It was a rainy evening. Zia Scilla had been hanging and collecting the same clothes over and over all day long. Alfio's trousers now looked like a stinky puddle. Mr Bosch had been undisturbedly drinking Budweiser since 1pm. Inside Lucceto's truck, a Czech cartoon show coloured the glasses with blues of three different intensities. I heard the rain. Each drop falling on the plate above my head. Duc, top, duc, top, duc, top, duc, dop, sigh. My legs tangled themselves, showing across the slim door, toes resting on the soaked grass, my arm waving the smoke away.
"Sei un photographe?" That was the broken voice of Mrs Pollet. I had seen her silhouette coming out of the fog before. The backlit stage made her look like ET's friend emerging from the saucer. "Hmm... ssssort of." "Vieni qui, s'il vous plaît." Aguamado's home was by far the best - cozy, like a Tiffany lamp inside a squirrel den. "Skype. My son. The camera doesn't work." In that place, everyone used to make weird associations regarding my persona. Once Ada asked if I didn't mind her telling her nan that my workmate and I were father and daughter. No, certainly I didn't mind. I didn't mind anything. "Let me find the codecs. Do you have a connection?" "Amaretto? Café?" Aguamado was the fluorescent-light seller, he was the oldest creature in the camp and Mrs Pollet was his wife, and she was a jealous lady. Probably they had spent the past 50 years together. They were planning to quit someday, but I knew they wouldn't do it anywhere in this life. Maybe in the next. "My son in Belgium." "Dai, dai, ma let her work, mamma!" Their daughter was also there, still with painted eyebrows three centimetres beneath hers. The music started baffling again. "Told you, mum, lei è clever." "Grazzie. Stay. Finish the café."
In the past week I had dreamed of Randy twice. He ate fifteen chickens a day and was full of hatred. I was forced to marry him in a garish ritual. I passed by the cage and he turned back. Glanced straight into my eyes, as if he wanted to scan my skull through before smashing it and spitting out the grey mass. Randy, go to hell. I knew my compassion drove him mad. My smell made him roar lower and longer than anyone else's and despise himself even more, if that were possible. Randy, can't you see where you are? You'll never have m... "Carmin! Carmin! Vieni! Hold my hand! Fast! Let me show you my new princess! She has a raincoat!" "Bimba! I've been searching for you the whole time, oh dio qué bella..."
