My first night in Florence
"If I had known then how hard it would be, how much I’d risk and lose for this dream of a place…I might have booked a return flight the next day and let it all go."
Before we routinely carried smart phones in our pockets, before emails and texts connected us instantly, there was a feeling of being completely alone…
September 2001, Florence, Italy
Whenever I imagined Florence, the sun was always shining. But on my first night there, I stared out my hotel room window and listened to thunder echo through the narrow stone streets of the old city center. Wrapping bare arms around my knees, I counted the seconds between a spark of lightning and the next crash of thunder, a trick my Mom had taught me years ago. Take the number of seconds between the lightning and thunder, divide by 5, and you get the distance in miles to the lightning. I counted seconds, thinking this storm sounded nothing like the ones unleashed on the wide-open Kansas plains of my childhood.
The bedside lamp flickered and my stomach cramped with unease. The hotel room was sparse, more like a dorm room with space only for a twin bed, small dresser, and a desk in the corner. My suitcase with everything I’d packed for the year was lost somewhere between Florence and the baggage check at Kansas City International.
Next to me on the bed was a stack of research articles, underlined and with tidy notes in the margins. The scientific papers described muscle proteins with names like myosin, actin, nebulin, and – my new favorite and the one I would research that year – the mighty titin. I rested my hand on the stack and felt the cool, smooth surface of the paper against my palm, brushed my thumb along the feather-soft frayed edges. The running shorts, tank, and sports bra I’d packed in my carry on were neatly folded at the end of the bed, my socks and running shoes just below on the floor. I planned to run every inch of the city when not working in the lab. I’d squeeze in a museum visit now and then, have a glass of chianti, learn Italian. It was all a part of my grand plan for the year. I’d thought of everything.
But I hadn’t expected to feel so alone.
I stared at the phone on the nightstand and listed reasons not to call Ben: I was twenty-eight years old, here for the first real job of my academic career, I could do this on my own. I pulled a research article up to my nose and squinted at the fine print. But it was too dark to read, and I flopped back on the pillows and sighed. Ben with his crooked smile and warm bear hugs. An ache began to gnaw at my insides. I picked up the phone, but the line was dead from the storm.
Restless and unnerved, with the next crack of thunder, I leapt off the bed and scrambled in the dark to find my shoes. I grabbed my backpack and the room key and rushed out the door. Downstairs, the handsome young Italian at the hotel front desk looked up, surprised, then called out as I hurried past and out into the rain.
Earlier that afternoon, when the sun dazzled and Florence looked like the picture postcard I always imagined, I’d noticed a phone booth on the edge of a small park. A flash of lightning illuminated the glass and metal box and I ran down the empty street towards it. Sloshing into the cramped phone booth, I dug through my backpack for my international phone card. The phone instructions were in Italian and several combinations of numbers got me nothing but silence. My palms started to sweat and my breath curled in knots as I fought to stay calm.
A deafening clap of thunder rattled the still night air and I dropped my calling card onto the grimy floor. Bending to pick up the card, I bashed my head against the sharp corner of the phone. I stood slowly, gritting my teeth to stem the tears. Phone in hand, the cord slack against my thigh, I searched the sky for lightning and began to count. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three.
Maybe this was all a mistake. I’d moved to Florence, a city renowned for Renaissance art, to be a scientist. I knew no one and didn’t speak Italian. My graduate school professors warned me that one year would not be enough time to learn a new research technique, carry out my planned experiments, and publish the results. I stared at the Italian words listed next to the receiver until they blurred and wondered if Ben was feeling unsettled and lost without me. If he was searching for me on our favorite running trail, in the audience while he sang, next to him under the covers.
I placed the phone on its hook, opened the phone booth door and ran back out into the rain. The man at the hotel front desk gave me a curious smile and raised an eyebrow as I stood dripping on the lobby’s slick marble floor.
“Buona notte, signorina.” He winked and languidly drummed his fingers on the desk.
“Buona notte,” I mumbled, annoyed with his sexy hooded eyes, with the blush that crept uninvited to my cheeks. I took the stairs two at a time and prayed he would head home from his shift before morning.
Back in the hotel room, I slipped off my shoes and hung my wet clothes over a chair, wrapped a thin bath towel around my hair and crawled under the covers. I stared up at the ceiling as thunder rumbled in the distance. My research career depended on my success in this unfamiliar place. I’d turned down other fellowships and gone against my professors’ advice; I couldn’t ask for help if this grand plan went up in flames. A sour taste rose in the back of my throat as I imagined failing, as I imagined losing Ben.
If I had known then how hard it would be, how much I’d risk and lose, all for the quicksand dream of a place and a person I hoped to become…I might have booked a return flight the next day and let it all go. But I didn’t know, one can never know, if chance is real and worth the taking.
As the storm slipped out of the city and inched towards the Tuscan countryside, I thought of morning, of Florence radiant with sunshine, and willed myself to sleep.
Thank you Kara!
This is fantastic, Paige! I can't wait to read more.