Brittany
I am lost in Italy, maybe this is Rome.
I find myself driving a tiny car, it has three wheels, but no roof, and is pulling a limping trailer. I travel through half-lit underground tunnels, maneuvering around piles of trash, empty tin cans, and filthy rags. Moving headlong into traffic, though not concerned as I approach them, for every car jumps into reverse and comically backs away .
I merge with a group of similar clown cars and follow them home.
I am staying in a dingy apartment with a family of male Greeks. There are two adult brothers and their violent father. In the living room, the father binds both brothers across the chest and legs to separate maple wardrobes with heavy hemp ropes. Under the ropes, the siblings writhe and wildly contort their bodies and faces. It is an ugly thing to watch. The father screams and whips a length of the rope, slamming the knot at its end against the floorboard. What he seeks is for the brothers to sing in harmony, whipping the rope, indicating them stop and then begin their singing again. Eyes closed, their bodies twisted and shaking, they achieve and hold their father's wish.
I am unfamiliar with the song they sing.
I retire to a windowless bedroom in the apartment, it is wood-paneled and holds a single mattress positioned in the middle of the floor. The white sheets are worn, but soft and somewhat clean.
At some point during my sleep, two women crawl into the bed with me. They nuzzle my face and neck, slowly waking me with hands in my hair. I am drawn to the warming scent of one more than the other. The smell is something close to peaches in the sun, cinnamon, and tobacco. The lack of interest in the other woman causes her features to harden, her face becomes wooden, puppet like and then she dissipates like exhaled smoke.
I am left alone with the other.
Her body is small, the backs of her arms are soft against my face and cheeks. My eyes are drawn away from her body and to the single red dot of lipstick she wears on her mouth. She closes her eyes as I run my hands over her chest and stomach.
We spend days cloistered in the bedroom. The rooms edges undefined, the walls sinking into a dark murkiness. We are uninterrupted as she travels, wrapped in the top sheet, to the bath and back to the bed again.
We do not take the time dress, but spend our days watching an endless newscast of some war on a tiny Sony Trinitron. On the screen the are people in clothing made from rough linen, black powder smoke, and the sound of gunfire off-screen. There is sleep between bouts of warm skin. There are only unshelled pecans to eat.
Our banter is friendly, affectionate, but not overly loving. She holds a hand to my cheek as talk.
After two days, I muster up the courage to ask the obvious.
She says, "Brittney."
