Blow by Daniel Nayeri Read Free Book Online

Giacomo, who was a grown man now, or at least a young man, demanded to know why his father had interfered.
    Nothing from Babbo. Then a loud slurp.
    Giacomo said, “And another thing. How in the name of Peter’s Papal Pardon did you know French and her dad know Italian?”
    Babbo Giovanni said, “See? You’re still too young to understand. I’ve been writing letters to that fop since you were this big.” He held up a marble the size of a ball bearing and continued. “I had to learn French because I ran out of dirty words in Italian. I even learned calligraphy just to add curlicues for emphasis. And you, you want me to send my
son
to grovel for his daughter? You think I’m nuts? You think I’m some kind of nincompoop? You’d be his stable boy. And he’d mail me oven mitts or hot pads or some sewn thing with pictures of his cottage on it and a nice newly painted barn with a little silhouette of a strapping young boy,
my
boy, painting. The master you could become, painting
a barn.
And no one would believe me, when I show them, because that gerbil of a man would sew it so it looked like a shadow. But
I’d
know. I’d know it was my boy sweating his life away. I’m telling you, he’d do it. It’d be you on the oven mitt, Giacomo, the damned bucolic
oven mitt.
”
    And Giacomo simply wasn’t prepared to counter an argument that crazy. Obviously, Babbo had marinated for years on just such a nightmare scenario. It didn’t even make sense. Pierre would never stoop to making oven mitts.
    It didn’t matter to Babbo. He kept going, “And for what? For
him.
And some girl — okay, she’s beautiful, I’ll say that much, Giac-Giac, cute as every button in the old man’s caboodle. But you just have to find someone else.”
    That was what tipped it over for Giacomo, who’d been playing with a purple teardrop launcher — a half-pounder. The idea that he would have to find anyone other than Chloe. Giacomo flung the marble at the back of Babbo’s head. It smacked Babbo in the neck and sprayed a cloud of sno-cone mist from his beard.
    Babbo turned around, slowly. Giacomo wasn’t sure whether to run. He was smart enough to grab a few more marbles, though. Babbo chuckled. A stray dream-catcher rolled behind him like a tumbleweed.
    Ten seconds later, both men were hopping around the booth, pelting each other with marbles. Priceless spheres of every color whistled through the air. They ducked and yelped and screamed at each other, “Stop! I’m serious — just stop, seriously.” But neither would stop first. They started to throw fistfuls at a time. They stood on either side of the booth with both arms swinging, while leaning back, trying to keep their faces out of the line of fire.
    One-inch welts popped up all over them. Finally Babbo ran around and caught Giacomo in a bear hug. It only deteriorated from there into Giacomo elbowing his dad in the belly, and his dad giving him noogies.
    By the time they hit the dirt, they were both bruised, panting, and slumped with their backs to the booth.
    Babbo caught his breath and said, “That bad, huh?”
    And Giacomo said, “I love her, Pop.”
    And Babbo laughed, then groaned and touched his swollen jaw. “You coulda just said that.”
    They got up and started gathering the marbles. After a little while, Babbo said, “You know he’ll never —”
    “Yeah, I know,” said Giacomo.
    More talk would have killed the solemnity of Giacomo’s trouble. Their marbles were scattered all around, so they hunched over the dirt in silence as the sun sank into the horizon like a marble they could never retrieve.
    Night was falling on the fair, and shadows of the surrounding forest began to extend branched hands farther and farther into the great glade.
    A few people began to notice that there were no lampposts at this fair. They had all admired the ribbons drawn across the tops of the trees, girded with honeysuckle vines that hung down every few feet, creating aromatic curtains above