The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

Is this romance or ridicule? I let in the voices of my other life, of those who would critique me from their desks or standing over diaper, of those who have forgotten what it feels like to want to die in love because that is how much you want to believe.

I begin to call out to the Signora but I stop because I don't have the word yet and I don't want to sit there and pantomime. Instead, I tear the newspaper into strips and reach over to moisten them in the sink. The papier mache is soft and cool and I am pleased with my solution. Back in my room I catch a look at myself in the bureau mirror and sure enough there is newsprint smeared all over my ass. It is better than shit I suppose. Merde, there's a word I know. It is written everywhere on the walls as graffiti.

The road is a dark river of racing cars. Low black clouds touch down on the modern high rises of the Fascist city. I have not seen Rome from this angle. There are more signs for the Center but I am dubious. I still believe I am facing another city but I am caught at the head of a line of cars in a cloud of buzzing scooters and I cannot pull back. I gamble on the carousel, behind the ears and nose of a thundering steed, straining on the yoke like a gladiator, the oily wake chopping against the floor runners of this screaming chariot.

When we stop for gelato I am opening doors for her and inside she glides past a few tables calling out to her neighbors so they will notice that she is back among the living, that Luna is having a night out, and I oblige her, and take her arm, and smile and buy the ice cream while she takes pains to explain me to everyone with outrageous pronouncements that I don't understand, but that her neighbors, middle-aged widows themselves, all laugh at with their own dirty thoughts, and then we go out with our minds back on ice cream and I turn gracefully toward her home.

I envy the sand and salt their delicious right to be next to her goosey skin. I want to walk behind her and catch the drops of yellow wine that fall from her precipitous curves. I want to wear that tight gray dress of hers with nothing underneath and hear her laughter in my stomach. I want to watch her cross and uncross her legs, twitching like a lady mantis, my sunburned tongue the object of her squirming prison.

I smile at her goofy punk. The clear plastic handbag with red hearts. The bamboo slippers. Her collarbones protruding out of the neck of her jersey like developing fins. Her deep red lips pulled back to her temples. Her ribbed cotton skirt, white and dirty already, hugging, elastic - stretched over her naked hips.

I am trying to be optimistic. I don't want to think about the poor beast laying near death in my arms, and who only this morning slept comfortably, albeit hungry and stinking, but liquid, supple, his cells swimming on the cool white marble steps of a church where no doubt a few McDonalds frittas were tossed his way now and again. So what if he would eventually die of malnutrition or cancer - he was happy. And then I come along and lead him on with soggy bread crusts and a tattered book binding to this - the poor trusting bastard, along with everyone else! When will they learn? Can't they see that it's my fate to be outside the garden? In full view of it, yes - but always outside. I doubt right now that I would scale that wall even if I had the strength. Even before this great thirst I was digging my own well between the living and the dead. All my life I have kept to the dry, solitary pavements, to this barren place. Forgive me for bringing you here Luigi, along with everyone else, to wait as I have waited - remotely, patiently, thick-skulled and lifeless - with a strong back and a squeezing fist for a heart. Finally we come to a stone bench. The lightest dapple of shade, an errant twig, has grown from the wall. Luigi collapses on his side, sprawled out. He is panting hard. I wonder if I have killed him too. Youth, hope, health, property - I have destroyed them all. There was Hazel who died at 30 from complications of our seven year relationship and her subsequent drug habit. And Tara, her mother, who had to watch as she let go of her life. There is Cassi laid emotionally barren, youth beside her now, still waiting for me. There are my parents without grandchild or daughter-in-law. There are the alcoholic tremors that I helped to cultivate in my youngest brother. There are all the dead and unborn from all the senseless rooting and scarring one-nights. And this is the short list - the one that fits on a flashcard in my wallet; the one that I see every morning before I open my eyes; it is my Pieta, my Ave Maria, summoning god and sermons whenever I enter a chapel.

She feels weak when she lets him invade her like this, weak when he worms his way into her thoughts and she is disturbed when she realizes it will take a knife to cut him out. Already it is not a matter of walking away, of saying so. She thinks about him much of the day, and then at night - why did he have to tell her about the parties that he makes with himself?

I descend the broad basalt steps into the Viminale, past yesterday and the day before, and stop for a drink from one of the hydrants that flow continuous sweet water from the aqueduct. I let it roll on my tongue as I walk in the shade of two thousand years.

But there was Melodie with her gold rims tossed aside, grieving for it, begging me, all set to swallow my head if I didn't comply, and let me remind you that we were laying in the scree and sand and broken glass and cigarette butts of a civilization gone mad...

I might have seen it coming - the hours at that cafe looking out over Cavour at all the forking traffic; turning over my shoulder to watch those steps and that stretch of cobbled street between the sunken buildings and her metro stop. But how could I have known that weeks and months later I'd position myself, elbows up on the overlooking wall, so that I might see her pass, knowing her work schedule, meanwhile pretending to travel and enjoy myself on a trip that never really took place?

She moved off and sat down on a bench on the right bank and called her man. It was late, much later than she had originally told him. He would be suspicious, she expected as much. She also told me that she was determined to lie to him. But, determination aside, she had been dreading this call most of the evening. And now that we have crossed the river together, that was something, she said, that could not be undone.