Heddi Goodrich - Lost in the Spanish Quarter

“A prospecting pick,” Pietro said excitedly. “Yes, I have one.”

“Really?”

“All geology students have to own one. It’s a tool of the trade, like a sword to a knight.” He was laughing but looking intently now into his empty cup, like he was reading his fortune in the swirl of sugar crystals. All of a sudden he leveled his eyes with mine. “Would you like to see it? It’s upstairs.”

It wasn’t just a coffee. Despite my wild heartbeat, there was a certain relief in giving in to that knowledge. As I followed him up the staircase, I had to restrain a smile. Wasn’t it just like fourth grade, inviting a girl into your room to see a rock pick or a butterfly collection? Couldn’t he have come up with something better? But it was in fact the childishness of that fib that made the invitation acceptable. And the comfort brought on by that lovely little lie, of which we were both willing participants, wiped away all doubt, there wasn’t even a shadow of it now, that, on the third occasion that we’d ever spoken, once upstairs we would kiss.

Pietro’s room was the size of a closet, or at best a cabin on a ship, with the port mounted like a jewel in the window. There was hardly enough space for a single bed, a makeshift bookshelf, and a Jimi Hendrix poster. Pietro lifted his prospecting pick off the shelf and offered it to me as if it were made of the most translucent porcelain. He showed me how his name was carved into the handle, by his own hand. As I listened to him, I stole glances at his fleshy lower lip, wondering how on earth we were going to shift from a pick to a kiss.

“Sorry it’s such a small room,” he said. “If you want to sit down, you can use the bed.”

So this was how it was going to happen. I sat down, surrendering to that little twist and turn of fate. But I was out of my depth. I couldn’t comprehend how I’d ended up there, in a stranger’s room, on his bed. A slippery dip in blood pressure made my head go light and my body heavy like a bag of stones I suddenly had to bear. But at this point I was committed to seeing it through. I was already imagining being back in the safety of my own room, retasting the kiss that hadn’t happened yet—or, it now occurred to me, trying to erase the memory of it.

Pietro sat next to me, saying simply, “I might lie down.” He lowered the prospecting pick to the floor and stretched out comfortably, his legs pointing toward the sea.

I lay down, too, and this somewhat eased my light-headedness. We stayed there on our backs on that tiny bed, the kind children sleep in, while each and every pretense rose like steam up to the ceiling. For a long while we looked at the slanting ceiling, a mirror in which I could see reflected back to me a dizzying array of possibilities.

I asked, “Are you a Jimi Hendrix fan?”

“Not really. I just thought the poster looked cool.” His voice was as close to me as it had ever been, and at such low volume it sounded deeper still. I wanted him to say more, and more. Instead he asked me what kind of music I liked.

“I don’t know, quite a range.” I shrugged at the ceiling. “I liked the songs you taped for me.”

He laughed uneasily. “I thought a lot about what I was going to put on that tape. It took me hours.”

“But you didn’t even know me.”

“It was like a sixth sense, Heddi.”

There was a grave silence. I couldn’t possibly turn my face toward him now, with his breath so close I could taste it. All at once, the ceiling went dark and there was a collision of sandpaper with my mouth. Startled, I pulled away. Oh god, it had gone horribly wrong, it had all turned out very high school … very liceo .

“What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“You just surprised me, that’s all.”

“You mean you didn’t think I was going to kiss you?” And he fell dejectedly back on the bed.

Part of me wanted to walk out then and there and forget all about it. But a voice deep inside—and perhaps it was nothing but my familiar thirst for knowledge—told me I had to stay, to push through the awkwardness and the shame. I had to know . So I leaned over him, a rush of blood to my head instantly curing my low blood pressure, and I brushed his lips with mine as if to shush him. Pietro craned his neck to reach me with his mouth, like he was passing me a Halloween apple with his hands tied. I pulled back, burned by his stubble. Was this how they kissed in the province of Avellino?

I was still looking at his plump lower lip and without thinking I gently bit it. He let me. He just lay there, eyelids shut and breathing heavily, perhaps afraid of what I might do next. I didn’t know myself.

In a show of goodwill, again I pressed my lips against his. And this time his mouth opened soft and sweet like a fresh fig. It was warmed by the sun and ripe, just right, and I wanted more. Another kiss, and yet another, and soon our mouths were feeding off each other, one taste leading inevitably to the next but never satisfying. Before long we were scrambling for them, greedily, individually, as they disappeared one by one like cherries from a bowl. In the end there might even be a winner and a loser.

I was not in any way transported: I was almost too present, a purely physical being hyperaware of every movement, every sensation. There was my upper lip becoming raw from Pietro’s stubble, the balm of his tongue, the porcelain of his teeth. His belt buckle pressing into my hipbone, the stubborn buttons of his shirt, his long fingers getting caught in my hair. His scent of cologne and coffee, tomatoes and sweat. I had to keep my eyes shut: that was the only way I could limit the number of senses flooding me with information I couldn’t reconcile.

I lost my grasp of time, or perhaps time had lost its linearity. When had we started kissing: two minutes ago, two hours ago? I didn’t have the faintest idea. The beginning had slipped into oblivion and the end was no longer inevitable. One kiss led to another and the only certainty was that we couldn’t stop.

Then out of nowhere, something came over me—an inspiration, though not a flash of light but rather a flash of darkness, like a power cut. I was blinded, plunged into the deepest night. I was suspended there, stolen out of my own body, stripped of my sense of self, and yet it was such an incredible feeling that I could have stayed there forever, floating in the universe. Was this why people took heroin? But if it was so, then it was also true that he and I had shot up with the same drug, the same needle, for in that very moment we both opened our eyes.

We looked at each other for an eternity, or maybe just a breath. A transparent and peaceful gaze that went beyond judgment or embarrassment, even beyond curiosity. Our mouths still attached, we watched each other as if someone else were doing the kissing, our bodies carrying on without us. We had nothing to do with it, we were merely witnessing the beauty of the world.

We closed our eyes, letting the kisses rock us like so many exploding stars. Decorum was gone. Lips wandered to the cheekbones, chin, neck. I rubbed my cheeks across his stubble, wishing now for rawness. He rolled on top of me, murmuring things that made no sense, a warm mist breathing into my hair and my ear, not words at all but a spirit moving me. My god, was this how they kissed in the province of Avellino? It was a divine, primordial chaos that seemed to be building up to a great upheaval of the elements. I became afraid, and as if to brace myself, to ground myself, I searched for his mouth so that I could take in his breath once more. I’d forgotten where I was and how I’d come to be there, I’d even forgotten his name or that he was like any of the other people on the planet who had names, pasts, and daily concerns. He was simply him, this man , whose mouth was mine to kiss, every warm and rich corner of it, and whose chest was pressed, sternum and ribs and heart and all, up against mine.