13 Little Blue Envelopes (13 page)

Another sharp turn took them down a massive boulevard, 129

and the buildings became more practical and industrial. They came to an abrupt stop in front of a massive glass-and-metal box of a building. The driver opened the door and sat back and said nothing. People peeled themselves from their seats and pulled their luggage off the rack. Ginny suited up with the pack and lumbered out.

She managed to wave down a taxi (at least she thought that was what it was, and it stopped) and passed the letter forward, showing the driver the address. A few minutes later, after cheating death by speeding down roads just barely wide enough to fit the car, they pulled up in front of a small green house.

Three cats groomed each other on the front step, oblivious to the squealing machine that had just arrived in front of them.

The woman who opened the door looked about fifty years old. She had short black hair, streaked elegantly with gray. She was carefully but not overly made up, and she was dressed in an attractive blouse and skirt. She wore heels. She ushered Ginny inside. This had to be Ortensia.

“Hello,” Ginny said.

“Hello,” the woman replied.

She had a nervous look in her eye that said: “That is all the English I know. Go no further because all I will do is stare at you.”

The backpack, though, could be universally understood. The woman pulled out a small preprinted card that said 20 EUROS

PER NIGHT in English as well as some other languages, and Ginny nodded and passed over the money.

Ortensia led her to a tiny room two flights up. It looked like it was originally a crawl space, since there was just enough headroom for her to stand and just about enough room for the 130

cot-bed, a small dresser, and her backpack. A realtor would have described it as “charming.” It
was
kind of charming, actually.

It had been painted a happy mint green (not a sad, cinder-block–gym-wall mint green). Plants filled every available space.

It would have been very nice in the winter, but now it was the holding tank for all the rising heat. Ortensia pushed open the window, and a lazy breeze came in, circulated once, and went home.

Ortensia said a few words in Italian that Ginny was pretty sure meant good night, then descended the narrow spiral stairs that led to the room. Ginny sat on her neatly made bed. It was quiet in her little room. It made her heart pound. She suddenly felt very, very alone. She told herself to stop thinking about it, changed for bed, and lay awake, listening to the Roman traffic out on the street.

131

Virginia and the Virgins

Every once in a while, Ginny remembered that along with being charming and whimsical, Aunt Peg could sometimes be a little flaky. She was the kind of person who absentmindedly stirred her coffee with her pinkie and was surprised when she burned herself or left the car in neutral instead of park and laughed when it was occasionally in a different place than where she had left it. Those things had always been funny before. But now, with the massive, ancient city of Rome sprawled out around her and absolutely no guide, Ginny had to wonder how good (or funny) the “no map” rule really was. Her sense of direction wasn’t going to help her much here—there was just too much Rome and no point of reference to work from. It was all crumbling walls and huge billboards and wide squares and statues.

On top of that, she was terrified of crossing the street, since everyone drove like a stunt extra from a movie car chase. (Even the nuns, of which there were plenty.) Ginny confined herself to 133

one side of a road and crossed intersections only with groups of more than twenty.

And it was hot. So much hotter than London. It was real summer here.

After an hour of wandering around what seemed like the same tight streets of pharmacies and video rental stores, she spotted a tour group walking along with flags and matching travel bags. Lacking any other plan, she decided to trail them loosely in the hopes that they’d be going somewhere big and touristy. Then at least she’d be
somewhere
.

As she walked, she noticed a few things. The tourists wore sandals or sneakers and carried heavy bags or maps. They looked hot, and they guzzled bottles of water or soda. She even saw a few people buzzing themselves with tiny, battery-powered handheld fans. They looked ridiculous, but Ginny knew she wasn’t doing much better. Her bag was stuck to her back. Her braids were limp in the heat. The little makeup she wore had dribbled off her face. She was developing a nasty sweat pocket at the middle of her bra that was going to start showing through her shirt at any second. And her sneakers were squeakier than usual.

The Roman women flew past on Vespa scooters with their designer handbags resting by their feet. They wore huge, fabulous sunglasses. They smoked. Talked on their cell phones.

Threw dramatic glances over their shoulders at people who passed them by. Most amazingly, they did it all
in heels,
gracefully, without teetering over on the cobblestones or getting stuck in a crack on the uneven pavements. They didn’t break down and cry from the blisters that had to be forming as the 134

sweltering heat caused the leather of their stilettos to suction to their perfectly pedicured feet.

They were hard for Ginny to watch. They made her nervous.

She followed a group down into a metro station and lost them as she struggled to buy her tickets. She went over to a map and found, to her relief, that there was a stop marked Coliseo, with a drawing that looked a lot like a doughnut. When she emerged again into the blinding Roman sunlight, she was on a busy road. It seemed certain that she had made a mistake until she turned and found that the Colosseum was directly behind her. It took her a few minutes to make it across the street.

Again, she met another tour group, and she trailed along behind, following them under one of the massive archways that led inside. The guide seemed to take a little too much pleasure in reporting the bloodshed that had made the Colosseum so popular back in the day.

“. . . and at the inaugural, over five thousand animals were slaughtered!”

A woman in a long, double-sided apron was walking toward them. She opened a large bag she was carrying. Within a moment, a flurry of cats appeared around them. They seemed to leak from the walls. They jumped from hidden ledges high up in the stony walls. They rushed from behind Ginny and gathered together in a tangle, mewing loudly. The woman smiled and began pulling paper takeout containers full of bright red raw meat and pasta. She set these down on the ground, allowing a few feet between each dish, and the cats swarmed around. Ginny could actually hear them frantically chewing the food and purring loudly. When they were finished eating a few moments 135

later, they surrounded the woman, rubbing hard against her ankles.

Ginny and the tour group crossed through a passageway into the Roman Forum. The Forum looked like a very old place that had been run through by a giant bowling ball. Some columns, though cracked and worn, were still standing. Others were just little nubs in the ground, strange little stone tree stumps.

Ancient buildings sat on the rocky outlines of other, even more ancient but now-missing buildings. The group split up to explore. Ginny decided to ask the guide where to go—he didn’t seem that aware of who was with him.

“I’m looking for the vestal virgins,” Ginny said. “Their temple is supposed to be in here.”

“The virgins!” he said, raising his hands in delight. “You come with me.”

They made their way through the labyrinth of walls and paths and columns to two rectangular pools made of stone, obviously ancient but refilled and planted around with flowers. On one side was a line of statues on tall square pedestals. All women, all wrapped in flowing Roman robes. Most of them were missing their heads. Some, most of their bodies. Eight figures stood, with a few empty pedestals between them. The other side was full of empty pedestals or just remnants of pedestals. The pedestals and statues were protected from the crowd by a low metal rail—

nothing much, no more than a mild request not to touch.

“The virgins,” he said proudly. “Lovely.”

Ginny leaned into the rail and looked over the statues. She felt that weird guilt she sometimes got when she knew she was looking at something very old and important and she just 136

didn’t . . . get it. The story behind them was interesting, but they were still just a bunch of broken statues.

Come to think of it . . . it was a little annoying that Aunt Peg had sent her to look at a bunch of famous virgins. What exactly was that supposed to mean?

For some reason, this made her think of Keith. That memory stung. She pulled off her daypack very deliberately and dug around inside. She had a few euros and euro coins. A gum wrapper. The key to her room at Ortensia’s. The next letter. Her eye patch thing from the plane. Nothing that seemed like an appropriate gift to give a bunch of ancient statues. This whole thing was suddenly very annoying. It was too hot. The symbolism was a little too pointed. This entire exercise was stupid.

She finally found an American quarter at the bottom of the bag. It seemed as good an offering as any. She lobbed it softly onto the grass between two of the statues, then pulled out the next letter. It was painted all over with pictures of tiny cakes.

“Okay,” she said, tearing open the seal. “What now?”

137

#6

Dear Virginia,

Sorry. If there was ever a moment to use your proper name, this seemed like it. (This is one of those things that isn’t funny . . . isn’t it?) So here you are, standing around in a big

courtyard of broken stuff, probably surrounded by tourists. (You are not a tourist . . . you are on a quest. You are a quest . . . ioner. Ooh. I should stop, huh?)

Anyway, what do we learn from this, Gin? What do our girls the vestals tell us?

Well, for a start, single chicks are powerful chicks. And in some situations, dating can be bad for you. However, since at least a handful of the vestals risked everything for a little loving, we also know that . . . sometimes, it just feels like it’s worth it.

See, I had a problem, Gin. I was very into this idea of being a single woman, committed to a higher purpose, like the vestals. The way I saw it, the great artists didn’t want to be comfortable.

They wanted to struggle—alone—them against the world. So I wanted to struggle.

Whenever I got too comfortable anywhere, I felt like I had to move on. I did it with all kinds of

things. I quit whenever I started liking a job too much. I broke up with guys whenever things got too serious. I left New York because I was just too content. I wasn’t moving forward. I know that it must have been hard when I left without a word . . .

but that’s how I always did it. I would sneak off like a thief in the night, maybe because I knew there was something just a little bit wrong about what I was doing.

At the same time, I still have this thing about Vesta . . . this love of the home. Part of me wanted to embrace that. I love this idea of a goddess who guards the fire, blesses the house. I am a mass of contradictions.

One of her other symbols was bread, anything baked. Bread was life itself to the Romans. On Vesta’s holiday, animals used to be decorated with garlands of cake. Garlands of cake! (Screw flowers.

Can you imagine any garland better than a garland of cake? I can’t.) So, let’s take this idea and celebrate Vesta with some cake. But let’s do it the proper Roman way.

I want you to ask a Roman boy out for cake. (Or girl, if that turns out to be your preference. But good luck with that—Roman women are tigresses.) For the sake of argument, I’m going to say boy