Yo-Yo Boing!

— I guess the way they were raised. They don’t dare to take risks. And I was ready. To support him. Maybe because he was a man, he could not accept it. Will I find happiness?

— You are happy.

— I wanted him — and he was for me — we felt it. Both of us. If it happens when you’re twenty you say—maybe he feels it. But you’re not sure. But at forty, when one feels the connection, it’s for real. And for two weeks.

— He’s married?

— Divorced. But he didn’t dare to take another risk.

— The same with Madere.

— Why is it? There’s only today, today. We make each moment, we fill it with passion. And I know he was feeling what I was feeling. I want to be loved. Oh, be for real. If you’re looking for a thrill. Just let me know. I don’t want love to hurt, hurt me again. No, nevermore, anymore.

— Let’s dance. I loved that story of your childhood when you were sent to America from Croatia.

— I’m not going to help you.

— Did I ask for your help? You, you are stealing my muse. If she knows I’m watching her, she won’t act natural.

— Be for real, baby.

— That is what I say, Suzy. They are not for real. They are staring at me, and they don’t want me to capture your muse. I’m not stealing your muse, Suzy. I just want to seize your waves, your feelings, seizing, Suzy, your soul.

— There she goes again. Don’t let her torture you.

— I want to hear the story when you came to America by yourself and the captain of the cargo ship woke up the passengers in the middle of the night and said:

— Now throw your bottles!

— It was pitch black except for the distant lights of Messina, and it was dead quiet except for the splash of the bottles. It must be in a movie someday. If I could find the right person to write the script. It is more than an image. It is a metaphor.

— For what.

— For something.

— Tess can write the script. But I’m sorry, it has to be in my book first because I already have Wassila, Mona, and Makiko’s childhood episodes — and I need Suzy’s.

— Suzy, Suzy — the dog in Short Cuts. I edited the soundtrack. Suzy and the policeman and the children.

— Suzy, I think and I talk of my mother, the way they talked of Suzy. My mother is coming. Stop. My mother has to cross the street. My mother is here. Isn’t she beautiful. She’s my mother. She’s Suzy.

— Be for real.

— And the bakery. Why did they turn to the baker for comfort when their boy died? And he offers them a muffin. And when they say they want to see his birthday cake, he had already thrown it out. Maybe he threw it out the moment he died. We’ll never know.

— It is depressing.

— No, it’s real. If you’re looking for a rainbow, you know there’s gonna be some rain. Be for real. The captain said:

— Now, throw your bottles!

It was the last time we would see land. We were in deep waters. Inside the bottle sealed with a cork — a letter to my mother — and cigarettes for the fisherman so they could put a stamp on it.

— It got there?

— My mother received the letter and keeps it to this day with my Easter bonnet.

— The truth is that we are never properly dressed.

— Especially if you are dressed in New Jersey and you are returning to Croatia. There was mother and father, waiting after a year, Easter, for the ship to disembark, and my aunt in Hoboken dressed me like a blue bunny with a basket full of marshmallow eggs to give to my brother and sister. My mother, when she saw me, took me right to the ladies room and stripped me of my bunny dress. I thought I was fashionable with lilies on my bonnet and cherries on my shoes. All costumes are ridiculous. They all show how stupid we are believing in ludicrous mannerisms, which fade away, but be for real, baby, cause I don’t wanna be hurt. I was the lead singer in a rock band when I was thirteen, The Little Stone Faces, for real, then I started bingeing and got fat because I was small, and in my country in the age of Twiggy if you’re small, you dress dainty, and I was unhappy with their idea of me, as if I always had to wear frilly skirts because I was small, here they say I’m Giulietta Masina. I started liberating myself when I came here, and I started dressing for my size, and wearing jeans, and unafraid to be myself, I liberated myself.

— Waiting for the miracle to come. Suzy, you’re carpe diem. I’m ubi-sunt. I never thought I would write an elegy about the past — my memories — lamentations — after I wrote the Inquisition of Memories—never say I’ll never say never. You’ll say it. Again and again. Never again. The revenge of realities against dreams. And my mother tells me:

— Use some imagination. Don’t exploit your brother’s death and call me a piggy bank.