S01.E04 - A Pizza, My Heart

"Whoa!" said Trisha as she almost passed through the open bathroom door only to find that Candy was standing bottomless beside the sink with her foot on the edge of the toilet. Through sleep-crusted eyes she tried to focus on the can of shaving cream and the disposable razor instead.

"I went nineteen years without seeing another woman's vagina, but then I moved in here and suddenly I can draw two of them from memory."

Trisha leaned against the bathroom door frame with her arms crossed, her gaze averted. Candy reluctantly readjusted herself.

"Jenna doesn't mind."

"I'm pretty sure Jenna's a voyeur. Now that I'm here, we have to pretend as if the doors have hinges, like in a normal apartment."

"What?" Candy paused mid-stroke, blinking up at her while exuding a faux innocence. "That’s how we women shave our legs." She gestured vaguely at her own reflection in the slightly foggy mirror, as if that explained everything.

Trisha snorted. "No, that’s how you chum for sailors down at the docks."

Candy gasped, clutching her chest—which, given her current position, nearly sent her toppling into the tub.

"Do you think there's women sailors?" she asked with a coy smile.

Jenna appeared behind Trisha, nudging her aside with a hip as she joined Candy inside of the bathroom. "Candy, you clearly have a problem with sex addiction. Please seek help." She grabbed her toothbrush from the holder, shaking her head.

"And you--I need your rent."

"Done!" Trisha reported proudly. "I put it in the jar last night. Aaaaand--also most of the utilities. AAAAND---I have enough left over to make a date with this really cute Italian guy I met."

"Ew," protested Candy, a foamy disposable razor in her right hand. "Close the bathroom door if you're gonna be gross. We don't need to be accosted by your tales of 'Whoa, look at the package on THAT one. Wha---aw---oooh.'"

"Candy, our new roommate has her own special hobbies, and we need to be respectful of that." chided Jenna, clasping her hands behind her back to signal that she was ready to listen. Then she leaned back to look at Trisha. "Also, don't say anything about penises out loud because you never know when the landladies are listening, and it sets them off somethin' fierce."

"His name is Vincenzo." began Trisha, unconcerned by her roommates' protests. "He's the new waiter at the Italian restaurant next to that emergency laundromat you told me about. He only speaks restaurant-menu English, but I've decided to help him by teaching him all of the most important phrases you need to know to survive in America. Like 'moonlight stroll', and 'roses for the lady', and 'stick your tongue straight out then hold it there until I say stop'."

Candy practically broke a hip trying to reply, unable to let that pitch go by. "You know what I can do—"

"No one knows and neither do you." snapped Jenna, seeing the strikeout before the pitch was even thrown. "Shave your legs."

As Candy considered working on her scowl instead of returning to her personal grooming, Jenna changed faces and pretended to be interested in this episode of Lifestyles of the Poor and Heterosexual. "And where are you taking this honest young man?"

"Well, I thought about that. He already works in a restaurant, so if he brings the scraps that the diners send back, then I have just enough cash for a motel room."

"How economical of you."

"Trisha, don't just fuck him." said Jenna, deeply concerned for her new friend. "You have no idea who this guy is. He could be some kind of perv who cuts your feet off and then runs away with them."

"I could stand to lose a few pounds." replied Trisha. "And if I don't get laid soon, I'm gonna go fucking nuts. Okay?"

Candy went to turn around, but Jenna grabbed her by the arm and returned her to "shave your legs" position.

Trisha bounded off toward the kitchen to make breakfast while Jenna and Candy watched her leave from behind. "That is just a waste of gorgeous right there." said Candy as Jenna nodded in agreement.

=====

That evening, Trisha and her new boy toy were out on a first date. They were paired together at the annual Bryn Mawr Scavenger Hunt. True to her word, Trisha was using the event as an opportunity to teach Vincenzo broken English so that he could successfully arrange a wedding some day.

"Ciao." she said, smiling broadly because she had managed to remember the first of five Italian words she memorized that morning.

"Caio, bella." said Vincenzo enthusiastically, correctly appreciating her extra effort.

Suddenly, Trisha became concerned that he had forgotten her name. "No, Trisha." she said, pointing to herself. "Trisha." Then she tapped him lightly on the chest. "Vincenzo."

Her partner in scavenging smiled. "Si si." he responded.

Trisha prepared to explain the rules. "You—". Pointing. "—and I—". Pointing. "—are looking—". She pointed at her eyes to drive the point home. "—for these items." She held up their piece of paper, which had been provided by the organizers of the event.

There were 25 different items on the list, ranging from a towel to a statue of Benjamin Franklin. And she was sure they would find none of them. But it didn't matter. Trisha was proud of herself. She could teach Vincenzo new words by matching words on paper with objects in real life and then bend over slowly to pick things up so that he wasn't too bored. It was the perfect plan.

And it went flawlessly. They didn't come even close to being the first ones done. With each found item Trisha had to explain what it was and then reward Vincenzo appropriately with kisses and gropes once he correctly pronounced the word.

The statue of Benjamin Franklin being last, several other teams were shocked to find an American and an Italian mauling each other against the plinth of a British inventor for seemingly no reason. Eventually, they came in a respectable—given the circumstances—18th place. Trisha decided to conclude their time together that night by rewarding Vincenzo with a special kiss after he correctly pronounced the word "erection".

=====

It was ten o'clock at night and the girls were finally settling in. Trisha had just injured her shoulder while patting herself on the back after the success of her super-dreamy first date. She then described what she thought three Pennsylvania-Italy children would look like using parts from her and parts from him. Even Jenna had to metaphorically tip her hat when Trisha explained just how much English her new friend had learned in a single night.

Candy, however, was nearing "bereft" at an alarming pace.

"Well, we both look forward to sleeping with the bridesmaids at your wedding." said Candy in a less-than-celebratory tone.

And that's when it happened.

It was the sound of pure love—albeit very flat and oddly crackly—muffled and tinty as it passed through the closed windows of their lesbians-only apartment. From the grass of the quad rose a lone Italian male voice, either professing his love or explaining the proper ratio of ingredients for a Chicken Tetrazzini.

Jenna's elbow knocked over an empty mug previously containing recently stolen kombucha as she and her two roommates scrambled for the window with eyes as wide as startled flamingos. Below them in full view of the entire planet, Vincenzo stood proudly. He was bathed in the jaundice-yellow glow of a security light, one hand pressed dramatically to his chest, the other clutching what appeared to be a wilted bouquet of restaurant-style parsley.

"Mia stella marina," he warbled, butchering the high note in a way that made Candy's left eye twitch. It was the kind of sound you might expect from Pagliacci if you shot him in the ankle with an arrow during the Trojan War.

"That's the most romantic thing I've ever seen." Trisha whispered, transfixed by his performance. She clutched at her stimulated womb as Candy looked on at Trisha's response with total befuddlement. Jenna yanked the curtains shut with such force that the rod rattled, almost as if that somehow solved the problem.

"How did he even find our apartment?" demanded Jenna of Trisha. "Did you tell him where we lived?"

"No, he's just that smart!" said Trisha, not understanding the full implication of what was transpiring.

Vincenzo's anguished vocals continued to peck at the glass.

Candy peered through the gap in the curtains. "Oh god, he's unbuttoning his shirt." She turned on her heel and mirrored Trisha's clutching of her midsection, but for the exact opposite reason. "This is a level of heterosexuality I'm simply not prepared for. I think I'm going to be sick."

Jenna snapped everyone into focus when she explained, "We have to stop him before Barbara or Delilah see this."

"No, no, no—" came the words tumbling out of Trisha and Jenna's mouths in perfect sync as they barrelled out the front door and then down the apartment stairs.

"Ciao, bella!" Vincenzo beamed, puffing his muscles like a bullfighter getting ready in the middle of a ring. His half-unbuttoned shirt revealed a silver crucifix nestled in chest hair that somehow managed to look both devout and indecent.

Trisha swooned so hard her knees buckled, and she had to look away for a second to compose herself.

"You cannot be serious." complained Candy as she stared at Trisha's sustained elation.

Jenna caught Trisha by the elbow with one hand while using the other to swat at Vincenzo's shoulder like he was a misbehaving terrier. "No! No singing! Bad Italian!"

Vincenzo blinked, his serenade dying mid-warble. He tilted his head, studying Jenna's death grip on Trisha's arm. "Is sister?" he ventured, pointing between them.

Trisha gasped so violently she inhaled a strand of her own hair. "Oh my god!" She shook Jenna's arm like a slot machine about to pay out. "He learned a new word! A non-menu word!"

She raised her arms to let Vincenzo know he did good. "I'm so proud of you!"

"No, not sister. Girlfriend." said Jenna, wrapping her arm around Trisha and pulling her close.

"Wait, what?" said Trisha, trying to wrap her head around the plan.

"Yeah-wait-what?" repeated Candy, taken hostage by the fear of missing out.

"Play along. People are watching." warned Jenna, pointing with her eyes at several lesbians who had stepped outside into the night to find out just what the hell was going on. These were people desperate for juicy gossip, and they were all seconds away from a full-blown scandal. Thankfully, none of them were landladies yet.

"We have to get him out of here. Now!" explained Jenna in a desperate whisper to Trisha, whose eyes were transfixed on the newest parts of Vincenzo that she was hoping to save for their second date next Friday. Yet there they were.

"Mio caro, you say the perfect."

Trisha turned to Jenna and asked almost breathlessly, "What do I have to do to get out of the lease?"

"This guy is clearly a stalker. You have to get him out of here.", Jenna said, breaking the bad news in a brutally honest tone.

Candy, still nursing the earlier abandonment, transported them all back in time. "Why do you get to be the girlfriend? Surely someone has a coin we can flip."

"Oh, I'm so sorry." said Jenna in a mocking, faux-apologetic voice. "I didn't take your feelings into account because NONE OF THIS IS REAL!"

The two women turned back to the happy couple to find Trisha with her hands slid up Vincenzo's shirt. "...six, seven, and eight. Huh. I guess I was wrong." Trisha turned her head to nod as if her two lesbian friends would instinctively understand how wonderful this new discovery would be.

"I do sit-ups literally every day." said Candy incredulously to herself, as if to soothe the blasphemy she was watching right there in her own courtyard.

Jenna's grip on Trisha's elbow tightened like a vice. "Look at me," she hissed through clenched teeth. "We are two seconds away from Barbara or Delilah seeing this walking marinara advertisement, and then we're all homeless. Get him out of here now."

"But he just got here—"

"Yes, yes. He came and he went." Jenna interrupted, making a sharp shooing motion with her free hand. "That's usually how it goes with heterosexuals."

Trisha rolled her eyes, but then complied—upping her volume so the handful of onlookers could clearly hear what she was lying about. "Come with me, strange waiter who I don't know, to the parking lot. You are mistaken and must leave this place at once."

Trisha walked around to the rear of Vincenzo. She tried with all of her might to burn a hole in his dark cotton work pants with her eyes as she pushed him steadily but reluctantly toward the safety of the unobserved parking lot. When they finally got far enough away that no one was watching, Jenna quickly wrapped her arm around Trisha again and kissed her on the cheek. "Girlfriend." Jenna said desperately, wrapping an arm around an otherwise distracted Trisha, hoping it would drive Vincenzo away.

Vincenzo took the hint with all the grace of a drunken gondolier, stumbling backward while making an elaborate series of hand gestures that somehow managed to convey both romantic despair and a dinner invitation for an as-yet undisclosed day next week.

"Mio angelo," he crooned, blowing a kiss that lingered in the air like cheap cologne. Trisha went to catch it dramatically against her chest like an incoming butterfly—only for Jenna to immediately swat the moving air away like a mosquito.

"Ew," Candy muttered, wiping her hands on her pajama pants as if the very atmosphere had been contaminated. "I can still smell the testosterone."

"That's pepperoni. He's got big meat."

"Bleh."

The trio watched until Vincenzo's distant silhouette disappeared around a corner—mercifully without another serenade.

"I think we did it." rejoiced Jenna cautiously. "If the landladies didn't see then we're in the clear." The three roommates walked back toward the stairs leading up to their apartment.

"What do you think an Italian translator makes?" asked Trisha earnestly.

"Damn it, Trisha. Jenna says 'No!'." yelled Candy.

=====

It was two o'clock in the morning. All was peaceful with the world. The full moon hung low, a light breeze swept gently across the quad, and three roommates slept soundly while attempting to recover from a long night of near misses.

And that's when it happened.

"Mia stella marina...!!!" came an all too familiar voice, now returned to finish off the murder of the high note that he had only managed to wound in his first attempt. Deep inside the apartment, Candy's left eye twitched as she slept—unconsciously swatting away the notes as they slipped under her bedroom door.

Suddenly she was awake, her hands pressed firmly against the mattress and her posture as alert as a prairie dog.

"It can't be." she said, leaping to her feet. She almost flew across the room to the robe on the hook. Surely the police would overlook gunplay given the circumstances.

Candy ripped open the door of her bedroom at the same moment that Jenna and Trisha tested their door frames with equal verve.

"Maybe it's not Vincenzo." said Trisha, attempting to deny the obvious.

"Why, how many waiters did you bang this week?"

Trisha, Jenna, and Candy raced to the living room window and flung open the curtains. The view they were both dreading waited behind the cheap fabric.

"Okay. I see it now. Fifty-fifty he might be a stalker." said Trisha, rocking her hand back and forth to indicate that she was still on the fence about the matter.

Vincenzo the Great, standing in all his amorous glory, broadcast his undying devotion to Trisha in thick Italian verse that none of them could ever hope to translate.

"That's the second-most romantic thing I've ever seen." said Trisha, her eyeballs almost falling out of her head as she clutched at her roaring heart.

"Woman, you cannot be serious." snapped Jenna, turning to hammer home the seriousness of the situation with her famous Look of Doom.

"I meant—like—if it was someone else. Like on a TV show." said Trisha, hoping to save herself from a punch.

"This means war!" shouted Candy as she led the charge. The three women raced out of the front door and down the stairs with lighting speed. By the time they got to Vincenzo, he had felt strongly about beginning the third verse with divine inspiration, which was met with the waving arms of two lesbians and one starstruck slut.

It was only Trisha's immediate adjacency that snapped Vincenzo from his windmill. "Il mio pianeta." he whispered in his native tongue before switching to a disturbed version of English. "I make a pizza, my heart for you."

Candy seized the opportunity to rectify an earlier oversight.

"Girlfriend!" she announced proudly, slinging an arm over Trisha's shoulder and then pointing back and forth between them with a treacherous finger.

Jenna pushed them apart to chide Candy. "We don't have time for that now. We've got to get him out of here. We'll translate it for him later."

Candy pouted and then pulled Jenna aside. "It'll be easier to send him on his way if he sees Trisha and I kissing like lovers under the moonlight."

Candy threw her arms outward and tipped her head up toward a blanket of stars. "Trisha. For the apartment."

Then the poisoned slot machine finally hit all sevens. The light outside of apartment 101 snapped on like a prison spotlight, looking for wayward guests. Any slim chance the roommates had to quietly cover up this disaster was instantly gone.

"The light came on. It's them!" reported Trisha, somehow whispering and shrieking at the same time while pointing across the quad.

"Correre!" scream-whispered Jenna, who grabbed Vincenzo by the sleeves of his button-down waiter shirt and raced across the quad in the same direction as before, but toward the stairwell leading upstairs. "Get him inside. We'll figure something out."

Candy, now in a panic, raced up the stairs and through the open front door, absentmindedly shutting it behind herself. This elicited a frantic pounding.

"Who is it?" asked Candy in her special "I'm a cheerleader" sing-song voice.

"Who do you think it is? Open the door!" announced Trisha, no longer concerned with who heard what. Candy clawed at the open air above her head, embarrassed at yet another instance where she was thwarted by a knock at the front door. She released the barricade, and both Trisha and Vincenzo sprang through the opening. The door slammed behind them, and they pressed themselves against it like they were bracing for a mob of angry villagers.

"Mio caro!" he said breathlessly.

"Are you kidding me right now? How many oysters did you eat today?" demanded Trisha, yanking her hand away as he tried to take it.

A frantic pounding came from the other side of the door.

"Who is it?" asked Candy, the sing-song voice returning with a vengeance. She slapped both of her hands across her mouth.

"It's me, you ditz! Open the goddamn door." spat Jenna from the other side.

The door was opened and Jenna flung herself into the apartment, slamming the door behind her as both she and Trisha pressed themselves flat-palmed against it, as if attempting to stop the end of a Chinese dynasty.

"Ah---is girlfriend." said Vincenzo proudly, showing off his memory skills.

"Great, now he gets it." snarked Jenna, thrusting a thumb in Vincenzo's general direction.

"How do you know Italian?" asked Trisha.

Jenna sank her fingers into her frazzled locks. "Does this hair look like I don't know Italian?"

"Look, when they get up here, we'll tell them that Trisha's a feral perv and she can just move out." announced Candy, oddly proud that she was the one who came up with the solid plan this time. "They'll give us a month to find someone else."

Trisha was not amused.

Jenna waved her hand dismissively and then rubbed her temples, trying desperately to grab all of the pieces to the answer she knew were there but couldn't quite assemble. "Look, we've got about five minutes before they get up here."

Knock-knock-knock.

"Who IS it?"

"...or less."

"I'll sneak him out."

"How?"

"My bedroom."

Upon hearing the word "bedroom", Vincenzo ripped open his shirt, sending buttons everywhere—including one which hit Candy in the lip, sending her spinning in a circle while making the noise of a distressed airplane.

"Finalmente!" he said, cocking an eyebrow in a way that was understandable in every language.

By this point Jenna was out of moves. She opened the door and tried the Hail Mary pass—pretending like everything was normal.

"Good morning." she said as if preparing a tour at the local museum. Behind her, the troika mimicked her nod and beleaguered smile in a "friends-stick-together" moment worthy of song.

Barbara stepped into the room wearing a full pinstripe business suit. "What the hell is happening?" she asked in an oddly polite tone normally reserved for the bullet point "Give greeting" on a to-do list.

"Happening?" replied Jenna. The three behind her nodded in unison.

"Apparently there's some sort of concert this..." began Barbara, pausing to check her fancy opal-encrusted watch. She then leaned forward to make sure the next word landed just right.

"...morning."

"Oh. That. Well. You see—" began Jenna, turning on her heel to reveal the lineup of suspects. "This is Vincenzo. He's—our—waiter."

"Are you opening a restaurant?"

"Earlier tonight—see—we went out to dinner—and—Vincenzo—"

"Sono Vincenzo!!!" he clarified, waving and smiling at Barbara like the madman he was. Trisha and Candy each took an arm and returned him to a proper stationary position.

"We tipped him really well, and he just wanted to thank us."

"At two o'clock in the morning?"

"That's when the restaurant closes."

"In song?"

"It's the Italian way. His people are from the old school. Sicily."

"Sono genovese."

"It's a border town." lied Jenna to Barbara, all but ignoring Vincenzo.

Just then the tension was as thick as a London fog. All eyes remained on Barbara as she weighed Jenna's story on the scales like Lady Justice herself. It was at this moment that Vincenzo decided to occupy himself with something more pressing than the pedestrian concerns of women who only spoke English. His hand landed with the firmness of a dock pylon on Trisha's right buttock. The noise she made was unholy, and her shock pushed both her and Candy into the little table that hosts the tiny potted plants by the living room window.

Candy and Trisha hugged each other and stared back at Vincenzo in disbelief. Ever the opportunist, Candy offered one final attempt to turn the tables in her favor. "Girlfriends!" she announced, pulling a now appropriately exasperated Trisha even closer and wagging a finger to sell the point.

Barbara's posture confiscated the tiny bit of wiggle room it had allotted her earlier at this uncommon hour and her eyes squinted into hooks that grabbed Vincenzo's attention.

"It's time for you to go." Barbara said in a voice that contained a silent "...and I'll deal with you three next." that made Jenna nauseated and a little light-headed.

And that's when it happened.

"Ah! Questa è tua..." began Vincenzo while pointing at Barbara before dropping Guillotine's efficient blade upon himself.

"...momma."

Somehow the word left his mouth in slow motion. Jenna, Candy, and Trisha froze mid-leap, aghast by the change of circumstance. They stared terrified at Vincenzo, attempting to comprehend how he had not be struck down by lightning even in those brief nanoseconds as the words crossed the room to meet their ears. Even Trisha, who had only recently been introduced to the nuances of the lesbian world, understood the magnitude of the terrible slight he had just inflicted.

All turned their eyes to Barbara, whose eyes were like hens' eggs. Her hand held the door to steady herself—a justified betrayal of her earlier majesty. She glided forward with the authority of the heavens and burned a path directly into Vincenzo's soul.

"Get out of this apartment, or the next tip you get will be yours."

They would never know exactly how much of that Vincenzo understood. He simply turned to the other women, said "Mi scusi." and then bolted from the building with consideration for neither safety nor social etiquette. Even as he ran through the parking lot to places unknown, somehow his footfalls failed to diminish in the expected amount of time.

Trisha stood with her beat-red face in her hands, embarrassed beyond words at the chaos she had accidentally caused. Jenna and Candy stood in awe of Barbara, silently taking copious notes inside of their heads instead of attempting to explain it aloud in words. And then there was Barbara, who put away the second version of herself that she kept for emergencies and returned to Landlord Barbara, Queen of the Lesbians.

"Clearly that young man is disturbed. I'm sorry this happened to you." she said with a shrug, then turned on her heel and marched back into the beautiful night from whence she had come. "Enjoy the rest of your morning."

Jenna managed to find enough circulation within her limbs to close the door to their apartment. Trisha fell backward into Candy's waiting arms and rested her head on her roommate's shoulder. The three of them remained there laughing until Sandman sent them back to their rooms.