13 Little Blue Envelopes

by Maureen Johnson

  Ginny still hadn’t moved. She stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “They were about to steal from you,” he said. His English was very clear but strongly flavored by an Italian accent.

  “Those little girls?” she asked.

  “Yes. Believe me. I see this all of the time. They are gypsies.”

  “Gypsies?”

  “You are all right? Has anything been taken?”

  Ginny reached around and felt her pack. To her alarm, she found the zipper partway open. She opened it up all the way and checked the contents. Strangely, she checked first to make sure the letter was still in there, and then she checked for her money. Both were there.

  “No,” she said.

  “That’s good.” He nodded. “Okay. Good.”

  He went back to his spot at the edge of the fountain and sat down. Ginny stared at him. He didn’t look Italian. He had golden brown hair, almost blond. His eyes were light colored and very narrow.

  If there was ever a guy to buy cake for, it was a guy who had just kept her from being robbed, even if that meant defending her from small children by waving a textbook.

  She walked up to him cautiously. He looked up from his book.

  “I was wondering…” Ginny began. “Well, first, thanks. Do you want to…”

  Do you want to was too strong a construction. It meant, “Do you want to do this with me?” She just had to offer the cake. Everyone likes cake.

  “I mean…” she corrected herself, “would you like some cake?”

  “Cake?” he repeated.

  He blinked slowly. Maybe at Ginny, maybe at the sun. Maybe his eyes were tired. Then he looked down into the splashing waters of the fountain. Ginny looked into them as well. Anything to keep her eyes off him in this painful pause, during which he had to be trying to figure out a way of telling a weird American girl to leave him alone.

  “Not cake,” he finally replied. “But a coffee.”

  Coffee…cake…close enough. She had asked a guy, and the guy had said yes. This was nothing short of a miracle. She stopped herself just short of bouncing on her heels.

  It was no problem finding a coffee bar. They were everywhere. The guy went up to the long marble counter and turned casually, ready to take Ginny’s order and pass it to the stiff-aproned server.

  “I usually get a latte,” she said.

  “You would like a glass of milk? No, you mean a caffè latte. Would you like to sit?”

  She pulled out a few euros.

  “It costs more if you sit,” he explained. “It’s ridiculous, but we are Italians.”

  It cost a lot more. Ginny had to pass over about ten dollars’ worth of euros, and in return, they were presented with two very modest glass cups, each nestled in a tiny metal basket with a handle.

  They sat down at one of the gray marble-topped tables, and the boy began to talk. His name was Beppe. He was twenty. He was a student, studying to be a teacher. He had three older sisters. He liked cars, some British bands Ginny hadn’t heard of. He had been surfing in Greece. He didn’t ask Ginny a lot about herself, something she could easily live with.

  “It’s hot,” he said. “You should have a gelato. Have you had one yet?”

  He was horrified to hear that she hadn’t.

  “Come on,” he said, getting up. “We’re going now. This is ridiculous.”

  Beppe led her down a few more streets, streets that got progressively more crowded with people and more colorful. These were streets that shouldn’t have had motorcycles and scooters barreling down them but did anyway. People calmly stepped out of the way just inches from their deaths, sometimes offering a choice word or gesture if they’d actually been brushed.

  Beppe finally stopped in front of a small, unassuming stoop. Once Ginny stepped inside, however, she saw that its size didn’t reflect its offerings. There were dozens of colorful gelatos packed into a glass case. Two men behind the counter quickly shoveled out heroic portions with a flat-edged spoon. Beppe translated the labels. There were normal flavors like strawberry, chocolate. But there were also ginger and cinnamon, cream with wild honey, black licorice. One was rice flavored, and there were at least half a dozen with special liquors or wine.

  “How did you come here?” he asked as she selected her flavor, which was the unimaginative strawberry.

  “By…plane?”

  “You are with a tour,” he said, but not as a question. He seemed certain of this.

  “No tour. Just me.”

  “You came to Rome by yourself? With no one? No friends?”

  “Just me.”

  “My sister lives in Travestere,” he suddenly said, giving Ginny a short nod, as if she should know what this meant.

  “What’s that?”

  “Travestere? The best place in Rome,” he said. “My sister will like you. You will like my sister. Get your ice cream, then we will go to see my sister.”

  Beppe’s Sister

  Travestere couldn’t be a real place. It looked like Disney had attacked a corner of Rome with leftover pastel paint and created the coziest, most picturesque neighborhood ever. It seemed to consist entirely of nooks. There were shutters on the windows, overflowing window boxes, hand-lettered signs that were fading perfectly. There were wash lines hung from building to building, draped with white sheets and shirts. All around her were people with cameras, photographing the wash.

  “I know,” Beppe said, eyeing the photographers. “It’s ridiculous. Where is your camera? You can take a picture too.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Why don’t you have a camera? All Americans bring cameras.”

  “I don’t know,” she lied. “I just didn’t.”

  They walked on a little farther and finally stopped in front of an orange-colored flat-faced building with a slightly green-tinted roof. He pulled some keys from his pocket and opened up an ornate wooden door.

  The inside of the building was nothing like the outside. In fact, it looked like Aunt Peg’s old New York apartment building—chipped tile floor and dented metal mailboxes. She followed Beppe up three flights of stairs to a stifling, dark hallway. From there, he showed her into a very clean, somewhat spare apartment. It was just one room, carefully divided into sections with folding screens and furniture.

  Beppe pushed open a large window above the kitchen table, and they had a good view of the street and the bedroom of the neighbor across the way. She was sprawled on her bed, reading a magazine. A fat fly came in through the unscreened window.

  “Where’s your sister?” Ginny asked, looking around the empty room.

  “My sister is a doctor,” he explained. “She is very busy, all the time. I am the student, the lazy one.”

  This wasn’t exactly an answer, but there were a number of family pictures around the room, several of which included Beppe. There was a tall girl standing next to him, with honey-colored hair and a distracted scowl. She looked kind of busy.

  “Is this your sister?” Ginny asked, pointing at the girl.

  “Yes. She is a doctor…with babies. I don’t know the English for it.”

  Beppe opened a cabinet under the sink and produced a bottle of wine.

  “This is Italy!” he said. “We drink wine here. We’ll have some while we wait.”

  He filled two juice glasses halfway. Ginny sipped at her wine. It was warm, and she suddenly felt exhausted but also very content. Beppe was talking with his hands now, touching her hand, her shoulder, her hair. Her skin was sticky. She looked out the window at the light blue of the building across the street. The woman from the bed had gotten up and was adjusting her blind and watching them with a detached interest, like she was watching the progress of something cooking in an oven.

  “Why do you wear your hair like this?” he asked, holding up a braid and scowling.

  “I just always do.”

  He pulled off the rubber band that held the braid, but Ginny’s hair, so well trained (and still a little wet, she guessed), refused to
debraid itself.

  Her first thought when he kissed her was that it was way too warm for this. She wished there was an air conditioner. And it was so awkward at the kitchen table, leaning across the chairs. But this was kissing. Real, unquestionable kissing. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be kissing Beppe, but for some reason, it felt important—like she should be doing it. She was making out with an Italian boy in Rome. Miriam would be proud, and Keith…who knew? Maybe he’d be jealous.

  Then she realized she appeared to be slipping down out of her chair onto the floor. Not in a falling kind of a way—in a “guided down by Beppe to have more room to make out” kind of way.

  This, she really didn’t want.

  “There is a problem,” he said. “What is it?”

  “I have to go,” she said simply.

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she said. “I just have to.”

  She could see from the baffled look in his eye that he hadn’t meant to do anything wrong. He didn’t seem to understand.

  “Where’s your sister?” she asked.

  He laughed—not meanly. Like she was a little dim. It annoyed her.

  “Come on,” he said, sounding conciliatory. “Come sit back down. I am sorry. I should have been more clear. My sister isn’t here often.”

  He started in again. He was giving her quick little kisses on her neck. Ginny craned her head to look out the window, but the woman across the way had lost interest and was gone.

  Now Beppe was reaching for the button on her shorts.

  “Look,” she said, pushing him back, “Beppe…”

  He was still working at it.

  “No,” she said, starting to get up. “Stop it.”

  “Okay. I will leave the button alone.”

  She pulled herself to her feet.

  “Americans,” he said dismissively. “All alike.”

  Her head was thrumming as she raced down the steps. Out on the street, Ginny’s sneakers squeaked mercilessly in the humidity. The noise echoed down the narrow street, so much so that diners at a small outdoor café looked up to watch her pass.

  Strangely, though the wine had made her groggy, it actually seemed to sharpen her sense of direction. She confidently walked back to the metro station and managed to get herself back to the Colosseum.

  The gates were still open, so Ginny went in, weaving her way back through the crumbling things and the half walls, all the way back to the remaining pieces of the virgins.

  She grabbed the button that Beppe had been reaching for and yanked it from her shorts. She leaned over the metal bar that kept people back from the statues and tossed it onto the ground between two of the most complete ones.

  “Here,” she said. “From one virgin to another.”

  #7 & 8

  * * *

  #7

  Dear Ginny,

  Head for the train station. You’re getting on a night train to Paris.

  At least, I’d like you to get on a night train to Paris. They’re really nice. But if it’s day, get on a day train. Just GET ON A TRAIN.

  Why Paris? Paris needs no reason. Paris is its own reason.

  Stay on the Left Bank, in Montparnasse. This area is maybe the most famous artists’ quarter in the world. Everyone lived, worked, and played here. There were visual artists, like Pablo Picasso, Dégas, Marc Chagall, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and Salvador Dalí. Writers, too, like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Gertrude Stein. There were actors, musicians, dancers…too many to name. Suffice it to say that if you stood here in the early twentieth century and you started throwing rocks, you would hit a famous and incredibly influential person who helped shape the course of artistic history.

  Not that you would have wanted to throw rocks at them.

  Anyway, go now.

  I have to insist that you go to the Louvre immediately. You can get your next assignment there, in the proper atmosphere.

  Love,

  Your Runaway Aunt

  * * *

  The Surfboard Sleepers

  There were a few seats available on the next train to Paris, much to the surprise of the man who sold Ginny her ticket. He seemed genuinely concerned by her rush and kept asking her why she wanted to leave Rome so soon.

  Her little room on the train (the couchette) sat six people. The boss seemed to be a middle-aged German woman who had a steel-colored crew cut and a huge supply of oranges. She ate these one after the other, sending visible gasps of orange oil into the air of the cabin as she peeled them, flooding the air with a citrusy smell. At the conclusion of each orange, she’d wipe her hands on the gray fabric of the armrests of her seat. Something about this move gave her a kind of authority.

  Under her command were three sleeping backpackers and a man in a lightweight tan suit who had an accent that could have been from absolutely anywhere. To Ginny, he became Mr. Generic Europe. Mr. Generic Europe spent the ride doing a crossword puzzle. He coughed dryly each time the German woman sitting next to him peeled a new orange and then moved his arm so that he didn’t get orange pulp on his sleeve when she wiped her hands.

  Ginny took out her notebook

  July 5

  9:56 p.m., train

  Dear Miriam,

  Last night I had to run from an Italian boy who kept trying to take off my pants. And now I am on a train to Paris. I cannot confirm my identity anymore, Mir. I thought I was Ginny Blackstone, but apparently I have gotten into someone else’s life. Someone cool.

  About the Italian guy thing, it wasn’t particularly sexy or scary. More skanky. He lied to me to get me to go to his sister’s apartment, and I went because I am dumb. Then I escaped and had to wander through Rome.

  This reminds me of something. I still have a whopping bad case of what you call my scag magnetism. I thought I had gotten rid of it there, but it looks like scary guys still materialize from thin air in my presence. They are drawn to me. I am the North Pole, and they are the explorers of love.

  Like the guy with the Radio Shack bag who always hung out outside the second-floor women’s bathroom of the Livingston mall who told me on multiple occasions that I look exactly like Angelina Jolie. (Which I do. If you just change my face and body.)

  And we can’t forget Gabe Watkins, the freshman who dedicated many, many pages of his blog to me and took a picture of me with his phone and Photoshopped his face and mine into a picture of Arwen and Aragorn from Lord of the Rings.

  Anyway, you’re in New Jersey, and I’m here, speeding through Europe on a train. I realize that maybe this all sounds incredibly exciting, but sometimes it’s just really dull.

  Like now. I have nothing to do on this train (not that writing to you is nothing). I’ve been by myself for a few days, and it doesn’t always feel good.

  Okay. I’m going to stop complaining now. You know I miss you, and I promise I’ll mail this soon.

  Love,

  Gin

  A few hours into the trip, the woman said something about bed in two languages, and then everyone else in the cabin stood up. There was a lot of pushing around of stuff, and in the process, Ginny got squeezed out of the cabin. When she re-entered, there were six big shelves there. Judging from the fact that Mr. Generic Europe was stretched out on one, Ginny guessed these were supposed to be beds.

  There was a lot of awkward shuffling around as people figured out which ones they should take. Ginny got an upper one. Then the German woman snapped out the overhead lights. Some of the others turned on little personal lights that were built into the wall. But Ginny had nothing to read or do, so she remained in the dark, looking at the ceiling.

  There was no way she was going to be able to sleep on some jiggling surfboard sticking out of a wall. Especially since the German woman kept sliding open the window, and Mr. Generic Europe kept closing it halfway. Then one of the backpackers said something in Spanish and then said, “Do you mind?” in English and pointed at the window. When she closed it all the way, no one put up a fuss. The
German woman opened it again anyway, and the cycle went on throughout the night.

  Morning came suddenly, and people started going in and out of the couchette with toothbrushes. Ginny rolled over and swung her legs off her surfboard, carefully toeing the ground. When she returned from washing up in the cramped and kind of dark bathroom, the beds were magically folded back into chairs. An hour later, the train stopped and she was shuffling through a huge train station and out onto a wide, sunny boulevard in Paris.

  The street signs were little blue plaques on the sides of huge white buildings, frequently obscured by a tree branch, lost in a bunch of other signs, or just impossible to spot. The streets veered off almost constantly. Still, it wasn’t that difficult to find a hostel in the neighborhood that Aunt Peg had recommended. It was in a massive building, some kind of old hospital or junior palace. A woman with stiff black curls behind the front desk, after admonishing Ginny for five minutes about not calling ahead in peak season, told her that though there were no singles left, there was plenty of room in the dorms.

  “Do you have sheetz?” the woman asked.

  “No…”

  “Three euros.”

  Ginny handed her three euros, and the woman handed her a big white bag made of a rough cotton.

  “Eet will be lockout soon,” the woman said. “But you may take your sheetz upstairs. You can come back at seex. The door ees locked each night at ten. Eef you are not here at ten, we lock you out. I suggest you take your bag weeth you.”

  Ginny took her sheet sack up the stairs and went to the room at the end of the hall, as she’d been directed. The door was open just a crack, and she pushed it wide to reveal a very large room with skinny, military-style-looking bunks. The floor was covered in small putty-colored tiles that were still wet from a mopping with a strong-smelling cleanser.