Day Twenty-Seven

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.