by Maddy Hunter
I could see the red-and-green umbrella of our tour leader bobbing conspicuously in the air near the front entrance. “What don’t you get?”
“All these wannabe writers are all in competition with each other, right? So how come they want to help each other so much? I mean, you should have been there last night. It was a lovefest! When a guy’s in competition with you, he stabs you in the back and steamrolls you into the pavement. When a woman’s in competition with you, she becomes your best friend! It makes no sense to me.”
“Maybe you need to boost your estrogen level. It might improve your understanding.” I spied everyone in my group huddled around a baseball-capped Duncan Lazarus and his umbrella. Grace and Dick Stolee, Helen and Dick Teig, and Lucille Rassmuson — all of whom had gained a ton of weight since our trip to Switzerland last year. The Severid twins, Britha and Barbro, who were absolutely identical except for one characteristic, which they stubbornly refused to reveal. Nana and George. Alice Tjarks, the former voice of KORN’s agricultural report, with her new camcorder. Osmond Chelsvig, with his double hearing aids and bigger camcorder. And Mom, listing like the Tower of Pisa beneath the weight of my shoulder bag.
“Estrogen, smestrogen,” Jackie sniped beside me. “Women act really weird sometimes. And to think of all the money I spent to become one of you. I should demand a rebate.”
Even before we could blend back into the group, Duncan stabbed his umbrella in the direction of St. Peter’s Square and led the charge out of the basilica. I checked my watch. Three o’clock exactly. Duncan must be from the Midwest. A wave of humanity followed him out the door, but I worried about the head count. Not everyone on the tour was from Iowa. What if someone was late getting back? Uff da. It wouldn’t be a good scene if we accidentally left someone behind.
“Why is he walking so fast?” Jackie fretted, as we emerged into blinding sunshine. “He has old people on this tour! And young people wearing extremely sexy but very impractical stiletto slides that make their feet look at least three sizes smaller.” She clattered down the ramp that funneled tourists into the square and stopped short when she noticed something on the service road that flanked the ramp. She motioned to me furiously. “Emily, you’ve gotta see this. An honest to gosh Swiss guardsman.”
I scurried over, cringing at the idea of having to wear blue and gold striped balloon pants with a matching doublet and spats to work every day. I knew the guards formed a small army that protected the pope, but I figured if they expected to be taken seriously by an invading force, they might need to rethink their uniforms. I mean, that’s why GI Barbie wore fatigues instead of spandex, right?
Jackie snapped a picture of the pike-holding sentry standing before his little guardhouse. “Emily, would you take a picture of me standing beside him? Maybe Tom can hang it up in the salon to show his clients what I’m up to these days.”
I glanced back toward the entrance of the basilica. I didn’t see any Passion and Pasta people lagging behind, but waiting a few minutes for stragglers probably wasn’t a bad idea. I didn’t remember seeing Keely leave with the crowd. Her red hair wasn’t exactly hard to spot. Could she still be snapping gum in the grotto? I could be a big help to Duncan here. In fact, if I could prevent some tour guest the agony of getting left behind, I’d be a real hero, which would kind of make up for my not attending the seminar last night and introducing myself to the immediate world.
“Okay,” I said to Jackie. “Hand over your camera.”
I kept one eye on the front of the basilica and one eye on Duncan’s umbrella as Jackie scooted down the ramp and up the service road toward the guardhouse. She said something to the sentry, who ignored her completely, then posed close beside him and smiled up at me. “Pizza!” she yelled.
CLICK. I listened to her camera rewind itself. “You’re out of film!” I yelled.
“You gotta take one more for insurance!” She fished inside her shoulder bag and brandished another cartridge in the air at me. “You want me to throw it to you?”
I gauged the distance between the guardhouse and me. Unh-oh. Not a good idea. Given her recent sex change, she probably threw like a girl. “I’ll come down and get it!”
Casting a final look behind me at the basilica, I hurried down the ramp. The rest of the group was filing helter-skelter through the nearest columns and emerging onto what looked like a street beyond where the bus would no doubt pick us up. I jogged toward the sentry house, reloaded Jackie’s camera, and snapped a shot of her standing on the other side of the guardsman.
“Thanks, Emily.” She retrieved her camera. “You want me to get a shot of you with Mr. Personality?”
I waved her off. There was only one man I wanted to have my picture taken with, and he was in Switzerland.
As we hotfooted it back down the road, Jackie threw on her sunglasses and looked perplexed as she glanced around her. “Where’d everybody go?”
I pointed to our right. “Through those columns.”
Jackie stopped short. “Hold up. I want one last picture of the square. Have you noticed that the square really isn’t square? Why do they call it a square if it’s an oval?”
“Jack! Come on! Everyone’s gone. They’re probably on the bus already!” I hurried toward the shadow of Bernini’s columns and passed through the relative coolness of the roofed colonnade, ending up on what looked like a residential street. But as I paused on the sidewalk, I noticed a minor problem.
Fifty-three people had come this way, right?
I looked left at the deserted street and sidewalk. I looked right at the deserted street and sidewalk.
So if fifty-three people had come this way, WHERE WERE THEY NOW?
Chapter 2
Click click click click. “Ten seconds!” Jackie complained as her heels clacked on the pavement behind me. “You couldn’t wait ten seconds while I took my picture?”
“They’re gone!” I cried in a semipanic. “How can they be gone? They were here a minute ago. I saw them!” The street dead-ended to my right, but to my left, it intersected with a noisy artery of traffic about a block away. I ran to the opposite sidewalk and peered down a long pedestrian walkway that tunneled beneath the main road and emerged on the other side.
Empty.
“Where’s the bus?” Jackie called out to me.
Fifty-three people could not disappear into thin air! I squinted toward the street, where small, angry cars chased after each other. That had to be where the bus was picking us up. I gestured wildly in that direction and took off at a dead run.
Click click click click. Jackie pulled abreast of me halfway down the street, a throwback to her high school track days when she’d laced herself into running shoes instead of satin corsets. “Emily…” she gasped out beside me, “why are we running like this?”
We skidded to a halt at the traffic-jammed street running perpendicular to us. I looked left. I looked right.
No bus. No group. No nothing.
“They’ve disappeared,” I choked out, numb with disbelief. “They were here a minute ago; now they’re gone. How is that possible? HOW CAN THEY HAVE VANISHED?”
Jackie dug a tissue out of her bag and mopped her throat, looking curiously left and right. “Gotta be alien abduction. I bet it happens a lot more than people realize.”
“I knew something like this was going to happen. I knew someone was going to get left behind. But it was supposed to happen to someone else! It wasn’t supposed to happen to me!”
Jackie’s face lit up. “Female intuition! That is so cool. I’m dying to have my first flash of female intuition, but it hasn’t kicked in yet. I hope I don’t have to wait too long though. I have zero intuition at the moment. It’s like being a guy again.” She balled her tissue into her fist and regarded me hopefully. “So, now what?”
I was racking my brain to recall what my Escort’s Manual said about getting lost when I suddenly realized why I couldn’t remember. There was no section on getting lost. The topic was considered unnec
essary because, unlike directionally challenged people in the rest of the civilized world, Iowans didn’t get lost! Ever!
“Should we call someone or something?” Jackie prodded.
“We should, but…” I took a deep breath and spoke in a rush of words. “My address book and phone are in my shoulder bag.”
Jackie lowered her head and stared at me over the tops of her sunglasses. “Good one, Emily. What about a public phone? Call your cell and when your mom picks up, she can tell you where the group is.”
I bobbed my head a little sheepishly. “I uh…I didn’t memorize the number.”
“You WHAT?”
“I said, I DIDN’T MEMORIZE THE NUMBER! Why should I? I wasn’t planning on calling myself!”
“Oh, this is lovely. Just lovely.” Her hand flitted to her face where she massaged her temple with long-suffering fingertips. “Good timing. My female intuition just kicked in, and you know what it’s saying? It’s warning me that we’re going to be wandering around here forever. Like…like the Robinson family in outer space!”
“Didn’t they eventually get back to earth?”
“Did they? I must have missed that episode.”
I checked my watch. “Okay, wherever everyone is, this was the last stop of the day, so I suggest we just hop into a taxi and meet the bus back at the hotel.”
Jackie straightened up, seemingly electrified. “Meet them back at the hotel? Take a taxi? Right. I…I hadn’t thought of that yet.” She opened her arms and crushed me to her chest. “I knew you’d think of something! You’re so clever, Emily.”
That’s what I’ve always loved about Jack. Consistency. I wiggled out of her embrace and straightened the bodice of the Laura Ashley sundress that fell modestly to my ankles and buttoned up the front — not my usual style, but it had been perfect for traveling eight hours on a plane yesterday. I glanced down the street, wincing at the roar of car engines, the buzz of scooters, the screams of irate drivers. Ireland had been chaotic. Rome was insane. “We need to find a taxi stand.”
“We can’t just flag one down?”
“Duncan mentioned it’s almost impossible to wave down a cab in Rome.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say why. He simply said it was.”
“We’ll see about that.” Hips swiveling, chest out, she sashayed toward the street, scanned the lanes of traffic, then without warning, raised her arm in a kind of Heil Hitler salute and stepped off the curb into the path of an oncoming car.
“JACK!” I covered my eyes with my hands.
Tires squealed. Rubber burned. Horns blared. Terrified, I inched my fingers apart and took a peek.
Jackie stood before a miniature white car, a sultry smile on her lips, her stilettoed foot perched on the front bumper. But this wasn’t just any car. It had a little sign on the roof. It was a taxi!
The driver laid on his horn and yelled something out the window. Jackie motioned me toward the car. “Emily! Will you get in before he decides to run me down!”
I opened the door and jumped into the backseat. “Maleducato!” the driver screamed at me, followed by a string of Italian that didn’t sound too flattering. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, a half inch of ash threatening to fall off. He wore a slouch cap that sat low on his forehead and a stained white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows. His forearms were dark, hairy, and bulged like sacks of seed corn.
“Hi,” I countered, offering him a two-fingered wave. “You don’t happen to speak English, do you?”
He projected his right fist in the air and slapped his elbow with his left hand — a rather subtle gesture that I took to mean, NO! I caught his eye in the rearview mirror and flashed a conciliatory smile. He glared at me, using his forefinger to slash an imaginary line across his throat from ear to ear. Oh, this was nice. All the taxis in Rome, and we had to get the one driven by Vlad the Impaler.
Jackie scrambled into the backseat and collapsed beside me. “There,” she said breathlessly. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Not if you were a six-foot transsexual in stiletto heels. The rest of us could have a slight problem.
I gave the driver the name of our hotel in my most precise Italian, then fell backward as he gunned the engine and charged across two lanes of traffic. He drove with one hand on the wheel, one arm out the window, and one eye ogling Jackie in the rearview mirror. He wove left. He wove right. He thrust his head out the window to yell at a passing bus, then outraced a pack of scooters in a competition to be first across a bridge. The G force pinned me to my seat. Scenery sped by in a blur. I realized everything I’d heard about Italian drivers was true. They were rude. They were short-tempered. They ignored speed limits and signs. And considering the lunatic way they maneuvered through the raging disorder in the city streets, they had to be the most skilled drivers in the world.
Jackie angled her head away from the glare of the rearview mirror and whispered behind her hand, “Why is he leering at me like that?”
“He’s Italian. I think they’re all programed that way.”
“How come he’s not leering at you?”
“I’m not wearing white spray paint.”
We took a corner on two wheels and shrieked to a stop in front of a building with curved ironwork fronting the second-story balconies and lots of black window shutters. “Albergo Villa Bandoccio Maccio D’Angelo,” the driver announced with an emphatic wave of his hand.
I peeked at the building through the car window. I sidled an uneasy look at Jackie. “Do you remember balconies on our hotel?”
“Nope.”
“This is the wrong hotel, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
EH! “Excuse me.” I tapped the driver politely on the arm and enunciated slowly so he could understand me. “Is there another hotel by this name somewhere else in Rome? This isn’t where we’re staying.”
“Albergo Villa Bandoccio Maccio D’Angelo,” he repeated, pounding a hand on the meter to indicate the fare owed him.
“I can see what the name of the hotel is,” I fired back. “The problem is, WE DON’T HAVE A RESERVATION HERE!”
“Figlio d’una madre infame!” he spat, making a supplicating gesture to the heavens. “Figlio d’un cane! Disgraziato! Figlio della miseria!”
“You’re doing a good job, Emily,” Jackie exhorted. “Keep talking. Maybe you can piss him off a little more.”
“Figlio di puttana!”
Jackie stiffened. “Unh-oh. That’s not good. Puttana is not a word you want thrown at you.”
I narrowed my gaze at her. “How do you know that?”
“Well, since you asked. I’ve been dying to tell you, but I wanted to wait until the right moment to surprise you.” She curled her hand around my forearm with giddy enthusiasm. “I took a crash course in Italian right before the trip, and you’ll never guess! I discovered I have a real flair for languages! My instructor said I had the best ear ever for picking up conversational Italian. When I was a guy, I couldn’t even conjugate verbs. Now, I’m speaking Italian! Does that rock, or what?”
“You speak Italian?” I asked jealously.
“Like a native.” She whipped her sunglasses off and studied the marquee above the hotel’s front door. “Do you suppose you got the name wrong?”
“I know this is the right name. I memorized the names of all our hotels!”
“Okay. Let me see what I can find out. Scusi,” she said to the driver, followed by a string of Italian that wowed me. I beat back my envy as I listened to her. How could she have learned a foreign language in such a short time? But I refused to let her skill make me feel inadequate. I mean, I knew a little French and a little Norwegian. A knowledge of two foreign languages was pretty decent. Three, if you counted Minnesotan.
When she finished speaking, she shook her head. “He says this is the right hotel.”
I heard a digital tone from the front seat followed by a gruff, “Pronto,” as Vlad answered his cell phone. Jack
ie threw open her shoulder bag and pulled out a book that mirrored the colors of the Italian flag.
“Maybe you reversed the order of some of the words,” she suggested as she paged quickly through her phrase book. “It happens.”
I regarded her bag, pricked by an unlikely thought. “You don’t happen to have a copy of our itinerary in there someplace, do you?”
“Of course I don’t have a copy of our itinerary. I’m on a tour. I’m not supposed to know where I’m staying. That’s why you’re here.”
“Si,” said the driver into his phone. “Ciao.” He replaced the phone in a little holster attached to the dash, then pivoted around in his seat, rapid-firing a steady stream of loud, plosive words at us. He slapped his meter again and made a “gimme” gesture with his hand.
“What’s he saying?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth.
“I heard the word lire, but I’m not sure about anything else.”
I snapped my head around to stare at her. “How can you not be sure? I thought you spoke Italian like a native?”
“It’s like this. I’m pretty sure what I’m saying; I don’t always know what they’re saying.”
UNH! I buried my face in my hands and bent forward, banging my head against my knees.
“Emily? Stop that!” She grabbed my shoulders. “What are you trying to do?”
“Kill myself. Slitting my wrists would be quicker, but Mom has all my sharp objects with her.”
“I have a fingernail file.” She rummaged in the side pocket of her bag. “Whoops. Make that an emery board. That won’t do you much good.”
I looked up distractedly, noting the long row of digits on the driver’s meter, then higher, where the holster for his cell phone hung on the dash. Phone? EH! I grabbed Jackie’s arm. “Ask him if we can borrow his cell phone.”