I just booked two sets of tickets. I’ll be spending Palm Sunday in Italy and Easter in Miami. A few days in Rome will do me good, then it’s down to Naples with the in-laws. The thing with Rome is, I love it. But my stepson will be there on a class trip. I can imagine him wandering the Spanish Steps whispering: dove si compra fumo?
Hopefully, two things will happen. He won’t whisper it to a policeman and I won’t run into him on the street. It’s not much, but Rome is a small city and I love to walk around. If you walk around Rome enough, you’ll run into everybody you ever knew. There’s a conference on air-dried dried meat with venues all over town. I won’t shit for a week, but I’ll get some exercise.
The fact that we’ll all be in Rome together is pure coincidence. The fact that my wife agreed to come along with me is another story. She sees it as a good chance to keep close watch on the kid, which means she’ll be on the phone with him all day, breaking balls until we all meet up in Naples, where the ball breaking gets more operatic.
Miami is something else. I think Easter is best spent among the Jews. My wife thinks it’s a good chance to spend time together as a family, recapture the past. She talked my son into the idea that he and my stepson share a room, and we’ll all enjoy a little fun in the sun, like the old days. That would be two men, 21 and 17, with differing tastes in women (my son has a girlfriend to whom he is completely faithful while my stepson cannot be trusted alone in a room with a pound of boiled ham), drugs, and what’s good on TV, adjoining a room with me my wife. My mother called it a crucifixion.
I call it cheap. I got a deal in South Beach at a very nice hotel for no money, which is not to say free. Call it barter. I know the owner, and he’s happy to have me in his debt to the tune of several thousand. Knowing him, he may take it out in catering, but I doubt it. More than likely I’ll have to make a phone call, which I’m happy to do. Between my cousin and me we know a lot of people, who know a lot of other people. Call it people power. And all those people love the idea of having all the other people in their debt, because maybe it’s the only credit they’re likely to get. And everybody owes somebody, which is how it should be.
