Marco Timpano - Narration, Audiobook, Everyman, Travel
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
It is an imposing shopping arcade, four stories high, built in the grandiose style of the 18 sixties and still probably the most handsome shopping mall in the world, with floors of neatly pattern tile, a vaulted latticework roof of glass and steel and a couple a rising 160 feet above a rotunda where the two interior avenues intersect, it has the loftiness and echoing hush and even the shape of a cathedral. But with something of the commercial grandness of, ah, 19th century railway station thrown in, every shopping center should be like this. Needing an afternoon infusion of caffeine, I took a table outside one of the three or four rather elegant cafes scattered among the shops. It was one of those typically European places where they have several tables and one hopelessly overworked waiter who dashes around trying to deliver orders, clear tables and take money all at the same time. And who has the cheerful? Nothing's too much trouble attitude that you'd expect from someone in such an interesting and remunerative line of work. You don't get a second chance in these places. I was staring at nothing in particular, chin in hand, idly wondering if Ornella Muti had ever done any mud wrestling. When it filtered through my consciousness that the waiter was making one of his rare visits to my vicinity and had actually said to me Prego, I looked up, Owen expressed. I said, But he was gone already, and I realized that I was never going to get this close to him again unless I married his sister. So with a sigh of resignation, I pulled myself up, moved sideways to the tiny gaps between the tables, grimace seen apologetically as I caused the succession of unforgiving people to slop their coffee or plunge their noses into their gateau and returned un refreshed to the streets after southern Italy, Milan seemed hardly Italian at all. People walk quickly and purposefully swinging shopping bags with names like Gucci and Ferragamo on them. They didn't dawdle over espressos and tuck into mountainous plates of pasta napkins bid into their callers. They didn't engage in passionate arguments about trivialities. They took meetings. They made deals. They talked into car phones. They drove with restraint, mostly in BMWs and Porsches, and parked neatly. They all looked as if they had just stepped off the covers of Vogue or G. Q. It was like an outpost of Southern California hard enough to take in Southern California. This was Italy. I wanted pandemonium and street life. People in sleeveless vests on front, stoops washing, hanging across the streets, guys selling things from pushcarts Ornella Muti and Giancarlo Giannini zipping past on a Vespa. Most of all, I wanted a cup of coffee.