Read Online A Semester Abroad by Ariella Papa - Free Book Online Page A

giving me a quick look up and down. She turned to Michelle. “Do I look okay?”
    “You look good.” Michelle said, for once barely giving Janine any attention. She wanted to look good tonight too and kept shifting her outfit in the mirror.
    Lisa looked at me. Again with the pleading. This was where I was supposed to intervene. Fine.
    “I’m sure we can make room in the car,” I said. I looked over at Michelle. She let herself meet my eyes for exactly a second, before glancing quickly at Janine and then back at her reflection.
    “Do you want to switch with her?” Janine asked me. “I mean, there is only so much room in the car.”
    “We can sit on laps,” I tried. I was starting to fret that I was going to lose my chance to get out of this freezing apartment.
    “That’s with sitting on laps,” Janine said. She smiled at Lisa. “Next time, Lisa. Gabriella is already ready, anyway. Maybe sometime we’ll go out when it isn’t a school night.”
    A good woman would offer to stay with her. A better one might switch. But I was neither and the idea of staying with her in the frigid apartment or, worse, staying by myself was more than I could take. I looked at her and tried to convey my apologies.
    Lisa left the room. Janine had already moved on.
    “We should have drunk something before shouldn’t we? Now we’ll be totally sober,” she said, looking at me because she thought like everyone else that I had some sort of high tolerance because of the big beers I bought. “Fuck it, they’ll buy us drinks.”

    They were waiting. Roberto’s friends were both shorter than Michelle and me, but we were instructed to sit on their laps in the backseat of the tiny car; Gennaro (under me) and Mauro (under Michelle). It was true enough about the room in the car. All the cars in this country seemed smaller. But I liked being packed into the car like this, the smell of the male cologne, testosterone. My sense of smell was sharpening. I was picking up not just people’s scents but their intentions.
    The Tendenza was like nowhere I had ever been. It was a giant warehouse space with people dancing everywhere. Even Michelle and Janine, who went clubbing at home, were in shock. Everyone was given a number when they went in that they had to put on. The bouncers pinned the numbers close to our breasts, and the Italian boys put drinks in our hands. Roberto unpinned Janine’s number and put it on the waistband of her skirt, the skirt she borrowed from me. We downed our first drinks and got others at the bar before heading onto the dance floor. The Italian boys paid for everything
    The numbers were projected on a screen, and if you saw your number, you had a note waiting from an admirer. It was a literary meat market. The club was blowing purple smoke onto the dancers. The Italian boys were delighted. They kept saying “
è bello, è bello, no
?” They loved it. I wished I could say 
surreal
 in Italian. I thought that it was probably something obvious like 
surealistico
 or something, but if it wasn’t I would have to try to explain it to them. They would want to understand me; it would be complicated. Sometimes it was better not to even bother trying to communicate unless you had a lot of time.
    Janine started dancing seductively against Roberto. The rest of us danced on the outskirts. I liked these boys, liked that they didn’t try to get too close. Michelle and I danced closer together. There were also scantily clad professionals, mostly women, who were dancing on a stage in the center of the club.
    I felt Janine’s hand on my shoulder. She was pointing up toward the screen with the numbers. I looked at the number pinned to my shirt. My number was flashing across the screen, and there was Michelle’s, as yet no sign of Janine’s. I was really curious about what the letters might say. Michelle couldn’t contain her excitement.
    “Come on, G, let’s check out our letters.” Michelle was drunk already, but her