In a Sentimental Mood

A hot summer day in Italy gets disturbed when Duke Ellington dies.

1974

There was a fly resting on my chest, rubbing its dirty, stick-like arms together. It was too humid, and I was too bored to do anything about it. The fly wasn’t doing me any harm; how evil would it be if I had shooed it away?

I was lounging by the pool. I’d been doing that for over a month now– a whole month of nothing but sitting in the sun. Every now and then, we’d go into town and get drunk with the locals, or visit a bigger city and play the role of a tourist. 

“Until yesterday I thought I was a lesbian. Turns out, I was just afraid of men.” 

Cicadas chirped in the background. The garden smelled like freshly cut grass and chlorine. When I didn’t respond, Cathy cleared her throat. 

“How interesting.”

She sighed and turned toward me. “Are you even listening?” she asked, lowering her sunglasses and cocking her head. 

“No, I wasn't,” I admitted. “What did you say?”

“Yesterday, on acid,” she paused. “I realized I’m not a lesbian.” 

“Acid?” 

“What’s going on with you, Michael? Acid. A-C-I-D–” I still wasn’t looking at her, but I was sure she was frowning at me. “—I realized that I’m not a lesbian.” 

“When did you take acid?”

“Yesterday in the early morning.”

“When did you think you were a lesbian?”

“Before yesterday. Then I had sex with Marc,” she paused. “Does that offend you?”

I opened my eyes and looked at her. “Why would it offend me?”

“Because of our history,” she said. 

I met Marc in a bar in Paris. Marc had drugs. He had money when I got cut off. Then, when we met Cathy and Sofia, he proposed we’d all go to his estate in Italy.  

I liked Marc. I liked Cathy Sofia. I also liked Italy. I liked sitting by a pool.

My mouth was dry and I longed for a drink. A dive into the pool, cool water and chlorine filling my nostrils. A full reset. I’d never come up. 

“Michael.” Cathy was frowning.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I sat up on the sunbed and patted the space next to me. “Come on,” I said. “Tell me about your acid realization. What was I doing on acid?”

Cathy sat down beside me. She was wearing a dark blue bikini with an orange outline. She had one of those halter tops that didn’t reveal any cleavage. 

“You were in your room the whole time,” she said. “Maybe you just passed out. That’s why you don’t remember anything.”

I nodded. “That must be it.” 

The fly, who had left the second I moved, was now resting on my left arm. It tickled. I wanted to go to the kitchen and get more wine, but I felt bad about swatting it away. The sun was warming my skin. I should’ve sought shade by then and I didn’t. Any second longer and I’d turn into a crab. 

“Could you get a bottle of wine?” I asked Cathy. “Red.”

“I’m not the maid,” she scoffed. “Get Anna to do it.” Cathy looked around. Marc was asleep on a float in the pool. The gardener was watering the hedges, and Sofia walked out from the house with a cigarette between her lips. There was a towel wrapped around her body. 

“Could you grab a bottle of wine?” Cathy shouted at Sofia. “Red.” 

“I can get it myself,” I muttered. The fly had flown away. Cathy shot me a look, but Sofia had already turned around and marched back inside. 

“I thought Marc had a thing for Sofia,” I said, loud enough for him to hear. I was certain he was asleep, and couldn’t care if he wasn’t. 

“He asked her to come back to Paris, and she said no,” Cathy said. “Broke his heart into two.” She paused and smiled, touching my arm. “You know, he asked me to come and I said yes.” 

“You know what bugs me,” I said. “You said you were a lesbian until you had sex with Marc. We had sex. Did I turn you into a lesbian?”

“How did you know you were a lesbian?” I asdded. “Have you ever even been with a woman before?”

Cathy’s face turned red. She looked away. “I’m not answering that.” 

“Who’s better in bed? Me or Marc?” I looked at him. He was still sleeping. The water had pushed him to the left side of the pool, further away from us. 

“I’m not answering that,” she repeated. 

I smiled. “You can’t tell that to Marc’s parents now, can you?” Cathy slapped me playfully. I shook my head. “I don’t care. Marc must be better in bed–just look at him!”

Marc woke up. He lifted his head from the floaty, sunglasses askew. His brows furrowed together as he gave us a look of pure confusion. I waved my hand away at him, a sign that he could doze off again. 

“I was on acid yesterday,” she said. “Sex on acid is like having sex with God.”

“I don’t believe in God.” 

“It’s like making love, then,” she said. 

Sofia returned with a bottle of wine and handed it to me. 

“Grazie,” I said. 

“Prego.” 

Nobody said anything. Sofia squinted her eyes at the pool–or maybe the sun beyond it. She put a hand on her hip and parted her lips to speak. Anna’s voice bellowed from behind the gate.

“Signorina!” I heard the clumsy sound of metal and the turning of screws. Anna walked in. Her hand was clutching onto a newspaper. Per Marc’s request, Sofia asked Anna to get an American newspaper every day. I never read the news. Marc did, and Cathy liked to pretend she did. 

Sofia made her way over. She was the only one who spoke Italian, and while a guest at the estate, had turned into a translator of sorts. Her eyes scanned the news, then her mouth fell open. 

“Michael,” she said, handing me the newspaper. “You must read this!”

“What is it?”

“He died.” Sofia walked back toward us. She handed me the newspaper.

My eyes darted left and right until I saw: Jazz Great Duke Ellington Dies at 75. 

I slammed the paper down. My heart stopped. “My life is over.”

“Who died?” Marc said, once more woken up from his slumber. 

Cathy took the newspaper, squinting her eyes as she read, “Duke Ellington–” she handed the paper back to me. “–Right, you mentioned that you play the piano.” 

“This isn’t about me,” I said. “How could he die?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

I stood up from the sunbed. “Do we have a record here? One of Ellington’s?”

Cathy shook her head. 

“I’ll go get one myself,” I said. “Tomorrow.” I didn’t know how late it was. All I could think of was a sick, old Ellington in bed. I needed to know what his last words were. I needed to find his grave once he got buried and die right beside it. 

“Where are you going?” asked Cathy. 

---

Later that day, I lay in my room, staring at the white ceiling, speckled with dead mosquitoes. Duke Ellington was just as dead as them, maybe even more. I closed my eyes and pictured him again, this time as a rotten corpse. Was this mourning? I tried to cry; nothing came out. 

Light footsteps approached. It could only be Cathy– she followed me every time I wanted to be alone. Even now, after confessing she had betrayed me by sleeping with Marc. 

“What are you doing, Michael?”

“I’m trying to cry.”

“Because Ellington is dead?” She sat down on the bed. “He died a week ago. Anna got the wrong newspaper delivered. It’s June first, he died May twenty-fourth.”

Her hair was wet from a midday swim. Drops of pool water landed on my chest. 

“June?” I said. The last date I checked, it was early May. 

“Don’t be so upset,” she said. “He was old–way past his prime.” 

“You should get to live forever if you make it past your prime.” I sighed and took a cigarette from the box beside the bed. “Do you think we can get a piano?”

“Here?” Cathy looked at me like I was crazy. “You’d have to ask Marc.”

“He’s renting the place, isn’t he? I mean, his parents are.” 

“You don’t have money for a piano,” said Cathy. She laid down on her back beside me, taking my cigarette. 

“I could pay him back,” I said. “Once I go to America I’ll have money again.” 

“Why would you want to rent a piano?”

“I never said anything about renting,” I said. “I meant to buy one. I’m sure some old lady in town has a piano they could spare.”

“You’re crazy.” Cathy looked at me and smiled. She put her hand through my hair and kissed me. 

I closed my eyes. “What about Marc?” I asked. “Are you going to tell him I betrayed you after he betrayed me? An act of revenge?” 

“He doesn’t mind,” she said. 

“Maybe I want to leave this place–” I said in between kisses. “–I’ve always dreamt of playing in jazz bars. We can live off scraps, like true artists.”

She shot me a funny look. 

“I mean it,” I said. “Live in some shabby apartment in downtown Paris, get paid in drinks and tips.” 

“Sounds like a dream.”

“This doesn’t bore you?” 

She put her arms around my neck. “I’ve never been more relaxed.” 

---

I awoke in the middle of night because of a mosquito buzzing next to my ear. The cicadas were even louder, as if nature itself wanted to keep me awake. I’d dreamed that Cathy was burying me alive. I tasted dirt in my mouth. 

Beside me, Cathy was asleep. I watched her stomach rise and fall before slipping out of bed. I wanted to sit by the pool, look at the moon. 

The garden looked like a haunted graveyard, cooler now than in the daytime. A soft breeze brushed my arms. I sat by the pool, dipping my feet into the water. I looked up at the sky–no moon, just stars. 

“This is depressing,” I said out loud. I got up from beside the pool and took the pack of cigarettes lying on a table by the sunbed. 

“Depressing,” I repeated. 

I said it another time, syllable per syllable. Who needs stars without a moon? They all look the same, white dots on a black canvas. Dead mosquitoes on a wall. 

“Deprimente,” said Sofia. She sat down next to me on the sunbed. I could barely see her in the dark of night. “Can’t sleep?”

“I dreamed Cathy was burying me alive,” I said.

“I’ll go with you into town–” Sofia said. “–To buy the Ellington records. I’m sorry for your loss.” Her tone was neither serious nor mocking.

“He was the best friend I never met.” I propped my elbows on my legs. “I want to get out of here. I’m supposed to be in mourning–I haven’t shed a single tear.”

We could barely see each other in the black of night. Not even the pool was lit.  Every now and then I caught a glimpse of skin or the white of her eyes. 

I stood up and lit a cigarette. My legs had become restless. I needed to walk, but I had nowhere to go.

“I’m nineteen, I could die any minute with nothing to show for,” I said. 

Sofia laughed. “I could die any minute–that’s the happiest I’ve ever heard you speak.”

“I don’t think I’m afraid of death.”

Sofia stood up only to push me down on a sunbed. “Did you take Marc’s acid?”

“Clearly not.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Will you come with me?” 

“To where?”

“Anywhere,” I said. 

“So we can feel nothing together?” Sofia laughed. “You’re strange, you know? I know plenty of Americans–they’re all loud and drunk. You, you are drunk and strange.” She stood up and kissed me on the lips, a platonic kiss. “You act like you feel nothing, did you feel that?”

“Not a thing.” My hand moved to the table in search of a glass. “I have to leave this place before Cathy buries me alive.” 

“And how do you want to get there? Car? Bicycle?” Her face lit up. “Hitchhiking! That’s what we should do.” 

“I’m serious,” I said. 

“So go,” she said. “What’s stopping you?”

I smiled. “What would be the fun in that?”

The sun had started to rise and I could see her face fully now. Her hair was pulled behind her ears and her cheeks were red, sunburned. Anna walked into the garden and greeted us. “Signorina,” she said to Sofia. “Signore,” she said to me. 

“Buongiorno, Anna.” Sofia smiled. They started conversing in Italian while I lit a cigarette. I looked at my left wrist; I’d forgotten I’d sold my watch months ago. “How late is it?” I asked Sofia, who then asked Anna. “Le otto,” she said. 

“Eight,” said Sofia. 

I nodded, blowing smoke in the air. “It’s too late anyway,” I said. “I can’t go anymore.”

“And why not?”

“It’s too late,” I said. 

Cathy walked outside. “Michael, where’d you go?” She paused when she saw Sofia and me together on the sunbed. 

“Would you like a cigarette?” I held one up to Cathy, who shook her head. 

“It’s morning,” she said. “I just brushed my teeth.”

“How about a drink?”

She looked at me, deadpan. “No, thank you.” 

I shook my head and stood up. “Well, I’m getting myself a drink—” I looked at Sofia, who shook her head. “More for me, then.”

---

Anna was in the kitchen slicing fruit into a bowl. Cathy must’ve asked her for it. I breezed past her and opened the wine cabinet. I could feel her stare on me. I ignored it. 

“It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?” I asked her. 

"Sì, signore,” she said.

Marc entered the kitchen. He was wearing green swimming trunks and had a towel draped over his shoulder. He saluted me on his way to the garden. 

From the window I could see Marc march up to the pool. Shoulders slacked, he dropped his towel on a sunbed and dove straight in. I watched the ripples in the pool, wishing they’d last longer than they ever do. 

Swimming pool in Benidorm, Costa Blanca, Hubertine Heijermans (1996)