Chapter 19 from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

19.
In the morning I go out for my coffee and decide to call Berto. I don't want to keep him waiting. He assured me that everything was fine as we left it. I don't want any gaps I said. He said to come in a couple of days after my holiday.

Back at the hotel Charlie tries to spar with me a bit. I pat him on the head, change into my trunks and walk down to the lido. I don't plan another move until the sun goes down.

I've paid for an umbrella and have relaxed into my chair with Pasolini and a beer. It's early too, before eight probably, but I'm celebrating my decision. I like the sound of it already. That I should have an apartment and a Rome address, even for a short while. I picture myself opening shutters in the morning, writing letters, watering houseplants. All those things I never do at home.
In the book I pick up with Lelo and Tomassino, the ragazzi - they are coming home to their outskirts in the dawn, back from Rome and some all night, early morning mischief - drinking, stealing, spying on whores, upsetting the apple cart everywhere they go - and now they are in a hurry for some reason. It is a long walk to Tibertina so they decide to grab a moving tram only when they do, Lelo misses and slides underneath, getting his legs crushed.

At once, it is the blackest picture of all for this boy and for us, and Pasolini is a master at painting this hopeless poverty and ignorance into our hearts. Then somehow he turns the story around for us, into something beautiful, deepened by this senseless tragedy. The life of one boy becomes a testament to the spirit of a people, and everywhere the world over you realize this same miracle has outlived governments, has outlasted civilizations, has created and destroyed entire cultures because survival is always more than dumb luck or stubborn arithmetic.

I look up from my book and consider the view across the sea toward the Balkans. It's hard to imagine that they too have discovered this same will and patience, one by one, boys and men and women, sifting through the destruction of their lives. It's hard to imagine anything but serenity on this flat sea.

I see that Antonio is trying to cheer me up this morning. He is the young porter, my new friend here at Zara Beach, and he has arranged a fine bit of scenery just for me. As it is, he couldn't have placed her better - a mere two umbrellas away -and if she were any closer I would be struck to stone.

She is real class this one. Tight head to toe like a bullet. I spotted her earlier coming down the beach in a gray body dress with the faintest of lines underneath and you know how it is when they move like that, first thing in the morning, before the muscles stretch.

She stopped, lowered her sunglasses and surveyed the beach. At this hour there's not much to see - a few gray whales dug in here and there and myself, the only person under fifty. Whatever she was looking for I assume she didn't find. She turned and left and I was sitting there feeling pretty grateful for that even, for the turn and walk back, when I heard Carlo's salty tenor crackling over the loudspeaker paging Antonio who was asleep in one of the pontoons.

Antonio jumped up, catching a rope around his ankle and dragging it behind him. In a moment he came down the beach with that tight wonder in tow and a little peckerwood of his own I'm sure and the look of her this time might have ripped my sack off if I hadn't taken care of that yesterday in the hotel shower.

They are speaking about something - which chair, I don't know, the angle of the sun - and then they stop right in front of me. Antonio locks his hands to his hips, feet dug in, frozen to the spot. She bends away from him and brushes off her chair. Still turning away, with Antonio still standing there, she begins to peel off that long gray tube working it from the top down.

She stands there, heaving that thing off of her and breathing now, free, like an uncorked bottle, and I can see what that glove has been hiding and it is better than the preview even.

She shoots from the sand like a water spout. Her smooth curves dive into the clefts of her womanhood and her skin is drawn up into tiny brown whirlpools.

When she gets down to it, right there in front of me, I can't believe my eyes. The leopard skin thong is too much. The long painted toes are a bonus, the hidden tip of chocolate in a waffle cone. The freckles the merest hint of modesty, the pudency of a small town innocent.

She settles into her lounger with a book and the sun, pointing herself my way and I am finished on the spot. I keep the Pasolini book open on my lap for posture but the pages are like white heat and under its cover, firm to the binding, I am already aching and stiff.

Her legs are always going: raising her knee, pointing her toe, lifting, crossing, uncrossing - her shins knocking against each other like starving chopsticks. Its almost like she's holding onto a piss but the rhythm is something else, unevenly seductive, deliberate, driving itself into my brain and all the while I'm waiting for that brilliant solo to leap from my lips - sun, sand, sea, or sex - there's got to be a hook somewhere besides my shorts.

I manage to get up and go for a much needed swim. I lay there drifting over the stillness, castaway in the slight ripples like a styrofoam peanut. There is a brilliant and glistening serenity here because it is that moment before. It is to be on the verge of something, to linger on that flat sea of no return; to be lying under an entire sky of her, waiting to breathe again, waiting to die, waiting to drift and be pulled under and carried off by the deep night below.

On my way back up the beach I imagine that she is looking at me. I suck it in a little and hoist my shoulders. I am coming straight for her in my new Calzedonia swim trunks that I bought in Rome even though they were too tight. Now I'm glad I listened to that pretty sales girl because I feel big and I realize that's what the netted lining is for, to pull all your looseness together and give you some heft - and so here I come, all bunched up and within easy conversation range and hey, a little smile I think, a flicker of hope and then the usual swarm of doubt. Maybe I imagined it.

I veer off and walk my dripping ass back to chair number 36, stubbing my toe as I try to kick the sand off my lounger without dirtying my hands. Moments later it is swollen to the size and color of a ripe fig.

No sooner am I seated in my new agony than she is up and headed for the water. I give it a few minutes - I want to make sure she's going. She is. I spring up and my toe sends a jolting reminder that crumples me like a wino's sack. I hurry down to the water trying to hide my limp. Here she comes, done already! Some dip, she is barely wet. We are about to pass within that violable range of one another. I decide it is by her design. This gives me what I need. All right yankee doodle, I say to myself, let her have it.

"Next time just ask and I'll bring you a cup of water from the sea.

"Cosa? What?, she said, stopped now, adjusting to my english.

"Sorry, I said, "non parlo, sono Americano, and her large freckled lips are moving with mine intimately for just a split second.

"Sorry but you don't have an American face. What are you doing in Pescara?

"I don't know.

"You certainly picked a good spot.

"Really? I realize I'm leering at her but I can't stop.

"Where else would you find an English teacher relaxing at the sea?

"I guess you could say I'm the luckiest man on beach.

She ignores the flattery and this takes care of my testosterone problem.

We say a few more words but since I am going in and she is coming out, to keep up appearances, she returns to her tanning bed and I fling myself into the Adriatic to cool off. When I come back I am ready for her.

"So Paola, what kind of face do I have then since you mentioned it?

"Why italian of course. I thought you were italian the whole time.

Well there, the cat was out. She noticed me earlier. I quit trying so hard to flatten my stomach.

"What about you - are you all alone on your holiday?

"No holiday I'm afraid. I have a class in fact, here, this afternoon. I teach all over the region. Tomorrow I have to leave very early to administer exams in the town where I come from. Sulmona, do you know it?

"I've read about it. It's in Abruzzo right, hidden in the mountains - the ancient town where Ovid was born.

"You make it sound much more interesting. To me it is small, very small and to have to spend another weekend there during summer giving tests - well, it is not so hot at least - but I much prefer the sea.

"I was thinking I might explore the area but now I don't know.

"Well of course you should. In fact, if you come this weekend we will certainly run into each other. There is nothing else to do but go out to a few places at night and everybody sees everybody there.

I don't know what to make of this sideways invitation but my moral compass tells me not to push. She's got her duties and priorities. She's a professional and I've got enough going already. Still, she is a magnificent woman -smiling, lingering, keeping up the chit-chat- and all the while below the surface I tremble to imagine how I would handle her.

Finally, almost thankfully, we say goodbye, bidding to see each other again and I watch her walk back up the beach - the earlier scene played out in reverse - the cork being put back into the bottle whose contents have been sweetened by the sea air. I tip my eyes after her all the way to the sidewalk and watch her shiver and gasp under the cold outdoor shower.

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.

Yes, I want, I want, I want. It is an ugly chant after a while, to always be wanting, to never be satisfied, to never have what it is you need, to drink it by the drop or by the gallon and never quench your thirst; always, but never when you need it, often, but never enough; to be flat on your back in the dead sea looking up at the sopping clouds as they pass and the sun is pulling sand across your eyelids.

What do you want? The hot sirocco blows a hole in your head. What do you want? The greedy sea holds you like clay. What do you want? It is an ugly question to have to answer sometimes.