A vacation without a vacation

We kissed, once, right?

You never leave in the summer. You stay at home for the day and hang around the city at night. It’s the best time of the year. August. The middle part of August is even better. One week, 10 days tops; that’s the perfect moment. Everybody else goes away, and you stay here. It’s your vacation without a vacation.

You have a balcony from which you can see the street. It feels like you could see the whole city, but it’s not like that. In June the city starts to fill, with nights full of things to do and people who don’t want to go back home this soon. At a certain point, though, fewer people start to pass by. If you’d try to listen to what they’re saying, you could hear them saying, “We’ll meet when I come back.” Slowly the city starts to empty. On a certain day in August, you say goodbye to the last friend who didn’t leave yet, and now you’re alone.

You call it like that: a vacation with no vacation.

The city is filled with foreigners who take pictures of every corner and you like that. You stay home in the warmest hours. You eat little and continuously. You watch movies you already saw hundreds of times. You need to choose what to do at night. At 5 pm your mind is hopping between 3 different options. At 6 pm only 2 are left. At 8 pm you decided. Sometimes you take your motorcycle and don’t stop at the place where you chose to go; you keep going around until late at night.

You spend a lot of time in empty supermarkets and buy a lot of ice cream. You take the car several times. You prefer the motorcycle for the rest of the year, but now there is no traffic and wherever you go, you can always choose between 5 or 6 parking spots. You live your days in the dim light of your house’s semiclosed windows and look for a place where you can feel a light breeze. You stay naked around the house and spend a lot of time staring at the ceiling. Especially after a shower. You have many showers. You like that time seems not to pass, and you never know what to do. You even enjoy boredom at a certain point. Some days, you start to think you’d like to leave; you think about where your friends are and how to reach that one or the other one. You like to walk through your hallway thinking, “Should I stay or should I go?” knowing you’ll never leave.

When you get out, in any place you’re going, it always happens that later you take a long walk. In the middle of the night, you leave the car or the motorcycle parked and start walking. You walk and meet tourists. You look in their eyes for looks of awe for what they are seeing and you like to think that they look at you and think that you live here. You walk until the echo of your steps is the only sound around.

You are alone almost all the time. Sometimes someone keeps you company. You like to walk until your steps and your friend’s exchange rhythm. Usually you spend most of this time with someone you barely know. Someone you never frequented or that you met only once. And that you’ll start again to not frequent at the end of this week, 10 days tops.

This year you met her. You knew her; you saw her in different places. The last time you met her was at a party in July and now, while you’re walking at night, you say that at that party you talked with her all the time. She tells you you were talking to her, but then you stopped to talk to an Israeli girl who came to town to study cinema or to film a documentary. You remember the Israeli girl but it doesn’t seem that…—anyway… Then you remember that a friend of yours looked at her in the eyes and said, “We kissed once, right?” and she said, “Yes.” You understood right away; you would have remembered this fact, but you didn’t grasp why at the moment.

You meet her at a concert, right before your vacation without a vacation. You drink something together before it starts. She tells you she never leaves because the city in August is empty and more beautiful than it’ll ever be. You don’t say that you thought the same thing because it sounds dumb. You stay quiet. But you understood that you’ll spend your vacation without a vacation with her.

You hang out with her every night. For this week, 10 days tops.

“We kissed once, right?”

She calls you every day at 6:30pm. You don’t tell each other what you did until then, and you never meet if not in the evening. You spend a lot of time discussing what to do. The movie, the concert, the pizza, the Indian place. Every time you’re close to choosing an option, one of you adds something and you have to start over. You both like to complicate things. You go somewhere. You leave the car or the motorcycles and leave them on the border of a neighborhood and walk until late at night. You get a gelato. She’s with you but in the meantime she’s with her friends. She sends texts and receives them all the time. She doesn’t stop walking, talking, or listening while she texts, and she doesn’t stop texting while she walks, talks, or listens. Sometimes she smiles and you didn’t say anything funny so you understand she smiled because of a text. This doesn’t bother you; it gives you some joy.

You walk her home. She opens the entrance door, and you walk to the last floor. She’s not bothered at all by the stairs. In front of the door of her apartment, you stop and talk for much more time. The second or third night, you kiss. As soon as you stop kissing, you wish her goodnight and run down the stairs with that frenzy you get after a kiss.

All days go on like this. Call. “What do we do?” Discussion. Choice. Hang out. Walk. Texts. Her house’s stairs. In front of her door, she turns off her phone. You kiss. Every day is like this, but every day you’re just waiting to kiss her. You kiss for a long time. She doesn’t invite you in, and you don’t want to go; you want to stay there with the dim light and the silence and the long kisses that you love. You don’t ask her, but you wonder if she likes them as well. You think so. You never talk about kisses. Every night you get on top of the stairs and you both discover something new about the other. You shared so much before. You just kiss for a long time, many times, and then you go down the stairs in a frenzy.

One evening she invites you to her place. You eat, drink, talk, and listen to music until late at night. Then you go out on the landing and only then do you kiss. For a long time, many times.

One day she calls you at half past six. You’re ready to argue about going to any place you don’t want to go. It’s the game you play. You’re ready. Her voice sounds more natural and more casual than usual, from which you understand she’s not natural nor casual. You wait for her to tell you what she has to tell you. She says it. There is one of her friends tonight, the one she told you about. She’s back. She’d like to hang out with us. You check the date, trying to remember what day it is, and you finally remember. Maybe, as soon as you hang up, someone will call you as well. Somebody might be back. “Hey, are you there?” she asks. You say that maybe if they didn’t meet for a while, they should be by themselves. She calls you dumb; she wants you to meet her friend. You agree. They thought to go…—you agree without protesting. She keeps quiet for a while after you agreed so quickly. You say, “Hey, are you there?” You chose a place to meet.

You don’t go. You get out much later. Go to another neighborhood. You walk until late. Until your legs hurt. You see a tanned man who is unloading luggage from his car. He seems happy to be back. You check your phone when you get home; you left it there. Two of your friends left a text saying they’re back.

You remember those kisses. You remember them even after the summer ended and for the whole winter. One night, months later, you meet her at a party. You greet each other and hug each other like people who don’t understand why they don’t meet anymore. She receives a text and answers. This should be your moment. You should look at her in the eyes and say, “We kissed once, right?” But you can’t do it. You want to, but you really can’t. You understand that you can’t wait for the night when you’ll be able to do it to come. But it won’t be soon. You really don’t think so.