| |
OOMPH!
I fell face first off my bed and onto the floor and wondered why the heck Jack had just pushed me, rather rudely, out of bed.
I pushed the hair out of my eyes, got up, and looked over. I got a toothy grin in response.
Max. That rotten (possibly scheming, since Bailey told me Max was sly and cunning) canine. Why wasn’t he in his crate? I thought for a second and seemed to remember a heck of a racket last night. Lots of whining, barking, protesting. Some mild cursing in Italian. I’d gotten up and ...
Oh. Right. Kennel Bad. Crate Evil. Max hated it. Knowing where he’d come from, I guess I couldn’t blame him. I sighed and made a mental note to give Bailey back the kennel. No dog deserved that kind of drama.
Even so. “Look here, buster. That’s MY bed. You have a nice, cozy bed on the floor. Right there,” I pointed at the foot of my bed where a giant plush doggie bed sat empty.
Max flopped onto his back and burrowed deeper into the covers, totally ignoring me and acting all smug. I decided not to use my mom voice since Max’s superpower seemed to be that he was able to ignore whatever he didn’t want to hear anyway.
I left Max alone, made coffee, and went to shower and dress for work. It was almost eight so I had an hour to get Max fed, watered, and pottied. By eight-forty we walked into the dining room on the way to the kitchen.
I didn’t get two steps into the main restaurant before I stopped, mouth open, eyes bulging, heart tripping. Oh, no. No, no, no. I looked at Max. He looked at me, then gave me a cute head tilt. Oh yeah, he’d done something all right. But what?
“Is this an ambush?” I asked, hoping I’d get at least one smile from the faces of my family who sat, sprawled, or slumped in tired disarray. All scowling, glaring, or frowning. “Okay,” I said. “What did he do?”
Seven voices, raised at the top of their very Italian lungs, started in simultaneously.
I raised my hand my like a traffic cop. Nothing. I tried hollering above the din. Nothing. Finally, I stuck my fingers in my mouth and let loose with an ear-piercing whistle. Blessed silence. “Maybe we can take this in order? Without undoing the shingles on the roof? Or freaking out the cleaning crew?”
We had a cleaning crew come in every morning to tidy, disinfect, do bathrooms, floors, glass. And, uh-oh. They were currently cleaning up what looked like my nonna’s favorite fig tree. Favorite, as in, it held a symbolic significance to my nonna that I’m pretty sure rivaled the birth of her first child.
I suddenly wanted to make a break for it, but chances were, if I did, Luca would tackle me. Instead, I firmly locked my knees in case they decided to start knocking.
“Uh, what happened to your tree, Nonna?”
“What happened to my tree?” she shrieked. “Well, it wasn’t nothing, that’s for sure! Looka that mess! You know how long I had that tree? Fifty years! Enzo get that tree for me when he bring me to this country. Now look at it! If it even lives, it gonna be so mad it never give me another fig!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sure the gardeners can fix it.” I wasn’t at all sure. It looked like a few marching bands had trampled on it. All playing tubas. “Uh, how did it get knocked over?” I didn’t want to know. I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t. I eyed Max. Max looked at the ceiling. Probably whistling some kind of show tune in his head.
“How? I tella you how! That ... that wayward, onion-eyed, maggot pie! He take off with—”
“—an entire beef tenderloin!” Luca cut Nonna off. “Do you know how much that cost?”
“So I chase the doggie,” Nonna continued. “Around and around that tree we go like some boil-brained idiots! He chomping Luca’s meat like he never ate no meat before. He running and gulping like a crazy butt-biting meat grabber. I running and yelling like a sheep-biting crap-dragon and then the peoples at the tables, gah!” She threw up her hands. “They start cheering, then he take his last bite, stop short without even telling me what he gonna do, and wham!” She crashed her hands together like cymbals. “I tripped, and flew right over that beetle-headed beast and into the tree. The tree not so big it gonna knock me down, so it go right over in a dead faint.”
I murmured something I hoped was appropriate.
Then Nonno said, “I was happy to teach him to clip a few wallets, but hey, he much too busy eating his way through my white Armani jacket.”
We all gasped. (Apparently, my family deals with tragedy by eating, swearing, or gasping. If you saw us from the outside, you’d think it was our last day on earth.)
“I’m so sorry, Nonno,” I said.
“Not to worry, my principessa, I need a new jacket today anyway, eh?”
“I’ll pay for it. I’m really sorry.”
“Pfft,” he said.
Then my papa held up something black and shiny and metal and mangled and I thought, Well there goes my savings, and possibly my trust fund. “Is that your—?”
“1931 Rolls-Royce Phantom I Town Car? Yes.”
We all gasped again, then bowed our heads in a moment of silence.
Okay, so it wasn’t a full-sized 1931 Rolls-Royce Phantom I Town Car. It was a remote-controlled version. But still. “I’m so sorry! I’ll buy you a new one, I promise!” At this rate, I was going to go bankrupt before I even had breakfast.
“No, no, I still have some spare parts, I can fix it. Maybe you help me when you have some time? Spend some time with your papa?”
I went over and gave him a hug. “Of course I will. I’m sorry this happened.” When I pulled back, I noticed his pocket square was missing. “Papa, your jacket!”
He patted his chest. “Oh, that. Well, Max had a little meat sauce on his muzzle, so I wiped it off.” He shrugged. “It’s only fashion.”
Another gasp flew from my family’s mouths and I felt like I was going to swoon or stroke out or some weird thing from blood loss in the brain. My father was a major fashion whore. To hear him utter such words came close to blasphemy. Which meant he either really liked me, or maybe he liked Max more than his pocket square. Possibly both. I hugged him again.
While I was hugging him, I happened to notice my mother looked a bit damp. And her hair wasn’t perfectly coiffed. In fact it was kind of wet and stringy looking. And uh-oh, her make-up looked a bit runny.
I let go of my father and turned my full attention on my mother. “Mama? Are you hot? You look a little sweaty or something.”
“A little sweaty? No. Or something? Yes! That,” she pointed at Max, “Bottom-smelling-arse-farmer ran out of the ladies’ restroom with a diaper, only wet, not the messy kind,” she crossed herself, “clenched in his teeth! And where did he go?” Her left eye started an impressive tick. “Right to Venice. Jumped straight into the lagoon! Well, I’m telling you, he’s fast and I didn’t have time to slow down, and ploofa! I fell in after him. At least I managed to grab the diaper before it made splashdown.”
Max fell to the floor and covered his face with his paws.
“Oh, Mama, I’m so—”
“Ha!” Paolo exclaimed. “He ate three tiers of a wedding cake! How I’m gonna get three tiers made, and decorated, and do all the normal restaurant desserts, by tonight? And that was after he locked himself in the pantry and ate two boxes of bread crumbs. And that was before he helped himself to three cheesecakes, a tray of fresh meatballs, and half a tiramisu from the walk-in.”
I started to apologize but Paolo wasn’t finished.
“Then, that smarty-alek, he find a dozen lamb kebobs and eat all the meat and spit out the veggies! And then the porco gets stuck in the freezer, but does he whine? Or bark? No! He all happy chewing on a whole frozen veal shank.” Paolo put his head in his hands muttering something about a crazy family, getting whacked, and giant out-of-control dogs.
“I think he ate his way through a week’s profits in one night,” Luca said, looking disgusted.
Max glared at Luca, completely unrepentant.
I sighed and looked at Gio, figuring it was his turn next.
He shrugged. “He chewed through a vat of house dressing. I slipped in it, a dozen or so times, and now I’m gonna smell like house dressing for a week. I won’t be able to get a date. I thought I should run us both through the dish pit, but Max, he’s all tidy. Not a drop on him. I’ll probably be in the shower most of the day. With scouring pads. And degreaser. The industrial strength.”
Luca added, “Nonno walked Max in the back for over an hour waiting for him to do his business. We can’t afford this, Sophie. He’s got to go.”
I started to apologize yet again, then I noticed the trend and my eyes got squinty. “First of all, why was he allowed in the kitchen? You don’t let a dog into the kitchen. That’s just unhygienic. Everyone here knows that! Second, it sounds like he was hungry. Did anyone think to give him regular dog food? Did anyone think to feed him so that he wouldn’t get into the people food? My gosh, he’s been starved and no one here thought to feed him?”
My entire family’s mouths fell open.
Then they all started speaking at once.
“Oh no, Sophia’s right!”
“That poor doggie, no wonder he eat everything!”
“We so mean, he never gonna forgive us!”
“He’s not a bad dog at all, just hungry!”
“We all so ashamed!”
And on and on they went. Max gave me a sideways smirk. I did a mental eye roll and shook my head.
“Okay,” Nonna said. “He get one more day.”
“Nonna, you said he could have a week!”
“Okay, maybe two days. We take it a day at a time. We see if he hungry or crazy.”
#ThisIsSparta!
#MaxWouldMugElvisForDonuts
#GiveMeTheBeefBoysAndFreeMySoul