by Angelina Acquista
(11/07/07)
You were bored with your life, so you left it. Husband, job, everything. Took the train to the city, got a room in a fancy hotel. Slept until noon, had breakfast in bed. Nothing changed. Took walks in the park after dark, crossed against the light, and still nothing excited you. No, your heart stopped beating long ago. You caught a taxi to the airport, bought a ticket to anywhere.
London. Paris. Rome was nice. Crazy, loud, pugnacious. Colorful, like a Sophia Loren movie. You swan-dived into a sea of new sights and sounds and smells, yet still -- still you felt nothing.
South to Calabria. In Villa San Giovanni, you stood in line to buy a ticket to Messina, spoke your bad Italian, and waited for the scrunch of puzzlement on the ticket seller's face. He didn't disappoint.
"Oo-no big-lee-etto, pear fah-vor-eh?" you said again, feeling nothing, not even shame.
A warm, wet wind rattled the windows of the ticket booth, and a woman's sudden, throaty chuckle did the same to you.
"Round trip or one way?" she said, stepping to your side. Laughter laced her voice, and a smile lit her face. You couldn't help but smile back.
"One way."
Her Italian was perfect, and the man in the booth handed her two tickets, which she took with long, elegant fingers.
"The other one's for me," she said and winked.
You followed her down to the ferry. "You're American," you said, feeling suddenly foolish.
She smiled over her shoulder. "So are you," she replied and disappeared into the crowd.
Men in striped shirts handed you up onto the boat over clanging, metal planks. You stood at the railing, trying to conjure her from a sea of passengers when another strong wind lifted the hat from your head and swirled it into the blue, undulating waters of the straits.
"Sirocco," her warm breath whispered in your ear. You jumped.
Black hair snapped around her head like live wires, and she laughed as she pulled it back from her face.
"The sirocco. It blows from Africa." She laughed again, and your body vibrated like a struck bell.
"I'm Anna," she said and extended her hand.
In Taormina, you took a room together.
"You're one of them," Anna says, sprawled in her chair like some Titian bacchante, white robe parted to her navel, glass of Cinzano curled in long fingers between her breasts. You're both sitting on the balcony, feet upon the railing, letting the African winds tickle your bare soles. Beyond, the Ionian Sea waxes navy in the waning sunlight.
"Them?" Your head spins with liquor, and you aren't sure you heard her right.
"Runaways. Suburban wives. Most of them don't get this far, though. Paris is usually enough. Or Rome. Timid little bunnies..." She wiggles her fingers like rabbit ears, "...poking their heads out only to pop them right back in again." She eases onto her hip, and her robe slouches to reveal the curve of an olive-tinged breast. "But there are some, a few brave rabbits, who do venture out into the big forest. Just to see what's there. Like you. So why? Why have you come so far from your safe bolt hole, my little rabbit?"
You shrug, a tilted, sluggish movement that sloshes amber liquid onto your white, linen shirt. Anna laughs and pulls you from the chair. You say nothing as she unbuttons you, and you don't protest when she tugs the garment from your arms and leaves you standing half-naked in the doorway to run the fabric beneath the tap. Wind laps at your bare skin like a cat's tongue, and you shiver even though it is warm.
She hangs the wet shirt across the railing where it flaps like a flag of surrender, and then she turns, blinking slowly, and your heart thrums suddenly between your thighs.
She comes to you where you lean against the doorframe, and stands so close you can smell the liquor on her lips. The sirocco swirls around you, snapping the edges of her robe against your legs, and you smell the spices that waft across the channel from Malta and Tunis and Tripoli.
When her lips touch your neck, you tremble. With both arms she embraces you, teasing open your bra, slipping it from your shoulders. Soft fingertips bring gooseflesh to your arms. You breathe deeply of the spicy air, of the sea salt. Her mouth closes over yours, lingers, descends to your nipple, and you sing a note deep in your throat, a song of abandon.
She pulls you into the room, leads you to the bed where you stand, knees knocking against the edge. Her hands are slow, soft, nothing like a man's. Fingers, lips, tongue. You shiver. You have never felt any caress so keenly before. Your skirt falls to her fingers and your thighs soon give way as well. You make that noise again, and she guides you to sit, slides your panties, so damp, down your legs. You close your eyes.
The wind insinuates itself into the room, nudging your knees apart, and the air of darker continents blows across your clitoris. Fingers, lips, brushing your pussy, and you cry out at the shock of it. No scratch of sandy beard, no awkward fumbling, only the deftness of her tongue sweeping your body, and the softness of her hair swathed across your thigh. And you have no time to wonder, to think, to regret. You are here, now, living life, as pure and as powerful as the blood pumping through your veins after so many long, long years.
You tangle your hands into her hair.
With a warm puff of breath, her tongue laps at you again, and once more, and you open your eyes to look upon the stuccoed ceiling of a whole new world.
Yes, you think, I am alive.
And orgasm takes you, then, as naturally as breathing, as perfectly as first love, as fiercely as the sirocco that swirls through ancient, Mediterranean streets.
