Page 2 of Two Chances With You

The woman doesn’t seem to know whether to say yes or no.

“Right, so he’s the friend I lost more than two years ago. He was inseparable with his girlfriend, Pallina. She’s just incredible, a great person, bright eyes, always laughing, hilarious, sharp and funny and really witty…”

She listens in silence, her eyes curious.

Sometimes you feel more comfortable with a person you don’t know at all. It’s easier to talk about yourself. You really open up. Maybe because you don’t care about how they judge you.

“Whereas I was with Babi, who was best friends with Pallina.” I tell this stranger everything. How I met Babi, how I started to laugh, how I fell in love, how I lost her…

You can only see the beauty of a true love after you’ve lost it. I think while I speak, with little pauses every so often.

The woman is amused and curious, more relaxed now. She’s even let go of my hand. She’s forgotten about the impending airline disaster. She’s taking an interest in my own personal disaster. “So this Babi, have you talked to her since?”

“No. Every so often, I talked to my brother. And now and then, my father.”

“Did you feel lonely in New York?”

I answer with something vague. I can’t bring myself to say it. I felt less lonely than I did in Rome. Then, inevitably, I make a reference to Mamma. I just plunge right in. My mother cheated on my father. I caught her in bed with the guy who lived across the street from us.

The passenger can hardly believe it. The airplane? She doesn’t even remember that she’s riding in an airplane. She asks me a thousand questions. I practically can’t keep up with her. Why on earth do people love to wallow in other people’s misery so much? Spicy topics, forbidden details, obscure acts, salacious sins. Maybe because, when you’re just listening to them, you don’t get dirty.

The woman seems to relish and suffer at every twist and turn of my story. So I tell her everything, and I do so without reluctance. My violent assault on my mamma’s lover, my extended silences at home, the fact that I never told my father or my brother a thing about what happened. And then, the trial. My mother sitting there, right in front of me. She sat in silence. She never had the nerve to admit what she’d done. She could have used her betrayal as a justification for my rage and violence.

The woman stares at me, mouth agape. She understands. Suddenly she turns serious.

So I try to cut the drama. “As Pollo would say, I don’t give a flying fuck aboutThe Bold and the Beautiful!”

Instead of being scandalized, she laughs. “And then what happened?” she asks, itching to hear the next installment.

I explain to her about the reason I went to America, why I wanted to run away and bury myself in a graphics course. “And seeing how easy it is to run into each other, even in a big city…so much the better to move to a new one entirely. Only new experiences, new places, new people, and most important of all, no memories. A year of the challenge of conversation in English, with the aid of the chance presence of the occasional passing Italian. All of it quite amusing, a reality filled with colors, music, sounds, traffic, parties, and new things.

None of what people talked about to you had anything to do with Babi, none of it could evoke her, bring her back to life. Useless days in an attempt to bring rest to my heart, my stomach, and my head. The total impossibility of retracing my steps, finding myself in the blink of an eye downstairs, looking up at Babi’s apartment, or running into her on the street. No danger of that in New York.

No room in New York for Lucio Battisti and his melancholy music. “And if you hark back in your mind, it’s sufficient just to think that you’re not there, that I’m suffering pointlessly because I know, I know it, I know that you’ll never come back.”

The woman smiles for one last moment. Stah-tuh-thump. A flat, metallic noise. A sharp movement and then the plane lurches ever so slightly.

“Oh my God, what was that?” The woman seizes my right hand.

“It’s the landing gear, don’t worry.”

“What do you mean, don’t worry! Does it have to make so much noise? It sounds like the landing gear fell off…”

Not far away from us, the flight attendant and the other crew members all sit down in the unoccupied seats, as well as a few odd side seats next to the exits. The passenger does her best to distract herself. She lets go of my hand in exchange for one last question. “So why did it end?”

“Because Babi found another boyfriend.”

“She did what? Your girlfriend? After all the things you told me?”

It seems like now she’s enjoying herself, sticking her thumb into my psychic wound. The airplane and the imminent landing procedures have faded into the background. And in fact, now she’s pelting me with questions, right up to the very last moment. Caught up in her excitement, in fact, we’ve exchanged names and moved on to a first-name basis. And she’s not holding back. “Since you broke up with her, have you had sex with any other women? Would you get back together with her? Is forgiveness an option? Have you talked about it with anyone?”

Either the beer is having quite an effect on me or it’s her and her questions that are making my head spin. Or else it’s the pain of that not-yet-forgotten love affair. I’m confused at this point. Utterly bewildered. I can only hear the roar of the spinning jet engines and the backthrust of the landing maneuvers. The woman looks out the window, frightened at the airplane and its wings that seem to brush the ground and wobble indecisively. She seizes my right hand and glances out the window again. Then she slams her head back into her headrest and jams her legs against the footrest with all her might, as if she were trying to use her own feet on the brakes of the plane. She digs her fingernails into the flesh of my hand. With a few gentle bounces, the airplane touches down. Immediately, the plane’s turbine engines go into reverse thrust, and that enormous mass of aluminum and steel shivers crazily, including all its seats and the woman beside me. But she doesn’t surrender. She squints and shudders, taking it all out on my hand.

“This is the captain, ladies and gentlemen. I’m pleased to inform you that we have landed at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. The temperature outside…”

A ragged attempt at a round of applause rises from the back of the plane, dying out almost immediately.

“Well, we made it,” I say.

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