The Last Party

Walking along the streets of Corso Venezia, Chiara remembers cycling down these lanes to work in her Uncle’s Pasticcino bakery. She remembers it so vividly that she can almost see her younger self pushing past her now, the bicycle bell ringing frantically, swooshing past the flower stall opposite the Montanelli gardens, where Chiara had just bought a giant bouquet of azalea and jasmine. She reminisces how her canvas plimsoles felt worn to the last layer, pressing into the bicycle pedals that hung to the bike like they were strung by a fine fishing wire. Chiara snaps herself out of her day dream and catches a glimpse of the Prada Spazzolatos that are now on her feet, and how her hair is cut short and sleek, like most women in 1997. The Milanese city sun reflects the light straight back up to space, rather than the tangled locks with the sun-bleached highlights she used to have.

She has these moments often, nostalgic over how much she used to wish for the life she darts about in now. If that little girl she just envisioned was real, she would of placed her hand on her shoulder to stop her racing through the streets and say “finché c’é vita c’é speranza” meaning “where there is life, there is hope.” She reaches the seven-floor townhouse, moving her sunglasses to her brow, she simultaneously inhales to enter back into her life. As she steps out of the lift she doesn’t say ‘hello’ because she dreads the conversation.

“I don’t know why you insist on doing the housekeepers’ jobs.”

“To feel alive” she mutters to herself.

“I had a headache, I thought having a walk through the sunny streets might help” she says with mustered up positivity to Matthew, who hasn’t once glanced up from his newspaper.

Matthew is an American stock broker who Chiara met in the prime of her life. She was twenty-two and dancing in Plastic, dying to see someone like Freddie Mercury, when Chiara caught Matthew’s eye instead. Chiara now admits to herself that she doesn’t love Matthew as much as she expected to. You would get married if you were Chiara, and someone like Matthew took a shine. All of Chiara’s friends at the time said she was lucky, she wouldn’t have any idea what they would think now.

Chiara moved through the house slowly like she always did, to pass the time. The smaller living room was Chiara’s favourite place in the house. She loved it because it wasn’t a room where she would have to eat food that had been cooked for her, it wasn’t a room where she had to perform for her husband. It was a room she could be herself in, a place she could let her imagination run wild. Fiction would spill out of her mind, filling up the room like a swimming pool, making her feel claustrophobic in all the chaos. She missed that feeling so dearly. Entering the room she slips off her sling-backs and falls dramatically, as if she has been shot, back into the midnight nappa armchair. The chair was so deep that it could hold Chiara’s long, gangly legs if they were crossed like a child’s. Momentarily shutting her eyes, finger to temple as if to nurse the headache she lied to Matthew about. When she lifts her tired lids once more she sees all the wonderful ornaments and objects of life that she decorated this room with. All of these otherwise pointless objects made her imagination feel alive, yet with everything of such expensive taste she often felt wasteful. But what else was she to do all day? When she married Matthew she had stopped working at the bakery and he gave her an allowance of twenty-thousand dollars every quarter.

The cumbersome TV fixed in an overly large unit was where he likes to watch AC Milano play football and scream abuse, and celebrations. Chiara often wondered what he would think if she screamed and teared about the house like that. She watches old Sophia Loren films, the ones that she has watched since she was that little girl working in the bakery, the ones that she will watch until the day she dies. They have one of those floor to ceiling CD racks, too. A giant stack of an eclectic mix, ‘his and hers’, not because it was idyllic, because their music tastes were from different planets.

At the thought of the two separate, yet legally bound lives they lived, Chiara’s coffee-coloured, cartoon eyes sunk towards the floor, meeting the low, glass-topped coffee table on the way down. Leaning forward, peeling her weight from the back of the armchair, she pushes the magazine clippings of things that have inspired her around the glass, the other hand holding her scrunched up face like a child when bored. Matthew hated how the coffee table was always cluttered with her chaos. Always complaining that this one tiny patched was owned by what she thought was beauty and creation and the wonders of life. Chiara would never respond when Matthew complained about things like this, she would sit there like a child being disciplined. Although she would always think to herself “well, you’d hate to step inside my mind then, and what a terrible shame that would be.”

Staring through the pages of Vogue and of women throwing their heads back in laughter, holding crystal chandeliers, her eyes jumped off the floor, as did her body, her mood and her soul. She had forgotten they were having a party tonight! Pushing herself out of the armchair with so much strength, she almost left the ground. She pushed her glossy black hair away and exhaled her face into a new shape that looked brand new.

She knew what this would look like if someone were to be watching her life. One moment sulking, the next elated at the thought of a party, utterly ridiculous for a thirty-one year old woman. “How spoilt” they would say. Yet Chiara doesn’t let those demons ruin her life further, because out of all the things she despises and dreads, this is the one thing that Chiara only ever dreamt about. That little black notebook you would have seen hanging out of the girl on the bicycle’s parcel bag was her lifeline. Chiara has learnt to live life in her imagination when she finds herself in a place she doesn’t want to be. The tatty notebook is the book she remembers writing in forever, she still writes her magical stories in it now. Of course, it’s not the same notebook but Chiara always replaces a full one with a new one from the small leather stationary shop close by, always choosing black. She loves how black is the least magical colour, yet when she wrote into it, the words would dance off the page around her head, an illusion keeping her cosy. The money wasn’t why she married Matthew, but after he started giving her such large sums every quarter she thought what better use was there for it, than to use it to turn those fairytales and myths into real life.

Whisking around the heights and the lengths of their home, Chiara felt as though her feet weren’t even touching the ground, like an angel. Preparing for parties was one of the only times that she liked the maids and the chefs to work, it not longer felt bigotry but more like she was one of them, one of the little maids, and together they were a team. Although it would be wildly inappropriate to ask them to stay later and enjoy the party, she wishes she could. All of Matthew’s espresso cups and pint glasses were to be removed and replaced with the crystal champagne flutes, and whiskey glasses that had diamonds sprinkled and the bottoms of them. Chiara held one of the diamond glasses up to the light and grinned from ear to ear as if she had been kissed for the first time, blushing thinking of the fine gentleman who drinks from this later, the diamonds will be so well paired to the diamond’s on his date’s choker. Matthew places his hand onto Chiara’s shoulder, her face instantly drains of the peach blush and stiffens back to it’s usual shape.

“Why are all of the housekeeper’s making such a fuss, Chiara?”

“Because we are having a party.” Raising her eyebrows and turns to carry on arranging the drink-ware.

“I fucking forgot. Do we have to? Have to fill our home with people we barely speak to and dress up like fucking Barbie dolls?” Ending his small outburst by throwing the newspaper down on the marble side so hard that it makes an instant slapping sound, echoing through the apartment and sending a ring through the champagne flutes.

Chiara took a breath in and exhaled her next sentence in one, long extending breath.

“These people are your friends, they all work very hard and the ones that don’t, mainly the wives, deserve a party even more. Everyone should like to see a different four walls on a Saturday night. All of your finance friends I’m sure want to see glitter rather than numbers running though their minds.”

“We spend an awful lot of money on these parties.” He urged, finding any excuse.

“We have an awful lot of money.” Chiara placed one hand on his left cheek, a kiss on the other, ending his pestering. She glided away, the long strands of her silk headscarf following her. As she suspected Matthew stood there for a moment, in surprise because Chiara never places her hands or lips on him.

By the time it was eleven’o’clock, the party was in full swing. Women stood about the house like the ornaments in Chiara’s smaller living room, carefully placed and perfect. They wore dresses made of Italian silks in camels and blacks that slid across their bodies like Roman goddesses. Chiara stood in the corner of the room observing like she did at most parties. Inhaling the laughter, enjoying the music that every set of ears were listening to in unison, the giggling as tipsy women spilt droplets of champagne from the crystal flutes, flailing around like children who have no cares. She watched as eyes met in lust, as men listened to their wives for the first time all week, and as diamond chokers were matched to diamond-encrusted glasses. It was with moments like these, when the dark clouds had lifted, when stories came true, existing in real life, that Chiara was so high, so far away from the floor that she questioned whether her life was as terrible as it seemed. As women were classily cackling at their husband’s jokes she reasoned with herself that without her life now, she would never hear those laughs, admire those dresses - if she still worked in the bakery she would only be smelling the sour milk that gathered around the coffee maker, rather than spritzes of perfume and mesmerising scent of happiness. This was the happiest Chiara had ever felt, she shut her eyes and whispered “finché c’é vita c’é speranza.”

There was a lot gossip between the neighbours in the weeks after the party. Some had heard arguing the day after everyone had left, some swore they saw her run away, some expected the worst of him and called him an animal. All they knew was that Chiara had died so suddenly, and dreadfully, in the same week Matthew had announced that he had lost a lot of money in a recent exchange, he was bankrupt. As Chiara’s heart stopped at the thought of her mind going black, no dancing words, no colourful pages, she embraced the end of her story. The last page had been turned, and the last party had been brought to life.

For all she ever believed was that “finché c’é vita c’é speranza.”