Читать книгу Clouds Of Smoke… The Story - Gianluigi Ciaramellari - Страница 24

When Sonia went back to sleep, that same Saturday, her nightmare was soon followed by other thoughts and dreams, luckily less troubling, and it vanished like a vague and clouded memory.

Sunday morning she woke up in a good mood, and she switched the alarm button on to radio mode, already tuned to her favourite frequency: Radio Italia solo Musica Italiana [a radio channel which plays only Italian music]. In doing so, she felt the usual satisfaction, for she beat the clock, anticipating the ring. Maybe she had never even heard that sound, except for the first time, in order to set the volume.

Sonia had an inner timer, if she had to get up at a certain hour; she did it automatically, as if she had set within herself a very reliable and accurate mental alarm.

The radio seemed to make fun of her, for at that moment they were playing Venditti’s song: “...What a nice Sunday, spent at home waiting, but the phone won’t ring anymore, and your boyfriend ran off...”

“That’s not true, my boyfriend will call me, you can be sure of that!” Said Sonia, yawning.

As a matter of fact, she didn’t have time to finish her breakfast and the phone rang, contrary to the singer Venditti’s predictions.

“Good morning!” Giorgio greeted her from the other end.

“Hi Giogiò, did you sleep well?” Answered Sonia, almost choking on the toasted bread she was chewing.

“Yes... I’m leaving the house now; I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes, start inflating the wheels of your bike!”

“Hmm... No, I’ll wait for you. I don’t feel like pumping so early in the morning!” She laughed mischievously.

“Hahahaha! It wouldn’t hurt you! All right, I’m on my way!” He hung up, already excited.

Twenty minutes for Giorgio were five minutes for Sonia. A ridiculously short time to dress, put her make-up on, make her bed and clear away the breakfast table. The morning was sunny. Being so warm already at that hour in the morning, she could wear a pair of khaki-coloured shorts, a green polo, of a fairly consistent fabric, so her breasts wouldn’t show, a pair of tennis shoes and a colourful clip to hold her hair back. A little eye shadow to contrast with her brown eyes, a dab of foundation and mascara, a coat of lip gloss, a spray of Bulgari perfume on her neck, wrists and she was ready.

Her bike was on the terrace. She checked the condition of the wheels and they seemed okay. She had already prepared a couple of sandwiches and drinks and put the parcel in her front basket.

She pulled the bike onto the landing, while Giorgio rang the intercom.

“Giorgio, can you come up and get my bike please?” Sonia pleaded as she opened the door.

With his athletic physique, Giorgio climbed the four flights of stairs taking the steps two by two. His lock of long golden blond hair, swayed at every hop. He wore sportswear, shorts and a white shirt with an unbuttoned Korean collar, ankle socks, running shoes, and on his wrist a gold Rolex. He had locked his Mountain Bike to the light pole in the street. “Just to put the lock on, (Sonia thought), it must have taken him five minutes”, knowing him, the lock and his precious Giant bike.

Sonia could smell the scent of the Armani fragrance Acqua di Giò, while he was still on the third flight of stairs.

Giorgio knew how to dress, but always exaggerated with perfumes, deodorants and aftershaves. Anyhow he had no intention to save on such products. His parents were the owners of one of the most sought after perfume shop in Florence.

They made a lot of money. Giorgio was used to a worldly life since he was a boy, for he grew up between private parties in prestigious villas, fashion shows where his father’s company logo was omnipresent as official sponsor and important gatherings to which the whole family attended, including Buddy the bulldog that everyone feared, not for his bite but for his drool.

Giorgio was a handsome guy. He was rich, (and this made him even more handsome), well-educated, (sometimes unbearably so), gracious, (sometimes...).

But he was empty. Yes, empty like an empty Nutella jar. Or rather, like an already labelled jar, left-over by Nutella’s manufacturer.

Sonia often wondered if she had ever even gotten a whiff of that chocolate hazelnut cream. However, she was content. It was a nice jar after all, she would have filled it with something, and she would find a way to do it.

The jar tumbled into her house, while Sonia was putting her electronic cigarette into her backpack.

“I’m here!...What’s that?” The jar... Giorgio asked Sonia, (without panting).

“My electronic cigarette! I bought it a while ago, from that shop nearby. It works, you know.”

“Does that mean that you've decided to quit smoking?” Giorgio asked, intrigued to the point that he stuck his head into the backpack to see “that thing” better.

“Well, at least I’ll try. Shall we go?” Meanwhile she kissed him on the lips.

“Bring the bike downstairs, then we can talk, I have some things to tell you”.

Actually, Sonia was not so sure she wanted to tell Giorgio of her tests, not today at least, not during a nice bike ride.

But she had to do it anyway. It was her boyfriend’s right to know about it. Giogiò, (as she called him), would have been hurt if she had kept it hidden from him, even just for a few days, or even worse if he had heard it from someone else.

They had been going out for about six months, since they met in his father’s perfume shop, where she shopped every once in a while. He liked her for her kindness and her refined elegance; it was almost as if she belonged to another era. She was testing the new Cavalli line, when he came up to her to suggest a fragrance, (which she ended up buying). So he was a man who knew her tastes. They spoke only two words, maybe three, one by her and two by him. Giorgio was the most loquacious between the two of them. It took only a lunch date at the Sushi bar in the centre, then a dinner date in Greve in Chianti. A candle and a good bottle of Chianti wine was enough to bring them together, eye to eye, hand in hand.

Their first dates were sweet. They often dined together in the evening, at her house, or at his house, sometimes out, in fantastic places: by the sea, on a hill, all paces with breath-taking views.

But not very often at his home, though. Giorgio lived in an annex of his parents’ villa. To enter one had to go through the main gate that opened onto the driveway that ended in front of the entrance to his parents’ home. Every time, coincidentally, they were awake. Either because they were giving a party, or because they were playing Buraco with friends, or a business chat with agents that had come to dinner, well... Sonia was always a little reluctant to participate in those presentations and (formal) cordialities.

When they went to Giorgio’s house, she had to dress in a certain manner and, “oh my God, what a bore!”, that was something she had soon discovered to be a burden with which she had to learn to live with.

When you fall in love as kids, in the other person you see the image of the love you’ve dreamt of, and you love the idea that the feeling perfectly matches your expectations. Often, these love affairs end because you discover that they were simply “teenage crushes,” so, once you get over that sense of disappointment that dissolves in a pint of tears, you jump into another affair.

At twenty years old, things become more serious, but they are just like cartoons that change the theme: first they are frogs and princesses, then they become Minnie and Mickey Mouse and Fiona and Shrek. The love affairs of twenty year old people are heroic because they have to fight against the prejudice and criticism of parents and friends; they are lived as passionate adventures with moments of romance which, I’m sure, will never come back again.

In your thirties, your heart has already built a shield. It’s the time in which your rationality wakes up and, after all the beatings it’s taken, it starts hitting back. So on the one hand there’s your heart that tells you to follow it, because it became so strong that it doesn’t believe it can be wrong, on the other hand there’s your mind that continuously places limitations, painstakingly trying to sabotage you, because it wants to protect itself from deception, and be the only one at the centre of your universe. Our mind is jealous, terribly jealous of our heart.

Four months into their relationship, Sonia realized that the Giorgio’s beauty was nothing more than a golden mask that hid the weakness of his personality. At thirty-six years old, one is a grown man, he can’t depend on his Mom. But he revealed himself to be a boy who never made a decision without his mother’s approval. For him it was unthinkable to manage his life in total independence. Sonia should have realized this, when she saw that he still lived in an annex of his parental home. But we all know that, when we fall in love, we tend to see and enhance just the things we like about the other.

Thus she felt let down one day, when they argued about which dress she should wear for his brother’s wedding.

That quarrel had irritated her very much. Up until then she had appreciated the fact that Giorgio knew her tastes, be it perfume, flowers or jewellery. At first, to calm herself down, she blamed her disappointment on the particular circumstance that this was an occasion concerning “Giorgio’s very respectable family”, so she held her prejudice responsible, since she disliked his mother. Then her anger escalated, when she saw Giorgio calling “his mother”, for advice. In the end Sonia had to surrender and wear a wide mesh net dress, which she never wore again following that ceremony, during which everything bothered her and made her feel uncomfortable; although it was one of her favourite dresses, that day she wanted to wear something different, more in tune with her mood.

She forgave him, though it took a week for her to digest it; a session of wild sex was enough to make her forget about it, one of those moments in which Giorgio brought out the real man, the handsome macho that he was, at least in bed.

However, since that day, Sonia began to see Giorgio under a different light. She removed the glasses of the girl engaged to Prince Charming, the ones with a tortoise butterfly shaped frame and with fuchsia-coloured lenses, and was now able to see her boyfriend through the naked eyes of a mature woman who knows what she wants.She watched him pedalling in front of her, on his Mountain Bike, she nodded to him when from time to time he turned back to make sure she was following him at a safe distance. She studied him. Undoubtedly he had a beautiful body. His nimble legs, with muscular calves, broad shoulders and the sweaty shirt clung to his back highlighting the well-sculpted backbones. When he got up from his seat to push harder, Sonia could see his butt. Small but firm and round. She was proud of having such a handsome boyfriend; she thought that any woman would want him, and some of her girlfriends had also told her so. She could smell his scent, mixed with the acrid smell of sweat and it was a pleasant mix that intoxicated her.

“Slow down, Giogiò!” She called breathlessly, from behind.

“Excuse me darling, come on, let's ride together now!” And he let her catch up with him.

“I have a city bike, I can’t keep up with you if you go so fast!” Sonia pleaded.

“Okay, I’ll slow down. In this stretch of road there are less cars, we can ride close to each other”, he reassured her.

They were going through Via del Barco, towards Cascine Park. Damien’s shop was in that street: “Clouds of smoke steam cigarettes”. Obviously, it was closed on Sunday. Sonia saw it and pointed it out to Giorgio.

“Look, that’s the store in which I bought my electronic cigarette!” She said, pointing to the sign.

“Come on! - He exclaimed, surprised – do you know that there was a small perfume shop here which belonged to customer of my father’s?”

Without getting off their bikes, they both put a foot on the ground to steady themselves and stared at the shutter for a few seconds. He tried to remember how the perfume shop that used to be there had been and she thought of Damien, wondering what he was doing at that moment and how he spent his Sunday mornings.

Sonia gazed at the first and last floor of the building; she saw two windows with closed blinds. At first it seemed strange that she instinctively compared the two closed windows with the closed shutter of the shop, as if they were connected with each other. She remembered Massimo, who the night before told her “Damien spends the night in there!” For a moment, a thought crossed her mind and made her guess that Damien lived there.

It lasted a second, in fact. She didn’t think it was important. However, wherever Damien lived, she doubted that at ten o’clock in the morning, he could still be sleeping. He didn’t seem like a guy who sleeps in on Sunday. He was probably out, taking a walk. Or he was at home, with his wife and children. Maybe even his grandchildren. Could he be a grandfather?

“What are you thinking of?” Giorgio asked.

“About Damien”, Sonia said, without taking her eyes off the two windows.

“Who is Damien?” Asked Giorgio nervously.

“He’s the owner of this shop. A very exceptional man”. Sonia said with conviction.

Too much conviction for Giorgio, who at first was curious, then became grumpy.

“An exceptional man. What does that mean? What’s so exceptional in a man that sells electronic cigarettes? He’s a tobacconist 2.0! That’s what he is!”

“Okay, you’ll explain it to me later” Giorgio said, starting to pedal again.

“Come on Giogiò! He’s twenty years older than me, he could be my father!” Sonia mocked him, starting to ride her bike, too.