Memoir

The Fickle Pickle: Passion or Love

A soft heart and short attention span spell trouble.

Brindisi, 1979

Brindisi baked under a late summer sun, but I shivered uncontrollably. The bench outside the train station dug into my back, while I tried to sleep wrapped in a sleeping bag.

Fever dreams sent me down corridors of nostalgia from my recent travels: riding cheap boats through the Greek Islands, sleeping the day away on sandy beaches, swimming the silken waters of the Mediterranean, dancing all night, waking in the sand to start all over again, the Lebanese girl who loved me for two days then sailed away holding my gaze, and the English lass who spilled a bottle of amyl nitrate, turning sex into a laughing crawl to the window for air.

One particular afternoon on the island of Ios kept bobbing to the surface of my mind. Throughout the heat-drenched day, as I had been lying in the sand, swimming in the sea, and visiting the taverna, I watched a young French couple, who were either rapturously in love, or on LSD, or both. They hung off an old boat tethered to a buoy, laughing, hugging, climbing aboard to lounge on top of each other, kissing, always connected except when diving into the cool water. That ultimate closeness, that complete openness, and the unrestrained joy in their laughter reminded me of Judy.

Judy and I had fallen in love as actors in a theater company in San Francisco and tripped together many times in so many beautiful places. We smeared our brain cells across the sky together, along beaches, redwoods, vineyards, and mountains; always entangled in each other’s arms. Our bodies were only complete when next to each other. I imagined we would have been like that couple, hanging on each other like a life raft.

I struggled into a sitting position on the bench and wrote Judy an impassioned letter. I scrawled across pages torn from my notebook. She was the one. I loved her more deeply than ever. I had been stupid to ever doubt it. I had broken off our relationship time and again to find a version of myself without her, but I could never experience what we shared with anyone else. I only wanted her. I poured my fevered heart into the letter. As the sun lowered, I stumbled to the post office to send it off and buy some water.

That night, I recovered from my fever as the train rolled northward to Genoa.

Genoa

The elevator clanged to a stop and the metal gate opened onto the fifth floor offices of ESKO, an international logistics company that catered remote construction projects across Africa and the Middle East.

My brother, Michael, had orchestrated my transformation from scruffy traveler to sharp businessman: a barber had cut my locks; a tailor crafted suits and shirts; and Michael loaned me ties, shoes, and cuff links. The starched collar chaffed my neck, and my feet complained about their sudden imprisonment, as we clipped along the marbled floors of a grand stone office building.

Entering an office of polished wood, Michael greeted a secretary in effusive Italian until she beamed and showed us into the conference room.

Michael said, “I’ll introduce you, but only speak to answer a question.”

Enzo Zanotti, an elder Italian industrialist, entered wearing an impeccable suit.

Michael introduced me and spoke of our work together building sales teams in the United States. Michael was resigning as their head sales representative, but he proposed to train me as his replacement while I wrote a sales manual codifying his innovations. By Christmas we’d move back to the United States to represent ESKO with Michael as consultant and me as salesman.

Enzo began what I assumed was a question, and I kept waiting for him to finish. Enzo shot his cuffs, leaned on the table, talked to the ceiling, ran his hand through his thick hair. He spun off into other subjects, answered some of his own questions, talked of the company’s greatness, dreams of landing American contracts, and rambled on for over ten minutes. I still had sensed no opportunity to answer a question or grasp if one had even been formulated when his secretary entered the room and announced his next appointment. We rose and shook hands. He said I could use the vacant Chairman of the Board office. I was hired because I was Michael’s brother and, in Italy, that was all that mattered.

I settled into a routine. Each morning, Michael and I would arrive around 8:30 a.m. and work for an hour before we joined the British sales rep, George, for coffee. Returning to the office around 10:30, we would work for another hour before taking a three-hour lunch. We put in one more hour of work before catching the early bus back to a pensione by the sea.

I was not adjusting well to this corporate life. I missed the beaches of Greece and I missed Judy.

It had been several weeks since I wrote to her from Brindisi, so I placed a call. Her reaction wasn’t what I expected. She hadn’t received the letter. I summarized it for her, but my arguments sounded thin when I heard myself saying them. She read me the riot act. Did I think I could just throw her away and pull her back like a yo-yo? She had forgiven me too many times. She was furious. And that was how she left it. I became morose.

Bogliasco

Mike and I went to dine in an elegant old apartment with friends of George, who had invited a woman to meet me. “Cinzia’s smart, athletic, and gorgeous. She was the Argentine national tennis champion!”

She was late. Minutes before the main course, she bounced into the room wearing a skintight leather outfit. She launched into a story of her obstacles getting there that was charming and funny. She blew it all off like a breeze. I don’t remember what we talked about that night, but I remember that outfit. She gave me her number, and we set a date to play tennis on some clay courts at a tennis club.

Why I thought playing tennis with a national champion was a good idea escapes me. It was exhausting for me and hilarious to her. She blasted balls at me like a machine and I slid around on the clay with wild gyrations to hit them back.

She told me she had a boyfriend, of sorts. He was married. She was hoping, with little faith, that he would leave his wife. Nonetheless, we made a date to go dancing.

The next weekend, we took the evening train to Portofino to go clubbing with her young Italian friends. Flashing lights and pounding music put us in a world without words. Vodka got us loose. We danced until we had to catch the last train back to Genoa.

The two of us spilled into a train compartment, laughing and sweating. We had danced for hours and our bodies had communicated more to each other than all our conversations. I knelt in front of her and blew onto her neck, glistening with sweat. She lifted her hair and tilted her head. I blew under her hair, down her neck to her chest. She pulled her shirt down lower. My breath raked across her. I stopped blowing, looked into her eyes as if I was going to kiss her, but leaned back onto my bench instead. She laughed. She moved to my bench and blew the sweat from my neck and retreated with a smile. “Come to my place for dinner on Friday.”

Cinzia lived in a small attic apartment in Bogliasco. The walls slanted inward, which was more of a problem for me than her compact five feet. She said, “Stay in the living room while I finish cooking.”

I sat on the couch and chanted a little under my breath. When she returned, she asked me what the noise was. I told her it was Buddhist chanting.

“What were you chanting about? Or is it like a birthday wish and you can’t tell me?”

“I was chanting that I could really connect with you.” She regarded me for a moment and then kissed me passionately. The dinner sat cold for hours. We spent the weekend in her apartment, only coming up for air when we popped open the hatch above her bed and looked out across the roofs.

After that, we spent every weekend together and most weeknights. We visited the Alps, vineyard estates, and some quirky professor who explained his concept of Tantric sex. In November, we explored Venice through a maze of silent streets in thick fog.

In December, I was scheduled to fly back to the States. We were having dinner in her small kitchen. She was not her usual chatty self.

“What’s wrong? Why are you so sad?”

She gazed at me with a sincere sadness. “Because you’re leaving in two weeks.”

It hit me like an accusation, although we had only spent two months together. In my defense, I blurted, “You could come too.”

“To be with you?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t meant for this to be a proposal, more of a general statement that we are all free. Her life was a house of cards yearning to be blown away.

Without Judy, what would it matter? “Sure. Why not?”

San Francisco

I climbed the narrow stairs to the impeccable flat of my traveling companions, James and Joe. I had just arrived back in San Francisco and Cinzia would join me in a month. They were beaming with revels of our travels in Greece, and we toasted with ouzo to mark our reunion. James excused himself to answer the phone. He returned with a big smile. “Judy just called and can’t wait to see you. She is on her way over.”

I was shocked. I thought I was dead meat to her. I had heard nothing since our fraught telephone conversation.

Soon she bounded up the steps and whirled into the apartment with laughter, ribbing, and hugs. It was old times, like nothing had ever changed. The four of us had a merry dinner, and I went home with Judy. It felt like an out-of-body experience. I watched myself naturally fall into our closeness, so familiar and easy. I kept thinking I should tell her about Cinzia, but we were having such a good time.

When I asked her about the phone call in October, she said, “Oh, that. You know me. I get dramatic. I had to blow off steam, but it didn’t mean anything. And then I got your letter, and I forgave everything.”

“But you didn’t contact me?”

“I didn’t have an address or phone number for you or Michael. But none of that matters now. You’re home.”

In the morning, I awoke in Judy’s bed, sat up, and stared at the floor. I had betrayed everyone.

She said, “What’s wrong? You look ill.”

“There’s something I have to tell you.”