Wrestling the Kraken

Dante

Dante

Mrs. Rossini set her fork down, taking up her napkin to gently wipe the corner of her mouth. Picking up her glass of wine, she brought it up to her nose, the fragrance prepping her taste buds to bath in the sweet stream of life poured from the vine. She took a measured sip.

Giving a tight lipped smile, she tilted her head up. "You remembered."

"Of course. It's your favorite." Dante replied. He raised his own glass, but his gaze was elsewhere. Mrs. Rossini noticed the distraction and followed his gaze in a discreet manner.

"Just another reporter." She said, taking another sip of her wine. "They're getting craftier these days."

Dante set his glass down, spinning the base of it slowly between his fingers. "You can never be too careful." He returned his attention to the bar at the front of the restaurant. Sitting alone was a man dressed in a low quality suit. He did his best to clean up, but Dante wondered how he was able to get into the rooftop restaurant. Access was fairly limited to a certain price range and he didn't appear as though he could afford anymore than an appetizer.

It wasn't that he seemed out of place in stature that worried Dante. It was the way he kept looking over his shoulder their way and then looked away whenever he caught him. Could he be working for his father? Is this how he surveyed him to figure out who needed to be removed from his path- the obstacles- as he had been calling them?

"Dante." His mother said, trying to get his attention.

He pulled himself away from his thoughts, feeling as if he had walked into another reality. The thoughts in his mind were starting to feel more otherworldly. If he stayed with them too long, it was like a lucid dream, a separate reality.

"Forgive me. I've had the need to be overly cautious lately." Dante replied.

His mother observed him for a moment, taking in the dark circles under his eyes, the wrinkles that were beginning to form at the edge of his temples, so young to look this way. "I know it hasn't been easy for you. It never has really."

"I've had a good life, mother." He replied.

"You never had a choice. What was it you said you wanted to be? You had just come home from boarding school for the summer, do you remember?"

Dante's face lightened up at the memory. "A horse trainer."

"Yes, that's what it was." She laughed, thinking back. "You used to stay at the stables, watching the trainers from the circus."

"I remember. Father hated it."

"Oh that day Mr. Karras came by with his daughter. Your father had wanted you to entertain her, a charming girl, while he tried to persuade him that he should sell his share of the business to him.

Dante laughed, recalling the moment clearly. "He was so furious when he found me."

"You were covered knee deep, shoveling horse manure, face all dirty..." She started laughing.

"Yes, then Father had the stables manager fired. He said his son was no stable boy and I was to give orders not take them. Mr. Geraldo was only trying to teach me how to care for them, forming a bond with the horses was more than taking them for a ride, he once told me."

"And that was the start of you touring with him. He wanted to teach you the business, how to manage. He blamed me for allowing you to be too 'soft.' The fool. Easy to label and deem it a weakness, yet knowing nothing about it. What he called 'softness' is more of a tactfulness. It's relying more on the bigger picture, all the angles, intuition. It's the mouse that sees the trap and wishes to warn others, whereas the elephant laughs at it and stomps his way through. The way I see it, the behavior he views as being soft is nothing more than having a heart too big in a world that wishes not to see it. Why is it that when a man acknowledges the emotions he feels, he is labeled as weak and not manly enough, when one of the biggest complaints women have is that men cannot handle feelings."