Chapter 22 from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

I phone Cassi from the station. I need to compartmentalize my indiscretion right away, before the guilt takes over, and a phone call is a good normalizer, especially from six thousand miles. Besides, it's been one thing after another today and I'm leery of going one step further. Cassi is my barometer. If I can hold it together on the phone with her I'm all right. At least she'll tell me if I am spouting into the receiver.

I get the answering machine - if ever there is an opportunity to deliver some unfettered nonsense - and as I start in at length with time of day, my coordinates, the visual lay around me and the supposed phantoms in her bed that she picked up at the bar last night, she answers.

"I was still asleep.
"Yeah well, it's a little late. You sure you were sleeping?
"What do you want? Did you call just to harass me?
"No - just checking in.
I think to myself that I'm about to level with her, to let her off the hook once and for all.
"Where are you now?
"Florence - I just pulled in. How's everything?
"Ok I guess. Busy at the shop.

Her boutique is in an up and coming boho neighborhood. We used to run it together. She sold retro and fetish fashions, art, lingerie, novelty sex toys and smut books. The longer I was gone, by her account, the more cock she added to the place.

"You have the street fair next month.
"Don't remind me. I'm sad about it already.
"You knew I wasn't going to be there.
"Oh shit what time is it? I forgot I have to go in early today. Your fuckin boy is keeping me up all night chewin on his ass and running outside 'bar, bar, baruuuuuue, baruuuuuuuue'
"And you want kids?

I've been playing with the wooden bracelet in my pocket and it's just come untangled. Unconsciously I bring it up to my lips and inhale the perfume of her sex mingled with old sheets and dishwater. It brings her back to me in an instant, ill-timed and yet perfect. I slip it on and hold it there under my nose.

"That reminds me - I sent you an email last night. I'm sorry if it rambles on but I was drunk and feeling sad.
She has that tone so I don't even ask.
"Ok, I'll check it out., I say, normalizing her. "First I have to get situated. It's late and it's pretty crowded here and I don't have a room yet. Wish me luck.
"You don't want to know what I wish for.
"You're right. Ok, I'll call in a couple.
"Miss you too.
"Give me a chance at least.
"............well?
"I miss you. And the dogs too.
"Did you hear that Shelley? Your daddy says he misses us. Boo hoo.
"Alright. I gotta go.
"Ok, I'll talk to you whenever you decide to call again.
"Or I'll see you in Rome, I said.
"Not if I see you first.
Click.

A drunken email. Great. I know what's coming. Not a Dear John mind you, but some sort of exacting reassessment breathed new life by our six thousand mile separation. Already this had not been the best of days - locked in a bathroom, facing a limp dick that couldn't, a marriage proposal and now this. So why not? Besides, we've been dancing around the issues for years. Marriage, kids, commitment - the usual bit. It was always there and I was never ready for it.

I need some night air. I throw my pack into a locker, buy a ticket on the red eye to Rome, and hit the street for a bottle of wine.

Florence is set up like an exhibit. That is, until you walk around behind the Duomo and discover that back there the show has been over for centuries. Back there the famed church is black with soot and held upright by cables and scaffolding. There it sits - squat, dejected and belching - and you can sense what it means to outlive your usefulness.

But there's something here all right, put away deep like a bad memory, like something burned at the stake. Especially late at night when the place clears out a little and you're drunk enough to ignore the street lights. Now you can imagine the halo of the renaissance, the solitude of candle stubs burning in low-roof attics, fraternities of men secreted away in basements or workshops around a single wooden table, and the salons and parlors of the wealthy with their velvet austerity and their lace manners.

The graffiti I find on a church column tells a better story. "Dante was here, it says in heavy metal lettering and today people can come to eat at McDonald's, climb a human ladder to the campanile, make videos of David's buttocks and lay farts in the bapistry and never see that lingering halo.

The best thing to do is drink a bottle of wine and stumble about on the mean streets until you find a little alleyway of night called the Piazza della Signoria. There you may nod to Perseus and his medusa lunchbox, tip your hat and offer your coat to the Sabine woman, and take a moonlight stroll between the Uffizi buildings where those statues are housed on either side as you glance up at the alcoves between the repeating vaults.

You can stop and praise each and every one of them for no one is there to remind you that you are a drunk American stumbling over the basalt cobbles, going from bumper to bumper like a bowling ball. And they are all there - all the dead ones, the great ones, buried in the very stone of their achievements.

Giotto, Donatello, Boccacio, Dante, Leonardo, Petrarch, Cellini, Machievelli, Brunelleschi, Giambologna, and all the rest of them. "Salute!, you say. "Buona Sera Signori. "Bravissimo!, and you bow and quietly consider what you remember of their lives with disbelief, getting more and more disgusted with how small your life is. You really want to know how the fuck they did it and what it was like to them, and you end up with the consolation that somehow this is a different race, one that passed us by a long time ago and then left without telling anyone.

I walk with head down balanced on wine legs back toward Signoria and stop to listen to some string musicians sitting under an acoustic vault along the Uffizi. They are doing a really nice job picking through bluegrass. The improvisation, once everyone is aboard, migrates into an insane double time and they really wind it up for several verses. It's exhausting just to hear it. I slump down next to a black Labrador, petting him and halfway smiling at his owner, but she is caught up in the crossfire volley of banjos busting Yankee Doodle Dandy out in quadruple time. I stand up and my head is spinning like some sawdust jug-junkie and so I start back to the train station to catch the overnighter.

The fresh air puts other ideas in my head once I am moving again. I follow a growing racket down a dark street and walk into this place only I can't believe my eyes. Here was the chink I was looking for behind the Duomo and I knew it was here somewhere the whole time - it just took a bottle of wine and some stupid luck to let my eyes see it. Yes and finally here they were - a bar full of drunken students from mediocre American colleges singing along with their father's music and spending their father's money. In this case it was Sympathy for the Devil but take your pick, the jukebox was loaded.

I stood there for a moment against the bar, stricken, paralyzed with homesickness and a tide of red washing over me, but mostly just drunk with incomprehension. I swirled from face to face, all of them masks of the black death, each one cruder than the last. I couldn't understand it - why would you bring all that with you? If I had a car I would have taxied each and every one of them to the Ponte Vecchio and helped them off into the Arno before they brought a quarantine down on the entire city and ruined everything.

Just before dawn I wake up on the steps of a church next to a statue of Dante Alighieri. There is a little brown dog asleep under my arm and he smells like he's been living inside a sarcophagus. As I stand up he lifts his eyes like Shelley does back home when I get out of bed, and when I start down the steps, he gets up. A half block later he is still with me, back a few paces and wagging his skinny tail. And so it goes through the early morning streets of Florence as we cross the Ponte Vecchio, past the Uffizi, the piazza, and the university - all the way to the steps of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, once an actual orphanage, where I threaten to leave him, except that the few others who are loitering at this hour have seen us come together and so I cannot.

We pass through the empty bookstalls and I toss a tattered binding for him a few times. The book was written by Luigi di something or other. I can't decipher the worn title so I eventually forget it along with the binding in the gutter. But the name Luigi sticks. It sounds like a good Florentine name, a name you can hang a few public works on. Luigi di Firenze - my new boon companion! I lead him back to the area around the station where we set about looking for a pensione.

It seems reasonable to at least have a hot shower and a bed before I make any decisions. I call Berto back in Rome and he is fine with the slight delay. He can use another day or two and besides, he agrees, Florence is not to be missed.

I'm developing a plan for Luigi, a good one, I think. First I have to get rid of that stink of death that is on him or no one will ever take him. I'll clean him up, make him presentable, and find him a new Florentine owner, preferably young and female, so I might have a little fun into the bargain. Meanwhile I'll get my dog fix - he even looks like Shelley - and a reasonable one at that because I could see that he was a straight shooter. Bright and faithful, and a good average size for these bustling over-polished streets.

I empty a travel size bottle of shampoo on his greasy coat and scrub him with an old sock. To keep him happy I give him soggy bread crusts but he seems more interested in the sock which he snags in his under-bite. We finish the bath and I throw him out onto the balcony to dry off in the sun.

Next I take him down into the street for a coffee. He gets half a biscotti and some milk. I'd say he's doing alright. No leash required. When I go in he sits and waits. When I come out, there he is, just where I left him. When he eats he is efficient and gentle. Not a crumb leaves his mouth. This one will be easy. Who wouldn't want such a dog? He's already trained it would seem. I might even be able to sell him - not that he's a breed or anything. But people can see a well-behaved dog is going cost them less down the road of re-covering furniture, and digging up flower beds, not to mention the high cost of footwear and lingerie these days. And let's face it - some things aren't about the money. You can't put a premium on loyalty, for instance, and this dog apparently has enough for both of us.

Meanwhile, Luigi and I decide that a brisk walk across town is what we need and so we cross back over the Ponte Vecchio where Luigi is immediately set to his traces from early this morning when the stalls were all closed. I have to stop him from lifting a leg on a particular jeweler who seems to recognize him. I apologize and compliment the man on his gold - very brilliant I say, and shiny. Fancy words in english sure, but I give all the credit to Luigi for showing some restraint.

Just to the other side of the bridge Luigi and I slip off down a quiet side street. He's got his gelato cup snagged between his teeth and I've got my weak heart and half a mind to call Cassi or YaYa, I don't know which.

The streets are narrow over here. This is the older, less stately, Florence, cramped and residential with small owner-operator boutiques. It occurs to me that we're window shopping during siesta. It's further proof that whatever I need they just don't have.

And then we see her. In fact we just miss her, stepping out into the street, as she buzzes by on her scooter and pulls to the curb in front of us. She's attempting to back her scooter into a tight spot between two others. Of course Luigi doesn't care but I see an opportunity and so I continue toward her.

She's hung up on the other scooter's directional only she doesn't see why it's not fitting. She just keeps at it - blindly ramming backwards into that space, straddling her seat for footing - and every time, as she plants her shiny platform shoes, her gray skirt rides a little higher on her thigh.

I take her in slowly, admiring the pressure behind the buttons of her blouse as her shoulders and breasts strain at the handlebars. She accidentally opens the accelerator and a curtain of blue smoke encircles us. Quite a show I might say, from where I stand, a few feet drop dead in front of her now, gawking.

When she finally notices me she trains her full-face visor on me and stops her noisy struggle. All that wondrous flesh relaxes against the vinyl seat. I can see between two buttonholes that she is tan and braless underneath. I raise my index finger and give her the international "un momento, fetching a quick look at those bronzed cups glowing behind the expensive pink linen.

I walk to the back of the culprit scooter and lift it. She watches me in her mirror and I make quick work of it, laying it aside for her, and then I grab the back of her seat and guide her in. I can't help but notice a soaking trail of perspiration that must be tickling the top of her ass. It's glistening there just below the cut of her blouse, pooling momentarily against a brown dimple in her back, before it travels through a forest of tiny sun-bleached hairs and disappears below the waist of her skirt.

She turns off the engine and removes her helmet, releasing a wave of brown sea grass, parting around a clear, young face.

"Grazie mille. Oh the voice. It fills my flea bitten ears with warm honey.

"Prego Signorina, con Piacere. With pleasure I say, smiling, offering my hand.

She straightens her look out, twisting her skirt front ways and tugging the bottom hem of her blouse. She gestures across the street at a little boutique and says something I don't understand. I gather she is returning from work, late from siesta perhaps. She has that exquisitely thrown together look of last minute panic, sweat and all, and I imagine her getting dressed, rising from the bed of her lover, her pink bosom still warm and reluctant to go and he is laying there with his purple jackhammer, smiling at her, arms behind his head as she smoothes the wrinkles in her skirt and steps into her shoe straps grabbing at the wall for support.

She takes my hand like it's a damp overused towel in the bathroom of a party and I've forgotten why I'm holding it out to her.
"Non capisco, I say. "I'm sorry....dispiace.
She pours some more honey in my ears and turns to cross the street. There are people lined up at the door to the boutique, taking in the Luigi show, whom I had forgotten for a moment. He's cleaning out the inside of a gelato cup, chasing it all over the sidewalk with his chin and snarling at it when it rolls away from him.

She leaves me standing there with my damp towel still extended and crosses over the street on those magic heels. She undoes the lock and lets the three shoppers pass ahead of her and then barks a little something at Luigi. When she looks back across the street at me, I wave and blow her a kiss. It seems like the perfect thing to do.

I stand there a moment longer and watch her through the glare of the shop window. Somebody, somewhere, must be sick of her shit. Maybe purple jackhammer is getting rid of her. Who knows? It's an ugly consolation - it really is, but what else can I do?

She's at the counter now laying things out for one of the customers. I don't know if she can see me - what with the sun bouncing off that window - but I don't really care. There's no way to give this a reasonable twist. I look down at the scooter for a trace of her and detect what I imagine to be a little thigh sweat, but it is quickly drying on the hot black seat.

I look over at Luigi with his gelato cup. Nothing like a happy tongue. He is the ultimate inspiration I suppose. I look around quickly. Sure enough, there are people about - shopkeepers, tourists, regular peds - and there is a chance of being caught and yet I think, what of it? I mean, is it really against the law to go around licking things in public? Maybe I should lick a car bumper first to throw them off. A few door knobs, light switches - you know those guys. It's funny when they do it. I ask you, what makes a door knob funny but not the seat of a scooter?

Well anyhow I do it. I do it because the seat is drying and Luigi is getting dangerously close to the intersection with that cup of his. I fumble in my purse and drop a cigarette between the two scooters. As I retrieve it to my mouth, bending back up, I take a broad flat lick at the spot on the seat next to my head, half covering my face with hand and cigarette and instinctively squinting my eyes to become less visible.

Straightening up, I feel new veins throbbing in my shoes. I smack my tongue against the ribs of my mouth, squeezing out the essence of her. I look down at the seat to the very spot where here sexed up ass and thighs have left their mark and I taste her secretions. The memory of every delicious musk I have ever pressed my face into fills my lips and nostrils and eyelids with that warm plunging sensation, that sweet dough of life.

I stand there in a white adrenal haze, my ears ringing, a block of stone crowning the zipper of my shorts. I light my cigarette and step out from behind the row of scooters and into the street and by the time I hear the revving two-stroke engine I am on my back eating smoke and the scooter is pulling away from me, down the block, without so much as a beep.

I get up and try to focus but my eyes are erasers. Everywhere I look there are ping-pong balls dissolving and regenerating.

I discover that if I use my periphery I can avoid the floaters. I cross the street in the direction of where I had last seen Luigi. My elbow seems ok. It was a bump and bruise kind of hit, spun me around and tripped me up, nothing deep.

When I find Luigi he is standing in a kaleidoscope of gelato cups. He has licked the printing clean from all of them. Eventually I grab the right one - the one that doesn't move when I focus on it - and get his attention. We leave the misery of that glaring sidewalk for another quiet street and a long walk around the block.

But before we leave the neighborhood Luigi and I make another pass of the shop. This time my dick stiffens in anticipation. Now the fucking thing is ready. I long to go back to yesterday before that sinking moment of failure with YaYa. I imagine a strong finish, crossing that bright window, right there behind the counter. I want to show her that her purple jackhammer has nothing on me. I want her to give him up for a moment, to want something besides her two slick fingers while she thinks about it.

She is dirty back there where no one can see. She wrings her lace out in the sink and leaves it. Standing there across the counter from a customer, she is ready to go. A guy like me can smell it when he walks by. I can see it on her face, the way she lingers with him because it is better while he's standing there. I can see the salty tension between her breasts gathering in her navel. I watch her ache and arch her little buttercup against the counter while she white-knuckles her pen and takes down his order.

In another minute the shop is empty and I decide I'm going in. She looks up just as I'm about to turn into the doorway. She has that look on her face. That little circle of drool, the one where the window shades are pulled down halfway and there is a night-lite on somewhere in the back of her head. It is two bottles of wine and two glasses later. That look.

I duck into the photo shop next door and buy some film. I have it out, inspecting it, as I pass her window again moments later. She is busy with another customer.