Chapter 1
Marcello walked quickly but carefully along the perimeter of the Piazza Navona, trying to avoid the flood of tourists in the middle and dodging the waiters crossing his path as they hurried between the kitchens of the piazza cafés and the tables outside.
“Danny?... Danny!...Is that you?” An older woman, seated at one of the café tables, called out to him as he passed. Shit!, he thought, almost saying it out loud – what a time to let my guard down. I don’t have time for this! His attention had been focused on the conversation to which he was listening through a headset. He was monitoring a new student’s progress in a relatively simple field assignment; the kid was fumbling a bit, and Marcello was on his way over to lend a hand when he was recognized. Normally he would have sped up, simply ignoring the woman as if she were completely mistaken, but he was boxed in by four waiters pausing for a smoke and an argument about last night’s soccer match. Like most men in the world, it hadn’t yet dawned on them that it’s an absurd game to watch – just a bunch of guys running back and forth for 90 minutes, and then the game is decided 1-0 by a penalty kick. Marcello had excelled at ‘becoming Italian,’ but in this he was lacking. He could fake it, and often talked futbol with these guys and a million others like them, but his heart wasn’t in it, and never would be.
Focused as he was on the conversation in his ear and negotiating the crowds, Marcello had relaxed his public face just enough to be recognizable to someone from his distant past. Or maybe she was just so acutely perceptive. Who is it? Mrs. G.! Okay, we can rule out the super-perceptiveness option. He said into the microphone: “Hang in there, kid – I’ll be there in a minute,” then turned and prepared to do his ‘Sorry, I don’t speak English’ thing. But as he took a step toward her, something made him decide not to blow her off like that. Maybe it was a twinge of nostalgia, or even homesickness. Or maybe he could tell that his best thick Italian accent wouldn’t do the trick – that she was already engaging her gossip turbo mode, ready to tell everyone in the known world – or at least New Jersey – that she’d spotted a long-lost acquaintance. In Rome, of all places!
Mrs. Gleason was seated alone at a table for four. A good sign? No – there’s no way she would be here alone. Sure enough, there were cups and plates on the table for two other people. He had to make this quick. Get in, get out, start planning damage control. It wouldn’t be too hard to resume his blissful invisibility while this old bird and her tour-group cronies stood in line for St. Peter’s and shuffled through the Vatican museums for a glimpse at the Spark of Creation. As he approached her table and sat at one of the empty chairs, it was obvious that she definitely recognized him, but it was no big deal – he was just a kid from the old neighborhood, whom she hadn’t seen for quite some time.
“Hi, Mrs. Gleason. How have you been? First time in Rome?”
“Danny! I knew it was you! You’ve ….” She took another look at him, this time dragging some old snapshots out of her memory for a side-by-side comparison. “You’ve lost weight!” Another look: “A lot of weight!”
“Yes – thanks!” He wanted to keep it short and get out of there. He said “You’re looking well.” But in fact, as he looked closer, he saw she was not looking very well at all. She had always been a very vital older woman, very active, always running around to community events, the grandkids’ school events, etc. Not a bad sort, really, once you accepted her absolute New Jerseyness. In the infinitesimal interval between that thought and her reply, Marcello made a note to prepare a more helpful description should he find himself describing this encounter to any of his current friends in Rome. Something more informative than ‘her New Jerseyness.’He had observed, in his travels, that most major cities had a New Jersey, even in Europe: suburbs an hour outside of town with lots of commuter trains, populated by locals who loved it and by people who had lived in The City in their younger, hipper days, but who had bitten the bourgeois bullet and settled for a quieter place with more trees, suitable for raising kids. And teenage girls with big hair and too much makeup, just marking time until they got pregnant by their butthead boyfriends and settled down to do it all again. As Tom Waits said: They ain’t nothin’ that’ll ever capture your heart; They're just thorns without the rose….
