CHAPTER 38: AMORE

L’Amore domina senza regole.

Love rules without rules.

If Victor Brovelli would have been the same man as the one who helped cover up a murder and almost screwed up a police investigation, and almost got himself killed, while solving three murders in the process, instead of the man with a raised consciousness he is today, guess what he’d have done? Let me tell you. He’d have jumped in his Mustang and run all the red lights driving to Mills College, hustled Renee out of her dorm, sat her in the back seat of his Mustang, and imparted the story of his dangerous encounter with death. Can you imagine the sexual creativity this tale that included the Black Panthers, pistols, switchblades, mafia bag-men, a crazed rosary-toting female killer, and shoot-outs with the notorious biker gang, the Satans would have inspired in Renee. It gives me goosebumps.

But I was not that same man. The events of the last month that later came to be known as The Sweets Fuck-Up, had changed me. It wasn’t the closeness I’d come to dying, or the dangers of thoughtless decisions, or the turbulent political times, or even coming to grips with family pressure. It was the sudden and inexplicable love and admiration I felt for Dila Agbo.

So there we were, Dila and I, the top down on my Porsche, the sun chasing the fog back to the Pacific horizon, taking the curves down Coastal Highway 1 on our way to Santa Cruz for some theater, poetry, fun in the sun, and a whole lot of amore. That afternoon when I’d picked Dila up, her father, dressed in his usual long African gown, came to the door, looking none too pleased. Neither had my pop been pleased when I told him my heart’s desire was a black woman. It was their problem, not mine. It’s my theory that the rulebook of love contains only two rules: 1) Follow your heart. 2) Anything that stands in the way of the first rule must be ignored.

The End