CHAPRER 6
The chocolate of remembrance
Here we are, today Camilla came to pick me up so that we could revise our plan before entering the café. We try to arrive at least ten minutes earlier compared to the usual so that we could set everything before he arrives. Before going out, I wrote a card to explain my gift.
The little chocolate, in addition to the link of the same common thread of the daisy, must carry on our non-affair with the discovery of the senses, our senses, moving from sight to taste. I’ve decided not to sign the card but to put only the initial of my name, so that I would not reveal too much and I would not end too soon this game that is getting more intriguing, different from the usual flirting schemes. I write on the envelope ‘For…?’ since I don’t have a clue about what is name is, I put everything inside and I come down running towards my friend who has already buzzed from a few minutes.
Today I woke up earlier than the usual and it took me half an hour only to decide what to wear. In the end, I opted for a wool soft dress of my favourite colour, dark green, and my high heel boots. While I’m in the street, I can’t wait to arrive and I almost got hit by a car since I’m so head over hills that I didn’t even notice a red traffic light. Arrived safe and sounds at the café we laid the bags at the usual table and we wait at the counter. When it’s almost the time of his arrival, Camilla placed herself in front of the entrance and I made the barman get away towards the kitchen with an excuse. At this point, I placed the envelope in front of the sugar box on the side where he always stands to have a coffee. I know for sure that he’s going to take the sugar box and he’s
going to find the envelope in front of his eyes hoping that, realising that it’s for him, he would open it.
Camilla waves at me when he’s arriving and so we quickly sit pretending that nothing is happening despite a whisper of shortness of breath provoked by emotions and by the brief run towards the table. In order not to express my emotions, when he enters I look at him only for few instants. I am as excited as never before and I hope not to blush too much revealing my fake carelessness with regards to his arrival.
When he finally reaches the counter, we secretly spy on him, hoping that he hurries up and takes that envelope on display just before him.
He turns towards me in a blink and, feeling caught, I immediately look the other way. Today there’s not the usual harmony of our meeting: the last events left us more excited than the usual, he’s not the usual too. In order to break this awkward moment, he accidentally drops the envelope to the ground. When he picks it up, he gets slowly up looking at the mysterious addressee marked on the envelope with a little flower that I sketched while we were already on the road. It was to help him decoding the massage and to make him realise that he was exactly the one who had to open the envelope.
When we notice that he was opening it, we took the opportunity to go away secretly without making any noise, running away in the street.
The only thing that makes me sad is that I’m going to wait two days to see how our game will continue and I already know that it will be a very long weekend. Luckily, it matched a little trip that I had planned a long time before. Therefore, in the late afternoon I’ve already taken the train that will lead me to Venice to meet the baby of one of my five cousins who was born only a few months before. Her husband will be
outside the city in these days, so I grasped the opportunity to help her and to be together after a long time that we haven’t seen each other.
Today I finished work soon, taking advantage of some time off hours that I’ve previously asked in order not to have last minutes pranks. My pretty and little trolley awaits me home, packed with all the necessary things for these two days out of the city. I wear my comfy skinny jeans that I can fit into my boots with my hot and slim blue and brown sweater, unfailing during my winter trips. After a while I wear my coat again, with scarf and hat, ready to face Venice during this time of the year. I have been waiting for this trip for weeks and luckily it seems that the weather is going to help us providing us with two sunny days not even so cold with respect to the season. To avoid being late, a taxi that will take me to the train station is already waiting for me under my front door. As soon as I sit down and I close the door I already feel like I am on holyday. On the way I check a few last things and I prepare tickets and money to pay the ride. In ten minutes we’re already at the entrance of the station right on time for the departure. Arrived at the departures board, I look for my train and I receive the bad news of a delay of half an hour. On one hand, I thank heaven that this is the only delay and I take advantage to have a stroll between the shops renewed in the last years so that they create a real mall under the tracks, in a sort of underworld. There are all the trendiest brands especially for youngest girls and fast foods unfolded between scents and appealing colourful advertising that offer a good lunch at a few euros cost.
At this hour this area of the station is really crowded, who arrives, who is simply here to do some undisturbed and easy linked shopping. I
stop to buy a bottle of water in a shop entirely provided with automatic dispensers of every kind of water. Before I choose, I look at all of them: plain, still, sparkling, slightly sparkling, soda, not to mention the one containing more or less sodium and so on. Well, nowadays even choosing water becomes difficult. Just in case, I choose a brand that I know and I go back to my tour, looking at the watch now and then to avoid the risk of remaining in Rome. When my train finally arrives, I get on the coach displayed on the ticket and I have a seat. I connect my tablet to the station free Wi-Fi and I check the last messages, always hoping to find a contact from him. Disappointed from receiving only advertising e-mails and some answer to work messages, I turn everything off and I wait to hear the whistle that heralds the departure.
When the train starts to move I close my eyes, cradled by the increasing pace on the tracks that are slipping under my feet. That noise brings me back in the years, when I was a girl and I used to go to the mountains with the group of friends of my district. We always travelled by night and we almost never slept during the ride. There was always someone who brought the guitar and played in the couches with all the others pushed inside to sing. Someone stopped in the corridors, watching outside the windows the darkness lighted only by many street lamps along the way that moved away leaving behind a light trail. The rumour of the tracks, always identical like a chant that was a base for the choral voices and the sound of the guitar. Long trips that passed quickly in the euphoria of a holyday far from home, from families, from school… Ready to the adventure that only mountain experienced in tent can offer. The same train would have seen us again after ten days spent totally immersed in nature, between green trees and cold
streams that became source of water to bath and wash dishes. The same train that would have taken us home tired but as happy as ever with the backpack full of dirty clothes and with many adventures to tell. At that time there weren’t mobile phones or Internet to divert our attention from what surrounded us and the only contact with home was a single call made in the half of the week from a cabin far away from our camp. And we used to live so well…
When I open my eyes again, I am alone and outside the window it’s still day. I am enchanted by the landscape that surrounds me and it seems that it was eaten by the unbridled run of that long means of transport. Its sound is still the same of the one of a lot of years ago, its regular pace is always unaltered. I am the only one who changed, but with the usual smile that is finally came back to shine on my face tired and marked from the events of a lifetime. I enjoy taking some picture from the window. Luckily, my seat is just the window one and so I can admire undisturbed the scene that changes before my eyes. I enjoy modifying the photos that I’ve taken through some applications that are nowadays installed on every mobile phone and I post some of them on my profile. I check the mail, even if I see that there is any new message. Nothing, not a trace of my mysterious café friend who probably doesn’t even know where and how to find me.
In front of me sat a couple who will be more or less my same age.
Since he got on he has done nothing but calling with his latest fashion headphones and playing with his smartphone. She has