Free Advice for Italian Boys by Anne Giardini Page A

mugging, widening his eyes and mouth into an expression of foolishness. “You know, now that I think about it, I remember I read a book once too. It was red, about this size. Some kinda title. Fulla big words. Didja ever read it?”
    “Yeah, yeah,” said Paul. He sat down and shot his cuffs. “Yeah, sure, I remember that one. Red cover, real thick. You gotta like a book that’s got lotsa pages, ’cause then you really get your money’s worth. That’s the most important thing with books; you gotta make sure you get your value.”
    “A short book,” Frank said. “A short book is hardly worth your while. You might as well not even bother with a short book. You’re done before you’ve even started. Two covers,a couple of pages, a few words in the middle. Nothing to it. Sneeze and you’ve missed the whole plot. Where’s the challenge? A book for girls. Now this, this here is a book.” Frank seized Nicolo’s psychology text and held it up. “You could kill someone with this thing. You know? It’s more of a heavy, blunt object than a book. And the beauty of it is, is you can carry it around right out in the open without even you gotta get a licence. Could come in useful, if you get me, eh? In a certain kind of situation.”
    “Idiots.” Nicolo removed his book from Frank’s hands and placed in on the floor beside his chair.
    The glass door of the bakery opened and Mario came in on the heels of an older couple. Nicolo watched the little Gerussi girl slip away from the counter and take up her usual spying post on the far side of the pasta aisle. Two boxes of penne rigate were moved a finger’s width apart and he saw a slow-blinking brown and glistening eye appear between them.
    The four of them ran through their usual topics of conversation: soccer or baseball or hockey, depending on the season, work, cars, family, neighbours, anyone who had done something unusual or of interest, bought a house, moved, married, separated, divorced, gone bankrupt, met with unexpected fortune or success. Nothing unusual that Saturday at all, except that, after they had drained the last of their coffees, set the cups with their grainy residue of sugar askew in their saucers, as they were rising to leave, Mario held up his right hand in a signal for the others to wait for a minute before heading off into the rest of their Saturdays; he had something to say.
    “We decided. Well, Angie decided. No, we both did. The other night after, um, dinner. We both decided that we should ask you guys to help us out. At the wedding. I need to have six whatdyacallem, best men or attendants or something, because Angie wants six bridesmaids, her two sisters and a bunch of her friends. So can you do it? The first Saturday in June. We’re going to ask Angie’s brother Joe and her cousins from Vancouver, Nick and Guido, as well, and with her brother and with you guys that makes six. Okay?”
    This was the first Nicolo or any of the others had heard of a wedding.
    “Yeah, sure,” they all told him, clapping him on the shoulder, leaving overlapping powdered cannoli sugar outlines of their hands on his jacket.
    “We’ll be there, man. We’re there for you,” said Paul.
    Nicolo slipped a glance to the little Gerussi girl behind the pasta, but the brown eye had been withdrawn. Poor Marietta was on her bottom on the floor. COTTURA 11 MINUTI. N° 1 IN ITALIA floated in the sparkling blackness that swirled in front of her blinking eyes. COTTURA 11 MINUTI. N° 1 IN ITALIA. She twisted and tugged the silver ring that she wore on the fourth finger of her left hand as a place-holder, but it resisted her efforts; it twisted and dug into her plumply upholstered knuckle and, unlike her tender pink heart, refused to be moved.
    Mario had parked his cosseted Mustang beside Nicolo’s black Civic, and Nicolo felt that the few moments when they were walking together across the lot toward their cars should include some acknowledgment of Mario’s