Chapter 8 from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

8.
I walked Melodie to a bar near the station where we took a beer aperitif and waited for her train. The waiter, the same one we had the day before, fawned all over her again - blowing her kisses and 'bella' this and 'bella' that. He has expressed his grief that she is leaving for Geneva. I was relieved. I had been going hard for three weeks in Paris and Amsterdam and Rome, and now two days straight with this one. I needed some rest before I washed up on the California coast.
"What will you do with the rest of your holiday? Melodie asked, right on track as she snapped up a potato chip.
"Nothing definite," I said.
"And when you come to Geneva?
"I'll call of course.
"Don't worry if you do. I will take care of everything and you can have a key and come and go as you wish, so even if I'm working or studying it will not be a problem.
"We'll see how you feel about it two or three months from now.
"Don't forget we have our festival in August. Here, give me your notebook and I will put all of it down - even a funny little drawing of Switzerland and here is my mother's phone number and her boyfriend's name is Jorgen. My brother Gastien lives there too. Oh you have to come. You will all get along so well. When you get to the little town, here, you see, you take the E bus. Just ask anybody where it is and you should have no problem finding it.
"No, no problem, I said.
I was certainly open to the idea but I also knew that a plan, an obligation, a date changed everything. I was locked in to the present. I felt like lightning. A promise, a bus number, an e-mail, a poison dart, a nude festival - mere moths. If I showed up, it would be an afterthought - more like an accident.
"Will you walk me to the Station? I want to get a magazine and something for later.
We paid and stood up to go - much to the sad music of our waiter. Just the other day Melodie came here straight from the station with her luggage to rest and get her bearings. I felt for the poor guy. He has been tormented from start to finish, and now this, she was getting up to leave and he was addressing her with all the dignity he could, wearing a penguin suit and holding a table comb, and saying something quite beautiful, I'm sure, though I didn't want to eavesdrop.

At the station we discovered that Melodie's watch was slow by several minutes and that her train was already boarding. We hustled down the track and I thought about how much I had given up already as I watched her ass bounce ahead of me.
On the platform Melodie and I sealed the deal with sweaty kisses and promises and then she was gone.
I bought an international phone card as I left the station, half-believing I might call Cassi and confess everything. I started down the sidewalk, passing over a few public phones, and then a few more, and then I started to feel better. I put the phone card in my wallet. I caught a glimpse of the Coliseum down a long street and I was thrust back into the open; into the ululating tapestry of the sidewalk, pondering the cafes, the pasticceria, the bars, a display of fish and clams on ice, the smell of garlic and eggplant and bread, a pizza, a gelato, film for my camera, a pack of cigarettes. A pair of expert heels disappeared into a cool stone atrium behind a travertine doorway laced with damp underwear. How could I resist this mosaic?
I crossed back over the street and headed for the same cafe, though it wasn't my idea to torment that waiter again, regardless of how he looked at me, even then as I approached.
"I'll have a beer to celebrate," I said, taking my old seat facing the foot traffic around the station.
"That woman," he said, bringing out the beer and standing over me.
"She's gone," I interrupted.
"But she came just three days ago and you met?
"Something like that. She was lost.
"Maybe I should have seen that.
"Of course you should have, I said. "Look, you're nice but do I have to tell you about your own city? It's right here under your nose.
I don't think he understood what I was saying. He went to another table and I ripped out the page that Melodie drew up for me, put it with the tip, and left before he returned.
There was no going back. I had to get on with my excavation of this city and accept the fact that something would break in the process. I decided to retrace my steps from the other day, down into the Viminale, off the Via Cavour, past the Roman drinking fountain that splashed against your shoes if you weren't careful, and down the slightly humped street to the coffee bar, armed this time with a question for the one who called herself YaYa.

I'd passed by the bar since we met, on my way to meet Melodie and quite out of my way, just to glimpse her in there wiping her hands on her cruddy apron, smiling through a cloud of steamed milk at one of her tough customers.
I never went in. Just a couple of quick passes, satisfying some schoolboy urge. I remember riding my bicycle in looping figure eights in front of Deb McAllistar's house and mixing up love songs from the radio, using her name and my own lyrics.
But Deb never came out, never once did I see her coming or going, or even at the window. It was a thorough waste of my twelfth year, outside of baseball and my newspaper route.

YaYa was blocking the door again, hiding between her shoulder blades and snickering behind a glowing cigarette as I approached.
"I thought I recognized you coming down the street. You're wearing my favorite shirt again.
I didn't have to look to know I was wearing the same one as yesterday. It was a relic from the sixties, gradient blue and green stripes, the one Cassi sewed back together for my trip.
"Are you coming in?
She offered me her free hand.
"I wondered how many times I would have to see before you would come in to say hello.
She did an imitation of me walking down the street, drawing herself up straight like a marionette and doing a little vamp shuffle. It reminded me of Guiletta Massina in La Strada.
"That's very flattering.
"Well - we can take it up another time. Right now my boss is inside and there are customers. Even if they aren't buying anything I have to harass them. That's my job mainly. You can come in and have something if you like - I'll harass you too.
For some reason I had lost my kick.
"I think I'll go change my shirt. What about the music tonight at the bar?
"Oh right, she said, nodding at the A-frame.
"Ehh - we have not done that for some time now. I like to keep the sign out to see what kind of people it brings in.
"No, tonight is like every night I'm afraid. I will finish here at half past and then I will go home to my dull life in the barrio for a few hours before I come in very early tomorrow to open up by myself.
"So you don't have time after work then?
"Well maybe a little something. Come back at half past eight and we will see.
I left and walked back up those broad steps to the Via Cavour, to the nearest cafe, where I planted myself to wait out her shift. She saw me those other times, stalking her, and now she was curious. Come back at half past...she said. She wanted to know and so did I.
Perhaps I should have realized something - confronted with her fullness as I was then - not in her capacity behind the bar, but on the street for a moment, apron off, unguarded, jumpy, those long slender limbs aching to be held and her hair falling in sheets of black water to her waist.
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?