Page 205 of Marcello

“Because I’m still on the night shift,” he said resentfully. “This is my last night.”

“Um, yeah… about that…”

Eugenio’s eyes widened in horror. “NO!”

“Shhh, keep your voice down!”

“It was a one-time deal!” he hissed.

“I am altering the deal,” I said in a deep voice. “Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

Eugenio frowned at me like I’d gone insane.

Guess he’d never seen The Empire Strikes Back, and that’s why he didn’t get the Darth Vader reference.

Or maybe I was just a huge nerd.

“I need you to help me sneak out on the regular,” I said.

“NO! Absolutely NOT!”

I sighed. “Look, we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. The choice is up to you.”

“Your father would kill me if I helped you sneak out again!”

“My father would kill you if he knew you helped me sneak out already. I’d be grounded for a couple of months, sure – no Netflix or HBO Max – but you’d be wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of the Mediterranean.”

I had no idea if my father actually did that, but it was what I knew from watching gangster movies.

It’s an old Sicilian message. It means, ‘Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.’

Accurate or not, the concrete shoes threat had the desired effect on Eugenio. “You wouldn’t!”

“I don’t want to, but I need to go out again. And if you won’t play along, well…”

Eugenio stood there, eyes blazing with rage –

And then plopped down on my bed, put his head in his hands, and gave out an anguished sob.

Oof.

I actually felt bad I’d said all that stuff about concrete shoes…

Until he spoke.

“I knew I should’ve never helped you!” he whined. “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be in this fucking mess!”

“Actually,” I snapped, “you wouldn’t be in this fucking mess if you hadn’t taken pictures of my tits.”

He looked up at me with terrified eyes. “I apologized for that!”

I snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure my father would forgive you if you apologized, too.”

He slumped his shoulders, defeated. “…just this once, right?”

“Mm… probably a lot more than ‘once,’ actually.”

“That’ll ruin me!” he cried out. “Between paying Esmeralda and giving you money, I spent half my weekly pay!”