Brava, Valentine: A Novel by Adriana Trigiani

Author:Adriana Trigiani [Trigiani, Adriana]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: General, Family secrets, Family Life, Italian American women, Fiction - General, Sagas, Italian American families, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, Fiction
ISBN: 9780061257070
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-02-09T05:00:00+00:00

18 maggio 2010

Cara Valentina,

Enclosed is the leather sample you asked me to send. It's a basket weave of suede and leather, which gives the look of double-sided satin. I think you will agree that it is exquisite. Thank you for your letter. All is well here. I know you are busy, so I will close.

Love, Gianluca

I let his letter fall onto the floor next to my bed. Gianluca's first dud, written and sent without poetry or passion, and on the eve of my big adventure. I would have liked a sexy opus to read over and over again on the plane, but I guess I'll have to turn to the new Jackie Collins novel for that. Gianluca knows I'm nervous about this trip, and I've shared my reservations with him. You would think, wise old man that he is, that he'd come up with the exact right thing to say to make me feel more confident.

I hear a fire alarm in the distance, somewhere in Chelsea. I can't sleep. I get a special brand of insomnia before I fly. I imagine turbulence, a horrible flight, the plane is struck by lightning, a belly landing because the wings have snapped off, and once I'm on the ground, having slid down the emergency chute, Roberta meets me and hates me on sight. I develop a rash over my entire body and cannot walk. I'm put in a bad local hospital where they pump me up with drugs and change my name. I develop amnesia and have to be airlifted out on a gurney to a small hospital on the Galapagos Islands where a voodoo doctor can cure the rash but cannot restore my memory. I join a nunnery because the rash has so disfigured me I can only live in a colony where they wear veils. But wait! I know what's keeping me up this time. This letter was never intended as an endearing send-off. It's a blow-off. He's breaking up our imaginary relationship! We're only together on paper, bound by good stationery and his Italian-to-English dictionary. We're doomed. It's over. God help me, but if the plane goes down, the last words I will have read from Gianluca will be about a leather sample. Well, it was literary and luscious while it lasted. I actually believed his words, and hoped he really saw the woman he described in letters to be just like me. But she's gone. His pen ran out of ink. The compliments, the insights, the idolatry--they've dried up like an old inkwell.

Face it, Valentine, I say to myself. He's probably found someone new. Probably some shoe designer from Russia with long legs, high cheekbones, and bangs that lie flat. Or maybe she's Ukrainian. She's a brunette with rosebud lips and real pearls in piles around her neck. Or French. Busty and makes a good pastry. Gianluca would be a catch anywhere in the European Union. And to think, for a while, he wanted me.

I turn over and fluff my pillow into a comfortable position.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.