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Donvino leapt to his feet to greet his cousin Bianca. She was a lovely thing, all dark hair, big brown eyes, and long legs. Much like her cousin but rounded in places where Donvino was hard planes. She was in tan shorts, sneakers, and a tiny yellow top with a sunflower on the front.
They spoke to each other in rapid Italian which I tried my best to decipher but couldn’t. Someday soon, I hoped my tutor would start teaching me some actual words.
Bianca glanced at me, smiled, and then came over. “Hello. You are to ride with me in the front and Donvino will ride in the back. Good, yes?”
“Yes, quite good. Thank you for coming to our assistance.” I gave her the best smile that I could work up.
“My pleasure, Signor Arlo. Your family has been very good to mine for many years.”
“I do love your eggs, but your geese are not on the top of my favorites list,” I said while we made our way to the truck. Donvino was already in the back, staring out at the countryside. I climbed in, buckled up, and rode along with my sight locked on the road in front of us. This was where my attention was now going to stay.
“My cousin has talked about you so much,” she said as we made our way back into the shaded part of the roadway or one of many shaded parts, I should say.
“Oh?” That pulled me out of my funk enough to glance at her. Her hair was flying about her face. A face that held many similarities to Donvino. Who I was no longer thinking about. He was in the past. Eyes on the road to the future and all that. “What did he say about me?”
What the hell happened to not thinking about him?
Hush.
She gave me a quick peek, thumbed some hair from her smooth cheek, and then turned down the radio station that had been flooding the cab with an Italian rendition of “Gloria” that was quite spunky.
“He says you are fast friends,” she replied carefully, her gaze leaving the winding road for just a second to find me. “He is…sometimes he is trapped in his own head, yes?”
“Yes?” I slowly answered, not sure exactly what she was trying to tell me without really saying what she wanted to say. I wanted to delve more, but we were coming up onto the Suzuki alongside the road. “Thank you for the lift. I’ll be sure to have my aunt send you some money for gas since I’m a little strapped. Haven’t had time to set up a bank account here yet,” I lied like that moth-eaten proverbial rug.
“Grazie,” she said with a smile, then got out, leaving me to sit in the cab while she and her cousin changed the tire, their mouths going steadily.
Both kept shooting looks my way, which led me to believe that the heated conversation was about me. Maybe she was telling him not to be such a jerk to his new friend. I hoped so, I really did. I’d grown to genuinely like him. I didn’t make friends easily. My fortress walls kept me from getting attached. Once the bike was ready to go, another rather robust discussion took place between the cousins, this one with raised voices. Bianca pointed at her much larger cousin, poked him in his chest, and hugged him close. She pulled free from him, spoke softly for a moment or two, and then walked my way.
“Donvino is ready for you now,” she said as she opened the passenger door.
“Grazie,” I said once more, sliding down to the berm of the road.
“You are most welcome. If you wish to thank me, please do not be too hard on my cousin. He is…his thoughts are in confliction.”
“Ah okay, I’ll keep that in mind.” I gave her a timid smile and waved goodbye when she pulled away, leaving us standing in a dust of unease and road dirt. “Your cousin is quite nice.”
“Yes, she is my best family member. Come, we have to go.” He waved at the bike, his hands covered with grime. I dug into my backpack, pushing aside papers that I’d not even looked at during this fiasco, and pulled out a travel-size package of hand wipes.
“Here, your hands are a fright.” I shook the packet.
“Thank you,” he whispered, plucking a wipe from the package, his expression a tangled mass of confusion, contrition, and something else that sparked hope in my breast. I should have ground it out like a smoldering cigarette butt, but my stupid, lonely heart clung to that glimmer of affection like it was a life raft.
“Prego,” I replied, proud of myself for learning a whole five words all by myself. He wiped, I stared, and finally, we had to move lest we look like two fumbling nitwits. “We should…” I jerked a thumb at the bike. He nodded, stuffed the grimy wipe into his front pocket, and walked to the Suzuki with cleaner hands.
No words were spoken as we put our helmets on and got settled on the torn seat. The bike kicked over, the new tire not helping with the tired muffler or the too-rich fuel problems. I clung to his sides, my fingers bunching his shirt. He eased the kickstand back, took a deep breath, and then, with a meek touch, moved my hands from his ribs to his belly. There they stayed for the duration of the trip.
Chapter Eleven
Being the son of a big business mogul, you would think that I’d spent all kinds of time touring olive orchards, pressing hands with the workers, and all that corporate PR stuff.
But, if one knows me well, and few did, they would have known that Arlo Bonetti avoided Bonetti Olive Oil work as if it were a wilted penis. Still, here I was, being given the grand tour by an incredibly accommodating Signor Piravino, the senior manager of Bonetti Farms 20. Yep, twenty. We had twenty farms here in Italy. Big farms. None as big as good old 20, though, as Signor Piravino had mentioned several times.
“We are most proud of twenty,” he gushed in choppy but understandable English as we strolled through olive groves filled with workers tending the organic trees with earth-friendly means. “On this farm, we have four hundred thousand trees on five hundred eighty-five hectares.”
I glanced back at Donvino, who was walking with us just behind—something that I wished he would stop doing but he seemed set on it even though I had motioned him up several times—to ask if he knew what that meant in American terms.
“Ah, so sorry, Signor Bonetti,” Signor Piravino rushed to say before Donvino could reply. “That is roughly fourteen hundred acres. Come! Let us see the bees!”
