Like Hurricanes

21. Oh, Noemi Defelice

With a guitar on my back and a bottle of champagne in my hand, I looked like an indie musician who refused to get paid for his records. And Noemi, with her wild hair and yellow dress, looked like a Parisian artist from the '80s. We were whimsical, a little drunk, effervescent like the bobbles of champagne.

And then it poured.

The rain was sudden, as if someone put a bucket of water upon our heads upside down. Noemi grabbed my hand, instinctively, with no hesitation, and we crossed the street and turned the corner and then ran and ran and ran. No one had an umbrella. It was chaotic. It was beautiful. All I could feel was the rain banging on my skin and the champagne in my stomach and my wet socks. And all the noises created this upbeat song. Noemi's laughter and the thunder and my heartbeat. The drops of water dancing on the asphalt and the cars beeping and the people yelling. And the sun coming out again. I never knew that sun could make a sound, but in that moment I swear I could hear it sing.

We went on a rooftop.

The building was probably a condominium or maybe some kind of office. We didn't care. The pavement was still wet, but the view was majestic. Noemi put her backpack on the ground and sat on the edge, with her legs bouncing in the air.

''I thought I was the rebel one,'' I said as I sat next to her.

She smiled and out of nowhere offered me a piece of baguette that she just happened to find in her backpack. As she munched the other half, she looked at the grey city now conquered by the rainbow. There was something about the way she looked at it. Something peculiar that I couldn't really understand. It felt like her eyes went beyond the simple image, beyond the pastel palaces and the spiky towers of Duomo, the traffic lights and the shopping bags. I knew her by now, and I knew what these moments meant. Moments of silence, in which the absence of words communicated much more than their presence ever could. Moments where she lost herself in her surroundings, while I lost myself in her.

''Why is no one looking at the sky?'' she whispered.

She asked it genuinely, as though she thought there was an answer. As though she needed one.

"I don't know,'' I said, ''why should they? I don't think they really care."

She turned her head and looked at me, at first surprised and then with slightly furrowed eyebrows. "I just... I think we should pay more attention. I think we should appreciate it from time to time. This sun, for example, is just a giant yellow ball. Nothing special, right? But then if you think about it, if you imagine Aristotle and Da Vinci looking at the same sky that we're now looking at, centuries apart and yet... I think they looked up quite often. I think they cared."

I nodded my head, unsure. The little dots of wet people rushingly crossed the street. They all had somewhere to be, I hoped they had someone to come home to. I hoped they looked at the sky sometimes, I hoped they could see it the way she did. Perhaps that was too much to ask, because sometimes even I couldn't really understand her way of thinking. But I loved trying to. And I loved listening to her and just being a participant of what was happening in her thoughts. Her thoughts were a wonderful place, that's something I was sure of.

Noemi sighed and smiled faintly. ''My dad once said, if you want to love anything with all of your heart, look at the sky and fall in love with it. Don't take it for granted, never get tired of it. Everything is temporary and that's the beauty of it.''

She paused, and now her words seemed to have a different weight. The sky was brighter, but still grey, and a lonely cloud travelled slowly across its horizon. Noemi's eyes reflected its melancholy.