My thin tank top is
drenched in sweat when I wake up.
It normally is. A small fan
next to the bed that clicks as it rotates is the only form of circulation this
side of the apartment gets. I count
seconds to the beat.
It’s raining when I step outside.
Children jumping and splashing in puddles on the sidewalk, girls with
soaked dresses and boys shirtless, finally relieving themselves from the
wretched heat. It is still early morning and the puddles are colored from the reflections of the street lights. I pass a group of red ones, then green. It’s the first rain
in weeks since the streets were stricken with the thick summer heat. Droplets of sweat form above my brow
and lip as I trudge through the slick streets with my holey boots that allow small
pellets of rain to wet my socks. It’s that summer kind of rain-short but
exquisite, the refreshing kind but it still doesn't stand a chance against the summer heat, so you're skin feels sticky and clean at the same time.
A few servers are
bustling around forking spoons and laying knives square to each other on the tables. I walk towards the coat rack through
the kitchen. My eyes tear from
vinegar and sesame oil. Tofu is
crisping in the fryer while the two chefs argue in Mandarin. One sous is washing a big pot and
checking on is rice cooker every few minutes. Poorly cooked rice is a sin in Chinese culture. The other is chopping shallots and
herbs, moving quickly, it is hard to keep his hands in clear vision.
What
day is it? Tuesday? My first
customer will be Chenzo, a sour balding Italian man with thick-rimmed glasses
and a gimp leg he supports with a cane.
He comes every Tuesday and Thursday and complains of the food the whole
time. He talks to himself as he
waits but sometimes he tells me of his life in Italy. He says the heat is nothing compared to summers in
Italy. On breaks, we sit outside
when he had nothing to do, which was often, our knees buckled side by side and
our butts against the wet pavement, him smoking cigarettes and me taking the
occasional drag. All his family is
still there. His house is on a narrow
street by a parchment store called Pitti Palace where his family gets the
postcards they send him from. He
shows me them, with wrinkled hands and downward eyes. “It is veird zey sen me pictures to remind me of ze only
place I von’t ever forget. What is
all around me vis not home,” he said to me in his broken English. He tells stories of when he was a boy. His friends and him would steal gondolas and go down the river to markets and steal meatballs from the back door. Sometimes he
said things that stuck me with all throughout the night. They would creep back into my head as I
scraped chicken and broccoli into the trash and then again as I turned off the
outside lantern right before leaving.
He gives me things sometimes, pictures of places he’s seen, poems he’s
written, chess pieces and jacks he's found thrown in the park, and meaningless knickknacks. As I walk home passing under the
streetlights, I examine the book he gave me today, Nadja. He talks about
surrealism paintings that decorate his home in Italy. 
I imagine running away to Italy with Chenzo, getting lost in the winding streets stepping on shadows of chapels and stores. I reach home and climb the rickety fire escape to the roof and begin paging through Nadja with the light of the moon. Maybe this is how Chenzo loses himself for a bit. I need to lose myself. I wake up, my face burning from the sun and my shirt dry and crisp for the first time since summer began in the city.
