Burning The Map

“Yeah,” I said. He moved closer as a waitress jostled him from behind, and he smelled clean, fresh, as if he’d just showered. “What about you?”

“Lawyer.” He made an embarrassed sort of laugh. “M&A.” And then, as if I might not understand, he added, “Mergers and acquisitions.”

“I know what M&A means,” I said, sounding a little huffy. In reality, I was trying to cover up how daunted I felt to meet someone roughly my age who actually made a living practicing law.

“Sure,” he said, coloring a little. “Sorry.”

“No problem.” I graced him with my best smile. I liked his blushing.

I heard my name being called and turned to see my friend, P.J., another law student, pointing toward the door. “We’re out of here,” he yelled.

“Where’s Kat?”

P.J., who’d been hanging out with Kat and me for a year by then, gave an exaggerated shrug, as if to say, “Who knows? Who cares?”

I glanced at John. “I guess I’m going.”

“Are you sure? Why don’t you stay for the rest of the game?” He smiled at me, his lips slightly parted, and for some reason, I wanted to lean into them. “I’ll take care of you,” he said in a joking tone.

But I sensed he was serious, and I stayed.

Thinking back on that now, that somewhat self-conscious meeting that led to a smooth transition straight into a relationship, makes it seem even more alien for me to roll into my pensione at 6:00 a.m., all hot and bothered and mascara stained. Yet in a strange way, I’m proud of my current state, because this sordidness smells of sex and lust, and I haven’t had that particular scent for as long as I can remember.

Francesco drops me off in front as the early-morning commuters begin to surface. Their presence doesn’t prevent him from snaking an arm around my waist and drawing me into an extended kiss while he still straddles his bike.

When I finally pull myself away, he says, “I want to show you more special places of Roma. I will come back in a few hours.”

“I can’t.” My voice sounds unconvincing. “I’m sightseeing with my friends.”

“Tomorrow then.”

“No,” I say, although right now I want nothing more than to spend my last hours in Rome with him.

His brow furrows as if we’re experiencing a language problem.

“I’m taking a train to the coast tonight,” I say, feeling the need to explain. “To Brindisi. And then a boat to Greece.”

“But then you must spend today with me.” He puts a hand to my cheek, a feather touch, and kisses me again.

When I open my eyes, I find myself shrugging and agreeing. The girls will kill me, but I’ll have to kill myself if I don’t see him one more time.

“Eleven o’clock,” Francesco says. “I will be back.” He kisses me once more before he sputters off into the day.

The concierge, a different one from the night before, raises his eyebrows as I burst into the lobby. I give him a quick half smile, feeling undressed and dirty from his leer. Rather than wait for the elevator under his scrutiny, I take the stairs two at a time.

When I open the door, the room feels dark and cool. Kat is sleeping in a little pink T-shirt on top of her sheets. She seems to be without Guiseppe, but one can never be sure where guys are lurking when Kat’s around. Lindsey, though, is wide-awake. She’s sitting on her bed, headphones stuck in her ears, a Scott Turow novel resting on her knees. She’s studying it with intense concentration, as if she’s reading an ancient scroll depicting the hidden tomb of a pharaoh.

“Hi,” I whisper, waving my arms, trying to catch her attention and avoid waking Kat, although the fact is that Kat could sleep through an avalanche.

“Sin,” I say a little louder. “Sorry I’m late.”

I cross the room and stand right next to her, but she won’t look up from her book. She’s ignoring me. I feel my stomach drop.

I despise fights. I suppose it has something to do with the utter lack of conflict in my family. Even now, in the midst of their problems, my parents rarely duke it out. Instead, they stifle, pout, avoid and cry a lot. I guess I just never learned to do confrontation well, which is one of the reasons why I’m so nervous about practicing law. Litigation is inherently confrontational, a world of egos and bullshit and fighting for fighting’s sake. I didn’t really choose to go into it. Instead, it seemed to choose me during my summer associate position, when the firm kept pairing me with the trial group, telling me that my outgoing personality was perfect for it. Maybe, but I’m not well-suited for clashes with friends.

I nudge Lindsey with my knee, and she finally looks up at me, clicking off her Walkman with a punch of her finger.

“Where were you?” she says, her voice hard and demanding, and it hits me that Sin should be the trial lawyer, not me. She’s much better at intimidation and interrogation.

I try to ignore her tone. “I’m so sorry I’m late, but you won’t believe it. It’s the best story. We—”

“You were supposed to meet us here at midnight,” she says, interrupting me. “Last night.”

“I’m really, really sorry.”

She gives a short, bitter laugh that sounds like gunfire.

“We fell asleep,” I say, wanting to make this better, to tell her all about my night, but she shoots me a look that could wither roses.

All at once, my natural inclination to avoid conflict dissipates. She had reason to be worried when I didn’t come home last night, maybe even to be annoyed, but she’s ruining the first honestly good mood I’ve had in months.

“What?” I say, my voice a fierce whisper. “How come Kat gets to pick up every guy from here to Munich, but when I meet one person, you act like the Gestapo?”

Our voices have roused Kat, who sits up on her cot, watching us in silence. I wonder for a second if she heard my comment and is pissed off, but I dismiss the thought. If there’s anyone who hates confrontation more than me, it’s Kat. Like me, she probably gets this trait from her parents. After they divorced, they both kept a room in each of their homes for her, but they were more interested in dating and their careers than they were in Kat. She’d tried to scream and yell, she’d told me. She’d thrown some fantastic tantrums, but the parent of the moment would simply ship her back to the other like a UPS package. Kat doesn’t scream or yell much anymore.

Now she sits on her bed, biting a thumbnail, and I can almost imagine her as a little kid with her thumb in her pretty mouth.

“Well, for one thing,” Sin says, “you have a boyfriend.”

“I’m well aware of that,” I say in a haughty tone. How dare she remind me?

“And for another thing, Kat always comes home when she says she will. She’s around when you need her. She’s a friend.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just that…” Lindsey stops, pursing her lips as if trying to gather the right words in her mouth. This makes her look like my mother right before she’s about to lay some doozy of a revelation on me, like how she’s started masturbating again after a twenty-year hiatus.

“It’s just that what you did last night,” Sin says, “blowing us off—it’s basically what you’ve been doing for the last two years.”

Her words hit me like a slap. I sense some shred of reality there, but it seems like an overstatement, a gross generalization.

“I’ve never said I’d be somewhere and didn’t show up.”

“No, maybe not like that, but you’ve been avoiding us since you started dating John. You never call. You never have time to go out with us anymore. And when we finally do get together, once in a great while, it’s like you’re not really there. You’re just different. You’re not like you used to be.”

I can’t believe she’s saying this. Maybe I’ve been a little detached lately, but I’ve been studying for a goddamned living. My life hasn’t exactly been a Martha Stewart picnic.

I turn to Kat. “Is that what you think, too?”