Chapter 18 from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

18.
The next day I board a bus for Tivoli which is only a few miles east, through the countryside. My idea is to see Hadrian's Villa and then press on but I miss the stop and get sidetracked in town wandering the medieval center. While I'm in line to visit the magnificent gardens and fountains at the Villa d'Estes, a priest explodes through the heavy wood doors of an adjoining church and grabs two boys by their scruff, alternately kicking them in the seat. A few of the other boys, coming to the rescue, shoot orange plastic bullets at his black frock and run screaming into the antechamber. The priest is flustered and loses his grip on the two squirming boys. They run. He follows. Dust and commotion everywhere, like a cartoon and this is Tivoli - a side trip for bus tourists from Rome and a cruise spot for the young hicks from the country where they come to sit around on their parked scooters looking remarkably like Guess or Prada models as they drink their carbonated fruit drinks and whistle at girls. It is a town in which to buy brilliantine and film, which is exactly what I do, on my way to the train station.

Hiking along in the heat, down the deserted midday streets, I feel like I'm carrying another person on my shoulders and that is what it is to carry such a load through a small town like this - you feel double, like your taking up too much space, especially on buses or trams, but even walking through doors to public restrooms and tourist offices, places that expect this of you, places that have seen everything.

When I enter the one room train station it is no different - it is just that, one yellowish room, an elbow counter, a bulletproof window, a man in a chair, remarkably at a computer, and behind him, outside, two tracks, one coming in, one going out.
As always I try in my very best Italian to order a one way ticket to Pescara, on the Adriatic seaside, but the man refuses to sell me a ticket for a reason I cannot understand. He is frustrated by my insistence and then he acts like he doesn't hear me a second time. He won't even look. He has gone mute on me. I stand back and wait for someone else to enter the station, to test the theory, to see if it was me or him.

A black shawl and suit couple eventually come in and he won't sell them a ticket either. Now I'm getting mad. How did this guy keep a job? But wait, they don't seem angry. No, they are listening and nodding their heads. Suddenly the words flip in my brain. Oh yes, fuoco, binario, no treni - fire track no trains. I even saw the fire earlier as it climbed up the hillside toward the scenic overlook in town. Two and two. I'm back. Apologize for the man's soul. Break a full sweat, a sweat for two, under my heavy double again across town to search for a room. If only I could put my pack down and run some cool water I'd be happy.

Some nice girls in a restaurant write down the name of a B and B with directions and I'm spending more than I should but I am stuck and hot and carrying a lot of dead weight and now I have to shit. Two flights up, big room, not nice just big, no toilet paper and no phone connection to the front desk either. I need it now, not when, so I squeeze it all back down the stairs to the front desk and I swear the woman is amused.

Carta igienica, I plead. She makes me repeat myself. It's a lot to go through, considering, and I'm thinking it's still not too late to get on a bus and go back to Rome because I'm coming off badly, very badly and I've got the summer ahead of me and I should make a better start than this.

The next morning I flip a coin. Call YaYa but her man is there. Buy a long distance phone card and there's old reliable Cassi. Did I check my e-mail lately she wants to know. Not for several days. Well surprise! It's all set. She's locked down a plane ticket and is renewing her passport with some imminent travel passport agency since she didn't have the normal five weeks to process it through the post office. I guess I don't sound very pleased.

"Huh? Oh, I'm sorry, so you fly into Rome¦ Where will you want to go?

"I'd like to spend some time in there then go to Naples and Amalfi and Vesuvius and then to Venice....

"Wait a minute... That's a lot of ground in ten days - a big chunk of the country and you're flying into the middle. Into my little secret I'm thinking. I wanted Rome all to myself. "Why don't we start at either end?

"Maybe I could fly into Milan but the prices aren't as flexible.

"Ok. Look we'll map it out later. I'll figure out the trains and what we can fit in. I hear Venice is crowded now and will only get worse because of the biennial.

Cassi was silent.

"Hey what's wrong?

"You don't want me to come at all do you?

"Why would you say that? Of course I do.

"You sound funny that's all. You're being impatient, like you're already bothered and now you're cutting Venice out and trying to finish it off before we even get started.

"It's not that at all. I'm already here. What should I do in the meantime - go to places I don't think you'll want to go to? We could have worked this out a month ago, before I left.

"I tried but you wouldn't say when you wanted me to come.

"How could I know that? I didn't know where I would be and I still don't. The only thing is to make a date and come and we'll make the most of it.

"See, there you go again. Like it's a chore that you have to make the most of. Forget it.

"You're being impossible. I'd just like to have some idea of what I should do in the meantime. I can go north or south from here, it just depends on what we're going to do.

"Ok you're getting worked up. I'm not talking about it anymore. I'll let you know if I'm even going to come. That's a lot of money and a lot of bullshit to deal with just to find out you don't want me there. Please don't do me any favors. Just be honest and save me the trouble now. Seriously, I'd rather....

"I get it, I cut in. "Look, I want you to come, okay?

I knew I didn't sound very convincing.

"Let me check with my father's relatives and see what their holiday schedule is like. I'll call you in a couple of days.

"What should I do? The prices are going up every day.

"Whatever you want. Buy the ticket.

"What do you want?

Not again. Thankfully the card actually ran out of minutes. I hung up the phone. This time there's a different guy behind the bulletproof glass. I lean in on the counter. A Pescara, I say, solo andata. One way. My grandfather used to mention a place near there, in Abruzzo. Chieti, I remember.

Maybe he was in the hospital there after the mortar hit him. The guide book says it's an industrial dump. I'll see it from the train. If I like what I see I can get off. I was trying to get this idea across to Cassi. With her it was going to happen the other way for ten days right in the middle. I just wasn't excited and that wasn't about to change. Traveling alone, that was exciting. It was better. Nobody else. Just go and meet people because you have to or else you'll die inside. No group to reside in. No compromise. No challenge to what you want to do or where you want to go. Just get on and off. Flip the coin if you have to make a game of it. And you can be hungry and uncomfortable and tired and no one's going to lay that on you.

But don't you get lonely baby? Yes. And you stand tongue-tied at the edge of this strange world and you listen. And then you start to talk to that man you've been carrying around on your back, your double. This is freedom if you can handle it. Those who have trouble are the ones who think freedom is something else, who equate it with spending, going out to the movies, any movie, fast food at your fingertips, your choice of tires and beer and toilet paper. Freedom is not needing any of it. Just going up and down like Job said. But we've all gotten the speech before - at some time or another someone has laid it on us - from Buddha to Madonna and as usual it rings empty in our ears.

Ten days right in the middle. Of course it will be wonderful. It's just bad timing. I'm just starting to get along without the melancholy. I don't want the sight of a dog to soften me up every time. I want to look at a nude at the Borghese the other way, without picturing Cassi - nymph perfect, curving sunlight through the hem of her pussy field - imposed on it. When I find some beautiful detail that is not mentioned in the guidebook I don't want to have the conversation in my head, pointing it out to her, wondering too if she has noticed.

No sooner have I been weaned than I will be at the nipple again for ten days. And what then after that? Another three, four, five, six weeks, eight weeks and I am back in Los Angeles facing the rut and answering questions. As though I could sum it up like a few days at the shore while the bartender makes our drinks.

It seems simple enough I guess - ten days and then she is gone. But she'll leave something behind, something I can't use. Something in the air hanging over me like a dirty umbrella, and that is America - that's what she'll bring. A roof over your head, always, that crummy roof even when you are outside under the stars miles away from it all you can never get far enough away, you can never get out from under it.

I buy a ticket all the way east to Pescara, to the Adriatic. It is so good to be moving, away from Tivoli, away from Rome even and YaYa, and away from that telephone call, that I would take this train into the sea and keep going to Serbia.

Maybe it's the oxygen up here, but I am riveted to the landscape with my chin hanging on the window. The Abruzzo is the dream of the miniature train collector gone beanstalk colossal. The train seems to float and sway on a tight rope through miles of elevation between the humps of the Apennini. The green mountains and valleys drift by under the trestle bridges like lumbering clouds, and the castles gleam like scale-models from their rugged peaks of white stone.

We crash through mile long tunnels in abrupt darkness. All over the train is sealed from the concussion as the passengers slide up their windows, and just in time, as the last weary passenger has guided his sticky window to silence, the train is snapped back out into the living, and windows are dropped, and fresh air and chatter resumes, and people are in the sunny aisles again breathing and enjoining one another.

It is better than any roller coaster and I take it all the way in. Neither Avezzano or Chieti invite me to stop. Chieti is modern and falling down already. Crumbling block warehouses line the tracks. Some old machinery. Piles of concrete and steel. It looks like the aftermath of something, of a war that finished yesterday instead of sixty years ago. It also looks like the town in Pennsylvania I grew up in because of its color, because of its gray pallor, because of the despair along the tracks, at the edges of town advancing like a mass cancer.

Somewhere along the way this region soaked up some blood of mine and I can feel it in the distance, like a relative you never met calling from a dusty postcard.

As the train pulls in I slump under my pack and am hit with the summer heat of the coast. I leave the station with no bearing other than my own watery compass and instinctively head for the horizon. I take note of hotels along the way. At first glance Pescara is a horrid little town, a preserved 1960's resort, and I feel like I am here by mistake. I walk like a ghost through the heat. My face withers and my eyes wince against the glare of sidewalks and awnings and shop windows. Everything is on fire. There is no shade, not a single rib of it, out here in the open with the sun boring everywhere.

And then I see it - flat and placid and infinite. A limpid mirror. The Adriatic. It hardly looks refreshing or even wet - just a blue sheet of glass as far as anyone can see but it doesn't take me long to drop pack and shoes and have a bath right there on the spot. I lay on my back in the water and feel the sun toasting my forehead. I decide to stay at least through the night and a morning swim.

I drain back into my street shoes as I leave the beach. My roman blisters throb against wet insoles. Two blocks off the lido it is that much hotter when I step into the office of a hotel. The place looks deserted, in transition. There are construction materials tossed around and a bare reception counter. Everything is covered by half an inch of plaster dust.

I start to move off when a commotion erupts from around a corner and down a hallway. It sounds like a race horse starting out of the gate. Instinctively I retreat backwards through the door. I just manage it closed when Charlie, a 100 pound slobbering blur of muscle and teeth, becomes airborne and crashes into it headfirst. Like he has done too often perhaps, he springs the push bar in the middle of the glass panel with his jaw. The door in turn bites my nose when it slams open. Blood splatters and the dumb beast is laps it up. I'm done once he gets a good taste. I take the offensive, throwing off my pack. I'm ready to go head to head with this Hun but he grins and pants and licks the hot sidewalk instead.

Charlie's owner appears behind him on flat feet smoking a long cigarette and smacks him on the head. He withdraws. She is half of him physically and, as you can see, emotionally.

"He's a puppy of course - he doesn't know. He thought he was protecting me.

She looks like she has just come out of a black-light cave, all ninety of her drained of blood, and all of her extremities either dyed or painted black. I have a mental picture of Charlie protecting her. I look down and he's sitting there with his wand out, like he was reading my mind.

"I'm afraid we're not quite open yet and of course it is summer. It's been a mess but my husband and I have just taken over and so you see...but wait...we do have one room mostly finished. You can see it if you like. I'll have to get the key. I was just having a coffee when you came, would you like one?

She leaves me alone in the entryway with Charlie who follows her with his wet nose and eyes but stays seated.

"Good dog, I say, and I'm wondering how to say it in Italian when he jerks up again. I drop my handkerchief hand to cover my vital organs. He's following something out on the street with his ears, sensing. He gets up and breaks into a full wag, sending spit into the dusty reaches. His owner, the other half, is at the door. He comes in and greets Charlie. He doesn't speak English. I point to the hallway where his wife disappeared and he nods. We smile at Charlie some more and when his wife comes back there is a discussion while I have my coffee.

It's settled. I'm their first guest. As such I am honored. I take the TV remote and the key upstairs, push the two child's beds together, sack a pillow over my head and sleep until it is night.

I wake up and poke my head out the door. The bathroom is all the way down the hall. No sudden moves in the open. I'm pretty sure that Charlie was out there trying to scratch his way in while I slept, except that in my delirium he was Cerberus instead of a regular rottie. Now I can hear him downstairs sliding around on his toenails, changing direction, his bark echoing, his mistress sneezing and laughing. I make a few loud noises with the chair and the door and the window shade. I don't want to surprise him all over again and I don't trust that waif to control him once he is locked in on something.

I open the door again. I hear the air whip through his flapping jowl and then stop. Some gentle words from the cave. A television playing. Water dripping. A solid mass slaps against the cool marble. I pad out, remembering my Roosevelt feet and stick.

The shower is hot and clean. I smell the sea through the open window. I try to let go of a little and give it a good hats off to the italian gothic as I lean against the newly installed tiles but it is no use. I keep coming back to Rome. There's no payoff without her. It's like cooking for one. All you're left with is a pile of dirty dishes.

I go down to the street to call her. I walk past a row of dinnertime cafes. I can't stop sweating. Within minutes I am suffocating and my shirt is soaked through. I don't understand how everyone can be so well composed sitting over their steaming seafood pastas with their sparkling wines. Their nonchalance puts me off.

The awnings. The potted plants. The crystal glasses. The tanned men with their gold wristwatches and the women with their easy laughter. I don't believe they can be so comfortable. I don't trust it. No one seems to sweat, or mind the heat. How can that be when the greedy sea draws it's inspiration from me like a giant sponge?

At first she sounds hopeless. Her man has finally left. He's gone to his mother. There was another shouting scene. They threw things. The neighbors pounded at the door. YaYa told the fat christian woman that her god was a pig and to mind her own business. "I even pushed her back into the hall, she said proudly, perking up a bit.

"Where are you? You never called back, she asks.

"I thought it was a bad idea. You need some time. Anyway, I came to Pescara.

"Maybe you're right but nothing is happening. Is it nice there? I hear it stinks.

"Yes it does. And it's miserably hot for the sea. I just didn't know where else to go right now. You said to stay close.

"That's what I want to tell you. I'm trying to plan a little something for myself in a few days. I have a friend in Bologna. You'd like her. I'm coming to stay with her Friday night when I finish work and then Saturday night I will come back. It's not that far from Rome or Pescara. Do you have an interest in Bologna perhaps? I would like to see you. I know it's wrong but I must do something. I'm going crazy here. I will kill him soon if I don't leave.

"I believe you.

"So will you come?

"I don't know for sure. My plans are changing. I might go south. Someone is coming soon.

"And what did you tell her?

"What do you mean?

"Well how do you feel about it?

"I'm not sure. What could I say?

"When she comes you can bring her to the bar. I wouldn't mind having a talk with her.

"Sure and bring him along too. We'll have a picnic.

"But we're not even. I have all the troubles and you get to go.

"You knew what you were in for.

"But I still don't like it. I hope you can come to Bologna. I would like to show you around and we can stay with my friend. I told her all about you and she arranged for us to take the bedroom. Her roommate will be gone.

I'm ready to start walking only I keep it to myself. A lot could happen in the next few days, especially on her end. Tomorrow she could be reunited after one of her long talks and fifty joints with the old man. No, I should take it easy and not look forward to anything, maybe even kick up a little fun here. If nothing else drop into full sloth - eat and waddle to the beach - and check in with her later.