Rewind and Play

Chapter 11.

2013

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Alice

I am on a train with Clara, on our way back from Milan.

Clara told me that she found the perfect wedding dress in a very fancy boutique in Milan and, of course, I was up for a little stroll in the fashion capital of Italy.

I laughed so hard, today, I can barely keep tears from rolling from my eyes. I really needed this. I was starting to feel claustrophobic in Castelnuovo, surrounded by nothing but mist and a slight bout of self-pity.

Clara and Marco have been together for ten years, now; they decided that, to celebrate that, they were getting married next June.

They had known one another since high school, but Clara had been dating one of Marco’s closest friends for five years before realising that the guy she wanted to be with for life was actually Marco. That had caused a bit of a scandal at the time, but now, ten years on, the three can be in the same room for more than ten minutes without the men trying to kill one another. Great success story.

While we were at this very fancy boutique in Via della Spiga, I kept my Spanish bestie, Jon, appraised of the proceedings, sending mainly photos of me holding up a champagne glass with the blurry figure of Clara in the background.

I do miss Jon. However, I do not miss Miguel one bit. Who is Miguel, you ask? Exactly. We had been dating for two months before I got fired from that ludicrous admin job and decided to come to the village to help my aunt. In that short time, he had been fickle at best, but sex had been decent. He was a fairly relaxed guy, so much so that I am pretty sure he had another girl in the background. Not that I cared enough to mind.

In a way, Miguel represents my general feelings of lately. Nothing is bad, but nothing is good either. I am in a tiny boat in the middle of an ocean, without paddles. In a way it’s freeing, but in another way, at thirty-two, I feel like I should at least have one paddle.

My contrarian gut is telling me that I’m just starting out in life, which is a bit depressing; it means that, for now, I don’t even have the fucking boat, only a duck floater ring. 

I don’t know what I want to be; like millions of people around the globe, I’ve never felt something even close to a “calling”; so here I am, hoping that the time I am privileged enough to be able to take off will help sorting myself out.

Then again, maybe no miracles will happen. At least, though, I am more useful helping my auntie than counting screws in Madrid.

The fact that Laura is around and Christmas is also fast approaching, that I am here for Clara… these are all good things in my books. Guilt has been creeping up in the past few years, for not being around for my friends, or my sister.

I’ve been busy racking my brains to try and find what exactly could help Il Cavallino getting more customers through its doors. That’s my main focus now. However, no brainwaves are forthcoming. There are a couple of ideas starting to take shape, but I know myself well enough that I won’t be able to really get stuck into it until past Christmas.

My savings are still intact, mostly due to the fact that I’ve barely spent any money since my arrival. I haven’t gone out at all, save for that time with Clara at Bar Sport, a couple of weeks ago.

That was great fun and I would not mind repeating the experience.

And I could bump into Samuel again.

I am weirdly nervous about going to see Samuel at his parlour. Despite not having seen him for so long, when I was standing next to him at the bar made it felt like nothing had changed, like I still knew him, deep down. Part of me really wants to dig that friendship back up from the grave. He’s not been in my life, not really, since that time in secondary school. However, I wouldn’t be the same person if he hadn’t sat down next to me that September, all but dragging me out of my shell. 

I was also definitely not lying when I joked about Anna wanting me to marry him. My mother had told me a couple of times, in jest, that out of all of my boyfriends the one she preferred the most had been Samuel, despite the fact that he’d never even been my boyfriend.

She even kept me updated about his life for a couple of years when I moved to Spain. We exchanged polite Facebook birthday wishes, but he was quite elusive, online. And I am not big into social networks, so soon enough, I knew nothing about him, and Anna’s updates stopped coming too.

I wouldn’t mind some more intel, now.

Trying to move away from thinking about how my whole body lit up in Samuel’s presence (I’m sure the effect was enhanced by the G&Ts I had consumed), I ask Clara: “So, tell me Clari, how are the preparations for the wedding going, really? I imagine having a dress is an important step… I am really sorry I haven’t asked before. I suppose I was too wrapped up in my whole prodigal daughter returning shit.”

Her serious gaze moves from the planes zipping past in the dark, enveloped in a dense fog, to me, softening: “Hey, we all have our shit going on, so don’t worry. Marco is going spare preparing the Christmas show for his class; as you know six-year-olds are not the easiest to manage.”

“I am sure he is doing a great job. I have never seen a cuddlier man in my life; the kids must love him.”

“Oh, they do, but that doesn’t mean that sometimes, he wouldn’t love to throw a couple of them out of the window…”

“Impossible. It’s widely known that six-year-olds are like puppies.”

“Believe me, they are not. Demons under angel skins, the whole lot of them!”

“Anyway, have you started organising anything else?”

Clara chuckles darkly: “Absolutely not. I went all in with the wedding dress, so now the rest of the budget is very tight. I need to find a restaurant and sort out everything else, really.”

Without stopping to think about what that could entail, the words escape my mouth: “Wanna a hand with?”

Clara grabs my hand enthusiastically: “Yes, I do! I know that you are always super organised. Do you remember when you put together our twentieth birthday party? That was something all right…”

“I did enjoy that one, if only Peter Speranza hadn’t graffito-ed the side of the theatre with a sickle and hammer… Our seventeenth birthday party was much, much, lamer in comparison.”

“Ah, we were very green, there. Was that the one I saw your face being eaten by… Was it Samuel?”

My face grows very warm, very quickly.

“Oh man, I don’t want to think about that… No, that was my neighbour, Nico, the one I left with…”

“The letter!” Clara properly laughs now, and there’s little I like more than hearing my friends laugh. Even if the fucking letter has now haunted me for over a decade.

“Yeah, I really didn’t want to tell you about that. I relented only when I was far away enough from Castelnuovo that the burning shame stopped to affect me as much…”

“Samuel got older keeping his charms, don’t you think? You wouldn’t want to leave him with a letter…”

It must be very hot in this carriage, because I feel a sweat moustache starting to form on my upper lip.

“Ah well, yeah, he’s still, he…”

“Alice, are you blushing?! Anything you want to tell auntie Clara here?”

“Well, you know, I kind of had a crush for him at the time…”

“You did? I thought you were just friends, you kept saying that nothing happened between the two of you… Or did it? And you never told me?” she asks now, mock outrage having her clutch her chest.

Well, no, I never told her what almost happened, because it never happened, did it? I never thought it mattered, really.

I take a breath and spill the beans. It doesn’t take long, and she is pensive, after: “I see. He’s your what if…”

“You’ll have to explain that one to me.”

“You know the way sometimes in these situations, you are not sure of what could have happened and that ends up hanging over you forever. Oh, what if we had gotten together? What if he actually liked me but I never acted on any of my feelings either? What if I had stayed with Victor…”

“Wait, what? Is that an actual what if?”

Victor is the above-mentioned ex and Marco’s ex-best-friend-come-archenemy. Clara had joined a theatre group attended by herself and Marco and she and her future husband had gotten closer and closer during rehearsals. That, combined with the sexual frustration accumulating within Clara over the years she had been with Victor (who apparently was less than effusive in that department), led to a very explosive situation.

“Nah,” says now Clara with her usual aplomb. “But maybe, I would’ve loved to live a little before tying myself up for life…”

“… Some might say ‘Find my soulmate’…”

“… That too. You know how happy I am with Marco; it’s not like I regret what happened at all. It’s just that it happened when I was still very young. I would have liked to travel more, to have some more experiences. Does that make sense?”

I chuckle-sigh looking out the window: “Of course it makes sense. But this is a “chi ha pane non ha I denti” scenario, isn’t it? Some people have teeth and no bread, and vice versa. Sometimes I think about you and I envy you. You found something you like doing, and you sort of have your life figured out, while I am still out here like a chicken without a head.”

Clara pats me on the knee: “Well, it’s not like you are not trying. You are taking steps to sort yourself out; you are here for a while and who knows what’s going to happen.” I try my best to smile at her. “That being said, what’s the story with this Miguel? Are you going to sort him out or what?”

Now I do laugh: “He told me to call him when I go back, if I still feel like it…”

“Man, that’s cold…”

“Girl, let me tell you, hold Marco close because the good ones are fucking hard to find. I am starting to give up on the whole notion of finding the right one myself.”

“Well, I got lucky, but I also got trapped in San Giuliano for life… I am happy to live through Marta and yourself vicariously.”

“That reminds me, during the Christmas holidays, when Marta is here, we have to go out again.”

“We can go to Una’s, or somewhere in San Giuliano, if there are any decent places.”

I have not been out-out in the area for a long time, and it makes my skin crawl a little to think of the sort of clubs we would have to go to.

“I love Una, I think I found my female soulmate… We should go there to warm ourselves up and then burn every dancefloor in the province,” says Clara dreamily.

“God, woman, I understand you want to live a little, but in Castelnuovo?”

“Don’t be a snob, Giannelli!”

“Fine, fine, whatever you want. You are the boss, after all.”