To the Piazza Fiume

By Brenda Paske

Sara's life is going nowhere. A dead-end job at a title company, renting a tiny room in her best friend Arianna's apartment, no boyfriend and no social life, teetering on the edge of financial disaster.

Yet she knows she is destined for more than being a foot soldier in bossy Arianna's over-controlled life.

Sara is going to be a novelist. After all she's smart, hard-working and unusually stylish. Surely in Italy she could live a life worth writing about.

Then she meets a handsome Italian and maybe it will all come true

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 28, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595863730

Brenda Paske

Brenda Paske currently lives in Los Angeles, City of Hopeless Dreams, with her ex-husband and two cats. She is an IT Consultant with five previously published books.

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To the Piazza Fiume

Copyright © 2007 by Brenda A. Paske

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-42028-5 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-86373-0 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-42028-1 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-86373-6 (ebk)

Contents

Acknowledgment

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

For Hossein mio primo marito

Acknowledgment

Many thanks to Jennifer Jurkovich and Peter Windsor, for reading the early drafts and making various brilliant suggestions.

Part 1

San Francisco—Sulmmer

There were the fat girls and there were the thin girls at the Superior Title Company. And the fat girls ate lunch with the other fat girls and the thin girls ate with the thin girls, and it all seemed perfectly natural to Sara.

The thin girls at Superior Title Company of San Francisco hadn’t shut the fat girls out. The fat girls had segregated themselves, probably to avoid the sideways glances at the size of their lunches, as the thin girls picked at salads and talked about men who never even saw the fat girls, not even to make fun of them.

Besides, the fat girls were older and almost all officers, too, except Barbara who was the office manager, older than everyone at forty-two and African-American, but still a thin girl, thanks to her cigarette habit. And then there was Rob, who didn’t usually eat lunch with them, but counted as a thin girl since he too was thin and witty, and totally gay.

There were four of them who usually went out, Toni, Barbara, Arianna and Sara. The Gang of Four, Rob called them. And then Natalie came and made five.

Natalie was the new thin girl in the office. She had curly dark hair and a confident, loud manner. She didn’t wear makeup. She was from New York.

A five-legged table is redundant, Rob had told Sara. He had been trying to warn her that there were one too many women in the group, but Sara hadn’t appreciated it. She thought he was just being gay and bitchy.

She told him about fat girls and thin girls, but he didn’t see it the same way at all.

Think about those fatties, girl. C’mon, they all wear hush puppies! What kind of a woman wears hush puppies?

But to Sara it was only natural they would have no fashion sense. What good would it do them, after all?

Sara saw her life as a series of Chapters and Incidents, that would lead eventually to the glorious Final Scene of Triumph.

She was an aspiring writer.

So the day began with The Mystery of the Missing Money. On that beautiful June afternoon, sitting outside the French bistro on Belden Place, the lunch conversation among the thin girls turned to the missing check.

A check for $10,000 had disappeared, cashed to a false name, Sarah Linebarger. Of course the insurance company had covered the client, but still, who had stolen it? It had to be someone in the office.

They’re going to give everyone lie detector tests, said Arianna with satisfaction. She turned to Sara. She was practically glowing. Aren’t you worried? You were the one who logged the check. And it’s sort of made out to your name. And you seem to have money problems, what with your tenant moving out last month and all. Don’t be surprised if they call you in and give you a lie detector test.

The look she gave Sara was indescribable. Sympathetic, yet firm. Her golden curls encircled her head like a halo. She was smiling brightly.

Was Sara imagining it? Was Arianna actually hoping Sara was the guilty one? She and Arianna were roommates and friends.

Supposedly.

So Sara laughed carelessly, tossing back her tousled, midnight-colored hair in the manner she had practiced repeatedly in the bathroom mirror. She had done some thinking on the subject.

Isn’t Natalie the one who should be scared? She’s the one who found the check was missing. That’s the smoking gun. You don’t want to be caught holding it. Besides, the company never prosecutes theft. It would make them look too bad to the customers. And lie detector tests are illegal in California.

I wouldn’t count on that. said Arianna righteously.

Natalie gave Sara a dirty look. But it was every woman for herself. You seem very defensive, snapped Natalie. I wouldn’t go around flinging accusations if I was you.

I’m not accusing, Sara said calmly, even though her heart was racing. Two of them against her now. I was just pointing out how easy it was to suspect anyone. Didn’t you just buy a new car?

Barbara hastily changed the subject to something innocuous, as befitted an office manager.

And Sara was right. The investigators from the head office came, threatened everyone with lie detector tests and found out it was Natalie. And she was not prosecuted, only fired, although of course no one said any of that outright.

She resigned. We motivated her, said Arianna. Arianna talked a lot about motivation. She was a management trainee.

Sara was not fooled. A continual state of fear, that’s what Arianna meant by motivation. You have to read between the lines like that.

Our employees are highly motivated, and when the situation calls for it, they work long hours without pay (in a continual state of fear) to get the job done.

The world ran on an engine of fear and worry and it was best never to forget that.

Sara’s full name was Sara Sara Johannsen. She wasn’t sure if that was her name because her mother was terribly original or just terribly tired. Sara was twenty-six. She had graduated from college four years ago with a degree in accounting, since it was clear that a career in fashion would never be lucrative. Then she had waited for her life to happen. But somehow it hadn’t. She had a unique name, but not a unique life. She got the job at the title company, thanks to Arianna, and just barely scraped by. She had tried saving at first, to finance her future life of travel and style. She had saved religiously, invested a few thousand in stocks and put 5% down on a small shabby one-bedroom condo in Pacific Heights. It was nothing but a little servants’ shack in the back of a former gilded age mansion, but Pacific Heights was an exclusive area, and the condo was quite private and cottage-like, with its very own little patio and fenced-off rose garden.

But the people in the big house didn’t talk to her, she didn’t go to any of the condo meetings, and she had no friends to visit and take the chill off the terrifying solitude. In the end she realized that all she needed were the two smelly cats to complete the picture of isolated empty womanhood.

The truth was, she couldn’t bear to live alone in her own condo. But she would never be one of the Daly City People with their unthinkable but affordable lives in their Garden Apartments, where charming meant that it was unusually ugly. So Sara had fixed up her place, painting and adding new cabinets from Home Depot then rented it out and moved in with Arianna when the mortgage and the fee and the taxes and the emptiness became too overwhelming.

It barely paid for itself, but it did pay for itself, so that proved she wasn’t a total idiot, right?

For a while she had subsisted on the free samples at Williams-Sonoma, dipping tiny bread samples in olive oil, instead of spending money on lunch. She only went twice a week so they wouldn’t figure it out, and mapped out a few other stores she could hit the rest of the time. After a month she had caught up to herself and could bring two slices of pizza to work every day from the whole one she bought on Saturday. And once a week with the thin girls she had a decent meal.

But she had not let go of her dreams. She would be one of the envied ones. A famous, stylish author, who lived in Italy, in a charming sunny apartment in the heart of Rome with her adoring handsome husband who would never leave her side. She had been in Rome for a week after graduation and adored it. And you didn’t have to spend a lot of money to be stylish, you just had to care. You had to spend that far more precious commodity, time, to create something that was just exactly right, something that worked just for you.

And Sara was stylish. She wasn’t glamorous, not model glamorous anyway. But she was striking, definitely pretty. Dark haired, pale skinned, green-eyed, with the gloomy Norwegian heritage to give it all an air of significance. A few scattered, unexpected freckles. Slim and well-proportioned. All she had to do was maintain it.

That’s all most people had to do, but as a general rule, they didn’t. That gave Sara an edge. At some point all the other women in her age group would be fat and frumpy and no competition at all, and that’s when she would win.

People were just lazy, that was all. They couldn’t be bothered. They spent hours gazing slack-jawed at their big-screen TVs, wolfing down Cheez-its, growing fatter and fatter. And they had no more or less time than she did. Everyone was equal in that one way. Twenty-four hours per day, no matter who you were. Time was all you had and you had the same amount as everybody, even a billionaire.

Use it wisely.

Her one claim to fame was having her face in a photo frame advertisement.

A company rep had come into the photo shop where she worked part-time for minimum wage, oppressed and harassed. He had taken one look at Sara and suggested her for a modeling job. She had been paid four thousand and quit on the spot and the horrid owners had to look at her face multiplied a hundred times a day in every one of the photo frames they sold.

She had kept one of the photo frames. Arianna had denounced it as tacky to keep the picture that comes with the frame. She never believed the girl was Sara, even though she had to admit it looked a lot like her.

But Sara never got another modeling job except for a brief two weeks being a car model at the annual Moscone Auto Show, where the agency had stiffed her for three hours of work, claiming she hadn’t really been working because she took a five minute break to use the bathroom.

The woman running the agency hadn’t liked her for some reason. That happened a lot to Sara. Was it somehow her fault?

Did she just rub people the wrong way?

There was an earlier occurrence, even before The Missing Money. Sara called it The First Shot. The first shot in the undeclared war between her and Arianna. She had wondered what had brought it on, then dismissed it from her mind as unimportant and probably the product of PMS.

Isn’t that pencil from work?

Sara had been scribbling down her notes of the day. Every great writer had kept a diary and incorporated it into their work. Unfortunately most of her notes consisted of things like

Lorna lumpily late with the paycheck again, lumbers away Sunlight dazzling off Arianna’s sunglasses The Glory of the Blonde

Suspicious fish gaze emptily from the market stalls in Chinatown

No, nothing there that could really be inflated into a novel.

She stared at Arianna blankly, her concentration broken.

This? She realized Arianna was right, of course. Work pencils were a distinctive red, with the company logo. It’s just a pencil.

Well, let’s face it, you took something that’s not yours.

There was a long silence as they stared at each other. Arianna waiting for explanations, denials, confessions.

And Sara could think of absolutely nothing to say. Why did it matter? Who cared about a pencil? What was Arianna’s point? What could Sara say that would not trigger a crushing response?

She shrugged and went back to her note-taking.

"Aren’t you even going to answer me?’ persisted Arianna.

She wasn’t.

Arianna was not happy with her. That was clear. But why? Supposedly she should just confront Arianna and work it out, but the reason people weren’t honest to begin with was because there was no good solution. The person had decided to be unreasonable and since they couldn’t justify it, didn’t try.

They just attacked.

Sara lived with Arianna Voss, in a room in Arianna’s two-bedroom apartment on Van Ness. It was a giant cold concrete building from the ‘60s that depressed her. The floors of the apartment were covered with white wall-to-wall carpeting that didn’t help anything. It gave the apartment the unearthly hush of an undertaker’s office. It faced west and the air-conditioning was always on. But Sara was just lucky she had somewhere to go, after the foolish misstep she had made in buying the condo. The expected life-changing event had not saved her.

Sara owed Arianna a lot.

The building was near everything trendy, Union Street, Fillmore, without actually being in a good neighborhood. Sara hardly ever came out of her little room. It was like everything else in the apartment was Arianna’s and her little bedroom was the only place she was allowed to be.

Arianna had laughed at her ambitions to move to Italy.

You don’t even speak Italian, she had pointed out. Arianna, the tall, the blonde, the unassailable possessor of many items of real 18K gold jewelry, a late model Audi and a real boyfriend with a real steady job. Let’s be realistic. If you really wanted to move to Italy you would have done it years ago. Italy is just an excuse to avoid living your life. And you’re getting close to thirty. That’s not a good age to start over.

Sara had not even realized that she had started, much less that it was time to start over.

But she had to admit it was true. If you were going to live in Italy, you should speak Italian. So Sara got tapes and spoke to them religiously every weekday for half an hour. Mi chi amo Sara Johansson.

Sara learned Bocelli’s beautiful Con Te Partiro by heart. Then his other songs. It was easier to remember words from songs than from her language

tapes. Laboriously she translated the lyrics, playing the tape over and over to catch every phrase.

I will go with you To countries I never Shared with you Now I will live there

Arianna had glared. You cannot play that crap all the time. You just can’t. At least get headphones, for God’s sake.

So Sara took a class for a while on Market Street near work, shoving it in between aerobics and movies. Repeating phrases while sandwiched in between grey-haired menopausal overweight women who felt the world’s standards for beauty superficial and sexist.

All of them wanted to live in Italy, but Sara wouldn’t even go to a coffee shop with a single one of them.

The language effort made her tired. Sara did not pick up Italian as quickly as she wanted to, especially all the verb tenses, most of which seemed unnecessary. Some of them didn’t even exist in English. Was she kidding herself? If she couldn’t learn to speak the language she was doomed.

Arianna insisted she was being short-sighted. It was all a waste of time. Sara should be a management trainee, like her. That was realistic.

Everyone will accept that you are stupid. It is convincing them you’re smart that’s hard. You actually had to pretend to be what you were. Arianna did not accept that Sara was what she was, smart, pretty and determined. Sara had not laid the proper groundwork, so far as Arianna could see. She didn’t have nearly as good a job as Arianna. She didn’t have a nearly new Audi, only a common Honda Civic that she had bought used. She did not wear gold jewelry or have a steady boyfriend.

Obviously she was nobody and that’s the way she would stay.

It didn’t matter that she was stylish, disciplined and clever, had managed to open a small brokerage account and owned real estate, however over-priced. Since Sara never talked about those, they were probably inferior in some way that wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny.

If you didn’t show off it was because you had nothing to show off. Such people were easily dismissed. Whatever they might luck into would eventually be taken away by someone tougher and more aggressive anyway. There was even no point in pity. How could you pity someone who didn’t even stand up for themselves?

You’re not a self-promoter, Arianna pointed out with satisfaction.

It was true. Sara had noticed that people of Scandinavian ancestry were pretty low-key. She supposed it was the process of natural selection, since people up north were cooped up with each other half the year due to the relentless snow. But it proved that charm and wit and self-promotion were not half so important in getting along with people as just shutting the hell up.

Rob dreamed of Italy too. He at least had some money saved up. Sara had always thought gay men were happy spendthrifts, but he saved a third of his paycheck and spent the rest wisely, while still managing suspicious two-week vacations to places like Thailand and Cambodia.

We could have an apartment together in Italy, Rob said wistfully. After all, we are almost sisters.

She imagined hot gay sex occurring in the bedroom next to hers. The sulky, spiteful, pretty street boys he would bring home. The relentless pressure for her to disappear.

It wouldn’t work.

When she first moved in with Arianna, Sara bought a Chinese-style poster to decorate her simple room. For once it wasn’t expensive, so Arianna couldn’t make any remarks.

While Arianna looked on in astonishment she cut the poster up to different proportions, backed it with tissue art paper and put it in a gold-painted bamboo frame. It looked fabulous. Even Arianna could see that.

How did you know to do that? demanded Arianna. Where did you see it?

I just thought it would work. The tissue gift wrap inspired me.

But you copied something, said Arianna almost accusingly.

No, not really.

What was it? she persisted. Was it in one of those magazines you always buy?

Arianna, can’t you see that even if I copied, somebody must have dreamed it up, right? It had to start somewhere, in somebody’s head. Why not in mine?

So you didn’t think it up. You don’t have to be so defensive. You did a nice job, even if it wasn’t really your idea. You don’t have to make everyone else feel like insignificant specks of dust.

She wasn’t joking, Sara saw.

See, here it is! Arianna said triumphantly, weeks later. I knew you got that idea from somewhere.

It did look like her poster. Sara flipped to the front of the magazine. It was the current month. So now you think I travel in time? How did I copy this month’s magazine last month?

The look on Arianna’s face was a puzzle.

Obviously this famous decorator lives around here and is copying me! Sara proclaimed indignantly and swept in triumph from the room.

On Saturdays, feeling twinges of desperation in the empty apartment, Sara would apply herself and draw up a plan. She would pull up stakes and move to Italy and write a book. She ordered Out of the Tuscan Hills so she would know how to get started.

Like Jean Rhys in the 1930’s, she would have an eventful life and write it all down and be famous for it. You didn’t have to go to war or be a prostitute to have something to write about. Real life was sufficiently engrossing. The important thing was to get out of San Francisco and get on with it. But she wouldn’t end up like the alcoholic author, cast outside the party, her nose pressed up against the window of luxury and excitement and beauty, always on the outside, when she had a thousand times more talent than any of those she desperately, hopelessly envied and did not have the strength to fight.

It was fascinating to read in Quartet the view of the affair that started her on the downward spiral, first from Jean, who saw herself as the victim. Then the view from Stella Bowen, the wife, who pointed out in Drawn from Life that the couple had a child and this supposed minor incident, with the other woman brushed carelessly aside, had actually ended in divorce. And Ford Maddox Ford, who laughably thought of himself as the true victim of these events, driven to suicide by the lesser mortals around him, in The Good Soldier.

Of course he hadn’t committed suicide in real life. That would have been taking drama a step too far.

But Jean’s book was the best of them and all she had done was tell her story, from her point