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Authors: Amabile Giusti

When in Rome (3 page)

BOOK: When in Rome
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Hell, my head is spinning, my feet are on fire, and I feel like crying. I get up to go find something to eat. I’m not quite desperate enough for olives, but almost. I’m hoping there are some pretzels left. However, the pantry is empty. The only food is the cherries on the oil painting of a cherry tree I did a couple years ago that’s hanging on the kitchen door—too bad it’s not edible.

Just then, Luca comes in. The top of a golden baguette peeks out of the plastic bag he’s holding. I am suddenly aware of tears pricking the corners of my eyes. Luca’s actually a really sensitive guy when some naked chick isn’t monopolizing his attention. He sets the bag on the table and comes over to me.

“What is it, little butterfly?” he asks. “Did it not go well? Don’t tell me you made a bad joke.”

“Kind of,” I say, shrugging.

“You can’t keep your mouth shut! That’s why you lost that job for the French perfume ad a month ago.”

“More like I can’t keep my nose shut! Let’s be honest, you can’t sell a perfume that smells like sardines soaked in skunk sweat! That doesn’t mean he should have been so offended and fired me. Oh well. Did you go shopping?”

“I bought some pasta, some tomatoes, a bottle of wine, and some oranges. And the bread, of course.” He gestures at the old steel dinosaur covered in owl magnets. “I hope I didn’t offend you, but I cleaned out your fridge.”

“You’re so great!” I say. It’s true. If I were a cat, I’d spend all nine of my lives with him. “You’re marriage material.”

“Over my dead body,” he says. “Marriage is not for me. The thought of being stuck with the same woman forever is nothing short of horrifying.”

“But if you don’t change your ways, you’re going to need to review your precious philosophy.”

Luca turns on the sink, rinses the tomatoes, and fills a pot with water. “What do you mean?” he asks casually, while turning on the gas stove.

“You sleep with a woman only once. Excluding those who are too young, too old, already in a relationship, and lesbians, you’re eventually going to run out. You’ll have to start over from the beginning.”

“We don’t need to exclude those who are already in relationships. Anyway, I don’t even remember their faces the next day, so it wouldn’t bother me to start over again. And in the meantime, the young ones will grow up.”

“You’re disgusting, do you know that? I hope you’ll meet someone someday soon who treats you that way. I want to see you desperate for love.”

“Never gonna happen.”

“You never know. Oh, by the way, Miss Polka-Dot Thong called.”

“Who?”

“The girl from last night? With the lisp, remember?”

“She had a lisp?” He laughs, puts the tomatoes in a pan, and uncorks the wine. “I didn’t really pay much attention to how she spoke.”

“Yeah, you probably wouldn’t have noticed, given that she just moaned vowels all night. But her name is Sandra, and she wants to
thee you thoon
.”

“That’s her name? I couldn’t remember last night when I said good-bye.”

“You mean, when you threw her out.”

“Yeah, I just couldn’t remember. I wanted to be nice, but I think I called her Rebecca? Where did I come up with that?”

“The girl from three nights ago.”

“How do you know that?”

“The answering machine, Luca! You never give them your cell phone number, so the poor seduced and abandoned things fill up the answering machine with their whining and insults!”

Luca sits down on the couch, laughing. He’s so beautiful that I can’t help but gaze at him, feeling enchanted. Just then, the phone rings, and my mother’s voice bombards the machine. Even her
hello
is critical.

“Carlotta, honey, if you’re at home, pick up the phone.” It seems less like an invitation and more like a military order.

“Hi, Mom . . .” I grab the phone, pretending to sound distracted.

“I knew you were there! You’re not the dining-out type.”

“What do you want?”

“Make sure you’re free in two weeks. Beatrice is getting married.”

I roll my eyes. From what I remember, my mustached cousin Beatrice wants to be a Carmelite nun and firmly believes her virginity belongs to the Lord. Her protruding teeth and creepy smile terrified me. I must have heard wrong.

“Sorry, who?”

“Your cousin Beatrice! Are you starting to lose your memory?”

“But I thought she went to a convent?”

“Only for a while. You really are out of the loop. She had her teeth and nose done, spent a fortune on laser hair removal, met a Spanish guy, and now they’re getting married.”

How appalling. So Beatrice got plastic surgery. I wonder if there’s anything original left on her body. “She must have really worked to keep it from me, since I’m finding out so late.”

“But such controversy! Try to understand—that belly!”

“She had a tummy tuck, too?”

“I’m talking about the twins! Carlotta, have you been drinking?”

“What? Twins? Mom, I don’t even know what you’re talking about—”

“She’s six months pregnant and she’s huge. She wasn’t sure about getting married before giving birth, but Aunt Palma really got after her.”

“Ah . . .”

“Getting pregnant was a good thing for her. Time flies. You blink, and you’ve hit menopause! Don’t you think it’s time you got to it with some nice young man?”

“Mom!” I blush and my eyes dart involuntarily toward Luca, who’s draining the spaghetti. Fortunately he can’t hear a single word of my mother’s delusional nonsense.

“You’re not at all bad-looking, my dear!” she says in a burst of maternal generosity. “If you just committed yourself to it . . . But I’ve found you a perfect date for the wedding!”

I shudder and my stomach churns. This same thing happened when I was eighteen. I didn’t have a date to the end-of-the-year dance at school—and I didn’t care—but my mother set me up with the seventeen-year-old son of one of her bridge friends and forced me to go. He was seemingly innocuous, but once we were alone, he kept trying to root around under my dress. The thought of the adult version of a guy like that accompanying me to Beatrice’s wedding makes my face burn. I fan myself with my hand.

Luca passes by, ruffling my hair. He points to the pasta and spreads his arms wide, whispering something about how much my mother loves to talk. Meanwhile, my mother, mistaking my silence for respectful attention, is waxing on about the importance of sowing your seeds while you’re still young.

“I had you at twenty-six! That’s only three years younger than you are now! Do you want your children to call you grandma?”

“Gotta go, Mom,” I cut her off while Luca seasons the spaghetti and hang up the handset feeling sweaty, like I did the first time I saw
The Exorcist
. I’m on my way to the bathroom to rinse my face with cold water when the phone rings again. I’m tempted to ignore it, sure it’s my mother again, but I don’t want Luca to hear her ranting on the machine. I snatch up the phone. “If I get pregnant I’ll let you know, but I’ll decide who puts the bun in the oven!”

I realize too late that my mother is not on the other end of the line.

“Hello? Ms. Lieti? May I please speak to Ms. Carlotta Lieti?” It’s a man.

“Yes, this is she. Who is this?”

“This is Franz Eisner.”

The executive producer. The blond guy that winked at me.

“Oh, sure . . .”

Luca stares at me with curiosity.

“We met this morning, remember?”

“Of course.” My mouth is wide open. I look like a fish gasping for breath. He’s probably about to tell me that the director wants to sue me for emotional distress. I don’t have the money to pay my lawyer. I don’t even have a lawyer.

“We’d like to bring you on. If you’re still interested, the job’s yours.”

“Wait, what?” I’m amazed that he hasn’t asked if I’m drunk. Who would hire someone who picks up the phone sounding like she’s sloshed at one in the afternoon?

“As I said, your resume is interesting, and I know how to convince Rocky. By the way, he’s from Apulia, so you really are from the same area. Could you come sign your contract next week?”

With the phone wedged between my shoulder and my ear, I dance a ridiculous Zumba move. Then a memory nags me like a pebble in my shoe.

“Of course. But I have to ask you—what did you mean when you said I’ll have to find some unusual items?”

I hear a laugh on the other end of the line.

“Even if his methods are questionable, Rocky is a genius in his own right,” Franz says. “As I mentioned, he has reworked the entire text, setting the events in the modern day. So it only makes sense that some things have changed. For example, while Laura is still shy and romantic, she doesn’t collect glass animals.”

“She doesn’t? Not even the unicorn?”

“Nope. She collects Barbies.”

“Huh?”

“She has a collection of very rare, limited-edition Barbie dolls. That’s her little menagerie.”

For a few seconds, I’m appalled. Then a distant memory replaces the unicorn in my mind. I’m nine years old, and the mirror, like my mother, shows me no love. She’d spent the entire morning desperately trying to straighten my hair with brushes of all shapes and sizes, creams, sprays, and prayers to various patron saints. It was all in vain. My curls just wouldn’t listen to reason. I almost felt bad for her. While all her nieces had hair as soft as silk sheets, her daughter was bushy-headed and freckled and had an unhealthy tendency to beat up the boys who teased her.

Little did she know then about Erika, who would become her shining star. For the time being, she had to be content with her first, mediocre daughter. She left me in front of the mirror in a fit of exasperation, as if it were all my fault, as if I had conspired with my hair to misbehave out of spite. My father came in at that point. “You’re beautiful,” he said and asked me to go for a drive with him because the sun was out—and the sun clears bad thoughts. He took me to the shopping center, and we walked around, my hand clinging to his thumb.

A window display of a small army of Barbie dolls at a toy store caught my attention. Nose and hands glued to the display window, I watched them rotate for the world to see. They were so beautiful, all so elegant in their soft-colored dresses, with hair that my mother would have loved. And then my heart stopped—for there was a Barbie doll with brown curly hair. I was convinced that she was smiling at me. She maybe even winked. She was wearing a strawberry-red dress with gold accents, and she was gorgeous. I turned to my father, but I didn’t even need to speak. He already understood. That was
my
Barbie. That was
me
as a Barbie. Different and special. I kept her as a relic and never, ever tried to straighten her hair. She made me realize that everyone is special in their own way, and I’m grateful for it.

So I suppose the director’s idea isn’t completely terrible. It’s definitely a crude interpretation of the text, but it intrigues me all the same. Maybe I’m going a little crazy, but somehow I know that this job is for me.

“When you read the script, just do it calmly,” Franz says. “We go onstage in a little over two months. Think you can do it?”

“Of course I can!” I say with conviction.

We make an appointment for the following Monday, and I’m beaming by the time we hang up. Luca looks at me questioningly. Taking advantage of my justified euphoria, I run to embrace him and let myself savor pressing against his sensational abs and feeling the heat radiate from my nether regions at his touch.

“I can’t believe they picked me!” I say, leaping around the room. I run to wash my hands, then dash over to the table. Luca smiles, and I can tell that he’s truly happy for me. I forget all about my mom and my cousin Beatrice’s wedding. I don’t care about having children who call me grandma. I have a job! I can buy those incredible boots I’ve been lusting after in the shop window! I eat with gusto and drain my wineglass.

“What makes you happier?” Luca asks me, watching me with curiosity. “The prospect of finding these props or just having a job?”

“Hey!” I say, a little drunk. I pretend to be offended, then burst out laughing. “Both, I suppose.” Up until now, I really hadn’t thought about how nice Franz’s cheekbones are.

“How long has it been since you’ve had sex?” Luca asks me, peeling an orange. He stares at me, ruthless as only a man who works hard every night can be. He’s suddenly serious, as if we were talking about a disease. He swallows an orange slice and then fiddles with a crumb on the table.

“That’s my business,” I say. “I’ll clear the table. Did you write this morning?”

“You shouldn’t be inactive for so long. It’s not healthy. And then you run the risk of throwing yourself at the first guy who comes along. Excessive abstinence makes you a lot less selective, you know?”

“Says the most selective of us all!” I blurt. “Don’t make me laugh.”

“You don’t see the difference?” He seems vaguely irritated, a rarity. I think he’s even more beautiful when he’s frowning. He continues to play with the crumb and doesn’t look at me.

“There is no difference, unless you count chauvinism.”

“Chauvinism has nothing to do with it.” Anger tinges his voice. “The difference is that you’re a foolish girl searching for the man of your dreams, and this makes you more inclined to do something drastic. You believe in eternal love, so you’re stuck here like a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, hoping that a handsome prince will come along and put a ring on your finger. I don’t expect anything from the women I entertain, except that they have fun with me. If someone doesn’t meet my expectations, I’m not gonna go cry into my pillow.”

“I don’t cry into my pillow!”

“Carlotta . . .” He stops and shakes his head. “Don’t you think I know you well enough to know that you’re like a princess in search of rescue? For you, sex isn’t just a way to get pleasure. You dream of falling asleep on Prince Charming’s shoulder.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“The world is chock-full of guys like me, guys that are hoping to run down the stairs the second you’re done having fun with them. These guys won’t even listen to your voice messages, and they’ll hardly remember your face, or your lisp.”

BOOK: When in Rome
13.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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