16
Via Rainusso 108, Modena, Italy
April 22, one year earlier
The lead snapped off the pencil mid-stroke, ripping a hole in the page. Eva brushed the fragments away, smudging the lines all around. It looked like a hole in the sky, a tear in space. She checked the actual sky outside her window, pale blue with a few clouds drifting. Very different worlds.
Her hands were shaking, but she tried to ignore it. Her legs were like sticks these days, so thin. The roundness she’d been teased for in university had all melted away, leaving a lean, almost sick-looking girl, wrapped in a light jacket and jeans.
She had just laid down the first lines on a new page when the door to the hotel room opened and Rhodri entered, hands behind his back. His smile was contagious. She shut the sketchbook and hopped off the wicker chair, meeting him before he could kick his shoes off.
“Guess what I found?” he asked with a sly grin, turning this way and that, keeping her from seeing behind him.
“Magic beans,” Eva teased, reaching around, meeting empty air as he dodged her.
“Magic beans won’t fill our bellies. Try again.”
Eva bit her lip, her stomach rumbling angrily. There was food in the room. This was no time for games.
“If it’s stale bread again, you’re making way too much of a fuss about it.”
“It’s not stale, and it’s not bread. It’s…” he held out a pair of red, shiny apples. “A treat!”
Eva could barely contain herself. She leapt at him, giving him a hug that made his back crack. He blew her bobbed hair off his face and laughed.
“If you make me drop them, you’re homeless, got it?”
“How did you find them?” Eva gasped, pulling back, taking an apple in her hands. “Last time I was down in the market, they were like ten euros each!”
“Eleven, actually. Inflation. Got the two for twenty, though.”
Eva’s face dropped slightly. She took a step back.
“Twenty? How did… how did you get that much money? I thought we were saving that for emergencies. Things are tight, Rhodri, and I don’t know how much we can—”
“It’s not our emergency fund. That’s the second bit of news.”
Eva crossed her arms.
“Do tell.”
Rhodri took a large bite out of his apple, chewed noisily, a smile betraying how much he was enjoying it. After a few chomps, he explained, words slurring from the juice.
“I got a job.”
Eva leapt at him again, knocking him back a bit, wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hard on the mouth. Sweetness from the apple juice. He started laughing, kissed her back.
“So you’re happy for me, then?”
“How did you do it? There’s a company in town? Where? I thought we’d checked everywhere, and—”
“You want to keep asking, or you want me to tell you?” he teased.
She unwrapped herself from him, threw herself on the bed, legs crossed, and started eating her own apple. It was magnificently sweet, made her warm in the brisk spring air. Rhodri kept standing, foot tapping madly on the ground. He was full of excited energy, and it was infectious to watch.
“It’s not the kind of work you’re thinking. It’s for a restaurant.”
“You’re cleaning dishes?”
“No, not dishes. The owner wants to shut down his dining area for good. He lost a pair of waiters last month, and he’s sick of it. So he put up this ad, says he needs couriers to deliver food to customers around this and a few other towns.”
“Nice racket. All the money, none of the risk.”
“Can’t blame him. But yeah, I saw he was running it purely by phone-in, and I saw an opening. How many people have proper, working mobile coverage these days? Right? Not many. But how many people can still squeak out a data connection to their laptops?”
“Clever,” Eva said, her face bright with admiration. She started fidgeting as the apple was bitten down to the core.
“I talked him into letting me build him a website, complete with online ordering. Nothing too fancy, but it saves him having to hire a full-time receptionist.”
“Pretty smart there, science boy!”
Rhodri finished his apple, tossed the core from a distance into the garbage can. His eye were twinkling.
“Eight hundred euros, and I’ve got two weeks to work.”
“Eight hundred! Just think of all the—”
“Hold on, Eva,” he said, sitting next to her, taking her hands in his. “It’s a lot right now, but I don’t want to go through another year of starving like we have. I don’t want an apple to be the highlight of my month. Hell, my year. We’ve got to be careful with this money.”
Eva nodded, avoiding his stare. She shrugged.
“I should probably get a job too, then. Help out more.”
“You could be a courier for the restaurant! Just think! Running around town, delivering cold food to angry customers! Who needs a car when you’ve got spunk!”
She shoved him playfully.
“You’re such a bastard,” she grumbled. “Actually, I was thinking I could find some paint and see about selling some more work downtown. I sold one this morning, straight out of my sketchbook, totally by chance. This middle-aged guy from out of town, just wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Congrats! Which one?”
“The one of Maselle by the river,” Eva beamed.
“Ah, yeah, I could see that one being popular. She had that seductive look about her.”
Eva frowned at him.
“What seductive look?”
“Oh come on, you drew it. It was her whole ‘come hither’ thing.”
Eva pushed him over by his face, crossed her arms in mock anger. He laughed.
“All I’m saying is that when you’re living in a world like this, sometimes you want a little bit of the world the way it was,” he said. “These days, how many times are you going to be able to hook up with a sultry college girl with a body like that?”
“Digging yourself deeper,” Eva warned.
“I think hope sells, is what I mean.”
“Or sex,” said Eva.
“The hope of sex, then. Either way, it’s a powerful thing. You should embrace it. Sell more work, spread a little joy, even if it is by proxy. Give the people what they want.”
Eva leaned over him, her nose touching his. Her hair made a bridge between them. His breath was sweet and warm, his eyes dancing across her face.
“People should give me what I want first,” she breathed.
“What do you want?” he asked, softly.
“You know damn well,” she said, and they kissed, long and slow, in front of the open window, the pale blue sky filled with the sounds of passing ambulances.