IF OR IS | luberto

2 | Friday, Almost Saturday

When the train pulls into Portorosso's grey station, it creeps like dead skin to mahogany shelves, like it's intruding on a precious thing, like it's not supposed to be there. Rain continues to shatter the wind, creating drunken slews that fill Luca's brogues as soon as they touch the platform. He hisses as his webbed feet threaten to split open the welts, and is forced to carry them, torn socks shoved into his pocket and russet wingtips dangling from his curled fingertips, slick with the temper of the sky. The Change claims the rest of him soon after, and though the cold's nails are fierce and unfiled, each dense drop molten as a dagger in the womb, he welcomes it as an old friend: snout tilted skyward and emptied of air to accommodate nostalgia.

The cobblestone under his feet is a grave imitation of how he left it months ago, darkened by wet and night. Even the archway where his parents usually wait for him when he comes home for the summer is vacant and dreary as if the yawning maw of the town itself. One brave step more carries him through it, but... Portorosso looks different this time of year. The buildings, usually cascaded in trumpeting sunset hues, droop like diseased leaves under the cold's untoward torrent. They appear to him in grayscale captured on burning film, some sappy chapter in a book abandoned halfway. Peaky lights fight their way through the brume, glimpses of artificial fireflies summoning him into the heart of the town.

And who is he to disobey them? Spirited anew, he follows.

Portorosso is not a large town by any means, so it feels like mere footfalls before he finds the rickety old gate protecting the Marcovaldo household. He knows this, knows the simple adventure of coming home at last: 1) Flip the tiny wrought-iron lock, 2) round the corner; 3) scramble up the tree onto the hideout's platform. The sailcloth tarped over it plunges him momentarily into stillness, but then he's out again, shuffling down the thick branch to Giulia's old window, now Alberto's, wind unraveling as it bumps into his feet. With bated breath, Luca raps on the glass. Once. Twice.

His bleeding heart is wrapped in barbed wire.

But if I may,
And if I might.

This was absurdity. Why was he here?

Tap tap.

He couldn't rightly say, but oh! But oh, he certainly could. The rank recesses of his mind could; the coal his throat presses tightly when he swallows definitely knows.

But the truth of it? Out loud, it was embarrassing.

Tap tap.

It opens.

"Luca?"

The relief punctures his chest; he feels it, the needlepoint precise through the junction between his clavicles, the whisper of air escaping, purposed for equilibrium. Luca Paguro, at half-past two, with his scaly knuckles ruffled like plastic sequins, taught over the window sill, ensuring his balance, deflates and looks into the clumsy face of every good thing that ever was. Alberto Scorfano's eyes are the true liquid luck, dewy beds of clover mottled with sand; nesting in the shallows underneath, his freckles in the lowlight look like strawberry seeds. Alberto is summer's personal time capsule, and he carries out his duties faithfully, always.

Alberto regards him with a floppy grin, and Luca must remind himself to breathe. He trills—he can't help it—a delightful, flowery sound, reaches out to touch his cheek. It's been minutes. It's been seconds. It's been less. This is the feeling he's been searching for: stubbly warmth prickling the pad of his thumb.

Fondness. He could—

I won't break my word
My word to—

"You're welcome to sleep. I'll watch over you."