A storella: "Wet Kisses" (standard:humor, 424 words)
Author: Jerry Vilhotti	Added: Nov 09 2004	Views/Reads: 3790/2	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Weaving tangled webs ....

Only after Gaetano said he was running away did his girlfriend accept
the shoemaker and his wife as godparents;  male customers did not trust 
their wives to be alone with "Casanova" but his wife paid him back 
ten-fold for all his wanton ways. Both Pauolina and Gaetano carried the 
basket of fruit - to suggest more abundance than there was - into the 
shoemaker's shop and only after being told not to stand on ceremony 
while coffee and biscotti were being served, did they ask these 
God-fearing people to be godparents for wasn't the world taught by 
expedient leaders?  Including the church fathers who knew a great thing 
was coming full of bushels of money the size of millions of pyramids if 
they could do a Barnum on people convincing them that a para-a-dice was 
waiting for them if only they obeyed their rules of subservience and 
put coins in their machine that had the uncanny ability to produce 
"holy water" for coins stolen, begged or earned into the contraption; 
promising they would become "God cleaned" to enter their houses of 
worship and only then and only then would they see a "better day" in 
God's House of salvation in another world. With tears in his eyes and a 
tremor in his voice the handsome shoemaker promised that the child 
would never want for shoes as he patted very pretty Pauolina's slightly 
rouged cheeks; trying to get her lips to widen for his kiss while his 
wife was giving the twenty-five year old ruggedly handsome father to be 
who people said resembled the great Valentino - killed by 
Chicago-American doctors so jealous they were of their women-folk 
swooning over a "greasy foreigner" who had invaded their great country 
- a great big wet kiss falling into his smile. There would be two more 
sets of godparents for their next two daughters before they would get 
permission from Pauolina's mother whom he would always call "Mamasu"; 
telling all their eventual six children that it was a tender term for 
Grandmother but they would learn one day it meant "her mother": a woman 
who possessed a boneless tongue that could break bones with her 
viciously vehement words. The new godmother's smile would always remind 
Gaetano of the many pretty smiles that greeted him when he entered the 
city of Naples by the bay; delivering dry goods as he drove the team of 
four horses while working for the Padrone Vesuvio, that many said "see 
and die" so beautiful it was to the naked eye.  END   11-9-04


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