RED: A Love Story [Featured List]

Part 1: White 7 - Tropical rain

It was very tempting to confide to Valentina that she had encountered the literature teacher at the Lost Paradise. Yet Marisa resisted it. She was used to telling everything to her friend, but this time she had scruples. In the way Marco had looked at her, Marisa captured something that she knew too well herself. Something that should be respected: susceptibility. The next day in class, every time the two exchanged a look, it was with complicity for one shared secret and curiosity for another unrevealed. Marisa tried to guess what hidden desire had led Marco to the store. He speculated the same about her.

They were reaching the end of October, and that Tuesday was a typical springtime rainy day, still irresolute amid the last breath of winter and the neighboring summer showers. After classes, as Marco drove along the street, he spotted a silhouette in a lilac dress walking on the sidewalk with bowed head. He rolled down the window pane, and thick drops spattered on his face when he called Marisa to offer a ride. She rushed to the Lexus in a mess of notebooks, handbag and clothes clinging to her body. Her relief for escaping the rain lasted just the time to become uneasiness: in the confines of the car, the window panes now grew foggy with steam and tension.

After the encounter at the Lost Paradise, after the veiled looks in the classroom, there they were squeezed in a metal box. Just the two of them. Suddenly embarrassed. They talked about the weather and Marisa complained that she had forgotten to bring an umbrella precisely that day. Marco turned the heat on and she muttered a thank you. The conversation dimmed out. The rain pattered on the car's silver-gray hood. Traffic dragged painfully.

"Did you do the vocational test?" Marco asked after a few minutes.

"No, I... forgot..."

It dawned on Marisa the extent of the apathy hidden inside her. In truth, she no longer cared about college or the future whatsoever. Since her father's death, she had already quit dance classes and the choir. As she couldn't quit school altogether, Marisa numbed herself with studying to forget life was meaningless. Her soul perched on a plum tree like Pierre Anthon, silently shouting that nothing mattered. Life was a parade of platitudes, wake up in the morning and brush teeth, say hi to the porter upon leaving building and upon returning to it, rejoice with a good piece of writing and despair with trigonometry equations, long for the future, get disappointed with the future, have meals, dress up for the weekend, sleep and wake up again, until the day waking up was no longer an option. And in the meantime, everything a person loved the most was diming out, until all that remained were empty hands.

The suffocated pain rose to surface. First a contraction in the chest, then the jolt in the throat and a burning sting in the eyes. She was there again. For the first time. Walking with her mother on the path paved with cement and dry leaves. They stop before a rectangle of fresh grass with a black granite tombstone. She reads in the inscription what she refuses to accept. The name and the dates. So that's it. From an entire life, all that's left. She'll never see her father again. Never again. The sky darkens, the pine trees bow in the wind, and the horns of cars on the street come from afar—from a world to which she no longer belongs. The mother hugs her in silence, bleakly. Marisa cries. She looks at the sad saints watching the graves and promising eternal bliss. She's angry. Angry at life for robbing her of a most loved one and then continuing without him, angry at the father who had left her behind, angry at herself for not being able to save him. Angry. She swears not to shed another tear.

She almost kept her word.

Marco grew disconcerted when he saw her wipe away a tortuous teardrop on her face. He tightened his grip on the wheel as he glanced sideways at Marisa. Better to keep quiet so not to make her feel uneasy. She was biting her lip, restraining herself. He relaxed... but soon she sobbed and that tear evolved to a strident weeping. Marco parked in the first available space.