August 15, 1971 Ferragosto

“Oh God no! Not another one of your snotty parties with that loud dame, what’s her name? Leonarda?  The one who plays the accordion and expects everybody to sing along? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Fine Rino. Don’t come. No one’s making you.”

Adina turned and looked at her reflection in the mirror while she put on an enormous pair of dangly gold earrings. Her hair fell across her brow like a branch of sea oats on a dune.

“But don’t expect me home before three. I’m planning to have a good time.”

“Oh Christ, I’d have to get dressed.”

“You never get dressed. What are you talking about? Just don’t bother.”

Adina tugged her bra up and down and back and forth until her breasts were exactly where she wanted them. Rino might as well not come. She had an idea that she might go “fishing” after the party and it would suit her much better if she drove to Leonarda’s alone.

The bedroom and bathroom were filled with the smells of eau de cologne and face creams and elbow creams and body creams and fresh linen and talcum powder and lipstick and nail polish and a whiff of hair spray. The sun had set behind the linden trees in the public garden but the long August twilight had just begun cloak the light and the first swallows were starting to chirp as they decided to roost for the evening. There was no need to turn the lights on just yet, except in the bathroom where Adina had finished making up her face. Rino was half tempted to go along with her to the party. After all, it wouldn’t take him but ten minutes to shit, shower and shave.  Then they would drive a half hour to the sea as the moon slowly rose; he would stand there with all the other balding middle-aged men and their big gold watches and dark suntans while their wives told silly jokes and smoked cigarettes on the terrace. There would be food and pretty good wine, too. Leonarda’s husband Nando was a little dull, but he did scour the countryside and buy up big demijohns of wine from farmers, which he then bottled himself. It started to sound pretty good.

       Adina lit up a cigarette and sat down at her vanity. There was a loose thread on the dress she had had made especially for this party, a cascade of white flounces with violets embroidered all over them. The ruffles would descend from her bare, suntanned shoulders to her bare calves, and perfume would waft out from her with every movement and gesture. Adina was not a beautiful woman, she was not even pretty, and she was far from handsome. Her nose and chin were far too large and her great Etruscan eyes were ringed with wrinkles when she smiled. But Adina was attractive: she had learned that she needed to be engaging, and smile, and dress very, very well. If she did these three things, and offered the right people food occasionally, she was welcomed in society, and after thirty years of focusing on this and very little else, she was rather in demand. She was also as sharp as they come when it came to snipe; she knew what everyone was holding when the second round of cards came down.

        Rino was a different story. He was dumpy and losing his hair. He didn’t even attempt to pass for attractive. But he was well enough off. He had shrewdly made a pile of money for himself by trading in construction commodities and buying up farms to renovate. People liked Rino because he was exactly who he appeared to be. He enjoyed a good glass of wine, a big piece of barbecued mutton, looking at pretty women, and hunting wildfowl in the marshes. There wasn’t much not to like about Rino.

     Adina found Rino slightly boring, but serviceable after twenty years of marriage. Adina was constantly voluble about her likes and given to pursuing fashionable whims headlong. Adina didn’t really like the arts and culture so much as she liked the evening dresses and Chanel suits she could wear to meetings of the Soroptimists or furs she could flaunt at the opera. Mainly she liked being thought of a society lady: her prestige was essential to her self-esteem. She was absolutely certain of her own social standing and always kept it high. Adina had elegantly discarded her slippers  as a social climber years ago; she finally arrived by dint of giving after-theater parties, skiing only in Cortina, and beating everyone at snipe. There was not a soul who did not want her as a partner when the green felt was laid down. Adina’s lack of education (she had barely graduated from secretarial school out of the teachers’ pity) comforted other people for like Rino, she never put on airs about what she knew. 
        Adina limited her public self-assurance to her impeccable fashion sense and playing the last trump card for the final trick, at the gaming table and away from it. Everyone clearly perceived her cutting edge. There was no mistaking it; she never reiterated how sharp she was. However, to maintain her social prestige, she had to exercise her charms publicly and rather continuously. She did this often to the chagrin of Rino who would rather not be around eighteen people more than one night a week.

       Rino betrayed his wife occasionally, and he forgave her betrayals of him. They had a son and a daughter they wanted to rear in a united home; as long as no hanky panky took place in the house, no one ever said anything. Well, no one ever said anything to the other’s face. The whole town knew who they were screwing, and gossip quickly informed Adina and Rino of the other’s promiscuities. They weren’t jealous however: they just wanted to enjoy their lives as much as possible and that meant being tolerant towards their spouse and towards other people, a great deal of the time.

        The maid hollered for Adina from the kitchen, so she wrapped herself in a turquoise kimono, slipped on a pair of mules and cigarette in hand, exited the bedroom wing of their house to investigate what had happened in the kitchen. Rino looked at himself in the mirror and smiled at his reflection. 

        “What people fail to realize, is that the amount of pleasure you can get from life has nothing to do with what you look like. A glass of sangiovese is every bit as good if you haven’t shaved and showered.” 
        He lit up a cigarette, scratched his head and tried to decide whether to go tonight or not. He did have a pressed white linen shirt hanging in the closet, a pair of white linen trousers, and white deck shoes.

       “Rino!” Adina screamed from the kitchen.

       “What?”

        “Come here! You won’t believe what’s happened.”

        When Rino got to the kitchen, he saw Adina and Elda were crouched down in front of the refrigerator.

       “Well?”

       “Well, you know that old man in the country whose chimney your workers patched for free?”

       “Oh yeah, Babini. Poor soul, he really did need some help.”

       “Well, he definitely appreciated it, because while we were all out it appears he brought you a big bag of live snails.”

       “Snails! It did rain last night, didn’t it?”

       “Yes, it did. Well someone took the bag and put it in the refrigerator. Look!”

       Adina swung the door open to reveal the inside of the fridge slithering with snails. They were crawling around bottles of wine, over packages of cheese, up and down the walls of the fridge through the lettuce and over the watermelon rind.

      “Well, do you think you could give the maid a hand? I need to finish getting dressed and I would like to take them as a hostess gift this evening.”

       “My snails! Why . . .”

       “Are you going to cook them? Elda doesn’t like to cook them you know, and I certainly am not going to go to all the trouble of purging them, cooking them, and sticking them back in their shells. If you want to cook them, then we’ll keep them. If not, Leonarda will go wild over them and we’re bound to cut an amusing figure at the party tonight.”

      “Very well. You’ll wait for me, won’t you? I think I might go to the party after all.”

      Adina had been planning on Rino’s absence but she couldn’t very well say no in front of the maid. “What a nice surprise! But I want to leave in a half hour the latest. Will that suit you?”

      “I think I can desnail the fridge, shit, shower, and shave in thirty minutes.”

       “Rino! Really! I do wish you would use better language.”

Rino didn’t even turn to look at her and she walked out the kitchen. He was unloading the fridge as the maid pulled snails out of a small bowl of spaghetti and tossed them into a plastic bag she had filled with flour. Rino scraped the snails off the sides of the refrigerator and tossed them in as well. After Rino had finished unloading the fridge and removing all the snails, he went to the shoe closet to get another bag to carry them to Leonarda’s house in. Something fussy and un-snail like – from Fendi.

       “Oh Signor Nemorino,” went the maid who always used Rino’s complete first name. “Signora Adina won’t like that. She uses that bag to take her clothing to the dry cleaner’s.”

       “Elda, don’t worry about it. I’ll take all the blame. Now, let me run and get dressed. You don’t need any more help, do you?”

       “No signore. I’ll be fine. I pressed your linen shirt and trousers for you. I had a feeling you might want to go this evening, Signor Nemorino.”

       “Thanks Elda.”

       So the maid thought he should go to this damn party. There must be a reason for that; Rino realized it must be because the whole town was talking about Adina’s affair with a young dentist. That could easily be the reason. But he didn’t feel like breaking things up between them as long as she didn’t bring the tooth fairy into the house. Adina came out of the bathroom in her bra and panties and high-heeled shoes.

        “Well, I need to leave in fifteen minutes. I guess you’re not coming, are you now?”

       At this, having his wife decide for him not to go and the maid decide for him to go, Rino realized that he most definitely needed to go to this damn party.

      “Why no, I was just waiting for you to come out of the bathroom so I could shit, shower, and shave.”

        “Rino, really, must you talk like that?”

        “Would you prefer I do things in a different order?”

        Adina shook her head, lit a cigarette and sat down to touch up her makeup while Rino got ready. She wanted to go in separate cars, but that would just not do. It really would be too obvious. She could beg off early, but she didn’t want to do that, either, so she simply resigned herself to going to the party with her husband, which would look good at any rate. She needed to do it occasionally, and she could see the dentist tomorrow afternoon if she wanted. Adina could at least focus her attention on being as glamorous as possible, and pull in a new trophy hook, line, and sinker another night. She had her eye on the dentist’s brother-in-law.

        After driving through kilometers and kilometers of dusking pine forest, they finally arrived in the main road of Marina Romea, entirely camouflaged by the woods around it. You did not go  there, unless you went there and it was the nicest of the modern seaside built in the last fifteen years, with beautifully landscaped avenues and several towering buildings, one of which Adina and Rino now walked into and entered the elevator.

        The doors opened onto the top floor and Rino and Adina were ushered up ten steps to the roof terrace. The enormous Romagnol twilight was stretched across the sky in great swaths of pastel veils, hovering motionless over a green carpet of umbrella pines that extended in all directions: to the darkening sea, to the shrouded marshes around Marina Romea and towards the distant lights of Porto Corsini.

        “Funiculi funicula funiculi funiculaaaaaah!” belted out their hostess as she danced towards them playing an ebony and mother of pearl accordion strapped to her chubby bronzed shoulders.         

        “Welcome! You know where the wine and soft drinks are – please help yourselves!” She waltzed off, the center of no one’s attention but her own since she was the loudest thing anyone had been near all week long. When she came up to people, they smiled and laughed with her, and sang along for a bit and although they snickered behind her back at her vulgar brassiness, they forgave her because she made the party a festive occasion. 

        Adina quickly noticed Leonarda’s hairdo, an elaborate bandeau of hair that arched obliquely over her cranium, seemingly woven into a braid with pearls studded into it. Where had she seen it before? Oh yes, Leonarda must have copied it from Joan Crawford’s recent appearance on that American soap opera. It was Leonarda’s hair, she could see it was the exact same color of Forever Blonde, but Adina couldn’t help pitying Leonarda for having that hairpiece made with her own hair that she kept having reset and styled for parties. Who else did it these days? No one! Leonarda was like something out of the nineteenth century. Except for the accordion, of course.

        Rino tried to catch up with Leonarda, but he could hardly get a word in edgewise as she crooned "Lili Marlene."

       “Leonarda, Leonarda, I’ve got a hostess present for you  . . .”

       “Rino, you’re so kind.

       ‘Almost every evening, by the corner light,

        I stand and smoke and wait for you at night’ . . .”

       “Leonarda, but where do you want me to put it?  The bag is full of snails!”

“Nails, now what would I do with nails? 
‘With you, Lili Marlene,

With you Lili Marlene’”

        “Not nails, Leonarda, SNAILS!”

         Leonarda foxtrotted off and left Rino holding the bag. He looked around for Adina. She was leaning up against the balustrade, smoking a Muratti Ambassador cigarette with the horizon of the sea behind her in the far distance. She was talking to the young dentist’s older sister Manuela, whose box was next to hers at the theater.

        “No, I’m not so crazy about the upcoming season either: all that Shakespeare! Three plays: The Taming of the Shrew, Troilus and Cressida the Othello. That damn handkerchief.”

         “Adina, here. I cannot get Leonarda to tell me where to put this bag you wanted to bring and I want to get something to eat and drink.” Rino plopped it at her feet and walked off.

       “Rino! Oh Rino!”

        But Rino would not turn around or heed her cries.

       “So, what’s in the bag? Champagne?”

       “Hardly. One of Rino’s charity cases brought him a nice big bag of snails and I know Leonarda adores them.”

       “Yes, but doesn’t Rino like them too?”

       “Yes, but not enough to purge, cook and stuff them back in the damn shells himself. What am I going to do with this fucking bag of snails?” Adina stubbed out her cigarette on the outside of the balustrade and dropped the butt into the empty plastic cup she had been drinking from.

       “Oh Adina, let’s have some fun!”  

       “And what have you got in mind?”

       “Let’s leave the bag behind her toilet!”

       Adina smirked. It was an awfully good trick, just cruel enough to make it really funny. She could imagine Leonarda’s scream and her hairpiece flying off her skull when she walked into her bathroom late tonight after the party and found snails crawling everywhere: on the mirror, around the toilet seat, on the panes of her shower stall, weaving in between her bottles of cologne and perfume. But who could Leonarda blame it on, who could they frame?

       “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea: Leonarda would be furious and she’s bound to find out who did it, and then, there would be hell to pay. Unless of course, you know who we could innocently give the bag to and get them to place it behind her toilet unknowingly? Who can we trick into belling the cat?”

       “Her maid? Her children? Her husband? Her husband Nando! He‘d be perfect!”  Manuela chortled.

        “I’ve got it. Here’s what we do . . . “

         Rino had now eaten enough, spoken to the people he wanted to speak to and he was starting to get bored. He stood there trying to make small talk to Nando, Leonarda’s husband, but the only thing Nando ever talked about was his soccer team, Juventus. Black and white this, black and white that, and on and on about past games and trade-offs of players. It was just about the dullest thing that Rino could imagine. Why can’t people lead their own lives and participate in what’s happening around them? Is it so terrifying to speak to your neighbors once in a while, or do you have to sit there every Wednesday and Sunday in front of the television or with your ear plastered to the radio to follow your favorite football team? Rino was glad to see Manuela coming up to them.

        “Rino, there’s no more sparkling water left out. Do you know where the kitchen is?

         Nando took his cue and smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll get some more and put it out. Thanks for letting me know. Manuela walked back to the small circle of people standing around Leonarda and singing.

        “Here, I’ll give you a hand, Nando.” Rino picked up six empty bottles off the table and followed Nando back to the kitchen.

Sure enough, there on the kitchen table was the Fendi bag, stapled loosely at the top and a note scrawled as though the maid had written it. Nando bent over and read it out loud.

      “Sgnor Pirazzini, please put bag ‘hind toilet your bathroom. Need tomorrow to fix leek.”

      “What does Flora want with me? Oh, well, you have to do what the maid asks; you might not have to do what your wife asks, but you do have to do what the maid asks. Excuse me a minute.”          
       Nando walked off with the bag under his arm and came back a minute later. Rino helped him with the bottles and drinks, and then asked Nando where the service toilet was. He needed to go now. Rino threaded his way back to through kitchen and laundry room to the service bathroom. He wanted to find just what he needed to fix the “leek” in the bathroom.

      
         When he returned, Rino saw Adina slinking out of the  kitchen to the terrace where Leonarda was playing popular arias from opera and the crowd was tipsy enough to sing along. That was relatively amusing for about a half an hour. Adina spied Manuela on the far side of the terrace. They gave each other a quick look and watched both of them slithering indoors. .

        Adina and Manuela tiptoed through the living room, past the children’s rooms and into the master bedroom. The light in the bathroom was on and they silently crept in. Peering over the sink, a small white note gleamed against a background of stylized F’s of the shopping bag behind the toilet.  The beige and brown bag fortunately just about blended into the brown tiles lining the head. With pantomimed shrieks, they tiptoed out and came back to the party.

       When Rino caught up with her at the party five minutes later, Adina turned and asked: “Darling, have you got any more cigs? I’ve smoked all of mine.”

       “No, I’ve finished mine too. I’ll run down to the car and get another pack of my Marlboros.”

       “Marlboros? They’re too strong. Wait a minute; let me ask Manuela if she has any more Murattis. Hold on.”

      Rino walked back into the kitchen, tied up a garbage bag to take down with him, and put a new liner in the rubbish bin. Adina walked in on him, dangling a set of car keys that weren’t theirs.

       “Here. Manuela’s car is the red Alfa Romeo at the corner. She says there’s a whole carton in the glove box. Could you get two packs?”

        “Am I your little slave or what? Oh, all right. I’ll be back in a while. An opportunity has arisen that I need to take advantage of.”

      A half hour later Rino walked up to Adina and gave her the keys and both packs of cigarettes.

        “I’m tired Adina and I want to go home. Do you want to come with me or can Manuela give you a ride?”

        Adina looked at Manuela talking to her brother, Belcore on the other side of the terrace. Belcore understood at a glance and winked at Adina. She said: “I’m sure Manuela can find a way to get me home.”

        “Good, I’m going to thank Nando and Leonarda for the party. See you at home – before dawn I hope.”

        Adina crawled into bed about five o’clock, with her make up and earrings still on. She was exhausted but glowing. Rino got up about eight, fixed himself some coffee and walked off to the bar to get some cigarettes and the papers. Adina continued to sleep and awoke in the early afternoon. Rino had left a note on the kitchen table saying he was at the beach, and would have lunch there. Adina fixed herself a cup of coffee. The phone rang.

       “Adina?”

       “Yes, (Oh my God, it’s Leonarda!)”

“Adina darling, I was just calling to thank you so much for the lovely snails!”

        “Well, I know how much you adore them!

       “Oh, and Nando loves to cook them too. Isn’t that fortunate for me.? I hate purging them and all that stuff and cooking them alive.

“I know just what you mean. Well Leonarda, thanks again for the lovely party.”

        “Well, thank you for coming? See you at the beach! Ta ta!”

What was going on? Adina lit up a cigarette and scratched her arms. She ran her fingers through her sun-kissed hair and shook her head.

        Leonarda found the snails, but where? Not in the bathroom. Did Nando open up the bag? No, because the note was still on it. It can’t have been Rino who moved them, because she had watched him walk out right before Manuela and she had tiptoed into the bathroom and seen the bag with the note clipped to it. Had the maid found them when she cleaned up before she left? That must be it. Oh well, though her fun had been spoiled, she had not lost a friend in Leonarda. Adina decided it was time to go to the beach. She strapped on a bikini and a blowzy gauzy white tunic with gold chain belt, dumped her cigarettes, lotions, magazines, and keys into her straw beach bag, and walked out to the car.

        When she got to her bathing establishment, she saw Rino playing Mah Jongg with some teenage boys and waved and went to get another cup of coffee. She had her coffee and flipped through the paper and looked at the sandals the other women were wearing. She jumped when  the loudspeaker called:

        “ADINA, ADINA RAVAIOLI WANTED ON THE PHONE.”

Adina panicked. Her daughter was probably in trouble again. With panting heart, she reached the phone.

“Hello?”

        “YOU GOD-DAMNED BITCH!”        

        Adina was hardly aware of what of what was happening. “Who is this?”

        “WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK IT IS, YOU CUNT?”

        “Oh my God,” thought Adina. “It’s Leonarda and she had found where the snails were supposed to be. Now she’s going to let me have it.”

          “Leonarda?” she ventured.

          “Leonarda, Shleonarda. This is Manuela. There I was, showered and dressed for the beach and I go down to my car to discover, guess what?”

          “Oh no, they haven’t broken into your car, have they? Poor Baby.”

         “No, that’s not the problem. The inside is filled with snails. Snails on the dashboard, snails on the steering wheel, on the ceiling, on the floor, in the glove box, leaving trails of slime everywhere in the afternoon heat. It’s a complete wreck and smells to high heavens!”

        “And why are you calling me? I didn’t put them there.”

        “And if you didn’t, who did? Nando? Leonarda? They can’t have noticed what was going on.”

         Adina was stunned “Manuela, why would I do something like that to you?”

          “Because you’re fucking my brother and now you want to screw my husband, or at least that’s what the whole town is whispering behind our backs?”

        This cut a little too close to the quick but Adina was quick and parried on her first line of defense.

        “Wait wait wait. Leonarda called me up this morning and thanked me for the ones we left for her last night.”

         “What?”

         “Apparently somebody moved them to someplace where they can’t have been much of a trick. I cannot imagine who put the snails in your car.”

        “Well, I can and it doesn’t take that much imagination.”

        “Manuela, when can I have done it? We were at the party all evening long together.”

        “I was. But you didn’t give me my car keys back until just before my dentist brother and you both disappeared about three a.m. Were you looking for snails or trying to get their little horns to pop out of their little heads?”

        This piqued Adina. She did not like other people confronting her with the truth so nakedly.

         “I think we need to talk when you’ve calmed down. Bye!”

         Adina hung up the phone and pulled her sunglasses back on She called the attendant to put her chaise longue out and followed him to her umbrella. Rino was now there, asleep under the paper.  His hairy legs stuck out from under the sports pages and he made a slight rustle as he snored.

          “Rino! Rino! Wake up!”

          “Adina – Ciao! If you’d waited any longer I could have asked you to bring dinner with you. How are you feeling?

          “Oh, I’m all right. What did you do with the snails for Leonarda last night?”

          “I left them at your feet on the terrace, don’t you remember? What did you do with them after I left? Don’t you remember?”

         “Oh yes, of course I do.”

          “Didn’t Leonarda call to thank you for them? She’s usually pretty good about that even if she is the worst thing in a blond hairpiece when she’s playing that damn accordion. God was she loud!”

         “Oh yes, she called.”

         “Well, then she found them. Why are you asking me about the snails, then?”

          “Oh never mind, I just, oh well, never mind.”

          Adina disrobed to reveal a perfectly even, dark dark suntan. She had no tan lines anywhere, and her skin was as smooth and silky and toned as an expensive Swiss chocolate. She creamed and oiled her body and wiped her hands. Then she evaluated exactly the right angle for training the afternoon sun on her body and laid herself out on the chaise longue as if she were a set of clothing that needed to be folded and packed and put away in tissue paper. She removed her sunglasses, lit a cigarette, looked at her watch and baked for exactly one hour. Then she lit another cigarette, untied the string that kept her top up and lay flat on her stomach for another hour. She didn‘t speak, she didn’t read, she simply suntanned. She was extremely good at it, and the results were indeed remarkable. She even woke up on cue so she could turn over and roast on the other side, if she fell asleep.

      Rino looked over at her.

      His wife! Adina, Adina had never been beautiful, she’d never been pretty, and she’d never been handsome. But God was she sexy, even after twenty years of marriage. Adina’s passion for Rino had waned quickly after the birth of their son, and she had started seeing different men, encouraging him to see other women. But they remained married.  There were the children, she said, but he knew there were the bank accounts. He’d even spoken to a lawyer about the possibility of a separation and divorce, but unless she actually abandoned the conjugal roof, Rino would get completely cleaned out. So they stayed together, or rather Rino stayed. 
Adina and Rino did enjoy their lives, they did enjoy being gossiped about, they did enjoy seeing other people and their separate trysts and spicy affairs. Or rather, she did. Rino was just about full. He was getting to the age where the main pleasure in an affair was courtship and he was even getting tired of that. But he was only one of two people and there was not much he could do about Adina’s philandering.

        He looked at her perfectly buffed, satiny smooth shoulder blades; he remembered when they were first married. He used to look over at her at the beach and tell her that when they got home, he’d make her a pajama out of his saliva if she could only stay still long enough  for him to apply it with his tongue. He still felt like doing it. He would still do it, just eat her with a fork, starting with one of her shoulder blades. 
          Adina however would have none of him. So, instead, he reached into his beach bag and pulled out a little yellow and brown snail, which he placed on the sunglasses she was clasping in the hand behind her head.  The heat of the sun stimulated the snail to crawl towards the shade and when it reached her fingers, Adina said:

        “Rino, oh leave me alone. Don’t tease me.”

        But at this point, Rino was had moved to the chaise longue on the other side of her.

        “What are you talking about?”

        At this Adina turned her head towards her sunglasses and saw the snail’s two little horns waving at her in the sun. She jumped up, clasping the stings of her bikini top behind her neck so that her bosoms would not be left flapping in sight in front of everyone.

        “Rino! That’s not funny!”

        “It isn’t? Are you sure?

        “What are you talking about?”

         “About you and your boyfriend’s sister, trying to infest Leonarda’s bathroom with my snails.”

        “How did you know that?”

        “Well. I wasn’t exactly sure, until you confessed it right now.”

        “Oh, you’re such a spoilsport.”

        “Adina, the plain fact is that it wasn’t funny. Leonarda is pretty tiresome with that obnoxious accordion of hers, and she’s spoiled rotten, but she did invite us and put out all that food and drink and tried to keep us amused. She doesn’t need snails all over her bathroom. Her life is not like that. Yours is, and you shouldn’t try to impose it on her. It’s not fair, it’s not nice, and it’s only cruelly amusing, until it happens to you. But you like having snails all over your life, your life’s a series of snails crawling all over the town, all your little escapades with the dentist and the worker down at the town hall before him, and even that high school student.

        Adina’s jaw dropped at this. “Flavio! How did you ever hear about Flavio?”

        “That little snail crawled right up to me. He was quite taken with you, quite overwhelmed by your never-ending need for his young dick. He even thought he would get a jealous scene out of me, but I’m afraid I disappointed him.”

        “Why, what did you say?”

        “I told him, he could have you. As soon as the two of you decided, you could ask for a divorce, and I would be glad to hand you over to him.”

        “He never mentioned any of this to me!”

        “Of course he didn’t. I told him how much alimony I would be giving you – none since you had obviously been betraying me, an adulteress, and you would be abandoning the family home which would give you no rights to any financial compensation.”

        “You must be nuts! You know I would never even consider that!”

        “You’re right, Adina, that’s just what I told him. And that if he really wanted to be a man, he would just let you tire of him and let you abandon him. Which is exactly what happened, isn’t it?”

         Adina closed her eyes and turned her furious head away from Rino. She kept her silence and he kept his. Adina fell asleep. Rino continued to look at her and then he fell asleep. They both awoke when the shade of the beach umbrella had encroached on their bodies. Adina sat up and looked over at Rino, fat bald Rino, her husband, the father of her children, the man she actually slept with. With a slight touch of irritation in her voice she asked him:

        “What are we going to do?”

        “What we’ve always done: exactly what we want. We’re both free. I’ll work so you can pay the bills and run the house. I’ll make sure the cars run and you’ll make sure that the children are educated. How much more do you want than that?”

         Adina could easily have listed the other things she wanted: a more central box at the theater, a new white gold bracelet from Bulgari, a larger apartment in Cortina for skiing in February, the new Fendi bag she had seen advertised in this month’s edition of Vogue. Her whims changed with the velleities of fashion, and every last detail was all-essential to her well being. She would not have been happy without these things, and she knew she would get them. But she also knew she had never needed to ask for them. She simply wrote the checks and then wrapped the presents she had chosen that would come from Rino, for her birthday and Christmas, unwrapping them in front of the children and her society friends. 
         She really did have everything she wanted.  Except one thing.

        “Well, what do you think I want?”

        Rino knew. He reached into her beach bag and pulled out a pack of white Muratti cigarettes, opened them, clinked them against the heft of his index fingers and proffered the dislodged cigarettes to her: “This is what you want, now isn’t it?” 

         It was. Adina took the cigarette in one hand and held her bikini top to her chest with the other while Rino lit her up. “Can you tie me up in the back?”

        Rino reached over and tied her bikini top into a bow behind her neck so she could sit up. 
        “And what do you want, Rino?”

         Rino looked Adina straight in the eyes. 
        “Nothing I don’t already have, although I think you’ll need some new pajamas when we get home. You should at least try them on to see if they fit.”

          Rino died in 1973 at the age of 54 of an unexpected heart attack. It was horribly difficult on Adina just as any mourning is, but Rino had left her and the children quite well off, so things were not quite as bad as they might have been.  From that day at the beach Adina had stopped seeing other men entirely; something had died in her, the longing for what she thought she really wanted: a certain chic notoriety and salacious whiff of scandal to lend éclat to her prestige. But other people’s gossip only went so far. At this point only greater education and sincere kindness would have enhanced her position socially and she definitely was not willing to put out that much effort: how tiresome. Adina finally realized what she wanted more than anything else. She wanted a husband to provide her with all the luxuries she could ask for. She had a husband who provided her with all the luxuries she wanted even when she was a widow. 
       This wasn't for long; Adina died of lung cancer in 1976.

       No one recalls them now except for their children, but the son moved to Cortina and the daughter moved to Rome. They sold the family home, split the proceeds and began conducting their own lives of empty luxury. No one in town mentions Rino’ s and Adina’s son and daughter anymore either. The gossip, the cars, the furs, the linen shirts and suntans, the snails and Muratti cigarettes have all evaporated, rusted, shed, unraveled, faded, died and crumbled away. 

          Rino and Adina got what they wanted; it was enough for them to live for. Just because our lives are shallow does not mean they are not worth living or that they are unpleasant to lead.

And the reason for the Leonarda’s party? Ferragosto, the 15^th of August, in origin, celebrated the Ascension of the Madonna into heaven. Now, now it is a national holiday but it is not much more than an excuse to have a party in the open air, beneath a canopy of straw and thatch at the beach during the day or on a starlit terrace at night. 

Just because Ferragosto has lost its significance that doesn’t make it any less fun as a holiday, now does it?