All I Believe (Firsts and Forever, #10)(94)
After a while, Luca cut himself off and got to his feet, then embraced Andreo and me. “Thank you. I can’t even tell you what this means to me.”
“There’s no need to tell us,” Andreo said. “It’s written all over your face.”
He stared at the canvas for another long moment and shook his head, as if in disbelief. Finally Luca said, “We should get back to the party, Nana’s done so much to make it special. Now this, on top of an already perfect evening! I’m overwhelmed.”
Josh and Zachary elected to remain where we found them, and the rest of us ventured back into the chaos. Luca hugged the painting to his chest, and every time someone asked him about it, he’d show them the canvas and give them a mini history lesson. After a while I asked him, “Why aren’t you teaching art history? I’ve never seen someone so passionate about a subject. You should be inspiring the next generation.”
“It’s an idea,” he said. “I might look into it, actually.”
We ran into Dante and Charlie a few minutes later. They wished Luca a happy birthday, and then Dante turned to Andreo and said, “Thank you,” as he shook his hand.
“For what?” I asked.
“Andreo sent a gift to my office,” Dante said. “Two cases of very nice Italian wine.”
“I owed you that,” Andreo said with a rueful grin. “The part I left out about our family’s feud was that Vido Natori was absolutely guilty of the theft your ancestor accused him of. They aren’t the same two cases, of course. Nonetheless, I felt I should make amends.”
“I appreciate the gesture,” Dante said. “I brought a few bottles along so we could drink a toast to your brother on his birthday. It seemed like something that should be shared.”
Sometime later, we were told to come out to the street in front of Nana’s house. My grandmother and Jessie lined up on the sidewalk with us and the rest of the party-goers, and she said, “Well, what do we have here?” Jessie didn’t answer, but the fact that he was grinning and had started recording with his phone suggested he might be in on whatever was about to happen.
I muttered, “Oh no,” when I saw that a couple large ramps were set up in the middle of the street. In between them was Nana’s rainbow limo. A man quickly wheeled in some sort of big, black billboard and positioned it as a backdrop behind the car. Another man in a white jumpsuit ran forward and held a torch to a huge hoop beside one of the ramps, which lit up the night when it ignited. I looked around for the inevitable arrival of the SFPD while a lot of Nana’s neighbors came outside to witness the spectacle.
A few more men in jumpsuits were cordoning off the block on both ends with rope, and as rock music started blasting from a couple big speakers, the rope to our far right was dropped to the ground. A roaring engine could be heard down the block, and after a moment, Ollie shot into view on a motorcycle. He was wearing a rainbow jumpsuit and crash helmet, and fireworks were blasting out of the back of the bike.
As he hit the top of the first ramp, the black billboard crackled and sparked, and the words ‘Marry Me Stana’ were spelled out in hundreds of sparklers. Beside me, my grandmother exclaimed, “Holy shit!”
Ollie sailed over the limo easily, and after he coasted down the second ramp, he whipped the bike around in a tight arc and drove up to Nana. “What do you say, hot stuff?” he asked her, producing a jeweler’s box from the pocket of his jumpsuit and opening it to reveal a diamond ring. He unhooked a pink crash helmet from the back of the bike and held it out as well.
“What’re you, nuts? We’ve only known each other a short time!” Nana said.
“Yeah, but so what? Life is short, especially at my age. I love you, Stana Dombruso, and what time I got left I want to spend it with you.” Sirens could be heard in the distance. As Nana stared at him, his pit crew rolled away the ramps and billboard, and pulled the limo back into the driveway.
The police were getting closer by the moment, and finally Nana tossed aside the top hat and put on the crash helmet. She snatched the little velvet box and climbed onto the back of the motorcycle as she said, “I love you too, Olivio Caravetti. Let’s do this thing!” The two of them kissed before the bike shot forward and my grandmother and her fiancé raced into the night.
*****
Luca and I were among the last to leave the party, several hours later. Nana and Ollie had returned to the celebration eventually, no worse for wear. I wasn’t sure if they’d ended up getting chased by the police because they were pretty vague when I asked them, but they both seemed exhilarated. Maybe that was because of their pending nuptials though, which Nana had already started planning.
It was a ten-minute walk from Nana’s house to the apartment we were renting month-to-month until we knew where medical school would take us. Luca pulled up the collar of my wool overcoat against the cold, kissed my forehead and took my gloved hand in his before we started walking. The Cezanne was right where it had been all night, hugged protectively to his chest.
When we got home, he positioned it on the fireplace mantel, next to the painting of the two dancers which he’d given me in Viladembursa. “That’s the start of a damn fine art collection,” I told him as we stood back to admire the canvases.
“We should keep collecting,” he said, taking my hand. “I spent so many years building collections for other people, and it would make me happy to do the same for you and me.”