by Fabio Volo
Sitting at the table in the Doma Café, looking at its name through the window, the reversed “D” was blocked by a column and so, in front of me, I read: AMO, which is “I love” in Italian. “Could it be a sign?” I asked myself.
Across from the café there was a public phone, so I decided to call Michela. Starting with the address, after a couple of calls, I managed to track down her extension number. I sat there for another half hour holding the number in my hand.
What should I do, call her? ‘Hi, it’s Giacomo, I don’t know if you remember me, I’m the guy from the tram. I came to return the favor and buy you a coffee, I’m waiting for you outside.’ You can’t do that, come on.
I took a deep breath and then I called. I got her answering machine.
Please leave a message…
Click! I hung up. My heart had recognized her voice even though she was speaking in English, and it started beating fast. It felt like it wanted to leap out of my chest.
Now that I knew her answering machine was on, I prepared a little speech and called her back. “Hi Michela, it’s Giacomo, the guy from the tram; I’m in New York on business and I was wondering if you wanted to have coffee with me, if you want I’m here by… I’m at a hotel. Please call me at this number.”
I left her the name and phone number of the hotel then I hung up. I was about to tell her I was down by her office… Luckily I caught it in time, otherwise she would have thought I was stalking her. It wasn’t like that. Well, yes, I was doing it, and it was like that. Like what? Who knows! I was a little confused…
I left. I started walking around New York without any particular destination in mind. Every hour I would call the hotel to see if there were any messages for me. Nothing. I felt dispirited. I felt like a loser. Like when you send a text message to a person you like and they don’t answer you back right away. After sending it, you re-read it every three seconds and you check the time you sent it. You count the minutes, the seconds. Then you look at the last messages she sent you. That’s because you kept all of them, even the ones she sent you days before. And there they are, one after the other, because all the others, those that aren’t hers, had been deleted. It sucks when the last message is yours and all that’s left is waiting. When you are afraid of being annoying. When, like in a chess game, you think you’ve made a wrong move and you suddenly feel like a loser. You imagine her talking to her girlfriends, saying, “This guy is bombarding me with messages.” And when you’re in that situation there’s nothing you can do, you’re cornered. The only solution is not to write anymore. Then maybe she’ll write you back and you realize that you'd made too big a deal over it.
Luckily, walking around Manhattan is one most the beautiful things in the world. It’s a city filled with everything: sounds, people, colors, smells. You walk down the street and smell different kinds of foods: you say goodbye to the smell of pizza and hello to that of Asian dishes, and then suddenly that of roasted peanuts. All kinds of smells. The people you see walking around seem to be exactly the way they want to be. All of them dress differently, with their own style. When I’m in New York I always feel like the whole world is there and that the rest is simply a suburb of this metropolis. Often I like to imagine what it would be like to live in small town in the countryside or by the sea. But the truth is that I grew up in the city and really like it. Going downtown to do some window-shopping is something that makes me feel good even though I don’t buy anything. Going to a bookstore, stopping in a café, and leafing through the books I just bought, reading a CD cover while I sip on some tea. This will be one of my next projects: I have to figure out where I want to live. That’s because places and cities change depending on your age and what stage you’re at in your life. That’s why people who live in the same city all their lives never change.
I went back to the hotel. It was four in the afternoon and still no messages from Michela. I went down to the bar for a beer.
“I wonder what she thought when she heard my message,” I thought. “Something bad, since she hasn’t called me, not even to say no. After all, she did tell me, at the café, that she asked me out for a coffee because she was making changes in her life and wanted to embark on a new phase. But it’s also true that if she didn’t want to see me she could come up with a thousand excuses to say no. So she should at least give me a call. Maybe she hasn’t heard my message yet…”
Then I heard a voice calling my name. “Giacomo!”
I turned around: sitting by herself on a stool at the bar was Dinah. She me invited me to drink with her. She was waiting for her husband. We chatted a bit, but I was distracted. I couldn’t stop thinking about Michela. I was beginning to regret the trip, which looked less and less like an adventure and more and more like a bad idea. Anyway, Dinah was very nice and in the end it felt good talking with her. For a few seconds she made me forget everything. At a certain point we were interrupted by the girl at the reception, who told me there was a message for me.
I apologized to Dinah and went to pick it up.
The note read as follows: WHEN YOU COME BACK CAN YOU BRING ME A YANKEE’S CAP? DANTE.
It’s unbelievable how some people always have the worst timing without even knowing it. I said goodbye to Dinah and went back to my room. At eight I went back downstairs and went out for a walk. I chose to go downtown where the skyscrapers are. I had the ridiculous idea of running into Michela. Of living one of those strange coincidences. But nothing happened. I went down to the subway. I like taking the subway; I do it in all the big cities I visit. You can learn a lot about a city by traveling through its tunnels. It’s like getting to know a body through its vascular system. New York was, for me, always more complicated than other cities. The subway in Paris is one of the absolute best; I’ve never made a mistake there. But in New York, I’ve often been confused. When you’re not there on business, even getting lost is beautiful. You often end up visiting very interesting places. After a couple trips back and forth, I came out to the surface. I stopped by a vendor for hotdogs. I ate three of them. Then I started heading back to the hotel. As I was walking on the East Side I was approached by a prostitute. Very cute. We talked a bit. She asked me where I was from, “Italian.”
“Itaaaaalian…”
“I speak Italian… Come on, come with me… I’ll suck it so good it’ll disappear.”
She even showed me her boobs to help convince me. But in the end she understood I wasn’t interested and told me off. I should have said the line Silvio used during one of his whore-tours, “I can’t stay, I’m in a hurry. Wrap me a blow job, I’ll take it to go.”
I went to bed. I don’t know if it was the hotdogs or the fact that Michela hadn’t answered my message, but that night I had a hard time falling asleep, and when I finally did, I didn’t sleep well. The next morning at six, I was already awake and I was at the Doma Café by eight, across the street from Michela’s office.
A few hours later I really began to feel stupid and ridiculous. Even if I ran into her, she hadn’t answered my message, and so it was clear where she stood. I thought about changing my flight and staying there only for a few more days. But it bothered me to have gone all that way without even receiving a simple “no.”
I headed back to the hotel. I found myself passing through Washington Square. It was full of people. Some were studying, some reading, some playing music, some working out, others walking their dogs in the designated areas. Everyone was caught up in their own activities. At the center of the square, there’s a statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi. “Hi Garibaldi, it’s Giacomo, Giovanni’s son, the one who moved out.” I got to the hotel and, even though I hadn’t been there long, I already had my routine. Like stopping by the dinning room before it closed. I grabbed a coffee and a few minutes later Dinah walked in. By now we would sit at the same table without asking each other. We were two lonely people in a hotel. We talked a bit, then we said goodbye and I went up to my room. Fifteen minutes later the phone rang. I answered immediately. I
t was Dinah asking me if I wanted to go to the Guggenheim. At that point I didn’t have any plans… Why not?
I remember telling her I needed ten minutes.
“I’ll pick you up,” she said.
When she knocked on the door I was brushing my teeth. I let her in and went back to the bathroom. Dinah sat at the edge of the bed. After a few seconds we were kissing. When I took off her clothes, I thought that, judging by her lingerie, she had planned to make love to me before coming to my room. Plus the fact that she was wearing a wedding band turned me on. That morning I went for a triple. Between the first and the second the cleaning lady came in. We didn’t have time to hang the do not disturb sign.
It was already past two when we went out for lunch. After, she went back to the hotel to wait for her husband. I preferred to go for a walk. In any case, no Guggenheim.
That evening, as I was going out for dinner, I ran into her at the reception and she was with her husband. I had enjoyed making love to her so much that seeing her gave me a hard on. We exchanged a quick glance and then we went back to our respective lives. She was going to leave the next day.
I felt like pizza for dinner so I went to John’s Pizzeria on Bleecker Street. The guy who served me was born in Brooklyn, but his family was from Calabria. The typical Italian immigrants, like those in the movies. He spoke in a mix of American and Calabrese. Only a few words of Italian. How are you, cumpà?
That evening, when I went back to the hotel, the girl at the reception called me. I like hearing my name pronounced by foreign women, they often stress the second syllable: Giacòmo. She told me there was a message for me. I knew that Dinah would have dropped me a few lines before leaving. Instead, the message was from Michela. I swallowed hard.
“Hi Giacomo, I just got your message. I was in Boston on business. Tomorrow I should be free around five. Come by the office tomorrow morning, if you can, and leave your name at the front desk. If you have time we could have coffee around five. Here’s my cell phone number.”
She also left me her office address, but I already knew it by heart.
I was happy. When I got to my room, and the first minutes of euphoria had passed, I realized I didn’t understand something. If the appointment was at five, then why did she ask me to go by her office in the morning and leave my name at the front desk? Was I supposed to fill out a form just to have coffee with her?
The next morning, at seven, I was already awake. I worked on my computer for an hour, then I thought I could have continued somewhere else, or better yet, at Doma, that way I could even see her without being seen. Just to see what it felt like. So as not to explode and die at our first encounter; a way to dilute my emotions.
As usual, I chose the table closest to the entrance. Basically in the café’s window. I sat there still and motionless, watching her building like a hawk, doing that instead of working.
Doma was really nice. Wooden floors, brick walls painted in white, displaying the works of an unknown artist. I always like seeing original things, instead of prints or reproductions of famous paintings. In the middle of the room there were two columns also painted white. The counter was old, made out of wood, covered with cakes, muffins, cookies, and a couple of lamps. On the side of the room there was a big blackboard with a list of the specials.
The music was very diverse, playing from an iPod plugged into the stereo. The music was great: Nina Simone, Crosby & Nash, Carole King, R.E.M., Sam Cooke, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Cindy Lauper.
There must have been about ten tables, all different in size and shape. The bigger ones are shared by strangers. The chairs looked as if they came out of someone’s cellar or attic. I turned on the computer and I went back to work. It was hard going since I kept being distracted by the world around me. Many were reading books, others were writing with a pen, and others still on their computers. A girl was taking pictures, even of the people sitting at the table. Nobody seemed to mind. Among us strangers, there was an unspoken solidarity. Time seemed to stop in that place, marked only by the slow turning of the fans’ blades.
I ordered a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie. There was cinnamon in my pie. In New York, you can find a bunch of sweets with cinnamon in them and, to me, that was reason enough to move there.
I couldn’t work. I decided to call her cell phone. It wouldn’t have been the first time I talked to her on the phone. I hoped I wasn’t intruding. She told me I wasn’t.
“Hi, it’s Giacomo.”
“Hi, how are you? Did you get my message? Of course you did since you’re calling me; sorry, I’m a bit out of it this morning. So, are we meeting up later?”
“Yes. But maybe the girl at the hotel misunderstood you, should I come by earlier?”
“Yes, if you can, there is something for you at the front desk, but if you can’t come, I can bring it when we meet.”
“No, no, I’m free today. I’ll come by. I hope I didn’t seem too forward by calling you, but you know, I was in the neighborhood, it seemed like the right thing to do. I hope it’s not a problem.”
“On the contrary, I’m happy you did. I’ll see you later, bye.”
“Bye.”
“Do you have a cell phone with you?”
“No, I dropped it… On the floor and it doesn’t work anymore.”
When I showed up at the front desk, a mountain of a black man smiled at me and handed me a parcel.
For Giacomo.
I picked it up, signed for it, said thanks and went back to the café. I ordered a fruit salad. I remember there was watermelon in it and I don’t like it in my fruit salad. I like eating it by itself. My grandma would eat it with bread. She’s the only one I’ve seen doing it. When she ate it she would always say, “Look how generous nature is. Look at all the seeds in one single watermelon. That’s what I call loving life.” I’ve never had watermelon without hearing those words. But I also remember she would put the watermelon in the fridge without covering it, and when I would eat it I'd find it had absorbed the flavors of all the other food like a sponge.
When I sat down and opened the envelope, I saw something I immediately recognized: the orange notebook Michela used everyday on the tram. There was also a note that read: IF YOU HADN’T COME WITHIN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS, I WOULD HAVE MAILED IT TO YOU. LET’S MEET DOWNSTAIRS AT FIVE. ENJOY THE READ. MICHELA.
10
The Journal
I had never read a woman’s journal. Once, when I was about twenty, a girl I had been dating for a few months let me read a few pages of what she was writing every night. Her name was Luisa. On one of the many pages, she wrote about that time I forgot to bring condoms. Since she was in the most fertile time of her cycle, I remember I didn’t want to risk it and I told her that, since there wasn’t that much time, it was better to wait and do it when we weren’t in a rush. In other words, bullshit. As I was leaving her place I kept telling myself what a dumbass I had been for having forgotten. In her journal that same episode was noted as a confirmation that I wasn’t going out with her just for the sex, but because I really cared about her. Ah, women… Like when they take the blame for your lack of an erection.
There was one thing that bothered me about Luisa. I liked to be kissed on the eyelids, but she had the bad habit of licking them with her super soggy tongue; her saliva was so thick that when she finished I had a hard time opening my eyes because my eyelashes were drenched and heavy. She had snails in her mouth.
I was excited to hold Michela’s journal in my hands. I looked at it for a while before opening it. It brought back memories of her writing on the tram and all the emotions that seeing her stirred in me. How curious I was to know what she was writing. I opened it as if it were a sacred book. Now I could finally learn the secret of those mornings.
Those pages were full of me. She wrote about me, about what I was wearing and what she imagined I was like. I love reading. Today I discovered I like reading about me even more. Some of those pages surprised me.
Thursday<
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I’m writing in this notebook. I won’t look up, but I can tell you’re looking at me. I feel your eyes on me. They caress me, they invade me. When you look at me, you make me feel like fixing myself, straightening myself out. I feel like a mess. The kind of mess a woman only feels like in front of a man.
When you’re not looking at me, I try to steal a glimpse of you. Today you’re distracted. On the one hand, I fear you’re not interested in me anymore, on the other it allows me to look at you a little more. This morning, whenever I could, I lingered on your hands. Beautiful hands, that today weren’t holding a book, but still full of words.
Tuesday
I got into the habit of looking at your stop while the tram pulls up to it. I can’t always wait to find out. Sometimes I close my eyes and I open them only when the tram starts moving again and I look for you. I look for you among the thousand shapes of little interest. Today you are here. It looks like you haven’t slept, that’s why you’re even more beautiful. Your hair is ruffled, uncombed. I comb it with my invisible hands and then, when you’re all set, I’ll dishevel you again with a kiss. I’ll run my hand through your thoughts.
Today you got on and you’re standing in front of me. I won’t get off. Please don’t get off. Let’s go to the end of the line. Let’s go all the way. To the end of this ride. To the beginning of a new breath. Let’s stay here, on our reciprocal infinities.