LITMIR.BIZ

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so blind so dull so vain. I am not.

      Stefano wasn’t vain, and he wasn’t the universe. He knew what he was, a speckle within it, but a major speckle, one with an important part to play, if only he could figure out what that part was. Right now in this world he was nothing but a really bad fit.

      The pain didn’t help. It spasmed in his calves, ran up his thighs, pinged in his scapulae, but not disabling, and in some ways reassuring. It told him he was developing, that he belonged elsewhere. Not here, chopping carrots.

      He chopped like a machine, bang bang bang bang bang bang bang.

      As if from above, he watched himself working. To escape the tedium of chopping carrots, he planned his next canvas. He would be his own subject, as always. Not a detailed self-portrait, but a streak of cheap acrylic lurking within the slashes of dark and light lines that could be lampposts, or faceless crowds, or trees, abstract verticals toppling like blowdown and blurring his outline to the viewer.

      Except he had no viewers. Only Troy, the little blond boy with the goggle-like eyeglasses who lived down the street. Troy had taken to crawling through Stefano’s window now and then to visit. He would look at the paintings and sometimes comment. He said they were “neat.”

      Stefano wanted real feedback, from grown-ups. His parents knew a lot about art and creativity, but they hadn’t even tried to see the paintings he showed them. Showing them had been a mistake.

      But worse was the time he had hauled his best pieces into the little gallery on Lonsdale. The gallery lady had gone out of her way to give him what she must have considered to be constructive criticism, but she didn’t know a thing about him or what he was trying to say. And she needn’t have bothered, because her first reaction said it all, that fleeting look of dismay, then pity. She may as well have stabbed him in the heart.

      Now he showed no one, never, no more.

      The restaurant had peaked at around nine and was quieter now. The wait staff and dishwashers were taking short breaks, flirting by the refrigerator, goofing around. They ignored Stefano, and he knew why. He scared them all with his physical presence — or maybe lack of it. At twenty-two, he stood taller than the crowd. He was a looming invisibility. His body had grown long and concave from years of fussy, almost food-phobic eating. His hair was black and wiry, and his lashes were long. His beard had come in as wispy as the patch of hair on his chest. He would have liked a wild and messy beard, but people in the food industry should be well groomed, as Chef Jordan had told him, and he did everything he could to please Chef.

      She talked about it sometimes on their shared commute, complimenting his haircut or his new shoes, whatever efforts he made to look nice. She said nothing, though, whenever a horrible, sleepless night had left him bristly or unkempt, like today.

      He hadn’t shaved today because of his parents’ Scarlatti. It had kept him awake, that damned harpsichord tinkling through the floorboards — along with the endless groan of Anastasia’s CPAP machine — down into his lair, glassy notes dripping on his head till he ducked under the blankets with a snarl. Head covered, he had stayed in bed till past noon and risen too late to get properly ready in time for pickup by Chef in her Rabbit.

      What Stefano desperately needed was a place of his own, but the dream was fading, and worse than hopelessness is hopelessness that follows hope. Two years ago he had secured this job at the Taverna. After saving up for over a year, and after an excited month hunting for his own apartment — that was back in June — he understood that he could fill out rental applications till his fingers rotted off, and still nobody would accept him. He was too different. Anyway, he couldn’t afford to move out, not on his wages. He was stuck in his parents’ home with no escape.

      Something had to give. And what would give, if not him?

      Not them, Paul and Colette. They were dried out and timeless. They would live forever, and he would live below them for just as long. He was their burden, their disappointment, the boy who had destroyed the family, and as punishment they would play the cursed CD. Scarlatti in the morning, Scarlatti at night. Sometimes — just sometimes — they would break it up with Schubert.

      A waitress shrieked a laugh, and a busboy shushed her, the two of them skidding like drunks on a dance­floor. Stefano squeezed his eyes shut. The din never stopped in the Greek Taverna. Chatter from the dining room, the whisking rush of the waitresses’ nyloned legs, the banging from the dish pit. Chef and sous-chef were arguing about eggplant, and as always, the radio buzzed on its shelf, CKLG-FM, volume down so low that the DJs sounded like mosquito people.

      He glanced at the clock and clamped his jaw. Almost quitting time. The tightness and tingling coursed down from rump to Achilles tendon. At just past 11:00 p.m. he heard the last diner belch his satisfaction, pay his bill, and go. Instantly the staff dropped their manners and became their normal vulgar selves. Hyenas.

      Stefano cleaned his work surfaces and packed vegetables, scowling as he thought about Anastasia. The piercing shriek of that waitress had done it. Shrieking girls always took him back to his sister’s last laugh. Chairs were being pulled aside now, and the dishes were loaded into the bins. The staff moved down the narrow corridor past Stefano to the back exit, not looking at him. They filed out into the night, and the door eased shut with a thump. A hush fell over this steamy, smelly dungeon — except for the yapping radio.

      He switched it off. Chef Jordan was nowhere in sight. She had sung out good night to the girls, done what she had to do, then disappeared. She would be outside, rewarding herself with a short toke as she waited.

      Stefano pictured her there in the dark, sucking her poison, tall and slim, as dark as the night around her. Her mother was black and her father white, and she looked exotic, with her umber skin, grey-blue eyes, and deep gold curls. He loved the slow, soft lilt of her voice. He loved everything about her.

      He threw his apron in the hamper and pulled on his ski jacket. The back door that opened onto the parking lot was steel plated like it was meant to keep out tanks instead of the briny portside chill. There was a patter of light rain as he stepped out, and the sharp drift of burning weed located her to him in the darkness — there she stood, almost invisible by the blue dumpster, with her woolly coat wrapped close. She smiled and nodded at him, and together they headed toward her car. A crackling series of bangs sounded off in the distance. Halloween was around the corner, and even in the drizzle kids were out getting a head start on the fun.

      Chef was stuffed into her driver’s seat now. Stefano took his place beside her. It was icy cold in here, and his fingers, linked on his lap, looked bony and blue. Chef twisted the key and started the car, her Rabbit, her Little Lemon, as she called it, and along with its uneven poop-poop, something in its workings chattered like windup teeth. Chef said, like she said so often, “Oh dear, there go the valves.”

      What could he say to that? “Oh dear,” he murmured.

      He knew she must wish him gone. She would prefer a small-talker like herself, what with all the hours they’d spent jammed together going to and fro since May, when she had moved in just down the block. How did it happen that he was so well read and not a bad writer, yet in her presence, the spoken word got stuck somewhere between his brain and his tongue?

      His few attempts at rejoinder were always drowned out by something larger than himself. If it wasn’t the drone of a truck, it was a passing siren. If not a siren, it was her exclaiming about the funny bumper sticker ahead. There was always something.

      The Rabbit idled on the white line. Chef looked westward for a break in traffic. “Problem is, you take her in for the valves, and they say, ‘Sorry, ma’am, looks like the whole tranny’s gotta go.’ You say, ‘Ouch, how much is that gonna set me back?’ They say, ‘Ooh, well, this one’s kind of a doozy.’ It’s always a doozy with cars, Stef. Trust me, you’re better off with public transit.”

      He looked at her sidelong and bent his mouth into his sexiest practiced smile, but her eyes were on a passing bus. She pulled out so fast they nearly hit its rear end. Stefano seized the grab handle at his side. Chef was a menace on the road. It was a miracle they weren’t both dead, with all the

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