Rewind and Play

1997

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Alice

Oh, Vittoria looked pissed all right.

I didn’t think she had seen our exchange, or that weird thing, whatever that was, that had just happened. However, I still felt like I had been caught with my hands in the Samuel jar. All I could think of was Samuel’s eyes, staring at me. It felt different from the way we’d been looking at one another since the beginning of our friendship, like a thought had solidified in his head. He seemed on the verge of telling me something. What was it? I was confused, hot, and a little bothered, heart loud in my ears.

A weird instinct to run away from Samuel got me, before he could grab me to go somewhere, sit down and talk. Talk about what exactly? Did I want to talk? Did I want to think about it? Could I be making everything up in my mind, though? Samuel had been nothing but courteous and nice and friendly, but he had a girlfriend, after all.

I was spared a humiliating retreat in front of half of my peers by Vittoria’s appearance.

Samuel was looking from his hand to Vittoria, his expression openly annoyed. Ouch.

His beautiful curls were all plastered under both the Borsalino and the gel that he must have used generously, the suit rooted out from god knows where ever so slightly too big and short for his long, lean frame. Samuel was clearly making a conscious effort to recompose his features into a smile, but he was failing so thoroughly that a slightly hysterical giggle left me. What if, after all, he was actually annoyed at being interrupted? Surely, I was making it up in my head.

Vittoria was almost upon us, strutting from wherever she was coming from in a dress that, of course, was matching Samuel’s. It was a good enough imitation of a roaring twenties’ flapper dress, problem being that she was a bit too short for it and it looked like she was a toddler wearing her mom’s dress during playtime.  

Samuel threw a glance in my direction, eyes narrowed, like he could read my mind.

I had by now also placed the mask firmly back in place, sweat or no sweat.

“Ali?” Clara was back from the toilet, too. Samuel and I must have been talking only for something like five minutes, but it felt like much longer.

I was still feeling lightheaded from the experience.

“Was the bathroom ok?” I asked, stupidly. Clara frowned and said: “Of course, it is a bathroom. Still there, still looking like the last time we saw it. What’s going on here?”

“Nothing, Vittoria has just arrived.”

Vittoria had indeed arrived: “Sam, I thought you were going to wait for me outside, what are you doing already in?”

Samuel, who had now actually managed to recompose his features into something resembling inner peace, smiled: “I am so sorry, Vicky” (somehow, to my ears, it sounded like he was anything but sorry. Also, “Sam?” Yuck) “I must have misheard when we were talking about it yesterday, I thought I was going to come in and you’d find me here.”

He seemed relieved. Maybe he had also been worried that Vittoria had seen us locked in that weird thing. Thank you, low lighting.

Vittoria turned her attention to Clara and me: “Who’s the two grannies?”

I pulled up my mask and, as quickly, I placed it back on my face. Samuel cocked his head like he wanted to peer further up the mask.

“Ah ciao Ali, didn’t know you knew Samuel.”

Was there a slight edge to the tone? Probably not.

“Ah, yeah, before you also started to come on the bus in the morning, he was mine. I mean my… He used to sit with me.”

Samuel was now trying not to smile, but his mouth had lifted at one corner and the dimple was out.

He was clearly enjoying this as much as I had his fluster a moment ago. Fair enough, I supposed.

“Oh, I didn’t know. He had never said a word about you.”

I didn’t really know what kind of reply I was expected to give then (was he … what, ashamed of me?), so I just smiled, not that Vittoria was going to see it anyway, under the granny face: “Yeah, this is Clara, she’s from Castelnuovo but she doesn’t come out here much. See you around guys, have fun!”. I turned on my heels, and dragged Clara along.

“What was that all about? She seemed like she didn’t like you very much.”

“Fuck it if I know. She’s Samuel’s girl. I haven’t spoken to him much recently, so I don’t know what’s her problem.”

“What were you and Samuel talking about?”

“Ah, just catching up.” I was not going to talk about the cassette because, for some reason, it embarrassed me to admit that he had made me one in the first place.

“He looked hot tonight, didn’t he?”

“I barely noticed; I don’t look at him that way.”

Clara turned her grandma face towards me, making it even weirder when she said: “If you say so. I could feel you blushing all the way from inside the mask but ok, girl. Let’s go check out the guy on the dancefloor again, I think he was looking at me and I have no problem in admitting that I like it.”

---

Luigi dropped Clara home, inquiring politely about the evening, and then drove us back to the flat.

I knew I should wait until the following morning, but I was so discombobulated that what I ended up doing was putting the cassette in my dad’s stereo in the living room as soon as I was left alone, a pair of big earphones giving me privacy.

We had quite a good stereo equipment, and I loved to spend time listening to old records, mostly from the Seventies, or record mixtapes for myself through the radio.

I admired a good mix tape as much as any other music nerd ever, and I had read High Fidelity, of course. So it was with trepidation that I put the cassette in the slot and clicked the play button, curling up in front of the stereo, still dressed like an old lady, the granny’s mask looking at me creepily from the floor.

“You ok, pet?” Dad’s face poked in through a sliver of open door.

“Yes papi, I am just listening to something and then I’m going to bed too.”

“Ok pet, night night.”

I started listening.

The first side of the mixtape was good enough and I liked its songs: it was all upbeat or uplifting rock from all eras. I appreciated that he had put the newest songs first and went in for some staples: Springsteen, the Clash, Buzzcocks.

When I turned the cassette, I was expecting more of the same; I was surprised to find that the second half of the mixtape was much more soulful and personal that I had expected. He put in R.E.M, because he knew me, but it’s with the last two songs that he won me over.

It was the first time I heard Jeff Buckley’s heart-wrenching “Lover, you should’ve come over”, and only by the time I reached the halfway point of the song, I realised I had started crying. Big, fat tears had started to roll down my cheeks and I thought this man had the most angelic, sad voice I had ever heard. And then, David Bowie came on, with this little song, “The Prettiest Star”, which I might or might not have listened to previously, but that was beside the point. I thought the song was just a lovely way to finish a mixtape and, somehow, it was dedicated to me.