Menu Turistica, Episode III

Mopeds swarmed the streets, buzzing up and around Massimo #2's Volvo. Massimo #2 steered through them, like a kayak through rapids—one hand on the wheel, the other gesturing as he told her. On Italian city terms, Elena decided Massimo #2 was a very careful driver, but he cursed as most people say um. After a few miles, the whole scene stopped shocking her, and she relaxed back into her seat, wrapped in the moped buzz and his Italian accent that softened the final syllable with an italianesque: “Fucka italian food. So boring. I meana, Shita! When you can get the best fuckinga hamachi... ”

At the restaurant, he parked half on the curb and ran around the car to let her out. The interior of the restaurant did not seem Japanese with its brick walls and orange candles, but they sat on tatami mats and ate sushi sparkling with fish eggs while the people around them spoke Italian. The woman who served them was Japanese speaking Italian, and Massimo #2 spoke English to Elena with an Italian accent while they ate take rolls and sat on pillows and drank green tea. Massimo #2 did not ply her with alcohol as an American man would, as an American man would need to where an Italian man does not. An American man needs a slick car and a bottle of Vodka to get an American woman to go to bed with him, but an Italian man can drive a burgundy Volvo station wagon and drink green tea. Of course, he must have a cellular phone. All the men in Italy had cellular phones.

He paid the bill and then kissed her later, outside her hotel, with his burgundy Volvo parked at the entrance to the alley, in front of the church. They kissed while a homeless woman passed them and then stood two feet away staring intently into a shop window. This made Elena uncomfortable, but Massimo #2 simply directed her face back towards his. She hated her own reluctance; she was really a very good kisser when her mind was in it. She hoped he wouldn’t think his money and time badly spent.

In this way, he convinced her to take him up to her room in the pensione, and she saw then that he had been simply biding his time until he could come into her room and unbutton his pants for her to touch him. She could see he was in it for his pleasure alone, as though his kisses and accent were enough to satisfy her. It was what she had wanted from the beginning, wasn’t it? She wanted to believe that those attentions came without her permission, but now, when she invited them, she saw them for what they were not.

In her fantasy, she would meet this very Italian boy, 23, nice, and Italian-looking, she would sneak him into her bare but clean hotel room. It would be exactly as it had happened, their quiet steps on the stairs. She asks him to wait while she goes in to make sure the proprietress is out of the way. When she walks in, the proprietress intercepts her and tells her she has received a phone call. (It would be Massimo #1, of course, to remind her that he was jealous of Massimo #2.) She thanks the proprietress, perhaps with too much enthusiasm. She suspects that the proprietress can tell by the way she has not completely closed the front door that there is a young man waiting on the stairs. The proprietress turns back to her own room and Elena makes motions to go to hers. She even puts the key in the lock and turns it. Then she sneaks back to the front door and beckons him in.

He is shifting his weight back and forth, has his hands deep in the pockets of his bomber-style jacket, his black scarf wound once around his neck. He smiles and winks when he sees her. She beckons him in, forgetting the word for “quickly” in Italian. She’ll have to find her dictionary later. He makes an exaggerated act of sneaking in. This annoys her, because she’s always been a good girl and she doesn’t like breaking rules. The proprietress has been quite nice, the room is very clean, and she’d hate to ruin things now. But her fantasy is walking into the room and taking her around the waist and kissing her.

She reminded herself that in brief affairs in foreign but beautiful countries, no one is supposed to engage in earnest conversation. But her body didn’t believe her and refused to reach out an arm to caress the Italian boy. Her mouth did not kiss, but instead said “I’m so very tired.” How does one say “your accent is not enough. Talk to me and I will wrap my long legs around you. I will sit on your lap and nibble on your ear. Talk in that delightful accent and make me believe—even if it’s not true—that if I lived here, in a little tile-roofed apartment building, if I hung my sheets out on the line, if I invited you over for risotto every Sunday night and then played the piano for you while outside the buzz of mopeds drowned out the soft, emotional part of the piece, tell me that you would want to see me every Sunday, as a friend. If I never kissed you again, tell me you’d still come over on Sunday nights with your smile and a bottle of wine, in the car borrowed from your father.”

When she grew still and silent in his arms, Massimo #2 pulled his sweater over his head and said he was cold. Then he said he needed to get home—it was getting late. He had driven forty minutes from Fiesole in a car borrowed from his father to see her, he said, and his eyes added: And for what? To be disappointed by the American girl? American girls were supposed to be fucking easy.

She snuck him out again, his tiptoeing exaggerated and her still not remembering how to say “quickly” in Italian. At the door, her turned to her. “You are to call Massimo tomorrow,” he said, pressing his phone number into her hand, “do not let that be the only Massimo you call.” He mouthed his soft ciao and gave over his dimpled smile. She closed the door carefully behind him.

When she awoke the next morning, she half expected to see a Massimo of some type lying next to her, but of course she was alone and grateful. She rose and went to her window. If she stood very close to the wall on the left side, she could just see the waters of the Arno. The morning sun was tying the sky in pink ribbons like some cherub painted by Vasari, the buildings appeared blue and on fire, the river sending up sparks. She decided to go to the Galleria dell'Accademia to spend time with Michelangelo’s David. That beautiful boy would not touch her—just stand, brave and innocent, for her to admire as long as she wanted. He would ask nothing in return—or so she thought.

[In the next episode, Elena finally goes to Piazzalle Michelangelo—but not with Massimo.]