Chapter 17: Mafia Kings: Massimo: Chapter 17

The trip lasted three hours.

It felt more like 15 with all the complaining.

First, she turned on the radio and skipped past a half-dozen good songs until she found some godawful bubblegum pop music.

I lasted about five minutes before I couldn’t stand it anymore. I switched the dial to an American classic rock station she’d skipped past.

“HEY, I was listening to that!” she shouted.

“Yeah, and it was shit,” I snapped.

“What the fuck is this?”

“Led Zeppelin, ‘Whole Lotta Love.’”

That’s the thing about Italy and most of Europe: at least 50% of the music is American. I’d grown up listening to American rock ‘n roll – especially stuff from the 60s and 70s – because my father had loved it.

“Okay, Grandpa,” Lucia scoffed. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Jesus – you’re only four years older than me, but you have the musical tastes of a fuckin’ Boomer.”

What she actually said was in Italian, so it was, “Hai solo quattro anni più di me, ma hai i gusti musicali di un fottuto Boomer.”

I wasn’t familiar with that last word.

“…Boomer?”

“Jesus, you don’t even know what that is?” she asked contemptuously.

“No,” I said, my blood pressure slowly rising. “I don’t.”

“In the US, they call old people ‘Boomers.’”

“Why?”

“What the fuck am I, a dictionary? Google it.”

“Where did you hear it?”

“Where the fuck do you think I heard it, bitch?” She started counting off on her fingers. “TikTok – YouTube – Instagram – ”

“You should watch your mouth.”

“Why – does it offend you that a girl talks like you and your little mafia buddies do all the fucking time?”

I was going to say, My ‘mafia buddies’ don’t talk like that –

But then I remembered how much Adriano and Valentino cursed. And Niccolo, too, when he was riled up.

So I decided not to go there.

But I did have another objection. Her saying ‘bitch’ reminded me of it.

“You curse at inappropriate times.”

“Ohhhhhhh… so I’m ‘inappropriate,’ am I,” she said in a mock sympathetic voice, nodding like she deeply empathized with my plight. “I use bad words ‘inappropriately.’ If only I could learn to use them appropriately – like you! – then you might approve of me, huh?”

“You called your grandmother a bitch.”

Lucia scrunched up her face in shocked outrage. “No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did.”

“WHEN did I call my grandmother a bitch?”

“On your cell phone message.”

“What?!”

“You said something like, ‘Leave a message, bitch!’”

Lucia burst out laughing.

I glared at her.

“I wasn’t calling her a bitch, dumbass – I was quoting a television show. Or paraphrasing it, if you wanna get technical. Plus, technically, I’m calling everybody a bitch who listens to the message, so it wasn’t specifically my grandmother I was calling a – ”

“What television show?”

“‘Breaking Bad,’” she said, then started talking in English like a stoner. “This is my own private domicile and I will not be harassed… bitch!”

I looked at her like she had grown a second head.

“Jesse Pinkman?… Walter White?… ‘I am the one who knocks’?!” She seemed shocked by my ignorance. Then she rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you don’t know ‘Breaking Bad.’”

“I don’t have time to watch TV.”

“It’s on Netflix, not TV – and it’s an old fucking show, dude. I watched it when I was, like, twelve.”

“What’s it about?” I asked. I had never heard of this American concept of breaking bad things. Or bad breaks, or whatever.

“It’s about this high school chemistry teacher in America who gets cancer and starts cooking meth with a student of his,” she said nonchalantly.

I looked at her in horror. “You watched that when you were twelve?!”

She snorted. “You probably killed a dude when you were twelve.” Then she narrowed her eyes and leaned towards me like a district attorney. “Didn’t you.”

“NO,” I said defensively.

“What – thirteen, then? Fourteen?”

“No – ”

“Fifteen?”

“…sixteen,” I grumbled.

She rolled her eyes again and shook her head in disgust. “And you have the fuckin’ nerve to lecture ME on what I watch and how I speak. Fuckin’ typical Italian male chauvinistic bullshit.”

“The man I shot was trying to kill my family,” I snarled.

“Whatever.”

I noticed she got quiet after that.

We drove without speaking for several minutes. Then she asked, “What do you watch, anyway?”

“I told you, I don’t have time to watch things on – on Netflix.”

I caught myself before I said ‘TV,’ since that would only get me another eye-roll – and every time she rolled her eyes, I wanted to strangle her.

“I bet you watch football,” she said scornfully.

She meant what Americans call soccer.

“Well, yeah – when Fiorentina or Juventus is playing,” I said, naming two of my favorite teams.

“So you DO have time to watch shit on television!”

“Only once in a while!” I snapped. “And I haven’t watched anything in six months.”

I didn’t mention that six months ago was when my father died, and my brothers and I had to take over the family business.

There hadn’t been time for anything other than that.

“What was the last thing you watched, then?” she challenged me. “And NOT football.”

I had to think about that one.

“I bet it was something about the mafia, wasn’t it,” she said with a knowing grin, like she had me all figured out.

“No – ”

“Okay, maybe not the Cosa Nostra, but some other gangsters, then. ‘Peaky Blinders’?”

“What?”

“Oh, yeah, you’re a grandpa – you don’t even know what Netflix is.”

“I know what Netflix i– ”

“The Godfather?”

“I haven’t seen The Godfather in years.”

“Scarface?”

“Pacino’s great in that,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, he was,” she agreed off-handedly, like she couldn’t argue. Then she snapped her fingers. “I know – ‘The Sopranos.’”

I didn’t answer, but my face must have given me away, because she laughed in delight.

“HA! It was ‘The Sopranos,’ wasn’t it?! That show is older than shit, dude. You really ARE a fuckin’ Boomer.”

I noticed, though, that the entire time she was mocking me…

She never changed the channel on the radio.