Advice for Italian Boys Read Online Free

ball, which soared up into the sky at an angle that made it disappear into the beaming late-Junesun. Impossible to catch a ball like that, errant, lost in the sun, on its own unknowable, arching and triumphant trajectory, and Nicolo ran easily, lightly, safely under that sun around all three bases and then slid into home in a shower of dust and grass.
    On the night of the grad, as soon as the Thunderbird reached the end of the long, curving block of orderly houses where the Santacroce family lived, Jessica sent a glance back over her right shoulder, then reached down and pulled her scoop-necked, long-sleeved white lace shirt up and over her head. She tossed the shirt free of her dark hair with two craning motions of her head, first dipping right, and then left, scrunched it up and launched it into the back seat of the car. Then she manoeuvred her legs underneath her lap, kneeled up, wriggled her bottom and slid her long black knitted skirt down her legs. She rearranged herself in her seat, kicked the puddle of black fabric up with the toes of one foot, caught it and pitched it over her shoulder to join her blouse. Her thick, beige pantyhose followed, and next her flat, black polished shoes. Jessica was left with bare, gleaming legs, shoulders, arms and feet, and had exposed a second layer of clothes that had been concealed beneath the first. She was wearing a white halter top that was shot with silvery, shimmery threads, and a glossy black, pleated, very short skirt. Nicolo watched this transformation with darting sideways glances. Jessica’s writhing and shedding reminded him of a nature program he had watched on television with his nonna, in which, in an extended time-lapse sequence, a drab mud-coloured snake had worked itself free of its old dull skin, revealing a new, taut, shining surface that glistened with its bright hatched pattern.
    Jessica opened her purse, took out a pair of high-heeled silver sandals and hooked these onto her feet. She jabbed enormous hoop earrings hung with banks of pink transparent discs through her earlobes, fished for a lipstick and painted a glistening kiss-shape the colour of a ripe plum onto her mouth, dropped the golden tube back into the purse, snapped the clasp of the purse shut, stretched her long, white legs and arms, groaned and wriggled her toes. Her toenails were slick with purple lacquer. She shook her head, tossing her long hair around the car.
    “God, I could use a cigarette,” she said.
    “I don’t smoke,” Nicolo offered, inadequately it seemed, since Jessica sighed heavily and turned away from him to examine through the window the passing view of garages with houses appended and strip malls each with an almost identical arrangement of 7-Eleven, video store and hair-dressing salon.
    Jessica was only a couple of years out of middle school. As a peripheral player in Nicolo’s life to date, she had seemed a safe enough candidate to accompany him to the grad dance—a simple, comfortable and undemanding companion, likely to be thrilled to be asked and readily impressed by his gift of a pink carnation backed with camellia leaves, ribbon and tulle netting fixed to a fabric-wrapped pin, and by an Italian-style hot-and-cold buffet served in the staff room of Our Lady’s, followed by a dance to canned music in a crepe-paper–decorated gym.
    Jessica drummed her fingers on her purse, which was black and gathered into thick leather folds; it rested in her lap balefully, like a pug dog. When Nicolo pulled the car into a parking space a block from Our Lady’s, Jessica sat forward andassessed the number of cars parked on the street ahead of them.
    “We’re early,” she declared, slumping back in her seat. “Let’s go get some smokes and then come back.”
    “We wouldn’t be able to get as good a parking spot,” Nicolo said. He glanced at her feet. “If we go and come back you might have to walk a few blocks in those shoes.”
    “You could drop me off at the front door,”