Well, the gig is up. Bruna found out about the tall American hiding in the sofa bed, and left a letter written in all capitals, red pen and with a lot of exclamation points and underlining, which meant it’s time for me to move on. She was mad about other things…the water heater broke and there’s been a slight issue with stray voltage in the apartment, so she explained that if anything else broke while we were here, we would be the ones paying for it. Now, we have no leverage, especially me, because I’m not even supposed to be here, but the water heater that broke looks like it could’ve been installed in 1956 and normal wear and tear put it through its paces and it broke. That’s not our fault, the thing was going to go anyway, it just so happened that everything in the apartment decided to break while we were here. So maybe it’s a good thing I’m getting out, before the fridge explodes and throws shrapnel consisting of half filled tomato sauce jars and Fanta bottles all over the place. Now I’m out and off to a hostel, sharing a room with 11 other people, but it’s cheap, and it’s for a short period of time, and honestly, the bunk bed will probably be more comfortable, the shower will be warm, I’ll have clean sheets, and the whole place in general will be cleaner. I hope.

My friend Matt, who had also been staying in the apartment where I was freeloading, ended up moving in with his great-aunt Marisa. She speaks very little English, and he speaks very little Italian, so between the two of them there’s a lot of confused chuckling and awkward silences. The thing about Marisa’s house is that when you go into her apartment, it’s like taking a step back in time. The kitchen has been preserved in formica, with every conceivable surface being glossed with the stuff. The walls are covered in random pieces of art that are of the ‘great-aunt’ likeness: boats on water, impressionist paintings of gardens and landscapes, and there’s even a portrait of Marisa from her younger days in the living room. I told her she should be smiling in the portrait, she just said, “No, no smiling.” Bummer. The furniture is all very old—there’s a bar that looks like it belongs in a ‘50’s swingers lounge, and in the foyer there’s a very elegant ‘half table’ that looks like it’s coming out of the wall.

Marisa also has the quirk of drumming. Everything she does involves tapping her fingers, stomping her feet, or clicking her nails on something, anything, everything that will produce any sort of conceivable noise. As I spent the morning watching “Seventh Heaven” in Italian while Matt was at a job interview, I often thought someone was knocking or a mouse was scrambling around, because the tapping is incessant. Come to find out, Marisa, despite her 76 year-old frame and shuffling about the house, is a dancer, and dances for four hours six days a week. She seems very happy living in this time warp, where Glen Miller is her hero and for four hours of every day she’s kicking it up as if she were 17 again, but she’s still able to get home in time to catch CSI Miami (which a number of Italians I’ve met here seem to be obsessed with.) Go Marisa.