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The church doors are open. The rectangle of light blessing the ground is warm against the night, so striking in color that it makes Giorno’s heartbeat rise. Enticing, promising, in the way only the color gold can be.
The ache in his chest is amplified as he leads the remains of Buccelati’s gang over the threshold. The blue night is chilled for the winter, but the echoing hall is all gilded. It is the kind of light that exists alongside darkness, the light of candles and the glow flickering across the folds of Mary’s jewelled robes.
Heads turn to see the last arrivals to midnight mass, and the gazes linger on Mista. No one knows who Giorno and Trish are, but they recognize an old shadow of Buccellati’s. The country is slow to realize there is a new head to Passione, and none know it is the 16 year old clutching a heavy coat around his shoulders.
They slide into the last pew on the right. Mista slouches, while Trish sits with her back straight, head down and covered in an ornate scarf. Giorno cranes his neck to see the altar.
Minutes later and a bell rings. The congregation rises, and turn their eyes to where the priest appears. A song, the sign of the cross, amen , and they sit again. Trish sings along and Mista stands with the same expression he wears to work. Giorno mouths the words.
He half-remembers the prayers and mutters them, unthinking, as the rituals drift back from the years he would attend mass in boarding school. Even the friendless students would smirk beside each other in the pews, drawing crude sketches in the margins of bibles, flubbing the words to prayers to make them dirty. He started skipping around the time he learned to steal and drive cars. It was always hard to keep his thoughts on some eternal salvation, when he started feeling he could find it on earth.
His mind drifts now for other reasons. This is the church where they had the funerals. Small, warm, welcoming, a pillar of the community tucked away on a winding, narrow street. It sits across from a convenience store where they leave a basket of plastic rosaries outside in the good weather. The priest knows them. He’s a good man by Giorno’s definition: quiet, unassuming, accepting of gangsters with hidden revolvers in his church.
And, he knew Buccellati, from Christmas and Easter and saints’ days, when Buccellati would stand in the back of mass and take his communion. He would linger in the street, shaking hands and kissing cheeks, as if he were the priest at the door, receiving praise for doing the Lord’s work.
Giorno isn’t quite there yet. He doubts if he ever will be.
***
Mass ends, and the crowd shuffles on slow feet to leave, trying to exchange quick words with the priest. Giorno and Mista slip out, standing in the square with the other men, who light cigarettes and wait for Trish. Mista bums a cigarette from someone and the glow is red on his face.
“You didn’t get communion,” Giorno says plainly.
Mista raises an eyebrow, glancing down at Giorno. He looks away, smoke billowing from his nose.
“‘Course not. Everyone will think I haven’t gotten laid, in, like, forever.”
“Hm. I figured it was appropriate; for the holiday,” Giorno admits.
“Sure. Whatever,” Mista says. Frustrated, he drags on the cigarette, practically spitting the smoke from his lungs. “It’s a good front for the old ladies you want to impress. Buccellati did the same thing.”
“Did he now?”
Mista nods. “And Abbacchio, but he pretended he didn’t even know where the church was. He’d take me with him, sometimes.”
Giorno nods. He can see Trish now, speaking with the priest, holding his hands and tilting her head. The tears on her cheeks are just like Mary’s, glass-like, eternal, mourning for good young men taken too soon. He probably wasn’t supposed to see her cry.
“And Narancia?” Giorno asks, eyes never leaving Trish.
“Hm? Barely knew how to pray. Caught him doing it a few times, though.”
Giorno sighs. Mista lifts his eyes from the cobblestones, following the line of Giorno’s sight, landing on Trish. His expression turns from hard to soft, the same way Trish turns everything soft.
The priest kisses Trish’s cheeks and she thanks him, crosses herself, and melts into the crowd. Mista remembers his cigarette, curses, and drops it to the ground. He steps on it. Giorno straightens his clothing, and dully thinks of rituals and their meanings.
When Trish joins them again, her face is clear of tears and she links her arm through Giorno’s.
“You alright?” Mista asks as they walk home.
She nods. “Yes. I think...I think I’ll start going back to church.”
“Yeah? I’ll take you,” Mista says.
This makes Trish smile and Giorno wants to keep it there longer.
“I’ll go when I can,” Giorno offers.
“That’d be nice.”
They settle into silence. The streets are full with people walking home from mass, and the night is odd. It’s the first time Giorno has felt this, having spent his Christmases at school rather than returning home. He’s never seen the streets with lights and candles and the hearts of people, glowing with the promise of eternal peace.
He thinks it must feel nice, to have faith, and wonders if it feels anything like having a dream.
Trish tugs him closer when children rush ahead of their parents. They come by laughing, jarring Giorno from his head, watching them run away with oranges in their fists and velvet bows pulling back long hair. Somehow, the thin streets that always felt lonely as he walked them are flooded with people.
Someone sings a hymn from their open window, the off-key notes heartbreaking in their sincerity. Giorno grips the loose fabric of Trish’s jacket. People jostle by, like a force drawing them together, moving forward without knowing why. A procession, though they are leaving their shared destination. The brushing of their lives against each other should have ended. This crowd should disperse.
He ignores the want to break away. He has Trish and Mista now, and he’s not 15, and he can allow himself to be pulled along. Mista cranes his neck to see ahead. Giorno does the same.
One bobbing head, hidden among the children skipping in front of them, catches Giorno’s eye. The stubborn cowlicks fall in a pattern that feels familiar, and only after passing under a street light does he remember. It’s a boy Buccellati kicked a lost football to, offering him the first smile Giorno ever saw on his face.
Giorno ignores Trish’s fingers on his elbow and digs his hand into his coat pocket.
“Giorno? Is everything alright?” Trish asks.
He nods. “Fine.”
“What are you - ?”
He pulls out his wallet and decides it’s too small. Immediately, he bends, lifting his left foot up, hopping to keep pace.
“Giorno, what in the world -”
His loafer comes off and he keeps walking, with gold melting over his arms as the shoe changes. First always comes the heartbeat. With fur, it becomes a warm, wriggling puppy, fat bellied and licking his fingers.
He breaks from his friends and slides past the crowd, eyes locked on the boy. The night feels loud now, as he catches snippets of conversations, we’ll have coffee at home - would have loved the new choir - just one present, nothing more . Their bodies are warm as they brush against his.
When he reaches the boy, Giorno breathes a little heavy, realizing he’s rushed up hill and now stands at the apex, a valley lined all the way down with cracking plaster homes.
The boy looks up, confused. The stars are bright and cast a white glow on them all, and Giorno wonders if this boy will ever recognize him in the dark.
“Here,” Giorno says, unprepared, handing off the puppy. The boy takes it and the puppy starts licking his chin. “ Buon natale .”
The boy stops walking, and his friends do the same, gathering among Giorno and staring at him. The crowd walks around them like they are rocks in a stream, immovable, but unconcerning.
The boy looks down. The puppy licks his ear and the boy squirms.
“What happened to your shoe?” he asks.
Giorno glances down and wiggles his toes in his sock.
“Ah, I suppose I lost it. But, tell me: do you like your new dog?”
The boy starts, shakes his head in disbelief, and faces the puppy. She whines and struggles to lick his face more, stretching her neck forward. Slowly, the boy’s face splits into a grin.
“Really? You’re giving her to me?” the boy asks, shouts.
“Yes. I heard you were very good this year. Buon natale .”
“ Buon natale !” the boy exclaims and tucks the dog into his jacket, zipping up the front so her head rests under his chin, bowling his arms under his chest to support her.
His friends coo and jabber on in awe. When Giorno slides back into the crowd, he can hear the others shouting for him to return, asking where their gifts are.
He returns to his friends, and he is ready to lay out apologies, but they seem to understand. Mista drops his chin and rests his feet from standing on the tips of his toes; he must’ve strained to watch Giorno. Trish opens her hands to grab him, sewing him back into their sides.
“Why did you do that?” she asks.
Giorno shrugs. He can’t look at them. He can’t look at anything, just the street laid out before them, gently moving with people like water.
His friends don’t ask again.
The night is silent.