The Attic Room
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for Carole, wherever you are now
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--oOo--
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Chapter One – A Curious Feeling
She turned the pages of the biology text book, the words were going in, then straight out again, they wouldn't let her hold onto them. There was something different about today. No, not different, good. She couldn't put her finger on it, like a dream that goes out of your head when you wake. Being unable to grasp what it was. It wasn't frustrating, just curious. No, that wasn't it. It wasn't like a dream she'd had and was forgetting, it was more like one she was about to have and was anticipating. She couldn't put it down to any one thing or feeling, the day had been quite ordinary, and yet. And yet. There was something going on, something happening, or something about to happen, she wasn't sure which, that she could taste, could feel. Her whole body seemed alert to it, as if it knew but wasn't telling. There had been a certain lightness in her step all day, whenever she moved, walked, sat, laughed, ate, her body did it differently, with a peculiar energy, a peculiar life in it. The places she went, the people she spoke to, they couldn't know this was her special day yet they seemed to help it along, to lift it up, to join the feast without her knowing what the celebration was.
It had started in a perfectly ordinary way; a shower, putting on whatever came to hand first (she'd chosen the short orange dress, the one with the strappy top - perhaps she'd decided to sit outside and get some sun on her shoulders, on her legs, she couldn't remember now). A quick bite of breakfast, the waiter Marco being his usual exuberant self; that is if you considered silent, agonizingly shy teenagers with terminal acne to be exuberant. She'd said a quick hello and goodbye to Seiji, and he had said…
"Hey, this evening, don't come back here at five. I'll come to you tonight. Meet me at the Volpi, we'll go out and eat."
"OK, but I won't have showered, I'll be all dirty. I hate that."
"Don't worry, I won't mind. You can shower after."
"After what?"
"Afterwards," he gave her one of his crooked quizzical smiles. She knew there was no use trying to get it out of him. They had been in Cremona over two weeks now, the summer course Seiji was attending at the violin making school seemed to be going well although it was hard work – some evenings he was shattered. During the day she usually studied her schoolwork or her Italian, sometimes both, sometimes neither. She went to cafés, parks, churches, museums, galleries. She drifted about and waited. Waited. But for what? Today maybe?
She'd been to the park and practiced her Italian. She'd sent the cat doll to Mr. Nishi a week ago and he'd written back, he was so pleased to receive it. She'd got his letter this morning – but there was also something between the lines that was hidden from view, she should have understood but couldn't. Not everything felt right with him. That was bothering her too, adding to the day's strangeness. At one o'clock she'd visited Anna-Marie at the art shop and they'd gone out for a quick bite of lunch. Her mother was better today, thank you for asking. In the afternoon she had come, as she often did, here to the Piazza San Giorgio just behind the Academia Grafica and whiled away the time at the Café Volpi making her milkshake last as long as she could, studying her biology and fending off Adamo who seemed to take her "No" to mean "Try harder". He was quite sweet in a way, a bit pathetic too as he sniffed around all the girl students from the academia, but she realised he was a slave to his own genetics, it wasn't his fault, he was just a boy, doing what boys do, helpless to the driving forces that controlled him. How old would he be? Seventeen? Eighteen? He knew she was visiting the city with her boyfriend, he'd spoken with Seiji often enough, but he still seemed to try, maybe he knew the battle was lost and was just using her to practice his technique.