Chapter Text
“Who’s Di Massimo?”, Dickie asked one day as they sat shoulder to shoulder, bathed in the morning sun of Mongibello. Tom was concocting yet another letter to Mr. Greenleaf. Marge had gone off. I feel a surge of inspiration, she’d said, referring to her in-the-making novel of course. See you later, boys. Tom thought Good riddance, but he’d said, What a pity. His promise to keep Dickie entertained fell on two pairs of deaf ears as Marge and Dickie shared a revoltingly affectionate kiss.
“Can’t you read?” Tom laughed, stilling his pen on the word great. He was going to add artist.
Dickie elbowed him. “Talking back now, aren’t we?” He snickered. “Too much work to read all this. You’re wordy, you know? Keep that up and my old man might just find out what we’re up to.”
Tom looked to him. He must have looked alarmed, because a second later Dickie burst out laughing. “Oh look at you. Did Mr. Greenleaf spook you so?”
“No, I’m appalled that you only realized I’m wordy just now,” Tom replied smoothly, exaggerating his surprise with a dramatic hand on his chest. “Haven’t you read any of these letters I’ve written under your name?”
It earned an eye-roll from Dickie, a good-natured one, and Tom shrugged to mask his contentment. “‘Course I had,” Dickie said. “Anyway, you made him up, right? This Di Massimo of yours.”
Tom nodded.
“So he’s supposed to be a—” Dickie peered over. His breath smelled of ale. “...er, jazz singer? Or what?”
“You could say that,” Tom said. “The voice to your melody. Someone who inspires your musical soul.” Dickie snorted, so Tom added quickly, “An elusive artist. Only known in the underground.”
“Ooh. Elusive.” Dickie echoed. He nodded with a pensive hum. “I like the sound of that.”
Tom grinned. “Good.” He knew now that Dickie didn’t read the letters.
—
Fausto was in the house. Fausto, Dickie’s local oh-so-good friend and Tom’s current informal Italian tutor, had been in the house for about an hour without coming upstairs, lounging about in the living room as though he owned the place, and Tom knew because Fausto was not even hiding it, not even trying to limit the noise as he rummaged Dickie and Marge’s shiny new ice box to help himself to a cold drink. But Tom didn’t bother to come down to greet him, or even acknowledge his presence with a good-nature Buon giorno called from upstairs. No; he was not in the mood for talks, and he had no plans to stop reading.
But then the Italian man went upstairs and Tom was forced to stand up from the armchair with an overly wide smile. Fausto waved him off and asked Tom about his progress with the language. “Not much,” Tom answered in English a tiny, confessing tone, getting across a point that would probably fare better than the cold venom he wanted to spit out right now. He didn’t dislike Fausto that much, truly, not usually. It was just his foul mood; Dickie had gone out with Marge for the evening without telling him a word, and while he was napping too, despite Marge having promised they would go out together for dinner. Tom had spent half an hour imagining himself crashing their dinner and telling Dickie that somebody had put something into his drink that made him sleep for so long in the middle of the day, and then another half hour to weave himself a dream where Marge was the one who overslept on the couch and he, in her stead, would have told Dickie, Perhaps we should let her rest. Let us go have a sandwich and a drink and bring your saxophone so that we could pass by the cabaret again; I won’t tell her . Fausto, of course, had nothing to do with the entire affair, but right this moment Tom hated him the way he hated that new icebox that Marge had chosen out for their luxurious apartment of a lovebirds’ nest. Smoky and bronzed and sea breeze-salted like a sundried Venetian herring, good-looking Fausto was yet another reminder that Dickie had everything he could have wanted and Tom Ripley didn’t figure among them - didn’t figure among the things Dickie wanted , to be clear, because he considered himself a thing Dickie quite had.
Fausto dropped himself into a chair, sighing and curling himself into comfort in it like a cat. Out of politeness only Tom offered him a cigarette and was surprised to find him declining. “I’m-a saving it for a rainy day,” he said, to which Tom had to, despite himself, laugh. “What do you mean?” Fausto shrugged and didn’t answer, his faraway gaze somewhere along the red horizon. Tom didn’t see the appeal. Mongibello was pretty in the mornings, but Tom did not like sunset; maybe because he’d never liked sunsets at all. And Mongibello wasn’t rainy. Fausto would have to save that cigarette for years, probably. With that thought Tom resumed to his chair and his book. He wasn’t past two sentences when Fausto piped up again, to his annoyance.
“You made up a good name, Tomaso.”
Tom hated that nickname, too. He smiled. “What are you talking about?”
“Di Massimo. Not common, but not too strange,” Fausto said, turning back only a little. Half a smile played across his lips. It was obvious that he thought this was a compliment, which Tom took with as much grace as he thought appropriate. “It is very much an artist name.”
“It’s actually a real person,” Tom said, still smiling. Of course it was a lie; Di Massimo was entirely a creation of his mind, not one that he was especially proud of either, but he couldn’t afford to have Fausto think to highly of him. Not when Fausto was apparently close enough to Dickie to know about this fictive musician that Dickie wouldn’t have bothered to even learn of had he not been there with Tom while Tom was writing - typing, recently - his letters.
This seemed to have piqued Fausto’s interest. “Truly? Is he not from around?”
“Oh, no.” He couldn’t have. “I just saw him talking to someone at a park. I think he was a composer. Carrying some scores and all. Tall, pale, dark-haired, definitely not a Mongibello kind of person you know. Not with this much sun.”
Fausto laughed a little. “Pity he isn’t. I could really have gotten you three to meet, and then your little lie won’t be a lie anymore.” The embers of late sun went out on the horizon like the end of a cigarette finally turning to ash, and the now sky was so suddenly, startlingly beautiful.