Eva, they say, you’re quiet tonight. They get nervous when I’m quiet – these friends of mine – and they’re not wrong to be. I like to talk, and I can do it in twoalmostfour languages. It’s rare that I stop – What’s that? What’s that word mean? Conjugate this verb in dialect for me. […]
Italy
Friday Fix – Old Man Angelo on Going Out
I’m in Vienna and hungover but it’s Friday and I promised you (or mainly myself) to pop out an Old Man Angelo fix on this holiest of days so: OLD MAN ANGELO: Eva, I’m going now. ME: Great. OLD MAN ANGELO: I’m tired. I’m going straight to bed. ME: No partying tonight? OLD MAN ANGELO: […]
Keeper of the Castle: A Play in One Act
CAST OF CHARACTERS EVA: Writer. American. Early 30s. Breathtakingly gorgeous. OLD MAN ANGELO: Pensioner. Early 60s. Italian. Haunts the bar where Eva goes to write. Scatters outrageous, unsolicited advice like so much birdseed. MARCO: Policeman. Italian. Mid-40s. MARCO was once one of Eva’s interview subjects for an article she was planning to write. FRANCESCO: MARCO’s […]
Blue Roses
At night, there are the nightspots and free concerts. My group of friends tends to meet up around midnight – when my friends in the tourism and hotel industry get off from work; when the nightspots start getting packed – and those of us who don’t live at home* and might not have eaten dinner […]
USA vs. USA
What happens sometimes – when you’re living in a foreign country, a country where you’re almost one of a kind – is that people want to pair you up with other stray members of your species. There’s another American who lives three towns over, they say. I’ll invite him over. You can chest bump […]
Office
The office is where I am these days; that is, the 113 year-old bar in the Centro with my laptop and my cell phone and my glass of vibrant orange Crodino. I’ve officially become a great big ball of novel-writing momentum, which is why I’m there and not here with ye would be-pigeon eaters but […]
Breaking Ground
25 degrees today – pure joy! – and caught sight of my first tourists; ill-fitting clothes, foreign faces, and blank expressions. It shocked me that they were so easily identifiable; makes me wonder how clueless I seemed last summer when I arrived myself. But they’re breaking ground on the beach now – resurrecting the summertime […]
Katarina, like most of my friends here in Italy, is unemployed. She was employed – personal assistant to a famous actress in Rome – but that actress be crazy and Katarina, who has a master’s in Linguistics, wasn’t about to be scrubbing no toilet bowls. But there’s a crisis on right now; vice-tight here in […]
The World’s Best Excuse for Being Late
So years ago, in another life, I worked retail at an antique shop in SoHo. This was many years ago, before living in Japan shook all the tardiness out of me; when I habitually strolled into workplaces and classrooms and restaurants 10-15 minutes late: The train, the bus. Grand Central was crazy. I couldn’t get […]