'Look, I'm sorry about last week,' he said, when he pulled into the parking lot of the arena. They'd spoken very little during the ride; Lucrezia had pretended to be ensconced in an article she had to read for her exam, and Cesare had been busy dreaming up a half-decent apology. It was silly, really, for if he'd asked her what she was reading, she couldn't have told him, and if she'd asked him what he was thinking about, he wouldn't have told her.
Lucrezia put the article away and turned to look at her brother. He was manoeuvring the car into a parking spot and couldn't return the look, which gave her a pleasant feeling of power over him.
'Really? Why?' She asked.
But Cesare was rather got at manoeuvring. 'I didn't mean to hurt you,' he said diplomatically.
'So you're not sorry that it happened.'
'Come on, Lucrezia, you're killing me.'
He parked the car and went around to the other side quick as a flash, so that Lucrezia only managed to open the door by herself. 'I wish,' she said, but she accepted his extended hand and got out of the car in the utmost regal manner.
'Come on, it's not like I coerced the girl into having fun. Two adults, etcetera,' Cesare said. He gave her suave smile, but she made a face and pulled her hand away from his.
'She's my friend. And Alfonso's sister,' she said, as they started towards the stadium. They were early, and Lucrezia wondered if her brother had done that on purpose. She had to admit that he, too, was a decent planner, and a shrewd one at that.
'Tit for tat, Lucrezia. You're my sister and Alfonso's my friend, you don't hear me complaining about that,' he said.
One would hear him complaining about that, actually, and with some frequency, but Lucrezia tapped a different vein. 'You and Alfonso are friends now?' She asked with obvious incredulity.
'Of course. I knew him long before you barged in and corrupted our beautiful brotherly bond,' Cesare answered.
She snorted. 'Please, you don't even like him.'
They were at the outmost entrance of the stadium, where they were stopped by a buff guard with a blinking bald head. 'Not true,' Cesare told Lucrezia, as he gave their tickets to the man checking them. The man seemed a great deal less interested in those than in Lucrezia, because he looked at her longer and with more interest. Cesare scowled at the man, who quickly returned the tickets and let them through.
'I used to like him, before he…' Cesare went on. He looked back at the guard and continued doing so until they had to round a corner. Then he looked straight ahead, seemingly unaware of his sister's eyes on him. 'Before he wetted the bed and let me and father mop up his mess,' he finished.
Cesare worked for Cardinal Rover Catalano now, but he previously worked for archbishop Andrea Ruggiero, who had been the papal nuncio from the Holy See to Washington but was demoted after being implicated in a scandal. Alfonso worked for the ministry of Foreign Relations in Washington, in a suboffice that was largely responsible for this implication. The charge concerned Catalano's involvement in a post-war operation dubbed Operation Gladio, an international anti-communist covert operation headed by several intelligence agencies and the Vatican. The Operation blew up in the early nineties, so the fact that it should bite the old archbishop in the ass had been a shock – especially for Cesare and his Father, who had several "friends" in the office responsible, Alfonso among them.
It wasn't Alfonso's fault, though. Things blow up in politics and the game shifts; unfortunate, but unavoidable. Cesare knew this, but still he blamed Alfonso.
'Alfonso was not responsible for that trial and you know it,' Lucrezia reminded him, but he scoffed as soon as she did. 'Besides, it's not as if the allegations were unfounded,' she added.
'What the hell does that have to do with anything?' He erupted. 'This is the Vatican, in America. Every cardinal, bishop, monsignor or whatever is involved in some plot.' He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. He'd let it grow too long so that it came down halfway down to his ears, causing it to tangle more easily. He tried to stick a stray curl behind one ear, but it bounced right back.
'God,' he said, annoyed. 'The least they could have done was uncover a plot that's still fucking relevant. The Gladio thing was a cold case. Why would anyone bother with such ancient history anyway, unless someone pointed the right people in the right direction?'
'Don't be an ass,' Lucrezia said, at least as annoyed as her brother. 'Alfonso had nothing to do with it. His boss had a vengeance and besides, the only reason Ruggiero wasn't implicated before is because of the protection the CIA gave him, also with Alfonso's help. But things like that can only last for so long, especially nowadays. Opening cold cases is a common hobby of politicians and lay people alike.'
'Right,' Cesare said. He wasn't convinced, but he never would be. 'Well, I guess you're the expert, aren't you? How is that paper coming along anyway? Maybe you can write it on the governance of Alfonso's office, then we'll know for sure.'
'I have to write a paper for history, not governance.'
'Great, then you can write about Operation Gladio. Ancient history, as I said.'
'Let it go, will you!' Lucrezia snapped, making her hands into fists. 'You're just blaming Alfonso for this because you want to have a reason to hate him, but deep down in that cluttered head of yours you know it's all bull. Besides, I'm engaged to him now so you have to be nice to him and treat him like a brother and all that.'
Cesare snorted, for if there was something he would never do it was to treat Alfonso as his "brother". He hardly even treated Juan as a brother, and although Juan had few redeeming qualities, one thing in his favour was that he didn't put his hands anywhere on Lucrezia.
Cesare noticed Lucrezia's clenched hands – in fact, she was almost pissed off enough for a dark cloud to have gathered above her head – and remembered that he'd been trying to apologize to her.
'What, like you're treating me?' he said jokingly.
She didn't really react to that, so he frowned and pondered the best way to phrase his thoughts. For a couple of minutes they walked in silence, with just the background noises of people calling for beer or vendors announcing the price of their hotdogs and the like. They were strolling along the edges of the stadium, and every once in a while they'd pass by a throng of stalls or dixies that seemed to attract noise. The experience was like attending a flea market for construction workers at night.
'I just…. don't like the engagement,' Cesare said, when there was a quieter patch. 'I don't like the idea of marriage, first of all, and I also think it's too soon, whether you love him or not.'
Lucrezia opened her mouth, perhaps to say that she did love him, but he talked over her. 'But I'm not the kind of brother who takes that out on his little sister… I do want you to be happy, you know.'
He meant it, but she was less than pleased by his overt antagonism towards her fiancé. 'So you're taking it out on him instead of me,' she said angrily.
'Passively.'
'That's not fair, Cesare.'
He stopped and looked at her. There were a bunch of stalls coming up, and there were more people around them, but he didn't mind them. He rubbed his hands together with some exaggeration and said: 'Oh, let's play that game. What else isn't fair, let's see…'
'Okay, I don't need to hear it,' Lucrezia said quickly, and she turned around to look ahead. 'Let's just go find our seats.'
When they were headed for one of the entrances that led to the field, Cesare stopped again, much to Lucrezia's irritation. 'What is it now?'
'Just stand still, I'll be right back,' he said. He was looking at something a little further back, but Lucrezia couldn't see what or who it was.
'Everyone's going to be searching for their seats, Cesare, I don't want to get stuck in human traffic,' she said, but he was already making his way through a group of people that had been walking behind them.
'Yeah, yeah,' she heard him say, and then he was gone.
She waited for a few minutes, watching dozens of people pass. Some glanced at her, mostly men. Not to give the impression that she was wearing anything indecent or provoking, but one might say she had a certain attraction: she had the same hazel eyes as her brother, but her outlook was inquiring rather than cynical. Her skin was lighter, too, as if complexion matched personality. And then she had these endless curls that girls big and small dream of, all perfectly blonde and in line with the dead cat idiom.
She didn't really mind standing on the side by herself, looking pretty and swimming in her invisible spotlight. Partly because of that spotlight, she didn't notice when Cesare reared his dark head again, nor did she notice that the pair of eyes that adored her the most were a copy of hers.
By the time she saw him, he was almost standing in front of her. He was holding a flat bed of what looked like aluminium foil in the palm of his hand, with an unidentifiable mush on top. When he came closer, it became clear that this mush was a large fruit stake with warm chocolate poured over it.
Cesare smiled triumphantly at his sister as he picked off a chocolate raspberry and put it in his mouth.
Lucrezia drew in her breath sharply and sped up to him to loom over the delicacy. When she stuck her hand out, Cesare lifted his arm and wagged his finger in her face.
'Uh-uh! This is only for people who are nice to me.' He picked up a piece of pineapple and stuck it in his mouth, only opening his eyes to see the envy on her face. 'Hmm, tasty,' he mused, before picking out another raspberry. He dangled it in front of her face for a while to taunt her.
As he'd expected, she retaliated: she dragged two fingers through the hot chocolate and smeared it across his cheeks and his lips.
He gasped theatrically. 'What manners you have!' He cried. 'I wonder, if I ask you to sit and roll over, will you do it?' He held out a cherry a little way above her head.
She kept her eyes fixed on the cherry and opened her mouth slightly. He laughed while he lifted the thing up and down. In that moment, she snatched the full plate of fruit straight out of his hand and jumped back. 'No,' she said coyly. 'But I know other tricks.'
'Dirty tricks!' He exclaimed.
She gave him a wicked grin and bit off half of a pineapple piece.
'Dirty tricks and dirty faces,' Cesare said, watching how juice ran down her chin.
'Pot kettle,' she mumbled, because he still hadn't wiped off the chocolate on his face. She recognized that it was her fault, though, so she ate the rest of the pineapple and then reached out to try and wipe him clean. He patiently held still as she worked on him with one hand and kept the dish in the other. It was lucky that the chocolate on his face had mostly dried, so it crumbled easily.
He let her eat the rest of the fruit after, refusing to take anything more for himself. When she was done he put his thumb against her chin to remove the fruit and chocolate mess. 'Will you forgive me now?' He asked. He was grinning and his eyes glowed mischievously, but she could hear from his voice that he was serious.
She regarded him silently as he brushed over the corner of her mouth and then stuck his thumb in his own mouth without thinking twice about.
'Lucrezia?' Someone called. A man and a woman had appeared quite suddenly next to them, the man wearing a grin that stretched from ear to ear and the woman wearing a tight-fitting tank-top, mostly.
'Alfonso!' Lucrezia exclaimed, and she turned to embrace the man.
Cesare seemed as surprised by this appearance as she was, although he wasn't all too pleased by it. He gave Alfonso a stiff nod and Sancía a beguiling smile and wink. Then he licked the rest of his fingers clean and took the aluminium plate from Lucrezia to throw it away.
Lucrezia noticed her brother's greeting and watched him walk over to the nearest trash can. 'What are you doing here, honey?' she asked, distracted. She might have noticed that that was a silly question if she hadn't been.
'I got off work earlier, so I thought I'd come see the game with my sister,' Alfonso answered, still smiling. Any fool could notice that he smiled excessively when he was in the vicinity of his wife-to-be.
Cesare rejoined them halfway through the sentence. 'What a coincidence!' He said. 'So did I. Let's get back to that, shall we? The game's about to start.' He tried to take Lucrezia's hand and pull her away, but Lucrezia shook him off and gave him a dirty look.
'Why don't you sit with us? We've got a box,' she said to Alfonso and Sancía. 'Don't we, Ces?'
'An entire box?' said Sancía. Her mouth opened to form a perfect, practiced ring, and then she puckered her lips the way a pretty but spoiled child would have. Which she was, in effect.
'Yeah, dad reserved it but he couldn't make it. I wouldn't know how he could have with his job, but the man is a terrible planner,' Lucrezia explained. She didn't know that Cesare had elected to simply pay for the entire box because he thought that she would prefer it to the crowds. She did, but even if she didn't he probably would have chosen the box anyway.
'If it's fine with you,' Alfonso said to Cesare.
The latter smiled as passively as he could, because he knew that both Sancía and Lucrezia were watching. Oh, and Alfonso was a friend, lest anyone forget. 'Of course,' he said.
'Great!' Lucrezia exclaimed. She reached out for Alfonso to walk with him to the entrance, much to Cesare's chagrin, but Alfonso turned to Cesare – even more to Cesare's chagrin, and Sancía's, who pouted again. Lucrezia was unphased, though. She turned her attention to Alfonso's sister and the two of them led the party into the heart of the stadium. They were chatting busily, with one of them sometimes glancing back to the men that walked silently behind them. It wouldn't have appeared odd to the onlooker, because in all honesty, one frequently finds such quartets around football stadiums, or any public event.
Alfonso was the chattier of the two, and he attempted some small talk that Cesare engaged in very sparingly. After a couple of failed attempts at a comfortable conversation, Alfonso cleared his throat and said: 'Look, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. I'm speaking as a friend, you see.'
'Of course,' Cesare said, silently gloating.
'As you can imagine, I heard about last week, with that little party Lu had, um…' The sentence more or less came to a halt with Alfonso's deep frown and muttered syllables.
Cesare gloated some more because of this. Alfonso was simply the type of man who struggled rebuking people directly. To his credit, he didn't resort to doing it indirectly, although Cesare might have preferred it had he known where Alfonso was going.
'I'm just gonna say it,' Alfonso said, almost breathless. 'I think you should back off. A little.' He didn't give Cesare an unpleasant look or smile, just a very serious, serious face.
Cesare was at once annoyed and amused. 'I appreciate your concern,' he said, though he made it clear from his voice that he didn't. 'But don't you think you should let Sancía speak for herself? She's a big girl, Alfonso. Besides, there's nothing much to talk about. It was very far from being a party, just some drinks and games. I really don't see why this is suddenly everybody's favourite topic.'
Alfonso frowned. 'I'm not talking about Sancía.'
They stared at each other, both pondering the consequences of a fight. Cesare was thinking about how good it would feel to feel Alfonso's body jerk on the impact of his fist, while Alfonso thought of how embarrassed he would be if half the stadium was privy to a heated argument between the two of them. And there was Lucrezia, of course, but Cesare was thinking about that too.
'Then I'm sure I don't know what you're getting at,' Cesare said slowly and in a low, dangerous voice.
Alfonso heard the warning and would have been impressed, if he hadn't been so outraged that he'd been forced into having this argument. Well, he hadn't been forced by anyone other than himself, but it just hadn't been an option not to bring it up, especially after he'd seen Cesare sucking his fingers. That action had made him simultaneously revolting and frightening to Alfonso, and incidentally he felt the same about Cesare's possessiveness towards Lucrezia. Poor Lucrezia, he kept thinking.
So Alfonso stuck to his guns, saying: 'I'm sure you do.'
Poor Lucrezia must have become aware of his empathetic pity, because she'd turned around at some point and found that her brother and fiancé had fallen behind. She and Sancía had retraced their steps and were now looking from the one to the other now with matching expressions of suspicion.
'Something wrong?' Lucrezia asked, looking at Alfonso and then at Cesare. 'Ces?'
Cesare forced himself to relax whatever muscles made his upper lip curl up, which became noticeably easier when he looked upon his sister. 'No, nothing at all,' he told her. Then he lifted his arm the way a gentleman might have. She took it without knowing how ungentlemanlike this move was, or how indignant her fiancé looked, and let her brother lead her to their box.
