Everything on the Line by Bob Mitchell Read Free Book Online Page A

is gonna be Jack’s biggest rival before long, no question about it—”
    “Not to worry,” Ira interrupts. “You’ll see. One day, not too far down the road, we’re gonna meet that little Italian sonuvabitch head-on and teach him a lesson he won’t soon forget. Mark my words .”
    “Oh, and one more thing, my good friend,” Odi says at the other end of the line. “Here’s another juicy tidbit you might enjoy hearing. This Bellezza kid? He’s deaf .”
    A funny grin insinuates itself on Ira’s face, his left eye is twitching like a broken traffic light, and he and his thirteen-year-old gold mine, who has fallen asleep in the passenger’s seat, slither silently into the black, frigid New York night.

5
    Fifth Sense
    TO A FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD DEAF PERSON, looking straight up at Antoni Gaudí’s spectacular Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona is the visual equivalent of listening to the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony , the finale to Rossini’s William Tell Overture , and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody , all at the same time.
    Standing on the Calle de Mallorca, his head tilted all the way back like a crook-necked squash, Ugo Bellezza is being mesmerized by one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring structures ever created by humankind.
    He is feasting his eyes on the front of the cathedral, the glorious Nativity Façade.
    Mamma mia!
    He is gazing not at the front of a traditional Gothic cathedral, that high and wide mass of gray stone pointing up to the heavens and consecrated to God and Religion. No, this is something way more striking and a cavallo of a different colore and speaking of which look at those vibrant ones, the blues and the reds and the oranges and the yellows up there and all those shapes and materials consecrated to religion, yes, certo , but this church is also just as much a hymn to Nature and to Life and there is almost too much to take in visually all at once but it takes him in anyway, hook, line, and piombo , and the power and detail are seeping right into his adolescent bones.
    And Dio mio! there must be 100 different plant species depicted on just this facade not to mention 100 different animal species (there’s an ox! and look at those turtles! and getta loada those chameleons! and way up there, guarda that big pelican!) and in no particular order Ugo’s eyes are panning to those three main doorways standing for Faith, Hope, and Charity and those four main towering steeples with HOSANNA and EXCELSIS and SANCTUS printed right on them! and all those biblical figures and the signs of the zodiac and the gorgeous mosaics and a huge cypress tree right there in front housing a bunch of alabaster doves and a host of angels and the flight to Egypt and musicians and kings and shepherds and Magi and saints…
    And this is only the front of the building!
    “È stupendo , no?” Virgilio Marotti signs to Ugo Bellezza.
    At moments like this, Ugo is thinking how grateful he is to be deaf and not blind. Then again, Ugo being Ugo, if the dice had been rolled differently and he were in fact blind and not deaf, he would be equally grateful every time he listened to the music of, say, Beethoven or Rossini or Queen.
    “Stupendo,” Ugo echoes, turning to his mentor with a closed fist to his face that mimics an open mouth by unclenching itself and expanding outward into five fully extended fingers.
    “What I love about Gaudí,” Giglio continues, “is that he was always pushing the envelope, always going places no one ever went before, building things no one had ever dreamed of building. What I especially love is that we are all, every human being on the planet, capable of pushing envelopes, not just licking them. And your special envelope is tennis! The tennis court is finite, but, like Gaudí did with stone, you can make it infinite! You can expand the lines of the court and play like they are there but not there. In that small space that is allowed to you, you can do