4

What Cologne Do You Wear, Signor?

There are two young boys sitting in a salon.

There is a beautiful, large piano that sits by the window, its mahogany shimmering in the light pouring in from the window. There is something melancholy about it, especially as the slow, dramatic tune rises up from its belly. The room is vast and extravagant and there is a view of the ocean if one were to gaze out from between the curtains. The room is for guests and piano practice exclusively, with glass shelves that hold vases and porcelain figures (their favorite is the dog chasing its tail) and plates from the 17th century. The older brother is sitting at the window, book in hand, his hair a mess but his eyes bright. He likes the feeling of the sun pouring in upon his tan skin—for some reason, tanner than his younger brother's, who is sitting at the piano. The music floats up from the keys as the young boy plays, plays, plays, and the melody fills his older brother's mind until he is saturated with music and the presence of his younger, fairer counterpart. The music is sad, because that's what the older brother requested.

The younger brother is very talented at music, just as he is talented in art and dancing. He plays his music and dances around the room and makes the world blush when he smiles, while his darker brother sits at the window and reads and listens, making notes in the margins with his pen. The entire house, from the edges of the garden to the corners of the kitchen, can hear the music. But that is not why he plays. He doesn't play for the entire house to hear. He plays only for his older brother to hear, because he knows even without his brother telling him that he enjoys music while he reads and writes. When the piece ends, the older brother looks up from his book and meets his brother's eyes. He is waiting for a response. A smile. Anything.

His older brother blinks, gives a sharp nod, and returns to his book. But as the younger brother laughs, he jumps from his seat at the piano and wraps his arms around his neck. Not really surprised (this happens nearly every day, after all), the older brother finally smiles and, as he is now always expected to do, kisses his little brother on the forehead.

"Bellissimo, fratellino," he says. "Now stop fooling around and keep practicing!"

"D'accordo, fratellone!"

Cheeks flushed and giggles incessant, he leaps back to the piano and continues to play. The older brother listens and tries not to cry, though he cannot tell where the tears are coming from. He is too young to make sense of them.

...why can't you be more like your brother...?

...what an unsightly boy...!

...if only you had such talent...

...un bambino spregevole...a worthless child...

There is a broken vase now. The music has stopped. People rush in. Push him into the corner. He hears people yelling at him and he sees his younger brother beginning to cry at the piano, only to be comforted by a maid. He couldn't help it, he cries. He couldn't help it. He couldn't help it. He really couldn't help it. He's sorry, he's sorry, he's very very sorry. Finally he sees his father pushing through the throng of people that have gathered to clean the shards of the vase and reprimand him, and he feels a rush of relief. Until his father begins screaming, as well.

"Why can't you be more like your younger brother?"

His father crouches.

"Look at him, sitting there at the piano like a good, talented boy—and here you are causing problem after problem!"

He begins to cry, too.

And the first slap comes.

Romano sat in his spot, the alcove, the haven that nobody else knew about (or so he told himself), and tried to write about happiness. The sun was only just rising, and he had quietly left the room while Kiku had been sleeping, when the stars had still been glistening hopelessly in the sky. There was dew on the ground and it felt wet when he sat upon it, but he liked the feeling of discomfort. It made everything seem more real somehow. The wetness, the chilliness, the shakiness in his fingers as he held the pen to his black notebook. It helped to reassure him that he was here, on this earth, even though he couldn't seem to grasp the idea of happiness that his professor had commanded of him. He had not written a single letter in forty-five minutes. Each time an idea came to him he would pause, stare at the page, and then heave a sigh and give up and stare at the tree and wonder about happiness. Its giant trunk, certainly too big even for two Romanos to wrap their arms around.

Do I even know what happiness is?

There's gotta be something...

Think of something!

Bullshit happiness if you want.

He won't notice.

Nobody notices.

But then, an image came to him. A memory, vague and fuzzy. It was an image that sometimes came to him in dreams, though he was very convinced that it wasn't a dream, but a memory. It was blurry and vivid all at once—though he couldn't exactly make sense of the details, simply its presence made his heartstrings tie in knots and his stomach turn on itself. Suddenly inspired and ravaged with the spirit of a writer, he began to write, knowing with a sense of reluctance that he would be paying the irritating Spanish writer a visit. But he wouldn't be writing a jumbled, nonsensical poem this time. This time he wrote a description, as detailed as his vocabulary would allow him, and this time he wrote it in English because for some reason he was feeling the effects of the damp British air on his skin.

Romano skipped his morning class to finish his writing. He became so engrossed in it that the voices stopped having conversations in his head and he didn't notice the sun come up and he was unaffected by the few people that stumbled into his haven, saw him sitting in the grass scribbling madly, and retreated. He was in a bubble now, trying to find the words to describe this image, the warmth it gave him. A warmth that he so rarely felt. He wasn't even sure if it could be called happiness. He hoped Feliciano would never discover this place.

He skipped lunch, too, though the ringing of the tower's bells startled him and interrupted his train of thought. There were three pages of his notebook filled now, from top to bottom, with words scratched out and replaced and commas and periods moved because every writer knows that even the slightest punctuation change can redirect a work's entire meaning. And there was nothing but the description of the image he had in his head. Nothing but that. Spread out elegantly onto the page. Romano's writing was the only thing about which he could feel even a semblance of pride. The one thing he didn't completely and utterly hate about himself. The reason that most of his medication remained untouched—the pills made his brain muddy and incapacitated his ability to write. And, therefore, the reason his mood swings were so dramatic.

As long as I can write.

So he found himself in front of Toni's slightly ajar door, building up the courage to knock, announce himself, and go inside. But he was frozen now, his backpack hanging off one shoulder as he hugged his notebook to his chest. His heart was pounding. Why was his heart pounding? He was nervous to let anybody see his writing. Nobody had seen his writing since he was eight, when he had written a poem for Feli because he had asked him so earnestly. He was the only person who had ever seen his writing. The only person other than Romano himself and the voices in his head and now, this Spanish professor. He had written academic papers in school, but he didn't really consider that writing. Not like the prose and poetry and words he put in his notebook.

Each time he lifted his fist to knock, he would hastily withdraw, for fear that his chest might implode. But after standing there for five minutes he began to get impatient with himself, and with clenched teeth, forced his knuckles to the wood.

"Come in," came the milky voice inside. Romano pushed the door open and stepped in, and was at first taken aback by the brightness. Sunlight was pouring in from all sides and, even then, there were three different lamps turned on around the room. As if this Spanish professor was starved of light, like a flower left in the shadows for too long, and was drinking in as much as he could.

The small office, similar to Romano's own room, was messy. Papers, books, various writing utensils haphazardly spread around the room dappled in the golden rays. (Though, from his own experience, he could hardly imagine that it was haphazard. Even for the messiest of people there was organization in a strange sense.) The desk was packed with books like sardines, to the point that the wooden walls might have cracked at any moment if Romano didn't know any better. There were multiple empty mugs with tea and coffee stains on their rims, a typewriter in the corner, beautiful photographs of the Spanish landscape and quotes along the peeling walls. Romano walked in and felt an overwhelming sense of comfort. This was what he would imagine his own office to look like, what he'd imagined his room would look like if Kiku weren't there to keep him in line.

There was a window seat on the other side of the room, and it was here that the Spanish professor sat. He had glasses on, which he didn't normally wear, and his legs were spread out along the seat and crossed. He had taken off his boots and was wiggling his toes in the sun. He wore brown trousers that were rolled up to the center of his calf, a white undershirt, and a red vest. His hair was a complete mess, brown tufts spreading in every direction, and he was concentrating very hard on a book in his dark, calloused hands. His green eyes narrowed, biting his lower lip with his crooked teeth, tapping the edge of the window with a fountain pen. He looked, undeniably, like an academic.

When Romano walked in, he looked up from his book, and a smile spread across his face.

"Ah, Romano! I'm so glad you came." He swung his legs over the window seat until his soles touched the ground, and he put his pen inside of his book and lay it beside him. "Por favor, have a seat. I apologize for the mess, but I think it's past hope at this point."

His voice was overly merry, his eyes overly bright, his smile overly broad, and it made Romano's blood boil inexplicably. He considered, as he had done before, ignoring Toni's attempts at hospitality, just to spite him and his goofy expression, but he decided against it and wordlessly fell into a chair near the window seat. He put his backpack down on the stained carpet.

"The carpet is not my fault," Toni laughed. "That was there when I got here."

"Yeah, sure."

"I truly am happy that you came," he continued. He put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, then took off his glasses and put them on the book. Romano furrowed his brow and looked away, unwilling to meet this man's earnest gaze. "It means a lot."

"Whatever...I wrote your stupid prompt," he snorted.

"Wonderful! May I see it?"

His skin was tingling and his stomach was churning in his annoyance, his sudden discomfort. He had felt a sense of belonging in this room, but now that he was sitting down and speaking to this man and about to reveal something that had come from the inner depths of his soul, he wanted more than anything to burrow himself into his bed and never come out. But, he reasoned, he had come all this way. He might as well keep going.

"You can't look at any other pages, all right?" he said angrily, opening his notebook and handing it to Toni. "Only those three."

"Claro. Gracias," Toni smiled. Romano hated when he did that. Like he was trying to make him feel guilty for being so uncooperative.

I can't help it.

Well, I probably can.

No I can't—I can't.

Still smiling, never moving his eyes from Romano's face, he took the notebook. Only then did he look away, down at the filled-to-the-brim pages. Romano crossed his arms and watched from the corner of his eyes, sweat gathering on his temples, as Toni's eyes skimmed the page. Pouring over every word, his rich, thick-lipped smile retreating to a pensive line. Romano couldn't tell what he was thinking. It was making him anxious. He closed his eyes and decided to concentrate on the sounds and smells of the room. Ruminate in temporary blindness.

He smelled coffee grinds. Stale black tea. A hint of cinnamon. He heard the disillusioned ticking of the clock and the piercing cries of a bird outside the window, perhaps chilled to the bone in the autumn frost. Could hear his sharp breaths colliding with Toni's broad ones—breaths that seemed as if they could swallow the world whole.

It smells disgusting, sí?

No, not particularly.

Try smelling him. I bet he smells disgusting, too.

At his dinner party I'll ask about it.

What cologne do you wear?

¿Cuál colonia usa, Señor Toni?

Romano tried to keep from laughing at his own musings and bit the insides of his cheeks. He opened his eyes and looked back at Toni. Something in his air had changed. He was leaning back now, had crossed one leg over the other, eyes narrowed, and was picking oddly at the hair of his eyebrows while he read. Romano had never seen anybody pick at the hair of their eyebrows when they were thinking, but he supposed there was a first for everything. His breaths were a bit more shallow. Finally, after an excruciating length of time passed that Romano didn't bother keeping track of, Toni looked up with a flash in his green irises.

"Romano," he said definitively. "Do you mind if I read the first part out loud? I feel as if it's meant to be read out loud..."

Taken aback, Romano curled his lip up.

"I don't care. Do what you want," he blurted, even though he didn't want to hear Toni read his writing. He would rather leave, find a tomato to nibble on, maybe have a glass (or a bottle) of wine, listen to music that made him sad (why do we listen to sad music when we're sad, that seems strange?). But it was too late now. Toni opened his mouth and began to speak.

"She has hair that looks like the mahogany of a grand piano in the corner of a dusty room where she used to listen to music with me. It shimmers the same way in the sun. And her eyes are blacker than the blackest hole of the universe, and I lose myself in them. I throw myself into them as she takes me into her arms and holds me like the ocean might hold the moonlight in its waves: we are made for each other, we need each other to survive. I fall into her chest and smell olive oil on her skin, and I hear unfamiliar words on her tongue. I am no longer myself, my soul lost to the beating of her heart."

His voice trailed off when he looked up and noticed that tears had welled up in Romano's eyes. Romano, once he himself was aware of them, began hastily to wipe them with the back of his sleeve and looked down at his muddy boots. He hadn't meant to lose himself like that in Toni's voice. He certainly hadn't meant to let the tears slip. He sat on his hands in embarrassment and bit his lower lip and couldn't bear to meet the Spanish professor's eyes as they bore into his forehead.

"Romano...is everything okay?" he said softly.

"Yes! Everything is fine!" he spat.

Toni paused.

"What is this about? A lover, perhaps?"

"No, stupid. It's about my mother."

His retort (which he hadn't meant to sound so rude) was followed by silence. He still couldn't bring himself to look up. But he could just barely see Toni's fingers tightening around the pages of the notebook, his knuckles turning ever so paler. Then, Toni's voice came once more through the silence, but it was softer now. Like cotton falling upon him.

"Que bello," he said. "So simple, but it has burrowed into my heart."

"What is with you? Do you just think every little thing is beautiful? Eh?" Romano suddenly cried, jerking his head up. Toni blinked, startled, but his expression did not wane. He seemed completely unaffected. "I'm starting to get the feeling that even if I had written shit, you still would've told me it was beautiful."

"That's not true," Toni said. "It's just...you have a way of writing. It flows. It resonates with the soul even if I do not understand it."

Spanish bastard.

That's what you are.

But he could not say anything out loud.

"I think it will help you to have me read your writing," Toni continued. "Will you write more for me, querido?"

And somehow Romano found himself agreeing, and this time, to a simple prompt of "love."

Spanish bastard.

Romano was still not accustomed to the presence of his younger brother, so he found himself startled into speechlessness and a rapid pulse each time he saw him, though it had already been a few days since his arrival (relatively, a few days was not very long compared to six years). Today, Feliciano wanted a tour of campus—see, he was always getting lost, and surely, he thought, his older brother would be able to help him in that regard. After he'd shown up out of thin air in front of Romano's door, they had been spending an almost absurd amount of time with each other. From the very start, Feli had taken it upon himself to come to Romano's room every night before he went to bed, and with his contagious smile and outgoing personality he was already on good terms with Kiku. Sometimes, when they had meals together or would stop and chat between classes, the big German bastard was with him, which Romano still resented so much. But they didn't speak. They tolerated each other's presence, though it seemed that Ludwig was more indifferent to Romano than anything else.

So the Vargas brothers (half-brothers) walked across the campus, among the trees and the old, ivy-covered brick buildings and dewy, lush grass. Feli was talking a lot, and Romano was actually surprised at his own patience. Even though it had been so many years, they melted into each other as if they had never been separated.

"Britain is pretty," Feli noted. They were at the top of a hill now, far from the center of campus, and air was misty and chilly. He walked with a spring in his step, while his older brother nearly dragged his feet and was loathe to take his hands from the warmth of his pockets. When they were alone, they always spoke in Italian, and sometimes Feli would try to imitate Romano's Sicilian dialect. The one he'd acquired after he'd moved away for the first time, to live with his mother's family when he was seven.

"It's all right."

"You fit in here well, Lovi."

Romano shot Feli an angry glare, which was met with a playful laugh, before he looked back down at his boots and the crushed blades of grass beneath them.

"I mean because it's so beautiful, of course."

"Yeah, well you stick out like a sore thumb."

"I do, don't I? But the people are nice, so I think it's okay. Everybody is very smart, especially the professors, and the girls are very pretty," he laughed. "Though the weather can get really grey..."

"Hey, Feli."

"Yes?"

"Why did you leave Rome? To come here, of all places? You were supposed to go to school in Vienna anyway."

Feli had already explained it to him, but he wasn't sure he could quite believe it. Couldn't quite believe that Feli had moved from Rome, where his home and his soul and his happiness was, to this isolated and dull college just for his sake. Feliciano didn't respond right away. In the silence, Romano looked over at him. He had his hands clasped behind his back and was looking up at the sky, a serene look on his face. Romano mused that his own face might look like that when he was asleep, or perhaps even when he was writing. They were so often mistaken as twins.

"Because I miss you," he said, eyes still on the sky. Romano stopped, digging his heels into the mud.

"You left everything, just for me? I don't believe you."

"Why not?" Now a few steps ahead, Feliciano lowered his head and glanced over his shoulder. "Do you not believe that I love you?"

Romano opened his mouth, but said nothing.

Of course I don't believe that.

How could I?

"Papá wasn't happy, of course," Feli continued, but his smile never faded. "He threatened to disown me and everything. But I told him that I had already made my decision—that I had already been accepted to attend school here, and there was nothing he could do to stop me from being with you."

"He would never disown you," Romano grumbled.

"No, you're right."

Neither of them brought up the fact that he had, in fact, already disowned Romano.

"You shouldn't have left Rome to come here," Romano finally said. There were tears in his eyes, and he couldn't look at Feliciano for too long without feeling the lump swell in his throat and spread like a virus through his limbs. He had never known how to respond to such affection. "You belong there. Or in Vienna. Or anywhere but here."

"I thought the same thing when you first left," Feli said softly.

"I didn't leave. They sent me away."

"I know." He sighed. A heavy, trembling sigh that crashed into Romano's ears like bricks. "I wasn't kidding, what I said before. I really did cry every night. I was only six when you moved to Sicily, remember? I kept crying until I was sixteen. I couldn't understand why my brother was gone. I still don't. And after you went to Spain for boarding school I never even saw you once."

"Because that wasn't where I was meant to be."

That's not where I was wanted.

"It's funny," Feliciano suddenly said with a smile. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and, as they glistened against his skin, the tears in Romano's own eyes spilled over and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop them. Not with the burden of so many years hanging on his eyelashes. They stood across from one another beneath this grey, heavy sky, crying such different tears. "I haven't seen you in so long, but I still feel like I know you better than I know myself. I wonder why that is?"

"It's just how brothers are," Romano said.

When they cry into their pillows every night.

In different countries, staring at the same moon.

You'll always know each other.

"Come. I want you tell me about Sicily."

"You know about Sicily. You've been there."

"Well I want to hear you talk about it, Lovi! And I don't actually know that much about your mother's family—tell me, won't you tell me, Lovi?"

You'll always know each other.

"Okay. Whatever you want."

Ti amo, fratellino.

Ti amo, Feliciano.

Translations:

Bellissimo (Italian)= beautiful

Que bello (Spanish) = how beautiful