Burning the Map Read online

  Suddenly, I’m yanked toward the closing doors of the subway train.

  “Let’s go!” Kat yells. “We’re here!”

  I tumble out of the doors of the train, struggling to keep the backpack on.

  “God, Casey, you are so out of it sometimes,” Lindsey says.

  I feel like setting her hair afire, but I just mumble, “Sorry.”

  “Shit,” Lindsey says, looking at her watch. “We’ve got about a minute till the train leaves.”

  We run up the steps and into the station, our heads swiveling wildly, looking for the right track.

  “There!” I say, pointing to a track a few hundred yards away. “Number 6!”

  We all break into another run, Kat in front. She gets no farther than ten feet, though, when the large plastic bag she’s clutching gives way, spilling its contents—Vatican souvenirs wrapped in green paper, a paperback copy of Story of O, a black leather makeup bag, an errant shoe, even a pair of tired-looking Victoria’s Secrets.

  “Jesus, Kat,” Lindsey says as we bend to help her pick up the collection. “Why couldn’t you pack this crap?”

  “It wouldn’t fit!” she says, scrambling to gather it all in her arms.

  As I lean over to help the cause, the force of my overloaded backpack and the extra weight I’d acquired over the summer send me sprawling.

  “Shit!” Lindsey says. “The train’s leaving!”

  Grabbing Kat’s rank-looking undies, I push myself to my feet, and we all sprint toward Track 6, where the mustard-colored passenger train is beginning to slowly move away.

  Lindsey manages to grab the handle on the last car, pulling her tiny self onto the platform. Once inside, she yanks in Kat and her armload of junk. A few of Kat’s Vatican trinkets flit away.

  “Come on!” Lindsey yells at me, holding out her hand.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, I think, as I waddle after the train. I’m never going to make it. I’m going to be left here all alone.

  “Let’s go!” Sin yells, shaking her arm at me.

  Finally, I muster every shred of energy and heave myself upward, grabbing Sin’s hand with one of mine. She drags me in, both of us falling to the floor in a jumble of luggage and limbs. I open my eyes. Sin’s face is right below mine, so close we could kiss. I cross my eyes at her, and we burst into laughter.

  8

  The train is packed tight with other tourists, families traveling in bunches and Italian students who look bored with the whole scene. We wander from car to car like mules, carrying all of our belongings on our backs. The people who can’t find a seat have set up camp in the aisles, and we have to step over mounds of luggage, sleeping backpackers and even mothers with children.

  We’re almost to the front of the train when I spot an oasis—a car with empty spaces.

  “Scusi,” I say, sliding open the car door and smiling at an older Italian couple dressed all in black despite the heat. What is it about most Italians and their fear of cool, accommodating clothing? They refuse to wear shorts, shrugging them off as an ugly American thing.

  “No! No!” The man gestures with his hands and unleashes a torrent of rapid Italian. Using my minimal skills, I’m able to understand that they paid for the entire car ahead of time and refuse to let us share.

  “Please,” I say, assuming a beggar’s pose, my hands clasped in front of me. “Per favore.”

  “Please! Please!” echo Kat and Lindsey from behind me.

  The man continues to hold out his hands as if to block us, speaking even faster now, so that I can’t make out a word. I’m about to give up when the man’s wife nudges him aside with a sharp elbow and gestures us into the car.

  Kat sprawls on the seat across from me, her eyes shut, legs apart, her head propped up against the window. I can’t imagine how she can sleep like that, but she’s shown time and again that she can doze through just about anything. In college, when she wasn’t with a guy, she was always the one who passed out on the couch while the party raged around her.

  Lindsey sits next to Kat, apparently absorbed in her novel.

  “Good book?” I say. I’ve already exhausted my conversational possibilities with the Italian couple, asking where they’re from and explaining that we’re from Chicago. The woman looks at me every so often, and we both smile as if not sure what else to do.

  “Um-hmm.” Lindsey nods, not lifting her eyes.

  “It’s so hot in here, isn’t it?” I ask, fanning my face with my hand.

  “Yeah.” She continues reading.

  “Sì, sì!” the woman says, catching my drift, fanning her face as well. We smile again, and another uncomfortable silence follows.

  I want desperately to tell Sin about Francesco, to relive every moment. To me, an amazing experience doesn’t seem like it really happened until I can tell one of my friends. Yet at the same time, I don’t want to be the only one making the effort here.

  I turn and stare out the window. The countryside whizzes by, a blur of rolling burnt-yellow hills, vineyards with crisscrossed rows of vines, quaint stucco cottages.

  In my mind, I go over and over the details of my time with Francesco—the feel of his waist in my hands as I sat behind him on the scooter, the way he patted my neck with the napkins. I could live for years on these memories alone.

  We’ve only been gone four days, but it seems more like four weeks. Mostly, I feel far away from John. And with that reminder, the guilt comes rushing in. How can I be so cruel? John does nothing but love me, and I run off to Italy and roll around with the first guy on a scooter. What in the hell is wrong with me? Or maybe a better question is, what is wrong with us? It’s too unfair a thought, though, one he’s not here to defend against. I decide that I’ll swear Kat and Sin to secrecy and do my best to forget Francesco. It was just a small blip, nothing else.

  Think only of John, only of John, I tell myself. I squint at my watch and figure that with the time change, it’s early in the morning in Chicago. He’s probably just waking up. He’ll mix together Grape Nuts and Raisin Bran, then add banana. He’ll put on his olive suit but dress it up with one of his three hundred ties. He’ll take the 7:04 El train into the Loop, and he’ll go to work. Again.

  The problem is this—there isn’t anything particularly exciting to think about in terms of John. I try focusing out the window. We slow as we pass a small town, one with only a few dusty roads and three square buildings. A little girl of about seven stands in the doorway of one of the buildings, watching the train. She’s wearing a brown dress and has long, dark hair in a messy ponytail. It seems like she catches my eyes as the train moves past, and I imagine that we hold each other’s gaze until she fades to a tiny brown speck.

  The Italian couple prepares to leave at the next train stop, which is about an hour outside of Brindisi. They don’t speak, but while they gather their bags and suitcases, they seem to communicate by gestures and looks. It makes me think of John and me in twenty years, and I find the thought both sweet and terrifying.

  At their stop, the man glares in our direction, but the woman smiles and nods her head.

  “Grazie,” I say, thanking her again. “Grazie.”

  One of the three guys who’ve been stuck standing in the aisle for the last few hours holds the door open for the couple then sticks his face in the car. He has shocking orange hair and freckles covering every visible surface of his wiry body.

  “Hey, girls,” he says in a thick Irish brogue. “Mind if we share the car with you?” He gives us a crooked smile.

  “Of course not,” Lindsey says, deciding to speak for the first time in at least an hour. She waves at the spaces vacated by the couple.

  “Excellent, excellent. Come on, lads.” He gestures to his friends in the hall before he carries in a battered, army-green canvas bag and tosses it onto the overhead rack.

  “Johnny,” he says, extending a hand to Lindsey and me. “And this is Noel and Billy.”

  “I’m Kat,” Kat says, awakening at the sound of young males
.

  Kat is generous enough to introduce Sin and me, and we all shake hands.

  Noel is a short, stout guy with shiny blue eyes and colicky brown hair that stands out at all angles. Billy is tall and sinewy with black curly hair.

  “Hey, girls,” they both say.

  “Much thanks for the accommodations,” Billy adds. “It was a feckin’ mess out there.”

  His hair reminds me of Francesco’s, but Billy is less mysterious, all grins and quick nods of his head.

  “Where are you girls heading?” Noel asks, taking a seat and leaning forward, his short muscular forearms resting on his knees.

  “Corfu,” Kat says. “We’ve heard about someplace there called the Pink Palace.”

  All three of the Irish guys snort, making sounds of disgust.

  “Ah, the Pink Palace,” Johnny says with a dismissive wave. “It’s bloody awful. We’ve been to Greece three times before, and believe us, you don’t need to go to Corfu. The place to go is Ios.”

  “We might stop at Ios, too,” I say, “but Corfu is closer, and the Pink Palace sounds nice.” I don’t mention that we got our information from a guidebook used by Lindsey’s cousin a decade ago.

  “Nice? Nice?” Johnny, Noel and Billy are laughing now.

  “All they do is break plates off your head and feed you ouzo for breakfast. You don’t need that,” Billy says. “Come to Ios with us, girls, and we’ll show you what Greece is all about.”

  “I’m sure,” Lindsey says, mimicking his brogue. “Guinness for breakfast and shagging, right?”

  They all laugh again at her imitation, while I sit there astounded at her suddenly warm and witty personality shift.

  “Anything for you, love.” Billy holds Lindsey’s eyes a bit long, it seems.

  Lindsey’s eyes sparkle like they do on the rare occasion she’s interested in someone.

  Their intimate little moment passes as the guys describe Ios in more detail.

  “It’s a little island that has billions of pubs and clubs packed onto it, and there’s a great beach,” Noel says.

  “And we know a place to stay,” Johnny says. “It’s on a cliff overlooking the beach. And the best part is it’s cheap.”

  I don’t hear the rest of their enthusiastic description. For some reason, I’ve let Francesco out of the basement room in my head and started thinking about him again. I reach in the pocket of my shorts and pull out the card he gave me with his address on it. I wonder how many other women have the same card pasted in their scrapbooks next to his picture.

  “What do you think, Case?” Lindsey says. “Should we go to Ios with these guys?”

  Oh, now she’s speaking to me again.

  I think about it a moment. The truth is that the thought of deviating from our plan makes me anxious. These guys seem nice enough, but with them around I wonder if we’ll get the time Sin says we need to make things better between us. Still, Sin’s face is lit up like a neon beer sign. She’s so rarely hot for anyone. I suppose if she’s happy, it’ll make everything easier.

  I look at Kat. “What do you think?”

  “I’m game for anything,” she says. No surprise, really.

  “All right,” I say. “Let’s do it.”

  PART II

  IOS, GREECE

  9

  The ferry in Brindisi is monstrous, and yet they’ve managed to stuff in more passengers than there is space. We’ve already been laughed at when we asked for a sleeper cabin and learned that the rooms with cots were sold out weeks ago. Find a chair or someplace on the deck, we’re told. The Irish guys were smart enough to book ahead, and they offer to share their bunks, but the other people in their cabin refuse to let us stay, assuming, apparently, that the six of us would be having raucous sex all night if we did. We say a temporary goodbye to the guys, promising to meet them at the Ios port.

  Kat, Sin and I schlep from one level of the ship to another, struggling with our overstuffed backpacks. The inside of the ferry has a few lounge areas furnished with hideous, chartreuse-colored, faux-suede chairs. These, too, are completely occupied with travelers, most of them young, most of them sleeping, chatting or drinking beers, giving the boat the feel of an international floating college town. A bit stupid of us to choose the month of August to travel, when nearly every European citizen is off for “holiday,” but it was August or never for me because of the bar exam.

  We eventually resign ourselves to sleeping on the deck, but even that is a struggle. The floor is littered with sleeping bags and makeshift campsites. We finally locate a small patch of open space near three large metal cylinders. We look longingly at those people with plush sleeping bags while we spread out our pathetic little beach towels.

  Despite the paltry accommodations, I know I’ll have no trouble falling asleep, due to the minimal hours I logged last night. I prop a sweatshirt under my head, happy to be horizontal. The last thing I hear is Kat striking up a conversation with some German boys who look about fifteen.

  “Where you boys heading?” she asks.

  “Crete,” one replies.

  “Really?” She sounds disappointed.

  At 5:00 a.m., we find out the purpose of the metal cylinders we’ve curled up next to when these cylinders, otherwise known as steamer horns, sound off in three long, rumbling blasts, louder than anything I’ve ever heard. When they first start to boom, I have no idea what they are. I can barely remember where I am. All I know is that I’m being terrorized out of a wonderful dream where Francesco and I are kissing on a hardwood bench in one of the ubiquitous Roman churches. I bolt upright, terrified, my heart pounding almost as loudly as the horns. Lindsey sits up, too, and we stare at each other, our hands slapped over our ears, our mouths open in surprise. Kat is trying to untangle herself from the German boy who’s sharing her meager towel.

  Other than messing with the poor peasants on the deck, there seems to be no reason for the horns. We don’t dock anywhere. There’s no announcement of any kind. When the blasts are over, Kat and Lindsey slump back on their towels, but I’m entirely too awake.

  I walk to the side of the deck, picking my way over the multitude of bodies. When I reach the railing, the sight of the sea overwhelms me. Last night, we’d boarded in darkness, and I’d almost forgotten that we were on the Adriatic. Now the sun creeps its way from the east, infusing the teal-blue water with a golden-white sheen. The water is peaceful, only a sailboat or two in the distance, no land in sight. The air smells of salt, and it’s cool with an early-morning chill.

  Kat joins me in hanging over the railing. The wind whips her chestnut hair and tangles it around her face, but this only makes her look like a model in front of a fan.

  “So,” she says, “are you going to give me the play by play?”

  “What do you mean?” But I know exactly what she means, and I’m thrilled that someone finally wants to hear about Francesco.

  She gives me a little push.

  “How’s your boy?” I say, gesturing toward the towels and her German friend.

  She shrugs. “Just some eighteen-year-old.”

  “Right in your price range, huh?”

  “Absolutely. Now tell me.”

  “Where do I start?”

  “Just tell me, damn it.”

  “You know where he took me to dinner?”

  Kat shakes her head.

  “The Colosseum.” My voice carries a pride I barely recognize.

  “What?” Her mouth drops open.

  I fill her in on the details, polishing the extraordinary ones, sanding off the more mundane, going on and on about sneaking into the Colosseum and the picnic Francesco had planned.

  “Oh, this guy is good.” Kat rubs her hands together. “Did you get any?”

  I scuff a shoe on the deck, feeling my face getting warm.

  “You did!” Kat says with a healthy amount of glee in her voice. “What happened?”

  “Not much,” I say, but I can’t stop a broad smile from moving onto my face.r />
  “C’mon,” Kat says. She’s practically jumping up and down now.

  “No, I didn’t sleep with him.”

  She raises one eyebrow, a patented facial expression of hers.

  “I didn’t!” I say. “I mean, we did fool around, and then we did fall asleep, but we did not have sex.” I’m not sure this distinction would hold much weight with John, but I feel compelled to make it.

  “Well, what then?” Kat says.

  I give her the rest of the story, and as I do, I think, there’s nothing better than this—hashing it out and reliving it with a friend, especially when that friend is Kat or Sin. During our senior year, we had a standing rule at our apartment that if you came home from a particularly good date—or a particularly good pickup, in Kat’s case—you were allowed to wake the other two and bore them to death with all the gory details.

  “It sounds magical,” Kat says when I finally stop for a breath, “like something you’ve been needing.”

  I nod. “Exactly.”

  “But what about John?”

  I stop my head in mid-nod. “It had nothing to do with him.”

  She raises one eyebrow again.

  “Seriously, Kat. I know how shitty it was, being with Francesco, but it honestly had nothing to do with John. I still love him. I still want to be with him. This thing in the Colosseum, it was about me. A part of me that…I don’t know, that I forgot about. Does that make sense?”

  She falls silent for a moment. “It does, but what happens when you get home? Are you going to pretend it never happened? Will you just forget about this, or did it really mean something? Are you going to tell John?”

  In ten seconds, she has effectively cut through the jungle of excuses I have created for how I can keep this situation simple. Francesco and John swirl around in my head like a tornado.