Two. Eva Forte

quickly on his virtual keyboard. With the same mood showed until now, she starts to eat chips, slowly and almost coerced. There’s no emotion in her eyes, always abandoned in the void. Suddenly she stops, the vibration of her mobile phone notifies her a message that she reads quickly but with a light in her eyes that she had never had until that moment. While she puts her phone back, in the same speed she had taken it from her coat pocket, I detect a slight smile on her lips and a little tear on her face.

      She swiped it immediately away with her hand while she turned in the opposite side with regard to where her husband is sitting. Then she continues eating her chips, coming back to her absent world and regardless of what is happening around her.

      I start to imagine who could have texted her to make her resurrect from a trance and boredom state when I am also reached by a message that takes me back to reality. I start to look for my phone in my bag with such a fervour that I drop some of the things that were inside of it.

      My fellow traveller immediately activates and helps me pick up what I’ve lost from the floor of the coach that is making my personal belongings swing back and forth as in an endless ballet. I thank her and we exchange a smile and I understand that hers is a strong solitude that she would like to break even with the first person who comes along.

      I’ve finally found my phone: it’s my cousin from Venice who tells me that I’m going to find her outside the station waiting for me in her car.

      I answer her writing about the slight delay and I put my phone back, this time in the pocket of the bag so that I’ll easily find it the next time.

      As soon as my ‘new friend’ realises I’ve finished to fight with technology, she starts to speak to me: ‘I also always happen to drop

      things from my bag’. At her first words, her husband jumps on his seat almost surprised to hear his wife’s voice coming out her vocal chords.

      Then, in the same way, he goes back to play with his phone looking a little bothered by our chat. We continue to make small talk until our arrival in Venice without noticing that the sun has already given its place to darkness and we even exchange our contacts to see each other again, maybe for a pizza, once we’ll be back in Rome. They live not too far from me and, being childless, it could be funny to organize a ladies night, thing that she has never done since she married the love of her life five years ago. I don’t know if I’ll see her again but seeing her enthusiasm only at the idea of our pizza gave me hope about her taking her life into her hands again and leaving a too boring routine. And who knows who sent her that message so intriguing to make her cry. Maybe one day I’ll be able to ask her, satiating my endless curiosity. We say goodbye as we were great friends, with him only a cold ‘hi’ instead, and then we went separate ways.