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On the morning of April 2nd, Fugo, Giorno, and Mista awakened to a vanished Narancia, which was weird because he almost never woke up before the rest of them. He wasn’t in the other room, at least according to Trish, who claimed to not have seen him since the night before. “I woke up when Bucciarati and Abbacchio went down for breakfast half an hour ago,” she said. “I haven’t seen him.”
Downstairs, there was no sign of Narancia, and Bucciarati and Abbacchio also said they hadn’t seen him, and nor could he be found at the coffee shop across the street. Finally, Mista gave up and called him, despite the fact that he was given to not answering the phone.
This time was different, however, and Giorno, Fugo, and Trish gathered around Mista to try and overhear the conversation. “Dude, are you okay?” Mista asked. “Where the hell are you?”
“Is Bucciarati nearby?” Narancia whispered.
The whispering couldn’t be a good sign. “No, why?” Mista answered, lowering his own voice. “He and Abbacchio are inside. The rest of us are out front. Should I go get him? Where are you?” Mista didn’t state what was obviously on everyone’s mind. Was Narancia being hounded by another enemy stand user?
Narancia breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m back in the room. I’m hiding.”
“What the fuck? Why?”
“I can’t believe you forgot. It’s April 2nd.”
Giorno, craning his head to hear Narancia, asked, “What’s so special about April 2nd?”
Fugo sighed heavily. “He’s right; I did forget. It’s the day Bucciarati takes us all to get our yearly check-ups.”
Trish raised an eyebrow. “Check-ups? Like, from the doctor?”
“Yes, from the doctor,” Mista said. “Narancia’s afraid of needles, so he always tries to get out of it if he can.”
“I’m not afraid of needles!” Narancia shouted over the phone. “I don’t like doctors at all! It’s not the needles! Anyway, tell Bucciarati I found an enemy stand user and that I’ll be back later.”
“I’m not doing that,” Mista said, then hung up the phone just as Narancia started to yell, “HEY!” cutting off his protests at the pass. “Giorno, Fugo, help me cover the exits. Trish, you go flush him out. Here’s our room key. He’s probably under the bed or in the closet.”
Trish accepted her assigned duty with neither laughter nor complaint, and soon Bucciarati was holding a squirming Narancia by the arm. “You didn’t die the last time you went to the doctor, or the time before that,” Abbacchio was saying as their crew gathered outside the front of the hotel.
Narancia, face flushed, puffed out his cheeks and didn’t say anything.
“You can be such a child sometimes,” Fugo said.
“Only sometimes?” Abbacchio said.
“I apologize for not mentioning it earlier,” Bucciarati said. “But I ask that every member of my team makes sure he’s healthy. Trish, since you’re with us at current, I’m asking you to get a physical as well, even though you’re only here temporarily. I can’t contact the Boss directly, but assuming there’s no trouble, this shouldn’t cause too much of a delay.”
“That’s fine,” Trish said. “I’m fine with doctors.” She gave Narancia a sidelong glance.
“Why would you assume there won’t be any trouble?” Abbacchio muttered.
“Additionally,” Bucciarati continued, ignoring him, “I’m going to ask that all of you undergo testing for sexually transmitted diseases, in addition to your regular physical. Everyone here except Abbacchio and I are teenagers, and although I won’t ask for details, I expect that at least some of you are sexually active, or will become sexually active in the near future. As such, I’m asking you to get tested.”
A heavy silence descended over the assembled crew.
Fugo was the first to break it. “Bucciarati, with all due respect, you can’t be serious.”
“Pannacotta Fugo I have never been more serious in my life,” Bucciarati said, rounding on him. “I know we’re all fairly young and most of you probably don’t remember, but we aren’t that many years out from the AIDS epidemic. Many STDs are asymptomatic until it’s too late. Do you know what took down Al Capone, one of the most infamous gangsters of all time?”
“Uh,” Narancia said, scratching his head with his free arm, “what’s the American thing called—the government police?”
“The FBI,” Fugo said. “You mean the FBI.”
“Yeah. Them.”
“It wasn’t the FBI,” Bucciarati said. “It was syphilis! Once known as the great pox, it ravaged the world for centuries. Nowadays, we have antibiotics to treat the disease with, but it can still kill if the infected isn’t aware of it. Syphilis rotted Al Capone from the inside out, destroying his brain until he was little more than a husk of his former self. I will not let the same fate befall anyone in my crew.”
“Um, but Bucciarati, I haven’t had sex before,” Giorno said with his trademark sincerity and lack of embarrassment. “Do I still need to get tested?”
Oddly enough, Narancia let out a snort and said, “Now that’s a lie.”
Everyone looked at him quizzically, but Bucciarati ignored his outburst and addressed Giorno. “I don’t want to single anyone out in one direction or the other, and besides, it’s better safe than sorry. Some STDs can be contracted in ways other than sexual contact.”
“But you can’t get AIDS from a toilet seat,” Fugo said.
“I knew that,” Giorno said.
“Good. Now, come along everyone,” Bucciarati said, then, dragging Narancia by the arm in a vise grip, led them all down the road to the local walk-in clinic.
The clinic was a humble building in both size and decoration, its waiting room packed to the brim with people of all stripes, children and the elderly, the sick and the well. The staff managed to keep thinks moving along at a steady clip, and soon enough Bucciarati and Abbacchio had been called back for their physicals and subsequent STD tests.
After a long, only somewhat awkward pause, Mista asked, “Soooo, have any of you had sex before?”
“Like that’s any of your business,” Trish scoffed.
“No,” Fugo said at almost the same time. “Absolutely none of us have, and anyone who says he has is lying.”
“Mista has,” Narancia said. Narancia was being held in his seat by Mista and Fugo so that he wouldn’t try and escape again.
“I have?” Mista asked, pointing at himself. He coughed, cleared his throat, then said, “I mean, of course I have. Total ladies’ man. That’s me.”
“Why are you defending him?” Fugo demanded of Narancia. “How do you know?”
Narancia’s eyes went wide. “I don’t know. I just—he’s the oldest out of us, aside from Bucciarati and Abbacchio. It was just a guess! I didn’t see anything, I swear!”
Deciding not to press him on this, Giorno said, “Speaking of Bucciarati and Abbacchio, what about them? I mean, surely—they’re both in their twenties, aren’t they?”
“Deigning to speculate, Giorno?” Fugo said.
“That’s what the game is, isn’t it?”
“I bet Bucciarati has a girl in every town in Italy,” Narancia says. “He’s that typa guy.”
Mista nodded in agreement. “He is very cool.”
“No way,” Trish said, and all heads swiveled towards her. “Bucciarati’s definitely gay.”
Fugo narrowed his eyes at her. “And how do you know that? You’ve only been here a couple of days. You don’t even know him.”
“Didn’t you hear him talking about the AIDS epidemic earlier? That was obviously personal for him.”
“It’s not just gay people who can get AIDS, Trish,” Giorno said. “Even women can get it. Even gay women.”
“I know that! But it did hit gay communities hard, didn’t it? What year was Bucciarati born?”
“Uhhh,” Narancia said and began counting on his fingers. “2001, 2000, 1999…”
“1980,” Fugo said.
“Anyway,” Trish continued, “it’s not just that. I shared the room with him and Abbacchio last night, remember?”
“Abbacchio too?” Mista said. “They weren’t—while you were in the room?”
“No, nothing like that. But they shared the bed like it was nothing.”
“So?” Narancia said. “We all share beds all the time when we travel together. It’s not a big deal.”
“I just got a vibe,” Trish said, somewhat huffily. “Call it a girl’s intuition.”
“It’s total bullshit is what it is,” Narancia said. “There’s no way Bucciarati’s gay. He’s too cool!”
“Dude,” Mista said, “that was a kinda homophobic thing to say.”
“I didn’t mean—! Ugh, sorry, Mista.”
“You shouldn’t apologize to me. You should apologize to gay people.”
“But you—!” Narancia’s face screwed up. “I don’t know any gay people.”
“You know Bucciarati,” Trish said. “And Abbacchio.”
“I don’t know any actual gay people. Probably. Maybe.”
“What do you mean maybe?” Fugo asked.
“I dunno,” Narancia said. “Any of you could be gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“If any of us are gay, it’s only in theory and not in practice,” Fugo said, leaning back in his seat and loosening his grip on Narancia’s arm slightly. “Since, as previously established, none of us are having any sex, gay or otherwise.”
“Except Bucciarati,” Mista said. “Whether it’s men or women or both, that guy definitely fucks.”
“I heard my name,” Bucciarati said, emerging from the crowd of people milling around the clinic waiting room.
“Guh!” Mista said, reeling back. “Don’t sneak up on us like that, boss!”
“Did you need something?”
“Haha, nothing at all,” Narancia said. “You’re done, then?”
“Yeah,” Bucciarati said. “You’re up next, Narancia. And I’d advise against running away.”
Narancia took that advice, although he did so unhappily, squirming as the nurse got the needle in his arm to get the blood sample. “Please, sir, it doesn’t even hurt.”
“I just—don’t—like—doctors,” Narancia gritted out.
“Good thing I’m a nurse, then,” the nurse said dryly.
“What happens to my blood after you take it?”
“We send it to the lab to test it for several STDs. Your—“ She squinted at Narancia’s face. “brother? Has asked us to mail the results to a PO box in Naples.”
“Right. Gotcha.”
“Look at that. You somehow survived a third trip to the doctor’s office,” Abbacchio said upon Narancia’s return to the waiting room.
“You don’t need to be such a dick about it,” Narancia muttered. “It’s not like I can help my stupid phobias.” Phobia being one of Fugo’s vocabulary words, although the latter was not there to hear it, having been taken back for his own physical. “So,” Narancia said. “Do you think you’re clean?”
“I know I’m clean,” Abbacchio said. “I got tested a year ago, and I haven’t had unprotected sex since then.”
Unprotected, huh? Maybe Trish was onto something. “Congratulations,” Narancia said.
“Likewise.”
And then their visit to the clinic was over and they were on the move again, headed to drop Trish off in her father’s waiting arms. As they were getting in the boat, Narancia said, “Formaggio called me jailbait.”
“What,” Fugo said.
“Who?” Mista asked.
“Formaggio. The guy from La Squadra with the stand that made me small. Remember when I went out shopping and got into a fight and everything caught fire?”
“And this was the most recent incident of that happening?” Fugo asked.
“Yes Fugo. And he called me jailbait.”
“What’s jailbait mean?” Trish asked.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Mista asked.
“What part of what I said was confusing to you?”
“Only that it’s apropos of absolutely nothing!” Fugo exclaimed.
“I thought it was relevant to our earlier conversation!”
“What earlier conversation?” Bucciarati asked, shooting a mildly suspicious glance back at his teammates.
“Nothing!” Narancia said, voice cracking a little. “Never mind! It doesn’t matter! Let’s just take Trish to go see her dad.”