Only when it rains E-Book

Luca Tabanelli

• Herausgeber: lfapublisher
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

In small ditches cars go astray, as do certain feelings.
Flank’s protagonist will find his past on sale. And halfway there are those who do not marry; for love.
In Luca Tabanelli’s stories almost nothing will happen, because soon you will realize that everything has already happened before.

Leseprobe

Luca Tabanelli

ONLY WHEN IT RAINS

Luca Tabanelli

ONLY WHEN IT RAINS

Isbn 978-88-3343-221-2

First Edition February 2020

LFA Publisher

Lello Lucignano Editore

Diaz street, 17 -80023-

Caivano -Napoli, Italy

VAT number 06298711216

www.lfaeditorenapoli.it --- [email protected]

Printed distribution Libro Co. Italia -Firenze -

Small ditches

Alone, and white. The snow, which was still falling slowly, covered everything; the roofs of the houses, the green countryside around, the street, the clearing where I had just parked the car and the engine off.

The position was perfect. I looked around, I didn’t even see a soul around.

-With such a weather, who do you want to move – I thought.

I took the smartphone, set it to vibrate and I can comfortably fit it on the passenger seat.

I turned the radio off, I didn’t want distractions. Now I was totally focused and all in perfect silence. Nothing would have escaped me, no details, no movement, no noise.

I lit a cigarette, lowered the window a minimum stood on my side, I looked at it for a moment to see the smoke had managed to get out, and I set my eyes on the door of Leli’s apartment.

She had left me and in doing so I thought maybe I would find a valid reason, or at least to be able to discover a reason, for to be able to say to her: -Look, it’s not just me who always ruin everything!-

I was here on the outskirt of this little town. In this street always passing a few machines: -Imagine today.-

Each apartment had independent entrance and shared parking spaces in the forecourt of the complex. Leli’s car was parked in her usual place. I had kept my distance, enough to not show me in case she left.

I imagine her in every room. On the sofa to watch a movie, in the bathroom in front of the mirror to think… who knows what. Wonder who.

Thoughts that lead to nothing. Just pictures.

I didn’t want to lose her. I loved having sex with her, I went crazy about some of her particulars and I couldn’t find a good reason at the why she decided to close, to forget everything like that, how if nothing had been. But soon after I also thought of all my messes, my bullshit sais, to my empties, her, the misunderstanding of some of our behaviors, and why she decided to make such a clear decision, they found more answers for every question. I was thinking about this thing, and the day she said to me: - If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work-.

But now it wasn’t important.

Everything was rolling down and it looked like it had to stop only at the end of the crash. Which I was looking for. I think.

For a while nothing moved, and often I didn’t understand if the time was passing fast or hopelessly slow.

I kept my gaze fixed on the door. With the white all around and the snow that kept falling, sometimes to focus the view, I had to close my eyes tight for a moment and grain them an instant later.

As I was lighting another cigarette, I hear the noise of a car nearby, I looked away without moving my head; came towards me, slow, I clearly hear the white crushed under the wheels. I looked who could be and a little before he passed by my side, I took my smartphone in the hand and pretended to converse. I certainly didn’t want to look like a maniac, an ill-intentioned, or something like that.

-With the people around, you never know who they call the police-.

As soon passed the car I took the phone on the seat, on its place. I moved the view to fixed a point for a few second randomly in white, a bitter smile formed on my lips, I slowly shook my head.

-What am I doing?-

But I already lost so much time, my eyes came back to focused on the door.

Minutes passed, with no movement expected.

-You’re at home or not?- I repeat to myself.

Maybe, soon, it would start to fall black.

I became one with silence, with white, and this almost started, somehow, not to mind. In that moment I thought to Stefano. We always go out together, we now all of us and of course I told him this too. He would describe it like a romantic situation an at the end he said that I’m the proof that love exists.

Of course if Leli saw me here out there, I don’t think she was of the same opinion.

At that moment turned another machines to the end of the crossroads, not far from my street, but it didn’t come towards me, slowed down for enter into the parking of the apartments, stopped in front of the closed bar waiting for it open. It opens. Don’t look like a car of the usual condominiums, I don’t recognize it. It enter slowly occupying the first free parking, by standing still for a minute there, with the engine running.

-Here we are-.

I was looking for the best view to focus, I stretched my back forward, my heart was beating like a drum. It was what I was waiting for, but I still couldn’t define who or what was going on in that damned car.

-But why I didn’t bring those useless binoculars that they gave me years ago? Damn!-

He turned off the engine and headlights.

I was super stopped and focused. The driver’s door opened, a tall boy go out, with a little bit of beard, he seemed like a nice guy and I hadn’t never seen him before. The passenger door also opened, I wasn’t longer in the skin.

-Come on, go out!-

She was Leli’s neighbor.

Roberta was a young girl, beauty and independent. Brunette, with wavy hair up to the shoulders, with a body that leaves no room for imagination and some dark eyes of someone who knows what she’s doing.

Never known, but always kind and smiling for a greeting when I met her at the entrance or exit of the apartments, when, often, once, I stayed there. Leli said she was one who easily changed men, even I always thought that it was a bit jealousy to speak. Surely not the envy, Leli had nothing to envy to Roberta; not to anyone else, but maybe it was a way to tell me: - Stay at your place, ok? – and I do. Even though I make some thoughts about Roberta and I like to think that she too has made some about me.

They entered in the house. Good for him.

Minutes passed, I don’t know how often, but surely that guy had the time to get comfortable in those arms. I thought I wanted to do it with Leli too in that moment instead I didn’t even know if she was in her house. Maybe she was in another warm house. Yes, warm, because out there I was started feeling the cold air of the white and nothing I was looking for had shown up. I was losing my sense, I was no longer sure why I was standing there. I thought about my ex when our story ended, and I felt that same feeling. Cold.

I moved my gaze to the small white covered ditch that followed this road. Those who didn’t know the way, today, wouldn’t have been able to see it.

My father, before moving on to a better life too soon, causes a bad illness, when it snowed endlessly he loved to drive in the car without chains or thermal tires. When he was young, before his father forced him to work, he ran in rallies. It was his passion.

In that days of snow he had always a baby smiling on his face and many times, on his street’s adventures, he ended in small ditches like this. Left hand on the steering wheel, right hand on the gearbox, back slightly detached from the seat, gaze forward slightly higher than the dashboard, but not for looking what, more than anything to hear if he was playing well with the clutch and the gas and if the wheels had a proper grip with the white, the grass and the ground underneath. He wouldn’t have asked for help if he hadn’t turned then all first. Sometimes he did, and sometimes he didn’t. But that was also what he liked. It was part of the game. Of his game.

Ok, stop.

Even the snow that was slowly coming down had gone to rest.

Everything and everyone was warm, somewhere.

I go home.

On the way back I went slowly, with the music of the radio high and that moment I had not crossed any car, it was just me and the white. Black had just entered the scene all over the sky, when I looked to my right, towards a small ditch all covered in white that accompanied the road, and I saw my father. He had ended up in once again. His eyes were fixed on the dashboard, a little higher, he was working on the clutch and the gas, like a real master. He was perfectly focused and didn’t even turn to see me pass, but I knew he had seen me. I understood, that if there had been a way, only one possibility, he would have made it.

Only when it rains

Sun is different when I wake up and I am at home for work. The light is friendly, clear, and it makes me free to make any decisions that go into my head.

I had been more than active in the morning. I had already drunk a liter of blood oranges, carefully squeezed the night before, which I had put in a glass carafe and then inside the fridge thinking that I would make them last at least two days.

I had listened to the last CD that I had downloaded on Saturday afternoon and listened to my current favorite song over and over again. I had watched a couple of episode of The Big Bang Theory, I had masturbated, I had eaten crack, tuna and mayonnaise, all mixed in the same dish and drank Pepsi; written and replied to some Whatsapp on the cellphone, read for the umpteenth time “vandals”, one of my favorite stories by Carver, smoked Marijuana and not less than four or five cigarettes.

By lunchtime I was quite satisfied, both mentally that physically. I no longer remember in what order, but I had done all these things, all this of God, in one morning.

At 13.28 pm I was deciding what I would do in the minutes to follow.

I could have gone out, but I thought I wouldn’t have a place up to where I would have been as good as I had been this morning in my home, at least not in the surroundings and therefore I would have risked throwing away a precious time. Get in the car to reach the beach, lie down on the towel, sunbathe with the iPod in my ears with “Corona beer” with lemon in my hand, admiring some bikinis tormenting me with unattainable thoughts, he tempted me, but maybe not enough to go.

Sometime it was good for me to be with myself, in a safe place, and the day seemed to be the right one.

While I spent a few minutes, looking at photos of super happy people, on Facebook, who feel lonely and sad, in this desperately unfair world, it all happened trait I never expected.

It started to rain.