Carla’s Tale - Part 2
Before reading this, please make sure you have read the first “Carla’s Tale”.
Carla just sat there, looking on in horror, as her rosy red apple flew through the air and landed with a loud splash into the harbour, and at the same time her tray of fresh strawberries erupted like a volcano from her lap with each one of the luscious fruits choosing its own trajectory, either to follow the apple or to splat like a burst balloon on the hard ground. To complete the floor show, her beautiful soft peach gently rolled off her lap onto the ground, and ever so gently found the lowest possible route culminating in a drainage channel leading directly to the sheer drop into the harbour. She made a last minute dive to retrieve it, but lost sight of it as it disappeared in slow motion over the edge, closely followed by the orange juice escaping from the can which was rolling on its side. The peach’s fate was confirmed when she heard the splash as it hit the water. “Merde!” she shouted at the top of her voice, throwing her arms into the air. She quickly followed it with “Bordel de merde!” At the same time, her glasses jumped down her nose and were in grave danger of following the fruit until she made a wild swipe at them and ended up knocking them off. “Merde!” she shouted again, even louder this time. Now she was in real trouble. Her heart was beating hard and she tried to console herself. First thing she did was look all around her for her glasses, but all she could see was the blurred tarmac and slight hints of fuzzy coloured areas at various intervals around her, including what she thought must have been the little basket the strawberries were once in. No glasses. She started to get really scared now. She was in big trouble. She also knew that since wearing her grandma’s strong glasses her eyesight had got so used to them that she was now totally blind without them. She had to get right down on her hands and knees and comb every part of the ground for them. She HAD to find them. She covered every inch of the ground all around her to no avail. She was beaten. She started to cry. Some passers-by looked at her, but no one offered to help her. She was shaking, so she went into her bum bag for her cigarettes took one from the pack with it almost up against her face, and lit it. She took two drags in a row and inhaled deeply. Immediately she began to feel better. Anger started to take over, and she tried to aim a kick at what she thought was the little empty strawberry basket, to send it into the water beside the rest of the fruit. Then she thought, ‘I might as well salvage something from this disaster. It’s a dainty little basket. Might make a good jewellery basket, if I ever get any jewellery!’ She bent down to pick it up, and there inside it were her glasses. “Mon Dieu,” she shrieked, and started to laugh. She immediately put the glasses on and was back to normal.
She was just about to leave when she glanced up at the boat she was sitting next to. It was moored stern-in to the jetty and she read the name on its transom - Gravità Z-Ro, Sanremo. Some people were lunching on the aft deck, and one of them, a very good looking man, had left the party and had been leaning on the rail watching all of Carla’s mishaps. When she looked up at him, he smiled. “OK,” she shouted, “Laugh, why don’t you. I’m sure you found that very funny. Go on, laugh at other people’s misfortunes, sitting up there on your big posh yacht, you think you’re smart don’t you?” The man seemed taken aback by her outburst, and he made towards the gangway from the boat and walked down it towards her. Carla got frightened and started to hurry away. He shouted after her, “Please, wait, please. I was not laughing at you. Please let me explain. Stop. Don’t go.” She stopped, turned around, and found she was facing the most handsome, amazing man she had ever seen. She also thought he looked a bit familiar. He looked straight at her and thought she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, and he knew she was the girl he had seen before in the mini-market at Sainte-Maxime when he was over there the other day getting supplies for the boat’s larder. He never forgot girls with glasses. He was in the business. He was the first to speak. “Please let me explain. I am Lorenzo Agastini, and I saw you a few days ago at the mini-market in Sainte-Maxime. You served me. I didn’t know if you were the same girl as you now have different glasses on, and if I may say so, very beautiful ones. Have you heard of Gravità Z-Ro?” Carla thought for a second, then said, “Yes. I have seen advertisements for their glasses in glossy magazines.” Lorenzo continued, “Good. It is my company. I own it. We are the premium manufacturers of superlative Italian designer eyewear in the world. We are at the forefront of contemporary fashion. I was just so delighted to see you sitting beside my yacht and then realising it was really you from the shop. Then when I saw your glasses, I couldn’t believe it. These 1970s drop temple styles are going to come back, and we are currently designing a new range for the next season. How did you manage to get them ahead of our plan?” Carla didn’t want to tell him the truth, so she just said, “Oh, they are a vintage pair I acquired, and I just got my prescription put in them.” “You are very bold,” Lorenzo said, “and can I say they suit you exceptionally well. Absolutely beautiful! But then so are you.” Carla felt herself turn red. She wasn’t used to compliments from magnificent men like this. Then Lorenzo said, “I see you were having a little trouble with your lunch? Would you like to come aboard and share some of ours? We have plenty to go round. Please,” and he ushered her towards the gangway.
They walked aboard the yacht, and Carla was absolutely stunned by the grandure of it all. Every surface was shiny pristine white, and all of the metalwork was sparkling. She took a glass of champagne offered by a steward, and then sat down to a lunch of smoked salmon, caviar, canapes, and even fresh fruit which Lorenzo made a big joke about, and then had to apologise when Carla scowled at him. They talked about anything and everything. Lorenzo told her how he had inherited his father’s opticians business, and then built it up into the top designer brand of the eyewear market. He showed her around the yacht which he described as his ‘plaything’, and then went into great detail about the helicpter he was negotiating to purchase from a millionaire in Cannes who had fallen on hard times. This was the purpose of this trip.
They returned to the sun deck, and Lorenzo indicated a lounger for Carla to sit on. He sat beside her, never taking his eyes off her glasses, and offered her a cigarette from a gold cigarette box on the small table. She accepted, and he took one also. He lit hers first with a gold lighter also from the table, and she noticed it was a St Moritz menthol cigarette, one of her absolute favourites but much too expensive for her to ever buy regularly. She treated herself on the odd occasion. As they sat back to relax in the sun, Lorenzo launched into a long speech.
“My dear, I am completely enthralled by your glasses. I realise your eyesight must be absolutely terrible, and I sympathise to an extent, but I have to admit to being hugely envious for you to be able to wear such outstandingly beautiful eyewear with such a strong prescription. You make a very bold statement which says – This is me, this is how I am, accept me or die!” With the last word, he shaped his hand like a gun, pointed it at her and went ‘Pouffff!’ “You, my dear, are making the statement that we want to encompass for next year’s marketing strategy. Have you ever noticed in magazine advertisements for eyewear that all the models are always wearing glasses with either plain glass lenses or no lenses at all? It’s true. Also on any TV programmes where the characters wear glasses, they are all fakes. Plain glass lenses. That really bugs me and gets my back up. How could they deem to insult genuine glasses wearers such as yourself? It’s a travesty of , of…. of….” he searched for the right word. “Truth?” Carla offered. “Yes. Yes, truth,” Lorenzo continued. “For our next campaign, we are going to show girls modeling our frames wearing their own prescriptions, and the stronger the better. Exactly like you. There will be myopic, hyperopic, astigmatic and even girls with a squint eye – I forget the name for it – but it will all be real. We even intend to feature lesbian couples in our advertisements, and there are tentative plans to show amputee girls and girls in wheelchairs modelling our products. Another feature will be girls who genuinely wear hearing aids showing them off along with our glasses. We are also entering into the hearing aid market next year with some very bold styles. It’s never been done before, and I think we will take the market by storm.”
And then he made an extraordinary proposition to Carla.
To be continued.