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Mista’s new car was a “classic,” which was a nice way of saying it was an expensive piece of junk. Fugo hated it. He only drove it because he didn’t trust Mista behind the wheel. Plus, it gave his hands something to do.
“You’re gonna want to take an offramp soon.”
Case and point—if his hands were on the steering wheel, that meant they weren’t wrapped around Mista’s neck.
“Can you tell me which offramp I should take, please?”
Although he must have known the offramp in order to give Fugo the direction in the first place, Mista took his sweet time with the map. A white lollipop stick wagged between his lips. He’d bought it at a gas station, green apple-flavored, God knew why. Fugo had never even seen him eat a lollipop before. It clacked against his teeth each time he took it out of his mouth.
“The next-next one.”
Fugo wanted to bash his face in.
“Thanks.”
Another thing Fugo hated about Mista’s car was that it had no air conditioning. Driving it during the summer was hell. They’d rolled all the windows down, and still Fugo was drenched with sweat, his back and thighs sticking to the leather seat. Mista, who was still wearing his stupid knit cap and sweater, hadn’t said anything about the heat, but he couldn’t have been faring better.
The smell was awful. It would have been awful even without the top notes of sweat. At some point (Fugo didn’t know when; he hadn’t been around) Mista had started wearing cologne. Too much cologne. The car smelled like steamed rosemary, and the scent put Fugo on edge. Didn’t Mista know that he smelled like a roast chicken?
“You ran that stop sign.”
“There were no other cars.”
“Is that how it works?” Mista broke the rest of the lollipop between his teeth and tossed the stick out the window. “Well, you know the law better than I do.”
His prodding was intentional. He was trying to get a rise out of him. Maybe he was still looking for an excuse to shoot him. As far as Stand abilities went, Fugo knew that Mista was his “natural predator,” although his advantage was squandered in close quarters like this. Mista could take the shot if he wanted—Fugo would crash the car and kill them both. (Another benefit of driving.)
It would be easy, Fugo thought. One hard turn, then the car careening off the road and into a thick tree or maybe a conveniently placed boulder. He imagined an explosion, like in the movies, although he knew that was very, very unlikely. An explosion would feel right. He wanted an explosion.
But crashing the car probably wouldn’t kill them both. Given Mista’s luck, he’d survive by the skin of his teeth, and all Fugo would accomplish would be killing himself in front of him. That thought had its own dark appeal.
“I think you just passed the hostel.”
“You might have let me know before I passed it.”
“You might have noticed the sign.”
An explosion. Twisted metal. A second explosion, for good measure.
Fugo bit the inside of his lip. It was only a week. They only had to keep from killing each other for a week.
--
The mission was simple. Giorno had dressed it up for them—their “person of interest” may have had ties to a smuggling operation, so Fugo and Mista were to follow him and observe who he contacted—but it was busy work. Neither of them were particularly well-suited for it on their own. Together, they’d be a disaster.
Giorno must have known this. He’d seen what it was like when they were in the same room together. What he was trying to do was obvious, but Fugo hadn’t said anything. To his surprise, Mista hadn’t, either. He’d just stood there with his hands in his pockets, scowling.
He also hadn’t expected that Mista would keep up the silent treatment for as long as he did. He was the kind of person who needed to talk like he needed to breathe, wasn’t he? He choked on long silences, preferring to fill them with asinine questions like, “Is a hotdog a sandwich?” (No.)
And yet, their days were excruciatingly quiet. They followed their mark around town. They ate cheap food and tossed the wrappers and paper bags into the backseat. They took turns sleeping. They only spoke when absolutely necessary, each word laced with venom.
Maybe Fugo hadn’t known Mista as well as he’d thought.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if the mission required their full attention, but it didn’t. Their mark was a middle-aged pharmaceutical sales representative with a wife and two kids. Did he have access to prescription drugs? Definitely. Was he connected to a smuggling operation? After days of following him in Mista’s awful car, it didn’t seem like he did. He wasn’t even cheating on his wife.
“Has he done anything yet?” Mista asked. He had his feet up on the dashboard and was fussing with his gun, popping the cylinder open and shut. It was the first thing he’d said all day. Apparently, the boredom was starting to eat at him, too.
“He’s just eating soup,” Fugo reported. It was the third day in a row that they’d watched Bernardo eat soup in his car alone.
“What kind of soup is it?”
Fugo offered him the binoculars. Mista didn’t take them. He didn’t even look up from his gun.
“Just make sure to note it when you report back to your GioGio.”
“Don’t say his name like that.”
The cylinder snapped shut.
“Like what?”
Fugo imagined grabbing the pistol and whipping him across the face.
“Never mind.”
Fugo raised the binoculars back to his face. He was seriously considering the possibility that Giorno had sent him and Mista on this mission because he wanted them to kill each other. If so, bringing him back to Passione seemed like a wasted effort. But what else could Giorno have expected? That things would go back to how they were before? That just because he’d wanted Fugo to come back, that Mista wanted the same?
It wasn’t like that. This was a bridge that couldn’t be unburned.
--
The car crapped out on the fourth day. Fugo was at least able to pull into a parking lot before the engine completely died, but there was no reviving it.
“Piece of shit!”
At least he understood what kind of car he had, Fugo thought as Mista kicked the tire. Unsurprisingly, kicking it did not fix the engine.
“At least we have options,” Fugo said, surveying the parking lot. “Can you hotwire that coupe?”
Mista said nothing. He stared at his car, sweating and seething.
“Mista. The coupe.”
“Can you shut up?”
Mista’s voice was tight and quiet. After spending the past four days needling Fugo, it was the first time he’d been upset. It felt good, like sipping a cool drink.
“I’m sorry about your car, but Bernardo is driving away as we speak. We need another car.”
“So you’re saying I should just dump it, is that it?”
“Well, you only got it a few months ago, and you could easily buy another. You’re certainly paid enough now.”
“It’s so easy for you to walk away from things.”
“Look, can we just focus on the mission?”
“What mission?!” Mista yelled, grabbing the front of his jacket. “There is no mission! Giorno made it up to give us something to do because he’s sick of us! It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out!”
Up close, Mista’s cologne was unbearably pungent. Fugo had to breathe through his mouth.
“Can you please hotwire the coupe?”
The punch was not unexpected. Fugo stumbled backward, his cheek radiant with pain and the taste of blood on his tongue.
Good, he thought. Finally.
He spat the blood from his mouth and swung at Mista.
But as much as Fugo had fantasized about beating Mista’s face in, they’d never fought before. Actually, except for a few scuffles with Narancia, Fugo hadn’t been in many fights at all. He hadn’t had the opportunity as a child, and after awakening Purple Haze, he hadn’t needed to throw his own punches. Mista, on the other hand, had been scrapping for years. In addition to having more fights under his belt, he was taller and heavier than Fugo.
Rage could only get him so far.
Mista saw Fugo’s punch coming and easily batted it aside. He slammed him against the car, pressing his arm on the back of Fugo’s neck. Hot metal seared his cheek.
“You’re such an asshole!” Mista snarled. “Where do you get off, acting better than you are? After everything you did!”
“What I did?!”
“You betrayed him!”
“No, I didn’t! He didn’t expect us to follow him!”
Mista responded by yanking a fistful of his hair and bashing his head against the car doorframe. Phantom lights freckled Fugo’s vision.
“You think you can redeem yourself with one stupid mission? You think you’ve changed? Bullshit! You’re still just a fucked-up rich kid!”
Fugo slammed his elbow into Mista’s ribs, and he yelped, his grip loosening. Fugo shoved him off his back and punched him in the mouth. He ripped his knuckles on his teeth, but he didn’t care about getting hurt so long as he hurt Mista worse.
“I’m so tired of that ‘rich kid’ shit!” Fugo yelled. “You’ve never eaten out of the trash! You’re not tough! Bucciarati only recruited you because he knew you wouldn’t last a month in prison!”
“Shut up!” Mista’s fists landed like a bricks against his chest, his arms. “Keep his name out of your fucking mouth!”
“Fuck you! You hardly knew him for a year!”
“So what? You weren’t there! Not for any of them! So why the fuck are you here now?”
Fugo launched himself at Mista. The asphalt took a bite out of both of them as the fell. They scrambled to climb on top of one another, clawing at each other like alley cats.
“Why are you here?!” Fugo found himself screaming, his palm jammed against Mista’s chin. “What did you buy a new car for?! Why do you smell so stupid?!”
They struggled a bit longer, landing a few more punches and kneeing each other in the stomach, but they were both of them were sore and winded. It wasn’t really a fight so much as wild flailing. Eventually, the blows stopped coming. They lay on their backs in the parking lot, breathing hard and squinting at the noon sun.
“I hope a car pulls in right now and runs you over,” Mista gasped. He was bleeding badly from his mouth. “I hope it runs us both over.”
“I was about to say the same thing.”
Fugo licked his split lip, savoring the little zap of pain that followed. He was dizzy, probably concussed. He was bleeding from his forehead, and he could practically feel the bruises forming on his chest and arms. His knuckles were busted. He’d scraped his knee and elbow when they’d fell. He probably had a bruised rib.
But all in all, his injuries weren’t too bad. Nothing was broken, and the brain damage was hopefully minimal. He just hurt, but it was the easy kind of pain.
“You didn’t go for my gun,” Mista said.
Fugo looked at him. He’d scraped his face against the asphalt and small bits of gravel stuck to the wound.
“You didn’t draw it.”
Mista made a choking sound, and Fugo thought it was the blood in his throat. Then he threw his arm over his eyes.
“Shit,” he said.
Shit, Fugo thought. He had no idea what he was supposed to do in this situation. Was he supposed to comfort him? He’d never done that for anyone before.
“I don’t really believe all that, you know,” Mista said. Fugo took a deep breath, his ribs aching in protest.
“I think you do.”
“Okay, I guess I do. But I don’t believe it more than I believe it.”
“You can’t believe in something and not believe in it at the same time,” Fugo sighed. “But yeah. Me too.”
Mista either laughed or sobbed. Fugo wasn’t sure which one he’d rather it be.
“I’m glad you’re here, y’know?”
“You don’t act like it.”
“I know. But I am. I’m glad you didn’t get on the boat.”
“I wish I had.”
“The boss would have taken you out right away. You’re too smart, and Purple Haze is too dangerous. I only made it out alive because I wasn’t enough of a threat to bother with. It wasn’t luck.”
Mista wasn’t crying anymore, but he hadn’t moved his arm from his face, either. His voice had gone flat, as if he were reciting grim statistics (the number of automobile deaths in Naples last year, stomach cancer survival rates, the life expectancy of gang members, etc.).
“I couldn’t do anything,” he continued. “I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t even die for them. There was no point in me getting on that boat. I was totally useless.”
“But you were there.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It does.”
Mista finally removed his arm from his face. His eye was swollen, Fugo realized. He looked fucked up. He was always getting fucked up.
“I’m glad you survived,” Fugo said. “If that was because you were useless, then I’m glad you were useless. You’re…you’re the only one left from before. If anything happened to you now, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“You’d be fine. You’ve only known me for a year, remember?”
“It’s longer than that now.”
“Oh. I guess.”
The sound of street traffic washed over them. A pigeon landed next to Mista’s head, decided he wasn’t edible, then bobbed apathetically away.
“Remind me to show you how to throw a real punch,” Mista said. “You leave yourself wide open. It’s embarrassing to look at.”
“It was good enough to knock you flat.”
“I was going easy on you. I wouldn’t go all out on a kid.”
“Sure.”
“Y’know, we should do this again sometime.”
“Beat the shit out of each other?”
“It would keep us sharp.”
“You’re the person I know best in the entire world,” Fugo said suddenly. “Isn’t that fucked up?”
“Yeah,” Mista agreed. “It super is.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Yup.”
Fugo sat up. His head spun. They’d need to get painkillers and antiseptic, some bandages, and maybe a suture kit.
“I’m sorry about your car,” he said. “We’ll get it towed and checked out.”
“Thanks.”
“And I’m sorry I said you smell stupid.”
“What did that even mean, man?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. You smell fine, just…different.”
“Yeah, well. That’s just how it is. Different.”
Mista picked himself up. He winced, but he didn’t complain.
“I guess I should hotwire that coup, huh?”
“Please.”