Flirting in Italian

by Henderson, Lauren

  I have no idea what to say to Kelly. I’m feeling very spoiled and privileged and undeserving when Paige bursts into the bathroom. She’s changed into a whirl of white lace cover-up over pink bikini over full-body tan, flip-flops slapping on the tiles.

  “Hey! Isn’t it cool!” she sings out. “Though I can’t believe we’ve only got single beds! I’m gonna keep falling right off it when I turn over! Anyway, we’re going down to the pool. You coming? Come on down! Jeez, I sound like a game show!”

  She swirls out again, leaving the dust mites whirling in her wake.

  We charge back into our enormous bedroom to tear open our suitcases. I realize that looming up before us is one of the major holiday hurdles that any group of girls has to face: the first time they all decide to go swimming together.

  I hate this bit. It’s the Swimsuit Beauty Parade.

  Swimsuit Beauty Parade

  The parade is brutal, but it’s over relatively quickly. There’s a flurry of movement as we spread out our towels, settle on the loungers, dart quick looks around us to see if anyone else is watching, and peel off our outer layers. Paige has effortlessly won the Best Pool Outfit competition; her white lace cover-up is gorgeous, and I totally covet it. These American girls are much chicer than me and Kelly: like all my friends, I just wear a strappy top and a little pareo-thingy over my swimming things when I go to the beach or the pool, while Kelly doesn’t even have that—she’s just pulled the T-shirt and mini she was wearing before over her swimsuit.

  But these girls have actual pool-lounging outfits. Paige’s pink bikini is coordinated to her pink diamante-studded flip-flops, and her cowboy hat looks really cool with the white lace of the cover-up. You could laugh at her, call her too matchy-matchy, or say she’s trying too hard, but to be honest, I think both Kelly and I envy how smart she looks. Kendra has tossed off her own yellow wrap and dived in to swim lengths, her slim, dark shape cutting through the water like a pair of designer scissors, arms and legs long and lean. Kelly and I join Paige in a chorus of oohs and aahs about how beautiful the pool is.

  “I mean, I saw it in the photos online,” Paige is saying, picking up one in a long series of suncreams, double-checking it’s the right factor, and then applying it to her shoulders. “And it looked stunning. But in real life, it’s, like, amazing. I’m gonna take a ton of photos and make everyone back home jealous.”

  The pool’s at the side of Villa Barbiano, set in a wide green lawn bordered with fragrant lavender and rosemary bushes: the swimming pool comes right up to the border of the lawn, and that side drops away with the slope of the hill with what I think is called an infinity edge. It means that when you’re actually in the water, you can float and look at the landscape with nothing to obstruct the view. I find myself wondering what a painting would look like if you did it as if you were in the pool: glittering water below, distant hills in the center, blue skies above, the concrete surround of the pool just visible at the far edges of the frame.

  And then I shake my head in confusion. Tuscany definitely does something weird to me. I’ve never had this impulse to paint everything I see before.…

  I fold my top and pareo and put them on the little dark green table next to my lounger. Then I start applying sunscreen. Kelly’s doing the same thing, and we’re glancing over at each other, checking out what I really don’t want to think of as competition, but it’s so hard not to. With the film posters and ads showing pictures of perfect bikini bodies, the magazines that pick apart celebrities, rating their good and bad bits, it’s almost impossible not to do the same. I wish I didn’t, but I do. I feel really mean to be relieved that Paige, though not at all fat, is bigger than me, taller and wider, with solid thighs and arms, while Kelly is pale, plump, and clearly miserable in a green one-piece that makes her white skin look almost putrid. I’m very grateful that I’ve been fake tanning for a couple of months; my naturally sallow skin looks nicely pale brown, and my black polka-dot bikini, with little frills around the legs and bosom, is structured enough that it makes the most of my shape.

  Or rather, it does when I look at myself in the mirror, tummy sucked in. Sitting up, walking around—those are very different activities, and I know I’d loathe seeing a photo of myself snapped at those moments.

  Whereas Kendra, rising from the swimming pool, pulling herself up to stand on the side with one athletic push from her toned arms, has nothing to fear from anyone’s camera phone. We all stare openly at her in her tiny white bikini, the kind that’s just a few triangles of material that fasten with a few ties at hips and neck and back. The kind that only models with small, perky, high bosoms and tiny bums can wear. Hello, Swimsuit Beauty Parade? We have a winner.

  I think for a moment of my mum in a bikini, long and slim and elegant as Kendra, though she does wear a slightly more mum-suitable two-piece, thank goodness. I certainly didn’t get my figure from her side of the family: she, Aunt Lissie, and Mormor are all tall and lean, with long waists that give them totally flat tummies. I look gloomily down at my squidgy one, as I’ve often done in their company, but this time with the added force of wondering whether I have such a different figure because I’m not actually related to them at all.

  I swallow, hard. I texted Mum to say I’d arrived safe and sound and of course got a second flood of relieved texts back: the first, naturally, had already arrived as soon as I switched my phone back on, apologies for breaking down at the airport, best wishes for the trip, pleas to let her know as soon as the plane touched down in Italy. She thinks texts are like letters: she always starts “Darling Violet,” writes lengthy paragraphs, and finishes “Love, Mum.” The phone has to break them down into multiple messages. It’s a bit exhausting, frankly, but I know it means she loves me, so I try not to get too irritated.

  You’d better not, I think. You’re going to get lots and lots of text-letters from her in the next eight weeks.

  “That pool’s really small,” Kendra says dismissively, walking over to her lounger, where she picks up a towel and wipes her face dry. She wraps the towel around her head like a turban and stretches out on the chair, looking like a carved mahogany sculpture of a Somalian supermodel. “I’m going to have to do a hundred lengths a day, instead of fifty,” she complains. “It’s like I’m bouncing off a wall every five strokes.”

  Fifty lengths a day? No wonder she has that figure! I think, wincing at my own laziness. I glance at Kelly, who’s putting up the umbrella to get some shade; she grimaces back at me, clearly having exactly the same thought.

  “You work out really hard!” Paige exclaims, looking down at her own stomach and prodding it gloomily. “You make me feel like a lazy slob!”

  I have to give Paige credit: she may spill out everything that pops into her head without thinking first, but she’s pretty honest. She laughed at my mum’s drama-queen meltdown at Heathrow, but at least she’s pointing out her own defects too.

  “I do a hundred sit-ups every morning,” Kendra says, reaching for her white-framed sunglasses. “You can join in if you want.”

  “Oh my God!” Paige wails. “A hundred? I can barely do three!”

  She grabs a handful of stomach and wobbles it. I am increasingly, reluctantly, impressed with Paige: it takes real courage to wobble your tummy in public.

  She looks over at me and Kelly with a friendly smile.

  “This place is awesome,” she says cheerfully. “I mean, it’s smaller than it looks on the website, but everything’s smaller in Europe, right? London was really cool. We stayed there last night, with friends of Kendra’s mom. My mom and dad thought we should have a rest before we came over to the mainland.”

  Kelly has lain down on her tummy on the lounger, face on her arms, but now she lifts her head, squinting in the sun, and stares incredulously at Paige.

  “When you came over to the mainland?” she asks. “You do know that the United Kingdom is a completely different country from Italy, right?”

  Paige’s blond eyebrows knit in confusio
n.

  “But it’s all part of Europe?” she says, looking at Kendra for help. “I mean, England’s like an island, off the mainland of Europe.”

  “We’re a separate country,” Kelly says coldly. “It would be like saying that Greenland’s an island off the mainland of the United States.”

  “Isn’t it?” Paige says, giggling helplessly. “I was never very good at geography.”

  “Kelly’s right,” Kendra drawls. “Some of us Americans do have half an idea where other countries in the world are located.”

  “Are you two friends?” I ask, because I can see that Kelly’s still seething.

  “Our parents know each other from the country club,” Paige says, not a whit upset by being effectively called an idiot by Kendra. “Our moms play tennis together on Saturdays.”

  “And our dads golf together,” Kendra says, self-mockingly now. “It’s all super-cozy. I wanted to come to Italy for the summer, and I found this course online—”

  “But her mom didn’t want her to go on her own, and she told my mom, and my mom thought it would be a great learning experience for me—” Paige bursts in enthusiastically.

  “And teach you where some other flipping countries are besides your own,” Kelly mutters sotto voce.

  “—so they thought we’d make a great team,” Kendra concludes, with enough sarcasm in her voice to indicate that she has decidedly mixed feelings about having Paige as her sidekick.

  “You hadn’t met before?” I ask. I’m always curious about people: Mum says I shouldn’t ask so many questions, but I can’t help it.

  “Oh, we knew each other from the club,” Kendra says. “But we don’t have the same friends. Or,” she adds rather pointedly, “go to the same school.”

  “Oh no! Kendra goes to the really brainy high school in Jacksonburg,” Paige says with devastating candor. “Her friends are all, like, super-smart.” She giggles. “Mine just like to party. Hey!” She sits up, leans forward, and shoves her own sunglasses up to the crown of her head. “Talking about partying, I didn’t come to Italy for the summer just to hang out with a bunch of girls! No offense, but there had better be some cute boys around here! If not, we’ll just have to go out and find them, right? Hunt them down like dogs!”

  I can see that Paige has a real gift for saying what everyone else is thinking but is too proud to admit. Of course I’ve been speculating about Italian boys, lots and lots, but I wasn’t going to say it out loud.…

  “Do you two have boyfriends?” she asks us.

  Kelly shakes her head and I shake mine, a little embarrassed at being put on the spot.

  “Cool!” she continues, to my surprise. “Kendra doesn’t either. And I just broke up with someone. Or he sort of broke up with me. I think. We had a fight and it was all kinda messed up. Anyway, who cares?” She throws her arms wide, smiling so happily I can see almost every one of her big white perfect teeth. “It’s summer! You should never have a boyfriend in the summer. You get a boyfriend in the autumn, so you have someone over Christmas! And then you break up with him in the spring so you can party in the summer again!”

  Kelly and I stare at her, eyes wide. There’s a mad kind of logic to this, I suppose.

  “That isn’t how we all roll in the States,” Kendra informs us with an ironic twist of her mouth. “Paige just thinks the way she does stuff is—well, how everyone does it.”

  I’m getting really warm now; even though it’s late afternoon, the sun low in the sky above the far hills, the heat of the day has soaked into the concrete surround of the pool and baked the earth dry, and that heat is still shimmering all around us, the air heavy with it. Sucking in my tummy, hoping my thighs don’t wobble too much, I sit up, quickly swing my legs to the ground, and walk over to the pool, diving in before anyone has too much of a chance to see me in motion. The water’s deliciously cool against my overheated skin, and I swim a whole length underwater because it feels so good. I wish I had the willpower to make myself swim a hundred lengths a day, like Kendra’s planning to do; it would definitely slim me down a bit.

  And yet, being totally honest with myself, I know I won’t. I sigh as my head breaks water at the far end. How is it that some people have amazing self-discipline, and others just don’t?

  I’m at the infinity edge, and I hold on to the side, the smooth rounded concrete lapped over with water, which trickles gently over it and down into a little trough a foot below, there to catch the overflow. From here I have a great view of the ornamental gardens below, planted with hedges in a complicated geometrical pattern, small flower beds shaped like shields set between them at intervals. The grass of the lawns, seen from above, is drying out, the earth below baked hard and brown by the sun; the grass is withering in the scorching heat. Back in England the lawns would still be lush and richly green; but the Mediterranean climate is harsher, with much longer summers, and—here, at any rate—rockier, stonier soil. Plants that grow here have to be tough to survive. Like the vines, and the olives, and the rosemary …

  From my elevated perspective, I’m the first to see a bright blue convertible winding its way up the hill with two people in it. Girls, I realize as the car nears the house, and I feel my heart sinking: We have enough girls in this house already. We need some testosterone! The car passes below me and pulls in to a parking area behind a stand of pine trees; moments later, the engine turns off, the doors slam, and Italian voices, high and piercing, ring out in the still, heavy afternoon air, light footsteps running up a concealed flight of stone steps until the girls emerge on the far side of the swimming pool.

  We all turn to look at them. I swing around, my arms wide to either side of the pool surround, and as soon as I catch sight of them I’m really grateful that most of my body is concealed by the water.

  Because they’re really thin, and really stunning. And they’re looking down their prominent Italian noses at us as if we’re nasty stains on the upholstery of the pool loungers.

  I can’t tell if they’re the same age as us; maybe they’re a bit older. They’re both wearing armfuls of narrow gold bracelets and dangling earrings. Their thick dark hair is cut short, pushed back from their faces, and they’re wearing as much makeup as Kendra and Paige, but in a considerably more obvious style. They make Kendra—slim athletic Kendra—look plus-size. Their legs, in their skinny jeans, are like toothpicks. Their heels are three-inch-high studded wooden sandals, and their tight white tops fit their narrow torsos like gloves, lifting over their low-rise jeans to reveal glimpses of near-concave stomachs. They’re carrying shopping bags and studded handbags that match their sandals, and they’re tanned to the color of caramel toffee.

  An absolute silence has fallen as we all watch them go past, swinging their bags and tossing their earrings as if they were on a catwalk. They’re chatting to each other, laughing, perfectly aware of our presence by the pool but not deigning to even nod at us in acknowledgment. One of them glances over at us briefly and says loudly to the other, “Hai visto? Madonna, che maiali!” as they trip through the back door of the villa.

  We all look at each other. I’m biting my lip; Kelly’s pulled her towel over herself to hide her body; even the confident Paige and Kendra are visibly taken aback. The four of us have bonded as a group. And though I’m glad that we have, I’d really rather that it hadn’t been caused by some frighteningly intimidating Italian girls spitting out a comment about us that, by its tone, was definitely dismissive.

  “Oh, jeez,” sighs Paige, who’s rapidly becoming the Girl Who Says What Everyone Else Is Thinking. “How did this happen? I wanted some Italian boys, not skinny girls who’re gonna make the rest of us feel like crap!” She narrows her eyes and waves one fist at the sky. “This proves it,” she adds gloomily. “God is definitely a guy.”

  The appearance of the Italian girls, brief though it was, has killed our mood. The sun is sinking in the sky, and I think we all want time to unpack, bathe, and primp ourselves to the nines before dinner, now that we’re awa
re of the level of competition there will be around the dining table. We’ve discussed the girls and decided that they must be Catia’s daughters: the website for Villa Barbiano’s summer course mentioned the whole Cerboni family, and Paige, bless her, blurted out that she’d been hoping that this meant a ton of hot sons.

  “Not skinny daughters,” she’d said gloomily as we parted in the antechamber to go into our separate rooms. “Which totally sucks.”

  Kelly showers first, and I unpack; when it’s my turn for the bathroom, I luxuriate in the shower for the longest time. I’ve never had a bathroom like this before, one where the marble-lined shower stall is so huge it doesn’t even need a door or a curtain; the water pours down in a wide arc, hitting the stone below, running down into the brass drain, saturating the stone. It’s such a novelty that I stand there for ages, stretching my arms, feeling the cool grain of the marble under my fingers, turned at an angle so I can look at the view out of the window, the rising hill behind the house planted with lines of fluffy-topped olive trees, their leaves steely green.

  I’m practically in a trance. So when Kelly bursts into the bathroom, jumping across my eyeline, gesticulating frantically, I scream my head off with shock.

  “Come and see! You’ve got to come now!” she yells, turning pink at the sight of my naked body and averting her eyes immediately. Despite sharing a room with her sisters, Kelly is turning out to be very modest.

  “But what—”

  “Just come!” She gallops out of the room, flip-flops flapping as she goes. I grab a towel, throw it around me, and dash in her wake into our bedroom, over to the windowsill, where Kelly’s kneeling, her body so far into the window frame that it looks as if she’s about to jump.

  “Look!” she hisses without turning her head. “Boys!”