Hotel Di Nino is actually quite a decent hotel. It has a rustic feel with its stoned walls and the horticultures, yet a touch of class with porcelain basins and profound portraits. It even has an antique caged elevator in the lobby. Just the way that the pony-tail wearing, ginger grazing hippie Pablo likes them in. The television is playing news in the background, in Italian. Something about a widespread strike in Europe by the nurses. Paul calls his boss for the fortieth time. He coughs, rattles, sneezes and burps while he waits for the automated voice informing him that his Boss is unavailable. Something is brewing inside him that wants out. It wells up to throat as if he is on a bobby boat. He dials again, this time switching to phone speaker. While the dial tone multiplied swiftly, he goes to the bathroom sink to retch. Nothing comes out. He looks at the mirror and sees how much he aged since he was sick. With dark circles under the eyes and jaundiced cheeks, he looks like a bruised banana.
"Hello?" The speaker crackles. Paul hurries out to take the call.
"D! What the hell!" He screams. "Where are you? Are you alright?"
"Uh."
"I tried my best to reach you, but it's so hard to get through from over here."
"Uh-huh."
Paul keeps quiet for a while. There is this one question he wants to ask. One that bothered him incessantly for the last eight hours. The very same that had him frowning and making those forty phone calls.
"Where are you?" Dini asks emotionlessly.
"Treviso, a little off Venice. It's a side trip." Paul thinks hard to sneak in the Question.
"Where is she?" Her bloodless tone went slightly pitchy.
"Out. She went out. D, where on earth are you?" Paul goes for it. "The voicemail. Are you for real..." A dozen hours ago on the plane while he was sleeping off a cold on his tiny flight seat, Dini left a voicemail sobbing that she thought she could handle his marriage, but she couldn't and she missed him so much that she decided to overdose on sleeping pills.
"Uh-uh. I wasn't trying hard anyway. It's stupid."
"What do you mean? What do you mean when you say you are not trying hard..."
"I stopped taking them halfway through and called Maggie. They got me here in the hospital and pumped my stomach."
Paul feels that the hotel room is spinning like the teacups in the amusement park. It's okay. As long as she's fine now, that is all it matters.
Dini suddenly erupts into tears and cries, "But our baby is gone!"
*************************************************
Piazza dei Signori stands at the core of Treviso and is the center of the island's attention. However it is pretty much deserted, with the surrounding cafes closed.
"This is odd. Is everyone quarantined or something?" Nico asks as she unfolds the map. They walk around a bit and see that empty boats are bobbing in the canals and statues sunbathing quietly in the afternoon. It is so abandoned that it feels eerie to be there. Like something is about to happen.
They find a pizza shop that is opened and settle themselves at the booth by the windows. There is no customers in the shop as well. The owner is a petite Chinese lady wearing a surgical mask, a plastic apron and latex gloves, as though she will be operating on a mozzarella pizza later. The owner takes their order and goes into the kitchen to bark out instructions in Cantonese.
When the food arrives, Pablo offers beer to Jen to which she declines, "I'm pregnant." Pablo and Nico lean in and learn that Jen found out her pregnancy just hours before.
"Congratulations!" They cheer and bump tall glasses of cold beer against her distilled water bottle.
"Have you told Paul?" Nico asks.
Jen shakes her head, "Perhaps tonight. Or a better time when we aren't fighting. God! It shouldn't be so hard!" She exclaims, "Ever since we got married, we are fighting all the time, over the smallest stuff! I have to admit, this is not what I have pictured for married life."
"Ah." Pablo smiles, "Falling in love and getting married is two different things. People often mix that up. It is normal to feel frustrated at the beginning due to mismatch of expectations but things will eventually turn around, and they always do. Take Nico and me for example! We quarrel plenty over stupid stuff but when our first child arrived, we are able to look beyond our differences."
"He is right." Nico concurs, "This new life inside you will make things all better, if not great. I'm so excited for you!"
"Bullshit." The owner who is wiping the counter spits out, "I've got a no-lifer son who is nothing but a knife in his mother's heart. So don't bet on that."
The shop's door push open, ringing the bell. A lanky man limps into the shop. His hair is long and unkempt, and he looks drunk from his gait. "Speak of the devil!" The owner welcomes his son home.
"Mommy?" The son tilts his head and asks with drool dribbling out. But he tilts overboard and almost falls over. He looks at the owner and flops his head the other way and repeats, "Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?"
He moves closer to the counter banging tables as he swaggers. They could smell a stinging stench on him. The owner looks profusely embarrassed now and calls her husband who is in the kitchen. Together they try to bring in their sobbing son who is still crying out for his mommy.
Platter, platter, platter-
The son pees in his pants, soaking the khakis black and large amount of dark urine rain below waist. The urine is so concentrated that it looks like tea. The pizza shop is now filled with smell of cheese, urine and feces, and the endless strings of "Mommy?"
"Oh my." Nico mutters. "Shall we go?" They agree and put their money on the table. As they exit, the son suddenly shouts and runs past them, knocking down Jen whom Nico catches. The son sprints outside the shop, bouncing off sidewalks and onto the road. A tour bus full of passengers turns in from a corner and runs over him. His parents scream and fly onto the road.
Jen and her friends follow on for a closer look. The driver of the tour bus gets down and is on the receiving end by the father, while the pizza lady checks on her son who is lying at the side with mangled limbs. The deserted street is now crawling with curious passers-by joining in the commotion.
"Mommy?" His voice croaks through the afternoon air loud and clear.
The street falls silent. The father stops tugging the driver and his wife stops crying. Jen puts her hand to her mouth with eyes wide open like everyone else on that road.
The son, stained with fresh blood twists his body and props himself up like a baby learning to stand. "Mommy?" He asks as he pushes himself upright with his better side and stands with his broken arms dangling. As if it was an achievement, he grins widely, revealing his shattered teeth and mouthful of blood, and walks away. His parents follow closely by, with someone dialing for the ambulance.
For the longest time, Jen keeps her hands to her mouth and her eyes stay widened.
*************************************************
In the darkness of his room, Paul wakes up on the floor of the bed. What time is it now? He feels for his phone and sees that the battery has depleted. How long was I on the phone with Dini? He remembers that they have been talking for hours. Talking about the loss of the baby they never knew existed, their love for one another and how they long for each other again.
Dini has always been the prettiest girl in the mortgage department. She was young, athletic and competitive. Thus, it came as a surprise when Paul found out that she was having an affair with a middle-age manager in Accounting. During one celebratory dinner, Paul and Dini really hit it off and started exchanging a few drinks into the night while the rest left. Dini was the one who told Paul about her affair and was ventilating her conflict being in an adultery relationship. Curious, Paul inquired on how did a married balding middle-age guy got a catch like Dini.
"Come here. I am going to tell you the secret to a woman's heart." She whispered with breath smelling an exotic mix of cigarette herb, cherry and alcohol. Her big eyes fluttered above her drunk cheeks, "It's actually quite simple. You just have to talk very well."
"Excuse me?" Paul feeling the kick from his seventh beer.
She smiled, "You don't have to look great or even fuck good. Bottom line is, if a man can say the right thing at the right time and says it really well. It should work every single time."
"That's a pretty big secret. Why are you telling me?"
"Because I trust you?"
Paul guffawed, "Okay, let me return the favor by unlocking the universe to a man's heart. It is also very simple. Listen carefully. White top."
Dini blinked, "That's it?"
"White t-shirt, white singlet, white blouse. As long as it's white. Screw your Dolce & Gabbana. You don't even have to have a rocking body, just wear white and it's enough."
A few days later, Dini texted him a picture of her wearing a white tank top and they had been together ever since. At that time, he was already in a two-year relationship with Jen.
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