My Simple Plan

by Ariel Gore

This was during the strike of ’92.

The tobacconist had run out of the real thing on day one.

The pharmacy sold out of patches and gum on day two.

The town filled Marco’s café, trying to mask their true desires with caffeine and Campari. They ran their fingers through their hair. Their hands trembled like hummingbirds. They were quick to anger.

It’s incredible, when you think about it, how fast an entire people can be brought to their knees. I mean, I got nothing against Italians, but these particular Italians had gotten on my last gay nerve since I’d washed up in their very picturesque hill town a few months earlier. So, yeah, maybe I liked imagining their torment now.

None of them knew about my stockpile.

Non ancora.

* * *

I intended to make my capitalist debut on the fourth day of the strike. I figured they’d be desperate by then, but still trying to wait it out without making drastic trips to Switzerland or Greece. My plan: I’d offer single cigarettes for two thousand Italian lire apiece. I’d sell them all fast—make enough to get out of this godforsaken town, catch a bus and then the train all the way up to Berlin, find the squat I’d heard about with central heating. I’d hunker down for the winter.

I wouldn’t even have to sell to everyone who asked. I could make those provincial gossips beg me for their relief.

But my capitalist revenge dreams turned to shit on the cold morning of that fourth day.

The shot rang out before dawn.

The sound jolted me out of bed. I sat straight up, and for a split second I thought I was back home in America. It was a gunshot, not a Fiat backfiring.

From my mattress on the stone floor, I couldn’t make sense of it. I took in the dirty white walls of the wine cellar I’d half disguised as an apartment. In my precoffee haze, I tried to reconcile the impossible: A gunshot. In Middle-of-Nowhere, Tuscany.

What in the actual fuck?

I stood up to look out the basement window, but darkness still pressed down on the stone street. I could hear faraway shouting, then the sirens.

I craved a cigarette right then like I was missing not some foreign chemical but a part of my own soul, and from each cell of my throat and my lungs, I thanked the universe that I had one. Yes, I had a cigarette. Who’s the homosexual slut now? I snapped at no one.

The buy had seemed extravagant but oddly rational at the tail end of summer—spent my last two hundred US on two backpacks crammed full of stolen cartons of Nazionales and MS cigarettes from a desperate punk in Rome. I already had a ride to this town I’d seen in watercolors, and I had no reason to foresee that I wouldn’t find work here or that I’d get caught up right away with the winemaker’s daughter. I figured I’d just be traveling broke to a pretty town—no big deal, right? You can always make a few bucks doing this or that wherever you end up, right? Well, not so in the watercolor town.

You ever live in a world of crumbling castles where no more than three people will even say hello to you? And I spoke decent Italian then. Not even hello. They called me l’Americano when they talked about me; they rarely addressed me directly. And you can forget about hitchhiking out of here if you don’t expect to get raped.

It puts you in a spot.

The only reason I survived at all was that Antonia, that shrill gossip with bright-yellow hair, let me stay in her wine cellar—I later realized it’s so she can talk shit about me with more authority, but what was I gonna do? A wine cellar is practically an apartment. That and Marco, the old man who owned the café and let me clean it after hours in exchange for coffee and caprese sandwiches.

Well, survive I did.

No thanks to most of the locals.

So when news of the strike trickled in, I couldn’t help the smile that crept across my face. I couldn’t wait to start hissing, Where were you in my hour of need?

I stripped off the sweats and T-shirt I’d slept in and pushed open the arched wooden door that led deeper into the wine cellar. I grabbed one of my designated smoking blankets from the top of a small barrel and wrapped it around my body. The cold flagstones felt like ice on the soles of my bare feet.

I’d rigged a fan in the depths of that place, and the fan blew the smoke out a small window that opened only onto a deep ravine at the edge of town. I’d set up a bucket of water next to that window too, and after every smoke I brushed my teeth hard enough to make my gums bleed.

In the first days I hadn’t wanted anyone to know I had the cigarettes for strategic business reasons, and even now, as I sucked hard on an MS filter, the hot smoke radiating like relief across my chest, I had only begun to understand all the ways the stakes had just changed.

I crushed the cigarette into the stone wall, flicked the butt out into the ravine below, and lit a stick of Nag Champa incense.

As the church bells clanged, I crept back into my living space, pulled on my army-surplus pants and black sweatshirt, and laced up my Dr. Martens.

The café would just be opening. Someone would know what had happened.

I took a deep breath, and didn’t smell smoke. I climbed the steps from my place to the street level, sidled into the already-full café to listen.

Marco’s café was that watercolor town’s local news channel: street journalism with espresso. The sense they would try to make of it.

It seemed the victim had been old man Martelli, gunned down in the dark of dawn just a few steps from his car at the edge of the piazza. It was the first murder anyone could remember in that town since 1974. The first gun murder maybe ever.

“I heard he’d just come back from Napoli!” Antonia called out, hands on her hips and eyebrows raised.

Even I knew what that meant.

In those days, in that place, Napoli meant one thing: the black market. And since the state workers from the Italian tobacco monopoly had decided to strike, black market meant cigarettes.

Obviously Martelli had gone down to Napoli to buy a few cartons—at the very least.

Antonia raised both hands dramatically. “I looked in his car,” she said. “No cigarettes.”

Everybody nodded, like it made perfect sense.

Martelli had brought cigarettes to town, and somebody had killed him for them. Who would kill a man over cigs? Everyone moaned, because right then, on day four of the strike, probably most of them would have done it in a heartbeat.

I slunk back into my wine cellar, bolted the door shut behind me, and took off my clothes to go smoke.

* * *

I watched from my basement window as the woman known as Giovanna paced up and down the cobblestone street in her black stilettos, a familiar sight for my sore eyes. I marveled at the way the tips of the heels never got stuck in the cracks between the stones. I’d been holed up all morning and into the afternoon.

Lying on my bed, looking up, all I could see were those shoes, her thin ankles draped in sheer nylons, the hem of a black skirt. I always knew who that was. She kept pacing, like she needed a smoke badly. The rhythm of her tapping steps lulled me into a relaxed state. If anyone in this fucking town could help me, maybe it was Giovanna.

Now, Giovanna—like all the rest of the locals—had never given me the time of day, but I knew they hardly talked to her either. Town slut, she was the subject of at least half the gossip that poured through the café in any given week. I figured there was at least half a chance that her arrogance toward me was just the old pariah-saved-by-a-bigger-pariah kind of a thing.

Either way, click click.

I stood up fast and rushed to the widow. “Giovanna!”

She looked down at me. “Pervertita,” she spat toward the cobblestones. “Pervert” tumbled and landed on my windowsill.

Like, did she think I was trying to look up her skirt from here? How embarrassing. “No,” I hissed. “I—” I hesitated. “I have something.”

Giovanna shook her head and clucked her tongue, but she click-clicked around the edge of the building anyway and next thing I knew I was scrambling up the steps and next thing I knew I was opening the door and next thing I knew Giovanna stood in front of me and next thing I knew I swallowed awkwardly.

She was beautiful.

“Come inside.” I gestured fast and Giovanna walked into my actual apartment and I shut the door behind her.

“What do you want?” Her English was just fine.

I felt like such a tongue-tied loser. I touched my fingers to my forehead. “Giovanna, I have cigarettes.”

Her eyes sparkled wild and I saw rainbow crystals. She took my arm like we were friends. The streaming energy of her sudden love for me burst into butterflies. “You have cigarettes?” She winked at me. Did Giovanna wink at me? “You bad girl,” she growled, but then she froze suddenly, and she leaned away from me. “Did you kill Martelli?”

I stared at her. She had faint acne scars on her face, like a lacy white tattoo.

She lowered her voice. “A couple people have already mentioned you, actually. You know, Italians don’t do guns.”

“I’m from the West Coast. We don’t do guns either.” And I met her gaze and I wanted very badly for her to believe me as I pulled her deeper into the wine cellar.

When we rounded the corner to my stash, illuminated like a golden pyramid in the thin stream of afternoon light, Giovanna grabbed my shoulders and kissed me hard. I felt surprised and electric with painted heart confetti bursting from the stone walls and I said, “Wait! We have to take off our clothes.”

Giovanna shook her head.

“Oh, no. I meant, you know. To smoke. We can’t. We don’t want our clothes smelling of smoke.” I thought I might die of embarrassment. Like my beating heart might stop.

“Aha,” she said. I could tell she still thought I was trying to get in her nylons.

“I mean, you don’t have to,” I said. “It’s just what I’ve been doing. So people won’t be able to smell it on my clothes.”

Giovanna smiled, and took off her sweater slowly, like a stripper, and then pulled her dress over her head and grinned at me. Her breasts swelled, and I imagined Botticelli himself had never beheld skin so delicate.

“Holy shit.” I stared down.

Her belly arched toward me.

I whispered-stuttered, “I had not heard that you were expecting,” and I held a blanket out to her.

Giovanna winked at me as she took my blanket, letting the edge of her hand touch mine. “No one knows,” she said. “Or even you would know. Now, can I have a cigarette?”

What did she mean, even I would know?

I handed her a pink lighter. “Help yourself.” And I carried her clothes farther away from the smoking spot under the window and I took off my own clothes too. My skin was pale and red where my army pants rubbed my waist the wrong way. By the time I sat down next to Giovanna, and lit my own cigarette, the revelation had started taking over my brain: I mean, maybe this was the reason I’d ended up in this backward watercolor washout town to begin with. To meet Giovanna. To help her get out. I said, “It doesn’t seem like single motherhood is really a thing here. I mean, what are you gonna do?” They already called her a whore, and worse.

Giovanna just smiled wide. Her teeth were stunningly crooked. She rested her head on my shoulder. “I know,” she whispered. “The only kind of single motherhood allowed here is widowhood.” She took my hand in hers, and brought it to her tight belly.

I felt turned on with a savior fantasy like in a fairy tale; my whole chest went warm even though I wondered if it wasn’t kind of creepy on my part.

But then Giovanna took my face in her hands and leaned in to kiss me again. When she pressed her lips into mine I tasted tobacco and vanilla and she dug her fingernails into my back and scratched me hard and our sparkling nakedness and all these sought-after and dangerous cigarettes made me feel powerful and vulnerable, like a giant mango about to explode, but I didn’t tell Giovanna that because I didn’t want her to think I was so weird that I compared myself to fruits we couldn’t even get in this town. The soft of her breast against my palm made me shiver.

I said, “Giovanna, I know a squat in Berlin. With central heating. All we have to do is sell these cigarettes, then buy our tickets. There’s work in Berlin, I’m sure of it. And all kinds of families without men. I’ve made money painting in the streets. Tourists—they all want their picture. I can show you how to do murals!”

Giovanna nodded slowly. I could tell she was mulling the idea, warming up to it even. “Street muralists,” she hummed, and she rubbed her sweet belly. She was fixed on the cracks in the stone floor, and bit her lip.

Yes, I would take Giovanna away from all this.

She looked back up. Just the slightest hint of lipstick clung to the edges of her lips. “We can’t sell the cigarettes here. They find out we have the cigarettes and they’re going to think we killed Martelli. But . . . I might have a way.” She took another cigarette from the pack and lit it. And in that golden, dusky light through that tiny little window, Giovanna, naked and pregnant, blowing smoke rings toward the fan, was a picture I wanted to paint.

* * *

In the dark of morning, I stood in the archway of a ruined castle at the edge of the piazza, my two backpacks still quite full of cigarettes. I’d shoved a single change of clothes into a side pouch. I fingered the wad of lire in the pocket of my army-surplus pants. Marco, from the café, would hardly notice the missing money. Giovanna had wanted me to take all of it—she said if he left his cash register full of money every night he deserved to learn a lesson—but I still had some morals then.

“Good morning, bella,” Giovanna whispered from behind. Bella. I could get used to that. I could imagine it all: we’d paint the walls of our squat blue, make a cradle for the baby from a milk crate.

She wore black gloves, and dangled a key in front of me, bringing one finger to her lips. “Shhhh. No one can see us leave town together.” She glanced over her shoulder. “You take the car. I’ve got a ticket for the first bus. I’ll meet you at the railway station in Grosseto in time for the 6:15 train.”

I nodded.

But when Giovanna pointed to the car she had in mind, my skull felt heavy. I wanted a cigarette. “How do you have a key to Martelli’s car?”

She pouted, just a little. “We were engaged.” She smiled and winked at me. He must have loved that wink.

What was it about Giovanna that made me see everything in flush pinks and reds? I closed my eyes against all those colors and frowned. Sternly I said, “We can’t take Martelli’s car.”

But Giovanna laughed her easy laugh and replied, “Don’t worry, bella, we’ll have it abandoned at the station by dawn.” She pulled me in, and when she pressed her full breasts against mine I knew all things were possible.

Yes, in Berlin we would have central heating. We would march through the streets holding hands and that song about the ninety-nine red balloons would play from a boom box somewhere out of sight. We would be artists, and have the baby in summertime. I wondered if Giovanna wanted a boy or a girl or a herm—if she’d want another child after this one. Yes, in Berlin we would get femi-fists tattooed on our biceps and we would probably meet Nina Hagen.

“Let me take one carton,” Giovanna said, and she reached over my shoulder and unzipped my backpack and slid out a carton of MS. A light, cold rain started to fall and the dark sky began to blue and Giovanna kissed me once more and let her tongue graze my teeth. “Drive safely, bella.” I felt the imperative of my mission: yes, I would be the one to get Giovanna out of this place. She didn’t need this parched Catholic morality any more than I did.

She said, “Oh!” like it was an afterthought, almost forgotten, and pushed a brown paper bag toward me. “I packed a surprise for you—for later.” It smelled like cloves and old libraries. Everything she touched smelled good.

I liked the way she said for later. I imagined something soft and heavy, a sensual token of her gratitude—something worth waiting for. Just then the church bells started to clang the early-morning hour and I rushed to Martelli’s car. I threw my things onto the passenger’s seat and I shifted that car into neutral and eased out of the piazza, then started the engine, and took a sharp right over the bridge that crossed the ravine and led out of town. At the bottom of the hill, I followed the arrow that pointed toward Grosseto. The sunlit freedom of it all. I shifted into high gear, reached into the brown paper bag without looking. The hard thing inside felt like a dildo and a shiver of excitement ran from my fingers and down my arm. As I began to caress it, the thing seemed a little cold. I peered inside the bag.

What in the motherfuck?

And right then is when I heard the sirens. My heart contracted as everything came into focus: I was driving a murdered man’s car, the passenger seat piled with cigarettes that might as well have been his haul from Napoli, my fingerprints on the gun. I fumbled for a pack and opened it. My hand shook as I held the Nazionale between my fingers, but I managed to light the thing. I looked up into the orange of the sunrise and felt a tightening and a fluttering at the same time, like a bird was trapped in my chest. I inhaled, knowing this would probably be my last cigarette for a long time, but just then, as the nicotine flooded my veins, the trapped bird opened her wings with something like grace.

I rolled down the driver’s-side window and blew the smoke into the air, took another hard drag. I reached over and grabbed a half-empty pack and threw it out onto the street, watched it tumble and bounce behind me. I grabbed a whole carton then and opened it. The sound of the cop’s brakes screeching behind me was the sound of my opportunity. I pushed all my weight onto the gas pedal, and glanced into the rearview mirror as that watercolor town melted into a blur, and there in the chipped corner of my mirror that constable scrambled to pick up all the packs. Yes, I would abandon Martelli’s car at the Grosseto station, jump on the train and change my clothes in the tiny bathroom, pay for my ticket once we were already speeding north and away from that crumbling hill town where no one had so much as asked my name.

I lit another cigarette off my last, and tossed the butt out the window. I thought of beautiful Giovanna, all rainbow crystals and black stockings, her little wink. And I couldn’t help but smile again: I was your one chance out, Giovanna. And now you can really go fuck yourself.