Page 62 of Massimo

18

She might not have changed the channel, but that didn’t stop the complaining.

“I’m hungryyyyyyy.”

After five minutes of her whining, I stopped to get gas at a tiny, out-of-the-way gas station. While I did that, she went to the restroom.

Before we left, I bought a bottle of water and a cheap charging cord for my phone to stick into the cigarette lighter.

Lucia got an energy drink and an armful of junk food, which she proceeded to eat with her shoes off and her feet up on the dashboard.

“I’m BORED,” she announced.

“Too bad,” I said.

“Can I watch something on your phone?” she asked as she picked it up off the ashtray.

“NO,” I said. “I need the GPS. Plus, I don’t have anything on my phone.”

“There’s this thing called ‘the internet’ where you can download stuff. Have you heard of it, Boomer?”

“Put the fucking phone down,” I snapped.

“It’d probably take forever to download anything, anyway,” she grumbled as she looked at Google Maps. “Which mountains are we going to?”

“The Dolomites.”

“Oh,” she said absentmindedly.

“You’ve heard of them?”

She shot me some side-eye. “Of course.”

They were a relatively famous mountain range inside Italy.

“Dolomites…” she muttered to herself. “That’s such a weird name.”

“It’s because the mountains are made out of a mineral called dolomite,” I explained. “It’s – ”

“Didn’t ask,” she said, not looking up from my phone.

I gritted my teeth and thought about strangling her. It was becoming my go-to fantasy for getting through the drive.

“Why there?” she asked. “Why not the Alps or something?”

“The Dolomites are part of the Alps.”

She rolled her eyes, then looked at me like I was boring her beyond comprehension. “Okay – why are we going wherever we’re going instead of someplace cool?”

“Because I have a cabin in the Dolomites where we can stay the first night.”

She perked up. “Oh – like, a ski chalet?”

“No, not like a ski chalet.”

She frowned. “So… like a hunting lodge or something?”

“You should reduce your expectations quite a bit.”

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