I told Susan that Keats was buried in Rome. It was a line of course, factually true but nevertheless a line. She was already captivated by what she supposed was the romance of the eternal city when I met her getting off the train from Naples at Termini Station on a sweet spring morning and I thought something to do with poets would help her fall for me; it seemed to work. Over and over she made much of Keats’ name with her soft, pouting lips as we had coffee in the station bar, turning it this way and that. She quoted him wrongly and got him mixed up with Shelley but I let her go on just to hear her voice and see her eyes moisten and her mouth move around words that excited her.

“We must go see his grave,” she declared with a firmer, less attractive mouth. I wanted to tell her that she should say “go to see’, not ‘go see’, but I knew that would be rude and might kill off the prospect of an interesting few days in Rome with a pretty American girl so I said nothing, but I think I may have said it to myself. I know I did, and it bothered me.

Image by miss vichan via Flickr

Instead of correcting Susan with the pretty mouth I tried to edge my plan along a bit. “And take flowers”, I said as a suggestion, and her mouth went soft and wet again. I was good, better than I thought I would be.

“Roses. We’ll take roses”, Susan affirmed. Now she was back to her determined, businesslike manner with dry, hard lips. I played along hoping to find the key to keeping her lips soft and red. “And we will go at sunset. Tonight.”

 It had been decided and declared and there was to be no more discussion so I bought roses from a flower seller near the restaurant we had lunch at. It was off the Piazza Navona. Ecco Bomba it was called. We ate in the room out the back and I got to impress her a bit with my Italian.