The Sun and Other Stars Read Online Free Page A

the maintenance.
    But even after that, nobody believed it would actually happen. I mean, being the mayor is all well and good, and Gubbio can sign whatever piece of paper he wants, but there’s nothing like a bunch of old women with loosened tongues and long memories to maintain order in a society, and everybody knows things in San Benedetto are ultimately approved or vetoed by the nonne. I think maybe that’s why everyone sat back, because they expected the nonne to step in, but in the end, they only crossed themselves and called Papà matto for it. Crazy. Behind his shoulders and not even to his face.
    I sit down next to Luca’s headstone. I comb my fingers through the grass and tease apart the knots. I’m supposed to be the one mowing it, and maybe it’s just my guilt, but I can practically hear it growing and proliferating in real time around me, the roots sucking up the water, the chloroplasts filled to bursting, the cells madly dividing. A testament to life, and yet tall enough to bury me. I pick up the calcio ball Papà left here two years ago instead of flowers. It’s soft and damp, and I roll it between my hands.
    “Genoa’s leading,” I tell Luca. “Three to two, but Yuri Fil left the match early. Something about his ankle. Then again, you probably know that already, don’t you?”
    I lie down and let myself sink beneath the surface of the grass. For a while after Luca’s accident, I’d try to get him to talk to me. I’d look over at his empty bed on the other side of the room and complain to him about Papà or tell him how depressed Mamma was. Because that’s what Father Marco and everybody else kept saying to me: now he’ll be watching over you, blah, blah, blah, you’ve got another angel praying for you in heaven, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. I’d wait for him to answer, give him plenty of time, but there was nothing. Niente. Only a rushing sound around my ears. I guess in heaven they have better things to do than worry about us—making out with cherubim or playing Quidditch or whatever you do when you don’t have to lug your body around anymore.
    The shouts of the end of the match rise up from the villas on the hill.
    “I guess they won, eh? Papà must be happy.” I sit up and take another drink, then pour a generous shot where Luca’s feet must be. Magic feet, they called them. He was perfectly two-footed, and over the years he’d learned a litany of feints so the defenders could never tell which foot he was going to use until the ball was already past the keeper. He had his first tryout when he was twelve, went away to the academy in Milan at fifteen, and worked his way up the junior leagues. At his funeral, the assistant coach they sent said they were going to call him up to the first team in the fall, though he could have just been saying that. I wonder if Papà watched the match tonight thinking about Luca running back and forth across the flat-screen.
    I get up and walk over to the edge of the terrace. People are pouring out onto the streets now, chanting and cheering, cars honking and air horns blasting. Someone is shooting fireworks off the end of the molo, and the car headlights respond, blinking in some fottuto Morse code I’ve somehow never learned. Nonno’s got the 2CV down there, and it honks like a dying goose. He actually won it from a French guy back in 1960-something after the Italians beat the French in a match that was so important, evidently people were betting their cars on it. I don’t know what color it was originally, but Nonno painted the front blue and red—Genoa colors—with a yellow griffin spread across the hood. The back half of the car is painted in red, white, and green, with “VIVA L’ITALIA!” scrawled across the rear window. Below it, on the flat of the trunk, he put a skull and crossbones with the words “AND DEATH TO FRANCE!”
    I take another drink, and the bottle feels light, the vodka plinking against the sides as the tide pulls in and out of