Four Things My Geeky-Jock-of-a-Best-Friend Must Do in Europe (8 page)

Wednesday, before dinner

(The system of time here is based on floor mats and food, as best as I can tell.)

Dear Delia,

I was BOLD today. I walked around the streets of Nice in my bikini top, and whenever I started to feel self-conscious—which was only every five seconds—I glanced over at ma mere, who then frowned at me—bless her—giving me the much-needed boost of self-confidence.

Sometimes parents really DO come through for you, I guess.

In my bikini top I ate glacé (that’s ice cream in French, pronounced almost like “glass,” which is a little frightening), shopped in little French shops and bought a blouse for you (which I think will fit you because I couldn’t get the buttons to meet at all when I tried it on), and sat openly on benches in parks with French flags waving around me. I was liberated and happy! And then we went down to the shore.

There are many strange things about the beach in Nice. For instance:

• There is no sand. The beach is covered with large rocks. I was lurching around as if one leg were eight inches shorter than the other.

• You can’t lie down on a towel because of these rocks, so everyone sits up or stands, or (if it’s not their first time there) they have beach chairs.

• There are these French guys on the beach who go around with coolers selling actual HEALTHY snacks, like watermelon slices and oranges. It’s MADNESS!

• And, the last—and MOST—strange thing about the beach in Nice: It’s a topless beach.

Imagine my surprise when I stepped (well, hobbled) onto the crowded beach, my head and my, uh, bikini top held high, and then looked around at all these other females on the beach lying in the sun, swimming, chatting, no tops on at all, their boobs boinging everywhere—big boobs, little boobs, young boobs, old boobs. (Hm. Did Dr. Seuss write about that? Oh, no, that was fish.)

“How did I miss THIS in the descriptions?” my mother said, her face turning DayGlo red. Standing there next to her in my blue bikini and white wrap, I’m thinking: We represent our flag well. (Of course, the French flag is red, white and blue, too, but WHATEVER.)

“Ma mere,” I said, feeling it was my duty to tease her at that particular moment, “I’m wondering about the term ‘inappropriate’ in THIS situation. Doesn’t ‘inappropriate’ sort of mean NOT doing what is expected of you? So when you’re at a topless beach, aren’t you sort of EXPECTED to go around topless? You know, like, isn’t it ‘inappropriate’ to WEAR a top?” I asked, reaching behind me as if looking for the clasp on my bikini.

“Brady,” she said in a don’t-even-think-about-it tone. “You’re wearing me down enough today, so let’s not—”

At that point she was interrupted by a very loud scream that came from my mouth when my bikini top FLEW off, as if flung from a slingshot. And my mother just stood there with a you-made-your-bed-now-sleep-in-it expression on her face, not even TRYING to help me. It was OUTRAGEOUS behavior on her part, which I know I fully deserved, but PLEASE.

Frantically, I started to root around on the rocks with one arm (with the other I was TRYING to cover myself up, but I SWEAR my arm has gotten smaller lately, because it hardly covered a thing—oh, SHUT UP), but the top was being inadvertently kicked around by a parade of bare-breasted French people, and I lost COMPLETE track of it.

So, there I was—fully exposed, COMPLETELY freaked out and TOTALLY helpless—for several hours (or at least it seemed that long, although it could have been twenty seconds), until this very old lady appeared in front of me. At first glance, it looked like she was carrying an odd-shaped leather bag around her neck, but on closer inspection it turned out to be something else: ancient ruins, you might say. Smiling kindly, she handed me my bikini top, and then disappeared into the boinging and flapping crowd. And I put my bikini top back on. (With NO help from ma mere, thankyouverymuch.)

My mother is still convinced I popped my top off on purpose. But I ask you, WHO would do that? Okay, maybe all those people on that beach, but who ELSE would do that? You know I didn’t mean to, right? The clasp just popped open somehow when I touched it. Obviously a defective part—I think there may be a lawsuit in this.

But even though I have been made—once again—to feel like an idiot in front of all humanity, I am STILL proud of myself. I WORE the bikini, Delia! In PUBLIC! And I am, at this very moment, basking in the sun at the pool—á la bikini—and I’m not even slightly self-conscious. (OK. Slightly. But that’s all right.) I just went for a swim and was actually able to get up some speed this time, since I no longer had a T-shirt strangling me during the freestyle.

“I’m sorry about today, Brady,” ma mere is saying. I haven’t seen much of her since we got back from Nice. This is the first thing she’s said to me, actually.

“That’s okay, Mom,” I am saying to her. “I was being a pain wearing my bikini around town.”

“Yes, but I guess you have been feeling some pressure,” she says, glancing at my hand.

“That’s right, it’s all Delia’s fault,” I am saying (in a very enjoyable way).

“I’ve been thinking about some things, though,” she is saying, as she pulls her sundress over her head and—OH. MY.
GOD
! SHE IS WEARING A . . .
BIKINI
!

“Mom,” I am asking her. “When did you get THAT?”

“I just bought it here on the boat,” she is saying. “It was on sale.”

“Don’t you, uh, think that’s sort of, uh, kind of, uh—”

“Inappropriate? I think the pool is the right place for a bikini, don’t you?” she is saying.

“But, uh,” I sputter, “you NEVER, uh . . .”

“I used to wear bikinis, Brady. I grew up in the seventies. But I haven’t worn one since Irene was born. I was bothered about weight gain and stretch marks.”

Uh, TOO MUCH INFORMATION, I am thinking, VERY loudly.

“But, you know what, Brady? Today—this whole trip, actually—has changed me. Seeing how the Europeans are so free with their bodies, well, it has made me feel emboldened.”

My mother is emboldened.

Be scared.

Be VERY scared.

To complete the picture of what is rapidly becoming a typical sort of afternoon in my life, Gorkon has just appeared by my chair.

“Who is your friend?” he is asking.

I look around for a second, then realize he is talking about my mother.

“That is my mother,” I am saying to him. Then, whispering, I add: “She’s sort of geeky.”

I think I’ll go swim a few more laps.

Oy!!!

Thursday

(No, wait! That can’t be right! We go home

on Friday, and I’m not ready!!)

Dear Delia,

We are pulling into a new port—Livorno, Italy.

Hm. Does a cruise ship “pull in”? I don’t think so. A cruise ship “arrives,” I guess. Well, whatever it does, we’re doing it.

Livorno is a very industrial-looking place with lots of big, rusty ships and factories and stuff. This is not the place where we are spending the day, though. We’re taking a train to Florence. Or Firenza, which is apparently the Italian name for it.

Mio madre (note I’m back to Italian) woke up really early and headed to the Internet Café to do research for our day in Florence. She spent some time there last night, too, by the way. I suspect she is trying to avoid surprises, such as the one we encountered on the beach in Nice. Or else, in her emboldened state, she was making plans to jump ship and run off to become a tour operator in the Mediterranean. Nothing would surprise me anymore, after the mother-in-a-bikini occurrence.

Per usual, she wants to get going as soon as we are allowed to get off the boat, because she says the trip to Florence is over an hour, and then we’ll have exactly three hours there, and then we’ll get on a train to Pisa, where she says we’ll run to the Leaning Tower and take a picture, and then we’ll run back to the train and arrive back in Livorno with just enough time to get on board before the boat leaves port. Feeling a case of Barcelona coming on, and worrying about such a tight schedule, I asked my mother what we’re supposed to do if one of our trains is late and we miss the boat. She just waved her hand at me and sort of tutted. As you can see, having an emboldened mother can be very risky business.

This morning I e-mailed my little sister. My mother kept bugging me about doing that, even though I TOLD her Clare and I have already had a VERY deep and meaningful IM conversation this week. But choosing not to start an argument (SOMEONE has to get sensible), I went ahead and did it. Here is what I wrote:

After I took care of that task, I headed to the breakfast buffet and pigged out. Literally. I ate bacon. Plus pancakes, and French toast, and eggs, and a mocha latte. If everyone on this boat is eating as much as I am, we will surely sink before the end of this cruise.

Seriously, though, I am getting SO out of shape. I feel like the Super Size guy in that movie. (SHUT. UP.) Not only am I snarfing down WAY too much food, I have TOTALLY gotten out of my running routine, what with my mother’s sightseeing schedule (which is a workout, for sure, but more mental than physical) and the constant demands of my cruise-ship social circle (a.k.a. the Odd Squad, as I am now calling us since Gorkon beamed himself down to join in).

Speaking of which, I ran into Tatyana and Noori at breakfast. They told me they are staying on the boat today.

“We’ve been to Florence, like, five times,” Tatyana said. “So we’re going to get facials, do the fitness room, sunbathe, drink virgin piña coladas. Stuff like that.”

Which sounded REALLY good, actually. I mean, I WANT to see Florence, of course, but I started thinking how, if I stayed, I could get in a five-mile run, do some serious lap-swimming while the pool isn’t so crowded, drink a few of those virgin piña coladas, AND take a nap. (The last two items being #1 and #2 on my brain’s priority list, I’m embarrassed to say. Welcome to blob world.) I started to think about approaching my mother with the request, when Tatyana said:

“I know what you’re thinking, but you HAVE to go to Florence, Brady.” And she poked her finger at my hand (which was, at that moment, very busy shoveling a fifth piece of bacon into my mouth), and specifically at that #4 instruction (which just WON’T fade away).

Before I could respond, Gorkon wandered up to us.

Truthfully, it’s a mystery that he ever figures out where we are. His head is always in straight-ahead-robot mode, and his eyes never venture anywhere NEAR our faces.

“Remember, Gorky, Brady needs SPACE,” Noori said, when he’d planted himself a little too close to me again.

“Space,” he said, not moving a muscle. “The final frontier.”

Tatyana gently pulled him back a few steps. “Brady doesn’t really want you there in HER frontier, Gorky,” she said.

(Clever, isn’t she, Delia? I will NEVER let you two meet.)

“AS I was saying, Brady,” Tatyana continued, poking at the word “Euro-hottie” on my hand again. “TODAY is your last chance.”

“Brady,” Gorkon said, “do you hurl heavy objects?”

I was grateful for this question. It represented a change of subject. “Yeah, sure!” I said. “Why?”

Smiling, he answered, “Klingon women hurl heavy objects.”

Quickly realizing I’d made a bad move, I turned my attention back to Tatyana. “I think I’ve proven I’m not very good at finding, uh, the #4 thing,” I said, making discreet head motions in the direction of Gorkon.

“Klingon women roar when they hurl objects,” he said.

“Oh, well, sorry, then,” I said to him. “I’m not much at roaring.”

“What do Klingon men do?” Noori asked him.

“They duck a lot,” Gorkon said.

We laughed at that for a while—including Gorkon, but I’m about 100% sure he hadn’t meant to be funny.

Mio madre has returned from the Internet Café with reams of printouts, and she is doing that clapping thing again. I’ll write later, although it may be on postcards I scribble out between shifts at the factories in Livorno, where I’ll likely be working to earn money for a plane ticket home when we miss the boat later today, which will make us miss our plane tomorrow. But, hey, I guess it would give me more time to meet a Euro-hottie.

Arrivederci . . .