The dance club pulses in the middle of a dark park near the river. When I step up to the door hours later, the tattooed bouncer barely looks at me before waving me in. The first room is enormous, every inch filled, and the bass beat of music engulfs me. The crowd radiates out from a central circular bar that glows like a small city. The ceiling stretches up several stories, and high above, people lean over balcony rails, humming red. On the perimeter of the room is a series of dark doors that lead to other rooms, one of which the canottieri has rented out. I had two drinks with my meal at a café near the stadium, but I’m already anxious for another one.
I am underdressed—jeans, sandals, and a button-down seemed right for a game and then a bar, but I look juvenile compared with the women in this club, all wearing spiked heels and fabric that clings to their bodies. More than the clothes, it’s the gesture that I’m missing. All around me they are talking, laughing, placing hands on arms, heads pitched back, backs arched, hips swaying right or left, all of these small movements melding to form a single S. A fluid motion in and away, a curling S with a strong spine. Leaning in, leaning out, but still bound to that core. It invites whatever the night might bring; it attracts and intimidates. I don’t have this gesture, don’t have any gesture. I just am. I feel a tug at my hair and turn, but there are no eyes on me. I run my hand across my head and keep moving.
At the third doorway, partially obscured by a thick velvet curtain, is a handwritten sign: FLORENCE ROWING. I descend into a room where everything is lower—low ceiling, low lighting, low tables with candles lining the back wall where people are seated in low clusters. The center, a small dance floor, is empty. I scan the room for Francesca, for anyone—I thought I’d be late, but I’m early, and I recognize no one in those little circles: not the men and not the women, who in this room have mastered an easy movement as well. I order a vodka and soda from the young bartender. He must be used to American students because he doesn’t blink when I drink it fast and order a second.
I look up when the curtain moves, hoping for a familiar face, then glance at my reflection between the bottles on the back of the bar and try to appear natural. I roll up one sleeve of my shirt, push it back down. I lean to one side, then the other, resting my elbow lightly on the bar’s edge. Look at you. I put my hand to my face, feeling for more flesh, then drop it quickly and look away. When I order my third drink, I try on the gesture, moving toward the bartender a bit and smiling, but his face remains blank as he scoops ice into a new glass.
I am decided on leaving when there is an eruption by the door.
“Oh, Fiorentina…”
Stefano enters and pauses at the top step with his arms raised, a handful of men behind him. The air swells with sound as everyone around me begins singing.
“Oh, Fiorentina…”
Stefano takes the steps two at a time, leading the charge, and I spot Luca and Gianni among his companions. The song surges up and down and even the bartender joins in.
“Ricorda che del calcio è tua la storia. La la la la la…”
I try to catch Stefano’s eye, but he doesn’t see me as the group passes and then divides, the men splitting off to greet people. The song slowly dies but the room is buzzing now.
“Ne prende un altro?”
An older man with thinning hair. He’s shorter than me and his shirt hangs too far open.
“No, grazie.” I shake my nearly full glass at him.
He puts out his hand. “Sono Bernardo.”
“Hannah,” I say, taking just his fingers.
“Piacere, Anna.” He stretches out the vowels, the grin not leaving. “You are at the canottieri?”
“I am.”
“Why haven’t I seen you before?”
I’m trying to think of a response that will end the conversation, but his frozen smile seems immovable.
“Basta, Bernardo. Ciao, bella.” Stefano squeezes my hand and gives Bernardo a look—his smile drops and he shrugs, muttering something under his breath before turning away.
“Grazie,” I say.
Stefano nods and calls for drinks. “A great game, yes? Forza Fiorentina!”
“A great game,” I echo, though I’d missed most of it.
With three glasses balanced between his hands, Stefano points to the back where a few other men sit hunched around a candle like a band of witches. When we get to the table, the conversation halts and Luca rises with a smile. “’Sera,” he says, his hands absorbing mine easily. Gianni and Sergio are sitting with him, along with a man I don’t know, broader than the others and in a sharply pressed suit.
“Hannah di Boston,” Stefano explains.
“Carlo,” the man says, taking my hand and gripping it a bit too tightly. Then the conversation resumes and I am forgotten, except by Luca, who asks what I’ve been doing in Italy. I think for a moment and then tell him about my trip to Siena, which seems the safest answer.
“Siena,” he says, and nods. “Beautiful city. Ma Firenze è più bella, no?”
I confirm that, yes, Florence is more beautiful, and he pats my knee approvingly, letting it linger a moment before reaching for his drink. I feel comfortable with him, trust his smile in this candlelight. I tell him about the chapel of St. Catherine.
“Ah, Santa Caterina,” he hums. “An interesting woman.”
There is a church in Florence I should visit, he says. San Frediano in Cestello. San Frediano in Cestello, I repeat to myself. I finish my drink and go to order another. I walk with ease, glide through the crowd, and smile at the bartender, who now smiles back. People have begun dancing to a song that is vaguely familiar.
Francesca. I catch the name when I return as the table erupts in laughter.
“Francesca?” I repeat, and Luca turns, surprised, as the other men continue bantering.
“Sì, Francesca. It is really funny, no?” He grins and then takes in my blank look. “Non hai capito?”
“No, you speak too quickly.”
“Hmm,” he considers. “Only English, then. I practice, va bene?”
“All right.”
“Allora.” Luca takes a deep breath and begins with effort. “You know Francesca, yes? She always goes out in the wide boats, perché she is afraid.”
The larger wooden sculls. They sit firm in the water, don’t tremble with each stroke like the sleek aluminum ones.
“So today,” he continues, “we told her to try a little one. But she says, ‘No! No! No!’” Here Luca does his best Francesca impression, pursing his lips and crossing his arms as he shakes his head tersely from side to side. “But we laugh at her e poi she says va bene. Allora, Correggio puts her in the boat and she goes. She has on little… sunglasses, yes? And she waves like we are stupid.”
Luca is already starting to chuckle between words as he recounts the scene. I can feel the warmth coming off him.
“She has a few strokes e poi she screams. Just at the boat is, ah, una nutria.”
“A what?”
Luca pinches up his face and raises his hands in small fists. Carlo laughs roughly across the table.
“Oh.” I grimace. “You mean the rats.” I’ve seen them waddling along the riverbanks and paddling in open water with only their heads showing.
“No!” Luca says earnestly, putting his hand on my forearm. “Not a rat. No. Una nutria. Cute, yes?”
“No,” I say definitively. “There is nothing cute about a massive river rodent.”
Stefano returns with more drinks and Luca pauses to take one.
“Allora,” he continues. “They do not bother us. No problem. But Francesca waves her arms e allora the boat is shaking and we shout, ‘Tranquilla!’ but she moves too much e poi she is in the water. E la povera nutria—”
“Poor Francesca.” I laugh easily and the sound surprises me.
“Poor Francesca?” Carlo says loud. “Macché povera Francesca.”
Luca ignores him. “He tries to swim but Francesca, she moves e poi she hits la nutria! Allora, la nutri
a screams and tries to go away però he is stuck nella… nella…”
“In the current?” I suggest.
“Sì. In the current. Exactly. Crazy. Ah, Francesca,” he says, and sighs.
Luca is about to say something more, but Carlo interrupts him again, his voice sloppy, and I catch the word puttana. Slut. All the men fall silent.
“Really?” I throw into the silence, feeling bolder with the alcohol coursing through me, and then all the eyes are on me, surprised.
But Carlo’s gaze remains hard. “Why, you know her?”
“Ma dai,” Luca says. “Lascia perdere, Carlo. You’re drunk.”
“He only acts like this to impress you,” Carlo says with a smile that makes my skin crawl. “Stai attenta, eh? He’s just like any man.”
Luca pushes back his chair, but Stefano cuts in. “Basta, ragazzi. Carlo—it’s enough.”
“Sì, basta,” Gianni echoes.
Carlo looks at Luca, still standing, and then shrugs. “And Mariotti? Where is that chicken shit?”
Luca shoots him a glance but sits back down. “Sorry,” he says to me as the men’s conversation picks up again.
“It’s all right.”
“If you can guess, it is not the first time Carlo speaks like this. But a crazy story, no?” And then he’s drawn back into the group as though nothing had occurred.
I walk to the bar and get another drink, a little unsteady, but I make it back to the table. I sit down slowly and try to look interested. Then I begin with the morning. The coffee, the toast, choked down. The salad at lunch—strings of tuna, tomatoes rolled to the side. The evening—the bar after the game, and I remember the brusque waiter, the wooden table, the plastic menu with its grease stains, but what had I eaten? I can’t remember. Not enough. Not enough for these drinks, and I feel something in my stomach now: dread.
I look to the men, try to follow their conversation, but something has changed and I can no longer understand it. I watch their lips move and try to stay calm as their voices spin, peppered with exclamations and laughter. Prendere in giro, a term I’ve come to know. Take for a ride. The Italians use it when they’re teasing someone and, with these words spinning around me, I begin to suspect that I’m the reason for their laughter.
I anchor my gaze to Luca’s profile to keep the evening from dissolving. For a while this works.
Things kept falling around me.
“What happened?” Julian asked, running his fingers along the inside of my forearm, the concern on his face growing. It was April. We were in the South End, back at the bar where we’d met eight months before, an anniversary of sorts.
Earlier that evening I had knocked everything off the glass shelves in my bathroom. Reaching for one item, I’d upended them all. They’d fallen everywhere, the lipstick cradled in the sink, the mascara rolling across the floor. My hands had darted out to stop the avalanche and my arm caught the edge of the mirror. Chipped for years, waiting to catch me, it had drawn a deep red line in my flesh. I’d tried to hide that bloody line, but he had found it. His thumb grazed over the wound.
“What happened?” he asked again.
“It was an accident.”
“Another one?” His concern was tilting into suspicion and it made me bristle.
“I’m fine,” I said. I still had my job. Everything was in balance. He could only disrupt it.
“Hannah, why won’t you talk to me? This isn’t normal.”
I pulled my arm away, mean. “What’s not normal? Maybe you’re not normal.”
He was right, though. It wasn’t normal. Things were coming loose. The proof was on my body and in this wound that he read with his fingers.
We kept drinking until the edges of the night blurred, until I said, “Leave me alone,” and began flirting with a stranger, faceless now, who wouldn’t prod or pry. I asked the stranger to dance. And still Julian wouldn’t go, not that night. But eventually, when I’d said it enough times and with enough venom—Leave me alone—he did.
“E Mariotti?” Carlo booms now.
“Boh,” Stefano says.
“He is too afraid,” Luca whispers to me. I don’t know what he’s referring to, and still I nod and nod and sit up straighter, try to mirror the women around us, but the room is moving, coming apart in ribbons. I watch the men and hear their voices, but I can’t make out the words. Until Gianni rises and announces, “Su, balliamo.”
Luca turns to me: “We dance?”
I don’t want to dance, cannot imagine even standing now, but it is easier to follow than to explain, and so I follow him to the center of the room. And then we’re dancing. And isn’t this how it always happens? Things are fine and then they aren’t, and I’m in a place I didn’t mean to be, watching it all deteriorate. Hold on to yourself, I think, hold on to yourself this time, but everything is moving quickly. I’m coming loose. Luca smiles, his features large as he sways side to side, the smell of his cologne surrounding me. I try to mimic his movements but the floor is shifting. I remember the S of the Italian women, the easy movement of it. I lean in, lean out. But it’s useless. I don’t have the spine for it. I am pitching too far one way or the other. It is all I can do. All I can do to remain standing. The crowd becomes a single creature, tilting and stretching, closing in. I lean in. Lean out. Lean in. Lean out.
Darkness.
Then hands on my arms propping me up. Voices circling.
“Andiamo.” Luca’s voice, his arm around me. “I take you home, va bene?”
The voices continue. I nod. I want to hear, want to know what they are saying about me. But it’s impossible, even, placing one foot in front of the other now. Why? Why did I drink so much? What did I eat? I begin with the morning. The coffee. The toast.
The air outside hits cold, wakes me.
“Sorry,” I muster as we walk slowly. “I mean, mi dispiace.”
“Di niente,” he says. “It is late for me also.”
Luca’s car is small and he drives quickly, the lights outside a blur as we race out of the park and into the old streets. It rattles and rattles and rattles. We take a sharp curve as we approach Piazza del Duomo and my stomach jumps. I grip the door handle and shut my eyes, hoping he won’t see. But he has seen.
“Stai bene?” he asks. “Stai bene?”
I can’t speak. I concentrate on the hum of the engine, mute. In a second Luca veers to the curb outside a small bar. He ducks out and I watch him, bent, almost jogging into the bar. I want to hide, want to leave, but that would only make things worse. I look at the comically large Duomo, striped green and white, and its angles swim. I can never get a feel for the whole. It must be late, very late, but even now a juggler stands on the steps surrounded by a cluster of students. The juggler says something I can’t make out and they laugh. The car door opens and Luca slides in with a bag and hands me a bottle of water, uncapped.
“Grazie,” I mumble, taking a large gulp, and try a smile. “Mi dispiace. Too much to drink. I must be confirming all your stereotypes. About Americans, I mean.”
Luca doesn’t smile back. He opens the satchel, producing a roll. “Mangia. You’ll feel better.”
I think, What are you doing? and in the same breath, How did you know? But there’s no hiding now, so I take a piece, put it in my mouth, and chew slowly, trying not to think about it. I swallow and focus instead on the juggler, and then on two men who appear from around the corner of the cathedral holding forties. One of them pauses, hands his beer to his friend, and turns into one of the crevices to piss, the dark stream gleaming on the marble.
“Che schifo,” Luca says, watching them, too.
I don’t know how long we sit in the car. Luca puts on the radio, hands me a few more hunks of bread. I accept them and listen to the music, chewing slowly until all of it is gone. The students disperse and the juggler sits on the steps of the Duomo counting his money.
“Allora,” Luca says finally. “We walk?”
I nod. He helps me out of his car, locking i
t behind me.
“I follow you,” he says.
I know this much at least, my route home. We walk away from the Duomo, then down through Piazza della Signoria, empty now. Possibilities seem to open up with the space, and if things were different, if I were different, this might be romantic. But the statues that I love are eerie in the moonlight, and I am a child who cannot keep a straight course, Luca’s hand intermittently on my elbow to prevent me from drifting too close or too far. I remember my first boyfriend, years ago. We sat on a curb in the middle of a cold November and he took off one of my inadequate canvas shoes to warm my foot with his hands, and I knew that things were coming and I only had to wait. But now I’m not waiting, only walking. And Luca is tired and quiet. Finally we reach the river, where the reflections of streetlamps spread across the water in long pews of light.
“Which way?” Luca asks.
I gesture left and soon we’re by my door and I can feel, already, the regret tomorrow will bring.
Luca takes my hands and kisses me quickly on each cheek. “Buonanotte.”
“’Notte,” I say, turning and putting my hand on the door for support as I search for my keys. I find them and choose, impossibly, the right one. I try to fit it into the lock.
“Aspetta”—Luca takes the key and easily opens the door—“I accompany you to your apartment?”
“No,” I respond quickly. I’m angry, swimming in it. Carlo was right about him. “I don’t even know you.”
He starts laughing, the sound of his voice gentle in the dark. “I will walk you to your door only, sai?”
I feel my face grow warm. “Grazie, I’m fine.” I mean to right things, but he looks puzzled as I step into the lobby and shut the door.
The apartment is dark. I shuffle to the bedroom and unlatch the tall shutters. Luca walks slowly up the street and disappears around the corner. I’m shaking, and my body relaxes only when I lean on the sill smoking a cigarette, a habit reserved for nights like these. It is raining again and the air bites at my hands as I watch the ash drop. I begin with the morning. I close my eyes, see the familiar tower grow. Such a long day. So much to remember. The coffee. The salad. I make it to the club, but the drinks I’m forced to estimate. Then I remember the small bits of roll, broken gently and passed like Communion in the car. I try to forget, to see only the hand, the gesture, the kindness in it. But the hand is lost, the gesture lost. Don’t. Don’t. My head begins to buzz. I drop the cigarette, run to the bathroom, and it all comes up.
Florence in Ecstasy Page 5