Chapter 15 from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

15.
Nearby there is a little rental shop I've been looking in on, checking out the models and prices of scooters. When they see me they no longer ask if they can help. It is down to a daily ritual between us. We exchange "Buon giornos and they go back to their maintenance while I scratch my head.
The trouble is that I still don't know what I need. I've never really ridden a scooter - it's such a ridiculously small machine it doesn't seem safe to me. I need wheels with a heft and visibility on these whipping unfamiliar streets. I need an ox-cart circa 154 a.d. What I need is a bus with a driver and a cold cheese sandwich but I am too old and stubborn to say just that - so I let them rent me the base model.

I regret my decision as I pull away from the shop. It feels like a child's toy. There's no way that YaYa will be seen on the back with me. Besides, I didn't get the extra helmet. The point is I still don't know. I mean, what was I supposed to do - pull up and say forget him, forget everything, we're going away?
I certainly wanted it to go something like that. I wanted to surprise her and I wanted her to feel free. In my mind we pull over along the sea. I envision our picnic of salami and cheese and bread and a bottle of wine on a little checkered tablecloth but how does it go when you don't live in a movie? I could pull up and smile calmly but inside I'm jelly, like last night when I looked at her and felt the Tiber sloshing in my gut.

I get stuck in a knot of midday traffic and find myself doing loops around the Coliseum. Even at this distance you can feel its gravity. Gradually as cars peel off the circular and others are added I realize that I should pick a road before I get pulled in too close.
I shoot down Via Labicana toward the aqueduct. The next time I take notice I have completely lost sight of Rome. I begin to see signs with slashes through them in a language I never considered at such high speeds. I'm convinced that if there is a sign whizzing by in a flash it must pertain to me.
I'm on the Via Appia Antica - the ancient road built by the Romans that lends credence to that historic notion. This is the original route 66, cutting straight all the way to Brindisi and its ancient Greek port and to think that it was built before neon roadside pillars grew out of the cotton fields proclaiming Jesus.
I pass the catacombs. Up here you get no indication of the wretched stockpile down below. Up here there are fields and canebrakes, the occasional cistern, or crumbling church and those ancient solitary brick walls facing the stillness with tired attention, hats off to the blue vault, weeds sprouting out their dusty cement pores. Down below the Christians are racked together waiting for eternity. But up here it is calm, like a Sunday, and finally I relax into the ride and take on the bumpy road with ease.
It begins to rain slightly. I make a few casual turns not knowing yet that I have lost the Via Appia, which loosely translates as the level way, forever. It begins to rain harder and I take another turn into heavy traffic. My soggy map is under me, my sunglasses are scratched and the rain is stinging my bare arms and legs. Above all, I realize I'm on a 50 c.c. scooter and it feels like a certain death ride. I am caged in by speeding cars on the Autostrade and now I understand those signs that say I shouldn't be.
I expect to be quashed out here on this little toy. The road is a dark river of racing cars. Low black clouds touch down on the modern high rises of the Fascist city. I have not seen Rome from this angle. There are more signs for the Center but I am dubious. I still believe I am facing another city but I am caught at the head of a line of cars in a cloud of buzzing scooters and I cannot pull back. I gamble on the carousel, behind the ears and nose of a thundering steed, straining on the yoke like a gladiator, the oily wake chopping against the floor runners of this screaming chariot.
Now is not the time of course, racing along like this, but suddenly I'm having one of those moments of disconnect in which you begin to doubt the actuality of your experience. I'd even go so far as to say it's possible that I'm no longer upright. I have a vision of myself lying in a drainage along the freeway under that gray umbrella of sky and all that plays before my eyes is sympathy from my mind, a kind of habit of consciousness to continue unabated.
Then I see Berto, putting on his waiter suit in front of an antique bureau, a nice red glow to his cheeks and a rose in his pocket. There is Cassi wearing a black cloak and kneeling on the grass. And then I see fire and glinting metal and exhaust smoke and my real father, the retired fireman, has come to pull me from the wreckage only he is young and dapper and fluid in italian and his wife, played by Anita Eckberg, is the ambulance driver.
Everything is a wet, vibrating chaos. I am numb from the stinging rain, and the soggy air pressing around my mouth makes it difficult to breathe, so I am suffocating a little as I go.
When I snap out of it I am lighting a wet cigarette and talking to two teenagers at a bus stop, asking them where the Center is. They answer and point. I'm still in disbelief. I find myself thinking that they are two teens who ride the bus and so what do they know? Except that I might still be lying in a ditch if it weren't for them. That's how I see it - from moment to moment, like a slideshow. Sometimes the slide gets stuck, that's all, and then it starts to burn.
I thank them and shove off, and after a series of long, high speed curves, as the rain lets up, I notice that I am back within the ancient, if unfamiliar, walls of the city. I am soaked through but somehow it is exhilarating just to be alive after that death ride so I squish along and don't care.