Expiration Dating Read online

  It finally hit me that I was in Italy.

  I took a step backwards, tripping over… people?

  “Scusi, scusi,” I said and waved my hands in apology. I hadn’t heard the couple murmuring to one another. The two were interlocked on the ground, the guy lying on top of the girl. Could she breathe?

  I needed to work on this bad habit, interrupting couples while they were… busy.

  Public Displays of Affection, better abbreviated as PDA’s, were quite prevalent in Milan. People smooched on the metro, straddled each other in the parks, strange men hooted and hollered at females passing by. I stumbled to the other side of the hill, giving them privacy, and looked out over the few tall buildings, the miles of developed city, and of course, the token soccer stadium. It all seemed vaguely familiar, yet still completely new. In a strange way, I felt I belonged.

  Not quite ready to leave the park, I sat back on the bench and let the warm sun splash over my face. I sprawled out, closing my eyes and turning my face towards the sky.

  I woke, feeling a cramp in my neck, and glanced at my watch. More than an hour had passed, and I wasn’t feeling quite so peaceful anymore. The sweat dripped down my face and my skin was crispy. I looked down, and sure enough, I had a tan line in the shape of a hand on my stomach. My shirt had crept up just enough to allow the sun to burn the part around my fingers, making it look like someone was permanently reaching down my shorts.

  I sighed, slipped headphones into my ears and began the descent towards home.

  I arrived at the apartment refreshed despite the sunburn.

  “You look refreshed,” Emilia said.

  “You’re mocking me.” I wiped sweat from my brow.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “How did you know? Is it that obvious?” I lifted my shirt and peered at the unfortunate tan line.

  Emilia’s face contorted with the effort of hiding a smile. “I just meant you look better, I think the run did you good.”

  I chewed on her words, contemplating the backhanded compliment.

  “Thank you for your honesty.” I grabbed a towel and headed for the shower.

  After changing into something more appropriate by Emilia’s standards, she and I ignored our homework and spent the rest of the day wandering around the city. We stopped at a bunch of hole-in-the wall shops, bought a little treat at every fruit stand and tested out various flavors of gelato.

  “Look at this.” I pointed to a sign reading Whipped Gelato. “We have to try it.”

  “We’ve had three regular ones already.” Emilia glanced over the flavors. “Your choice, they all look amazing.”

  I ordered Nocciola, a light, hazelnut concoction.

  “This is like eating a delicious, fluffy pillow,” I said, passing the spoon to Emilia.

  Her eyes rolled upward in bliss after the first bite.

  I took the spoon back. “We definitely need the extra calories since we’re touring the city on foot. There’s probably eight hundred calories in this one alone, not to mention the others.”

  Emilia sniffed, and seemed to be calculating in her head. I handed the spoon over.

  “I’m okay.” She waved me off.

  Mission accomplished.

  We also made friends with fruit man, a small, elderly Italian near our apartment complex. He sold arrays of vibrant produce out of a hut.

  “He accidentally gave us extra pineapple.” Emilia said, turning back to return the fruit.

  “No, it was a gift. He said so at the counter,” I said putting a hand on her arm. “It’s for coming here so often.”

  Emilia glanced at the bag. “That’s really nice of him.”

  “See? I told you. All it takes is a smile.”

  Emilia seemed lost in thought.

  “I mean, you’re really pretty, and you dress nicely and…” I searched for the right words. “But, the Italians are just looking for you to smile at them.”

  Emilia nodded. “I suppose you’re right, people in Milan don’t seem to smile very much.”

  “Exactly, take me as an example. I’m not particularly charming or suave. Let’s face it, I can barely stick two words together without embarrassing myself, but I get free coffee all the time.”

  “Yeah, but-”

  “And you know what they say, every time?”

  “What?”

  “They say-” I imitated a thick Italian accent, “You must be nice, you smile.”

  Emilia laughed at my impression; I sounded more like a caveman than an Italian. We sat in the plaza near our apartment.

  “I have a test for you,” I said, taking out an old napkin. I wrote:

  1. Smile.

  2. Try to speak Italian.

  I handed the two-step process to her, and she raised her eyebrows.

  “What’s this for?” She slipped the flimsy paper into one of her many bags.

  “It’s a little game we’re going to play, you’re going to go into that café and follow these two rules.”

  “Really?” She reached down and adjusted her boots.

  “Really.” I forced eye contact, ducking to meet her gaze. “Right now. It’s not so hard; all the baristas will adore you. Use those pretty red lips of yours.”

  I gave her a small shove off the bench. She rolled her eyes at me but didn’t protest. I pointed to a café across the narrow, cobblestone street and folded my arms.

  Minutes later, she returned to the bench where I was waiting with all of the bags. She was trying to keep a straight face, but I could see the corners of her lips twitching.

  “So?” I asked.

  She held up a napkin. I started to roll my eyes, but then I realized it was different than the one I’d written on. A barely legible phone number had been scribbled over a horse logo. I held out my hand for a high five, and Emilia cut her smile loose.

  We trekked back home, where Kimberly and Laura were cooking dinner. We added our recently purchased food to the pile. We cooked quite a grandiose roommate dinner for the four of us. Not being a cook, I was put in charge of things like chopping veggies and setting the table. They’d tried to get me to concoct the soup, but after the oven mitt mysteriously caught on fire, I was relegated to the dining room.

  The candles flickered as we sat around the table exchanging stories. We ate and drank for the remainder of the evening, in true Italian fashion. By the time we were ready for bed, I was full with good food and good wine, content and happier than I’d been in a long while.

  Chapter Eleven

  A week later, it became apparent I couldn’t put off getting a phone any longer.

  “Will you please come and help me?” I begged Andrew after class one afternoon. “For moral support.”

  “All those scary phone salesmen,” Andrew joked.

  I clasped my hands in front of my body and tried for demure.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Andrew said. “You seem sick to your stomach.”

  I straightened into my normal slouch.

  “I’ll make a deal. I’ll come with, but you’re buying the ingredients for lunch after.”

  “Even if I buy the ingredients… You’ll still cook?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t let you near the food with a ninety foot pole.”

  “Deal.”

  We shook on it. I enjoyed our lunch dates, we often met three days a week. There was something comforting about having another Minnesotans in a foreign country.

  After solidifying our deal, we grabbed our Italian books, shoved them in our backpacks and headed in the direction of the shopping center.

  “We’re getting quite good at this navigation business, don’t you think?” I asked Andrew, after we pointed a tourist in the right direction. “It feels good to be able to tell people directions.”

  “Yeah, it does. Speaking of, did you look up directions to the store?”

  “Kind of,” I said. “I know the general vicinity. We’ll find it between the two of us experts.”

  An hour later, we pas
sed an orange apartment complex for the third time.

  “These streets are spider webs,” I said, my stomach growling. “Impossible.”

  My stomach was starting to eat itself, my feet ached, and the light rain was ruining my already poufy hair as we searched in vain for the stupid shop. I put my hand on my abdomen.

  “What, you don’t enjoy the company?” he asked. I punched his arm, finally spotting the shop.

  After a lot of hand motions and head bobbing, I handed over some cash and secured a phone.

  “You should feel honored,” I said to Andrew with a solemn expression. “You are the first person to receive my Italian number.”

  “I’m absolutely flattered,” Andrew deadpanned.

  We were limping towards a grocery store, so I could make good on my half of the bargain. En route, I spied Noon, a café where the waiters were setting out small plates and dimming the lights. I put my hand on Andrew’s wrist and suggested we stop for Apperitvo instead of picking up fixings for a meal, my treat of course.

  I hadn’t noticed the passage of time, I’d been so obsessed with finding the shop; I’d been oblivious to the cafés as they converted into bars. Apperitivo, a unique cultural gem, was an Italian tradition I hadn’t known existed until I arrived in Milan. I’d learned the hard way that bars in Italy were the equivalent of café’s in America. On the first day of class, my teacher had suggested that we stop by the bar between sessions.

  What she’d meant was that it’d be nice for our class to get to know each other over a cup of coffee. What my reaction had been, however, was that it was five o’clock somewhere!

  It was ten in the morning.

  Someone had taken the liberty of explaining my comment to her, and I suppose that’s why she had a personal vendetta against my Italian language skills.

  Come afternoon, the bars change their menus around and set out meats, cheeses, and various other delicious plates of appetizers. You simply order a drink, and the appetizers are yours for free. At first, I wondered, how does this work? How do they manage to make money?

  The answer was simple. In Italian culture, Apperitivo is just that; appetizers. It isn’t dinner, it isn’t a meal, and Italians are classy enough not to gorge as if they were at a buffet. Not understanding this, at our first Apperitivo, Andrew and I received the evil eye from each and every server as we went up for our fifth and sixth plates. The recurring joke is that the only people that abuse Apperitivo in Italy are Americans and college students. It’s true.

  I pulled Andrew inside, determined to behave like a classy Italian.

  Forty minutes later I felt ready to pop from the astronomical amount of food I’d devoured.

  The good news was that Andrew was right there with me. We wiped our fingers, slurped the last of our drinks and left the bar.

  “Call me,” I winked as I hugged him goodbye, my new phone heavy in my pocket.

  That evening, I sat playing with the European phone. The T9 auto-text was in Italian, so it turned out to be much easier to write messages in Italian rather than English. Until I figured out how to change the settings, I was stuck.

  Andrew must have had the same problem, since I’d received several texts in messy Italian from him earlier in the evening. I hadn’t yet responded, mostly because I was having difficulty with the phone. Finally, I dug out the dirtied slip of paper from Frederico, the bartender from the first night.

  I glanced at the number, saw the name Giuseppe, and repeated it in my head several times. Emilia walked into the room.

  “What are you chanting?” she asked.

  “The name of that bartender. I can never remember it.”

  “You going to call him?” she asked, propping herself on the couch.

  “We’ll see if he remembers me.” I sent a message telling Giuseppe I bought a phone, asking if he remembered me. The phone pinged back almost instantly.

  I grinned at Emilia, “Guess who’s got a date tonight?”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Ow, jeeez!” I cried as Emilia yanked my hair.

  “Toughen up!” she said. Emilia had taken it upon herself to beautify my face for the date that evening. I planned to meet Giuseppe at his home, and I figured we’d go out from there. I told Emilia we would be meeting at a coffee shop; otherwise, she’d never let me go to a stranger’s home. Like most of my other friends, she’d say I was oblivious to dangerous situations. I preferred to call myself an optimist.

  She sprayed the last round of hairspray, eyed me up and down, and declared me good to go. I ran to the metro, already a bit late, and arrived at his door fifteen minutes later. Emilia insisted I wear high heels, though I hadn’t been sure that was a good idea. I was already tall, and my memory from the night we met was slightly foggy. I couldn’t remember his height, and I didn’t like towering over my dates as a rule. Regardless, Emilia wouldn’t let me leave until I had heels securely pinching my feet. Anything less wasn’t considered proper date-wear.

  I knocked, and the door opened.

  There was a pause as Giuseppe looked up.

  “I remember you being…” he searched for an English word. “…smaller.”

  “Um,” I said. I knew Italians were blunt, but jeez. He began gesturing, and I tried to understand. It was like a high stakes game of Pictionary.

  “I believe the word you’re looking for is shorter,” I said finally. I kicked my shoes off, stepping into the carpeted hallway, and he smiled in relief, realizing he was taller than me by a quarter inch when I stood barefoot.

  He invited me into his one-room, undecorated bachelor pad. I noticed a fold out bed in the middle of the room and a tiny, uncluttered kitchen. This place was so bland. There was not a single picture on the wall, no color in sight except for the black bed sheets.

  We made small talk as he offered me a drink. I accepted a glass of water, and we perched precariously on the edge of the bed. With my limited Italian and his limited English, our conversation halted after we figured out how many brothers and sisters we each had, what our favorite colors were, and what we liked to eat. There was an awkward silence, and he suggested we watch a movie.

  “Si,” I said. “What other option do we have?”

  I spoke the last part quickly. He looked at me with a blank stare. I shook my head, never mind.

  Of course the film he picked had no English subtitles, and it had one of those extraordinarily complicated plots; the type of movie you have to watch closely in your native language in order for it to make sense. I had no hope of understanding a single plot point, and I could only look on confused as he laughed at the antics on screen.

  He tried to explain once or twice, but explaining in Italian really wasn’t going to help me. However, I also couldn’t tell him that in Italian because I didn’t know how. I nodded and smiled, not wanting him to feel bad. In all actuality, I was daydreaming of other things. I wondered if Andrew was going out tonight. I thought he’d get a kick out of my Italian date, and I wanted to share the story with him. He knew I was after the Italians, so he’d mock me for this failed experience, but I’d show him in the end.

  I smiled at the thought, and Giuseppe mistook it as a green light for him. He leaned over and started kissing me. I found myself kissing him back, if for no other reason than to pass the time. He was a terrible kisser, too rough for my taste, but it could’ve been worse. We made out for ten minutes or so, and by then I was starting to get tired, not to mention bored to tears.

  “Basta, enough,” I told him. He grinned and tried to kiss my neck. I halfheartedly pushed him away. “Seriously.”

  He paused for a second, then leaned me backwards. I let my elbows bend, collapsing onto the bed. His hands were grasping at parts I didn’t want touched. I stood up.

  “I have to go,” I said in Italian.

  “Where?” he asked, seeming to be genuinely confused.

  I let my hands fall to my sides, fingers clenched. He had really asked me over just to mess around. He’d never had plans of go
ing out for dinner, grabbing a drink, or anything other than laying on his shitty bed, watching a movie I couldn’t understand and feeling me up. I felt nauseated; I didn’t even know his last name. I left without saying another word. He had the guts to yell out after me something about a second date.

  “Date?” I yelled back, “That’s what you call this?”

  I stalked back towards the subway, not even acknowledging the whistles as my dress swished around my knees. I hopped on the metro, and at the last minute decided to head in the direction opposite my home. I responded belatedly to Andrew’s texts, asking him to meet me for a drink. A few seconds later he named a place I knew, and I changed my course.

  I arrived before him and snatched a table. He’d said to meet at a cute little place called Bar Victoria. It had pink walls and looked like it belonged in the fifteenth century. It probably had existed then, I mused looking around at the walls. The place was frilly and innocent, and just what I wanted at the moment.

  Andrew arrived, and as soon as he walked in the door I knew something was not quite right. He didn’t look like his usual composed self; he was slightly harried, bumping into someone as he walked through the door and barely acknowledging their annoyed expression. This was not the polished, precise Andrew I knew. He sat down, said hi, and looked at the menu. We were silent until the waiter came.

  We both ordered strong drinks, him a Negroni, a potent mixture of gin and about six other alcohol types, and me a, vodka based concoction. It appeared on the waiter’s tray, minutes later, looking like there was a jungle growing out of the glass.

  “What’s up?” I asked after a few seconds of silent sipping.

  He hesitated, as if unsure whether or not to tell the truth. “I just Skyped with Anna.” “Ok,” I said. He stared at me, as if hoping the weight of that statement would sink in.

  “Should I know her?” I asked.

  “The girl I dated right before I left for Italy,” he said, as if I was slow.

  “Sorrrr-eeyyy,” I said, not actually sorry. How should I know her name? He didn’t react with a smart comment, and I realized he was truly upset. “I really am sorry.”