“Me neither,” Gio says.
I can’t lie—I love it. I don’t think about gelato recipes or bookstore lies because I’m too busy trailing my fingers over rack after rack of glittering baubles, from homespun holly to tacky pink flamingos in sunhats and golden angels draped in the Stars and Stripes. I pause at a rack of cooking-related baubles, holding up a silver-glittered whisk.
“If it was December, I’d totally get this,” I say, hanging it back with reluctance.
Gio trails beside me, much less enamored with the whole place than I am; but then I guess this is nothing new to him, the store is practically his neighbor.
“This place has my mother written all over it,” I say, pausing to look at a huge Christmas village display. I watch the small steam train chug along its track around the illuminated houses and old-fashioned shops, remembering childhood Christmases. It’s testimony to my mum that all I really recall of those years is the hazy, nostalgic glow. There certainly wasn’t much in the way of money for expensive presents, but it was homely and ours, just the two of us in our festive bubble. She was a charismatic person, exciting to be around, someone who could make any day, any occasion, any circumstance fun.
“Is she still in London?” Gio asks.
I look at him, blink a couple of times to shake the memories away and pull myself back to now.
“My mum? No. I lost her three years ago,” I say. “No siblings either. Just me.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, placing his hand on my shoulder. “Your dad?”
Charlie Raven strolls through my mind, scraggy-haired, drumsticks in one hand, a beer in the other. “He died when I was much younger, but to be honest, he never really figured in my life even when he was alive.” I shrug. “Just one of those things.”
Gio picks up a snow globe and turns it over. “Families are complicated, huh?” He watches the snow settle as he places it back on the shelf. “My sisters this morning are a case in point.”
“I like them,” I say. “They scared the shit out of me, but I like them.”
“They have their moments,” he says. “Fran was born not long after Santo and Maria took me in. I went from a cold apartment to a warm home with Disney-level parents and a baby sister. And then another one. And then another one.”
“And then another one?” I say.
“A particularly opinionated one,” he says.
“Yeah, I noticed you two clash sometimes,” I say.
“It’s not that I don’t have ambition for the business,” he says, exasperated. “The mobile city carts were my idea, I’m not risk averse. Belotti’s has changed with the times in every way but the flavor.”
He takes a step back as he speaks and accidentally stands on the start button of a life-size singing snowman, and in his haste to move away manages to stumble and press two more. All three wheeze into loud, tinny life, swinging their arms as they sing “Last Christmas,” an out-of-time chorus that is so ridiculous I start to really laugh. Gio looks at them in horror, and then at me, and then shakes his head and laughs too.
So that’s what he looks like when he laughs, I think.
“That’s definitely my cue to get out of here,” he says.
Back on the street, he rolls his shoulders as if to shake off any traces of Christmas glitter. He glances in the direction of the gelateria, and then the other way.
“Let’s try something out,” he says, placing a hand on my elbow to guide me across the street between the stalls and generators. People know him here: they raise their hand as he passes, waylay him to ask how Santo is doing. It reminds me how embedded Belotti’s is in this community, and I wonder if Gio appreciates what it means to hold a place within it. He’s a crucial cog in his family machine, and they in turn are a founding cog in Little Italy. I’m not part of something like this. We moved too frequently when I was a child to be crucial anywhere.
Gio stops. “In here,” he says.
I lean back and see we’re at a gelateria, but any similarity to Belotti’s ends there. This place is large and ultra-modern, and inside the glass display counter there are at least twenty different flavors of gelato, a parakeet display of color and drama.
“Wow,” I murmur. “How do you ever choose?”
An immaculately made-up woman leans across the counter and kisses Gio’s cheek, lingering for a second longer than a socially acceptable peck.
“Gio! It’s been a while since we last saw you in here,” she says. “What’ll it be?” She glides her hands gracefully across the top of the glass and smiles. She somehow reminds me of a snake charmer.
“Vanilla,” he says. “As it comes, no toppings, thanks.”
She looks disappointed. “The blackberry is the best today.”
He doesn’t say anything, and she sighs as she reaches for a cup. “One of these days,” she says, heaping it full of vanilla. I can’t imagine she puts that much in everyone’s serving, she’d be out of business in a week.
“Iris?” He turns to me. “For you?”
I look at the array of flavors and colors laid out before me, impressed. For the chef in me, this is better than a jeweler’s shop window. And then I look at Gio watching me and I know what I’m going to choose.
“Same again, please. Vanilla.” I look at the mountain of gelato in the cup on the counter for Gio. “Or, actually, can I just have a second spoon?”
He looks pleased, which is more than I can say for the woman behind the counter as she jabs another spoon into the cup, wobbling the precarious gelato tower. I’m not sure, but I think she might have imagined poking it in my eye.
“On the house,” she says, when Gio reaches for his wallet. “I’ll come by yours soon and you can return the favor.”
We take a seat at one of the booths, the gelato on the table between us.
“Research?” I say.
He pushes it toward me. “Ladies first.”
I pull out a neon green plastic spoon and swirl it in the gelato. “It’s more yellow than Belotti’s,” I say, raising the spoon up to eye level to study it.
He doesn’t touch his spoon, just watches me as I taste it. I find myself looking away from him as the cold gelato slides down my throat.
“It’s heavier, I think?”
He reaches for the other spoon and tests it, one spoonful and then another.
“More cream, less milk,” I say.
He nods. “This has a stronger vanilla flavor too.”
He’s right. There’s a delicacy to Belotti’s gelato compared to the intensity of this one.
“It’s kind of custardy,” I say.
“Yes,” he says, pointing his spoon at me.
“There’s no way I could eat this much of it,” I say, waving my spoon over the piled-high cup.
Gio’s gaze flickers toward the counter. “I think Priscilla was trying to make a point.”
“I think she was blatantly coming on to you,” I say, sliding my spoon back into gelato-mountain.
His eyebrows shoot up and he flushes as he looks away. “She thinks we would be a good partnership,” he says after a pause. “In business.”