I go out the back. There is thick fog in the courtyard. Fog has appeared in Milan for three days. It gives slowness to things, the fog. It immobilizes them. Even the black row of trash cans has more composure. A certain demeanor. I look up, you see the clothes hanging. Many rectangles with blurred colors lying in the air. And the external balconies with the exposed doors of the railing houses. The railing houses are beautiful, I think. Pami is emptying the trash can. The operation ends with a tin clatter, a dull and vibrated thump of the lid.
"Where?" I ask her.
"Shit, Emma..."
“Pami, I couldn't. Now where?"
«You'd better steer clear of him, he's pissed off with you, last night there was delirium at the tables, I won't tell you. Ros started serving for you, they were pissing off because the stuff arrived slowly..."
"It was an emergency."
“He doesn't give a shit about it.”
“I'll explain it to you. Where is he? "
I walk through the door after her and as soon as I step inside, the boss, Ros, is there in the middle of the room with legs apart waiting for me.
“You're fired,” she says.
The presumption of always making it without them, this has always fooled me with men. I didn't even insist, I joined my ankles well, the purse pressed along my side, I lowered my eyes, only my eyes, not my chin. And I left.
So I have the day off, six hundred euros with which to spend a month, photocopies of my CV to make, and the wheel has started turning again. Come, come, ladies and gentlemen, to see the single mum on the wheel…
I take the mail from the box, one Banca Intesa and one Mr. Gas writes to me. I pinch the two envelopes in my hand, I enter the house. The silence of the empty rooms kills me, I turn on the TV. I undress, remain in my underwear and T-shirt in front of the TV. I'm looking at the people crammed into the boats, they say they want to come to Italy, that Italy is fine, that there is work. I feel like something that makes noise in the palate. I unzip the transparent package, chew a cracker while I open the shower mixer with my right hand. I've got everything on Saturday and half Sunday, this is Max's weekend. I can't even start looking for work at this hour, I think I'm going to take a lot of showers, yes, a lot of showers.
My feet are still damp, my skin sponged by the hot steam, I take the little blue car with flames, on the ground, in the middle of the corridor. I go put it on Lori's table. There's the silver cloak rolled up on her bed. I fold it in four. Lori's stuff. They are waiting for him. Like me after all. The bathrobe vibrates, it's a cell phone number.
"Ready," I say.
"How are you?"
Here, the huge bullshit of not memorizing it the other night, I think.
"Good," I say.
I don't feel like saying "And you".
«Me too, fine» says Simpatia.
"Good…" I repeat.
“I heard from Pami that you're not on duty tonight.”
“Well, that's an understatement, he fired me,” I say.
The sponge is getting colder, I go from there to my room, undo my turban and rub my hair on my left temple, on the other side I have the telephone.
"I'm sorry, really, but listen, since you're not working anyway..."
"..."
«…how about we go for a drink?»
“To celebrate my dismissal, you say?”
"It was for…"
"Yes, no, I know."
"Yes, no, I know, what?"
"Yes, no, I meant..."
He smiles, my voice softens.
"It's just that I've already made arrangements to go see a movie"
"Ah, what are you going to see?"
"Shit, what am I going to see?" I think.
"Bah, let's decide there at the last minute."
«Understood, sometimes I do this too…»
And I don't know, as if there was a subtext with what I too sometimes do in this way, referring not to the cinema but to the fact of shooting bullets.
«Then it will be for another time» says Simpatia.
"Yes, it will be for another time," I repeat.
My feet are freezing, I absolutely have to put on a pair of socks.
«Ok, then bye…» Simpatia says.
"Then bye."
"It is not fair."
"Thing?"
“I said it first…” he says.
And attack.
I'm naked, cut in half in the strip of mirror glued to the wall but if I stand in profile I can fit all in and so I do. Skin tight on my back, too thin, too bony my back. Round, beautiful breasts. Still beautiful. I think in a few years it won't be like this anymore, I think I should take advantage of it now that I'm still young, still beautiful, I tell myself. I think I should force myself, do as the others do, imitate them, copy their movements from outside, and cross bridges, move forward, and not indulge my underground tendency to avoid. I avoid. I prefer to avoid. Some situations I can't handle. Or maybe I don't want to handle them. I feel frozen, that's the truth. I feel like waiting, standing still on a bloody bridge. Half perfect. Stalled. Neither here nor there, the choice requires movement, and right now I can't walk. I'm in pause mode. As if you have the phone to your ear and you're listening on tape The four Seasons by Vivaldi, hoping that suddenly the metallic voice that put me on hold will be replaced by the voice of. Max's, that's who's. I roll onto the other side, if I pull in my belly you can count my ribs, I still look like a girl, I tell myself. Then I take a cotton slip, a white t-shirt and I think that if I look like it means I'm not anymore.
Mami I'm hurting you.
Who knows how beautiful it is, I'll call you later.
I order myself a pizza. I eat, I drink, I watch TV, I watch TV, I watch TV… When I open my eyes again my shoulder tingles. The sofa sucks for sleeping, I look for the remote control, turn off the buzz, I look for the phone, the green cadmium bag flashes on the display. There are two messages.
How was the movie………? 🙂 L.
Colon, dash, parenthesis. But above all, all those ellipses. Maybe I combine them and the drawing of the guy with the old shoe bites the fishing rod comes out. Delete message, or reply message?
Second message.
Mami done tuto and toothpaste, tomorrow I'll bring you the catsgne. Good night
I break the silence by starting to clean up. The bleach stings the eyes, widens the nostrils. I clean. Cleaning is therapeutic, it makes you feel useful, it has a precise meaning, it gives you an achievable goal. First it's dirty, then it's clean. Action, result. Sensible stuff. Necessary.
Then at three o'clock I get hungry.
Then at twenty past three I doze off.
Then I hear the intercom.
"It's me."
And she. If there's one thing that annoys me, it's people who show up without warning.
"Did something happen?" I say. I close the door properly, the lock clicks with the double clutch while Pami advances with all her sweet trailing whiff. She uses those creams that taste like sugar.
“Wow, this house is a mirror,” she says. Her pupils make continuous circles on the walls.
“Only one Sunday out of two,” I say.
I prepare the mocha, she remains standing on dizzying heels. She pushes a chair away from the table, she puts her jacket on it.
"So he's already replaced me," I say as soon as he finishes talking.
"A real pain in the ass," she says.
He gets up with the dirty cup, puts it in the sink. Then with his head he makes a diagonal turn towards the goal.
"But my boyfriend?"
"He's in chestnuts, with his father."
“I liked that chestnut place a lot too” I think.
“Well, let's get to the heart of the matter then,” he says. He rests his sacrum on the edge of the table, he comes under me, I automatically push my chair back so as not to find it on me.
"What are we going to do?" she says.
I have his pelvis here in the foreground staring at me, his arms are crossed above.
"In what sense."
«Look, my friend is a nice guy. He's doing just fine."
"Lucky him."
"And he says he's interested in you, that you have something..."
"From?"
"Strange…"
"I'm not weird."
"It was to say."
"Do you find me strange?"
"But what does that have to do with it."
"I mean, if I were weird, would you tell me?"
"But I'm not a boy, it's different."
“So I'm only weird to boys?”
"You know what I mean..."
“No, I didn't get it. Explain yourself."
"In the sense that they talk like this, think like this."
"They who?"
"Males."
«I seem to feel my child, the boys, the girls, as if there is a gender identity.»
“If you say anything else like gender identity, I'm off.”
"Teeth…"
We look at whoever laughed first, we smiled at the same time.
“Anyway, they do that when it suits them.”
“Them again. Besides, I'd be the cynic."
"It's not cynicism, it's statistics."
«Statistics» I raise an eyebrow «And since when have you been involved in statistics?».
"Idiot."
“…Next guy who tells me I'm weird, I swear I'll leave a bruise on his cheek.”
"So, how old are you?"
“Pami, may I know what you want this morning?”
"It's not morning, do you see it? you see how are you doing? Morning or afternoon it's all the same for you… »And he laughs. «… I know what you need».
“Pami, follow the lip. I. I do not have. A. Work."
“And you follow mine. You. You do not have. A. Man."
«Good, let's do the math, one plus one…»
"Two cocks," she completes.
I go to close the bathroom door, it's Lori's shoes making a noise, I put them in the washing machine, they bang in the drum at regular rhythms, a pulsation of the sole, a continuous bass, always with the same note, always the same note, and I think I'm thirty-three, damn it, thirty-three years old, a moment and it will be forty.
Lori runs down the hallway, says she needs to go to the bathroom. She follows him with her gaze, then returns to Max's haggard face. I leave my hand cut on the door, she doesn't come in anyway.
"How did it go?" I say.
"Well."
"With Sandra?"
"Everything OK."
"Anything I need to know?"
“No, it's all right. Then I'll tell you another time."
With his thumb and forefinger Max pokes his eyes straddling the septum of the nose, rubs them. "Once upon a time she never came" I think as I walk back the door. I look at my wrist strangled by the plastic handles, I have a bag full of chestnuts, I don't know what to do with them.
Turns out he hasn't even done his homework.
"Why didn't you make them on Saturday?" I ask him while he is gnawing concentratedly on the last crust of pizza.
“Do you know I beat him twice? Duuue!”
“Thirty-seven years old, Max is thirty-seven years old” I think.
“Have you been playing games all the time?”
"The Wii is not a toy."
"Take the diary."
"I already know what I have to do anyway."
"Take the diary."
I flip through the pages quickly, look up at Lori, point a finger perfectly in front of her ball nose. His vision blurs as I focus on my finger.
"Then listen to me carefully."
"Uff."
“Only because it's late. But it's the last time. The last one, promise.”
"Okay, I promise."
"Look what you promised."
"I know."
"Look, a promise is a promise, it's a serious commitment."
"I swear."
"You can't swear."
"Then I promise."
I quickly reread the exercise to do.
“So, you two, I three,” I say.
"But you said you made them!"
“Not all of them, Lori. Me three, you only two, then.”
"And ugh though."
"And ugh I say so."
"No me."
“Hand me the pencil case.”
He passes it to me, I open the zipper which tooth after tooth makes that ginning noise, I look for the blue pen line.
"Mommy."
"What's up."
"If Sandra marries Max..."
"Did they say so?"
The pen stroke remains balanced on my middle finger.
"I think she wants to," he says.
Point your elbow on the coffee table, rest your cheek in the palm of your hand.
"It's their thing," I say, and I think we've always been against marriage, Max and I.
"But what if they get married in the end?"
“Lori, come on, it's late. Well, let's see…"
I take a look at the previous page, just to get my bearings, therefore, three little thoughts on autumn…
The author
Francesca Marzia Esposito graduated from Dams in Bologna, she attended a master's degree in writing and production for cinema at the Catholic University of Milan. She lives in Milan and has been a professional dancer for a few years. She now she teaches dance. Her stories have been published in numerous magazines. She is the author of two novels: The minimal form of happiness (Baldini & Castoldi, 2015), Dance bodies (Mondadori, 2019).
