Three Ramin
three
Ramin
Lost?” Ramin asked. He nearly had to shout to be heard over the bustle of hundreds of people grabbing their luggage at Milan Malpensa’s baggage claim.
“Yes,” the luggage attendant—a youngish woman with her blond hair in a bun—confirmed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Yazdani. It looks like it got sent to Amsterdam.”
“Amsterdam?” Ramin worked to keep his voice light. He’d done enough customer service calls himself over the years; he knew how thankless it could be, how a rude person could ruin your day. He wasn’t going to ruin this woman’s day just for trying to help him.
“Sì. I’m sorry, Mr. Yazdani. We’ll get it here for you as soon as we can.”
Amsterdam.
What the fuck was Ramin supposed to do without his luggage? All he had was his backpack. That wasn’t enough to last him eight weeks.
The morning after his disastrous proposal, he’d walked downstairs and announced to Arya, who’d crashed on his couch, and Farzan and David, who’d crashed in his guest room, that he’d booked himself a trip to Italy. Spur of the moment. Spontaneous.
Interesting.
“Will you be staying in Milan?” the attendant asked him.
Ramin nodded. He’d found an apartment he could book for eight weeks. Actually, it was fifty percent off if you booked more than four weeks, which was his original plan. But he’d been drunk off Barolo, and eight weeks for the price of four had seemed like a great deal at the time.
“If you can give us your contact information here, we can let you know as soon as we find it. Thank you for your patience, Mr. Yazdani.”
Ramin nodded and filled out the little form, fiddling with the new studs in his ears as he did. Brand new. Interesting New Ramin did things like get his ears pierced on the way to the airport.
Not the smartest choice he’d ever made, but at least his wound wash was in his backpack. Along with his laptop and phone chargers and passport and PrEP.
Not his condoms and lubes, though. Those had gone into his smaller carry-on suitcase. But when the gate agent back at his connection in Atlanta had begged for people to check their carry-ons because there were too many bags and too little bin space, Ramin had done it.
Boring Old Ramin behavior at its finest.
But maybe this was a blessing in disguise. He’d come to Italy to reinvent himself. Why not start with his wardrobe?
Ramin thanked the attendant for her help, noting her name tag—Silvia—to mark in his phone. He hoisted his backpack higher and headed for customs empty-handed.
If this wasn’t a metaphor for Ramin needing to let go of all his old baggage, he didn’t know what was.
As the taxi sped toward the heart of Milan, Ramin found his second wind. Colorful stucco buildings alternated with white marble churches. Piazzas and fountains interrupted the journey every few minutes, but that certainly didn’t slow his driver down. Or any of the other cars, for that matter.
“Is this your first time in Italy?” his driver asked. His name was Davide, and he was in his sixties, with a shock of white hair beneath his pageboy cap, and a huge pair of black plastic glasses taking up half his face.
“Sì,” Ramin said, because he’d spent the last three weeks feverishly studying what Italian he could. “Mia prima volta.”
“Ah, you speak Italian?” Davide asked brightly.
“Not very well,” Ramin confessed.
“Not too bad,” Davide rumbled. His voice was nearly as low as the car’s engine. “Where are you from?”
“The US. Kansas City. But my parents were from Iran.”
“Iran! Mosaddegh!” Davide grinned in the mirror. “Viva Mosaddegh!”
Ramin nodded, bewildered that Davide even knew who Mosaddegh was. Ramin himself hadn’t known much until he got to college. His parents had been kids when the coup happened, and surely Davide hadn’t even been born.
He didn’t dwell on it, though, as Davide moved from dead Iranian politicians to telling Ramin about the sights to see in Milan.
The Duomo, the Castello Sforzesco, Davide’s favorite piazzas, the best spot for an aperitivo.
Ramin nodded and tried to remember them all, but he was eager to explore and discover things on his own.
Get to know the city. Live like an Italian.
Be interesting.
At last they pulled up at his apartment building: a tall edifice painted saffron yellow with white trim around the windows and balconies, nestled between similar buildings in pink and sienna and white.
Davide shook his hand, shouted another “Viva Mosaddegh!” with a raised fist, and sped off without even using his blinker. Ramin took a deep breath, twisted his studs, fixed the hem of his shirt, and finally rang the buzzer his email instructed.
“Dimmi,” a deep feminine voice said.
“Uh. Ciao? I’m Ramin? I’m renting—”
“Ah! Ramin! Be down shortly.”
It wasn’t long before the metal gate swung open and his hosts stepped out.
“Ciao, Ramin! I’m Paola, and this is Francesca.” Paola was stunning, her red hair long and flowing down the back of her sleek, rose-red dress. Francesca, on the other hand, had a short black pompadour, and she wore jeans, a sport coat, and a bolo tie.
Ramin didn’t like to make assumptions, but he had the feeling he’d rented from a pair of fabulous Italian lesbians.
Being Interesting New Ramin was off to a great start.
“Ciao. Piacere,” Ramin said, shaking both their hands.
He didn’t see any wedding rings—though same-sex marriage still wasn’t legal in Italy, a fact he’d forgotten to look up while drunkenly making plans—but they wore a matched set of gold pendants that looked like they’d join together to form a heart. “Thank you for hosting me.”
“Please! We’re excited! Come, come. Where’s your luggage?” Francesca asked, holding the door for Ramin.
“Amsterdam,” he said with a shrug.
Paola laughed, a musical thing that set her very white teeth against her very red lipstick, but then she realized Ramin wasn’t joking. “Truly?”
“Yeah. I’ll be okay, though.”
“What a disaster, having to shop for clothes in Milan,” Francesca said drily as the three of them piled into an elevator that looked suspiciously like it was only rated for one person.
Ramin sucked in his stomach but still got jabbed by an elbow as Paola hit the button for the seventh floor, which was also the eighth floor, because in Italy, the ground floor counted as zero and not one.
Ramin was trying to be Interesting and New, but he hadn’t been able to help occasionally googling “things to know about visiting Italy” when he couldn’t fall asleep. It was either that or think about Todd.
“Here we are!” Francesca said when they spilled out of the elevator. The seventh (eighth) floor landing was wide and open. Sunlight poured in through the skylight above.
She and Paola led Ramin down the hall, past identical gray doors, to his apartment—8D.
It’s an omen! little devil Arya whispered into his ear.
Ramin hoped so.
Francesca pulled out a heavy keychain and let Ramin in—first through the outer gray door, which had a dead bolt and a lock in the knob, and then through the heavy red inner door, which had a latch and what looked to be the lock off a bank vault.
You had to stick the key—a weird-looking thing without teeth—in and crank it hard, three times, before the door finally opened into Ramin’s apartment.
Ramin stepped inside and took in the space.
The afternoon sun streamed in through the windows over the long, narrow kitchen.
It had a kitschy-looking yellow refrigerator and a lurid green IKEA dining table.
Beyond that, through a set of sliding doors, was the living room, with a bright red couch and a TV and more windows; to the right, a short hallway led off to the bathroom and bedroom.
“It’s perfect,” Ramin said once Paola finished a quick tour. “Thank you.”
“If you need anything, we’re right next door,” Paola said. She made to leave, her heels clicking against the floors, but Francesca stopped her and said something in Italian way too complicated for Ramin to understand.
“Ah, you’re right!” Paola swooped back into the kitchen to pull out a black binder from the small bookshelf in the corner. “This is full of recommendations: restaurants, bars, cafés, places for aperitivo—do you know about aperitivo?—theaters, shops, clubs, whatever you need.”
Ramin thumbed through thirty or so pages of recommendations. It was incredibly thorough, but…
“What about, uh, the gay scene?”
He felt his cheeks heating. He really hoped he hadn’t read the two women wrong.
Usually his gaydar was pretty accurate, but that was back home in America. Did Italian gaydar work the same?
Thankfully, Paola’s eyes lit up. She looked at Francesca and had the kind of silent conversation that Ramin used to be able to have with Todd.
“Sì sì sì, we’ll get you a list. You have to have a card. We’ll get you one.”
“Card?”
“All the gay clubs take a membership card. It’s not like that at home?”
Ramin shook his head, flabbergasted. In all his googling, he’d never heard that about Milan’s clubs. The few spots he’d been to in Kansas City certainly hadn’t needed a membership card, just a cover charge and a good body…
No. That was his dysmorphia talking. His body was a good body. A healthy body. A strong body.
Maybe it was boring, but even if it was, fuck Todd for saying so.
“Crazy Americans!” Francesca said fondly. “Allora, we’ll let you get settled, and we’ll get you a card. Okay, Ramin?”
“Okay. Thank you. Grazie.”
“Grazie te, Ramin,” Paola said, pulling Ramin in for air kisses on the cheek. “Ciao!”
Ramin closed the door behind them—cranking the dead bolt three times, just like they’d instructed—and then he was alone.
“Well,” he said to the empty apartment. “I guess this is home for a while.”
The afternoon heat smacked Ramin in the face as he emerged from a boutique minus several hundred euros and plus four big bags of clothes. He wore a just-purchased azure polo and white linen shorts, relieved to finally be out of his plane clothes.