33. MAGDALEN
33
MAGDALEN
The night-time air is chilly as I wait outside the small bar where Roberto suggested we meet. While it’s summer for the rest of Italy, the steep mountains of Castagneto Po trap any and all residual mist, making the village perpetually dewy and wet. He’s chosen a locals-only spot, even though he’s not a local. I make a mental note to ask him about it and hope it’s not just because it’s a ten-minute walk to my house. The restaurant is hidden behind a wall of holm oak trees that crowd the hillside, with only a tiny red door peeking through the greenery. I probably should have worn a jacket. I settled for a skimpy tank top Anika chose. Hopefully, he’ll see my choice not to wear a jacket and consider it flirtatious without me having to do anything flirty. I shiver, unable to help myself. Flirting already seems impossibly difficult.
Someone opens the door to exit, and warm air curls around my arms. A throaty, smoke-filled laugh fills the inside of the bar.
Briefly, I think of Theo and immediately want to cry. The only reason you’re kissing me is because you’re too afraid to fucking talk to anyone else. But instead of sulking for the millionth time this week, I crack my knuckles, stick my foot inside the door before it closes, and force myself to walk inside. The warm air smells faintly of stale body odour and beer, and I blink at the warm light. For some reason, I feel incredibly shy, and my eyes can only look at the other people’s feet. I see shoes scuffing against the floor, someone tapping the heel of their sneaker. Someone’s loafers are crossed at the ankles. I try to look above the calf, but my eyes begin to twitch when I do, so instead, I attempt to navigate the space via the sea of feet, hoping to find an empty space.
As I turn the corner of the bar, I hear Roberto call my name. ‘Magdalen, over here.’
I stop walking and force my eyes to search above the calves, above the tables, and eventually to the faces.
His voice is higher than Theo’s. It’s not a bad thing, but I notice it immediately.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey. You look incredible.’
I shrug my shoulders, unsure of how to respond to that in a witty way, but I end up saying nothing instead.
‘What can I get you to drink?’ Roberto immediately fills the empty space I’ve made, and I feel both grateful and already very exhausted.
‘I’ll get a beer, thanks.’
‘Sure, sure. Go sit.’ He brushes my arm to indicate the table he’s reserved for us, so I walk, thankful for being given an order.
When I sit down and settle into the seat, I watch Roberto at the bar. He’s objectively very good-looking. I’m flattered that he might have asked me on a date. Cropped light brown hair gelled with military precision, bright blue eyes. I immediately think about my own hair and how messy the wind has made it. I wonder if the difference in our hair indicates something fundamental about us. When he gets the drinks, he slaps the bar loudly and, turning towards me, I notice that he’s not afraid to look at me as he walks with our drinks. He flashes me a smile and keeps eye contact for the entire walk from the bar to the table. I think about how, if it was me, I would be looking down at the glasses.
‘Here we are!’ Roberto says excitedly.
‘Here we are!’ I repeat, because I genuinely have nothing else to say.
‘Did you find the place alright?’
I try not to roll my eyes. As if he doesn’t know that I know this place.
‘Yeah. Luckily it’s right near my house.’
‘Oh, is that right?’ he says and then licks his upper lip where beads of white wine have lingered. His tongue protrudes like the amputated tentacle of an octopus, squirming frantically one last time before it realizes it’s been severed from the rest of its body. I find this grotesque and try to imagine his tongue coming anywhere near my face, but I feel myself wanting to shudder. I try not to think about Theo instead. But by resisting thinking of him, I’ve arguably already thought about him more intensely than if I’d just thought the thought. Theo’s tongue. How I found it sexy when it peeked out to moisten his lips while he was talking. I hadn’t known tongues could be sexy. I wanted it all over me. I try to look at Roberto’s tongue with the same perspective, but it’s still revolting.
‘Yeah, I think you knew that, though.’
Roberto snorts into his glass. I must be funny!
‘Alright, you got me,’ Roberto says sheepishly. ‘I figured you’d be more inclined to say yes if you didn’t have to ask for a ride.’
I pause. ‘How do you know I can’t drive?’
He looks at me like I’ve asked a dumb question. ‘Magdalen, everyone knows you can’t drive,’ he says, emphasizing everyone as if people living on the outskirts of Pisa were aware of my driving inability.
‘Oh,’ I say fairly bluntly.
‘Yeah, so I just wanted to make sure you were comfortable.’ Roberto says the last word slowly, as if he’s trying to seduce me with phonetics.
‘That was very generous of you, Roberto.’
‘It was nothing.’
An awkward silence settles between us and I know it’s my turn to say something, but I have nothing to add to this dialogue.
‘You know, you were really quiet back in secondary school,’ Roberto adds nonchalantly.
I sigh, annoyed but understanding there’s not much else people remember me by. ‘Yeah, I guess I still am.’
Goosebumps begin to form on my arm, and I wish I had brought a sweater. A wool jacket. A fucking parka.
‘Why is that? You’re so pretty.’
My face heats. I realize I am deeply offended by his obtuse correlation between beauty and confidence.
But maybe I heard him wrong. Taking a huge sip of beer, I try to reword the statement, figuring out if I missed a word because of the chatter around me.
If he didn’t think I was pretty, would my shyness make sense to him? My brain searches for a way to understand this, but I’m just disgusted by how different we already are. I think of Theo again. How he would obviously know the two are not mutually exclusive. He would scoff, roll his eyes, and say something smart. He’d have an anecdote lined up that would seamlessly prove his point. Right now, I can’t think of anything to say and it makes me frustrated with my own intellect.
‘Maybe I’m shy because I know how gorgeous I am.’
Roberto stares at me for a moment.
‘And because I’m so gorgeous , I have no need to try to talk to people who I know are less than I am.’
Years ago, when Anika forced me to go to a daytime party with her in Torino, I asked her how she was so good at talking to strangers. ‘I just don’t think of them as real people,’ she’d said. I always thought about that afterwards, but could never get myself to think with the same indifference. But I loved it. ‘They’re just a part of my story,’ she said resolutely, and paddled off to the boys with their spritzes, flipping her hair.
Looking at Roberto now, I finally begin to feel as Anika does. Whether I strip naked in front of him or throw my drink, it won’t matter. He is not real to my story. I know this with certainty. In a week, in two months, in ten years, Roberto will be a nameless face with cropped hair who I went to a bar with.
‘Ha, yeah, I guess that could be it,’ Roberto answers with no conviction. He has no prepared comeback and it doesn’t make me any happier than if he did. The first date I’ve ever been on has been ruined by someone who’s not even here.
‘I guess so.’
‘When did you get back home?’ he asks.
‘A few weeks ago.’
‘I thought you’d be one of those who never came back to Chivasso.’
‘I tried, but then my sister fell in love.’
He furrows his brow, making it a point to switch between looking at my left eye and right, as if he’s trying to read my mind and wants me to know it. ‘Why don’t you like home?’
God, he sounds like a psychiatrist.
‘That’s a tough question.’ I sip my beer, somehow already warm. The fuzzy ache I feel whenever I think of my childhood reappears for a moment, even after a decade. ‘I guess I felt a little unincluded in my own life.’
I don’t mean to tell the truth. Blinking away the feeling of hot tears, I try to smile, but I assume I look insane. Roberto smiles back stiffly and I feel terrible that I’ve wasted his night.
‘That’s funny you say that.’ He takes an even larger sip of his wine than I did of my beer, as if preparing for his speech. Is this a competition? I sip my beer just in case it is.
‘I’ve also been grappling with identity. My last girlfriend, well, let’s just say she had no room for social cognition, you know?’
I go over his words in my head and realize that I, in fact, do not know. It strikes me as odd how quickly I agreed to this date because I thought I knew Roberto, when I have no fucking clue who he turned out to be.
‘Totally,’ I contribute.
‘Thank you! I have an inner social circle that requires replenishment, and in the end, we mutually agreed that we weren’t compatible – personality-wise.’
Roberto’s face has gone slightly clammy around the edges, and the blue outline of a vein has suddenly appeared in the middle of his forehead, throbbing with vengeance. It’s not his fault. We all have veins. I suspect if I didn’t spend my time memorizing Theo’s face, I wouldn’t have ever noticed this about Roberto.
‘So what do you study at university?’ I try to switch up the conversation and, surprise surprise, find out he is studying to be a psychiatrist. The conversation soon circles back to his ex, however.
By the hour mark, I truly believe I’m having a stroke. Trying to connect his words into understandable sentences, I draw a blank each time. But it seems I’m saying all the right things for Roberto to continue his monologue about his ex, Camille, whom he feels no need to stop talking about. She’s studying to be a paediatric nurse in Milan. She has a cat named Sylvia, because La Dolce Vita is her favourite Fellini film. She’s a Gemini who does angel dust more often than Roberto likes. But he loves her. And I feel sad for both of us, out on a Thursday night with the wrong person.
After the first beer, I settle deeper into the hard, creaky chair. Familiar with the dull sensation of being talked at.
My gaze wanders to his hands, and I notice the nail on his right middle finger is much longer than the rest. Some dirt is caked underneath it, and his cuticles are sprouting like wildflowers. I stop paying attention to what he’s saying after that.