Miami, Italy

                                                                     Miami, Italy

with apologies to my wife

The first time I’d tried to quit smoking was completely accidental. I was in my fourth year of college and I was living across the street from a house of girls. The relations between our homes were cordial; we invited each other to parties and if anyone was on either porch, it was an invitation to stop by. One afternoon in early spring, I’d wandered over there between books I’d been reading for class and met a girl named Elle who was visiting from the west side of the state, where she lived, but she was getting ready to go to school at Wayne in Detroit.

Elle was a year younger than me. She was smart and compassionate. When I parroted ideas from books I’d been reading for class, she knew the arguments and their flaws. When she disagreed with something she opened her green eyes and raised her brows a little like she was surprised. She gave off an air of worldliness and something vaguely piney.

Elle had lots of paperwork to do for Wayne and lots of councilors or somebody to talk to there. She started coming through Lansing almost once a week on her way to drop things off in Detroit and somehow I began making the trip with her. When we got to Detroit and she was in the admissions building, I went into the coney island across the street, drank coffee, smoked, read and looked out the window at the ornamental trees, the Free Press boxes and the changing traffic lights. After about an hour, Elle would emerge from the admissions building, come into the coney island and we’d head back to the car. On the drive back to Lansing, she’d voice her frustrations about college and how expensive it was. I’d agree in the lackadaisical way of someone who had yet to comprehend the threat of whole numbers. Only once did I broach the subject of the trip itself and why she picked me to go with her instead of her friend who lived across the street. But the discussion didn’t go well. Everything got confused; it was better just to think of it as an opportunity to get out of town once a week. Even if all I ever did was go to the coney island. We probably could’ve gone somewhere else, but I had no idea what there was to do in Detroit; neither did Elle. She never mentioned any other destinations, maybe because she was waiting for me to be adventurous and suggest something.

Despite this auspicious beginning, I didn’t have a crush on Elle. Before I met her and started going to Detroit, I had developed a crush on a girl named Sara in my Italian class. She was quiet, had long brown hair and large brown, almond-shaped eyes with an inquisitive shine. She sat behind me, but I couldn’t come up with a reason to talk to her and I was hopeless with foreign languages. Growing up where I did, the only encounter I’d ever had with another language was the sign of the Mexican place on Paige Ave. called Mexico Lindo. It never occurred to me that ‘lindo’ had any meaning. I thought it was a name or maybe a place in Mexico. So I’d never questioned what ‘lindo’ meant and the Italian teacher, Sr. Tedeschi—a short, balding guy, like an angry DeVito--knew it and gave me a hard time. It was my third semester of Italian and the first two had been alright but no matter what I answered in his class, Tedeschi responded ‘non e gusto.’ I could tell he got satisfaction out of saying it. His mouth twisted around the words like he was tasting them, a critical gourmet. I imagined Sara, two rows back, blinking her languid eyes and feeling embarrassed for me. To ease my anxiety, I smoked before going to the class. I’d been smoking since I was 15 so it didn’t require any effort or pretense. I got there early, found a bench and gave myself a good ten minutes to smoke and mentally prepare. I usually smoked before classes, but, for Italian, I made a point of it. I scheduled my smoking and always arrived early.

But one day, probably because I’d been going to Detroit with Elle and thinking too much at the coney island, I skipped my pre-class cigarette. The weather was warm and some of the smaller trees were beginning to bud. The air had a warm, earthen smell, like honey that’s been in the cabinet too long, and I didn’t feel like blowing smoke all over it. I took a cigarette out of the pack, felt its thin wasp paper between my fingers and then put it away. I tried to distract myself with the scenery and sat looking around like a bird watcher, but after I put the cigarette away, I felt like I had begun to hold my breath. An insistent voice kept asking me, ‘why are you not smoking?’ and because I didn’t have an answer, I found this question very annoying. I was almost relieved when it was time for class to begin and I didn’t have to think about it anymore.

Everything went alright. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Sara and Sr. Tedeschi still suspected me of being third rate, but I got through the class. When I stepped out of the doors, I found myself reaching for the pack, but I stopped and decided just to keep walking. I didn’t want to hang around the building anyway. It was way the hell in the back of campus where there were all these dorms and students yelling to each other from behind their flag-covered windows. Sitting in the courtyard, you had to listen to them play the same songs over and over. Whatever they were listening to would end on one stereo and then start up on another, like something they had to keep going. Even when I was smoking it annoyed me. I walked across campus and caught the bus with the air of someone coming out of an attack of amnesia.

Not smoking was like trying not to eat anymore because you’d skipped breakfast, had a few cups of coffee and still didn’t feel too hungry. If you felt alright around ten in the morning, perhaps you could make it until four in the afternoon and maybe until the next day, but the key word was ‘make it.’ At some point, it felt like you were going to have to give in. Not smoking didn’t feel like anything that could be permanent and trying to think of it that way drove a wedge down between the mind and body. The longer I went without smoking, the more I felt like an enfeebled mind trying to escape the tyranny of my body’s demands. The sense of self that once inhabited my head, chest, arms and legs equally felt like it had been sucked up into my brain through a straw. My body wilted and I floated on in my mind, dragging my useless trunk and appendages behind me like a balloon string. I tried not to think too much about tomorrow. It was cruel to project that feuding body and mind indefinitely into the future.

Having never tried to quit after nearly a decade of smoking, it was difficult to anticipate the anxiety. I felt hot and the blood collected in my hands and feet in a way that felt like it needed to be shaken out. My thoughts were hard to catch hold of and I had to clench my teeth to focus on one of them for a moment, but the background stuff, mundane sounds and even smells, the effluvia of life which normally passes without much notice under one’s feet, started to pile up and stifle what little attention I had left. I couldn’t form a coherent thought, but I was hypnotically drawn into the sound of the guy on the bus clearing his throat like I was caught in the grooves of a skipping record. My mind focused on these little things until it was paired down to the reptilian simplicity of ‘anticipate and absorb:’ anticipate between stimuli, absorb during stimuli. Coffee, which usually made concentration easier, now only made my misplaced focus so much more intense. Someone in my house would cook something garlicky and, from up in my room, I’d focus on the smell, nasally lapping it up to the point where it nauseated me. I was assaulted by details because I was no longer able to see the larger picture. I don’t know why giving up smoking should’ve done this, but it did. Crowded by details, I was only able to swipe at them as an impatient man swipes at a bee near his food, incensing it rather than driving it away. My movements became jerky and I lost my nonchalance that I’d carefully cultivated all through high school. Instead of taking things in stride, I’d worry about the details. I had previously experienced the world through a smoky but protective haze. Cigarettes had been my filter for stimulus; without them, the volume was up, the colors were bright and the output was all nervous and raw.

Three days after I’d quit, on one of those bleary spring days when the rain is light and cold enough to feel but not to see, Elle came through and picked me up to go to Detroit. I didn’t feel much like going, but I wondered if the drive might be a reprieve from my own increasingly nervous thoughts. There wasn’t enough rain to make a sound on the roof of the car or stream down the windows. It just splashed around between the cars and trucks on the highway and made it so I couldn’t roll down the window without getting soaked. The heater was on, but the current of warmth was coming out in a trickle on my knee which felt dry and hot while the rest of my body was still damp and cold. As we left Lansing, I considered how being in a car in the rain is too much like being in the womb. You just float there, reluctant to have the trip end and to have to go back out into the rain, but dissatisfied with your lack of agency in the car just passively drifting by all these rainy fields and dark stands of trees in the distance. I started to do the thing I’d done since I was a kid and projected myself onto the rainy landscape and imagined finding a dry place under a pile of leaves where I could stretch out, look up into the worn nickel sky or watch the rain trickle through the woods and feel the cold on my face contrast with the warmth of my body. When I got tired of thinking about that, I considered what it would be like to walk along the highway for hours, to become tired and sore and then to arrive home, change and slip into bed.

Elle and I didn’t talk about much on the way up. Neither of us was interested in the other’s choice of topic. I heard myself saying, ‘sometimes I think what it would be like to live outside. It’s probably easier than most people realize.’ Elle countered this by talking about the plight of the homeless and how it wasn’t very easy for them. I tried to explain that my idea was different. That I’d stay away from the cities and bathe in the rivers, but it sounded stupid when I tried to explain and I gave up. My own voice seemed constantly in danger of rising to a whine. A little ways after Brighton, Elle said she’d seen that a new vegetarian restaurant was opening not far from my house. I said I thought restaurants were a waste of money and I started rambling about how frying potatoes wasn’t hard and much cheaper when you did it at home. She muttered something about having other things on the menu, but I let it go and went back to the window. As many college students do, we’d adopted the habit of subtly accusing each other of bourgeois tendencies. The worst thing was that we were both aware of what we were doing, found it totally unnecessary, but couldn’t do anything to stop it.

All the parking around the university was taken up in the rain. We found a place a few blocks away. When we got out of the car, we both ran, umbrella-less, in opposite directions without saying anything. Elle ran toward the university, I ran across the street towards the businesses. She knew where to find me.

The waitstaff remembered me and without saying anything, brought over a coffee with no creams or sugars. Then they took away the utensils rolled in a napkin. I tried not to think about how much I’d been crossing half the state to sit in this place. Initially the rides were the object, we’d had great conversations. We’d talked about the things I thought about on long walks alone. We talked about nebulous American identity and the importance of poetry. On that first day, I’d only come over to the coney island to find some place to wait while Elle did her admissions stuff. I’d been impatient over my coffee, waiting for her to come back and pick up the conversation. Now, I watched the steam rise from my coffee, thinking how much I’d been looking forward to having this moment alone, but now that I had it, I wasn’t sure why I’d wanted it so badly. There was nothing in it, just me and the rain tapping on the window. A leafless elm was dribbling rain onto the yellow Detroit Free Press box on which someone’s half cigarette was bleeding teak-colored water. I brought my notebook from my bag, but I couldn’t think of anything to write about, the drive up in the womb had pacified me. All I could do was look out the window and blink like a baby. I tried to think of something to talk about on the ride back, but when I imagined saying anything, it was followed by Elle’s comeback, accusing my imagination of being insensitive. Across the street there was an ad for Newports in the window of a liquor store. It would be easy to buy a pack, but cigarettes always kind of gave me a headache in the rain.

Elle and I drove back under a heavy silence. Everything I thought to say couldn’t be finished. I couldn’t talk about not smoking because I didn’t know why I was doing it. The only class I ever thought about was Italian and I couldn’t mention that without talking about Sara and Sr. Tedeschi. I didn’t want to think about poetry; I didn’t feel like I had the words. I surprised myself suddenly wishing it would snow, but I only thought it; nothing had come out of my mouth. I considered saying something, but too much time went by after the thought and I knew it would sound maudlin, like a complaint about the rain. The silence in the car was building like a noxious gas. The highway exits were going by like a tally of silent moments we’d endured. I looked at Elle out of the corner of my eye and wondered why she wasn’t talking either. Until this trip, I’d always begged to be able to smoke in her car—she didn’t like it, but sometimes allowed it—I hadn’t mentioned it this time. How come she didn’t ask me about that? I was going through this constant struggle and someone who had once adjured me to quit didn’t even notice when I did. If she hadn’t noticed that, what else hadn’t she noticed? What did I look like to her? What did my voice sound like? What was the point of quitting smoking? All the silence made the questions build up. I could pick any one of them to ask her, but I let each slip by.

It got to the point where introducing anything short of profound into that silence would’ve been impossible. It was a rarefied atmosphere where only certain things could live, a stubborn, sticky silence. The closer we got to Lansing, it was as if something were withering. When we stopped in front of my house, I pried open my mouth to say goodbye, realizing how little I’d said since ‘hello’ hours before. It came out creaky and dry like a branch creaking in the wind. In a quiet voice, Elle returned my goodbye. I shut the door and she drove across the street. I considered heading over there, telling her about quitting and my tendency to have unfinishable thoughts in cars in the rain. We’d have a nice conversation on the porch, I’d get some Quality Dairy coffee. She’d yell at me because the cups were Styrofoam, but would drink it anyway and I wouldn’t be too sensitive about it. But the indolence of the car was still on me. I didn’t want to start anything. I was afraid it wouldn’t work. I walked inside quickly to get out of the rain. I stood in the doorway a minute then went up the stairs to my Italian homework.

After the silent rainy drive, Elle stopped coming around. I asked my neighbor about her, but she said she hadn’t heard anything either. “She does this sometimes,” my neighbor explained. I had no idea what to do with that. I had her number, but until that point, we’d only talked in person and I didn’t want to get in the habit of calling instead of talking face-to-face. I thought about calling when I went out for walks, but when I got home, the cordless phone was never on the charger and I hated to go looking for it. It was an excuse, but one I found easy to make. I was 21 and my life sat squarely on my shoulders like a space helmet. It wasn’t something I had to chase down.

Things in Italian got better. Sr. Tedeschi had stopped me in the hallway one day and said “You’ve got an Italian last name.” He made a show of sort of squinting before announcing “You don’t look Italian.” After that, I knew he was a jerk and stopped trying to impress him. For his part he stopped paying attention to me and just gave me ‘B’s on everything. I still spent a lot of time on the homework and studying for tests, but my interest had gone far beyond the class. I had begun to consider the possibility of going to Italy. I had bought this anthology of Italian American writing and even though it was mostly about Brooklyn, it made me want to see the Lazio and Reggio di Calabria the writers talked about in an ardent but uncertain way. Italy started to feel familiar, like a trip I’d been planning a long time. I thought about myself getting off the plane and kissing the ground outside Fiumicino. When I walked home from classes, I walked along the Tiber instead of the Red Ceder. I checked out opera cds from the library and tried to listen to them. I bought an ‘Everybody Loves and Italian Boy’ shirt, but couldn’t work up the nerve to wear it. And, as is so easy when you’re young, I allowed a budding interest to become part of my personality.

Mid-way through April, the rains became less frequent. The sodden green lawns dried out and people started to come back outside. My friend Dan was getting married in a few weeks and we had decided to throw a party at the house with all these bands. It was supposed to be his bachelor party, but it really just an excuse for a show. The semester was almost over and everyone needed a break. I hadn’t seen anyone out on the porch across the street in days, even though the weather was nice. In my own house, everyone was locked in their room, studying. I was down at the diner nearly every evening working on another paper, trying to extract some insight from my mind that was becoming increasingly focused on going to Italy and less concerned with smoking and with who I’d been before.

I studied hard for the final and Sr. Tedeschi was forced to give me a 3.5. He made some quip when I handed him my exam. It was meant to be friendly. I found myself thanking him. I wasn’t sure what for. I went down the hallway whistling. Sara had finished her exam before me. I’d looked up from my paper to watch her go, comforted by the idea that maybe we’d run into each other in Italy some day. I knew it was ridiculous, but the fragrant spring air only made it seem all more plausible.

I crossed campus entertaining a number of romantic scenarios in which Sara and I met in a cafe in Italy. In each, I was totally transformed into an Italian speaker and blended into the background so well, it took her a while to notice me. I imagined excusing myself from the company of my boisterous but good-natured Italian friends and our espressos with a ‘mi scusi’ and then calmly going over to the corner seat where she sat in total comprehension and appreciation of my situation. I’d expertly order her a coffee and we’d laugh at Sr. Tedeschi together. Poor bastard had probably never even been to Italy.

I crossed campus with these thoughts and went into the library, where it was easy to keep the fantasy going, climbed the stairs and imagined how Sara and I would walk the gas-lit streets of some Renaissance capital, arm-in-arm. I wandered the third-floor stacks with my eyes half-closed imagining crossing medieval bridges in the moonlight while the water sloshed gently through the Venetian canals, but my imagination was starting to bump up against the task of finding something to read and the vision faded until it was nothing more than a lingering feeling of contentment.

I checked out Pirandello’s short stories and went to read it on a bench. There were no more papers or exams to anticipate. I put the book down, leaned my head back and let the Sicilian sun shine on my face. I smiled up at it. Life would be like this from now on. I could spend the summer reading and dreaming of Italy. I picked the book back up but felt too giddy too focus. I got up to get a coffee, thinking I’d come back, but I didn’t. I went into the student bookstore—got a dollar coffee and started walking back home. A few times, I stopped and punched the air in a silent fist-pumping cheer. I was that happy. My thoughts skittered from the Appian Way to the freedom I felt in moving with no obligation chafing me. Today, tomorrow, they were all open. I even looked forward to going to work, knowing that I wouldn’t have to try to study while I was there.

I walked back home on a street parallel to the Red Cedar River. The spindly thicket that covered the river was now a mass of waxy green leaves. The faded trash that the melting snow had reveled had finally been cleaned up along Kalamazoo St. I sipped the dregs of my coffee watching the changes as if they were happening in the moment. The neighborhood was bright, green and warm. It was already summer and it had come as a surprise because I’d been too busy to pay much attention to spring.

I turned onto Foster and nearly stopped when I realized, in my rush of happiness, I hadn’t thought about smoking in days. Since I’d quit smoking, I had been lost in my effort to keep my mind on other things, but smoking had been like a dark current rolling steadily along under my thoughts. I had focused on finals to keep from thinking about how easy it would be to go to the corner store, buy a pack and start up again. I felt in my pocket. I was still carrying around my lighter. I took it out and looked at it. Loose change and keys had scratched the gloss to a matte green. I shook it. It was still full of fluid, but I set it down on a planter and walked up the street, back home.

On the way, I stopped at the house of the elderly couple who lived next door. The show for Dan’s wedding was the next night and I knew no one had warned them. I had to knock a few times before the old woman came to the door, moving slowly as if feeling her way in the dark. She looked through the screen and asked ‘yes?’ I started to explain who I was, but she remembered me from the last time I’d been over. She guessed the reason for my visit and waved away my request that they call us before calling the cops if the noise was too much. “Neither of us can hardly hear anyway. You kids have fun.” I had to restrain the impulse to say ‘yes, ma’am’ and skip away.

When I came down from the neighbors’ porch I noticed Elle’s car sitting across the street. In my expansive mood, I didn’t feel remotely uneasy. I hadn’t spoken to her in over a month, but, rather than feel reluctance, I was happy I’d have the chance to apologize for the long silence. I thought maybe I’d wait and see if I didn’t run into to her later, in the evening, when the light would be better for a long talk on the porch or a walk through the neighborhood. But I realized she might just be stopped through. Just because I’d stopped being invited didn’t mean she wasn’t still going to Detroit. I wondered if she’d missed me or if she’d realized my company hadn’t been worth the effort. She might not even have any interest in talking to me. But it was too late to stop, I was already on the porch. The door behind the screen was open and someone was talking in the darkness beyond. I banged on the edge of the screen door, each connection producing a little thunderstorm of rattling metal. I heard the conversation stop. It was hard to see beyond the screen; it was too early for lights, but too late in the afternoon for direct sunlight. I was about to cup my hands to my eyes and look in when I noticed a part of the darkness lighten. The lightening was so gradual and localized I wondered if I wasn’t seeing spots as one does when looking into a field of darkness for a while. The lightness grew until it called out to me. Elle’s voice was warm and familiar. I stepped back from the door, realizing I’d missed it. “You got a minute for a walk?” I asked the screen door, now yawning on its hinges and disclosing the kind of apothecary cool dustiness old houses take on in the summer.

It was the first time we’d walked together and it was difficult not to enjoy the new pace. We’d gotten to know each other primarily in a seated, side-by-side way, which had always seemed unnatural. Now, walking, we were able to cross in front of each other, or hang back. We stopped at lights, but when they changed, I always found myself going out in front, impatient at having to wait. I took her toward the marsh I’d only recently discovered in a neighborhood about 10 blocks north from my house, but before we made it, she said she had to go back. It was getting late and she still had to drive home. She had come from Detroit and had decided to stop on her way home. I asked her to stay. I said we could hang out, but when she said she wanted to get home, I didn’t press the issue. Then I remembered the show.

“Hey,” I said stopping and whirling around to face her “You should come back tomorrow. We’re having a show. A bunch of bands are coming from Detroit. It should be pretty fun.” Elle considered this for a moment and then told me she probably would. She said it smiling. Either she was laughing at the way I’d stopped and whirled around or she just liked the idea. A few blocks away, the frogs in the marsh took up their late afternoon croaking. I stopped. Elle stopped and we listened to it together.

It was almost evening when we made it back to the car. The air was heavier as if the sun on the horizon had charged it with a closer warmth and light. Down the block, kids were yelling as they chased each other around the yard. A car with a stereo system was bumping music while sitting in a drive way, the driver unsure if he was going anywhere, but wanting to hear what it would sound like if he did.

“I heard you were trying to quit smoking.” Elle said at her car. It sounded like an explanation rather than a statement awaiting confirmation. I told her I was.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I guess that’s why you were being such a jerk the last time we went to Detroit.” She’d been more upset than I’d realized. Rather than feel relived by her acceptance, I felt uneasy, thinking how easy it could be to upset people and go on doing the same things, unaware of the emotional consequences. It hadn’t seemed to me that I’d been an overt jerk, but rather than challenge this, I accepted it. I was willing to accept any fault to get beyond that forever stalled out moment.

“Yeah,” I said and attempted some kind of explanation. The feeling of having your lungs too full and you mind too empty, the way the heater had felt on my knee, the thoughts I couldn’t make coalesce that I knew a cigarette would’ve brought together. Elle ignored my blundering speech. She had the excuse she needed. She took my hands. We automatically stepped back from each other to look at our linked arms and to hold them up, as if stepping further away was the more affectionate option.

“I’m sorry, too.” I said and to emphasize the point, I shook both her hands so that our arms did a jerky ‘wave’ motion. We both laughed. I squeezed her hands, somewhat awkwardly and let go. The affection of the moment was on the verge of dissolving into a parody of itself and I wanted to break it off before that happened.

“I’ll try and make it tomorrow.” Elle said, sensing my desire to change the subject. She smiled and got into her car. I stood in the street until she drove away. I watched her car go up to Grand River and make a right. As I watched, I felt the neighborhood weighing on me. The oaks in leaf over the street wrapped up in the powerlines and the fading sun, the shouts of the kids playing with a hose down the street, the smell of cut grass coming from the neighbor’s yard, each thing making me happy in a different way. I stood there a moment, listening to all of it before I started walking back up to where Elle and I had been, all the way to the marsh. I was hungry, but it made no difference, I felt like I could’ve been fed with any kind of input. The moon coming up and the singing of the frogs would be better than eating.

The next morning, I woke up early, around 10. I’d been up reading the Pirandello stories most of the night. Sitting by my open window, watching the streetlight flicker through the rise and swell of the oak leaves in the breeze. I stayed in bed until the sun shining in from the window was too much and I kicked the blanket down and lay there taking in all the warmth I could. When I finally got up, I went to the corner store to get a coffee and then pulled a wooden kitchen table chair out to the yard to read the rest of the Pirandello. This seemed like a sure way to proclaim my new leisure, a flag in the neighborhood for everyone to see: summer had begun and surrounded by its warmth, I didn’t feel much like smoking, even with the coffee.

I held the Styrofoam cup under my nose and let the steam gather there until it dripped. Within a few hours, the house would be awake. We had to get ready for the show that night. The basement needed to be cleared out and everything in the living room had to be pushed to the walls. It wasn’t much to do, but I looked forward to the different kind of work. Study was such a solitary effort. It would be nice to do something in concert, talking, laughing and figuring out the best way to get the couch through the door. I could already hear someone else awake in there. The shower had been running awhile, the smell of soap sunk to the yard where I sat with my book open, reading and not reading.

In the late morning, there was little traffic through the neighborhood. The sunlight bounced off the streets so hard, it looked like they were made of iron. I squinted to look up from my book. Everything looked like it had been cleaned in the night. The trees planted in the berm were green and shaggy with almond-shaped leaves, groomed by chirping sparrows. The dewy yards were speckled with browsing robins and the house windows down the block, reflected back the same hard sun on the street. I looked at the empty porch across the street where I’d met Elle last night and thought about her, driving back and forth across the state to hand in forms. I wondered why it was that she couldn’t mail them. Deadlines, I guessed. Maybe she was worried they wouldn’t make it in time. I leaned back into the chair, content with things the way they were and glad to feel a distinct lack of restlessness. For the first time since I’d quit smoking, I didn’t feel like rushing off anywhere and I resolved to stay in the chair as long as possible that morning, reading, drinking coffee and watching the neighborhood. Even with the coffee, I was beginning to feel drowsy under the humid pressure of the day.

Afte the general clean-up, my roommates and I were eating in the living room when I saw Elle drive up, still parking across the street either out of habit or in case she had to make some kind of escape. I wolfed down a few more bites and scraped the rest into a Tupperware. My appetite had been all over the place, probably because I’d been compensating for cigarettes with coffee and candy. I’d had about three cups that day and a few bags of sour patch kids. Waiting for the show to start, seeing Elle arrive, I was feeling jumpy. My roommates, still eating their food, watching me pace up and down the room, started to tease me.

“It’s because that girl just drove up,” Ashley said around a mouthful of food.

I sat back down and said, “maybe you’re right. There’s just a lot going on. I got too used to sitting in the library.” I raised my voice and made a comic gesture, “I’m not used to stimulus!” Everyone laughed and I went to the Quality Dairy to get a beer, letting out huge lungfuls of air.

I started walking down the block, thinking I’d let Elle get situated across the street before I went over there, but it felt awkward to have to pass the place so many times. If she was out on the porch, it would look like I was ignoring her. I slowed my walk until the soles of my shoes were reluctantly scraping against the sidewalk. ‘Fine,’ I muttered to myself and turned around.

I ran up the porch stairs, taking them all in a single bound and crashed onto the porch. I banged on the screen door. No one answered. I peered into the darkness of the hallway. The cool, earthen smell of old carpet and the college house smell of corners long neglected, full of spiderwebs, hair and whatever’s in dust. The emptiness of the house was completely at odds with the Friday night reception I’d been expecting. I felt even more jangled and dove back off the porch, onto the sidewalk and eagerly made my way to the store.

I waited for the automatic doors to part and greeted the cashier who was tallying the cigarettes, but turned when I came in. He waived a hand in recognition. “Hey, Glen,” I called. It was the fifth time I’d been at the Quality Dairy that day. It was my first day off and already leisure and making little purchases had fused in my mind as mutually inclusive concepts. Tomorrow, I told myself, walking down the candy aisle, I’d go back to the diner down the street and study a little. I didn’t want to fall behind in my Italian. I didn’t want to lose the idea of going to Italy. I didn’t want to overly commit myself to a life here. Just the other day, I’d felt like I was half-way to Rome and now, opening the cooler door for a beer, it seemed ridiculous that I’d ever thought of going anywhere. I wondered if maybe they had wine and let the cooler door close. That would be more Italian. But I knew if I brought home a bottle of wine, everyone would look at me like I was nuts. I hated wine and I knew I’d have to spend more than a few dollars if I bought some. I looked around and noticed the rows of Boone’s Farm bottles. Those were cheap. But was there really much difference between this stuff and antifreeze? I thought, examining the bright green and blue liquid behind the labels. I’d have to pour it in a glass, Italians wouldn’t walk around drinking out of the bottle.

“Hey! Pick something or get out of the way!” The voice was familiar. I turned around to find my friend Mark, who always gave the impression of having half his lower lip tucked into his mouth and Zach who opened his eyes like an owl when he talked about anything that interested him. They were both in different bands set to play that night. If they were here, things must be getting started back at the house. I grabbed a bottle of the beer they were getting, happy to have an excuse to abandon the wine idea.

It wasn’t dark, but the parking lot lights were on and the grease from the fish place next door was heavy in the air. The three of us waded through the twilight back to the house where, already, the door was propped open and a few people were standing around in the yard smoking. I thought about going over to see if Elle had returned to the house, but it had only been a few minutes and if they’d walked somewhere, they’d still be out a while. I opened my beer with someone’s lighter and went to stand in the yard with everyone and complain about how great my life was.

The cavorting shapes of people coming down the street to join us were silhouetted against the lights of the Friday night traffic on Grand River. The front yard got so crowded, Ashley called for us to move to the back, before someone called the cops. A few low guitar notes sounded from the basement. Someone dumdumed on a bass drum pedal. A lot of people didn’t bother to take the bags of the beer they’d bought and they crinkled with each drink. Icehouse 22s in paper bags, King Cobra 40s in plastic bags, a few stray 12 oz bottles which seemed too moderate in their brash company. Glowing cigarette tips spangled over the dark outline of the crowd like it’d been wreathed in fading, smoking Christmas lights. A few cheap pocket whiskeys came out, went around a circle and went back in again. I thought of the literary term denouement—the untying. I looked around and saw everyone untying themselves. Their wrappings already littering the ground.

Ashley grabbed me and asked if I wanted to go to the store. I shrugged, told her it was beginning to feel like home and that I’d be happy to go, if we could stop across the street on the way back. After thinking about it too much, I was getting worried thinking about going over and getting Elle. I couldn’t imagine her in the dingy, untying crowd. I worried she’d find something she didn’t like about it and that I’d have to defend what I had no defense for.

Ashley and I detached ourselves from the crowd and crossed the street, still bearing tendrils of smoke and plastic bags caught on our shoes. The evening was settling into night and the refrigeration fans were all running in high gear behind the Quality Dairy as the evening patrons began opening the cooler doors more and more often. Without the sun to stir it around, the air had stagnated. Grand River smelled like its garbage. Coffee grounds, unfinished plates of fries, wax paper cups seething with melted ice and car exhaust was churning together. “It stinks out here!” Ashley yelled to me, as if the smell was tangible, a garbage fog blurring distance and sound.

When we went up to pay for our beers Glen asked if we were having a party. I told him we were and invited him over when his shift was up. He shrugged, he wasn’t getting off until 2. I told him he’d still be welcome, but that I’d have to apologize in advance for the things he’d probably see. He laughed and said in that case he would try his hardest to come. We were on our way out the door when I thought to ask about the smell.

“It’s probably just all these restaurants around here, man.” He said, turned back to his cigarettes. “They all get busy around the same time when the weather’s nice. Those smells just sorta’ hang in the air.” Back outside, the smell had grown oilier, to the point of developing substance and growing invasive. We ran. It chased us back down the street, the beers we carried underarm, clanking gently together. I forgot to stop across the street until we were in the yard and I’d already lost Ashley to the crowd. I turned. Now that it had gotten dark, I could see no one was home. There were no lights on and the darkness of the neighbor’s porch, in contrast to the smokey joviality of my backyard, took on a lonely cast. Like a place you’d go after you’d gotten too drunk and needed to get away and think. It was too early in the night to be seeking out such places, but I thought I should at least go over and leave a note.

I pushed my way through the people standing around the living room, slapping people I hadn’t greeted yet on the back as I went and went up to my room to find something to write with. As I came down the stairs, I heard one of the bands start in the basement. At this, there was a general stampede and I used the momentum to propel myself down the stairs and out the door, opposite everyone else headed downstairs. The noise, the crowd and the beer sent me flailing out into the middle of the street, but when I’d gained the other side and stood before the dark porch, I felt abstracted again. I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d leave a note, but where would I put it, I hadn’t brought tape. Would anyone find it? What should I write? Elle knew she was invited. Was there a reason she hadn’t come over? I considered trying to write something in Italian, but that would be too ridiculous. She wouldn’t even be able to read it. Trying not to think about it, I scrawled:

No show is complete without the bELLE of the ball; come over when you get this. D

Before I could change my mind, I dragged the door-stop rock over to the to step of the porch and stuck the note underneath. Slight though it was, it was the first time I’d allowed myself to show any affection toward Elle. It wasn’t hard to see her laughing at me as a result. I’d read too much into the trips to Detroit, she’d only needed company and I’d been available. Or I’d been the one to want company. The whole thing was so confused in my mind now. I couldn’t trust my feelings. After enough time, I’d start to like anyone. I tried to think of Sara, to see if I’d misplaced my affection. But, having never really talked to her, I had nothing to go along with the memory. But Elle and I already had part of a story. I shrugged at myself ran back across the street and went plunging into the sweltering noise of the basement, hoping it would clear my head.

At the back of the room, everyone was nodding to the quick tempo, pausing to sip their beers. Most of the crowd in the front was dancing around in a circle, disclosing a bald spot of muddy concrete floor. Someone was dancing with a 40; it was spilling everywhere and people kept trying to push him to the back of the room yelling ‘no bottles!’ but their voices were lost under the music and only their mouths opened and closed on the ‘O’ and ‘B’ sounds. Someone grabbed the bottle of the guy’s hand. He turned sharply, but they knew each other. The guy who grabbed the bottle bent down and yelled into his ear. The guy who’d been drinking and dancing indicated that he should drink it with the classic arm up, head back motion then someone pulled him back into the circle and he was gone.

I pushed my way to the front, encountering familiar backs and elbows I slapped at. It was too loud to talk, the best way to greet people. Everyone in the middle of catharsis and unable to talk. We punched at each other and grinned. It was impossible to imagine them wishing you anything but the kindest thoughts. I must’ve been offered six or seven drinks before I made it to the front where the dancing was. I saw Ashley and made my way toward her. The music stopped just as I reached out to put my hands on her shoulders which were already sodden with the paste of sweat and disturbed basement dust. She yelled, “Where the fuck have you b—“ but the rise of the question was washed out by a wave of noise and air as the band abruptly started again. We were flung into different directions.

Instead of unifying, the music spread a dissonance. The crowd began to push against itself, hands shot out, falling bodies were uprighted and then knocked over. The people in the front leaned back and the people at the back of the crowd, pushed forward. The music kicked into 4-4 and feet kicked against the floor in anticipation of the next beat or punched the space in front of them, the guitar chugged along in time and the vocals urged. A familiar face emerged from the crowd, arms shot out to push me. I pushed back and I was enveloped by the crowd. In the dancing, my ego slid away, discouraged by this group fervor. The faces blurred together, but each one was content to jostle the other in time to the music. With only this intention, we found a unifying principle, greater than anything beyond the basement stairs. In my classes, on my walks, while I read in the diner and even when I dreamed of going to Italy, I was by myself. It was exhausting taking everything on alone and dancing around, beer spraying over my head—the same guy’d gotten it back somehow— I wanted to dissolve into the crowd and move in time with its musical impulse. I wrapped my arm around a nearby neck. Someone tried to lift me up, but tripped and we both went tumbling into the brickolage of stomping feet, kick drum tempo, beer, mud and concrete: the things that form the ethos of a basement show. Several hands pulled us both up. The singer introduced another song, mumbling under the reverb about how we should make sure we pick up anyone who falls and we moved faster, fists hammering out the beat, feet, stomping it into the floor. I jumped to the ceiling, tried to pull myself up onto a beam, someone pulled me down, laughing. Everyone seemed to be laughing. The music was that laugh. We opened our mouths and it came out.

An arm shot out of the crowd, pulled me upstairs, handed me another beer. It didn’t matter who. Everyone was the same. We went to the backyard. I was sweaty; my hair was wet and the warm air was cooling. Standing with all those people. We were together in this brave way, finding a common desire only to stand around in this night and drink beer. As I passed through the crowd, each person I met only affirmed this. I took another beer someone offered and decided to take a cigarette, too. Everyone else was going to smoke, why should I hold myself to loftier standards? I was no better than anyone else and I had no real reasons to quit. Someone lit the cigarette, the warm, fragrant smoke poured through my body and I tilted my head back to sigh it out at the stars and watch it rise, spread and join the smoke from all the other cigarettes. I mentally felt around for regret, but I couldn’t find any. I was utterly calm; winded, boozed and sweaty but halcyon, the eye of the storm maybe. Why had I ever denied myself? There was still too much enjoyment in smoking and I felt too young to start intentionally cutting enjoyment from my life. The goals and tasks that I used to orient myself during the day were gone and I was doing exactly what I wanted to. If I wanted to go off into the night alone, I’d do that. For now, standing with these people, talking about these things, drinking and smoking, I was perfectly situated in the moment. Everyone was. It was the last refuge of those who didn’t want to fake anything just to fit into a place they thought they wanted to be. Here, at least, it was easy to belong and no one minded if you got carried away in your belonging.

Going back inside to catch the next band, I saw Elle standing next to Ashley at the edge of the living room. I felt merry, like a large slobbering dog who could do no wrong. I bounded over to Elle, planning on giving her a huge, genuine hug, a retraction of my cold silence that day in the car. Now I could show her I wasn’t always overthinking, I wasn’t always on guard. I didn’t live in the coney island, subsisting on coffee and ideas. I had a heart, too, a big merry, floppy alcoholic heart. But at the last minute, something in her aspect made me change directions slightly. Maybe she looked too sober or pensive. Maybe I knew she’d be affronted. Her eyes were open too wide and the beauty that flashed in their autumnal color was like an unseasonable cold breeze, but I was already jumping, so I changed direction and landed on Ashley’s back. We crumpled to the floor and she yelled at me in her high-pitched, facetious way. I looked up and told Elle I was glad she made it, but the message was in my actions, not my words and what I was showing her was that I was a different person than the maudlin diner dweller she’d come to expect and it seemed to take her a second to even recognize me. For a moment, I felt a pang of shame, sent from the future back to this moment when I’d wake up and wonder what kind of idiocy I’d pulled while in my cups. But the nicotine, after abstaining for so long, was acting as a stimulant and a break on any sloppy behavior. I picked Ashley up from the floor, offered each of them a debonair arm and flippantly proclaimed “to the races!” No one seemed to care what this meant, least of all me. Ashley took one arm and Elle, with no reluctance, took the other. When I looked over, the chill had gone out of her glance. I saw that she had a beer in her hand.

All of us tramped back down the basement stairs together. Another band started and I lost track of them. Mid-way through the set, someone invited me out for another smoke and I went. I stayed out in the yard after that, the basement was getting too cramped. I wanted to be out in the warm May air, flitting from circle to circle like a moth drawn by the smoldering rings created by huddles of smokers; each group resembling in the darkness, the dying embers of a campfire. I bummed cigarettes; no one cared. When asked why I didn’t have my own, my running joke was that I was quitting. Everyone laughed. I wondered if I still was. Would I go out to buy a pack in the morning? But the question was utterly unimportant. I was smoking now. That was the only thing that mattered.

By now, the bands had stopped playing, the basement had emptied out and I ranged through the party’s remnants, going from room to room, stopping to chat with the stragglers here and there. Since, I’d lost her in the basement, I hadn’t seen Elle. Upstairs, in the bathroom, I found Ashley. She was sitting in the bathtub with a friend of hers who’d come from Detroit for the show. They’d filled a birdhouse with beer and were trying to drink out of it. The unsuccessful result was why they were in the bathtub. No one knew where the birdhouse had come from or remembered why they were drinking out of it. I asked Ashley about Elle. She teased me. “Ooooh you’re looking for your girlfriend, huh?” I shook my head, but brought an eyebrow up with an ‘ok, you got me’ look. I sat on the edge of the tub.

“I think she left. I haven’t seen her since we all went down to the basement. I guess she wasn’t into it. I don’t know,” and here I uttered a very drunken sigh to signal that I was about to get mawkish. “I don’t think she likes me very much.” Even in my state, the words surprised me. Until that moment I hadn’t ever tried to get her to like me. I hadn’t cared if she did or not and now it was the only thing that seemed very important.

Ashley tried to comfort me, offering me some beer from the birdhouse, but my abandoned ego had begun to amass on the borders of my consciousness and I knew, very soon, it would launch an attack and I’d get mopey. The only remedy was to find someone to have a serious conversation with. If I could find Elle and start some kind of relationship conversation, I knew I’d be able to pull myself out of this pending depression.

I left the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I wandered around until I came out on the porch. My pending depression, staggered, broke and dropped like a mirror knocked off the wall. There was a whole glee club out there singing TV themes from the 80s and 90s. When I came out they were doing Charles in Charge. I joined in before I was even out the door, putting all my emotion into the song, meaning every word, no matter how nonsensical. When I cried I want Charles in charge of me! I meant it. Charles, he’d been a real friend, a TV friend, but who cared? Then we did Step by Step. I’d never really watched it, but I still knew all the damn words and every one meant so much. Yeah, the days go by alright. I thought, pushing my fist up to the treetops, past the telephone wires, into the stars.

Every time it seemed like we were going to stop, someone would remember another one and we’d all join in. I had no idea I’d had so many in my head. I was glad to do something with all of those damn words. When we’d finished The Facts of Life, I was falling asleep, but my mournfulness was gone. I declared there’d be no encore and staggered off to bed. Leaving my friends wide awake on the porch, trying to think up another one. As I went in, I heard someone start Family Matters but it was shouted down, they’d already sang it. But the song, by then was in everyone’s head. It gained momentum and by the time I reached the stairs everyone was singing it anyway, but it barely reached me. After all the noise, the silence of the house was enveloping. I noticed for the first time, my ears were ringing. The feeling of being insulated in sounds was familiar and comforting, like I already had a soft blanket drawn between me and the world.

The house was mostly asleep and going up to my room, felt like I was sinking into a warm summer lake in the evening after it had been warmed by the sun all day. The light swum down into the corners of the house and filtered through the dust drifting across the window casings. The warmth of the day had all collected in the upper floors and the attic, where I slept, was warm with the smell of the carpet remnants I’d used to cover the bare floor. My feet and hands were getting heavier. I reached the bed, ready to topple into it, but a form was tucked under the blankets and rolled against the wall. I was deciding if I should order the interloper out or just sleep next to them when Elle rolled over, opened her eyes and sleepily declared, “I’m just gonna’ sleep here, ok?’ I stood there blinking in the darkness for a moment, trying to make sense of the scene, but I was too exhausted to think. From the narrow window at the end of the attic, where the gables of the roof came together, I could see the sky beginning to lighten. The streetlights were getting washed out in the coming dawn. The texture of the carpet stood out in relief to the darkness in a path to the window. It would be light before long.

I told Elle of course she could stay. I sat on the edge of the creaking bed and took my socks off slowly, not sure what to do. Elle’s breathing had gone back to her mouth, where it had been when I’d come in. Not a snore, but a whirring of air in the throat, like a quiet yawn. She’d gone back to sleep. I sat there, watching the dusty light rise in the window and thought about getting a blanket and sleeping on the floor. I wasn’t used to sleeping next to anyone and I wondered what kind of embarrassments I’d be capable of when sleeping. After all the beer, I could very well be farting in my sleep all night. But the idea of this flatulent bed companion, only made me laugh to myself. I was too tired to keep thinking and, leaving the rest of my clothes on, I rolled into bed. I listened to her breathe through the ringing in my ears and watched the dust stirring as the room lightened, I fell asleep.

In the morning, Elle and I woke up at the same time. We both moved around a little, feeling out the situation, making sure there was no sleep to be had in any pocket of the bed. All this shuffling eventually brought us face to face. I yawned and wiped at my face. Elle opened her inquisitive green eyes, like the eyes of a French actress or a cat. We looked at each other for a while and slowly, as we woke, began to smile until we were both beaming at each other. I considered kissing her, but I was feeling too lighthearted for kissing. I was lying there in all my clothes, cigarette smoke in my hair, skin oozing out flat beer. It was no time for kissing, but we smiled at each other for a while, like kids with a secret. I didn’t open my mouth. I knew I couldn’t say anything as profound as that smile.

“What time is it?” Elle asked, her eyes still on mine.

I rolled over and picked up the digital clock on the floor. It was flashing 12:00.

“It’s probably about 12:00.” I reported. She seemed satisfied with this answer and we rolled onto our backs and looked at the ceiling together. I was beginning to wake up. The best thing about sleeping in your clothes is that once you’re awake, you feel a desperation to get out of bed. You can’t comfortably lounge in bed fully dressed. This desperation was starting to take hold of me.

“You want a coffee?” I asked, swinging my feet down, getting up.

Elle stayed where she was, looking at the ceiling. The sun had been in the room for hours and the musty attic smell was strong. I picked up my socks from where I’d left them the night before.

“I should get going,” Elle said stretching. “I’ve got to finish writing this entrance essay.”

“You’re still not done with that?” I stopped, mid sock. “Damn, they don’t make that school easy to get into do they?” Even this false indignation was a bit too much so early, after all the beer and before coffee. I saw spots. “I mean Wayne is easier to get into than U of M, right?” I asked, calmer.

“This isn’t for Wayne. I finished that. I got in, but I’m not sure I want to go. This is for a school down south,” she paused, as if for effect, “in Miami.”

“You’re going to go to Miami? Miami, Florida?”

“Maybe,” she responded, rolling out of bed. She’d slept in her clothes, too. “If I get in.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I just said “Wow, Miami.” It was dumb, but I meant it. I’d never been anywhere near Miami.

We put our shoes on and made our way downstairs. The window over the stairs had three bottles on its sill. One brown, one green and one clear with a reddish liquid that I wasn’t going to investigate. The light came in through these bottles and spread a drunken rainbow down the stairs.

In the living room there were more bottles of various sizes, with various amounts of fluid on every flat surface and several on their sides on the floor, tables and chairs. Two butts pointed out from the L-shaped couch where two people where sleeping, facing the back. Zack was asleep in a chair with his mouth wide open. Someone had been considerate enough to thrown a blanket over him.

On the porch, the ashtray overflowed. There were bottles everywhere. The ones in front of the window all had cigarette butts floating in them. There were a couple of tags written on the table and a broken, capless paint marker sitting in a blue pool.

I walked Elle to her car. As we had done two nights before we stopped in front of it. For fear of awkwardly shaking arms again, I leaned in and hugged her. She squeezed back and we stood there like that for a while.

“Let me know how the Miami thing works out.” I said when we’d parted.

“It might not happen, you know.” She said, like she regretted mentioning it. “I might not even go.”

Then it occurred to me and before I could consider the implication I blurted out: “You know what ‘Miami’ means in Italian, right?”

“What does it mean?”

“You love me.” I said, pronouncing it in Italian. “Me-amee. I was just thinking about that the other day. I wondered what Italians must think of it. Do you think they all want to move there?”

“It’s a sign.” Elle said and shifted her weight, changing topics. “I’d like to see you more. I mean this summer. Maybe we can do something other than drive to Detroit.”

I shifted my weight, too, trying to move into a more casual pose. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

We hugged again and Elle got into her car. “I’ll call you when I get home,” She said, talking louder over the sound of the engine.

I stepped back and waved her car down the street. After she turned onto Grand River, I started toward the Quality Dairy. The smell from the night before was gone and there was only this empty afternoon smell that was pleasant for having no real characteristics. I went in, picked up a 12 oz. cup, changed my mind and filled up a 16 oz. with dark roast. When I got to the counter, I bought a pack of cigarettes, too.

I stopped outside the door, opened the pack, took a drink of coffee and lit a cigarette. I shook my head at the thought of it. Of course I had to smoke. What had I been thinking? You couldn’t go to Italy and not smoke.