by Maddy Hunter
“Hel-loooo? You don’t have any numbers. You can’t even call yourself!”
Maybe not, but I knew one number that was bound to get some results. “Would you just ask!”
“All right already. Jeez.” She turned to a page in her phrase book and smiled sweetly at the driver. “Scusi, signor…” She pointed at the cell phone and proceeded to unleash a flood of halting Italian that caused the driver’s eyes to light up beneath his sagging lids. I’d heard Italians were extremely generous, but this guy seemed so excited to have someone else use his phone that he looked as if he was about to spring into handstands. He plucked the phone out of its holster and thrust it at Jackie, a broad smile creasing his unshaven face.
“Che corpo,” he rasped, his eyes roving her body, his tongue roving his lips. “Vorrei leccare il sudore della tua pelle.”
“What’s he saying?” I asked, as she handed me the phone. I hoped this phone was equipped with the right chip to connect me with another country. If not…I pushed away the thought and punched in the number while Jackie flipped frantically through her book.
“It must be an idiom. He’s either saying his testicles are the size of cabbages or he’s telling me I’m fat. If he’s telling me I’m fat, he can kiss his tip good-bye.”
At the other end of the phone line, I heard a torrent of static that was suddenly interrupted by the welcome sound of a man’s voice. “Miceli,” he answered in his beautiful French/German/Italian accent.
“Do you know the name of the hotel where I’m staying in Rome?”
A pause. “Emily?”
“I e-mailed you my itinerary. Remember?” Ever since his injury last month, he’d been battling migraine headaches and slight memory problems. He could recall all the major stuff, like the fact that his name was Etienne Miceli; he was a Swiss police inspector; he’d met me nine months ago when I’d visited Lucerne; he was in love with me. He was just having a hard time with minor details, like remembering that he wanted to marry me.
“I remember perfectly, darling.”
“I’m going to hand the phone over to someone. Would you please tell him the name of the hotel?”
I shoved the phone at the cabbie, who responded to Etienne with a, “Si? Si. Albergo Villa Barduccio Mastrangelo? Ah, si!”
“What’d I tell you.” Jackie eyed me sternly. “You gave him the wrong name.”
“Hey, I was close!” The driver pitched the phone back at me and peeled out of the parking area. I pressed the phone to my ear. “Hi,” I said to Etienne. “Thank you so much.”
“Was that a test?”
“Yup. And you passed.” I lowered my voice to a sultry whisper. “I wish you were here so I could give you your prize.” I heard a clamor of voices in the background on his end. “Are you at the office?” He was such a workaholic, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was nosing around the department in an unofficial capacity. Officially, however, he was on leave until his migraines disappeared.
“Actually, darling, I’m in northern Italy. Campione. Visiting my cousin. We’re celebrating my great-aunt’s ninetieth birthday. I thought I told you.”
“Nope. You must have told someone who looks like me.” His doctor assured him that his memory and headache problems would be only temporary. I was keeping my fingers crossed that he was right. The voices in the background reached a crescendo and erupted into excited cheers. “Your relatives sound like a rowdy bunch,” I teased. Had to be the Italian side of the family — the gene pool responsible for Etienne’s black hair, classic style, and awe-inspiring…hardware. I hadn’t had a chance to try out the hardware yet, but I remained hopeful.
“They’re complete strangers.” He laughed. “They’re cheering someone on at the roulette table. I’m at the local casino, trying my luck at chemin de fer. Did I forget to tell you the odd thing that’s happened in the last month?”
I guess he meant other than the fact that he’d forgotten about his intention to pop the question. “Have you thought about writing things down? Making lists? It works for some people.”
The cabbie growled something over his shoulder at Jackie.
“I seem to have developed an uncanny ability to maintain a mental picture of what cards have been played at the gaming table, what cards are left in the deck, and what my odds are of being dealt the card I need. I think it’s called, ‘being in the zone.’ ”
I thought it was called “card counting.” I’d come back from Ireland hot-wired to sense disaster; he’d come back a card shark. Go figure. I watched Jackie scroll her finger down a glossy page of her phrase book and stab a word with her highly lacquered nail. “Are you making any money?” I asked, as the taxi swerved suddenly, slamming me into the door. Horns blared around us. A scooter zoomed past, nearly clipping our front bumper. I covered my eyes with my hand.
“I’ve only just begun, but I have a modest number of chips in front of me at the moment. The betting limit in Lucerne is five Swiss francs, but in Italy there’s no limit, so as they say, if I play my cards right, I could make a killing.”
Or be wiped out. Unh-oh. I was getting a bad feeling about this. “Tell me again why you can’t come down to Rome?”
“The Jubilee year, Emily. There’s not one room left in Rome. I did try.”
And sharing my room was out. Not with Mom on the tour. “What about a rendezvous in Florence?” If he didn’t lose all his money, he might even be able to spring for the train fare.
“I nani mi divertono nel circolo!” Jackie fired at the driver.
A pause at the other end of the phone line. “Where are you, darling?” Etienne asked, a humorous lilt to his voice.
“In a taxi.”
“Who’s with you who just said, ‘Dwarves amuse me at the circus’?”
“That would be Jackie. She’s demonstrating her flair for languages.”
“Non sei spiritoso!” the cabbie fired back, gesticulating wildly. “Come sei sciocco! Sei proprio scemo! Ma vorrei leccare il sudore della tua pelle!”
“Did you hear that?” I whispered into the phone. “Can you translate?”
“He’s telling her she’s not funny, she’s tasteless, and she’s really stupid, but he still wants to lick the sweat off her skin.”
“Hold on.” Jackie posed one finger in the air as she consulted her book. “Okay, he adores my spirit, he loves my taste in clothes, and…he thinks I have killer legs.” She smiled like the Cheshire cat. “I might give him a tip after all.”
“Figlio di puttana!” wailed the driver, jamming on the brakes.
“ ‘Son of a bitch!’ ” said Etienne.
“What’s wrong?” I winced into the phone. “Did you just lose all your money?”
“I was translating what your taxi driver just said. What’s happening there?”
I peered out the front windshield at a major commotion surrounding a building that looked vaguely familiar. Cars. Trucks. Sirens. People clustered in knots on the sidewalk, pointing fingers at the upper stories.
“That’s it!” cried Jackie. “That’s our hotel!”
Unfortunately, it was on fire.
“The fire started in the kitchen and spread from there,” Duncan announced to us three hours later over the bus’s loudspeaker. Duncan Lazarus stood a couple of inches over six feet, had shoulders like a lumberjack, thick, sun-streaked hair that was a hint too long, and a voice that resonated with calm authority. I suspected his early ancestors might have played the gladiatorial circuit in Rome or resided somewhere atop Mount Olympus with the other immortals. “You’re all aware this is Rome’s Jubilee year. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult to find accommodations for fifty-five tourists anywhere in the city, especially on such short notice.”
A low hum of discontent spread through the bus as we headed north on the Autostrada, watching cars the size of windup toys roar past us in the outside lane. It had taken a couple of hours for people to recover from the shock of their luggage, laptops, and powerpoint presentations becoming charcoal briquettes, but to their cre
dit, all the guests had made use of their neck wallets, so no one needed to replace either passport or credit cards. A handful of people had lost their daily meds in the fire, but they’d followed Landmark’s instructions to carry scrip for all their prescriptions, so they’d already replaced them in a pharmacy near the hotel. And since the structure had already been fully engulfed in flames when the tour bus pulled up, no one in the group had been injured, but my knees still felt a little gimpy at the thought of what might have happened if the fire had started later in the day rather than earlier. The bright note here was that we were moving on to our second city and everyone was still alive! Was I on a roll, or what?
Beside me, Nana flipped through some fresh photos taken with her Polaroid OneStep. “See this corner window that’s engulfed in flames?” She slanted the picture toward me. “That was my room. It was a pretty nice one, too.” She heaved a dejected sigh. “I spent a fortune on naughty bloomers for this trip, Emily, and they all went up in smoke. I didn’t get to wear my reptile print Dream Angels teddy even once, and it looked real good on me. Slimmed my hips right down to nothin’.”
I stared at her, wide-eyed. “You bought a reptile print teddy?”
“What? You think the leopard print woulda been better?”
“Given our housing problem, we’ll be leaving Rome and traveling to Florence a couple of days early,” Duncan continued. “We’ve located a hotel within walking distance of the famous Holy Mary of the Flowers Cathedral, which the Florentines refer to as the Duomo, and by a stroke of luck, it can accommodate everyone until we move into our assigned hotel in Montecatini. The upshot of this is, you’ll be treated to a much more intimate tour of Florence than you ever expected, and I give you my personal guarantee that you won’t be disappointed. Florence is a great medieval city. More manageable than Rome. It’s a walking city, with less traffic and noise, fewer fountains, and incredible bargains on gold and leather goods.”
“What are we supposed to wear while we’re there?” Gillian Jones yelled out. “In case you need a reminder, our clothes are toast!”
Duncan flashed her an indulgent smile. “The miracle of insurance. Once we reach Florence you’ll each be given a stipend of six hundred thousand lire to replace some of the items you lost in the fire. And when you fill out a more detailed insurance form, you’ll receive the full replacement cost of all your belongings, so I suggest you start thinking ‘shopping spree.’ ”
“Six hundred thousand lire?” Nana said, tittering with excitement.
I deleted the three zeroes and divided by two to calculate just how much. “Three hundred dollars.”
“That’s a lot a money. If they got a Super Wal-Mart over here, I’m thinkin’, new wardrobe!”
“We’ll be making a comfort stop at an Autogrill about seventy kilometers up the road,” Duncan continued. “Their dining facilities are excellent, so we’ll plan to eat dinner there this evening instead of Florence. In the meantime, if anyone’s thirsty, I have bottled water and soft drinks in a cooler up here beside me. On the house. And please, don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your trip more enjoyable.”
“Such a polite young man,” Nana cooed.
The aisle suddenly filled with guests making a mad dash to the front of the bus. Apparently, watching a hotel burn to the ground made people really thirsty. I turned in my seat, spying my mother several seats behind me sitting with Alice Tjarks. “How did you convince Mom to sit with Alice instead of you?” I asked Nana.
“It didn’t take no convincin’. She volunteered. I let it slip that Alice was packin’ the deluxe travel edition a Scrabble. Every letter of the alphabet. Magnetized. It was too big a temptation to resist.”
I shook my head. “You’re bad, Nana. Tell me, were you able to avoid her in St. Peter’s?”
“Barely. I seen her bearin’ down on us, so I grabbed George and pulled him into a confessional. Woulda made my monthly confession while I was waitin’ there, too, but the priest couldn’t understand me.”
Okay, so maybe Nana had a teensy problem with double negatives, verb agreement, subordinate clauses, and tense formation. She was still perfectly understandable, wasn’t she? “What couldn’t he understand?” I asked gently.
“English. Turned out to be a Polish confessional.”
I smiled. “How did George feel about being inside a confessional? That’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a Lutheran.”
“He didn’t seem real impressed, dear. He thought it was a phone booth.”
I heard the loud report of snapping gum beside me and groaned inwardly as I looked up.
“Hi again!” said Keely as she passed. “Remember me? From the basilica? Say, weren’t you the one who missed the bus back at St. Peter’s? Where were you anyway? Seems we waited at that bus terminal for you forever.”
“You waited for me? That was so sweet!” I narrowed my eyes. “What terminal?”
“The underground bus terminal. You know, down the pedestrian walkway and left at the tunnel that intersected it halfway down.”
“There was a tunnel?”
“A real nice one,” said Nana.
My mouth sagged open. “How was I supposed to find a bus that was underground?”
Keely gave me a squinty look. “It might have helped if you’d stuck with the group. Hey, this is my roommate.” She grabbed the arm of a young woman with short spiked hair and a bolt through her nose.
“Amanda Morning,” the girl said, shoving a piece of glossy paper shaped like a flame at each of us. “I’m handing out my bookmark to everyone. It won first prize at the Southwest Regional Romance Lovers Festival.”
I read the print copy aloud. “ ‘Passion’s Flame. The sweeping romantic saga of a lovely young woman thrust into a vortex of danger and desire…and the one man who could awaken in her a sweet fire that would not stop burning. On sale soon wherever books are sold.’ ”
“This is the sixth time I’ve won the contest for best bookmark.”
“Six books?” I marveled. “Wow. You must have your own section in Borders.”
“Well, I haven’t actually written anything yet, but I bought a really expensive computer system so I can begin. And Keely’s promised to help me.”
Which was bound to assure her of at least one chapter of award-winning prose. “But shouldn’t it go the other way around?” I quibbled. “You write the book, then you design the bookmark? Kinda like, pillage then burn?”
Amanda quirked her mouth to the side and glared at me, her nostrils flaring around the silver bolt in her nose. She looked angry enough to do something really menacing — like sneeze. “I can tell you’re not one of us. You nonwriters just don’t get it. There was a contest! If you want to be a writer, you have to enter contests.”
Nana stared up at her with curiosity. “Do you ever get sinus infections, dear? They must be a real nuisance for you.”
Amanda kept talking. “Saying I’ve won six consecutive contests is going to look really impressive on a cover letter to some publisher.”
I didn’t want to appear naive, but I wondered if actually writing the book would appear even more impressive.
Keely elbowed Amanda out of the way and directed her to Duncan’s cooler at the front of the bus. “Publishing’s changed a lot since I won my first contest. It’s not about the manuscript anymore; it’s about who you know. And I’m going to know a lot of people by the end of this trip.” She blew a bubble the size of a grapefruit and sucked it back into her mouth with a pop. “Hey, look who else is in line. Fred!”
She clapped the shoulder of the man standing next to her and swung him around to face us. “Fred published a biography of his cat two years ago through a vanity press, so he’s an honest-to-gosh author, aren’t you, Fred?”
Fred was small and stooped and looked like an advertisement for J. Peterman in his safari shirt and pants. On his head he wore a matching cloth hat with a floppy sunblock brim that he was making no attempt to remove. E
ither he didn’t want to ruin the look of his ensemble, or he was afraid some ornery ultraviolet ray would eat through the solid steel of the bus’s roof and zap him. Considering all the holes in the ozone layer, I guess you couldn’t be too careful these days.
“Some author,” Fred said in a timid voice. “They told me I was going to make a bundle. They said the demographics indicated that elderly women love to read feline biographies. But what I ended up with was a storage shed full of books I can’t distribute and a big fat debit in my checking account. I’ve gotta hand it to the little jeezers. They delivered the books just like they promised, but they didn’t tell me that bookstore people refuse to handle the self-published stuff. You gotta do it yourself. Out of the trunk of your car!”
I suspected that could be pretty dicey, especially if you were stuck having to drive a subcompact. “Were you able to sell any?”
“Four. To my mother. She said they were a huge hit in her assisted living facility. People were clamoring for them in their little library there. But I’m not letting the hype influence me. I’m switching to romances. According to what I’ve read in Publishers Weekly, they’re the backbone of the whole industry. That’s where the money is, so that’s where I’m headed.”
“And here’s another one of the gang,” Keely interrupted, shooing Fred along and latching on to the arm of a sun-baked blonde with muscles like Popeye and a complexion that reminded me of dried tobacco. “Brandy Ann Frounfelker. She’s from California. A professional body builder. Can you tell? But she actually wrote a romance and got it published online.”
“I thought the e-publishing phenomenon would take off like gangbusters,” Brandy Ann said in a soft, wonderfully refined voice. “It hasn’t happened though. I’ve been soliciting more traditional publishing houses, but once I tell them I was published electronically, they don’t want to have anything to do with me. It’s as if e-publishing is a dirty word. And let me tell you…” She slowly clenched her hand into a fist that was the size of a car engine. Ropes of muscle bulged beneath her skin. “…it’s starting to piss me off.”