Free The Sun and Other Stars by Brigid Pasulka

red. I know whatever I say is being recorded by fifty pairs of eyes, the owners of which will play it back to me mercilessly and with commentary every night for the next month.
    “We just saw Fede and the rest of them over at Camilla’s. He said you were all going to Le Rocce on Saturday night.”
    “I haven’t decided yet.”
    “You should. It’ll be fun. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even meet you there.”
    I can feel the girl looking down at me, but no matter how much I try, I can’t look up at her, like her face is some fottuto solar eclipse and I need a cardboard box with a pinhole.
    “What’s the matter, Etto? You forget how to speak Italian?” Signora Malaspina’s ugly niece laughs again. She has one of those hyena laughs, sucking in air.
    “With girls, he only speaks Awkward,” somebody shouts, and they all laugh.
    Signora Malaspina’s niece steps back from the bar, and I’m about to sigh with relief when the girl taps me on the shoulder and says in English, “Hey. Don’t you remember me?”
    Shit.
    “The field? This morning?”
    I hear the whispers behind me.
    “Ah, yes. Sorry, I didn’t recognize you.”
    “Did you have a nice nap?”
    “Yes, yes.”
    “I’m sorry again that we disturbed you.”
    “Come on, let’s go,” Signora Malaspina’s ugly niece says, and she pulls the girl by the sleeve like she’s a child. “Ciao-ciao, Etto. We’ll see you Saturday night.”
    “I never said I was going.”
    She waves vaguely to the room, weaving through the chairs. “Ciao, everybody!”
    “Ciao!” the whole room shouts back.
    “He has a stable job!”
    “And he likes children!”
    “And he’s a virgin!” Mino shouts after them, mercifully in dialect, but Signora Malaspina’s niece is laughing her hyena laugh, and I know she will translate everything later. Shit. I bury my head in my hands, and the sea air hits me in the back as they leave. The others start in on me immediately.
    “What’s the matter with you, Etto? Cat got your pisello?”
    “Porca miseria! Not one but two girls trying to talk to you, and all you could do was play the mute.”
    “Youth is wasted on the young.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    “I thought we were going to have to commit a mercy killing!”
    “Who is she? Anyone seen her before?”
    “Probably one of Signora Malaspina’s renters.”
    “She looks a little grubby for that, no?”
    “Maybe she’s a nanny. She looked Irish to me.”
    “Ha! Etto looks more Irish than her.”
    “German, then.”
    “Euh. She can’t be German. Germans always travel in packs.”
    “Or battalions. Or brigades,” someone calls out, and everyone laughs.
    “Maybe she’s American.”
    “Not fat enough to be American.”
    “Maybe you should move to America, Ciacco.”
    “This?” Ciacco pats his belly. “All muscle. Feel it. Go on . . . feel it.”
    “I’m not touching anything. Who knows where that’s been?”
    Around and around they go. Blah, blah, blah. She can’t be English because she was wearing a scarf against the drafts, and the English, especially since Iraq, have it in their heads that they are like the Americans and suddenly above such European principles as drafts and air pressure. She can’t be Canadian, Austrian, or Australian because Canadians, Austrians, and Australians always announce themselves in the first minute so they will not be mistaken for Americans, Germans, or English. Not bitchy enough to be Russian. Not snobby enough to be French. And on and on.
    “What’s all this?” Papà is back from the bathroom, his face shiny, the damp clinging to the bristles of his hair.
    “Some girl came in with Signora Malaspina’s niece and started flirting with Etto.”
    “Just now?”
    “Just now.”
    “Who is she?”
    “No one knows.”
    For a second I think Papà might show some interest, but as soon as he sits down, they’re immediately back to the scandal. After every interruption, every argument, every tragedy, it all goes back to calcio. I’ll