nape of his neck, and the most extraordinary eyes Lovino had ever seen. They were so bright, so brilliant, so green that they seemed to peer into his very soul and strip him until that soul was all he had left. They made the Curbside Prophet seem like an old man, though he couldn't have been more than a few years older than Lovino.
The man was clearly someone who hadn't had an easy life; he was living on the streets, playing the guitar for a few dollars, covered with a road map of scars. And yet he radiated hope, love, and joy in a way Lovino hadn't thought truly possible.
He was different from all of the countless other homeless people Lovino had encountered during his twenty-three years of urban life: he hadn't given up.
Lovino found it unbelievable – how could this wreck of a person be more optimistic than himself, a man with a steady income, a roof over his head, and tomatoes to eat?
It was unbelievable, it was impossible, it wasn't right, it wasn't fair, and yet …
Lovino had found himself going out of his way to, no matter which way he walked home, pass by the singer's corner. He had found himself looking forward to that moment each day, the moment when the Curbside Prophet's emerald eyes would land on him and he would feel a fleeting moment of hope. He had found himself wondering who the Curbside Prophet was, how he'd ended up on the streets, how he'd learned to play the guitar. He had found himself memorizing the man's happy songs and singing them to himself when nobody else was around.
The man had become the sunshine in Lovino's life.
Lovino tried not to look at the Curbside Prophet as he passed him now – the guy was just another beggar, he told himself – but he found himself walking more slowly, almost of his own accord, so that he had more time to listen to the music, the music that somehow, impossibly, seemed to be speaking to him:
"Yeah, I know you're smoking, I've seen your fire
I know in love you've been giving it up
So do I qualify, qualify, qualify, qualify, qualify?"
Once upon a time and far, far away, a young boy began to climb up a playground slide.
I'm not so bad, honestly, Lovino thought, smiling slightly. I could be worse.
He was almost out of earshot of the Curbside Prophet when, suddenly, he turned, sprinted as he had never sprinted before, and fed the hungry guitar case a twenty-dollar bill.
The singer's "muchas gracias" followed Lovino home, chased by the Italian's unspoken reply:
"I should be saying that to you."
I feel like starting something.
I feel like calling off today to be with you.
Yeah, I believe we all do something that's familiar like a déjà vu,
Familiar like a déjà vu.
The next day was Wednesday – Lovino's day off.
There were a thousand different ways he could be spending it: sleeping, watching YouTube videos, channel surfing, working on his tomato plants, going to a movie by himself, shopping for clothes he didn't need, getting out his camera and searching for something worth photographing, researching for the wedding he'd probably end up doing most of the actual planning for, going to a bar and trying to pick up someone else as lonely as he was …
There were a thousand different ways he'd spent his days off before.
And, well, one way he hadn't. It had occurred to him late the previous night
Who will be the one to listen when it's time to listen?
Who will be the one to miss you when you've gone missing?
Well, I do.
Do I qualify, qualify, qualify, qualify, qualify?
And then, the sun wasn't shining any more.
Lovino stared at the ambulance as though his world was shattering, and the ambulance was the hammer that was pounding it.
Two nondescript people in hospital uniforms – one a short, stout man and the other a medium-built woman with cropped, dark hair – were lifting a third person into the back of their ambulance.
That third person was the Curbside Prophet.
Lovino's Curbside Prophet.
"No," he whispered.
A tiny part of him wondered why the fuck he cared so much, but it was quickly swallowed by the rest of him, which was screaming in pain that its sun was being taken away, and that was not allowed, Goddamn it.
Lovino rushed forward to the truck, probably looking like a maniac but not particularly caring.
"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.
"Who're you to ask us that?" the man countered.
"We're taking this man to the hospital," the woman explained when Lovino seemed unable to come up with an adequate answer. "We got a call that he collapsed out of starvation."
"Is he …" Lovino began, not wanted to say the word for fear of making its meaning come true.
"Dead? No," the woman said, "but he might be soon. Judging by his condition, it's surprising that he's lasted this long."
Lovino felt his body sway, as though he had no control over it. He had known that hobos often perished, of starvation or drug addiction or gang wars – his city wasn't exactly the kindest – but he'd never really considered that it would happen to his hobo. The singer had seemed too optimistic, too bright, too joyful to be killed by something so mundane.
He shook his head violently. "No. He won't die. He's too determined to die."
"How do you know? Do you know him?" the other man asked.
Lovino flushed. "Well … no …"
"Then how do you know how determined he is?"
"I just know, okay?"
"Okay …"
Lovino glanced from the incredulous faces of the hospital staff to the unconscious body halfway lifted into their ambulance. It looked so small and helpless without its owner's powerful personality inhabiting it. It wasn't right. Lovino wanted it made right again.
He wanted his sunshine back.
"I'm taking him to my apartment," he heard himself say.
When you're sleeping, darling when you're next to me,
I scan you like a credit card, connecting freckles like I do the stars.
Yes ma'am, yes ma'am, yes ma'am,
I am thinking about you.
Lovino Vargas was beginning to question his sanity. After all, he'd just spent a good half hour convincing a couple of hospital workers that the best place for a complete stranger who was almost dying of starvation was in Lovino's home, not in a hospital. Lovino didn't care about complete strangers. He didn't care, in general, as a rule.
So, why had he been so adamant that the Curbside Prophet should go home with him?
Lovino remembered the argument as he paced around his apartment, trying to figure out what to do with this man now sleeping in his spare bedroom.
"Are you a doctor?"
"No, but I'm CPR-certified. And I know doctors. I know a hell of a lot of doctors."
"Okay, but are you qualified to take care of this man?"
"Yes! Yes I fucking am!"
"Um …"
"It can't be that hard to nurse a person back from starvation, can it? You just have to feed him some good food, and I can sure as hell do that!"
"Well, no, you need medical training, and –"
"Okay, then, I'll Google it, or call one of my many doctor friends."
"We really should take him to the hospital –"
"Look. This guy was living on the streets. Do you honestly think he has any health insurance to pay for hospital treatment?"
"He might be eligible for free healthcare –"
"Might. That's great. The guy's dying and he might be eligible for free healthcare. And then what, huh? He goes back to living on the streets and starts starving again? But me, I'll take care of him, and I know a place where he can get a job. I can do a much better job than any government hospital at getting this guy back on his feet."
"… Why do you care so much about him, anyway? You told us yourself you don't even know this guy."
"I … um … I-I … I w-want … I want to do something good in my life. I'm twenty-three, and I have yet to amount to much of anything, so I want to make up for all of the good deeds I haven't done. Repent, I guess. And this guy … This Curbside Prophet … From what I've seen of him, he's a good person, and he doesn't deserve what's happened to him, so I want to help him. Is that really too much to ask, you annoying bastards?"
In retrospect, Lovino wondered where those words had even come from. "I want to make up for all of the good deeds I haven't done"? Who said that, and how had he gotten control of Lovino's voice?
Somehow, Lovino's pacing had brought him into the guest bedroom, and his gaze landed on the bed. The Curbside Prophet was scrawled unconventionally across it, on top of the blankets because Lovino hadn't had the strength to tuck him in, a little bit of water dribbling out of his mouth from when Lovino had given him a bottle of water that he'd drunk too quickly. His face was unbelievably childish in repose – naïve and innocent, as though the man had no idea the danger he was in. He didn't appear to be recovering from starvation; he simply appeared to be sleeping, without a care in the world.
Something about that face drew the Italian in closerto examine what he'd found so appealing about it before. It was a nice face, certainly – to underplaymatters – but it was scraggly, with that little, scratchy beard and that unkempt, untrimmed hair framing it, and Lovino couldn't remember why he'd been so hell-bent on rescuing this man.
But then, a hint of a smile crept across the sleeping man's face, as though he was dreaming about something pleasant, and Lovino remembered.
It was that smile, a smile happier than anything Lovino had ever seen (much less felt) in his life. That was why Lovino had wanted to bring this man to his apartment, to keep him for himself.
A sudden feeling of protectiveness came over the Italian, a sort of motherly instinct usually only reserved for members of the feminine sex, and he found himself bringing the covers up around the sleeping man's body, gently tucking him in the way a mother tucks in a young child.
Lovino didn't care, in general, as a rule – but surely, he could make an exception, if it meant he got to see that smile again.
When our two hands are linked together with an ampersand,
It's my kind of diagram.
When our sore eyes are lined up side by side,
Well, I'm a happy man,
Yes, I'm a happy man.
Yes ma'am, yes ma'am, yes ma'am,
I am thinking about you.
When Antonio Fernandez Carriedo woke up, he wondered if he was in heaven, because this was too good to be true.
He was still wearing the clothes that had become his uniform over the past five years – ragged jeans, holey sweatshirt, ratty t-shirt – but that was the only thing familiar to him. He was lying in a bed, a simple bed, not too soft but not uncomfortable, with a bright red comforter that somebody had pulled up to his chin. Sunshine poured into the room from huge windows on the far side, half-cloaked with curtains that matched the bedspread. The light was so bright, so happy, and so hopeful that Antonio thought it might blind him.
On a small table to his right were his guitar (okay, two familiar things, then) and a basket of tomatoes. Rich, ripe, round, fresh tomatoes.
The last tomato he'd eaten had nearly gotten him arrested.
His intense hunger suddenly reasserting itself with a kick to his stomach, Antonio reached out and grabbed a tomato from the basket, then proceeded to devour it like a starving man eating for the first time in days – which, in fact, he was.
It was the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted …
"Hey, bastard, don't eat so fast! You'll give yourself indigestion or something else equally shitty!"
… but not as delicious as the man currently striding into the room.
He wasn't very tall or very muscular, but he was sturdy and well-built. He seemed to radiate antagonism – but, somehow, that made him endearing, not annoying. His hair was a deep mahogany reddish-brown, hanging in uneven bangs over his face with a random curl Antonio just had to yank escaping from the top of his head.
And his face was possibly the most beautiful face Antonio had ever seen. He recognized it – he remembered seeing it pass by him every day for a couple of weeks in the early afternoon and then again late at night – but he had never before noticed how adorable it was.
The man's face was rounded, with cheeks as soft as a baby's. And yet, at the same time, it had angles – the sharp point of a chin, the long line of a nose. Then, the eyes … They were large and deep, the sort you could fall into and never return from. They were the color of the leaves of a flower, with sprinkles of sunshiney gold sparkling in them as they caught the light.
As Antonio stared, the man's face turned a bright red, the exact shade of the tomato he had been eating moments before.
Antonio wanted to pull that man onto the bed and make fierce, passionate love to him, kiss him and squeeze him and know him and invade him and claim him in the name of Spain …
But the last time he'd tried something like that, it had landed him on the streets.
So, he settled for a question instead.
"Are you a tomato angel?"
"… The fuck?"
"I mean," Antonio quickly clarified, "you look like a tomato, plus you're wearing white, plus this must be heaven, since I'm pretty sure I'm dead, so, um, you're a tomato angel."
The man laughed, and Antonio wondered if it was possible to get hard just by listening to a laugh. "Seriously? I think the starvation must've gone to your head, dumbass."
"Qué?"
The man sat down on the end of the bed and began to count flaws in Antonio's logic on his fingers, the long, callused fingers of a hard worker.
"First, this isn't heaven – it's my spare bedroom. Second, you aren't dead. Third, I'm not an angel. I don't even look like one. A white T-shirt and jeans doesn't make me an angel. And, fourth, I don't look like a fucking tomato. Contrary to stupid-ass sayings, you aren't what you eat."
"Oh," Antonio said. Then, "Are you sure I'm not dead?"
"Abso-fucking-lutely positive."
"Oh," he said again. He then proceeded to empty the tomato he'd just eaten onto the floor.
"Damn you," the man exclaimed. "You got fucking tomato puke all over my fucking floor! I told you not to eat so fast, damn it! Do you have any idea how long that'll take me to clean up?!"
"Lo siento," Antonio murmured, opening his eyes wide and morphing his face into the pity-inducing expression he'd perfected over the years.
The man sighed. "Fine, I'll make you some soup first."
"Tomato soup?"
"Is there any other decent kind of soup?"
"Well, I like chicken noodle, and minestrone isn't bad, and –"
"Shut the fuck up, bastard. It was rhetorical."
"Oh. … What does rhetorical mean?"
As Lovino Vargas stomped out of the room and into his kitchen, he could hear the former street rat singing a new verse to one of his old songs:
"I want to be the one to help you ignore Mr. Loneliness peeking his head into your door.
I'm hoping you can feel me,
I'm hoping you can feel me in your chest, chest, yeah."
"Oi, bastard," Lovino called over his shoulder, "you're gonna have to do better than that if you want my Nonno to hire you as a performer for his restaurant!"
