Why wasn’t I born rich? I mean, I really could get used to the good life. There I was, sitting on the beach in Nice, Mediterranean sun beating down, sipping an Orangina. Don’t get me wrong, I like my job but I live for vacations.
What the hell, I worked hard for this trip. Three years of Law School and two years busting my ass as an associate for a Big Boston Firm, hell, if you went by my billable hours I compressed three and a half years of work into those two years! It paid off; Junior Partner in a mid-sized firm of good repute, all by the age of twenty-seven. Slammed right through that glass ceiling. I had a right to be proud.
This trip was my present to myself. I finally had some money of my own and the time to spend it. Three beautiful weeks being a bum in Europe, going where I wanted to go, doing what I wanted to do. No schedule, no alarm clocks, no commuting to work, just relaxation.
Well, actually up until this point, I had been running my ass off. I mean, there was so much to see! I spent five days in London, hit the British Museum, Harrods (of course!), took in a show, danced the nights away. On to Paris! The Louvre, Printemps (OK, do you note a shopping theme emerging?) a ride down the Seine on a bateau mouche, hanging on the left bank, more dancing. Hop a train to sunny Italy, Fierenzie, the Boboli gardens, Il Duomo, more shopping in the leather market (I got a jacket that’s to die for!), Il David (boy, for an allegedly homosexual man, Michelangelo really short-changed his masterwork in the um, ‘plumbing’ department!), Gelato! Back on the train to Pisa, can’t go up the tower anymore. On the train once again, stopping in Nice, which brings me to this chair on a rocky beach on the romantic ‘Middle Sea’.
This was life! ‘Jill, you’re gonna hate going back to work,’ I said to myself with a smile. I leaned back in my chair, took a sip of my drink and adjusted my Red Sox cap. I had my ponytail a little too high and it was pushing my cap down. I closed my eyes and just soaked up that sun like a lizard on a rock.
The drink vendor made his way back down the beach, calling out, “Mamma mia, mamma mia! Coca-Cola fantazia, birra birra fria fria! Coca-Cola! Orangina! Ice-a cold beer!”
I smiled again, less then two hundred years ago, Nice was a part of Italy. The two cultures meshed here like no place I had seen before. You were as likely to hear Italian spoken as French.
A shadow blocked out the sun, I opened my eyes and squinted up. Backlit, I saw a head of rich, wavy curls looking down at me.
“Bella, you are going to get the sunburn!” she laughed. “ E Americana?”
“Si, Io sonno Americana,” I replied with a smile.
“Ah! Parle Italiano?” she asked.
I laughed, “No, No, that’s about the extent of it!”
“Ha, well then it is good for you I speak English! You Americani, you are so spoiled. We Europeans all speak two, three languages.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s kind of embarrassing.” I laughed again. She seemed nice. Pretty smile.
“Do you mind if I sit down?” she asked.
“Go right ahead,” I gestured.
She set her beach-chair up next to me. Not too close, not invading my space, but close enough to carry on a conversation comfortably. Pretty girl, tall, thick, wavy chestnut hair, nice tan! She set her chair among the small rocks that make up the beach (if you want sand, you have to go to Monte Carlo where they truck it in), chattering away.
“Oh what a beautiful day, una belle di! I have been stuck in that officino all week! Thank God we have the week end eh?”
Setting her chair facing the sun, she removed her bikini top and started to rub lotion over her arms and torso.
“You had better put some of the lotion on yourself, bella. You are showing the sun to places that don’t usually see it I think,” she gestured at my chest.
I looked down. What the hell, I was in France. I had decided to go topless. The problem was, there was a white band across my boobs. As she had surmised, they had never seen the sun (well, for any length of time at least!). They weren’t burnt yet, but putting another coat of sunscreen on wasn’t a bad idea.
“That’s how I knew you were Americana,” she went on. “You Americani are modesto, you don’t show the…” she gestured at her own ample chest, “on the beach.”
“No,” I chuckled. I liked this girl. “No, we don’t. We’d get arrested if we did that,” I answered getting out my own sunscreen and applying it liberally to my chest and belly.
“Pazzo!” she declared. “Crazy! The flics in America should spend their time arresting the crooks, the gangsters, like in the movies. Not bothering ladies at the beach.”
“Well, it’s not really like it is in the movies,” I said. “Anyway, I’m Jill, what’s your name?”
“Hello Jill,” she pronounced it Jeele. “Me chiamo Carla. Nice to meet you,” she waived.
“Nice to meet you too. Are you from Nice?” I asked. I assumed not since she spoke Italian, but you never knew.
“No, I am on holiday. I’m from Milano. I have un apartemento here in Nice. I like to come up here to get away from the city.
“That’s nice!” I said with feeling.
“You are from America, eh? Where in America?”
“Boston, Massachusetts,” I answered.
“Ah! Boston! (Boss-tone, I giggled). yes, I know, near New York! I have never been to Boston, but I go to New York, two, three times a year,” she answered.
“Really?” I asked, “What do you do for work?”
“I design clothes for a House in Milano.”
“Wow! That’s something!” I was impressed.
“And you Bella? What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m a lawyer,” I answered.
“Ah! A Boston Lawyer, like the Alley McBeal on TV!” she laughed.
I laughed too. “No! She’s too neurotic!” I saw her confusion. “Pazzo, she’s too pazzo!”
Carla laughed harder. “Si! She is very pazzo! But the show, it is funny. You are much prettier then her too. Rubia, blond, like she is but not so skin and bones, no?”
“Actually my hair is strawberry, thank-you-very-much.” I was glad of the not skin and bones part. I’m pretty thin, and small busted but I have some shape at least!
“Strawberry? Like the fruit?”
“Si!” I said giggling. “Like the fruit. That’s what we call blonds with a little red in their hair.”
“In Italy we call them ‘rare’,” she laughed. “Not too many blonds over here who did not get their color from the salon.”
We talked a little more.
“You are traveling alone?” she asked.
“At this point. I was with friends for the first part of my trip, but they wanted to go to Germany and I wanted to come here so we split up. How about you?” I asked.
“Yes, alone. I, (how do you say?) ‘dumped?’” I nodded. “Si, ‘dumped’ my boyfriend Paolo last week and wanted to get away.”
“Oh, had you been dating long?” I asked.
“Chinque, months,” she answered holding up five fingers. I noticed she held the hand up palm in, instead of how an American would do it, palm out.
“Owe, that’s tough!” I sympathized.
“Eh,” she shrugged. “It was over for a long time before, we just didn’t know it yet, you know?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“What about you? Una bella ‘strawberry’ lawyer in Boston. You must have a boyfriend,” she stated as if a fact of nature.
“No, no boyfriend, not for about a year.”
“Then the men in Boston are all pazzo!”
We both laughed.
We talked some more. The drink vender came over and tried to talk us into letting him give us an ‘Ice cold beer massage’, whatever the hell that was. We laughed and declined his kind offer. I learned she was thirty (she looked about ten years younger). She was from a big family and her mother was panicked that she would never settle down and get married. I told her about myself, my family. How this was the first real vacation I had taken since entering Law School.
“Bella,” she noted. “You are starting to burn where I think you don’t want to burn!” She pointed at my chest.
I looked down, my boobies were indeed getting pink. “Uh oh!” I said, reaching for a tee. “They may be small, but they’re all I have!”
Carla laughed. “You have such pale skin with the, um freakles?”
“Freckles,” I corrected.
“Si, ‘freckles’. You stay so light!”
“Yeah, I always say, ‘I don’t tan, my freckles just get bigger and kind of merge.’” I stood and pulled my tee shirt on. Impulsively I asked, “Would you like to have dinner? I mean, if you don’t have any plans.”
“No, no plans. Si, I would like to have dinner with you very much,” she answered smiling. “Do you know Antonio’s?”
“By the statue?” I asked.
“Si, by the statue! I will meet you there at eight, we will have an early dinner, you and I.”
“Great! I’ll see you then.” Early dinner? I thought. At eight? Well, when in Rome….or at least Nice.
We said goodbye and I went back to my hotel. I was drained from the sun so, setting my travel alarm, I took a nap. Upon awakening, I figured I would need a shower if I was going out. The shower was a hand-held wand attached to the claw-footed tub with no shower-curtain. That meant I would be taking my showers sitting in the tub.
“Fuck it!” I announced to the air. “I’ll take a bath.”
I filled the tub up deep, sat back and soaked. Damm, the tub was huge. More then big enough for two. There’s a thought, two in the tub. That would be nice. I had been single for a very long time. My last beau, Billy, had been fun, but there was never that ‘spark’. He was the perfect ‘catch’ as my cousin Lynn pronounced, but…..he was just kind of…..blah.
As a matter of fact, most of my boyfriends could be categorized that way. Acceptable to my parents, good ‘catches’ but……blah.
