Elisabeth Harvor - A Postcard From Iceland
On our night tour of Florence we gazed at black suns and triangles as black as licorice sunk into grey or white marble, and round-shouldered black doors set into the long walls of cathedrals.
Then the Duomo came into view, a small city of spires.
We went riding slowly past it, then took off for the main railway station where Dillon leaned back on the Vespa to wait for me while I went inside to buy us a Manchester Guardian.
The attendant at the station kiosk had a lonely and secretive look and as he was giving change to the petite American in the gauzy tunic who was standing next to me, I felt convinced that he knew something hard about life: something hard and passionate and enigmatic and European, something that I too was longing to know.
After I’d come out into the night again and Dillon and I were on our way back to the ostello, a motorbike with Dutch licence plates cut in front of us. The girl riding behind the driver didn’t look Dutch, though, she looked like a girl from the Canadian foothills or Montana or anywhere else in horse country since along with her hip-hugger shorts she was wearing a white Stetson and white cowgirl boots. And every time the motorbike hit an uneven patch of cobblestone street, the heave of the bounce would make her do a bump and grind that made me wonder if she was the kind of person who would be casual about pain just so long as it meant she could get herself noticed. Because even only taking in the view of her perfect back, you could tell from the imperious but perky way she was holding her spine how much she was loving the bounce and the ride and herself and her body.
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Dillon couldn’t take his eyes off her. I knew this without even being able to see his eyes because I’d already seen him be so enthralled by so many women since our arrival in Italy and consequently I was accustomed to the way a woman could become the whole horizon for him. He also wasn’t slumping as he was driving, he was sitting up straight in courtship position. But then why should I care? After all, I wasn’t in love with him, he was too much like an offensive big brother for me to have any serious interest in him.
I only took note.
