LinkedIn Group for Writers & Poets on WordPress – Please join

16/06/2015 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Howdy All,

Here on WordPress, we span continents and share a passion for writing, let’s do more to keep in touch,

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Black silk and white morning

14/06/201503/11/2015 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Last week I was reblogged twice and thrilled at the new readers this brought along and the new connections I have since made and the new words this has lead me to read. So I have decided that today is Sharing Sunday and I am beginning with Jane Dougherty Writes as I have been following her beautiful words for a long time now and want to share them with you too…

Jane Dougherty Writes

Painting by Max Jensen

Only the blackest of silk will do
To wrap my sorrow in,
To line a wooden casket,
So none of it escapes.
I set it in the water,
Balanced on a wave tip,
Tide enfolds it in compassion,
Guides it gently over rock and reef.
I watch the box of sadness,
Slip into the darkness
That fills the sleeping world,
Beyond the wave-nipped horizon.
When the long watches of the night
Are over and the light of day returns,
The ink-dark sea is empty,
But the sky is all aflutter
With white gull wings,
Colour of morning, sea foam splendid,
Bearing hope out of the east.

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SEEN IN THE SEA

13/06/201503/11/2015 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

I see you
Sweep across my feet
As I sink between
The sand and the shore,

I see you
Seep neath my skin
In a sensation so
Soothing and seductive,

I feel your
Currents caress me
Drawing me into depths
A darkness devoid of fear,

I feel your
Fluid fill my lungs
Flowing with the force
Of being found and being free,

I see you
Rise within me
Until I see myself
No longer, no more,

I see you
Until I open my eyes
And the dream is gone,
But what remains?

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

SCENE IN EUROPE, SCENE 6, CUNNING COLOGNE

10/06/201516/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

Scene in Europe, Scene 6, Cunning Cologne.

He was sitting by the edge of the river, proudly stroking the growth of his beard, as tourist boats sailed by when she passed his table and her scent caught him, a lingering fragrance of citrus and bergamot, flooding him with childhood memories of beaches filled with exotic tourists who’d frequented his usually quiet seaside town during the summer months, hijacking the harbour with their boats, the sands with their strange accents and all the while emblazoning his local haunts with an air of excitement and mystery.
Dressed in an almost transparent turquoise skirt that caressed her ankles and a cream, almost gold, fitted tee shirt, she smiled as if in reply to his stare and took a table next to his, even though the terrace was empty except for them.
“You are foreign, no? American?” she asked in a direct and clear voice.
“Yes,” Henry answered, adding a cough to clear his throat and break his stare.
“I think so, I see you here and that is what I think, you look much too relaxed to be German.”
“Well, can’t say I know much about that, only been here a day… you know, but you got the American tourist damn right, and in one go. Am I such a goddamn giveaway?”
“No,” she replied, both immediate and forceful, as if there were no point to ever question her answer and she swept blonde tresses back from her face that bellowed on a breeze that continued to cover him with teasing traces of her scent, “but you have an air of elsewhere, if you understand me correctly, you have a… a certain mystery to you,” she said, almost repeating what he had just thought himself with regard to the people who’d visited his home town, now way across the seas.
“I gotta tell you, your perfume’s sweet as,” he told her, sensing a directness to the situation that was both integral and to be encouraged.
“Oh,” she said, almost dismissively, “this stuff,” she continued as she brought her wrist up to her noise and took in her own aroma, “I guess it’s ‘sweet as’, like you say, to someone who does not live here. No one from here would ever remark on it, but thank you,” she said and he wasn’t sure if that had been an acknowledgement of his own ignorance or a disappointment at her own countrymen and their disregard for all that lay beneath their noses, literally.
“May I ask what you’re doing here, at such an hour, you know, for a Tuesday?”
“I may ask you too, no?” she responded, cunningly throwing his own question back at him.
“Well, for me, it’s just like you say, I’m the relaxed tourist, remember? So I got my excuse.”
She raised an eyebrow and smiled at his slowly reverberating response before turning towards the water to watch an open topped barge pass by, shipping coal down the ancient flowing valley of the River Rhine.
“It’s good to step out of oneself, now and again, do you not think? Test the other water.”
“I heartily agree,” he replied, reminding himself of the various waters he recently waded through and the ladies who’d only been too willing to share them with him since he’d arrived on this exotic continent, overflowing with tastes and odours that he’d previously only dreamt of.
“I go to the Chocolate Museum this morning, two children were at the cacao fountain and, behind their parents backs, they let the chocolate trickle onto their tongues,” she told him,” it’s that building just over there,” she continued, pointing just a short way down the river.
“No one from here goes in, you know, we don’t even eat that chocolate. But I saw them and wondered what it felt like, to be so excited, to taste what you shouldn’t, what you usually can only dream about and then… well, I suddenly found myself doing the very same thing. Can you believe it?” she asked him.
“No, but gimme a sec,” he said and he began to imagine her delicate tongue slipping its way out from her tender lips and moaning slightly as the warm liquid caressed her tongue.
“Okay, now I can,” he said as he shifted in his chair and spread his legs in her direction.
“I see you can,” she said, giving him a sultry smile before standing up and walking over to him.
“4711,” she told him, “Glockenglasse 4. See you at 5pm, today, then you can really get close to the scent that is so arousing to you. I see you there,” she said and suddenly she was off before he could reply.
Shocked at her straight forwardness, he quickly noted her address on his phone. Jesus, he’d been told the Germans were direct but this was something else. He’d been in the city less than 24 hours, was leaving the following day, but had already scored and scored big.

At 4.30pm, he was on the way to her apartment, No. 4711, in the Glockengasse, building number 4. He was wearing navy American Eagle jeans that gripped this thighs and a crisp white teeshirt, trying to suggest an air of low key, kinda-bothered-but-not-really.
That afternoon he’d wandered haphazardly around the ancient town, past the imposing darkness of the city’s impressive Cathedral, a short flit around the modern art museum next door before taking some photos of the old City Hall as a smiling, newly married couple posed on the historic Renaissance steps of the hall’s magnificent Loggia which looked as if it had been kidnapped from some sleeping Italian city.
Later, after changing at his hotel, he turned off the Rudolphplatz and wandered through the gay dominated streets known as the Bermuda Triangle and realised that not only were gazes turning in the direction of his 21 year old ass, but if he didn’t hurry up, then he might not make it past some of the tougher looking leather clad drooling faces, all busy dreaming up ways to show an American in Germany how down right perverse they could truly be.
Once free of the wolf whistles and surprising amount of chaps without a horse in sight, he felt a certain stride slip its way into his walk. This Europe was doing its very best to make a man out of him. Mamma would be pleased, he thought. She’d had her own share of foreign adventures right on her own doorstep, throughout his childhood, with the Cuban cabana boy, the Mexican gardener and the Brazilian so-called masseuse, so perhaps it was rooted in his jeans after all.
He crossed a busy intersection and immediately came face to face with a startling Neo-Gothic building with the number 4711 splashed across its top floor. Instantly his heart began to sink. What the hell, he though to himself as the stride slipped from his legs and his steps became heavy and slow. Under the arches of the lower floor he could already make out countless windows stacked with enormous bottles of perfume with a turquoise and gold label.
As he stepped beneath one of the arches and, as the sun slipped away from his fair hair, he made out the name of the perfume, Eau du Cologne, and suddenly a German sense of twisted humour flooded his 21 year old innocence and foreigner gullibility. He’d been duped, he thought to himself. He’d met what looked like the perfect girl by the water in Cologne who’d turned out to be nothing more than a walking advert for the water of Cologne itself.
“You’re one damn fool, Henry,” he said to himself as he opened the door to the ancient perfume store and followed up on the truth of her offer by really getting close to her scent, even if it was only in a cold, but well packaged, bottle.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

CRABBY

07/06/201525/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

4am and

Sleep is stolen

By the screeches

Of the brown booted

Bleached haired brigade

Hovering and whoring

Around the belches

Of beer-can-boys

Who’ll take them

And fill them

With the full force

Of all the nothingness

Their noise once covered

While I plead and pray

For the sweet return

Of soulful sleep

To sooth me

Before light dawns

And makeup smudged

Madams pull mini over muff

Along the shameful slide home

To clamber through closets

Uncovering the creams

And kill the crabs.

Hope it keeps them awake all day!

Footnote: I usually try to aim for Poetic and Polite but at 4am, everyone has their limits, but I guess I should give a big thank you to the customers of the bar across the street who prefer to stay outside and put it all on display, both visually and verbally, who inspired this poetic wander down into the gutter.

CITY OF SHADOWS

06/06/201525/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

You’ve lingered in the shadows

For so long now

Hovering like some ghastly ghost

Breathing a beat behind my neck

Baying in the stillness

And beckoning me

To see you

To hear you

To return to you.

You’ve lingered in the memory

For a lifetime

Refusing to dust and die

Replaying your part repeatedly

Washing me in waves of what was

And teasing me with

What I left

What I forgot

And what we became.

You’ve lingered neath the skin

Like a venom

A serpent silently slivering

Seeping beneath the bones

Salivating on the separation

And hissing at me

To succumb

To submit

To surrender .

You’ve lingered in the lines

For pages past

Writing your way into rhymes

Wriggling through the rhythms

Stealing sense from my sentences

And poetically pointing me

Back to you

Back to me

Back to before.

You’ve lingered in the pictures

I took of you

Finding you always solitary

Seeking out the unseen shadows

Peeking into parts undiscovered

Perhaps to persuade myself

To trust you

Be part of you

Be seen with you

Again.

Scene in Europe, Scene 5, Barcelona Bonding

03/06/201525/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Scene in Europe, Scene 5, Barcelona Bonding

Gravel voiced Sophie and her hard of hearing husband, Marty, were sitting on a sun drenched terrace near a bustling intersection, burnt, blistered and blocked up but embracing a very real possibility of relief. They’d just met another American couple, also doing a European tour, though travelling in opposite directions, and they were overjoyed at finally finding like-minded people after all the weirdos they’d come across so far. It was also a well deserved distraction from their own company. Marriage could be a blessing, but 40 days together, without a break, was beginning to put more of a strain on their relationship than their previous 65 years of togetherness. Mary Margaret; big earrings, big boobs and bigger smile, and her grown up daughter, JoBeth; no earrings, no boobs but winning smile, had been at the same cafe, a table away and, as accents carried, a conversation began between the 4 foreigners and, 2 hours later, they were huddled together under the heat of the Passeig de Gracia putting this strange European world to right. Sophie was already calculating the possibility of cancelling Jane in Berlin and following her new BFF’s while Marty basked in the much appreciated attention of his new female admirers who knew nothing about his bunions or his wife’s poop problem.

“Oh golly, I tell you, Parc Guell is just wonderful, truly, like Disney without the Mickey’s. What can I say, I’m a Gaudi fan, love the man, even have one of his t-shirts. So much colour, I was in heaven while Mother just loved the mosaics, didn’t you, tell them, you did,” JoBeth was saying, “and then the beaches, oh my! Although I’d stay away from Mar Bella and Sitges. It’s sorta boys only, if you know what I mean,” she told them and gave Marty a cheeky wink along with her winning smile.

Marty and Sophie didn’t know what she meant but nodded away in blissful ignorance.

“And you gotta take the cable car up to Mont Tibidabo. I swear, I didn’t think that old contraption was gonna make it, truly. Thought we’d plummet back down when we were only half way up, but once you’re up, golly, the view is just wonderful, I tell you, wonderful. Am I right Mother, or am I right?”

“Oh well, she’s right, but she always is, it’s just darling,” Mary Margaret replied as she fumbled with her phone, “we should take you both up there.”

“And the food,” JoBeth interrupted in another bout of excitement that seemed irrepressible, “have you ever seen so many small plates just begging to be tasted? Tapas back home’s nothing like this. Authentic, didn’t I say that, Mother? It’s truly authentic. Watch out for anything red, mind you, blows your head off. Mother here downed a whole pitcher of water last night after the peppers,” she told them in between gulps of sangria, “then spent the night pressing her ass into the fridge. Not really, but you get my drift,” she said as her mother giggled and Sophie and Marty smiled at them even though they’d been petrified to try anything that wasn’t sauce free and grilled to cremation.

“Red is hot in every language, in every culture, on every plate,” the daughter told them.

“Unfortunately, Marty here ain’t really one for anything too hot,” Sophie told her BFF’s, as if signalling a slight disappointment at her own husband which, this time, didn’t slip past him.

“No, but you could sure do with something to let more than just the steam out,” he whispered to her “if you know what I mean.”

Sophie knew exactly what he meant. There was rarely a time when she didn’t, but there was many a time when she wished otherwise.

“And you gotta see the Flamenco, it’s wonderful. How they don’t break their heels with all that banging I just don’t know, and the noise, but it adds to the atmosphere. Just don’t go expecting a quiet romantic dinner,” she told the couple and Sophie wondered if this younger woman had any idea what romance was when you’d been stuck to the same man, bunions and blockages, for more than half a century.

“Our JoBeth was taken up, actually, two nights ago. This moustached man got her into a right sweat. She brought the house down, our little girl,” her mother said, smiling at her daughter and touching her cheek as if she were still 13 with pig tails and double track braces.

“Oy Marty, things are finally looking up,” Sophie said, almost unable to contain her excitement when JoBeth went to the restroom and her mother left them to find a better reception for her cell phone, “these are the kinda gals who could put fun into foreign, into being away from home, for so long, away from good company. I feel homely just hearing their adorable accents,” she told her husband as she waved a salamander painted fan over her glowing cleavage.

“Thought we got away to see something new, Soph?” Marty replied, not wanting to appear too over eager at the adoration he’d been getting from these new glorious gals.

“Oy vey, you wanna make friends with these European freaks, Marty? I’ve barely understood a word anyone’s said in the last 3 cities. And now, at last, two smiling shiksas, happy to share their adventure with us. They’re probably lonely too, starved for a little male company, I’d say,” she said as she jokingly elbowed him, “seems such a pity it can’t last a little longer.”

“Well, they are good ones, I’ll give you that, Soph. And they seem to like us, even listened to your description of every cathedral we’ve seen so far. I can’t believe you hold in so much,” he remarked, with pun intended.

“So, how is everything?” JoBeth asked her mother when they both returned to the table.

“No change, praise the Lord,” she replied as she checked the buoyancy of her body-waved hair, “he’s in bed and she’s still held up in the suite with her empanadas for company.”

“And the closet?” the daughter asked.

“She won’t check,” came the response that intrigued Sophie and Marty and he gave his wife a look to see if she knew what it was all about but she seemed equally lost.

“Is everything okay?” Sophie asked, hoping her new friends felt close enough to confide in them.

“Daddy’s taking to peeing in the hotel closets. It’s our 3rd hotel in Barcelona,” JoBeth told them bluntly while her mother covered a giggle with a napkin.

“Daddy’s taken to what?” Marty asked, feeling more confused, “it’s not just the you of two?”

“Oh Lord no, sometimes I wish it was, Daddy’s here with us,” Mary Margaret explained, “and our Chilean nurse who’s decided to get homesick. Locked herself up in the hotel in the last 5 cities. Refuses to come out anymore till we go home.”

“And your Daddy?” Sophie asked Mary Margaret, confused as to whether it was her husband or if she just called her husband Daddy.

“Oh God, last time we took him out we lost him for 3 hours, at Park Guell. Security found him before we did,” she said, now unable to cover her laughter, “he’d taken off all this clothes and was sitting in the fountain. They didn’t see the humour so we were asked to leave.”

Neither did Marty or Sophie whose connection to their BFF’s was suddenly slipping away.

“He took a body wash across the road, in the Casa Batllo,” JoBeth added like it was nothing unusual, “there was an old washstand in one of the rooms, we got carried away with a painting and when we turned back, well, he’d just dropped his pants so we can’t go back there again either. It was truly a sight to see. A Chinese couple took a photo of him, they promised to email it to us.”

“Does this happen often?” Sophie enquired, deflating in her seat as her hopes ran down the drain.

“Oh golly, this is nothing, truly, wait till we tell you about Paris and the Louvre. He certainly put the smile on Mona Lisa. But it’s best if you meet him, maybe tomorrow?” Mary Margaret suggested.

Sophie shifted her position so she could kick her husband in the leg. It was time to go.

Who needed strangers, who needed peeing Daddies, who needed naked men in fountains? They had each other. They’d survived 65 years together. It was time to get back to just the two of them. Who needed American wackos, Europe had its own and they had each other.

5 minutes later, they’d made their getaway and were happily strolling hand in hand until Sophie felt her bowels finally move and she smiled at Marty lovingly before she made the most startling noise.

“There she blows,” said her husband with a proud smile.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

FRANCE IS CALLING, ATTENDS!

31/05/201503/11/2015 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

Packing boxes…
Separating substance
From superficial,
Measuring
All that matters
In the memory
Against
All that clutters
In the closet,
And France is calling…
Attends!

Packing boxes…
Selling superfluous
And saving sentiments,
Tittering
At trousers
Thought to be trendy
And fretting
At photos
Of faces forgotten,
And France is calling…
Attends!

Packing boxes…
Putting pressure
On the present,
Grateful
If the greener grass
Can be gainful
While worrying
If the words
Will return,
And France is calling…
Attends!

Packing boxes…
Filing fears
Into folders,
Singing
And skipping
And sighing and shaking,
Threading
The tracks
To tomorrow,
And France is calling…
J’arrive!

SCENE IN EUROPE, SCENE 4, PARIS

27/05/201516/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Prose,
Scene in Europe,
Scene 4,
Paris, L’ombre dans l’Eau / Voyages Extraodinaires

The Arts et Metiers metro station in Paris was deserted and glowed like the inside of Jules Verne’s Nautilus with its mock porthole windows, copper clad walls and giant cogs peering down from the roof. Winter winds rushed through the tunnels before dissipating in the open space of the platform as if Captain Nemo’s ghost had finally given up his search for the unexplored. The underworld voyage of Professor Pierre Aronnax had been Jack’s favourite childhood story, even if he’d felt himself to be 20,000 leagues away from an adventurous life at the time but now, how things had changed. Not only had he left home, but he’d left behind him the only continent he’d ever known and was busy blazing his own path through a whole new one, leaving a trail of tried and tasted fruits in his wake.

Today, he’d just witnessed 19th century cars with wings, flying machines resembling giant bats and a whole world that would have been an inspiration to Verne, all housed in the Musee des Arts et Metiers which now resided just meters above him. His childhood dreams had practically turned into reality under the stained glass windows of the museum’s 13th Priory Saint Martin des Champs stocked with early aeroplanes and avionic automobiles while a giant Foucault Pendulum swung from the domed ceiling, demonstrating the rotation of the earth. Perhaps ghosts did exist, he had been thinking. Perhaps time travel was possible, he told himself as he set down his already well worn back pack and remembered those joyous nights from his youth, spent dreaming about underwater adventures and around the world travels. And now here he was, travelling the world himself and experiencing all it had to offer. And it was already offering a lot more than a boy of 6 had even dared to imagine.

Very slowly, the unmistakable sound of high heels made their way towards him from one of the connecting corridors. Closer and closer the footsteps came, at first from above, then apparently down a staircase until finally the sound terminated behind him. He turned around from the copper wall he’d been resting against to find a woman in a red dress currently bent over, with one foot perched upon a shiny metallic seat, while she seductively adjusted the central black line of her stockings. A reminder of the wet weather outside dripped from her auburn hair and made dark seeping trails along the back of her fitted dress. She was perhaps 40, a curvaceous size 10 and surprisingly smelt of the one perfume that had haunted his adolescence. It was the one his mother’s acupuncturist wore when she came to provide his mother with a temporary relief from the stress of her life, and by stress he meant how to decide on which glass was best to use for an early morning fix of vodka. The acupuncturist, coincidentally French, had ignited many imagined scenarios in Jack’s juvenile mind, all centred around her particular scent, which he later discovered was called l’Ombre dans l’Eau; the shadow in the water, and it was that very same aroma that now caressed his nostrils, all these years later. He stood, almost paralysed, watching this mysterious woman run her fingers delicately over the back of her lower calfs. It was one of the most erotic moments he had ever experienced, a moment when long ago adolescent wet dreams met a moist Parisian reality.

“Avez-vous une cigarette, Monsieur?” she asked without looking at him, suddenly breaking the silence, acknowledging him and his stare and all it longed for, without dismissing any of it.

“I’m sorry, I… I don’t speak french,” he replied, surprised that his vision was actually audible.

“I ask if you have a cigarette?” she repeated in english with a deliciously daring French accent that did nothing to diminish Jack’s day dream.

“No, sorry but, well… I don’t think you can smoke here,” he told her in a slightly flustered american drawl, even though since being in Europe the only thing that had flustered him was figuring out how to leave a bedroom politely when morning broke and language barriers shut down, far from late night bars and beers that had previously loosened inhibitions.

“Dommage, je besoin d’un petit quelque chose. You know? I just need a little something,” she said, teasingly, turning to him with a pout on her jungle red lips which told him inexplicably that a little something was the very least of what she was after. He might only be starting out on gaining his worldly experience, but the little he had so far experienced thought him enough to understand the substance of subtlety. He rubbed the stubbled cheeks of his face, like a lion preening himself before his prey while he toyed with ideas of what to say next, wondering how to prolong the pleasure he was feeling in this woman’s company. Stay in the moment, he told himself. Don’t let this slip away.

“Maybe I’ve some in my backpack,” he said, turning back to where his bag was stashed, already knowing there were no cigarettes inside but not knowing what else to say or do.

Suddenly, there was a clash of metal rubbing against metal and a train swept into the station, taking Jack unawares and he turned around quickly to watch it. It stopped for only a second before an electronic whistle blew and it was off again, without the doors even opening, but he could have sworn this very same woman was staring at him from inside one of the carriages, hair still wet, damp red dress clinging to her luminous body and a cigarette between her fingers on the way to her Jungle Red lips. And then the train was gone.

Slowly, Jack turned back to where the woman had been standing to discover all that remained was a small pool of water. She was gone, vanished, departed. Perhaps it was the light or the wind, which had now returned, but he was sure a shadow moved, for a moment, in the water.

All Words and Photos by Damien B. Donnelly

SCENE IN EUROPE, SCENE 3, FLORENCE

20/05/201516/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Prose,
Scene in Europe,
Scene 3:
Famished in Firenze

Florence bustled in the early evening light as true Italians took to the streets in their finery, partaking in their nocturnal parade of pride and prowess. It was still early for aperitivo’s but the hunt was already on for the best place in town to sit, see and be seen. Sophie and Marty had found the terrace at Harry’s Bar, along the banks of the River Arno, the night before and today had downed two cocktails before the bells of the Santa Marie del Fiore had announced sunset. Marty was wearing the new tracksuit Sophie had found for him in Paris while she herself was in her usual colourful leggings, cerise today, and a lightweight North Face jacket beneath which she’d tucked her fanny pack. It was their third day in Florence and their 30th day in Europe and the sights and sounds of this whole new world were taking its tole on the pair of them, not to mention the demands of each others constant company.

“I mean, it’s all just darling, who could say otherwise, but it’s so old, Marty,” said Sophie, attempting to whisper through her gravelly voice, a tone below what her husband’s hearing aid could pick it up.

“What’s that, Soph?” Marty shouted, attracting attention from the terrace of coffee connoisseurs who preferred contemplating the gentle gyration of the Arno than overhearing foreign critiques on their celebrated city.

“Old, I said, Marty,” she replied with a raising of the eyes, wondering if any of his responses ever required her to not raise her eyes, and asking herself why he always had that damn hearing aid on so low? He never hears anything I say, she noted. “I just mean, well… I just wonder, don’t they ever wanna to build something new on this continent.”

“Well, I guess they could ship everything off to a retirement village, Soph, but I’m not sure it’d travel that well.”

“Oh now Marty, look at us, we manage to move around, relatively intact,” she said with a quick look down at his feet which were now outside his sneakers. She could actually see his bunions throbbing while she unconsciously rubbed her new hip that had been a little too active in recent weeks.

“Soph, honestly, I don’t know what you mean,” her husband told her between bites of his custard filled pastry that flaked down the napkin he’d tucked into the neck of his t-shirt as if he were back at the Lobster Lounge, although it did cover the gelato stain he’d gotten earlier from downing an ice-cream the size of his head in the Piazza della Signoria, “you wanted to see it all, Alice,” he reminded her, “while we still had the ability to remember it, or have you forgotten that already?”

“Well, it just feels a little dusty, is all. I’m entitled to my opinion,” she said, with that attitude of poor-unheard-little-lost-girl that he knew only too well had never ever suited her well stocked closets of opinions, “and I remember everything, Marty, believe me,” she continued as she looked him up and down, “I remember it all… sometimes too much.”

“Oh come now, Sophie, I mean really, you’ve always entitled yourself to an opinion, has anyone ever told you otherwise? Really Soph, as if? But what about that Duomo, the Santa Maria what’s her name, you can’t tell me you weren’t impressed by that massive erection?”

“Dusty Marty, dusty, and I can tell you, straight faced with just a hint of Botox, I’ve seen more erections in my time with a lot less dust,” she said with a shake of her head, annoyed she’d followed him down the erectile slope.

“So what about that Palace we just saw, the Pity something or other? They filmed Hannibal there, and you loved that.”

“Dusty,” she remarked as she took a look at her fingers as if to check for a residue before she pulled a small vile, filled with lubiprostone pills, out of her fanny-pack and knocked two back with the rest of her Mojito.

“Are you sure it’s not your glasses? Maybe that’s the only thing that’s dusty, Soph. I mean, I saw you take them off to look at the tush of that David.”

“Oy, don’t be vulgar Marty, I have a new hip, I don’t go that low anymore. Besides, a woman can still look, no? It’s nice to see what an ass is supposed to look like… now and again, besides the one we have to travel with,” she said, knowing that his would pass right over his empty head, currently covered with an Orioles baseball cap, “and would it hurt you to look at mine now and again? Maybe then I wouldn’t be looking at a giant stone one, Marty.”

“Soph, don’t be looking in the mirror then, your tush ain’t that big,” he said, with a chuckle that told him that he still had it; that charm, that wit that had first drew her to him.

“Oy… he made a little joke. Bring me a drink,” she laughed with her hands and fingers washing through the air as if to fan herself from the shock of his response, “who knew all this time I was shleping about with a funny man? So what’s next then, Marty, or should I call you Jackie Mason?”

“Alrighty, well… according to the last few emails about the German itinerary, Jane said she has a couple of good bits of theatre lined up for us in Berlin, so we should cross that off the list while we’re here.”

“Oh good, so we can finally get some tips on how to build a theatre back home, eh? Who does she think we are at all, I wonder?”

“Oy, enough of that sorta talk, Sophie. Besides, I hear there’s a Dante trail in town, maybe we follow that tomorrow for a few hours?”

“Marty, for goodness sake, I’ve been following you for the past 65 years, now you want me to follow another old fool into the gates of hell. Let me tell you, heat burns, Marty, and when it doesn’t burn… it fades.”

“Damn it Soph! Alrighty then, well let’s just walk along that Vecchio Bridge over there and then we’ll go wash up before dinner. I’ve got a real treat for us, Alice, you’re gonna love it, I just know it.”

“Pizza again, Marty, really,” she asked him as she placed a hand over his bulging belly, “you sure that tummy of yours can take it?”

“Well, looks who’s talking. How those pills treating you? At least I’m able to let it out now and again. Would it hurt you to push once in a while on that toilet seat, Soph?”

His wife gave him a look that needed no words and her husband’s swallow was suddenly almost as difficult to pass as her holiday poop.

“No pizza tonight, Soph, we’re in Florence. Tonight we are dining on cow. Pure red blooded cow, a Florentine favourite, according to those in the know.”

“Ay-yay-yay, now you’re talking. I am practically carnivorous. I could eat a human right now. If it was good enough for Hannibal then let’s do it. You know how much I like cow, Marty. You sweet old man,” she said as she slipped her foot out of her sandal and gently grazed it over his stockinged foot and smiled at him before turning her attention to the last of the sunlight that slowly wound its way along the banks of the Arno. He was a sweetie, she thought to herself. He might not have been one in a million, but he was her one just the same. Mazel tov!

“Yes Soph. I know how much you like cow,” he said, taking a sip of his chianti and sucking in the air over it through his teeth while he put his hand on top of hers on the table before he turning away and, just a whisper under his breath and out of earshot, continued “and they say it takes one to know one.”