Page 19 of Prosecco with My Professor
I hear a faucet turn on, and when I look back at Santo, he’s at the sink scooping handfuls of water onto his face. He gasps between each splash. I lean against the counter, curling around my arms, cradling my stomach, and wait. Part of me thinks I should leave, but what if he has an allergic reaction or if the burning doesn’t go away? He’d need help.
After a while, Santo leans back, turning off the sink. He holds out his hands and looks down at himself—the crisp, gray jacket he was wearing over a white button-down is soaked. Reaching for a towel first, he dries his hands and face. He still looks quite red and irritated, but it seems he can see now.
“Santo, I’m?—”
He holds up a hand, cutting me off. Oookaayyyy, not ready to talk yet. Slowly, he peels the jacket off and then his shirt, leaving a white sleeveless tank top behind. We would call it a wife-beater back home, which is a gross name for something that…well, I guess back home it’s pretty gross, period. But here, in the soft light of Santo’s kitchen, it’s a bit more Marlon Brando inA Streetcar Named Desirewith sweat and muscles and…
I snap my gaze up to Santo’s just before his eyes meet mine. And then they flick to behind me, and they widen.
“Merda! Zola!”
“What?” I ask as he lurches to the door.
“My cat!”
“Your cat? You have a cat?”
He ignores me, whipping around. “A black cat. Check the hallway.”
Holy hell in a handbasket, this can’t get any worse.
Santo’s crouching on his knees checking under the couch so I step into the hallway in time to see a flash of black by the stairs.
I follow it up, and when the hallway comes into view, it is, in fact, a cat. It sits at the far end under the small window, licking its paw.
We had a cat when I was growing up, but Bruce was a dog person, and I was pretty ambivalent about it. We had a golden retriever that died when the kids were in high school—Buffy was her name—but I haven’t been around pets since then.
“Hey, gorgeous,” I say.
The cat ignores me, but it’s in a way that obviously, pointedly saysI’m ignoring you.
“What did your daddy say your name was?” I croon, feeling ridiculous, but also, if I let this cat slip by me after the day I’ve had, after the day Santo has had…well, he just might fail me. Or kick me out. Or whatever is in his power to do.
I tiptoe forward while the cat continues to ignore me. “Miss Zola, I think that was your name, right?”
I get a few feet from her and crouch down. She stops licking and blinks at me, squinty-eyed, which makes me think of Santo and his pepper-sprayed gaze.
Like she’s trying to guilt me.
That’s not funny.
Okay, enough anthropomorphizing, Emma. The catdoes notunderstand what you did or why her daddy is upset.
Extending my hand, I hold the back of it out for Miss Zola to sniff. She stares at me like,what the fuck am I supposed to do with that, lady?
I’m sure if she understood what I’d done to her dad, she’d be miffed at me.
“Zola? Emma?” Santo calls from downstairs.
“Up here,” I answer.
I hear the thud-thud-thud of Santo, who must be taking the stairs two at a time, and soon he’s striding down the hallway to retrieve his wayward cat. She stares up at him, tail flicking and curling at her feet.
He says something to her in Italian. “Tu, diavolo subdolo. Non vuoi perderti nel tuo nuovo quartiere, vero?”
The view of Santo, his hands on his hips, white shirt, gray slacks, frowning down at his cat, who continues the conversation with a littlemeroooww,makes me melt. As if I didn’t find Santo attractive enough, now he has to talk to his cat, all adorable-like.
He bends down at the same time Miss Zola stands on her hind legs and reaches up to him, and I actually coo out loud while he grabs her under the arms like a toddler and lifts her up. Her whole body goes long and soft, like some weird cross between a slinky and a set of novelty handcuffs.
