Dissecting the Night
Back in the hotel room, Zorah was sitting on the edge of the bed while Icaro was talking on his phone. In the car, he’d received a call and while she was picking up bits and pieces of the conversation, he was speaking so rapidly much of it was eluding her. She did know, it was family related.
Vodingo and Sidonia took a different car and so she didn’t have anyone else to talk to while Icaro dealt with whatever was happening. She was still processing all the weirdness of the club, especially with the man called The Walrus. She found it highly suspicious and incredibly weird he apparently saw her from the ground floor praying and was smitten.
She rose from her seat, walked to the balcony doors, and slid them open ignoring the look on Icaro’s face at her movements. Moving to stand at the rail she looked around to see if she could tell where exactly he might have been standing to see her. The only place she could pick up was still on the hotel grounds, at the corner where the restaurant was located facing the street.
But, she contemplated, wasn’t Dagoberto supposed to be with his wife at the time she’d been out here? It seemed highly unusual to her.
“What are you thinking of?” Icaro asked as he came onto the balcony closing his phone screen and shoving it into his trouser pocket.
“Trying to figure out where Caiu saw me from. It’s kind of creeping me out he was watching me. Also, wasn’t your dad getting it on with your mom at the time he said he saw me?”
He laughed and pointed to the spot where she’d already suspected, “Dad would have met him there because he often just runs to the corner to meet someone for legal business. It drives the police insane because he’s very brazen about doing his business out in the open. It’s a giant screw you to the local enforcement. It also announces to the city he’s back in the country. He would have done it as an announcement he’s back home.”
“Oh.”
“And if I know my father, he and Mom were finished before they even got out of the car. Mom was likely having a bath, and he ran down to make his little show. I don’t doubt Walrus’s version of events. I’m simply pissed off at him.”
“He seems a very jealous man. He wants what you have.”
“He’s never behaved as he did tonight. I’ve never seen this side of him. He’s a hard-working man and everything he has, it’s because he fought hard to get it but to complain I’m some spoiled brat who never worked a day in his life is bullshit. We worked hard as kids. My father didn’t condone laziness of any kind. We worked farmland. My father and his brothers all owned parts of land which were all interconnected and we all worked each other’s lands. Wherever the work was, whoever needed something done, it is where the family is on a given day. We have sheep, cows, and chickens and not small flocks either. We own an olive grove and an orange grove. We plant acres of vegetable plots. We have a vineyard, and we worked that as well as kids. There wasn’t a day growing up I didn’t have farm chores when I was home even on a school day. I still work all of those farms when I’m home. This isn’t even considering the things my mom, aunties and grandmothers were having us do like dishes, helping with pickling and preserving and making tomato sauce which was canned. When we weren’t home, when I was eight, nine, ten years old, Dad started bringing me on jobs. I was being trained from a young age to take over the family business and our business is tough. While Walrus was home with his nose in a book learning maths and trying to make a better life for himself, I was in warehouses and dockyards, fighting and watching my father do what makes us Lucchesi.”
“Icaro,” she wanted to protest how enthusiastic he was defending himself against the man.
“No. I don’t want my wife thinking I grew up some silver spooned pup who had the world handed to him. It was not like this at all. It is not like this now. As for the car he liked, the Ferrari, there wasn’t a man in our group who wasn’t ogling the car. We all did. We were eighteen-year-old man-boys who were walking from the college to the local bar every afternoon after class and we would all stand in the window of the dealership and drool. I got a big payday from a job, and I treated myself with a car I couldn’t drive. Dad told me I shouldn’t get it. He counselled me hard. Told me over and over not to buy it. I bought it against his advice. I was an idiot!”
“You wrecked it?”
“Not even a month after having it. I think I drove it a half-dozen times. I opened it up on a stretch of road heading towards home and came around a bend to encounter a flock of sheep. I couldn’t hit them, so I went off the road and hit the telephone pole. I was in hospital for a week with a head injury and in a cast for six weeks for a broken arm. Wrote the car off completely.”
“Did you buy a new one?”
“Nope. I’ve never personally bought another car after actually. It was a giant waste of money. I didn’t get to drive it as much as I would have liked. It guzzled petrol like it was a thirsty man drinking cold beer. In the city I was constantly worried someone was going to steal it. It wasn’t worth the headache. Dad always has company vehicles. Around the farms and back home there is always a car to scoot here and there. We keep smaller SUV’s here. We have trucks at the farms as well. In New York, the company owns multiple vehicles, including Escalades which are retrofitted with bullet proof glass and panels.”
“Well, he seemed quite put out about the car. He behaved as if you stole it right out from under him.”
“Who knows why? He has a Ferrari of his own and a Lamborghini and an Alfa Romeo he uses to be classy. I’m fairly certain the car he has now is far nicer than the one I bought.”
Log in with Google Account
Chapters
Favorite
Settings
