Pennsylvania Station

by Patrick E Horrigan

An old gentleman hesitated at the stoplight in front of the station. Frederick handed Curt his suitcase and offered his arm to the old man. Escorting him across the intersection, he figured by now Sally and Veronica had taken his mother to Marge’s house, and Marge was explaining how she would live there for the time being until a decision could be made for a more permanent living situation.

  “You’re a nice young fella,” the old man said as they reached the Statler Hotel on the opposite corner. He hobbled on his way.

  Frederick felt a sickness in his stomach. The news, he was certain, would crush her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Perched on the Quirinal Hill adjacent to the Borghese Gardens, the Hotel Eden was a massive wedge of russet-colored stone, stucco, white trim, and green awnings. Having lived with Frederick now for almost a year, Curt was used to a lifestyle a notch or two above what he’d known as a kid, but the opulence of this place was apparent even from the sidewalk. The doorman came to the curb, opened the taxi door, and proceeded to empty the trunk of their suitcases.

  “Benvenuti, signori, welcome,” he said in a thick accent. Curt felt mildly uncomfortable with the effort the young man was making to serve him. He couldn’t have been more than a couple of years his senior. “Your first time in Rome?”

  “Sì,” Curt said.

  “Thank you” Frederick said, handing him an American quarter—“Remind me,” he added, turning to Curt, “to exchange some travelers checks once we get settled.”

  They were shown to a corner room on the fourth floor by a bellboy who carried all three of their suitcases. Curt tried to say he’d be happy to give a hand but made a mess of the Italian, prompting the young man to insist, “No sir, you are the guest, it is my job.” Frederick handed him a quarter (his pocket was full of them for this very reason), said “Thank you” again, and shut the door. Curt went directly to the bed and threw himself face down.

  “I hate the English language,” he mumbled into the bedspread.

  “Yes, it’s a problem that Americans by and large don’t speak foreign languages,” Frederick acknowledged, sitting down next to him and stroking his head. He knew Curt was having his first real, if harmless, experience of culture shock. “Understandable,” he said, “on one’s first trip abroad, but what were you expecting?”

  Curt sat up and looked around the room. The furnishings were antique. Two large windows, heavily draped, opened out onto a small cast-iron balcony overlooking the mellow foliage of the Borghese Gardens. In the distance rose the dome of St. Peter.

  “I feel like Rapunzel locked away in her castle.”

  “We haven’t even unpacked our bags. You’re probably a little distraught from jet lag. Take a bath, you’ll feel better. I’ll order some drinks.”

  After freshening up, Curt was in brighter spirits. Frederick proposed going for a walk to one of Rome’s most famous spots, the Spanish Steps—get that into his system, he thought, so he’ll forget about the politics of being an American abroad. Curt brought along his movie camera, a gift Frederick had given him after he’d made a theatrical show of wanting one for the trip as they passed an electronics store window one day while shopping for a proper suitcase. But the camera now became an unwelcome fifth wheel.

  “Frederick, look here, say hi, wave to the camera.” Curt attempted to film Frederick walking away from the hotel down Via Francesco Crispi towards Via Sistina.

  “Why don’t we just enjoy our surroundings?”

  “But this is my first time in Europe,” Curt said. “You’ve been here before, you’ve seen it all, I haven’t.”

  “All the more reason to look with your eyes! When you look through the camera, you’re not really looking, and you’re supposed to be the one who doesn’t want to behave like a tourist!” He turned away dismissively and continued walking a few paces ahead.

  “Fuck!” Curt shouted.

  What was the matter now? Frederick wanted to throttle him and feared this was going to be a long three weeks.

  “A pigeon just shat on me.”

  They spent the next several minutes, on the corner of Crispi and Sistina, wiping the bird droppings off of Curt’s shoulder with tissues and spittle.

  “Did any of it get into my hair?”

  Frederick checked perfunctorily and assured him his hair was clean but felt it would serve him right if the bird had shit in his hair.

  “Which way is Via Veneto?” Curt asked.

  “I thought we would walk to the Spanish Steps first. It’s one of the greatest public spaces in the world. You’ll love it.” He described the way the steps spilled forth from the foot of the church of Trinità dei Monti, how storied a location it was, the setting for movies and operas, where Keats—

  “I don’t think I could handle going into a church or a museum right now.”

  “I’m not proposing we go into any church or museum.”

  “I just want to walk and experience the city.”

  “With a movie camera stuck between you and the city you’re so keen on experiencing?”

  “I don’t need you to be my tour guide. I’ll figure it out on my own.”

  Frederick stopped in his tracks. “Then why have we come here? Why travel together?”

  “We don’t always have to do the same thing all the time.”

  “We just arrived!”

  “You think because you’re paying for everything you can dictate what we do?”

  “I think you’re seriously overreacting—to what, I don’t know. Maybe you need to rest.”

  “Stop telling me I need to rest. I’m fine. Maybe you should go back to the hotel and rest.”

  But this was absurd, Frederick thought, arguing on a street corner in Rome. It was the height of embarrassment, and Curt didn’t seem to have any idea how ridiculous the whole thing looked. Frederick realized he had to offer a concession and fast. He proposed a brief visit to the Spanish Steps and then returning to the hotel by way of Via Veneto, along which they could find a place to have some lunch.

  The Spanish Steps worked their magic on both of them. It was a little past noon, the sky overcast, the steps carpeted with people lounging and talking, couples embracing (Frederick and Curt were both reminded they were forbidden such intimacies in public), musicians playing, tourists taking pictures, old men selling flowers. Frederick pointed out how the shape of the stairs alternated between convex and concave arcs, how movement down the stairs was retarded at intervals, like the flow of a melody, or a dance, by the numerous landings. They walked down several flights until they found an unoccupied spot along the wall and took a seat on the steps. A flock of birds swooped down low over their heads and then up again. Curt began to notice young men, not so very well dressed, drifting up and down the steps, now and then approaching a solitary man or woman.

  “Prostitutes,” Frederick explained. They’d been noticing and thinking, apparently, the same thing.

  “Hey, look at him,” Curt said, discreetly pointing to a ruffian with baggy pants, suit coat, and no shirt underneath. Then a skinny blond fellow. Then a curly-headed Adonis.

  Frederick regretted what he’d started.

  “There’s nothing wrong with saying we find someone attractive, is there?” Curt asked, but though it took the form of a question, it really was a declaration.

  “It’s not that I don’t find other men attractive—” Frederick started to say.

  “We see men every day, everywhere we go. We look. I look, you look. Everyone looks. That doesn’t mean I’m going to pounce. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna run off with the first attractive man you see.” Frederick scowled but Curt, undeterred, looked him square in the eyes. “Would it be so terrible, for once, to have an experience together with a third person?”

  “Are you proposing it?”

  “Not necessarily right now, I’m just saying, in general…” Curt hadn’t quite intended to broach the subject, but there it was. Frederick thought, This is the first of twenty-one days together, how am I going to get throu
gh this? He almost looked forward to their return to New York and the resumption of normal, everyday life. Now he really did want to step inside the church at the top of the steps, cool his thoughts and dry his brow (the clouds were breaking up, the day was getting hot).

  Instead he suggested they go somewhere for a drink. Via Veneto seemed the best place to kill two birds with one stone—Curt’s wish to have a taste of the street made famous by the recent Fellini film and Frederick’s need for alcoholic refreshment. They retraced their steps along Via Sistina until they came to the Piazza Barberini, at the center of which Bernini’s muscular god Triton, borne aloft on the broad tailfins of four flapping dolphins, blew into a conch shell, sending a single jet of water spurting high into the air. Curt might never have noticed the fountain, however, had Frederick not drawn his attention to it and explained its significance (something to do with a passage from Ovid, and transforming a common feature of the urban scene—a public fountain—into a work of art), for he was preoccupied with figuring out which of the several streets that fed into the piazza was Via Veneto and how to get there from here, as several lanes of cars and buses whipped around the circle.

  Frederick let Curt take charge, and he steered them to Harry’s Bar. It wouldn’t have been Frederick’s choice—sumptuously (some might say ostentatiously) decorated, it was also crowded and noisy with tourists. They were brusquely ushered to a table indoors near the back next to a large, loud American family. “Looks like they put all the Americans near the kitchen,” Curt muttered, and Frederick thought he might be right. It was only once the drinks arrived they began to relax (neither of them bothered to attempt Italian—the waiter begrudgingly spoke English, quickly took their order, and was back surprisingly soon with the drinks). Alcohol and cigarettes lit them up and calmed them down, enough to discuss what their next move should be. Curt wanted to wander back down Via Veneto, admitting Harry’s Bar was bullshit but determined to get the full flavor of the street if possible. Frederick felt a need for sketching and for solitude. He thought there might be a bad omen in agreeing to part so soon only hours after their arrival, but he expected the first day for both of them to be a blur of fatigue and astonishment rolled into one, and so he accepted his urge, made sure Curt had enough lire in his pocket, agreed on a time to rendezvous back at the hotel, and with his sketch pad in hand set off to the Borghese Gardens and the Borghese Gallery.

  Half an hour later, he was wandering alone among paintings and statues, the best company, he thought, when there in the middle of the room stood Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, her hair and hands turning to laurel branches and leaves as young, delicate Apollo, his limbs and posture musically complementing hers, innocently, naïvely, achingly strained to capture her. He sat on a bench in view of the statue and began to sketch. He didn’t try to make an exact copy but, instead, focused on her strange, alien hands, half human, half vegetable. Those who love to pursue fleeting forms of pleasure (he read the Latin inscription at the statue’s base) in the end find only leaves and bitter berries in their hands. He grew more and more fascinated by this freakish girl whose body had become her own enemy as well as the enemy of the boy who loved her. Apollo didn’t interest him except in a purely sexual way—it was Daphne who roused his imagination—and he soon ran free with the idea of all things, not just hands, but the entire human body, male and female, and buildings—walls, rooftops, staircases—overgrown with vines and weeds, rude bushes and trees sprouting up in the midst of corridors, crashing into bay windows, disturbing the peace, nature brutally taking back what man had only briefly won for himself. He reverted to ruins, as all things do eventually, he said to himself, and thought anew of his country house, but something more modest this time, a cabin, secluded in the woods, perhaps, like Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond…

  Curt, too, sat staring at love’s pursuit. A bearded man and a severe, stylish woman without makeup, seated at the next table, kissed and whispered in each other’s ear, laughing (he’d found a more modest, and therefore, he realized, more suitable café farther down Via Veneto). They sat against a mirrored wall, so he was able to watch them and watch himself watching them at the same time. Soon the couple was joined by another man. Curt couldn’t tell if he was expected or a surprise guest. The man leaned down and kissed the woman, then the other man stood up and the two men kissed each other on both cheeks. He sat at the table and placed his arm around the man’s neck. The woman reached across the man in the middle to touch the newcomer’s face as the three of them laughed warmly in unison. The lines of affection and desire were impossible to interpret and, for that reason, utterly and forever appealing. The freedom and beauty of Italian men! The way they held their bodies. The way they expressed themselves, groomed themselves, combed their hair—their clothes, their shoes, the rings on their fingers—you would never see two American men approach each other, relate to each other like that, not in full view of other people. He almost wanted to cry.

  He finished his drink and ordered another…

  When Frederick returned to the hotel room, Curt was in a deep sleep. He stepped out onto the balcony and lit a cigarette. The setting sun was shrouded in mist. It was hard to tell from looking at the sky, the city, the shadows, the soft light, what time it was. The Victor Emmanuel Monument, its long row of pillars gleaming whiter than white, hung suspended in air like an opium eater’s dream palace or a phantom Penn Station. He began to count the columns but quickly lost track. The delirium of jet lag, he thought, and ordered room service before turning in for a long, drugged night’s sleep.

  The next morning both Frederick and Curt felt reborn. They made their apologies upon waking, admitting “Jet lag will do that to a person.” The ceiling in the restaurant at the top of the Hotel Eden was lower than on the other floors, but its compensating feature was a set of wide windows giving panoramic views over the spires, roofs, and treetops of Rome. Awnings sheltered tables on the terrace, which ran the perimeter of the building. Frederick and Curt took a table outside. The morning air was like nothing either experienced in New York. There was a heavenly aroma in it, they agreed, but of what—jasmine? Eucalyptus?

  “Buon giorno, signori, volete un caffè?”

  Before them stood a tall young man with a transcendently open smile. They could almost have laughed for joy over his stunning, easy beauty. What is it about Italian men? they began to wonder aloud once he’d taken their order and left, and this time the conversation about the attractions of other men didn’t unsettle Frederick. This was vacation, he would try to think and feel and act differently. The waiter brought the coffee, and as he took their food order, they seized on little opportunities to ask him questions and to engage him in light conversation (how late was breakfast served, could they purchase cigarettes here in the restaurant, had this always been a hotel or was it something else before?), which he sunnily, obligingly answered (until 11:00 AM, yes, of course, he didn’t know for certain but believed originally it was an apartment building, he would be happy to inquire of someone at the hotel who knew its history better than he, if the signori wished). All through breakfast (the coffee was incredibly good, the rolls and jam better than anything you could get even at the best bakery in New York—Frederick was pleased to see Curt catching travel fever, but he felt it too—it was indeed good to be out of New York, out of the US, for a while at least) they talked about what they might do for the day. The waiter overheard and stopped at their table.

  “Is this your first visit to Rome?”

  No, they explained, Frederick had been here before but, yes, it was Curt’s first time—actually, his first time anywhere outside the US.

  And today? What were they planning to do? They looked at each other and said they hadn’t decided.

  “Don’t go to the Vatican. It’s Sunday and the crowds will be horrible. Better go tomorrow. How long will you stay in Rome?” At first he suggested the obvious tourist sites—the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, the Colosseum—but as the talk continued
, he became friendlier and began to refine some of his earlier suggestions. “Where are you from?” When they said New York, he raised his eyes to the sky and shifted his weight onto one leg, the better to settle into conversation. “I have been to New York, it is my favorite city in the world. I will go again and maybe live there. Americans come here and wish to live the life of the old world, but I want to go to America and live in the new world. It’s funny, isn’t it?” He then suggested an itinerary “if you want to see another side of Rome. Go to Tivoli and see the Villa d’Este and Hadrian’s Villa. You will see beautiful gardens and ancient ruins and a small town but not so many tourists.” He had to dash away to tend other customers, but every chance he got he returned to their table, each time introducing some new topic. “What do you think of Steve McQueen?” or “What is the popular opinion of President Johnson?” and “Will there be a great war in Vietnam?” Both Frederick and Curt were surprised and impressed by his knowledge of the US, how closely he’d followed recent events, but also the range of what he knew. He could touch upon seemingly everything from local cuisine (“New Orleans gumbo I would love to try”) to popular television shows (“unfortunately the drive to Pompeii is not so easy as touching your nose like Samantha Stevens”—it took even Curt a moment to catch that reference) to current political events (“There will be a great society because of the Civil Rights Act, no? In Italy we do not have this problem with the races”). But again he had to wait on other customers. Finally he returned as Frederick and Curt were preparing to leave. “Please, what is your name? I am happy to meet you. I am Angelo.” They introduced themselves, thanked him for his suggestions, and wished him a good day. But then Curt lingered a moment longer, as Frederick headed toward the elevator, to ask Angelo which days he worked and to remind him they’d be here until Friday, when they must leave for Florence.

  Angelo smiled. “See you later, alligator.” He extended his hand. “Americans shake hands, they do not embrace like Italians. Very manly,” he said laughing.