The Fine Art of Truth or Dare (11 page)

“Don't you dare, Sadie,” Frankie said cheerfully. “Ella does not want to be inscribing my brother's crotch.”

True, I didn't. Except I'd had the clearest vision of how a little Italian portal devil would look on the faded denim . . .

“Fair enough,” Daniel said, sliding his foot off my chair. But he actually looked disappointed. For a second, anyway. “I assume there's food coming?”

“There is,” Frankie answered. “I'm sure it will come a hell of a lot faster if you do your vampire boy thing on Chloe again.”

“Tsk, tsk. Jealousy, Miss Thing.”

They bared their teeth at each other. It was scarily pretty.

“What did you order?” Daniel asked. Frankie told him. “That is not a Chloe's meal. That is penance.” He scanned the room for Chloe. She was already on her way over. “Spanakopita,” he called to her. “Fried zucchini. And a loaf of thou.” She giggled and headed for the kitchen, ignoring a dozen waving hands and several annoyed “heys.”

Frankie rolled his eyes. Daniel laughed and drained half his beer. Across the table, Sadie was hunched into her jacket, looking deflated.

Mink girl finished to polite applause. A pale, wispily goateed regular took her place and launched into “Buffalo Soldier.”

Daniel stood up and loomed over Sadie. “Sing?”

“Sorry?”

“Do. You. Want. To. Sing. With. Me?”

For a count of five, nothing happened. Then, a thousand sad wallflowers at a thousand loud dances were redeemed in that moment. Sadie positively lit up. “Yes,” she said, sitting up straight. “I do.”

“Okay.” He started for the stage. “Lose the jacket.”

She paused halfway out of her seat. “What?”

“The jacket,” he said over his shoulder. “It's freaking ugly.”

I watched as Sadie froze.

“C'mon, Sadie. I'm aging here.”

Sadie slid the jacket off her shoulders. It caught at her elbows for a second, then she let it drop to the chair. Underneath, she was wearing jeans and a red cashmere sweater. She looked terrified, mortified, and really good.

“Excellent,” Daniel said. “Let's go.”

Sadie folded herself up a little, but she went. Frankie snagged Daniel's beer and took a sip. He wrinkled his nose and slid the mug back where it had been. None of us are drinkers, really, but Sadie occasionally sneaks a bottle of champagne from her mother's many cases. Frankie never turns down the expensive stuff. He sips it with reverent joy, then inevitably has a Fred Astaire or Frank Sinatra moment. My fave is “The Way You Look Tonight.” Sadie likes “Someone to Watch Over Me.”

“He got her out of her jacket. In less than ten seconds.” Frankie shook his head. “God help her if he tries to get her out of something else.”

“Oh, no. He wouldn't . . . You wouldn't let him . . .”

“For the record, I was kidding. But try to give them both just a little credit, if you would, please.”

As he and Sadie waited for their turn, a good twenty female gazes latched onto Daniel. I suspected the hungry-looking guys were staring at him, too, no matter how good I thought she looked.

“But it begs the question . . .” Frankie went on, reaching over to tap my wrist, “Truth: What is it about boys who are bad for you? Huh? And I don't mean just you. I mean every otherwise intelligent girl who has lusted after a guy who bites or shreds, or even just never calls when he says he will. It's mind-boggling.”

“Right. Saint Francis,” I shot back at this, one superior snipe too many, “who has such an excellent record with—”

“Ah! Careful,” Frankie warned me, eyes narrowed, giving me the Hand. “You might want to think before you finish that sentence. I might not have found Mr. Right, but I never, ever go for Mr. What-Are-You-Thinking.”

“Ow. Hot, hot, hot!” A steaming plate replaced Frankie's tight face in my line of vision. Chloe slapped the fried squash onto the table, following it with the spanakopita. Then she grimly examined her pinkened and empty hands. “Anything else?”

“The chicken kebabs?” Frankie said. “Salad. Falafel.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Chloe stared at Daniel's empty chair. She sighed. “Right.” She gave Frankie an absentminded pat on the shoulder and wandered off.

“Well?” he demanded.

I picked up a wilted paper napkin and waved it in surrender. “I'm hungry.”

He gave me a long look, then reached for a piece of zucchini. “Ow. Hot.” I know Frankie; I knew it was a temporary reprieve. There was a squawk from the microphone. “If they sing ‘Endless Love' or ‘No Air,' I'm disowning them both.”

They didn't. They sang “I Got You, Babe” and it was amazing. Daniel kept his eyes on Sadie pretty much the whole time, like he was singing just to her. And, unlike Frankie, Daniel can
sing
. For the first few lines, Sadie kept her face down, hidden by her unnaturally sleek and heavy hair. Then her fab Sadie heart kicked in, and she faced him, chin up, and matched him note for note.

The applause was thunderous. And it was a good few minutes before anyone else dared to take the stage.

The clapping followed them back to our table in the boonies. Instead of walking in front of her this time, Daniel let Sadie go first. One of his arms circled but didn't quite touch her back, like he was protecting her from her greedy fans. He still managed to look cool and a little amused, his usual. By the time Sadie reached the table, she'd folded back up a little. But she was smiling, and she left her jacket off and she hung on to some of the glow, even when a model-faced stick insect wiggled up to the table and cooed at Daniel until he went with her. They sang “No Air.”

Frankie stayed off the stage for once, even when Daniel abandoned it for food. “I know when to sit it out,” Frankie said, waving a chicken-laden fork first in his brother's direction and then toward the room. “Tonight I will let 'em watch and yearn.”

I kept my head down and my mouth full. I didn't want Frankie's sharp eyes or tongue focused on me any more than necessary. It was a lot easier with Daniel taking up half of the food and most of the air.

“What about it, Ella?” he asked when everything was gone except the parsley garnish. “When do we get the pleasure of your vocal stylings?”

“I don't sing.”

“You mean you won't sing,” Sadie corrected. I tried to be charitable about her treason; she goes pretty brainless around Daniel. “Ella sings really well.”

“I'm sure she does.” Daniel tipped his beer glass in my direction. “In fact, I bet she could totally murder ‘Don't Stop Believin'.” A song that is actually one of my guilty pleasures. I think he probably knew that. I think he probably had himself a lovely chuckle over it. Then he whispered,
“Coward.”

In another story, the plucky little heroine would have slapped both hands onto the table, making it wobble a little on its predictably uneven fourth leg. She would then have taken both hands, ripped the long scarf from around her neck and, chin high and scar spotlit, stalked to the dais, leaped up, and slayed the audience with her kick-ass version of “Respect.” Or maybe “Single Ladies,” for the sheer Yay factor.

In this version, I gave Daniel what I hoped was a slayer look and busied myself refolding my napkin.

He was, not surprisingly, unfazed. “Can I ask you a question?”

I sighed. “Will my answer to that one make any difference?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Fine,” I grumbled. “Ask.” I didn't have to answer. He wasn't my Hobbes.

“Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?”

I gaped at him. “That's your question?”

“Nope.” He leaned back in his chair, propping one foot on the other knee. “That's
a
question. My question is this: What's the one thing you should ask yourself before getting involved with someone?”

“Seriously?”

“Do I look serious?”

Maybe not serious, but vaguely deadly. Still, it was an interesting question, especially coming from Daniel Hobbes. I thought for a second. “‘Will he make me happy?'”

“You think?” Daniel asked, then unfolded himself and got to his feet. “I'm outta here. Who's coming?”

We drove home in his battered Jeep. It smelled like smoke and cinnamon, even with the plate-size rust hole in the back that let in steady gusts of cold air. Daniel and Frankie were going to hear Be Cruel, the ska Elvis cover band that Frankie loves and Daniel tolerates. I hoped they would be able to talk Sadie into going with them. I just wasn't up for it. I'd had enough mediocre covers for one night, and more than enough of Daniel and his brain-numbing pheromones.

He drove with one hand at the bottom of the steering wheel and sifted through a pile of hand-labeled CDs with the other. Next to me in back, Frankie had his panama hat pulled low over his forehead, deliberately not looking. In front, Sadie was having a grand old time. Daniel found something he liked and shoved it into the player, which promptly spat it back out. “Put your hand here,” he told her, guiding her. “Hold it in until it sticks.” She did, it did, and a wailing guitar started competing with the wind and engine.

“Genghis Khan's Marmot,” Daniel yelled over the noise. “They're playing the Farm next Saturday. You should come. It would, and I say this with all due respect, be good for you.”

None of us mentioned that the following weekend, we would be floundering in Davy Jones's Locker. We all knew better. And anyway, Daniel probably knew all about it.

My clock read 1:10 when I flicked on the light in my room. I was quiet when I came home late, but not too quiet. I knew my dad would be half awake, listening for me. He was always exhausted after a Saturday night at the restaurant, but he wouldn't really sleep until he was sure I was home.

My clothes smelled like roasted chicken and shoe polish. I dumped them into my hamper, pulled on a
Top Chef
T-shirt—gift from Uncle Ricky—to sleep in, and dug my reliable costume out of the back of my closet. It would do. The painted blood looked fresh enough for the Bride of Davy Jones. Truth be told, it looked a lot better to me than when it had arrived, pristine, two years earlier. “Shred it. Paint it. Wear it to his funeral!” my cousin Alyssa had snapped as she dumped the dress, shiny and perfectly preserved in its carrier bag, onto the floor next to my bed. “Just don't you let a guy promise you a damn thing when you're wearing it. Swear?”

I swore. Then I shredded, painted, and wore it to the Fall Ball.

I'd decided not to go to this one at first. I thought I couldn't take it, the undulating mermaids and their drunken pirate partners. I thought I wouldn't be able to sit with Sadie and Frankie and watch Alex dancing with Amanda, her shells flattened against his chest, his hands on her sequined tail.

I'd changed my mind somewhere in the middle of Chloe's. Sad I could allow, even scared. I just wasn't willing to succumb to
coward
.

The shredded wedding dress was heavy in my hands. I thought I might add a paper anchor and chain this year, maybe a few wilted starfish. Black pearls would have been a nice touch, but the only pearls in the house were on Mom's wedding choker. There had been more pearls, fake ones, in the vertical lace spray that had topped her veil. More still sewn onto her fingerless lace gloves. Not her fault, I thought every time I passed their wedding photo in the living room. It was the eighties.

“Oh, that dress!”

My grandmother stood in my doorway, optic in a furry leopard-print robe. It was hardly her style, but one glance into the window of Victoria's Secret and she'd fallen in love. It was, she believed, exactly the robe Robert De Niro had worn in the boxing ring in
Raging Bull
.

“Hi, Nonna. Did I wake you up?”

“Oh, no. I watch Steven Tyler on the
Saturday Night Live
.” She stalked into my room, giving the dress the evil eye. “Bad luck, that.”

“Only for Alyssa.”

“Hmph. You have another party?”

“The Fall Ball,” I told her. “Our Halloween dance.”

“Ah. You have a boy to go with?”

“Absolutely. Frankie.”

She sighed, and perched on the edge of my bed. Her feet dangled a good six inches off the floor. “I like your Frankie, but he's not going to make pretty
bambini
with you.”

“Nonna!”

“Well, is he? No.” She leaned forward. “Now, that boy with the nice voice and bony mother. He might do.”

I sighed. “He might do a lot of things, Nonna.”
I'm not one of them
. “Dancing with me is not one of them.”

“He liked my
pane
.”

“Yup. He did.”

“And you. He likes you.”

“Nope. That he does not.”

“Hmph. You with all the answers about boys.”

That made me smile. “Apparently, I don't even know the right questions.”

“Who does? Even kings don't know the right questions. Eh, did you know there is a love story between a king and a queen in your history? Here.” She patted the bed. “Get in,
cucciola
. I will tell you.”

15

THE FOLKTALE

“This,
bellissima,
” Nonna began, “is true love story . . .

“The Costas, we were born to the sea and proud, very proud. Son after father after son build their boats and follow the fish. My
bisnonno
, father of my
nonno,
is proudest of all. He is the only son of a widowed mother—king of the sea. But he is . . . ppffftt . . .” Nonna blew out a breath and fluttered her fingers maybe an inch or two above her own head. “
Basso. Piccolo.
When he was young, his uncles and cousins at first fear to take him on board. They think the smallest of waves or biggest of
tono
 . . .
tono
 . . . What is it?”

“Tuna,” I said.

“
Sì.
Silly word. A
tuna
would flip him from the boat. But no one looks down on him. Ah, you laugh, you. Go on, laugh. They are not much bigger than he. So he is little, but he is proud, because his boat sails highest on the waves and soon brings in the most fish. Like gold, it makes him rich. And when a man becomes rich, he must think of marriage, or the village mamas will think of it for him.
Capisci
?”

I smiled. “Yeah, I get it. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.'”

“Ah,
sì
!” Nonna nodded, delighted. “Austen. So smart.”

“You know
Pride and Prejudice
?” I asked. She flicked my ear. “Ow!”

“You think you have the only brain in this family?
Eh?
Ah, Darcy. My
bisnonno
is such a man . . . Fine, you laugh again. Not so handsome, I think, but just as proud. He struts though the square with his new shoes. He buys a carriage. But he gives to the poor, too, to the Church. He is kind to his sisters; he is a friend to many. He is
raffinato
, a gentleman And the girl he chooses? Hmm? Hmm?”

“I don't know, Nonna. Elizabeth Benedetto?”

“Hah!” Nonna slapped her hand hard against her knee. It bounced soundlessly off the leopard plush. “
Elisabetta
. Elisabetta, daughter of a man who works on another's boat. Elisabetta who has many sisters and who is intended for the Church if she does not marry. I don't remember her family name, if I ever knew. Maybe Benedetto. Why not? It does not matter. What matters is that no one understands why Michelangelo Costa chooses this girl. No one can . . . oh, the word . . . to say a picture of:
descrivere.
”

“Describe?”

“
Sì.
Describe. No one can describe her. Small, they think. Brown, maybe. Maybe not so pretty, not so ugly. Just a girl. She sits by the seawall mending nets her family does not own. She is odd, too, her neighbors think. They think it is she who leaves little bit of shell and rock when she is done with the nets, little
mosaico
on the wall. So why? the
piu bella
girls ask, the ones with long, long necks, and long black hair, and noses that turn up at the end. Why this odd, nobody girl in her ugly dresses, with her dirty feet?

“Michelangelo sends his cousins to her with gifts. A cameo, silk handkerchiefs, a fine pair of gloves. Again, the laugh. Then, you would not have laughed at a gift of gloves,
piccola
. Oh, you girls now. You want what? E-mails and ePods?”

“That's iPods, Nonna.”

“Whatever. See, that word I know. Now, Elisabetta sends back the little gifts. So my
bisnonno
sends bigger: pearls, meters of silk cloth, a horse. These, too, she will not take. And the people begin to look, and ask: Who is she, this nobody girl, to refuse him? No money, no beauty, no family name. You are a fool, they tell her. Accept. Accept!

“And my proud
bisnonno
does not understand. He can have any girl in the town. So again, he gathers the gifts, he carries them himself, leads the horse. But Elisabetta is not to be found. She is not at her papa's house or in the square or at the seawall. Michelangelo fears she has gone to the convent. But no. As he stands at the seawall, a seabird, a gull, lands on his shoulder and says—”

“Nonna—”

“Shh! The bird tells him to follow the
delfino
 . . .
delfin
? Dolphin! So he looks, and there, a dolphin with its head above the water says, ‘Follow!' So he follows, the sack with gifts for Elisabetta on his back, like a peddler, the horse trailing behind. The dolphin leads him around the bay to a beach, and there is Elisabetta, old dress covered in sand, feet bare, just drawing circles in the sand. She starts to run, but Michelangelo calls to her. ‘Why,' he asks her. ‘Why do you hide? Why will you not take my gifts?' And she says . . . ?”

I'd been fighting a losing battle with yawning for a while. I was failing fast. “I have no idea. ‘I'm in love with someone else'?”

Nonna snorted hard enough to shake the mattress. “With who? There is no one else like Michelangelo. He is king of the sea! In love with someone else. Pah.”

“Okay. Fine. Tell me what she said.”

Nonna leaned toward me, eyes bright. “She says, ‘You do not see me.' And my
bisnonno
, he says, ‘Of course I see you! Every day I see you by the seawall. I see you in my mind, too, in pearls and furs and silk. So, here, here I offer you these things.' And she says . . . ?”

“‘Thank you?'”

“Per carita!”

“‘No, thank you?'”

“Ah, Fiorella. I think you are not the child of my child!
Rifletti
. Use that good brain.”

“Nonna . . .”

“She says, ‘
You do not see me!'
And she sends him away.”

I wasn't sure I was getting the point. Here's an ordinary girl in ratty clothes who's going to end up a nun if she doesn't get married. Along comes a decent guy with money, promising to take her away from it all . . . Wasn't that where it usually faded to Happily Ever After?

“So.” Nonna tucked each of her hands into the opposite sleeve, a wizened Confucius in a leopard bathrobe. “Michelangelo, he goes. For days and days he stays away from Elisabetta. The other girls, the prettier girls, have hope again. And then, there he goes once more, carrying only his
nonno
's ugly old glass—his telescope—and a bag of figs. These he lays at her feet.

“‘I see you,' he tells her. ‘Every day for months, I watch. I see you. Where you sit, the sea is calm and dolphins swim near you. I see your mended net looks like a lady's lace. I see you dance in the rain before you run home. I see the jewel mosaic you leave to be scattered and remade again and again,
piu bella
than gold and pearls. You are
piu bella
than any other, queen of the sea.

“‘You do not need silk or pearls. I see that. But they are yours if you wish. I am yours if you wish. If you like what you see.' He gives her the glass. She takes it. Then she asks, ‘What about the figs?' My
bisnonno
, he laughs. ‘It might take time, your looking to see if you like me. I bring lunch.'” Nonna slapped her knee again, clearly delighted with little Michelangelo's humor. “There is the love story. You like it?”

I swallowed another yawn. “
Sì,
Nonna. It's a good story.” I couldn't resist, “But . . . a talking seagull? A dolphin guide? That kinda stretches the truth, dontcha think?”

Nonna shrugged. “All truth, not all truth, does it matter? My
nonno
Guillermo came to Michelangelo and Elisabetta, then my papa Euplio to him, then me, your papa, you.” She lowered her feet to the floor. Then pinched my cheek. Hard.
“Buona notte, bellissima.”

“Okay, Nonna.” I yawned and pulled the white eyelet quilt up. I'd inked abstract swirl-and-dot patterns all over it when I redecorated my room. They're a little optic when I'm that tired.
“Buona notte.”

As I was dozing off, I heard her rummaging in the linen cupboard next to my door. Reorganizing again, I thought. She does that when Mom can't see her. They fold things completely different ways.