In one of his earliest letters, Massimo asked if I’d seen the Mission: Impossible movie. He said that in prison, there’s very little privacy, and he wished messages had a way to self-destruct like in the film. It was an odd thing for him to mention, especially without further context, but after steaming the Tom Cruise classic, I finally understood that my stepbrother wanted to write me something that he did not want others to see.
In letters that followed, he would recommend other movies to me, never mentioning why he thought I would like them but telling me of his favorite scenes. I’d watch them, of course, trying to figure out what it was he was trying to tell me without actually spelling out the words.
After that, Massimo would point me to more movie scenes, or passages from books, or
