“May I help you, Leonardo?”
“ Si, Ramona. I need food, rent, sleep, job.” Like I said, key words. He looked at me with those pleading dark chocolate eyes, his Roman nose and chiseled features like the ones the real da Vinci had probably carved a dozen times into statues. This modern da Vinci looked more like a Greek god than any mythological interpretation I'd seen. The only Italians I'd ever met were short men with dark mustaches who operated the Italian restaurants in Austin. But then again, I don't get out much.
I checked my watch. Cecelia would be gone by now, and I had to get to the school to pick up my boys for flag football practice. The social services department, which would help Leonardo with these matters, was closed on Mondays since they worked on the weekends. I couldn't very well leave him stranded, could I?
He smiled at me again, and I noticed the dimple in his right cheek and the deeper dimple in his chin. I couldn't say no to that most of all. I'd lived in a shell the last two years, so helping someone, especially a cute someone with a killer-watt smile, might be the remedy I needed for my depression. Prozac, among other things, wasn't cutting it.
“Come with me,” I told him, and even as I said it, I wondered what I was doing. Where would I take him, a hotel? Shove the want ads in his large hands and order him a pizza? Panchal's tagline hung above the whiteboard: One human race. Panchal believed everyone belonged, and no one should ever be lost, physically or figuratively. So as a faithful employee, I took Panchal's torch and made sure da Vinci found his way. I didn't unlock his door on my black Toyota station wagon until I scooped the fast food bags and candy wrappers and empty drink cups and shoved them into an even larger McDonald's bag.
Junk food had become my therapy; its salty, fatty flavor was far more soothing than a therapist could ever be. Another unfortunate side effect of widowhood wasn't just the mess that my life had become, but the physical piles of grief everywhere I turned. I had become Linus and Pigpen from Peanuts all rolled into one, only my security blanket was around my heart. The Pigpen side of me, however, was evident in my car, the kitchen sink, the closets, you name it.
My mother liked to remind me what a neat freak I was Before, but I told her people change. People die and people change. Two of life's certainties. I should've become more organized After, yet all the effort left me so exhausted I stopped caring so much, save one thing: I dusted religiously for fear of dust mites. Have you seen those things magnified a thousand times? Creepier than a monster in a horror flick.
True, some Grievers become better people After like some of the heroic 9/11 widows who started non-profit foundations and pursued big dreams, but I don't get that. Until today when I'd felt compelled to help da Vinci, the only thing I'd cared about doing was downing double bacon cheeseburger and raising my boys.
Neatness became a part of my past like so many other things: happiness, joy, adventure, love.
“ Grazie, ” da Vinci said to me repeatedly as we drove down the interstate.
He made himself at home even in my car, fiddling with the mirror and changing the stations on the stereo.
“Rock and roll,” he said, nodding his head to the beat of an old Beatles song.
“You like rock and roll?” I asked him in Italian. I wanted more than small talk. I wanted to know everything there was to know about this man in my passenger seat on day one. I told myself it was for insurance purposes; I shouldn't be driving around a complete stranger if he could be dangerous, though I doubted he could be. Even for his size, he looked like a gentle man-maybe it was the kind eyes or the fluidity of his movement. He moved like a dancer in the body of a linebacker.
Talking wasn't a problem for da Vinci. I understood enough to know that I liked him. He spoke lovingly of his homeland, his poor farming community outside of Milan, his four sisters, and he claimed to know a lot about women. I hadn't doubted that a bit. He was twenty-five, never been married, “because there aren't pretty girls like you.” If that alone didn't turn me to putty, his next statement did: he missed his mother. (Okay, his mother's cooking, but still.)
Like many of my students, he was in America at the University of Texas on a student visa. Lucky college girls, I thought. He'd have them lined up for nude portraits in no time, even if he didn't sketch.
Most of my students were poor, scraping together whatever savings they had in their homeland to travel to America to live a better life. I wasn't surprised that da Vinci only had enough money for one month's rent and even then it would be at a cockroach-infested motel. I couldn't see a man this beautiful at an embarrassing excuse for American real estate.
“$200 for rent? I know the perfect place,” I told him, my body feeling as light as air. “My studio apartment in the backyard of my house.”
Da Vinci seemed very pleased, and because it had been a very long time since I'd pleased a man, I felt pleased myself.
Understand that I have never offered my garage studio to a student before, but then I had never met a student like da Vinci, either. I hadn't touched Joel's private workspace in two years, leaving everything as it had been the day he died. It belonged to Joel, and I felt in some ways that the space would never be anyone's but his. I had wondered if I would just turn it into a museum, my place where time stood still. But it was, by all accounts, time for the hands to start moving again. But how?
During our ride I gathered that da Vinci was not only not an ax murderer, but that he was honest, sincere, hardworking, and something I couldn't quite put my finger on, but it was something I'd lost and didn't believe I would ever find again. As I pulled into the elementary school's circle drive, it came to me.
La vita allegra. Joyful living. His eyes danced with excitement and awe and insatiable curiosity. Not just for America. For life. I ached to feel that again. This is why I gave him a ride. This is why I rented my late husband's studio for scraps. I hoped some of da Vinci's joy would rub off on me. Although I had meant it more in the metaphysical sense than the physical, that wouldn't be entirely bad, either.
I couldn't understand half of what da Vinci said, but who cared? It was nice to listen to a voice again. A nice baritone voice so different than the calming tone of my father or the tinny voice of my mother or, let's be honest, the whiny voices of my sons. Da Vinci was refreshing. Some women wish for Calgon to take them away; I wished for da Vinci to never stop talking. Or looking at me. Looking at me and talking. Especially the part where he'd said I was pretty.
“You'll have no problem making friends,” I said as I pulled my station wagon behind a white Escalade. “I'll hook you up.”
“Hook up?” he repeated. “Hook up Leonardo with Jessica Simpson?”
I laughed. “No, not that kind of hook up. I meant, I'll help you.” So he liked blondes with big boobs and big shiny teeth. I checked my dishwater blonde hair in the rearview mirror, six months overdue for a coloring. The rugged gray strands in the middle stood like little Confederate soldiers, ready to shoot down any approach from a male suitor.