interviewing Paolo.

doing some character work, which includes the fun task of interviewing Paolo Romaldo.  imagine my glee when I discovered this gem of a video on youtube:

ha ha, Dani Osvaldo talking about his tattoos and his favorite music.  apparently he is planning to have all the characters from Pink Floyd’s The Wall tattooed on his left arm.

so here is an excerpt from my interview with Paolo, a work in progress.  PR = Paolo Romaldo, I = Interviewer.

I: You’re quite involved with youth football charities, both here in Torino and in your home city of Napoli.  Can you tell us why that’s so important to you?

PR: I started playing football when I was quite young—three years old, I think.  I had a modest upbringing, and only because of the funding of the youth leagues was I able to get the start that I needed.  I’ve never forgotten that.  Particularly now, with the economy the way it is in Italy, giving children the opportunity to learn to play at a young age in a safe environment is one way I can give back.

I: That’s a lovely sentiment.

PR: Well, we’re trying to make it more than just sentimental.  Ideally, it will change the lives of these children and also improve the caliber of football in Italy by growing talent at a young age.

I: Do you want to have children yourself?

PR: Of course I want children!  I’ve always imagined a big family, three or four kids at least, coming home for dinner every night and seeing them lined up down the dinner table.  I love kids.  But I can wait a little longer, I want the situation to be right, obviously.  I wouldn’t want to have four kids with four different women.

I: [coughs] It seems you and Francesca are on the right track, though.

PR: Of course, yes, I hope so.

I: What’s one thing our readers will be surprised to learn about you?

PR: Surprised to learn about me?  That I love the opera.  I have season tickets to La Scala.

I: I’d seen photos of you and Francesca at opening night, but I had assumed that was her doing and not yours.

PR: No, no, it was the other way around.  I’ve loved the opera since I was a kid.

I: That is very surprising.  If you weren’t a football player, what would you be?

PR: I don’t know.  I’d never considered anything else.  This is what I was meant to be.  If it all changes tomorrow, I don’t know, a racecar driver.

Christmas is coming.

and so, most likely, is Francesca.

the “Tree of Pleasure” in Milan.

next week you’ll get a taste of what Christmas looks like in Parallax, but in the meantime, enjoy these holiday flashbacks and last year’s Christmas morning.

life imitates art : Juventus match today

(photo via La Vecchia Signora)

in Rule of Thirds, Francesca goes to Istanbul a second time to watch boyfriend Paolo Romaldo’s Champions League soccer match against Turkish side Fenerbahce.  today, Juventus (Paolo’s team) visit Istanbul to play Galatasaray for a spot in the group stage of Champions League play.  FORZA JUVE!

inspiration #32 : L’Avventura

I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to talk about L’Avventura, considering it’s one of my favorite movies OF ALL TIME and it’s such a direct influence on this book.  The Criterion Collection blurb reads as follows:

A girl mysteriously disappears on a yachting trip. While her lover and her best friend search for her across Italy, they begin an affair. Antonioni’s penetrating study of the idle upper class offers stinging observations on spiritual isolation and the many meanings of love.

That is basically the book I wish I had written.  I’m obsessed with the portrayal of detachment in the film, that relationships are so fleeting, that we so infrequently make meaningful connections (L’Avventura is the first of Antonioni’s so-called “alienation trilogy”).  But further, I love that the characters have everything they could ever want and at the same time are ceaselessly searching for more.  That’s the lens that I’ve used to look at Francesca and her family–Marco, Anna, Ricci, and Giulietta.  They’re direct descendents of the characters in this film.

Maybe it’s the post-modernist in me, but I also love that L’Avventura is not at all driven by plot.  Halfway through the movie, you forget that we’re supposed to be looking for the missing girl, and everything that happens is entirely character-driven.  That’s how compelling these people are, rich, idle, and vapid though they may be.  And of course, Italy is itself a character–its craggy Mediterranean outcroppings, its fertile inland plains, its frenzied cities.  

[Other film inspirations: Blow-Up, Layer Cake, Belle de Jour]

trench coat.

The concierge at his building knew her and let her in the front door; he smiled at her approvingly, looking at her hair piled high on her head, the cat-eye liner on her eyes, and the length of her legs stretched from the hem of her trench to her tall Givenchy shoes.  She rode the elevator up to his flat with her heart racing.  It had been almost three weeks.

The distance from the elevator to his front door felt like a hundred meters, and the sound of her heels on the wood floors echoed through the hallway.  Surely he would know it was her.  Finally, she reached his door and knocked, three efficient raps.

She heard him moving inside, turning down the volume on the television and walking towards the front door.  Like a man, Paolo opened it without looking through the peephole.

Francesca stood before him, leaning against the door jamb.  He was speechless.

“Open my coat,” she said, walking towards him into the apartment.  She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back into the living room.  She could tell he hadn’t been expecting her; he was wearing baggy Juventus sweatpants, black with a team crest and Nike swoosh embroidered just below the hip, a plain white v-neck tee that clung tantalizingly to his chest and biceps, and at least a day of stubble on his face.  “Go ahead,” she said.  “Open it.”

[after this: take out / eat in.]

revisions.

I took my red pen yesterday and made some serious revisions to Rule of Thirds, a book that I thought was done (hah).  I had a number of inspirations for making these changes: Mia Marlowe’s “Red Line Thursdays”, focusing on the first 500 words of a book, Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s emphasis on showing backstory sparingly through the first chapter, and Michael Hauge’s “From Identity to Essence” story arc workshop.

instead of starting the book with Francesca Garancini’s heels sinking into the turf at the soccer stadium (an opening scene I’ve played with since, oh, 1997), the new opening is when she wakes up in bed at Paolo’s apartment the morning after.  already it feels like the right revision–I don’t know that there’s anything lost with the change.  but let me know your thoughts: do you miss the first scene at the stadium?  the scene in the cafe?  the first sex scene?

to call or not to call.

“I’m not sure this is working,” she began, but she wasn’t confident and her words trailed off.

“What do you mean, not sure?”

“I don’t think it’s fun any more.”  Inane, she thought to herself.  What an inane thing to say.

“Who told you it was going to be fun?  I’m sorry, Francesca, if you’re used to someone who kicks a ball and plays games all the time but life isn’t always fun.  I don’t know what perpetual fun you expect but grow up.”

She kept quiet for several seconds.  Selim seemed content to let the conversation drop.

“I’ll talk to you soon, I suppose,” she said weakly.

“No,” he said.  “We’re adults.  We’ll talk regularly, because we have a relationship.  And I’ll see you in a few weeks.  I’m working on a trip to Monte Carlo with some clients, and I expect that you’ll come.”

So this was how it was going to be.  At least she had some direction, she thought.  With Timo gone, it was a relief having someone tell her what to do again.  And it could be worse than Monte Carlo.

She wasn’t happy about what he’d said to her, and she had no idea at all why she’d said what she’d said.  Not sure it’s working.  Selim was right, she thought.  He was right to dress her down about relationships being hard work.  After all the time she invested into Selim, all of the miles she’d traveled with him, everything they’d been through together.  The entirety of their relationship, documented in magazines and trashy rag papers all across Europe, was she just to throw that all away?  Because she wasn’t having fun?

Selim had made reference to Paolo, off-handedly, in an attempt to remind her of her failed relationship with him.  But his comment had had the opposite effect.  It had been fun being with Paolo, fun all the time, fun in St Kitts and fun in Torino and fun in bed.  At the time, she thought he was simple, she would have agreed with Selim that he was a boy who played games rather than a man with a job.  Maybe he had been better than a man with a job and a wife.

She picked up her phone again.  If she called Paolo right now, after what, almost eight months, maybe he would speak to her again.  Maybe he wouldn’t ignore her call.  Maybe he was training and she could meet him in Coverciano and disappear with him into the hills of Fiesole, right outside Florence.

And Selim would call her a coward.  He’d say she was just running away again, the same thing she did whenever anything seemed to get just the slightest bit difficult.  How quickly he seemed to forget that she had already done the must difficult part.  Moscow.  The abortion.  The thing she could never tell Paolo, even if he did answer her call.

Her glass was empty.  Not half-empty, completely empty.  When she got up from the couch to refill it she played a game with herself: if it was an even number of footsteps to the kitchen she would call Paolo.  If it was an odd number, she wouldn’t.

One, two, three, four.  It would be a shame to go backwards, she thought, to go back to Paolo.  Eight, nine, ten.  But he had really loved her.  Entirely.  She had met his father and his sister.   Eleven.  And she was over the threshold, in her kitchen.  She wouldn’t call him, she decided firmly.  It had been a silly thought.  They had nothing else to say to each other.

[to remind you of Paolo: showering alone.]

Juventus Stadium.

Juventus – Udinese

on my last trip to Turin, I went to Juventus Stadium to see Paolo’s team take on Udinese.  our seats at the edge of the field provided a Francesca-like view of the action (and the players–yum).

Curva Sud superfans

it’s during a Juventus – Udinese match in Rule of Thirds when a sports commentator calls Paolo Romaldo “the maestro of the midfield.”  Francesca already knows he’s the maestro of her midfield…

Christmas morning.

When she woke it was Christmas morning and her bed was empty.  Or rather, Paolo was gone and she was alone.  She heard Christmas carols, the Vienna Boys’ Choir or something like that, traditional carols in Latin.  Wafting down the hall she could smell something incredible–spicy, vanilla, maybe, a warm, holiday scent.  Buttery.  And then coffee, richer and darker.  She opened her wardrobe and selected her most festive robe–a red and black embroidered kimono Alessandro had brought her from Hong Kong after he first moved there.  She still had light red marks on her skin where the boning had dug into her.  The silk robe felt divine–soft and smooth and cool on her skin.

She padded down the hallway barefoot, following the promise of breakfast.  Paolo was standing in her kitchen, wearing his D&G shorts and his wool sweater over his bare chest, barefoot.  He was concentrating on a small pitcher of frothed milk and a white cup and saucer.

“What are you doing?” Francesca asked, walking up to him.

“I’m trying to make a damn heart in this foam,” he said quietly, as if speaking any louder would disturb his art.  “I’ve already had to drink two of them because I messed up.”  He gestured towards the dirty cups in the sink.

“You’re adorable,” she said.  “Especially in those,” she added, slapping his ass playfully.

“Hey!  I almost had that one!”  She had upset his cappuccino efforts.

“I’ll drink it anyway,” she said.  “What else smells so good?”

“I toasted some panettone,” he said, abandoning the idea of designer foam and dumping the remaining frothed milk into his cup.

“Where did you find panettone?”

“I brought it from Torino.”

“When?  Last night?”

“Yeah, I had a big bag that I brought in when we came home.  I guess you didn’t notice because you were too busy devising your evil plan to make me your sex slave.”

“But look, now you’re a free man.”  She kissed him.  “Buon Natale.”

Merry Christmas, everyone.  For more of the holiday with Paolo & Francesca, visit this compilation of Christmas excerpts.

holiday flashbacks.

we celebrated Christmas with Paolo and Francesca earlier this year, and it looked like this…

Santa Claus Is Coming

Buon Natale

Open It