Burning the Map

by Laura Caldwell

  Francesco takes a step back and looks me up and down with a quick, appraising glance. “Now,” he says with a nod, “you are better.”

  And he’s right.

  Francesco and I are on the road again, and this stretch seems more comfortable. I feel lighter now that my black shirt is tied around my waist. My mind seems lighter, too, though I still have my arms wrapped around Francesco, anticipating a possible collision. I’m all too aware of my breasts pushing against his back as the scooter stops briefly at a corner.

  I turn my head to the side, and without letting myself think about it, I rest it against his shoulder. The scooter starts to fly again, and Rome whizzes by—myriad fountains, marble statues, larger-than-life doors with gigantic handles, streets that look like alleys. Neon lights blaze from the trattorias and bars, illuminating the history of the place.

  The rigidity that has settled in my bones and head over the last year seems to thaw a bit. Yet with the thaw comes an army of questions from some unused corner of my brain. What about John? Will you tell him about this little excursion, this man you are hugging? What happens when you get back, when you have to start work, when you can no longer escape the world? I lift my head and let the wind snarl my hair around my face, trying to forget these questions, the ones with rifles in hand that are waiting to fire holes in my flimsy curtain of contentment.

  It pisses me off that my good feelings are so fleeting, so damned hard to hold on to. Like so many of the other uncontrollable parts of my life, I have little mastery over my emotions. Lately, it’s been even worse than usual. I’ll find myself in a situation where I should be ecstatically happy—my law school graduation, for example—and yet, inexplicably, I can’t match my mood to the circumstances.

  My parents threw a party for me after the ceremony at the apartment of one of their friends, a place with a rooftop deck and a view of Wrigley Field. My family was there—my little brother, Danny, who as a college sophomore is not so little anymore, and a handful of cousins and aunts and uncles. Kat and Sin were there for a while, too, spending most of their time fending off Danny and one of his friends, both of whom had made too many visits to the beer cooler. I was touched that my girlfriends had made it, especially Kat, who normally worked Sundays.

  The sun was out. There was a game at Wrigley, so we could hear occasional surges in the noise of the crowd. It was hypothetically perfect, but the tension between my parents was thick as they circled the party like planets at opposite ends of the solar system. John hadn’t shown up yet. He’d already missed the graduation ceremony because of some technology merger he was working on, yet he’d assured me over the phone that he’d be there for the party. “Right there at your side,” was how he put it. But he wasn’t. As the party swirled around me, I felt incredibly alone. I drank more champagne, but couldn’t get a buzz. I tried listening to my uncle’s advice about office politics, but it just depressed me further. I wanted nothing more than to flee. Instead, I resigned myself to sitting at a table piled with gifts and plates of food.

  “We are almost there,” Francesco says now, as he slows for a stop sign. He throws me a smile over his shoulder, and I notice how white his teeth are against the improbable pink of his lips.

  “Great,” I say, pushing away all the memories and squeezing him tighter because I’ve suddenly discovered a day, or at least a night, that I want to stick around for.

  I feel a flash of wariness as we slow down again and pull into the circular drive surrounding the Colosseum. The actual Colosseum. This massive, ancient auditorium, a popular tourist destination by day, is now completely deserted and locked up for the night.

  Gravel crunches as Francesco maneuvers around the back of the place. He stops, and an eerie quiet descends as the chugging of the bike dies. The only sounds I hear are the revs of the spitfire Italian cars hundreds of yards away. Francesco busies himself, gathering random items from the basket on the front of his scooter. I see a blanket, the wine and bread he recently purchased, another bag.

  “Come,” he says, gesturing.

  “Come where?” A nervous giggle escapes my mouth.

  “Come,” he repeats with a grin. He turns away, walking with his arms full.

  “Francesco,” I call after him. “What are we doing?”

  He gives me an exasperated look. “We are having a picnic,” he says, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

  “Um…okay, but where? It’s almost ten o’clock at night.”

  “Inside.”

  He turns again and keeps moving until he reaches an arched entrance protected by medieval-looking prison-style bars that are driven into the ground.

  I follow with tentative steps, feeling as if I should tiptoe. Is this legal?

  Francesco drops to his knees, the blanket and bags at his side. He grasps two of the bars, shakes and jiggles them with practiced movements of his arms, and miraculously slides them upward. He stands, holding the bars up about four feet.

  “This way.” He gestures with his head toward the opening he’s created.

  I do as he says, and duck under the bars. Francesco kicks the blanket and the two bags in after me, then scoots inside with one graceful movement. The bars make a violent clang as he lets them fall.

  I jump. “Will we be able to get out?”

  “Of course.” He gathers the bags, hands me the sack with the wine and takes my elbow. “It is okay.”

  I glance around. We’re in some sort of anteroom, a dank place with a trodden dirt floor. Across the way, a long, dark hallway stretches into the building. I look back at Francesco, ready to ask him exactly where we’re going to have this picnic, but he leans in and kisses me. Not on the lips or even on my cheek, but on my forehead. The gesture is simple, tender. I close my eyes and breathe in his scent from the crook of his neck, a woodsy, chocolatey smell.

  He takes my hand, leading me down the hallway in silence.

  The hall opens up, and as we keep walking, the sky seems to open above us. I realize we’re at the edge of a round pit, the very center of the Colosseum. Francesco stops, drops my hand and spreads the blanket on the ground. He kneels on it and starts to lift things out of the sacks—wine, bread, a tomato, a chunk of hard white cheese and two squat glasses—the kind that Americans use to rinse their mouths after brushing and Italians use for wine. He uncorks the bottle and pours a dark maroon wine into the glasses. Out of his pocket, he withdraws a small knife and cuts off neat triangles of cheese, using one of the brown paper bags as a plate.

  He sets the knife down and raises both of the half-full glasses, holding one of them out to me. “Salute,” he says, the customary Italian toast. “To tonight.”

  I sink to my knees and, taking the glass, I touch it to his, making a pleasant clink. I take a sip and feel the wine warming my insides, loosening me again. He offers a piece of cheese, and I take it because although I’m not hungry, I want something else to do with my hands.

  “How did you know how to get in here?” I ask.

  Francesco shrugs. He keeps cutting the cheese and tomato, breaking off chunks of bread, offering them to me.

  I rest one hand behind me on the blanket, sipping the warm, spicy wine. The only light in the place is from the stars and the streetlights peeking through the stone arches. As I look around, it strikes me that thousands of people have died here. Thousands more have enjoyed themselves, watching the festivities, reveling in the prime of their lives. And they’re all long gone.

  I suppose that this is the prime of my own life, although until tonight it hasn’t felt like the prime of anything. The days and months have raced by me like a high-speed train, making everything vague and fuzzy.

  Until tonight.

  Francesco moves behind me. I can sense him coming closer, and I lose the air in my lungs.

  He spreads his legs around me, sheltering me, and I feel the gentle weight of his breath as he speaks into my ear. “Lean back.”

  I allow my rigid back to decline like a beach chai
r a few degrees, but I land in an awkward position, my head against his chest, my legs too far forward. He touches my hips, urging me back until I fold into him, nearly cheek to cheek now, with the back of my head resting on his shoulder. He keeps his hands on my hips. I feel my blood pulsing there.

  Francesco’s earlier reluctance to tell me how he knows the way in here makes me suspect that this scene is from a well-worn bag of tricks, and I wonder what’s next. I remind myself that this is probably where he takes all the foreign girls he picks up, but my warning does no good. I’m still enthralled with this place, with his breath in my ear.

  We sit like that awhile, Francesco doing nothing except supporting my body. My lungs start working again. I relax, but I’m intensely conscious of his arms around me, his chin grazing my ear.

  Then he tightens his arms and I think, here it is, the come-on from Francesco I’ve been expecting since last night. His breath grows even heavier in my ear. I can’t decide whether to run or return the gesture, lost somewhere in the purgatory between sheer panic and complete acceptance.

  I don’t consciously decide to do anything, but then I’m turning my head toward Francesco’s so my ear pushes against his mouth. I hear him whisper Italian phrases I can’t understand.

  I feel my own breath catching in my throat, and then I feel a kind of melting. My uptight, button-up, worry-about-everything persona that I’ve been wearing like a cloak dissolves, and for a moment, I feel like someone I barely recall, someone I desperately want back.

  Francesco nuzzles my cheek, my ears, my neck. My awareness has grown so acute now that I imagine I can feel my lashes resting on the soft skin under my eyes. My mouth opens in an O. I arch back into his hips, his mouth. I haven’t felt like this in so, so, so long. When was the last time? I hazily search my memory in that small cabinet of my mind where this feeling was filed away years ago. Did I ever feel this way with John? John is like a comfortable old flannel shirt that you love to put on in the winter. But this—this is a black silk shawl, clinging to my bare shoulders.

  I hear a moan escape my lips, and it startles me. Some force flows out of me, turning my body over, pushing Francesco’s shoulders until he lies flat on the ground. Our tongues and lips clash, soft groans from both of us, low gasps of Italian words from him, hands searching. Our bodies roll on the thin blanket that covers the hard ground.

  I lose my sense of time, and it’s bliss. Sharp and clear, as if everything in my life has stopped and focused on this instant.

  After what may have been twenty minutes, or two hours, our faces separate, our eyes lock.

  “Thank you,” I say, because even if this was part of Francesco’s frequently utilized seduction repertoire, he’s given me a momentary peace, a sliver of life.

  “Bella, bella,” Francesco says, holding my eyes. “You are beautiful, but you do not know.” He laughs. “And you make me tired.”

  He falls back on the blanket. I lean over him, turning my head and placing my temple on his chest where his shirt has become unbuttoned. The tawny, tanned skin of his stomach rises and falls, trying to catch up.

  I fall asleep with his shirt clenched in my fist.

  5

  I feel simmering heat and roll over to escape it. So hard. The bed is so hard.

  “John,” I murmur, reaching for his hair, which I always tousle in the morning. But I’m greeted by thick waves, not John’s smooth, thinning locks.

  As I sit up, my back screams in pain. Everything is foggy. I awaken a little more, realizing that my contacts are gripping my eyeballs like hubcaps on tires. I blink rapidly to dispel the haze…and it all comes back in a sharp second. Italy, Rome, Francesco, who is still in the throes of sleep, limbs outstretched, face turned to one side, mouth partly open. To me, there’s nothing more adorable than a sleeping man, stripped of all the society-taught, sports-induced toughness.

  I study him, comparing Francesco’s posture to the way John sleeps, always on his side in a tight fetal-like ball. John never moves, with the exception of one hand that always seeks me out, no matter where my erratic positioning takes me.

  The irony of it hits me then. I’m thinking of John while I’m sitting here, clothes askew, gazing at a near stranger who I spent the night with. I remind myself that I didn’t “spend the night” with him as in a euphemism for sex. There was no intercourse, nothing even close, really. It was more of a combination roll and grope, but my memories of it make me blush.

  It’s not that John isn’t tender or considerate. He’s both of those things. He’s even quite well-endowed. It’s just that sex has become, for lack of a better word, routine. It’s like watching a favorite movie over and over. The first few times, you think, Oh! Here comes the good part! I love this part. After a while, though, you know exactly what’s about to happen down to the minute details, and it doesn’t particularly excite you anymore, but you watch anyway because there’s nothing better on. I’m sure that I’m as much to blame as John is. Lately, I just haven’t felt sexual enough to try and break out of it. Yet now I have these feelings from last night. I’d almost forgotten it could be like that.

  I stretch and look around me. Sun streams through the eastern arches of the Colosseum and over the raw, broken pieces of the upper rim. Our blanket is twisted beneath us, the cheese congealing, the disks of bread hard.

  I glance at my watch. Christ, it’s 5:40 in the morning, and I was supposed to be at the room by midnight. Kat and Sin will be asleep, but still, I need to get back.

  I nudge Francesco, clearing my throat to make some sound. What if he’s one of those people who wakes with a start—confused and angry? But no. He brings his hand to his head and groans. His eyes open slowly, like a man with nowhere to be and no commitments.

  “Buon giorno, bella,” he says, fixing his lazy, lidded eyes on me with the look of a cat who’s gotten in the bird cage and plans to stay.

  He pulls me to him and into another kiss. My instincts are to fight it, because John and I have an agreement to always brush our teeth before an a.m. kiss, but Francesco seems to have no such requirement. His tongue seeks mine again, his hands roam, but I keep seeing John curled in his bed.

  “Francesco,” I say, gently pushing his chest with an open hand. “I can’t.”

  “Okay. It’s okay.” He moves a strand of hair that’s hiding my eyes. He gazes at me, and I feel myself being drawn, pulled back to him. I want to be all over him, but my thoughts of John are stubborn in the harsh light of day.

  I don’t explain this to Francesco. How can I?

  “I’ve got to get back,” I say.

  A sharp clang comes from our left, followed by muffled Italian. Our heads jerk in the direction of the sound. About three hundred feet away guards in navy-blue are opening the largest gated entrance.

  Francesco jumps to a crouch, shoving the corked wine bottle, his knife and the errant bread and cheese in the center of the blanket. He gathers the edges and swings the package over his shoulder like a hobo. I’m frantic, tucking my shirt in, smoothing my hair, retrieving my purse.

  Francesco grabs my hand. Bending over like soldiers avoiding an attack, we creep away from the guards and toward the gate we entered the night before. As he rattles and raises the bars for our escape, I take one last glance around, and it dawns on me. I finally have a story for the girls.

  I slip onto the back of Francesco’s scooter with much more ease than the night before. I rest my head on his back as he darts through early-morning traffic. The city is quieter now than it was in the night, the antiquity more evident as the new sun spotlights the dirt, the film that covers everything, except those pieces lucky enough to be deemed landmarks and restored. Most of the businesses are still shuttered, but we pass a bakery with an open door, and the scent of baking bread wafts into the street.

  I squeeze Francesco around the waist. He strokes my hand with his fingers. At a light, he glances over his shoulder with a quick smile, making my stomach bounce like a tennis ball. We take a sharp turn and
he grabs my thigh, as if to hold me on the bike. His touch makes me flush again. I adore this part. The part where everything is new and electric, where every syllable, gesture and glance count.

  It was that way once with John, wasn’t it? Our meeting two years ago in a smoky bar, packed to the gills, both of us standing directly in front of a band. They were called Beef Express or something like that. One of those names picked at random from the Yellow Pages or the side of a truck. I was watching the band and, at the same time, keeping an eye on the TV airing a college basketball tournament. It was the one sporting event I got enthusiastic about because my alma mater usually kicked ass. Kat was there, too, but she couldn’t have cared less about the game. She’d already met someone.

  “Who’re you rooting for?” John asked with a crooked smile that I would later become intimately familiar with. He was cute in a bookish sort of way—cropped light brown hair, washed-out, greenish eyes, a preppy shirt with every button fastened except the very top.

  “Indiana. Have to root for the Big Ten.”

  “The Big Ten.” He groaned. “You know they’ll choke. They always do.”

  “Fuck off,” I said, but with a light, funny tone and a coy smile. I was a great flirt back then. John and I started talking, going head to head on Big Ten basketball versus other conferences, but after a while there was a pause in the conversation. I acted like I didn’t notice and filled the space with an intent look at the game. The band screeched on about bodies burning in a field.

  “I’m John,” I heard him say when the song ended with a cymbal’s crash.

  I turned to find him stretching out a hand, his crisp blue, button-down shirt turned up at the cuffs. His arm was tan, which surprised me, the hair there golden.

  “Casey,” I said, meeting his hand, trying to make sure my handshake was firm, rather than one of those lame, fingers-only shakes.