And then there is the hairdo. At some point during our time in Italy, we drive thirty minutes down the coast to Pesaro, where my wife goes to Marcello for shampoo, color, and cut. (I think that is the order of operations.) Unlike Serravalle, with its plodding small-town civility, and unlike Rimini, with its grubby charm, Roman footprints, and jarring internationalism (hello, Russians), Pesaro is fashionable, homogeneous, and a little bit smug. At Marcello they don’t make appointments. My wife walks in. They take her coat. She gives herself to two hours of luxury.
This time it’s a late weekday afternoon. After dropping her off, I walk in the direction of the Via del Corso.
Probably every old city in Italy has a Via del Corso. Without Google-translating it, I’d just call it Main Street, a principal artery through the city center, often with limited or no auto traffic. In Pesaro the Corso is a fashion runway. An occasional van crawls up or down the gently sloping brick street, making deliveries. Patient residents inch toward home in their cars. Mostly, though, it is well-dressed people on foot or on bikes.
I stop at a place called Bar Iris, hoping to find a Wi-Fi connection. I have the first chapter of Louis Begley’s Shipwreck on my Kindle. If it’s engaging, and if there’s Internet, I’ll download the rest of the novel for later. Served an espresso and a shot of water (water first—order of operations), I ask about a connection.
“No Wi-Fi,” the young woman says. Her hair is tied back in a bun. She has a tattoo necklace.
“Anywhere around here?” I ask.
“All blocked.” She mimes turning a key in lock. “You need the password.”
In that case, I tell her, I will have a glass of wine and then, considering it will be a long hair appointment, probably another glass of wine. I position myself so I can read and watch people walk by the bar. In short order I make a startling discovery.
Sweatpants.
Not just an occasional man who has drifted into sartorial error and foolishly ventured into public. No, I witness blue and gray sweatpants on many men, young and old.
This is odd for two reasons. I think it’s safe to say the United States invented sweatpants. Usually a fashion trend moves from Italy to the U.S., not the other way around. Years ago my wife and I ran into a young woman at the airport in Rome. She was flying to the United States. She was someone connected to someone we knew in Pesaro, exceedingly well turned out, and wearing one of women’s fashion’s greatest gaffes: stirrup pants. It was summer. The pants were snow white. She looked like a model of a vintage skier prepared for photo ops on the slopes. It took a year or so, but eventually stirrup pants caught on in the U.S., where they lasted a long, long time. The other reason, of course, is the astonishing sight of a Pesarese dressed down, way down. I would have expected sweatpants in Pesaro to be like pornography in Kabul: indicative of a fatal cultural breakdown, a character flaw someone could indulge only at home, doors locked, shades pulled.
For years, arriving in Pesaro, the first stop my wife and I would make was Amadeus, a boutique run by her cousin Nano and his wife Marisa. We stood on the floor just inside the door and exchanged kisses and news. Eventually Nano, conscious that we were smack in front of the big display windows, would move us away from the front of the store. “Go over there,” he’d say with an impish smile. “If paying customers see you two in here, you’ll drive away business.” Then they would fix us up with some new clothes, my wife a lot, me just a little. One year Marisa slipped a double-breasted linen blazer on me. It was the color of sand, sabbia in Italian. “Nice,” she said, tugging and straightening the jacket on me. “See how good you look? On you the sabbia is very beautiful.” In truth, it felt a little crooked. I bought it anyway, feeling like I ought to make an effort. I took it home and waited five years to wear it. (Buy it, wait a while, and then wear it—order of operations.) She was right. It was beautiful. Maybe it’s a Methodist fear of fashion. I just can’t dress like an Italian.
Except for the scarf. I’m not afraid to scarf up.
My second glass of wine arrives just as a couple enters the bar, pulling their dog behind them. They sit at the table next to mine. It’s warm in the bar, but they don’t bother pulling off their scarves. I turn back to my Kindle. The narrator in this Begley novel, an American named North, is seated in a bar called L’Entre Deux Mondes. His story begins in Paris, circa 2003. When a waitress approaches him, Begley’s narrator muses, “I have to admit that altogether I like the new kind of French. I like their healthy looks. So different from the sallow kids I knew when I was a kid myself, with their passion for politics and their yellow teeth that melted in plain sight as they drank their scotch.”
Outside, a parade of pedestrians passes, many walking with arms linked, most wearing scarves. It’s a week since the terrorist attack in Paris. I wonder about the new French that Begley mentions. I think of my Arab students back home in Dearborn, standing by the door outside my classroom, laughing, hugging each other, being innocent girls. Conscious of their politically charged appearance—how can they not be?—they call themselves “scarfies” in perfect English and laugh the stigma away. They laugh; still, there is an undercurrent of fear. After 9/11 I worried about them, feared for their safety, knowing that, seeing their scarves and long dresses, an angry American might lash out: take revenge first, ask questions later. Order of operations.
The couple sitting next to me drinks tea. Their pooch, a dead ringer for the old RCA dog, seems happy to have a seat. I listen for conversation, straining to hear the dog’s name. My niece tells me her friends like to give their dogs English names: Scott, Lizzie, Susie, Brad. This one is Spillo (SPEE-lo), which is the Italian word for a small, pointy object; the English translation is “pin.” Walking past their table with a tray under her arm, the woman with the tattoo necklace leans down and tells the dog how good, how well behaved, how handsome he is, to which the dog responds with one crisp, preemptory bark.
They get up to leave around the time my phone rings. My wife is ready. I’m supposed to meet her at Amadeus.
“Let’s go, Spillo,” the man says. “Come on!” He pulls on the leash, but the dog won’t budge. “Su! Andiamo.” He pulls at the dog again, charmed by its intransigence. It’s no go. I wrap my scarf around my neck and watch as he bends down and picks up the dog. Tucked under his arm, it asserts itself with one more piercing, sovereign bark.
Outside I merge with traffic. It’s getting cold. I’m glad to have the scarf.