On the first day of the trip, standing knee-deep in a sculptural fountain, you emptied my purse into the water on a lark. You’d been carrying it for me all day through the wet heat of July, the leather sticking to your shirt, and I suppose you’d had enough. You wanted to feel the breeze passing freely between your arm and ribs. Leaning against the doe and fawn with their twin stone bellies, you smiled at me, holding eye contact while you did it. Tangerine lip balm, museum brochure, little suede wallet from the street market, twinkle of loose change. I stood beside the fountain and watched calmly.
“Are you going to fish those out?” I asked you.
You squinted at me through the prosecco light of noon. “Might do.”
“I wish you would. Before they’re unsalvageable, ideally.”
“You could join me.” You splashed boyishly at the water with your bare foot.
I found this cruel, so I only stared at you until you caved.
You retrieved my soaked items one by one, last being the museum brochure, now illegibly wilted, then tossed everything back into my leather purse, which you swung cheerlessly over your other shoulder. We walked back to the rental, passing beneath cypresses and red alders, making way for squealing children in cream and turquoise uniforms, stepping over stray bocce balls shot by laconic bald men with bad knees. Every so often, you picked up your pace without warning, so that I had to choose between hurrying inelegantly or tailing from a distance like a stray animal. The clinging silk of your shirt, python-green and liquid. Your neck-nape curls, dense and tentacular.
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