A Semester Abroad (7 page)

Olivia invited me to go to the bar Re Artu with her for a last drink with her group. I didn’t want to spend time talking to all the people that were leaving. Besides, my tiny bed was actually inviting with my belly full of this much food. But I walked her around the
campo
 over to the bar. The streets were crowded with people walking 
in giro
. These walks 
in
giro
—basically just walking around the town—were the pastime of the Italians before they went to their bars or café. We stopped in front of the bar.

“
Ci vediamo presto
,” she said. We will see each other soon. “It’s only an hour away on the Pullman or train. You have the number. Call in a few days.”

And it saddened me a little that the first thing I thought was that I didn’t know if I could handle the conversations that would be involved in getting those Pullman or train tickets. Getting to Florence was another maze I would have to run through.

“
Si, certo
,” I agreed, smiling. We hugged goodbye, and she went into the bar.

I started to walk home and noticed that a group of people was gathered outside a 
paninoteca
 on Via Independenza. There were two men fighting viciously. I couldn’t see their faces but I saw Dino and Giovanni in the crowd. They spotted me as I went over to them. They kissed me on both cheeks before turning their eyes back the fight.

“
Hai visto Gaetano
?” Dino asked, gesturing toward the fight. I followed his gaze and realized it was Gaetano holding on to some guy’s nose, drawing blood. He looked like an animal and had a nasty scratch on his forehead. The friends of his victim pulled the nosebleeder away.

Gaetano bent at the waist, put his hands on his thighs and breathed out. Dino called to him, and Gaetano looked up to see us. He came over immediately, practically panting, his breath coming white into the brisk night air. Dino said something to him in dialect, and Gaetano nodded. He didn’t kiss me; he was bloody and sweaty. He took a cigarette from Giovanni. “How are you, Gabi?”

“Fine, and you?” In English, I would have made a joke about the fight he had gotten into. In English, I could try and be a little witty in lieu of this situation. In Italian, I was a dumb girl who didn’t say much and kept her voice low.

His answer made his friends laugh, but I couldn’t understand him. I assumed he said something like, “I’m good, but you should see the other guy.”

“What happened?” I asked. In the distance was the sound of sirens. It was 
polizia
 or 
caribinieri
. I still didn’t know the difference. Only their tiny cars were allowed to come down those streets at night. Gaetano took my hand. He was still holding it when his friends said that he needed to leave.

“Will you call me?” He asked this twice, in both of our languages

“
Gaetano, dai
!” His friends were anxious. They started to tug his dirty sleeve. He was still holding my hand. He wouldn’t leave until I answered.

“Will you call me?” I didn’t want to, but the dumb girl who couldn’t say much and found it necessary to smooth things over answered to appease the anxious friends.

“
Si.”

“Sicura?”
 Was I sure? Of course not. I didn’t have a phone. I had nothing.

“Si
,” I lied
.
 And then he smiled and ran off with his friends, leaving me alone on the suddenly empty street.

I crossed the 
campo
 before the 
polizia
 arrived.

Janine had a boyfriend named Roberto. She met him at the
enoteca
. He was from Sicily, and he had a car. He could also speak English, which made life a lot easier for Janine. He was the ideal boyfriend for her.

One night, I was sitting at the table in the hallway working on my
compito
when Janine came up to me. I looked up from my homework. She didn’t say it right away, but I could tell almost immediately from the bright smile that she wanted something.

“How’s it going, Gab?” I hated to be called that. Michelle in some of her relaxed moments had taken to calling me G, but Gab I hated. I didn’t say that, though.

“
Bene
.” We used the little Italian we knew like slang in the house.

“What are you up to
stasera
?” Janine liked to inflect all the Italian dramatically.

“Tonight? Not much. I feel sort of sick.” Almost a month of cold weather had taken its toll on me. I was sniffling and my head felt stuffy.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Janine. She put her hand on my shoulder. I wanted to believe she genuinely felt bad for me, but I saw the gesture for what it was, a means to an end. “Because I was going to see if you want to go out with me and Michelle and Roberto and two of his friends to that club Tendenza.”

“I probably shouldn’t.” Though actually moving, dancing, not just sitting sounded good.

“C’mon, don’t be a nerd.” She made one of her funny faces. “I’m not going to ask Lisa.”

She wouldn’t care so much if it weren’t to please a guy. But I did want to check out that club and it would be easier to go in a car. I could be resting in America, hiding in my bed as I had in the past. Now I was in Italy, and I reminded myself that I shouldn’t miss any experience. “All right.”

“Nice, G,” Michelle said walking through the hallway. She was eating an apple. It was probably one of the only things she ate that day. I suspected that Michelle puked in my bathroom so Janine wouldn’t hear it. Michelle trailed the scent of perfume behind her. That smell reminded me of Kaitlin. It made me think of times when I was happy and we went out together, just to have fun, not to prove anything or to drown any sorrows.

“Yeah, it’s going to be kickass. So I was wondering if I could look at your clothes and see if I want to borrow anything.” At last, Janine made the real request.

“Sure, check it out. I might want to check out your stuff, too.”

“No prob, Gab,” said Janine ready to begin her search-and-recovery mission. She was already in Lisa’s room when she added, “If you think you’ll find something that fits you.”

I heard Lisa giggle. Lisa thrived on any insults that were not directed at her. Janine hadn’t invited her out, and Lisa was going to be bitter. It was worse that Janine decided to model all of my clothes that she liked for Lisa. Lisa complimented everything. She was hoping for an invite, hoping at last to get out of the life she has chosen, sitting in our empty apartment, studying hard to show off to people who didn’t like her.

I tried on everything I liked in Janine’s closet, too. My larger chest stretched out Janine’s sexy cheap tight black shirts. I defiantly buttoned up a red wraparound skirt. It was a little tight around the hips, but I didn’t care. I didn’t appreciate her comments.

I settled on one of her dresses. It was tight and gray but styled like a schoolgirl uniform. I could wear my own black shirt under it, and it would fit me even shorter than it fit Janine. I felt like looking good tonight.

I went back into my room for more primping. I shut the door so Lisa, who was pacing nervously around the apartment, could not prey on me. She kept sighing and mentioning how she needed to work on her American celebrations essay, hoping if she sighed loud enough, someone would give her another option. It didn’t work. At last, Lisa came sheepishly into my room. I continued lining my lips.

“So you’re going out with them.” From the way Lisa said 
them
, I knew she had already glorified them. They were the cool kids she was never going to be. I began applying the gloss with more care than usual. I considered wearing eyeliner.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Did they ask you?”

“Well, I didn’t just tag along. I don’t do that.” I turned to Lisa, holding her eyes. Her forehead was full of acne. It had to be stress.

“Can I come?” No one with any sense of pride would ask this when they are so obviously not wanted. Is she liked somewhere else, I wondered. Is there anywhere this girl has friends? I finished my bottom lip before answering. I almost pitied her. She was just trying to impress Janine when she giggled at her comment. I should be the bigger person. I should understand that she was lonely and desperate. But I wasn’t a saint or a psychiatrist.

“I don’t know, Lisa. It’s not my thing. It’s Janine’s. It’s her boyfriend. You should ask her.” I tried to make my voice softer, kinder. She looked at me, pleadingly. I tried not to think about all the times she corrected me and acted like a know-it-all. “All right, I’ll come with you.”

“C’mon,” Lisa left my room in a hurry, glancing back to make sure I followed her out through the kitchen into the better bedroom, where Janine and Michelle slept. Michelle was checking her face out carefully in the mirror. Janine was in the bathroom. I pretended to need to borrow some perfume. Lisa asked Michelle if she could go out with us. Maybe she wasn’t as socially inept as I thought; she was picking the nicer one.

Michelle was nervous, not sure how to answer, but she didn’t have to because Janine emerged from the bathroom. She was dressed more conservatively than she usually was for going out. Roberto liked Janine to dress like this. Janine said he was traditional. He wanted her to be modest, even though he liked the fact that he could fuck her the first time they met.

“You can’t come, Lisa, there just isn’t room in the car,” Janine took charge while giving me a quick look up and down. She turned to Michelle. “Do I look okay?”

“You look good.” Michelle said, for once barely giving Janine any attention. She wanted to look good tonight too and kept shifting her outfit in the mirror.

Lisa looked at me. Again with the pleading. This was where I was supposed to intervene. Fine.

“I’m sure we can make room in the car,” I said. I looked over at Michelle. She let herself meet my eyes for exactly a second, before glancing quickly at Janine and then back at her reflection.

“Do you want to switch with her?” Janine asked me. “I mean, there is only so much room in the car.”

“We can sit on laps,” I tried. I was starting to fret that I was going to lose my chance to get out of this freezing apartment.

“That’s with sitting on laps,” Janine said. She smiled at Lisa. “Next time, Lisa. Gabriella is already ready, anyway. Maybe sometime we’ll go out when it isn’t a school night.”

A good woman would offer to stay with her. A better one might switch. But I was neither and the idea of staying with her in the frigid apartment or, worse, staying by myself was more than I could take. I looked at her and tried to convey my apologies.

Lisa left the room. Janine had already moved on.

“We should have drunk something before shouldn’t we? Now we’ll be totally sober,” she said, looking at me because she thought like everyone else that I had some sort of high tolerance because of the big beers I bought. “Fuck it, they’ll buy us drinks.”

They were waiting. Roberto’s friends were both shorter than Michelle and me, but we were instructed to sit on their laps in the backseat of the tiny car; Gennaro (under me) and Mauro (under Michelle). It was true enough about the room in the car. All the cars in this country seemed smaller. But I liked being packed into the car like this, the smell of the male cologne, testosterone. My sense of smell was sharpening. I was picking up not just people’s scents but their intentions.

The Tendenza was like nowhere I had ever been. It was a giant warehouse space with people dancing everywhere. Even Michelle and Janine, who went clubbing at home, were in shock. Everyone was given a number when they went in that they had to put on. The bouncers pinned the numbers close to our breasts, and the Italian boys put drinks in our hands. Roberto unpinned Janine’s number and put it on the waistband of her skirt, the skirt she borrowed from me. We downed our first drinks and got others at the bar before heading onto the dance floor. The Italian boys paid for everything

The numbers were projected on a screen, and if you saw your number, you had a note waiting from an admirer. It was a literary meat market. The club was blowing purple smoke onto the dancers. The Italian boys were delighted. They kept saying “
è bello, è bello, no
?” They loved it. I wished I could say 
surreal
 in Italian. I thought that it was probably something obvious like 
surealistico
 or something, but if it wasn’t I would have to try to explain it to them. They would want to understand me; it would be complicated. Sometimes it was better not to even bother trying to communicate unless you had a lot of time.

Janine started dancing seductively against Roberto. The rest of us danced on the outskirts. I liked these boys, liked that they didn’t try to get too close. Michelle and I danced closer together. There were also scantily clad professionals, mostly women, who were dancing on a stage in the center of the club.

I felt Janine’s hand on my shoulder. She was pointing up toward the screen with the numbers. I looked at the number pinned to my shirt. My number was flashing across the screen, and there was Michelle’s, as yet no sign of Janine’s. I was really curious about what the letters might say. Michelle couldn’t contain her excitement.

“Come on, G, let’s check out our letters.” Michelle was drunk already, but her enthusiasm was clear and contagious. She pulled me over to the bar for another drink and then onto the stage, where you got the letters. It was mobbed, but we each found a pile of letters for our numbers. I translated the letters for both of us. They had a common theme, 
I saw you from across the floor. You are beautiful, I would like to meet you.
 As I read these to Michelle I put on a fake Italian accent and we both laughed, hysterically.

Janine ran over, pretended to look annoyed.

“I got one of those letters. Roberto is pissed. He’s so Italian.”