CABIN PRESSURE'S HIGH FROM BODY HEAT

[BELLADONNA LORRAINE AGOSTO]

belladonna agosto would be considered a nine to five worker, but in all actuality she was a five to nine worker. she worked from the early hours of the morning, filling out paper work and shipping out deliveries, checking out competitors, turning down buyers, accepting imports and packages, making sure the pickers stayed on schedule, making sure everything went according to plan. all while wearing a pencil skirt and four inch heels. impressive? don't doubt it. intimidating? you bet your ass. with this as her usual work schedule, most people expected her to lead a tiring, dull life. those people were wrong, because this young woman still had time to step onto the wii fit before work and spend her evenings out. those outings were glimpses into her past, how she used to be.

even one of the smallest, worse reputation towns of italy was beautiful. all of italy was beautiful according to belladonna. to her the world was beautiful, but italy definitely had to be the most beautiful places in the world. beautiful was one of belladonna's favorite words, descriptions. she liked to see beauty, she liked to speak of it, she loved being called it. even as a child, she enjoyed the beauty of flowers and summer grass and clear blue creeks. she enjoyed to write about them, to draw them, to paint them, to snap photos of moments that could pass as quickly as they came. her brothers called her vulnerable, naive, optimistic, silly - not that she was a problem with any of those things. her mother thought something along the same lines, but she still framed poems and pictures and photographs belladonna had made. her father, when he wasn't busy with work, like to tell her she was dreamy. that he had known she'd be appreciative of beauty, which was half the reason her name meant beautiful. he called her passionate and let her be whoever she pleased.

nothing was better to belladonna than her family. her older brother, junior, was her best friend. he and she could tease one another and fight, but he was still who she'd speak to when she felt lonesome at school or when the boys in her class spent more time staring at her hair than at the black board. junior was a dreamer, too. he dreamed of new york city and paris and rome. he dreamed of traveling and fame and the hundreds of women he'd bed once he was out there in the world. she thought him silly, thinking of such goals at the mere age of sixteen. by then, she was only nine and didn't quite understand the things he said, but she listened and he talked. he was her defender and her favorite family member - by then they had been joined by another son, nico, who was almost three years younger than belladonna - the one who taught her most, encouraged her often. he had taught her the english he knew and told her he'd only live in houses with spare rooms, so she would always have a place to stay with him.

things changed, though, when he began to speak about his dreams to ears that didn't belong to his younger sister. boys in town didn't like dreamers that were male. while they teased belladonna and ignored her silly dreams, they were brutal toward junior. things only got worse when women began to take notice in junior. they didn't tease him, not in any sense. when he became a small casanova to the small town of corleone, things got troublesome. belladonna saw less of her brother and more of her sketches or her poetry. when she did see junior, he was usually covered from head to toe in purple flesh. some love bites, but mostly bruises. he'd lay with a woman whenever, wherever, however he liked, no questions asked. while belladonna worried about sexually transmitted diseases harming her brother, boyfriends and lovers and brothers and husbands all over town were the ones causing him harm. until, finally, he couldn't be harmed any further. he was found, beaten to death in the creek she loved to visit daily. it's a hard thing to do, find your elder brother, your best friend, dead in your favorite place. it changes you.

her family left for america, a place known as a safe haven to foreign families. california was the best place for them to resume their family business, though it wasn't the best place for a young girl to grow. california was beautiful in spots. the beach was belladonna's favorite place to be. she liked to swim and lay out in the sun and bury nico in the sand - which he let her do once a week. the agosto family had always been close, but in the absence of junior, they grew closer. sort of as if they'd huddled together to hide the bald spot. leonardo did his best to take junior's place in belladonna's life, but not in her heart. he invited her out and into his world, taught her things like how to introduce yourself and look confident, not cocky. he introduced her to his friends and took her to underground concerts and hookah bars and bars in general. she rarely smoked or drank anything other than wine, but she didn't snitch on him or nag him about how red his eyes got when stoned, or how stupid he seemed the day after a party. she was just thankful to have one older brother still, thankful that he tried, thankful he encouraged her and taught her things.

she was most thankful for his introductions. most of the people they met were male, yes, but she liked most that they were artists or appreciated art. her favorite introduction was to gabriel lopez. he tried to convince his friends that he was related to george lopez, not jennifer. if he were related to jennifer lopez, well he'd go incestuous just to touch that ass. his words, not mine, not bella's. he was honest with her, though. after they were introduced, they were inseparable. whether they spoke through phone calls or text message or e-mail or face to face, they were always talking. unless that were sleeping, but even then, belladonna had dreams about him. he was cuban and she called him the racial slur spic like a pet name, and he called her dago. they liked to think they were clever, that they avoided the names babe or honey with names that represented the theory that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will never hurt us. belladonna never believed that, though. people gave words meaning. words meant whatever you wanted them to.

she was a star pupil and he was the class clown. she was beautiful and he was average. she made him study and he made her laugh. he was friends with leonardo and he was good to her younger siblings - by then there were two new; othello and bambalina - and he had friendly debates with her father and he flirted with her mother. he was charming and she was loving him more and more everyday. he was a virgin, he admitted one night when they got stoned and drank two bottles of her fathers wine on the beach. he was a virgin and all he'd ever aimed to be was a non-virgin, until he met her. then he didn't care. what did it matter if he'd never had sex, he had something better, he had her. it wasn't his only confession of the night, but it was the one that made her pull her shirt over her head and offer herself up.


she constantly changed her mind about sex. some nights she lay there under him, comparing herself to a turkey that american family's stuffed and cooked at thanksgiving. some nights, her eyes caught his and she knew she was living the definition of making love. some nights she'd send him home and some nights she'd let him stay and right a poem while he slept. soon enough, she began to change her mind about love as often as she changed her mind about sex. she remembered writing more than a poem one night, more of a short story, a dear john letter. love is a toy, a token, a teddy bear, familiar, one eye missing, she wrote. love is a toy, a token, a scented handkerchief. "tell me you love me," gabriel had said. "i love you," i said. "i love you, i love you." she wrote all night long until twelve pages were filled with her words, her doubts. her honors english teacher assigned them a paper as their final. they could write about anything, as long as they put themselves into the mix. she turned her twelve pages in, too busy working on other finals to write something new. it was awarded and published. gabriel didn't quite like reading about how much she doubted their love, how often she felt like nothing more than the door to his battering ram. he forgot about her quickly, finding a new turkey to stuff. she moved on to be valedictorian and turning down ivy league. she already had plans. junior's plans.

from the day after her graduation - her valedictorian speech consisting of statistics and facts, but happy thoughts and a dedication to her departed, beloved older brother - she packed her bags and hugged and kissed her family goodbye and climbed onto a bus to new york city. she took a bus, no matter that the ride would last a week and she'd be exchanging buses every few towns, because she wanted to see the country she hadn't been raised in. from there, she flew to new zealand, and from their to australia...and well, you get the point. in almost every city, belladonna found and bedded a man. usually between the ages of twenty and forty, whomever she found an attractive quirk in, whoever would let her spend a few nights with. it was a game to her. men didn't mean much, they came and went. she cared about her family, which was how she found herself back in italy, running the family business with her elder brother. her family, her business, their wine... it didn't just come and go. it was always there.

that didn't mean that she didn't like to head out after work and bring a man home, though. which was what she was doing this particular evening. looking for another notch on her bed post. hello boys, have you met the woman who put the ova in casanova?