Expiration Dating (7 page)

             
“By the way, get a phone!” he shouted as I disappeared from sight. “Some people want to get a hold of you.”

I thought about
what he’d said as I descended. I remembered the Italian bartender who had given me his number. Yes, I should get a phone soon, I decided.

I tried
to find a store on my way home, but I ended up so hopelessly lost, I was lucky to even find my way to my apartment. Not to mention, I was already frustrated from my cribbage loss, resulting in an extraordinarily crabby girl arriving home two hours later.

             
“Hey!” Emilia greeted me, peach in hand as I walked in the door.

             
“Mmmrph,” I grumped, heading straight to my room. Emilia was not to be shaken.              

             
“How was lunch?” she asked, trying to look innocent. She couldn’t fool me.

             
“Fine,” I responded.

             
“And Andrew?”

             
“Fine.” I paused and realized she wasn’t going away. “There’s nothing happening. I lost in cribbage and can’t buy a phone, and I have slept like three hours in the last three days.”

             
“Right,” Emilia said. “Not counting the ten hours you slept yesterday.”

I climbed into bed and closed my eyes, hoping
Emilia would get the picture. She headed out of the room. As she closed my door, she added, “Andrew’s a nice guy.”

I pretended to be sleeping. As soon as I heard the door click shut, however, I la
y awake with my eyes open.

Chapter
Ten

             
A short while later, after realizing I wouldn’t be able to nap, I changed into a tank top and ratty shorts.

“Emilia, I’ll be back – going for a run,” I said, already locking the door.

With my back to the oversized wooden door, I looked towards the staircase.

Do it. Take the stairs.

I pressed the call button for the elevator.

Think the extra calories you’d
burn.

I waited for three minutes.

Don’t be lazy.

I tapped my foot for
the next four minutes.

I’ve invested this much time, might as well wait, now.

The elevator light flicked on and a ding announced its arrival.

Doesn’t make
sense to be out of breath before I start.

The
metal doors suctioned shut, with me comfortably inside.

I
jogged towards the outskirts of the city. Running was the one escape I could count on anywhere in the world. I moved at a slow pace, stretching out my legs. I tilted my nose towards the Pasticceria on the corner, where the warm, cinnamon scent of freshly baked bread permeated the surrounding air. Though I was tempted to stop, I pushed myself past, forcing the brief inhalation to be enough.

I ran
on the sidewalks, dodging strollers and ignoring the funny looks directed my way. I got stares primarily from businessmen; Italian women seemed to never sweat in public, it was
obviously
a fashion faux pas.

I didn’t
understand this about Italy; there was a focaccia shop on every corner and four bars per block, so how did the Italians stay so thin with zero exercise? I coughed, passing through a shroud of smoke outside of a metro stop. Maybe it was the cigarettes.

E
ventually the landscape began to change. I discovered a park with lush grass and sturdy trees, away from the fumes and noises of the city. The greenery was soothing, and I found myself slowing to a walk, enjoying the atmosphere and the crispness of the outdoors. The path wound its way up, lazily circling the hill in a spiral towards the peak. I breathed in the freshness as I climbed. I craned my neck, swiveling my gaze back and forth as I tried to catch a glimpse beyond the trees. It wasn’t until I reached the top that I was able to look out over the city.

It finally hit me that I was in Italy.

I took a step backwards, tripping over…
people?

“Scusi, scusi,” I said and waved my hands in apology.
I hadn’t heard the couple murmuring to one another. The two were interlocked on the ground, the guy lying on top of the girl.
Could she breathe?

I needed to work on this bad habit, interrupting couples while they were… busy.

Public Displays of Affection,
better abbreviated as PDA’s, were quite prevalent in Milan. People smooched on the metro, straddled each other in the parks, strange men hooted and hollered at females passing by. I stumbled to the other side of the hill, giving them privacy, and looked out over the few tall buildings, the miles of developed city, and of course, the token soccer stadium. It all seemed vaguely familiar, yet still completely new. In a strange way, I felt I belonged.

Not
quite ready to leave the park, I sat back on the bench and let the warm sun splash over my face. I sprawled out, closing my eyes and turning my face towards the sky.

             
I woke, feeling a cramp in my neck, and glanced at my watch. More than an hour had passed, and I wasn’t feeling quite so peaceful anymore. The sweat dripped down my face and my skin was crispy. I looked down, and sure enough, I had a tan line in the shape of a hand on my stomach. My shirt had crept up just enough to allow the sun to burn the part around my fingers, making it look like someone was permanently reaching down my shorts.

I sighed,
slipped headphones into my ears and began the descent towards home.

             
I arrived at the apartment refreshed despite the sunburn.

“You look refreshed,” Emilia said.

“You’re mocking me.” I wiped sweat from my brow.

“No, I’m not.”

“How did you know? Is it that obvious?” I lifted my shirt and peered at the unfortunate tan line.

Emilia’s face contorted with the effort
of hiding a smile. “I just meant you look better, I think the run did you good.”

I chewed on her words, contemplating the backhanded compliment.

“Thank you for your honesty.” I grabbed a towel and headed for the shower.

After changing
into something more appropriate by Emilia’s standards, she and I ignored our homework and spent the rest of the day wandering around the city. We stopped at a bunch of hole-in-the wall shops, bought a little treat at every fruit stand and tested out various flavors of gelato.

“Look at this.” I pointed to a sign reading
Whipped Gelato
. “We have to try it.”

“We’ve had three regular ones already.” Emilia glanced over the flavors. “Your choice, they all look amazing.”

I ordered Nocciola, a light, hazelnut concoction.

“This is like eating a delicious, fluffy pillow,” I said, passing the spoon to Emilia.

Her eyes rolled upward in bliss after the first bite.

I
took the spoon back. “We definitely need the extra calories since we’re touring the city on foot. There’s probably eight hundred calories in this one alone, not to mention the others.”

Emilia
sniffed, and seemed to be calculating in her head. I handed the spoon over.

“I’m okay.” She waved me off.

Mission accomplished.

We
also made friends with
fruit man
, a small, elderly Italian near our apartment complex. He sold arrays of vibrant produce out of a hut.

“
He accidentally gave us extra pineapple.” Emilia said, turning back to return the fruit.

“No, it was a gift. He said
so at the counter,” I said putting a hand on her arm. “It’s for coming here so often.”

Emilia glanced at the bag. “That’s really nice of him.”

“See? I told you. All it takes is a smile.”

Emilia seemed lost in thought.

“I mean, you’re really pretty, and you dress nicely and…” I searched for the right words. “But, the Italians are just looking for you to smile at them.”

Emilia nodded. “I suppose you’re right, people in Milan don’t seem to smile very much.”

“Exactly, take me as an example. I’m not particularly charming or suave. Let’s face it, I can barely stick two words together without embarrassing myself, but I get free coffee all the time.”

“Yeah, but-”

“And you know what they say, every time?”

“What?”

“They say-” I imitated a thick Italian accent, “You must be nice, you smile.”

Emilia laughed at my impression; I sounded more like a caveman than an Italian. We
sat in the plaza near our apartment.

“I have a test for you,” I said, taking out an old napkin. I wrote:

1.
       
Smile.

2.
      
Try to speak Italian.

I handed the two-
step process to her, and she raised her eyebrows.

“What’s this for?” S
he slipped the flimsy paper into one of her many bags.

“It’s a little game we’re going to play
, you’re going to go into that café and follow these two rules.”

“Really?” She reached down and adjusted her boots.

“Really.” I forced eye contact, ducking to meet her gaze. “Right now. It’s not so hard; all the baristas will adore you. Use those pretty red lips of yours.”

I gave her a small shove off the be
nch. She rolled her eyes at me but didn’t protest. I pointed to a café across the narrow, cobblestone street and folded my arms.

Minutes l
ater, she returned to the bench where I was waiting with all of the bags. She was trying to keep a straight face, but I could see the corners of her lips twitching.

“So?”
I asked.

She held up a napkin. I started to roll my eyes,
but then I realized it was different than the one I’d written on. A barely legible phone number had been scribbled over a horse logo. I held out my hand for a high five, and Emilia cut her smile loose.

We
trekked back home, where Kimberly and Laura were cooking dinner. We added our recently purchased food to the pile. We cooked quite a grandiose roommate dinner for the four of us. Not being a cook, I was put in charge of things like chopping veggies and setting the table. They’d tried to get me to concoct the soup, but after the oven mitt mysteriously caught on fire, I was relegated to the dining room.

The candles flickered as w
e sat around the table exchanging stories. We ate and drank for the remainder of the evening, in true Italian fashion. By the time we were ready for bed, I was full with good food and good wine, content and happier than I’d been in a long while.

Chapter
Eleven

             
A week later, it became apparent I couldn’t put off getting a phone any longer.

“Will you please come and help me?”
I begged Andrew after class one afternoon. “For moral support.”

“All those scary phone salesmen,” Andrew joked.

I clasped my hands in front of my body and tried for
demure
.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Andrew said. “
You seem sick to your stomach.”

I straightened into my
normal slouch.

“I’ll make a deal. I’ll come with, but you’re buying the ingredients for lunch after.”

“Even if I buy the ingredients… You’ll still cook?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t let you near the food with a ninety foot pole.”

“Deal.”

We shook on it.
I enjoyed our lunch dates, we often met three days a week. There was something comforting about having another Minnesotans in a foreign country.

After solidifying our deal, we grabbed our Italian books, shoved them in our backpacks and headed in the direction of the shopping center.

             
“We’re getting quite good at this navigation business, don’t you think?” I asked Andrew, after we pointed a tourist in the right direction. “It feels good to be able to tell people directions.”

“Yeah, it does. Speaking of, did you look up directions to the store?”

“Kind of,” I said. “I know the general vicinity. We’ll find it between the two of us
experts.
”

An hour later, we passed an orange apartment complex for the third time.

“These streets are spider webs,” I said, my stomach growling. “Impossible.”

My stomach was starting to eat itself, my feet ached, and the light rain was ruining my already
poufy hair as we searched in vain for the stupid shop. I put my hand on my abdomen.

“What, you don’t enjoy the company?” he asked
. I punched his arm, finally spotting the shop.

After a lot of ha
nd motions and head bobbing, I handed over some cash and secured a phone.

             
“You should feel honored,” I said to Andrew with a solemn expression. “You are the first person to receive my Italian number.”  

             
“I’m absolutely flattered,” Andrew deadpanned.

             
We were limping towards a grocery store, so I could make good on my half of the bargain. En route, I spied
Noon,
a café where the waiters were setting out small plates and dimming the lights. I put my hand on Andrew’s wrist and suggested we stop for Apperitvo instead of picking up fixings for a meal, my treat of course.

I hadn’t noticed the passage of time, I’d been so obsessed with finding the shop; I’d been oblivious to
the cafés as they converted into bars. Apperitivo, a unique cultural gem, was an Italian tradition I hadn’t known existed until I arrived in Milan. I’d learned the hard way that bars in Italy were the equivalent of café’s in America. On the first day of class, my teacher had suggested that we stop by the bar between sessions.

What she’d
meant
was that it’d be nice for our class to get to know each other over a cup of coffee. What my reaction had been, however, was that it
was
five o’clock somewhere!

It was ten in the morning.

S
omeone had taken the liberty of explaining my comment to her, and I suppose that’s why she had a personal vendetta against my Italian language skills.

Come afternoon, the bars change their menus around and set out meats, cheeses, and various other delicious plates of appetizers. You simply order a drink, and the appetizers are yours for free. At first, I wondered, how does this work?
How do they manage to make money?

The
answer was simple. In Italian culture, Apperitivo is just that; appetizers. It isn’t dinner, it isn’t a meal, and Italians are classy enough not to gorge as if they were at a buffet. Not understanding this, at our first Apperitivo, Andrew and I received the evil eye from each and every server as we went up for our fifth and sixth plates. The recurring joke is that the only people that abuse Apperitivo in Italy are Americans and college students. It’s true.

I pulled Andrew inside, determined to behave like a classy Italian.

Forty minutes later I felt ready to pop from the astronomical amount of food I’d devoured.

The good news
was that Andrew was right there with me. We wiped our fingers, slurped the last of our drinks and left the bar.

             
“Call me,” I winked as I hugged him goodbye, my new phone heavy in my pocket.

             
That evening, I sat playing with the European phone. The T9 auto-text was in Italian, so it turned out to be much easier to write messages in Italian rather than English. Until I figured out how to change the settings, I was stuck.

Andrew
must have had the same problem, since I’d received several texts in messy Italian from him earlier in the evening. I hadn’t yet responded, mostly because I was having difficulty with the phone. Finally, I dug out the dirtied slip of paper from Frederico, the bartender from the first night.

I glanced at the number,
saw the name Giuseppe, and repeated it in my head several times. Emilia walked into the room.

             
“What are you chanting?” she asked.

             
“The name of that bartender. I can never remember it.”

             
“You going to call him?” she asked, propping herself on the couch.

             
“We’ll see if he remembers me.” I sent a message telling Giuseppe I bought a phone, asking if he remembered me. The phone pinged back almost instantly.

I grinned at
Emilia, “Guess who’s got a date tonight?”