Free When in Rome by Amabile Giusti Page B

on the programs.”
    I wish I could nudge the nearby manhole cover open with my heel and disappear inside. I stifle a scream, and a pinprick of unhappiness begins to pierce my heart.
    “Is she getting in or not?” the taxi driver demands before continuing on his way, leaving me to be her prisoner.
    “When were you planning on telling me?” I repeat. “I suppose you were going to wait until the wedding day, if I even showed up, to let me know that my dear cousin wants me to walk down the aisle dressed like a cupcake, while all the aunts murmur, ‘Poor insignificant Carlotta, she’ll never get married and she makes barely any money—’”
    “You’re being unfair, as usual,” she says, not letting me have the last word. “You’re going to be the maid of honor and make me proud for once in your life. The dress is almost ready. I’ll send it to you in a week. I’m sure it’ll be fine. We took measurements from Lisa.”
    “Beatrice’s sister? But she’s twelve years old!”
    “And she has a bigger bosom than you. But it’ll work.”
    I’m about to say something when someone grabs me by the shoulders.
    “Pervert!” Sandra yells into my ear.
    I turn around as my mother’s delight meter shoots up to the stars.
    “What?”
    “You dirty bitch!”
    I have no idea why she’s calling me this, and I tell her so.
    Sandra puffs out her cheeks. “Looking the way you do, how dare you act like that!”
    “Dirty bitch?” I say again, while a family walking by stares at me like I’m dealing drugs to children.
    “Whore!” Sandra yells. She hops into a cab, and my mother, burning with a desire to learn more about her daughter’s sleazy side, jumps into the cab with her without a good-bye. I stand paralyzed on the sidewalk, a halo of icy breath framing my face.
    Finally, I go back to the apartment, unable to make sense of this. Luca is still in the kitchen, putting a frozen chicken in the oven. He looks pensive as he scrubs a potato under running water.
    “Hey,” I say, entering.
    “Hey,” he says. “Do you want fries with the chicken? Here, peel this potato.”
    I take a knife and start to peel it, hands shaking with confusion and anxiety. “I hope my mother didn’t freak you out,” I say. “I’m sure she told you quite a few tall tales.”
    “She thought we were together?”
    “Well, you’ve gotta admit—”
    “Right.”
    “I get the feeling that Sandra hates me,” I say, watching him out of the corner of my eye.
    He turns, looking both amused and guilty. “You’re not wrong.”
    “What did you say?” Sandra’s choice words rattle around in my mind like marbles.
    “If there’s one thing I can’t deal with, it’s crying women. Especially when it’s a crying woman I don’t even know coming into my apartment and accusing me of—”
    “But you do know Sandra,” I say. “You slept with her three nights ago.”
    “—God knows what kind of treachery,” he continues as if I hadn’t interrupted him. “I can’t stand it when women come home with me once and then act like we’re engaged! My intentions are clear. So I just explained to her that—”
    “What did you explain to her?” I demand, the potato in my left hand and the knife in the other.
    “That I’m a slave to your deprivation, that we’re actually together but you forced me to bring Sandra back here because you get off listening to me having sex with other women,” he says. “That I’m in love with you, but you’re kinky and treat me like a doormat. That I’m seeing a psychiatrist to help me figure out how to leave you. And that if I do leave you, she’ll be the first person I call.”
    I can’t even believe this.
    “You’re a fucking . . . asshole!” The potato tumbles to the ground with a thud, and my face turns fuchsia. “There are other ways you could have resolved that! Do you know what she called me in front of my mother?” The knife falls to the ground, too. He just might be next. “Luca! Do you