Sergio Y. by Alexandre Vidal Porto

Author:Alexandre Vidal Porto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2016-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

I wore a blazer, a dress shirt, a necktie and new shoes. Before leaving, I looked in the mirror and thought I looked elegant. Once again, it was sunny but not too hot. By eleven, I had arrived on campus. I sat on one of the green metal folding chairs that had been set up on the lawn in front of the stage waiting for a call from Mariana so that we could make arrangements to find each other in the crowd.

I finally found my daughter in her black gown, with her blue sash around her waist and a small green and yellow ribbon pinned to her chest. She gave me a hug and a kiss, said she would call my cell phone so we could arrange to meet after the ceremony and then disappeared into a throng of her classmates.

I liked the speeches and enjoyed being surrounded by people full of optimism and dreams about the future. After the ceremony, I accompanied Mariana to her dorm room so she could change, and from there we would go to lunch.

She wanted to go to an Italian restaurant named Gino’s. It was far from campus and didn’t accept credit cards. If it had been up to me, I would have gone somewhere closer. But because she had expressed a desire to go there, and since I wanted to please her, we went to Gino’s. I knew why she had chosen this particular restaurant.

Neither of us remembered the exact location on Lexington Avenue. We got out of the cab two blocks too soon and walked down the right side of the avenue until we found the restaurant’s dark green door.

A notice was pasted on top of a padlock informing us that the restaurant had closed its doors at the end of April.

(“Out of business” was what the notice read. Afterwards, I learned that they had failed to renew their lease, and the owner, who had had enough, decided to give up and retire.)

“Imagine, it had been here since 1945. It was almost as old as I am,” I said to Mariana.

“It was Mom’s favorite, remember?”

“Yes, I remember,” I said solemnly.

“Where should we go now?”

We went to a restaurant on the eighth floor of a nearby department store. I liked my main dish (spaghetti alla carbonara) and the dessert (tiramisu). After lunch, I convinced Mariana to let me buy her some clothes, and this did me good.

We said good-bye in the late afternoon. She agreed with me that I had no business being at her “prom.” She returned to her dorm and I to my hotel. It looked like it might rain so I took a taxi.

I went to bed early. I fell asleep filled with a sense of pride. The next day I would feel ashamed, but, on the other hand, I would manage to learn more about Sergio Y.’s life and my real involvement in his death.

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