It took me a moment to recognise Baldi. Out of his uniform he looked totally different, mainly because of his American-style blue jeans and dark blue polo shirt. A pale blue sweater was draped around his neck, the sleeves of which were knotted over his chest. Wearing sunglasses, he appeared to be reading a newspaper. My suitcase and sleeping bag sat on the ground next to him.
He stood when he saw me approaching the table and held out his hand. “Sit, please. What will you have to drink?”
“What’s that you’re having?” I asked, having noticed the tall glass filled with something red and sparkling, a quartered orange slice sitting over the rim.
“Campari soda. Come, you must try; it’s the essence of an Italian afternoon, even in this early spring we’re enjoying.”
Baldi slid his sunglasses onto the top of his head, gestured to a waiter, then ordered. He looked almost exactly like the Italian movie heartthrob Massimo Girotti—whom I’d seen in dubbed versions of his movies at the cinema when I’d taken the bus to Nice—even sharing the same dirty-blond-coloured curly hair. There was no doubt that he was very handsome indeed, but once again I felt there was also something a little too suave about him, his legs stretched out, smoking a Chesterfield cigarette—the pack on the table, his gold lighter sitting prominently in view. I detected a faint whiff of a lemony cologne when he leaned over to light the cigarette I’d taken from my own pack. My brother had always advised me to be wary of squeaky-clean, over-groomed types, because they tended to look after themselves rather than the people around them.
“Thank you for arranging to get my luggage sent here,” I said.
“It was nothing. I’m old friends with the signora who runs the boarding house you stayed in. Surely you could have found somewhere more comfortable to stay?”
“It’s a matter of money. I’m still waiting for Thomas Cook to redirect my monthly allowance to the bank in Florence.”
“Allowance?”
“My war pension and another monthly stipend. It’s not a fortune, but it’s enough to keep my head above water.” I wasn’t going to get into a discussion about my book, or the fact that I’d asked my publisher to send me the twice-yearly royalties in monthly instalments.
“You should open an account at the Monte dei Paschi di Siena—it’s almost next door to the Thomas Cook office in Florence. It’s an old-established bank. There’s an office here and in Montepulciano. If you’re going to have to travel to Florence once a month to pick up your funds, you may as well deposit it into the branch there and withdraw whatever you need locally. The interest rate isn’t high, but every centesimo counts.”
“I’ll think about it, thank you. I’m sure Signor Donati will be able to help me if I need it.”
“How are you getting with my colleague anyway?” he asked.
“I barely see him,” I replied. My reply was deliberately evasive; I’d come to talk about the bodies at La Mensola, not Renzo.
“I’ve never been invited to his apartment. I hope you’re comfortable there.”
“Yes, I have my own room. West-facing, so it’s warm in the afternoon.”
“You’re lucky he was on duty yesterday when you came to the police station. His other two colleagues wouldn’t have been so helpful … or generous.”
“I imagined he worked every day,” I said, trying to lead the conversation elsewhere. I knew a fishing expedition when I heard it.
“No, the policemen there share days on duty, much like we do at my police station. On Sundays he usually visits his brother in Buonconvento; it’s about halfway from here to Siena. You’d have come through it on the bus.”
“As I said, I barely see him. I didn’t know he had a brother.”
“His brother’s a priest. I think Lorenzo goes there for confession. People who live in small towns like Pienza can be sparing with the truth in the confessional—it’s easier to be totally frank in a church where the priest doesn’t know you.”
Despite his attempt at a friendly grin, I really didn’t like Cristoforo Baldi. He’d used Renzo’s first name with a relative stranger, as a hint that they were supposedly good friends, but I hadn’t observed that to be the case while they were having lunch earlier today. I’d only noticed a cordial professional relationship, not one that merited first names. And that talk of confession in a town where no one knew you? Did Renzo have secrets? I suppose he did; I had plenty. But the way Baldi said it … was I supposed to take the bait and ask?
“I’m sure policemen don’t have much to confess,” I said instead, wishing the blasted Campari soda would arrive soon and wondering how soon I could change the subject.
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Baldi said. “Even you, Mr O’Reilly; even though you’re a young man, you’re old enough to have a few sins up your sleeve.”
“I confess in Latin both fully and faithfully, no matter where I am,” I replied, trying to match his rather transparent toothy grin. “I’m sure there aren’t many priests who actually know what I’m saying, even though I don’t have any ‘sins up my sleeve’, as you put it.”
“Come, now, I bet you have something to confess—I know I did when I was your age.”
Baldi played with his cigarette lighter for a bit, waiting for me to say something. However, I sat in silence and waited for him to speak again.
“He has a fiancée, you know,” he said, obviously not willing to let the subject of his “good friend” Donati alone.
“Who?”
“Lorenzo! They’ve been engaged since before the war. Poor man: she’s chaperoned night and day. He goes to her parents’ house every Sunday after visiting his brother, they have lunch, then he’s packed off and goes back to have supper with his brother. The man must have … how do you say it? The Americans had a word for it when they were here at the end of the war … I’ve forgotten. Ah wait, yes: lover’s coglioni.” He grabbed his crotch and smiled.
Like hell you forgot, I thought. His English was far too idiomatic; it was an attempt to draw me into “boys’ talk”. I was slightly taken aback by Baldi’s gesture, but even the waiter, who was placing our drinks on the table didn’t seem to notice or care. Maybe it was an Italian thing?
“Lover’s nuts,” I said.
“Yes, that’s it. Do you say that in Australia too?”
“No, we don’t use that phrase, although I know what it means.”
“We all know what it means,” Baldi said, with a wink.
I smiled faintly, my mind processing what he’d told me about Renzo, but fuming at Baldi’s indiscretions and overly familiar behaviour. What did he take me for? Instead, I took a sip of the Campari—it was delicious—then retrieved another cigarette from the packet in my jacket pocket. Once more, Baldi leaned over the table to light it for me. Our eyes met briefly and Baldi winked.
What in God’s name was going on? Was he flirting with me?
“You asked me here because you wanted to know about yesterday, when I found the body in my house.” It was as abrupt a change of conversation as I could manage.
“Ah, yes,” he replied, taking a notebook from the leather document bag that was leaning against my suitcase.
I repeated exactly what I’d told Renzo at the police station. I’d arrived, discovered the doors fastened closed, climbed into the house through the window, then walked to the police station to report what I’d found.
“Was there anything unusual you may have forgotten? I’ve read your initial statement. What you’ve said is more or less exactly the same.”
“Not that I can think of.”
“No one else got off the bus?”
“No … wait, I do remember something. Not long after I got off the bus—I couldn’t have walked more than a minute or two—a man rode past on a donkey, heading towards Pienza. He stared at me strangely and didn’t return my hello.”
“Perhaps he didn’t understand you?”
“I didn’t say hello in English. I said ciao.”
“It’s not a common word here, more usual further south, around Rome. Was he young? Old?”
“Old. A poor man, I’d say. Ragged-looking clothing.”
“Can you describe him?”
“I can do better than that,” I said. “Do you have a blank sheet of paper?” Thinking I’d only be gone half an hour at most, I hadn’t brought my haversack.
Baldi searched in his document case, finding a printed form, which he presented to me blank side up.
“Do you have something I can use to put under this while I draw?”
He gave me his thin wooden clipboard.
“Pencil?”
Baldi found one in his case.
I placed the page on the clipboard then turned it sideways, as if I was going to draw a landscape, then quickly sketched the man on his donkey, describing the colour of his clothing and the shade of fawn on the donkey’s muzzle, exactly as I’d seen him. Next to it, a drawing of the old man’s face, a bandana tied around the crown of his tattered straw hat. Baldi took notes, shaking his head as he watched the sketches form on the page. By the time I’d finished, the waiter and a young couple from the table behind us were peering over my shoulder, making soft, appreciative noises.
“This is extraordinary,” Baldi said. I heard the first genuine note of honesty in the man’s voice since I’d sat down with him. “How can you be sure it’s accurate? Perhaps you—”
“I can cement images in my mind. Since the age of twelve, I’ve always been able to. I’ll prove it to you. Do you have another sheet of paper?”
He pulled another form from his document case, which I took, then swivelled on my chair, turning my back to him. A few minutes later I handed Baldi the sketch over my shoulder. “Is that proof enough?” I asked, without turning around.
The waiter and the young couple applauded softly, murmuring, “Bravo! ”
“It’s almost like a photograph,” Baldi said. “You’ve made me a bit hard-looking in the face, though.”
“Perhaps that’s because I’ve drawn the policeman, and not the man.”
“Maybe, if you knew me better, I’d get to see what you thought of the man.”
“Unlikely,” I said, starting to feel uncomfortable again. “You’ll be returning to Siena when?”
“Our pathologist will arrive tomorrow with an ambulance. We’ll take the bodies away probably mid-morning. My colleague and I will follow. How can I contact you if we need to follow up on anything?”
“Telephone Signor Donati. He’ll know where I am.”
Baldi nodded slowly, his eyes still roving over my sketch.
“May I ask you something?” I asked. “Well, there are really two things.”
“Please.”
“Your English is very precise; I’ve not noticed any grammatical errors. In fact, if anyone asked me I’d swear you were an American.”
“Ah, I studied at university for a few years before the war broke out. I was told by my tutor that I’m a natural mimic … the accent came easily, along with the grammar and vocabulary. There are also many English-speaking people in Siena, and I go to the English Club, where I continue to have lessons.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I have a cousin who was brought up in America, and we talk often in both languages. Besides, it’s not unusual to speak more than one. I know you are fluent in both Latin and French. Why did you learn those?”
“We spoke them every day at the monastery.”
“What? Did you train to become a priest?”
“No, my brother and I were sent there as children to learn to become farm workers and to get an education.”
Baldi was about to say something else but I decided I’d given more away about myself than I’d intended. “The second thing I wanted to ask you,” I said quickly, “is whether you’ve made any progress on identifying the bodies, or perhaps if you’ve learned anything about why they were killed in my house?”
“Had you caught the earlier bus from Siena, you might have surprised the murderer when you arrived at La Mensola. You’re a lucky man, Mr O’Reilly: it could have also been your body lying there to be discovered at some time in the future. But, in answer to your question, no. We’ve learned nothing. The man downstairs, who you correctly surmised had not been dead for long, came from somewhere near Arezzo—the label on the inside waistband of his trousers indicates he bought them there. The woman’s clothes were generic—there was a French label on the inside of her blouse, but it’s a brand that’s sold here. Otherwise nothing else to identify where she came from. But the young man upstairs, that was interesting …”
“Interesting? How so?”
“The middle two fingers of his right hand had been hacked off and were found lodged in his mouth.”
“Anything else …?”
“Who are you, Mr O’Reilly, an Australian Sherlock Homes?”
“I’m sorry, Signor Baldi. I worked with a team that investigated Allied crimes in Japan after the war. My art teacher at the monastery, Father Benedict, used to set puzzles for us to work out as part of our assignments; I was always very good at them. So, when I was assigned to work with the investigative teams, I found out that I had a natural ability in that area. I wasn’t being officious; it was an automatic question. I’m just interested, that’s all.”
I could have bitten my tongue. Despite my self-admonition not to reveal too much about myself, I’d done it again. He’d drawn it out of me; it was an investigative technique that I’d used myself—leading someone to reveal something by a seemingly unrelated question presented as a joke.
Baldi inspected me for a moment, his face serious, then the smile came back. “Ah, yes, Signor Gagliardi, the local schoolteacher, told me you’d fought in the war and then had been in Japan afterwards. He didn’t say what you did, though.”
“That’s because I didn’t tell him. It’s nobody’s business but my own.”
“Are you uncomfortable talking about it?”
“Probably as uncomfortable as if I asked you what you did while the Fascists were in power here and then afterwards, during the Nazi occupation. We all have things we’d rather not talk about.”
Baldi offered me another cigarette, then leaned forward again to light it. I’d really had enough, but was curious about his motives, so accepted. This time Baldi’s eyes looked anything but flirtatious, but he did lean back in his chair and spread his knees, adjusting himself in his pants, the way country men did back home without thinking. I saw it from the corner of my eye but didn’t glance down.
“I was rude,” Baldi said. “The remark about Sherlock Holmes was obviously offensive.”
“Not at all. I thought it a ploy to change the subject. When I suggested there might have been more about the body, other than its severed fingers, you clammed up on me.”
Baldi sipped his Campari, then pulled his chair closer.
“Very well. If you want to know what else we found, there was a Fascist badge pinned through the man’s foreskin. It made me think that perhaps it was a retribution killing for something he’d done either before or during the war.”
“Could he have been a rapist?” I asked. “We had a number of genital mutilations in Nagasaki—revenge for the violation of a family member. The fact that his fingers were missing and shoved down his throat seems to indicate they’d been somewhere they shouldn’t have been—”
“Nagasaki? Where the bomb dropped?”
I nodded slowly. “The fact that it was a Fascist badge surely is of interest. Can you tell me—”
But Baldi was glancing at his watch. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I’ll help you carry your things back to Donati’s house.”
The abrupt change of topic was almost breathtaking.
“Thank you, but there’s no need. I want to catch five o’clock mass in the cathedral … unless you want to join me?”
Baldi declined, as I’d known he would. Refusing any money for the drinks, he paid, shaking my hand as he left, smiling too brightly as he thanked me once more for the portrait, finally throwing an “A presto! ” over his shoulder as he disappeared around the corner of the bar.
I felt like growling . Baldi had winked at me as he’d said, “See you soon.”
I ordered another Campari. I had absolutely no intention of going to mass, I just didn’t want to leave with him, in case he didn’t know where Renzo lived and then somehow invited himself inside with the pretence of helping me carry my suitcase. My drink arrived much faster than before, and as a thank-you I scribbled a quick portrait of the waiter on the back of the bar’s menu and gave it to him.
I wanted to sit, watch people in the square and think about what I’d learned about my new friend, Lorenzo Donati, and puzzle over Baldi’s behaviour and what I’d learned about the murder victims.
*****
Renzo arrived home shortly after seven. I had a pot of hot water simmering on the stove for the pasta, which I knew would only take a minute to cook. I’d taken the flesh from the chicken pieces and cut it into cubes, ready to shallow-fry it with a clove of garlic, half a chopped onion and a handful of parsley. I intended to deglaze the pan with a little water—I’d have preferred half a glass of white wine, but didn’t know what I should chose from the selection at the dry goods store. My Italian wasn’t up to describing what I needed it for and I’d remembered that Renzo’s stockpile seemed to be nothing but local reds. The silverbeet was also ready for a quick plunge into the water with the pasta just before I drained it.
Stripping off his tie, Renzo peered over my shoulder, his hands on both my biceps. It felt very nice, him pressed up against me.
“What a wonderful smell.”
“You. Eat. This. Lunch. Today.”
Renzo sat at one of the kitchen chairs, taking off his shoes.
“Cristoforo Baldi?” he asked. “How was it?”
I stopped what I was doing and threw him a look.
“You didn’t like him?”
I picked up a piece of paper next to the stove, reading from it. I’d spent a few minutes in the late afternoon using the dictionary. “Not. Him. Trust.” I said.
“Nemmeno io, amico mio.”
Me either, my friend, Renzo had said. “Wine?” he asked.
“Yes, please. Eat. Now?”
Renzo pointed to his watch, “Ten minutes,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “Your picture was very beautiful.”
“What?”
“Beautiful,” Renzo said, scribbling in the air above the table, miming drawing something. Then in English, tried to explain. “Your picture. Man. And …” He made a hee-haw sound that made me laugh.
While we drank, using signs and the odd words, he managed to explain that he knew the man I’d drawn. Patiently, he explained that he would talk with him. After saying it a few times, me shaking my head in total incomprehension, I echoed back the words he’d said, then ran quickly to my room, retrieved my writing pad and gave it to Renzo, indicating I’d like him to write down what he’d said.
“Perfect!” Renzo said after I’d had read back what he’d written. He ran his hand around the back of my neck and smiled, nodding his approval.
“How old? You. Renzo.” I asked.
“Me? Thirty-three.”
Together with his genuine smile and his hand on the back of my neck, things started to stir in my underpants—I’d always had a thing for men older than myself. I equivocated, not knowing whether to return the gesture or what to do. Instead, I slapped his knee and said, “Food!”
I settled back while we ate, and, despite having so few shared words in each other’s languages, we still managed to laugh. Renzo was like a kid, I thought, always smiling, full of good humour … but a kid with a certain grown-up look in his eye that made me a little uncomfortable—uncomfortable in a good way. After washing up the dishes, he put two big pots on the stove to heat up, while I went to the back window to check on the clothes I’d hung out when I’d returned home from the meeting with Baldi. They were still very damp, so I brought them back inside and stood in the living area, looking around to find somewhere to hang them to dry near the fire, other than the backs of the kitchen chairs, which I knew would be needed for the towels we’d be standing on after we’d washed.
“Ehi! ” Renzo called out, nodding his head towards a tall cupboard that I hadn’t yet looked in. In it was a folding wooden clothes rack and, hanging on the wall behind it, next to brooms and a mop, the tin tub we’d stood in last night to rinse off in. There was also, wonder of wonders, an ironing board and, on the only shelf, up high, an electric iron.
“You wash. Sit. This. In?” I asked, banging the bottom of the tub.
“Too much hot water in winter. Sometimes in summer, but in cold water.”
I nodded, understanding. I lifted it off its hook and placed it on the floor next to the towels that he’d already spread out. Then, before going to my room to get undressed, I placed the drying rack at one side of the fire and draped my T-shirt and underpants on it. Renzo was sitting at the kitchen table making notes on my writing pad, wearing just the Y-fronts I’d given him this morning. It was distinctly colder in my bedroom, so, after stripping off, I returned to the living room and stood in front of the fire, warming my bum. I squatted and fixed the fire, throwing another log on it, staring into the glowing coals for a minute, until Renzo joined me, having taken off his underpants. He ran one arm around my shoulder and passed me my writing pad.
“What’s this?” I asked—one of the few phrases I’d learned early on.
“This is what you wrote in your note,” Renzo said, leaning against me, “but in correct Italian.”
I stared at him, repeating a few of the words, trying to work out what he’d said.
“Do you understand, Damson?”
I compared my note with what Renzo had written on my writing pad, quickly seeing what Renzo had done: he’d written out full versions of my list of fractured sentences. “Yes. I understand.”
“This one,” he said, sliding from his haunches to sit onto the carpet, his finger tapping on one sentence. He pulled at my shoulder and I lost my balance and fell against him. We both laughed, but neither of us moved. “The policeman makes me feel uncomfortable. Do I make you feel uncomfortable?”
“You? Not you! I like Lorenzo Donati. Cristoforo Baldi. No to me. Like. Him.”
Renzo smiled. “I don’t like him,” he corrected. “Why?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know how to say that I thought there had been some agenda behind what I’d sensed to be Baldi’s insincere flirting, as well as the way he’d revealed private things about Renzo that should have been none of anyone’s business.
“Sta attento, Michelangelo.”
“Why. I. Careful?”
Renzo wove his arm through the air, hissing at the same time, finishing by snapping his hand over my forearm. I got it: Renzo thought Baldi was a snake.
The way I’d fallen had me almost in Renzo’s arms, my shoulder leaning against his chest and his chin on my shoulder. I needed to move; I could feel myself starting to get hard.
We chatted while we washed, neither of us really understanding what the other was saying, but laughing at each other’s clumsy attempts in both languages. Renzo took the flannel from me and turned me to face him. It was then I saw the vulnerability in his eyes. He soaped the back of my neck, saying the word for it in Italian twice and encouraging me repeat it. “Neck, neck,” I echoed. He went then to my throat, after which my chest, again teaching me the words in Italian, which I repeated.
He threw the flannel to me and indicated that I should repeat the process using the words in English first, then to see if I could remember the Italian. The flannel went no further than his navel, but I loved the feel of Renzo’s skin under my hands. So did he, obviously, because when I glanced down at the flannel, my hand hesitating at his umbilicus, I noticed the head of his semi-erect penis protruding from its foreskin.
I laughed softly, raised an eyebrow and smiled into his eyes before nodding down at it. He merely shrugged with an accompanied, “Boh, succede agli uomini! Chi si ne frega? Siamo amici, no? ”
I got the gist of what he’d said: yes, we were men and things happened that were out of our control. Who gives a shit? We’re friends after all, aren’t we?
When it came to washing Renzo’s back, I took my time—unlike last night when I’d been hesitant. The flannel flowed over Renzo’s lightly freckled shoulders, tracing under his scapulae, then down to the lightly haired patch in the small of his back just above the cleft of his buttocks. His arse was as hairy as my own, but, where the hairs on mine were more or less straight and reddish brown, his were dark and tightly curled. It was a magnificent bum, that was for sure. I kept glancing up at it as I soaped down the back of his legs, finishing with his feet, lifting them into my hands one by one and scrubbing between his toes with my fingers.
“Finished!” I said, rising to my feet. I picked up his crucifix from the edge of the sink and, still behind him, draped it around his neck and closed the clasp. I pulled at his shoulder to make him turn around, then carefully adjusted the cross on his sternum, patting it in place with a smile. He was no longer semi-erect; I could feel it pressing hard into my hip.
When it came to his turn, and while he was washing my buttocks, my left leg began to tremble. A soft chuckle from behind caused me to half-turn and playfully slap the side of his head. He said something I didn’t understand.
“What?”
He punched one of my buttocks. I understood—relax. I was wound up, anxious my erection wouldn’t subside before I had to turn around—I’d become hard the moment I’d felt his pressed against me. Now, while he was pummelling my arse cheeks, digging in his thumbs as he massaged the muscles deeply, I felt my face getting hot. As he began to wash each of my feet, I couldn’t help but think that this was no longer a simple situation of mates making the best of one bowl of hot water, but had become something else altogether, something that excited me, but also made me wonder whether I had the courage to make the next move in order to take it to the next level.
The rinsing off and towelling dry afterwards wasn’t as charged as it had been while we’d been sharing the soapy flannel, and soon afterwards, instead of another session of Scopa while we lay on the rug in front of the fire, Renzo produced a box, rattling it.
“What is this?” Another of my already-learned stock phrases in Italian.
He lifted the top and spilled the dominoes onto the carpet. “You know this?”
We spent the next hour teaching each other our own versions. I knew two: the first, one that I’d learned as a kid at the monastery, the second while playing with the locals at the bar in Vence. A bottle and a half of red between us, Renzo yawned, announcing he was going to bed. I stood and pulled him to his feet; he overbalanced and fell against me, our bodies pressed together, which turned into an arms around-each-other-type embrace, each of us patting the other on the back.
I sat on the back of the sofa, finishing my glass of wine and smoking, while watching Renzo throw himself onto his face on the bed with a loud sigh. My cigarette finished, I threw it into the fire then flattened out the embers. I switched off the lights in the kitchen and living areas, then lit another cigarette—nervousness always made me smoke too much—returning to my perch on the back of the sofa. He was still face down on the bed, one knee at right angles, the foot hanging over the edge of the bed. The angle of the light through his bedroom window played over the contours of the muscles in his back, highlighting the mounds of his buttocks in sharp contrast to the shadowed cleft between his opened legs. I felt my mouth grow dry.
I was less unsure of it now: there had been far too much intimacy between us today, from coffee in bed this morning and the handshake over my private parts to the luscious softness of Renzo’s groin pressed against my own as we’d stumbled into an embrace just a few minutes ago.
How hard it must be for him, I thought. A man like Renzo—if he was queer, that was—in a job like his, living in a small regional town in Italy with all the religious prejudices against homosexuality, yet perhaps longing to follow his natural inclinations. Engaged before the war, Baldi had said. That had to be … what? At least twelve years ago or more. Renzo would have been either in his early twenties or even younger, perhaps in his late teens. Then there had been the obvious reference to his fiancée being chaperoned by the family and the mention of his blue balls … no, lover’s nuts, that was the term Baldi had used. How many men had I met during the war who, like my captain in Nagasaki, had been engaged before the conflict, but who’d done so because it was expected of them. Danny had certainly not been backward about handing me his jar of Vaseline then lying on his stomach with his legs spread apart, urging me to fuck him.
I drained the last of the wine in my glass, went to my bedroom to fetch my toothbrush and toothpaste, then returned to the kitchen. The memory of the sounds coming from Renzo’s bedroom last night and my own matched efforts made me hard again while I was brushing my teeth. I hadn’t felt this sexed-up, or “horny” as the Americans called it, since my anticipated meetings with Danny and the feel of the Australian army captain’s warm flesh under my hands and his greedy mouth against my own while I’d given it to him.
Teeth brushed and mouth rinsed, I braced my arms against the sink, lowering my chin against my chest, and took a few deep breaths before heading back to my room.
I couldn’t help but see it: Renzo sitting up in bed, a pillow behind his back, knees splayed, one hand kneading his balls, the other tugging on his penis. My hand involuntarily slid over my belly then down to my groin while I watched, not sure whether he was watching me back or whether his eyes were closed. I stood there with a knot in my stomach, equivocating over whether to go to my room, stay for a while longer, or slide onto the bed next to him. All I needed was some signal, some indication to take … how many steps would it be? Ten, perhaps, to be on the bed beside him? But he seemed to ignore me. Perhaps I was right? Perhaps his eyes were closed? A cloud seemed to have passed over the moon and the room wasn’t as bright as it had been while I’d been inspecting the muscles of his back.
As the movement of Renzo’s fist began quicken and the soft sound of his breathing became heavier and more rapid, my leg started to tremble again. Because of the dark, I missed seeing his ejaculation, but knew when it came. The groan from deep in his belly and muscles clenched in his legs as he arched his back were all I needed to know that he’d climaxed. God, how I’d have loved to see it, I almost said out loud.
Instead, I turned, not to my bedroom, but to the carpet in front of the fire, where it was warm, lying on my back and working my cock furiously, both my hand and my penis illuminated in the soft red of the dying fire’s glow while I watched what I was doing. As I felt the gathering tension begin in my balls, and with the knowledge of my oncoming release, I threw my legs over my head and opened my mouth, my semen squirting onto my face and over my tongue. I stayed like that for a minute or two until my back began to ache.
I lowered my legs and stretched out, using my fingers to clean up whatever semen I hadn’t managed to catch in my mouth, licking them clean. Eventually, my heavy breathing abated, I rubbed my hand through the hair on my chest and let out a long, satisfied sigh.
A wet flannel hit my shoulder.
“Bravo, ragazzo,” Renzo murmured, applauding softly.
I sat up quickly. He was perched on the back of the sofa with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, his feet on its seat cushions, his penis hanging heavily between his legs. He threw his pack of cigarettes to me, but, still recovering from the shock of having found him watching me lick my mess from my fingers, I missed catching it. He eased himself from the couch and retrieved the pack, handed it to me, then stretched out on the floor at my side. He handed me his smoke, which I used to light the one I’d taken from his pack.
We smoked in silence. I felt slightly awkward, but not embarrassed at being caught. In fact I felt strangely aroused, somewhat excited at the thought that he might have watched me spurt into my mouth.
“You like that?” he eventually whispered, running one arm around the back of my neck. I turned to look at him. “The …” He ran his fingers over his mouth then licked them.
I groaned, placing a forearm over my eyes while laughing softly. All right, I decided, raising myself onto one elbow, no use pretending. “Yes,” I admitted, speaking in English. “I like it very much.”
“Ragazzaccio,” Renzo whispered, but with a very broad smile.
“What does that mean?” I used another of my learned phrases.
“Ragazzaccio? You are a ragazzaccio,” came the answer as Renzo ran his hand through my hair, pulling it between his fingers.
It had been said so gently, and with a smile, that I gathered it must mean something like naughty boy … scoundrel perhaps, or something like it.
I rolled onto my side to face him, then tentatively reached out, fingering the golden chain around his neck. I patted the crucifix into place then splayed my hand over it, my fingers threaded through his chest hair. Staring into his eyes, I slowly drew two fingers down to his navel, stopping only when Renzo slid his hand over the back of mine.
“Damson …?”
“Siamo amici, no? ” I asked, to be rewarded by a gentle nod and a whispered, “Yes,” in English. I gently squeezed his hand, then interlaced my fingers through his for a moment or two, before releasing it.
“Damson …?” This time it was barely a whisper.
“Shh …” I placed my thumb and forefinger together, then drew them across my lips.
“Our secret?” Renzo asked, searching my eyes.
“I promise,” I whispered back, then slowly drew a cross over my heart and wound my hand around the back of his neck, drawing us close together. It was only a gentle touch of cheek against cheek, but I could feel his heart beating as hard and as fast as my own, our arms wound around each other, our chests pressed tightly together.