The Sun and Other Stars by Brigid Pasulka Page A

note, and as I’m making change, the two of them go back and forth in some kind of Slavic summit. Finally the girl speaks up. “We would like to make an account. If it is okay? We are here for three weeks.”
    “And you are staying in Signora Malaspina’s villa?”
    “Yes.”
    As I pull the notebook out from under the register, I try to calculate how much rent they must be paying.
    “The name on the conto?”
    I hold the pencil over the page, waiting. She hesitates. Maybe it’s a mafia thing. Maybe this brother is a godfather or whatever they call it in Ukraine. They say the thugs over there make the Italian mafia look like children on a playground.
    “Maybe you want to put your own name on the account?” I suggest.
    “Yes, yes, I will put my name. Zhuki.”
    “Again?”
    “Like ‘zoo,’ except ‘zhoo’ and ‘key.’” She makes a twisting motion, like a key in the lock. “Z-H-U-K-I.” She traces the letters on top of the register.
    “Zhuki . . . ?”
    “Yes, Zhuki.”
    “No, I mean, what’s your surname?”
    “My surname?”
    The blond woman behind her starts to laugh. She takes her sunglasses off with a flourish and stares at me as if I’m supposed to recognize her. “Yuri Fil,” she says, tapping the register with one long fingernail. “Money. Pencil. Yuri Fil.”
    She snatches the hand of the little boy and pulls him out of the shop, leaving the girl, whose face turns bright red.
    “Grazie. Arrivederci.” She tries to say it as smoothly as she can, but she stumbles on every single syllable.
    “Arrivederc’.”
    My hand hangs in the air, midwave, as I watch them disappear beyond the edge of the window, the blond woman and her stroller leading the way, the girl—Zhuki—hugging the package of tortured meat under her arm like a calcio ball.

I t’s probably unnecessary by now to explain who Yuri Fil is. My lack of enthusiasm for the game of calcio aside, he is, I will grant you, one of the greatest strikers out there today, one of those players who can’t be quantified by a simple recitation of statistics or loop of clips replayed on The Monday Trial and YouTube. It would be beside the point, anyway. Because the point is not how much he means to the Dynamo fans, the Tottenham fans, the Celtic fans, the Genoa fans, or the fans of the next team who will inevitably buy him for a sack of euros. The point is Papà’s unwavering devotion to him. I think he would sell me, Nonno, Silvio, the shop, all of us, for an audience with Yuri Fil. After all, this is a man whose photo has earned a coveted place over the grinding counter in back, sharing company only with Dino Zoff, Maradona, and a handful of others. A man whose first three teams have been the only foreign scarves to hang above Martina’s bar. A man whose transfer to the Italian leagues inspired another man who has never been east of Trieste to teach himself the fottuto Ukrainian national anthem and keep singing it over and over until his son learned it involuntarily, through osmosis.
    Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina, ni slava, ni volya.
    When Papà bursts through the door, I’m still sitting on the stool behind the register, my mind digesting the situation. Papà doesn’t even say ciao—he simply continues his perpetual list of things I haven’t done. Grind the bucket of scraps for the sausage. Clean the gunk out of the cracks in the sink. Reorder the vacuum-pack bags. Make the involtini. He counts them off, levering his fingers back so it looks like they might break off.
    “Did you hear me, Etto? Did you hear anything I just said? What’s the matter with you? You look like you’re barely there. Are you drunk?” But he doesn’t even wait for an answer. “I know you can’t be tired. You’ve barely done any work around here. Why are you sitting around like that?”
    And maybe this is why I let the moment pass. Because it’s a rare chance to withhold from the know-it-all the thing he would most want to know, a way to finally torture