Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 4

We didn't hold hands.

I followed Mirko down the gravel drive and into his house. I wanted to turn around and run, but somehow I couldn't. I found myself inside his bedroom. Mirko playfully pushed me on to his queen-size bed, but when he put his hand down my jeans I balked. "I have to go," I said. I didn't say why. I just threw on my shirt and left, walking alone up the road, past the park, past the University for Foreigners, home. I didn't feel free or sophisticated. I felt a twinge of regret.

I was too ashamed and embarra.s.sed to go back to the cafe after that. Was there something wrong with me? Or was it with him? Either way, I couldn't bear to run into him again.

I was alone with Meredith when I told her about fleeing from Mirko.

"I feel like an idiot."

"Amanda," she said, consolingly, "maybe uninvolved s.e.x just isn't for you."

Months later Meredith's friends, our roommates, and especially the prosecutor would say that Meredith's and my relationship had soured-that we had fought over men, my manners, money. This wasn't true. We never argued about anything. We were just getting to know each other, and I thought we'd developed a comfortable familiarity in a short time-a process that probably moved faster because everything around us was new and unfamiliar. We shared a house, meals, a bathroom. I treated Meredith as my confidante. Meredith treated me with respect and a sense of humor.

The only awkward interaction we had was when Meredith gently explained the limitations of Italian plumbing.

Her face a little strained with embarra.s.sment, she approached me in my room and said, "Amanda, I'm sorry to bring this up with you. I don't know if you've noticed, but with our toilets, you really need to use the brush every time."

I was mortified. I knew that Meredith was uncomfortable saying it. I would have been, too. I said, "Oh my G.o.d, I'm so sorry. I will totally check and make sure I leave it clean."

We laughed a little nervously. We didn't want to hurt each other's feelings.

For two weeks in mid-October, tents and tables filled all the squares around Corso Vannucci for the annual Eurochocolate festival. The smell of chocolate around town was inescapable. Laura told me about the chocolate sculpture carving. It was done in the early mornings, so the next day, I went to Piazza IV Novembre to watch. The artists started with a refrigerator-size block of chocolate. As the chiseled pieces flew, a.s.sistants gathered chips and shavings into small plastic bags and threw them to the rowdy crowd. When a chunk of chocolate with the heft of an unabridged dictionary fell, onlookers screamed and reached across the barrier. I was shorter than most of the people around me, but I jumped up and down, yelling, "Mi, mi, mi!"

I was amazed when a worker plopped the chocolate in my arms. People reached at it, picking little pieces off as I disentangled myself from the crowd. I rushed home, trying to get there before the block melted on my shirt. I unloaded it on the table and said, "Voila!" Later, Meredith and I made chocolate chip cookies out of part of my winnings, trying to recreate the Toll House recipe from guesswork and memory.

Another afternoon, I returned to the festival with Meredith. I flipped the video switch on my camera and acted like a TV journalist. "Tell me, Meredith, what do you think about being here at the Eurochocolate festival?"

Meredith laughed and said, "No, no, don't film me." She pushed the camera away. She didn't like being the center of attention.

Neither of us felt we had to go far to be entertained. More days than not, three of the four guys who lived downstairs-Giacomo, Stefano, Marco M.-and another friend, Giorgio, dropped in during lunch and again after dinner for a stovetop espresso and, almost always, a joint. A few years older than Meredith and me, they were each equal parts big brother and shameless flirt. Students at the University of Perugia from Marche, the countryside east of Perugia, they'd sit around, get high, and gab about soap operas and game shows, movies, music-nothing in particular. Of the four, Giacomo, tall and st.u.r.dy like an American football player, with pierced ears, buzzed hair, and doe eyes, was the quietest and shiest. He played the ba.s.s, studied Spanish, and spoke English better than his roommates. When the guys weren't at home, upstairs at our apartment, or at school, they were often playing basketball on the court in Piazza Grimana. One day, hoping to replicate the football games I loved to play with my guy friends at UW, I asked if I could come shoot hoops with them. "Sure," they said. But when I got there I realized they thought I meant only to watch them play. It was another way in which my Seattle upbringing had left me unprepared for the cultural strictures of my new environment.

Around our house, marijuana was as common as pasta. I never purchased it myself, but we all chipped in. For me, it was purely social, not something I'd ever do alone. I didn't even know how to roll a joint and once spent an entire evening trying. I'd seen it done plenty of times in both Seattle and Perugia, but it was trickier than I thought it would be. Laura babysat my efforts, giving me pointers as I measured out the tobacco and pot and tried rolling the mixture into a smokable package. I never got it right that night, but I won a round of applause for trying. Either Filomena or Laura took a picture of me posing with it between my index and middle finger, as if it were a cigarette, and I a pouty 1950s pinup.

I was being goofy, but this caricature of me as a s.e.xpot would soon take hold around the world.

Chapter 4

October 2007

My big lesson on the first day of school at the University for Foreigners had nothing to do with academics. I'd shown up early for my 9 A.M. grammar cla.s.s and then waited, alone, checking and rechecking my schedule, wondering if somehow I'd come to the wrong place. Finally, just when I was about to give up, everyone arrived, en ma.s.se, at 9:15. That's when I learned that Italian time means T plus fifteen minutes, a tidbit I thought would probably be more useful to me than any verb I might learn to conjugate. I was even more charmed and appreciative the morning my p.r.o.nunciation teacher announced that she needed a cigarette and suspended cla.s.s while all fifteen of us walked outside for a quick shot of espresso or a smoke. Italians, I was coming to see, embrace any chance to have a good time. It was something I wasn't used to.

I went to school for two hours, five days a week. Besides grammar and p.r.o.nunciation, I had a third cla.s.s, in Italian culture. We all went home for lunch at noon, and I spent the rest of the day and night doing whatever I wanted. My teachers didn't give homework, so I'd sit on the terrace or, when the days cooled, at my desk with a grammar book and a dictionary, making my way, one word at a time, through the Italian translation of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

A lot of people would have traded places with me in a nanosecond. I was living in Italy, young and unfettered. But I quickly found that, for me, all the freedom came with a downside: the empty hours made me feel irresponsible, and I knew I needed somehow to fill them.

When I told my roommates in early October that I wanted a job, Laura arranged a meeting for me with a friend of hers. After lunch one day, she walked me over to Piazza Grimana, by the University for Foreigners, and introduced me to a scruffy young guy. "Juve, this is Amanda. Amanda, this is Juve. Good luck!" she said, turning to walk away.

Juve smiled and shook my hand. He spoke perfect, albeit stilted, English. "So you are looking for a job?" he said.

"Yes, I have experience as a barista."

"You are American?" he asked.

"Yes, I'm from Seattle."

He put his arm around my shoulders and started walking me down the street, away from the university. I felt awkward, because I was looking for a job, not a boyfriend. "My boss, Diya Lumumba-people call him Patrick-owns a new bar, Le Chic," Juve said. "It's a good place, small, and we are building up our clientele. I give out flyers during the day and bring in customers in the evening. I make sure business happens."

"Is that where we're going?" I asked.

The answer was no.

Instead we walked to Juve's apartment, where he made us espresso and we took turns playing his guitar. It was the weirdest job interview I'd ever had. I wasn't sure what to say or do. Was I supposed to talk about my work experience pulling coffee at a cafe and working for a Seattle caterer? Or were we two coworkers just hanging out? I'd expected him to ask me questions, but I had the feeling I'd already gotten the job on our handshake. Like so many other experiences in Perugia, this one made me feel off-balance.

"About the job," Juve finally said. "It is straightforward and easy. I will give you flyers to hand out in school. Invite your cla.s.smates to come to Le Chic. Keep asking them. Around nine P.M., we will meet at the bar, Patrick will open the doors, and we will help him get ready. Then we will go to Corso Vannucci and hand out more flyers and direct people to Le Chic. When we have no flyers left, we will help Patrick get drinks, stock snacks, and make sure people are having a good time. When customers leave, we bring in more."

I was hired to work at the bar from 9 P.M. to 1 A.M., making 5.00-about $7.25-an hour. "Handing out flyers doesn't count as work time," Juve said.

"Okay," I answered. "So, what's next?"

"You need to meet Patrick. I will tell him I know you and will teach you how to do the job."

I met Patrick at lunchtime the next day, at the university snack bar. He was originally Congolese and spoke Italian but no English. "Do you understand what I'm saying?" he asked.

"Pretty well," I said.

Like Juve, Patrick wasn't interested in my work experience. Looking back now, I'm sure they hired me because they thought I'd attract men to the bar. But I was too nave back then to get that. I still thought of myself as a quirky girl struggling to figure out who I'd be when I grew up. I now realize that the point of the job "interview" was to see if my looks were a draw or a liability.

Patrick said, "Sometimes the job is serving, sometimes cleaning, sometimes being friendly and welcoming."

"I'm outgoing," I said, still trying to sell myself as a hard worker. "I love talking to people."

"Good. Juve will train you, and I will see you tonight!" Patrick stood up and kissed me on each cheek. Juve handed me a stack of flyers. "The students are leaving cla.s.ses," he said. "Hand these out. And congratulations!"

Just before nine o'clock I went to Juve's apartment, and we continued on to Le Chic together. The wooden door was open, revealing a dim, tiny vestibule with a bar and a seating area beyond. The walls were brick, and the whole place was dark. It looked like a cellar.

Patrick was standing behind the bar. "Welcome," he said, as he handed me a menu and started pointing out which beers were on tap, which in bottles, and the different liquors for c.o.c.ktails and specialty drinks. "Would you like something?"

"I'm good for now, thanks," I said, translating the American idiom directly into Italian. Patrick looked at me blankly. "No, thank you," I said, correcting myself.

It turned out that working at Le Chic wasn't nearly as easy or as straightforward as billed. In fact, it was bewildering. I didn't always understand Patrick's directions, especially over the pulsating music, and I had to rely on Juve to translate. It was hard to keep track of orders let alone customers, whom I could hardly expect to stand in one place all night. I couldn't maneuver trays and had to hand-carry the full gla.s.ses two at a time. It was my job to make sure customers kept drinking, and I had to watch carefully so I could pounce on not-quite-finished c.o.c.ktails and replace them before the last swallow. It felt like a lot to juggle, even without the added challenge of trying to stay awake until 1 A.M. on school nights.

"Have a good time" was my main instruction from Patrick. If I was having fun, the customers would, too. This wasn't at all what I had thought I was getting myself into. As a barista at home, I was friendly with the regulars, but I wore an ap.r.o.n and stayed behind the counter, protected. At Le Chic, I liked being out and around people, but the job made me feel used and unsure of myself. Still, once I commit to something, it's hard for me to admit that it's not working out.