Chapter 3 from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

3.
Outside I am swept along by the dry shuffle of the streets, the heat-weary already loosening their collars and ducking into churches. It is too hot to be so tormented. I need something to hang my hat on. I begin to think of Melodie as I kneel against the cool marble. She was the Swiss who liked to reminisce about her days at the convent while she downed chilled vodka. As she drank, that cold winter light swallowed her eyes and she fluttered off. When she floated back in she told me she was in Rome to scout the art schools. I liked her enthusiasm. I told her I was here for the usual reasons.
I met her at the Piazza Colonna, outside a Dali exhibit. She had been sitting at the base of Trajan's column with her knees drawn up, soaking sweat through her tank top, and squinting at a map. I approached with my take-away lunch and stood over her blocking out the sun, licking pizza of my knuckles, until she noticed me.
I'd only been in Rome a few days but I felt like I had the place wired. I offered to help her find a pensione. She said she had money, but she was practical too, so we rang a lot of buzzers to find the best deal, making the rounds on foot. One letch even invited her to come back and sleep in his kitchen if she didn't find anything. It was hot and we were getting tired. We stopped for a drink and I offered my own lodging, at least for the night, so we could get on with the business of seeing the sights.
Of course that's not always an easy matter in Rome. Some days you can't cross the street without parting a group of little leaguers or an assembly of gynecologists from St. Paul.
Melodie and I managed to find the tram that takes you straight to god. We became two in ten thousand joined together in our quest for the Holy City.
The car was so crowded it listed heavily into the gutter and it was blistering hot. We were packed together in odd pairings - emus and chickens, a pig and a stallion, two corn rats and a goat, a sheep dog and a crippled alpaca - all willingly off to renew our golden sacrifice at this late stage.
Maybe it wasn't so odd after all. That ripening circus car had something going for it, something communal and cinematic, in the Italian sense. The air was choked with bits of wool and feathers and we were being driven along by a serene civil servant in a tight blue shirt who was singing to himself, and to us all, as dry as can be. It was a scene befitting Fellini and his technicolor vision of Rome. It seemed at that moment that anything could happen and that was always a defining feeling for me.
Besides, it wasn't an entirely bad predicament - being squeezed up alongside her like that. She wore only a tank top and a thin flap of skirt, no more than a couple of ounces of material. That's what struck me - just how little she was wearing - not to mention the sandals with one clean leather strap against those silk pillars.
But don't get me wrong. She sweated as much anyone, but hers was glistening rose water against that humble perfume of the petting zoo. I'm not kidding. She seemed clean like that, like her country, although I've never been, but it's an image. If I think about it I can probably make it go the other way. Nobody gets away with being that clean.
So when I said I was in Rome for the usual reasons, my nun, my little Swiss, sweet Melodie of the butterfly tongue and naked soul, she quickly became one of them. Another guide to the eternal rhythms between youth and middle age. We hit it off like a paint by numbers and I guess I didn't care why. Six thousand miles away from Cassi and three months as much as I knew. I didn't ask. Why is a secret ingredient. Too little and it doesn't reach the tongue. Too much and it gives itself away. But the right amount persuades you take your place at the buffet when your number is called.
Anyway, many have come before the spell of this city and it certainly didn't bother me. What did I have to lose? There was Cassi of course and that should've been enough, but somehow it wasn't, not when I was staking everything else.
The fact is I was looking forward to dying a little and coming back with a story to tell, a real crusher, something to add to the family legacy. It was half expected of me. I was an ambassador in that sense - for those who have cut themselves off from life. I was the one, the big brother who always up and left, the son who couldn't settle down, the friend who everyone secretly worried about.

Anyway, to get on with Melodie. She was from the French-speaking side of Switzerland, from a village that holds a pagan festival every year that the townspeople attend in the nude. I found this an attractive piece of information and I realized, as with her talk of the convent, that this was part of her trap.
"So there is your mother, she said in that music of hers that is like a hidden stream in the woods, "and the priest, and your teacher and the butcher - but no one is supposed to think anything of it.
"And you, what do you think? I asked, pressing in closer.
"It is very fun, especially for the children, and innocent. We eat cake and play games and sing and then we all bathe in the lake - just like any celebration really, except we don't wear anything.
She pulled her sweaty top away from her chest and fanned herself.
"If you are still on holiday in August you should come. I can give you the information of my mother's village where I grew up. Of course you can come to Geneva and visit me anytime you like.
She pulled down on her top again and smiled.
"You don't know how lucky you are. You can enjoy them at least. For me, they are like children. They never behave like I want them to.
Her watery caresses filled my ears and throat and I swallowed hard, staring down at her.
The tram hit a bump in the road and she fell against the seat we were holding, into a hackney trotter, who widened his nostrils at her, taking in her milky sweat.
"I don't want to complain she panted, "but I'm not used to being so hot.
She was really running the tap, but we all were, everyone that is, except the black shawl gypsies, who beg and throw curses at you with dry moustaches.
I leaned in for a breath of her sweet air, half expecting vodka the way she liked to guzzle it. She lengthened her neck toward me like a Botticelli, pulling her hair aside.
"Here, she teased, "try not to get drunk before we reach the Vatican.
This one had no off switch. I soaked my cheek and nose in her sweet water. She pushed herself against me, cold lips to mine, blue eyes smiling in faint wire rims, glowing that insect translucence of her northern complexion and for the next few moments I didn't dwell on anything.