Page 84 - NOMADS_NO4_2015

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photographed three times. The last visit she paid was not what she had expected. The sun had set and I had just taken the photograph into my apartment. She stood looking at where it had once hung as though if she looked long and hard enough it might reappear. She finally sighed and walked away, groping with lost fame. “You do important work for the neighborhood,” I tell the cobbler.
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three of us and I certainly don’t want
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to intrude on their privacy. “How long is he staying here?” I say. “He will be returning to Rome for a month.” “So,” I say, “you’re kicking me out on the streets to sleep with the dogs and the seagulls?” “I will give you a blanket and lower food to you on a rope from the terrace,” she says. Some elderly people who live on high floors often lower a rope with a basket to be filled with groceries delivered from a nearby store.
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something in her eyes does not seem right with the world. “I made us a Sicilian treat,” she says. “Want to see?” Hmmmmmm, I’m questioning just what is going on with her, why her eyes are not carefree. She returns to the living room with a serving tray that holds a small chocolate cake, a slice of cantaloupe extending from each corner. “The cantaloupe pieces are legs. It’s a scorpion to represent Scorpio. “Rosa,” I say, “the cake looks great. But what’s really going on?”
She grips my wrist and pulls me to sit with her on the couch. “You know me too well,” she sighs. “I got an unexpected call from my boyfriend Cosimo this afternoon. He’s not coming back to Rome in a few weeks as I had thought. His producer has ordered him back here to meet with a director.” She squeezes my hand. “He’ll be here tomorrow night.”
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vanished last night, I must start looking for a new place to live this spring. I could stay with my good friend, Cesira, and her boyfriend. They have a huge apartment with a grand terrace covered with flowers and plants. But they live twenty minutes away by train, but I both want and need to stay in Trastevere, which is always thriving with people and places that feed my hungry soul.
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Viviana who Cesira introduced me to a couple of years ago. She has a roomy and elegant apartment in the heart of Trastevere and sometimes rents part of it. I phone Viviana and the gods are with me because she’s eager to rent me a place to live with her and her daughter. Viviana is often hurting for money so my staying in her home will help both of us.
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