All I Believe (Firsts and Forever, #10)(41)
“No idea.”
Luca yelled something and threw his hands in the air, then climbed into a waiting cab. It drove off in the opposite direction from which Jessie and I were approaching. The tall stranger, meanwhile, turned and entered the hotel lobby. “Should you maybe call Luca?” my friend asked. “He looked pretty upset.”
I considered that before saying, “I’ll talk to him later. For now he probably needs some time to cool off.” Once inside the hotel, I looked around but didn’t see the man anywhere. I could only wonder what all of that had been about.
*****
When Nana and her sister and cousins returned from church (and shopping, lunch, and some more shopping), we all turned our attention to that night’s singles party. Nana and her family brainstormed ice breakers, Jessie handed out flyers in the piazza, and I began returning calls, because people kept phoning the hotel with questions about the event (the staff was getting a bit annoyed).
Shortly before eight that night, all of us were showered and dressed up, including Nana. She wore a sparkly white suit, had put on a lot of red lipstick (some of it actually on her lips), and seemed giddy as a schoolgirl. A tall, thin guy in a dark blue suit came up to us and said hello. It took us a moment to recognize Rafi without his makeup. “I came straight from work,” he explained. He held a garment bag and a big makeup case, and said, “I need someplace to change. The rest of my dance troupe is right behind me, most of them need to get ready, too.”
“Where do you work?” Jessie asked him.
Rafael looked a bit embarrassed as he admitted, “I work in a funeral parlor, doing hair and makeup for our clients.”
“Wow, how is that?”
“Not bad. I know it sounds depressing, but it’s actually a pretty good job, and I get no complaints from my customers.” He grinned a little.
Nana linked arms with him and said, “Come on, I’ll take you to my suite to change, then you can help me with my makeup, too. If you can make a corpse look good, just think what you can do with all of this to work with!”
Giorgio was almost unrecognizable, too. He came up to Jessie dressed in a dirty pair of coveralls, and told me shyly in Italian, “I wanted to clean up after work, but Rafi told me I couldn’t be late. Jessie’s probably not going to like me now that he sees I’m just a mechanic and not glamourous at all.”
When I repeated that to Jessie, he exclaimed, “Are you kidding? I love mechanics! I work on cars all the time! Tell him that. Or better yet, I’ll tell him.” He pulled up a translation app on his phone, typed something quickly and announced, “Io amo meccanica!” That made Giorgio smile. The two of them followed Nana and Rafi.
That temporarily left me in charge, which became a little worrisome when I looked up and saw several dozen people heading for the bar. That was just the first wave. Twenty-somethings to eighty-somethings, gay and straight, they just kept coming. Fiona soon joined me, followed by Matteo and Allesso, and we all acted as greeters and started directing everyone out to the beach, since there was no way the bar could hold everyone.
“Holy shit,” Matteo said at one point, “how many people is this? Two hundred? Three? What are we going to do with them?”
Nana appeared at my elbow just then. Rafi had done a great job on her makeup, and she looked radiant. She said, “We’re going to get ‘em drunk, entertain ‘em, and try to make some love connections! Come on, boys!”
The DJ she’d hired had moved from the bar to the beach, and began playing dance music as Rafi and his friends ran out and began performing. The wait staff looked like they were on the verge of panic, so Nana instructed them to bring up wine by the case. Once they did that, a couple waiters and I started filling dozens of glasses with wine, rather than trying to take individual orders. They were plucked off the long table before us as quickly as we filled them.
The party just kept growing. It felt like it was right on the verge of careening wildly out of control. But somehow, by her sheer force of will, Nana held it all together.
She’d hired a lot of entertainers, and instructed them to spread out along the beach. In addition to Rafi’s troupe, there was a mime, a clown making balloon animals, a magician, a sword swallower, a senior marching band (which ended up playing along with the DJ instead of competing with him), some fire dancers, and a group of acrobats. I had to chuckle as I took it all in.
She climbed up on a table with the DJ’s microphone at one point and said in Italian, “Now look. You’re all here to meet people, so don’t be shy. You know what you want, so go find it! Everyone’s here for the same reason, just remember that. I’m gonna come down there in a minute and I’m going to help you out. But before I do, I’m gonna say one more thing. If you’re straight and a gay boy shows an interest in you, take it as a compliment! They got damn good taste, let me tell you. If you act like a shithead about it, you’ll have to answer to me!”
Nana climbed off the table and started playing matchmaker on a massive scale. It reminded me of a giant game of Memory. She’d talk to one person, find out what they were looking for, and then lead (or sometimes drag) them up to someone in the crowd who she felt was a match. Most of the time, the two people in question would end up talking, and I saw plenty of phone numbers being exchanged.
Of course she couldn’t get to the entire crowd that way, but then she had a flash of inspiration and put everyone to work doing the same thing. She pointed to a young man and yelled, “You! Go up to that woman in the green dress and find out what she wants! Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s someone else. Your job is to help her find whatever she’s looking for! Then after you help her, she can help you!” She started mobilizing blocks of people that way, and to my amazement, it actually seemed to work. A lot of people started talking, asking questions, and making introductions.