A Father's Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

the flat at the corner of the hall, right next door to our new apartment.
    â€œDid you see her?” he asked me excitedly.
    â€œSee who?”
    â€œThe girl next door to us!”
    â€œNo, I missed her,” I said.
    Over the next few weeks, I noticed a beautiful fair-haired young woman using the same elevator as we did. We’d nod to each other, but that was all. Then one afternoon as I was coming back to my apartment, we acknowledged each other as we passed in the hallway. She had a vibrant, bubbly smile. I watched as she continued on past our apartment to the door at the end of the hall. It was the woman my flatmate had mentioned, all right.
    A number of models and other people associated with the fashion industry lived at our apartment complex, so I guessed that the woman and I might have some common acquaintances and interests. She seemed to have her own place; I never noticed her with a roommate.
    My Australian flatmate and I were intrigued as we tried to figure out who she was. Once when we saw her going into her apartment with an older gentleman, my flatmate suggested that he must be her “sugar daddy.” We later learned that she was a student working on her master’s degree at Domus Academy, an Italian school for fashion design, and that the man was her father, who had come to visit her and see Italy.
    I was hurrying out to work one afternoon, crossing Via Vigevano, when I saw her heading toward me carrying a small take-out pizza box. She seemed to be on her way home from school. We hadn’t really spoken, except for a few words in the elevator, but now she was right in front of me. I felt compelled to say something. I stopped in the street and said, “Hello, I’m David, your next-door neighbor. I’ve seen you in Residence La Darsena.” I was rather shy, but I ventured to ask, “Would you like to have a pizza together? I’ll go get one.” The remark sounded silly the moment it came out of my mouth, but the woman didn’t seem to mind. On the other hand, she didn’t offer any encouragement either.
    â€œSorry, it’s a personal pizza,” she said. “It’s just for one.”
    â€œOh, okay,” I said. “Maybe some other time.” I hurried to turn away and get on across the street so she wouldn’t see me blushing with embarrassment.
    Much to my surprise, as I was turning away, she called out to me, “But wait!”
    Wait? I turned back to look at her and she smiled warmly at me. “My friend is coming over to pick me up around nine-thirty or ten tonight, and we’re going to a party. Would you like to come?”
    That was an offer I couldn’t refuse. As soon as I got in from work and washed up, I was ready to go. Right on time, I knocked on her door.
    Her name, I learned, was Bruna Bianchi Carneiro Ribeiro. She was twenty-three years old and had come to Milan from her home near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to get her master’s degree in fashion design. Prior to her enrollment at Domus, she had done her undergraduate work in communications in Brazil, and some other studies in Italy. She told me that her grandfather was originally from Italy and had moved to Brazil, the homeland of her grandmother. Although born in Brazil, Bruna possessed Italian citizenship, too, and sometimes traveled on her Italian passport. Since Ribeiro was a common name in Brazil, she went by Bruna Bianchi, which her parents felt was a more prestigious, sophisticated name, and sounded more Italian.
    I liked Bruna immediately. She was warm and friendly, a beautiful person inside and out. She had a perpetual sparkle in her eyes. She was also very bright. She spoke several languages, was cultured and sophisticated, and quick to laugh. Bruna didn’t smoke or do drugs, and she seemed averse to alcohol because she had seen the negative effects it had on her father. In one of our first conversations, she confided to me that her father