The smoke washes over and past as the wind
from the campagna drifts into the car,
creating a last-summer feeling.
Italian pop blasts from the speakers, and my 
cousin’s boyfriend drives the
Fiat a pattern only evident to him of 
speeding up and slowing down with the
ebbs and flows of conversation. I’m catching bits of the dialogue, my 
dad taught me how to catch flies just as quickly, 
moving your hands up as they fly to an impossible freedom.
Sicilian, Italian, English, and whatever other Italian dialects thrown in
for humor 
mix with errant smoke and the pounding of speakers. 
I’ll add a word here and there, but my cousin and her boyfriend
change subjects too quickly,
and so when it comes up that
the bancarelle have closed for the year,
and we’ll have to travel
an extra 20 minutes to Modica, I nod and open the 
finestra a bit more, as the 
smoke is getting to my
head, making it hard to breathe.
We stop at a self-cleaning car station, and my 
cousin and I wait outside the
car while her boyfriend 
walks into the store to get coins for the 
macchina. It’ll spit foamed-up soap
and jets of water around the car, my 
cousin and I standing off to the side while her 
boyfriend takes control of cleaning the 
gas-guzzler, and I notice how much stricter gender roles are in the 
Sud of Sicilia, as opposed to the
Northwest of Oregon, the 
Northwest of the 
United States. 
After polishing the
car into a product as bright as one of the 
diamonds on my
cousin’s Gucci shoulder bag, her boyfriend drives us into the
center of town, to a gelateria, voted three times
in three years for
its excellent service and enduring dedication to buonissimo gelato.
I order ricotta and nocciola in a cono medio,
and the 
(ice cream maker? waiter? barista? icecreamist?)
prepares my €4 worth of sugar in such a way that
I have to continuously turn the cone to
avoid drippage.
We eat in silence, not of awkward young-adult behavior, but of the 
satisfaction we’re momentarily gaining from this monumental treat.
On our way to the 
mother of my 
cousin’s boyfriend’s house, 
we stop at a middle-of-the-sidewalk vending machine, and my cousin hops out to buy two packs of 
cigarettes that you can place inside
an e-cigarette and throw out the
window, pollution style.
Throughout this entire trip,
the most European thing I have seen.
The cigarette dispenser.
When we arrive, I’m greeted with double kisses
and teasing and 
shaming, because I’m too skinny and I should eat more, but I’m so beautiful, and I could be a modella,
only if I really wanted to be; I should 
think about that; forget college. 
It’s honestly a shame that with a body like mine,
I want to pursue academics.
I’m so happy I could die.
We sit out on the terrace, sipping 7-Up and espresso. 
Not together, of course.
We’re together, out on this terrace,
but those two drinks together?
No.
Peccato.
In Sicily, everything is a peccato. 
The Zataroni’s can’t come over for dinner.
Peccato.
American politics.
Peccato.
The young man who died last week in a motorcycle accident.
Peccato.
We say this, give our condolences, and look how quickly we move on.
We are ridden of any responsibility in a word.
On the ride home, my cousin’s boyfriend
switches the car radio from Italian to American rap.
He says he likes the flow better; it’s staccato.
He says rap wasn’t made for
the flow of romance languages,
and even though he can’t understand any English,
his preference is present.
Billboards for $80 boat rides to Malta and
savings at the supermercato line the road,
and I’m stuck in the backseat, taking in the secondhand smoke.