Not a Francesca Sort of Girl

It is June of this year and my seventeen year-old daughter Spank and I are in Rome for some major museum crashing. Fresh off the subway with a crappy, zoomed out map, our suitcases rumble on the cobblestones as we search for a tiny B and B. This is the first time it’s just the two of us so far away from home. It’s a little dirtier and hotter than Paris and London and the cars aren’t as fancy, but the colors are more saturated and everything moves in slo-mo.

As there are no signs advertising the place, we pass it up, come back, and stand at the address feeling like suckers with our pre-paid internet booking.

One of the building tenants lets us through the gigantic wooden doors as she goes through. We stand in the courtyard, still dumbfounded. The tennant has never heard of the place. Finally, I spot an intercom near a glass door and see the name of the place in a tiny slot in 10 point courier. Here we are from half-way around the world and this is my mark, a tiny piece of paper less than half a square inch in a courtyard behind colossal wooden doors. And I fucking find it.

After the buzzer, a deep voice says, “Fifth floor” then buzzes us into the foyer. Like every place in Rome, it has a marble corkscrew staircase, and this one, an add on cage-type elevator in the middle.

But it is broken. We carry our suitcases up five flights of stairs and finally get to the office, which is actually an apartment. We are slicked over with sweat from all the walking and stair climbing in this crushing heat wave. A little embarrassed. A six-foot brunette with impossibly long legs opens the door, looks us over from head to toe, then gestures for us to come in. She is the only person I have ever actually seen sashay. As we follow her into the apartment/office, she doesn’t bother to throw on any lights, but I notice her hair is teased up so high I can see through it. Her clingy, belted t-shirt dress barely covers her ass.

In the middle of her apartment, she welcomes us to sit across from her at a desk. Her accent is thick Italian, rhythmic, and spoken like the last waves of high tide. She manages to give us details about the city, where to go for breakfast, how to get tickets to skip the line at museums. I ask if there are places to avoid, especially at night, since Spank and I are two women, alone.

Her eyeballs are heavy, as if the pupils are made of lead while she struggles to keep her eyes level with mine, but she does. She flicks her wrist, flays her fingers, “Rome-uh… is safe-uh.”

She slides a piece of paper across the desk, “Call me-uh, when you-uh, wake up-uh, they need-uh, to fix-uh, air condition-uh.”

There is only a number on the paper, no name. I look back up at her and ask what I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to know, “What’s your name?”

Between that question mark and before she spoke, in my head, my own voice begs, please don’t say Paola, please don’t say Paola, because I’m going to develop a tic right here and give off the tiniest hint of a smile.

And as if she read my mind, the name slowly rolls off her tongue, like that eight ball you call in the right corner pocket, dropping in there with its last bit of momentum, “Paola.”

I don’t tic out on her, or look at Spank, I just write her name, concentrating hard because she’s watching. I had to make damn sure not to write “Paolo.”

Francesco-Francesca doesn’t cross my mind as she isn’t a Francesca sort of girl. No, she’s too angular, her chin too strongly chiseled, cheekbones a bit too sharp.

Then she takes us to the marble staircase with the elevator shaft in the middle. Asks us to wait up there with our luggage so she can “reset” the elevator. Roman staircases have the acoustics that make every footstep sound as if you are right next to it. So we hear her stilettos “tic-toc, toc-tik, toc-toc” like a broken clock, all the way down until they stop. Then the elevator cage closes, CLANG!

That’s when Spank and I look at each other and call it at the same time, “Thatsadude.”

And we are totally cool with that. If Rome is safe for her, it is safe for us.

_______________

I like searching for wireless network names while traveling, struck gold here, look down to the fourth one.

Speaking of fourth, don’t you love it when an artist breaks the fourth wall? Gives me chills. (this is part of Raphael’s School of Athens).

When in Rome

After a disappointing day and an evening stranded in the suburbs of Rome, the girls and Blane (the father) didn’t want anything to do with me, not even ring in the New Year. Just as the taxi dropped us off at the hotel, Blane (the son) and Angela showed up.

Fresh blood.

So Blane and the girls go to bed and Blane2, Angela, and I hit the streets of Rome. We haggle with a street vendor for some champagne and sit on the sidewalk like hobos, drinking right out of the bottle. Angela laughs about how angry her mother would be if she knew she was drinking. The way I see it is she’s twenty and the drinking age is what, twelve, in Rome?

When in Rome, do as…

We raised our bottle and toasted her mother at exactly midnight.

I really did believe the ATMs would magically begin spitting Euros at midnight. The way it worked in reality? The machines were empty. No euro, no lira, no nothing. We needed more booze for the celebrating. Fortunately street vendors were taking all sorts of currency that night.

The city was in a great mood. A bus paused near us and everyone on that bus was dancing. People were hanging out the windows yelling for us to dance. So we did, right in the street. We danced with a bus.

Next day, I’m hungover in the train station, splayed out across my backpack, afraid to move. The lines at the ticket counter are twenty-five deep. People all over. Chaos. We have no idea which trains to take to get to Barcelona. Angela admits she didn’t listen to the Italian travel tapes so she can’t go ask. I have to do it, not that I know Italian, I’m gifted at improvising sign language. She at least holds my place in line while I try to keep from spilling my cookies.

Watching travelers leave the line, it doesn’t look hopeful. The station agent is having a good time with the language barrier. It seems people are asking stupid question after stupid question and this guy loses it with every single person. I notice a pattern. First, he rubs his face and rolls his eyes. Second, he rears his head back in frustration. Third dumb question, he jumps out of his chair, throws his hand up in the air, and walks in a circle while mumbling something like, “Mamma Mia!”

I’m at an angle where I can see him go over to the cube next to him and laugh about it with his collegue. It’s just an act.

When I get my turn, I go with it. When he throws his hands up in the air, I do the same. When he shouts “Mamma Mia!” we shout it at the same time. This makes him laugh. Hard. It gets us out of Rome and on to Milan in reserved seats. No fighting for trains.

Milan was just a waystation and what I wanted to share about being there was a couple of photos. I can’t find them, so another day on that.

We took a night train to Barcelona from some mountainous area in France. Night trains through Spain are shockingly expensive. We do like to budget travel, but since we lost a day in Milan, we had to splurge on the night train to get back on our schedule.

What I remember most about Barcelona is beautiful people. I don’t mean on the inside, but in the shallow way. Perfect noses, eyes, skin tone, the hair. They are stunning.

The people watching was downright entertaining. Have you ever seen the shell game scam? They were working it big time, practically robbing tourists. We decided to have a little fun and get into some mischief.

Here’s how it works: A guy has three shells and hides a ball under one of them…mixes them up and someone in the crowd has to chose which one the ball is under. Somehow he gets people to bet on whether “someone” will find it or not. So there is a ton of money on each shuffle of the shells. We noticed the “someone” was not really a tourist, but a comrade of the shell guy. We also noticed they had two or three other comrades in the crowd looking for cops. The magical thing was watching how fast these four guys disappeared after they won their money.

We kept seeing the same scam over and over, just different people working it. We were traveling with a set of two-way radios to keep track of each other in case we separated. They didn’t work worth a crap -but- we did have some fun with them. If we saw a shell game scam, we’d get in the crowd and pretend to be undercover agents. When we’d whip out the radio (acting inconspicously, of course) it would magically make the con artists disappear.

We did get on the other side of the law while there.

Our hotel room had this horrible sewer smell in it. We insisted they change our rooms and were promised they would but when we got back that night, they didn’t keep to their promise. We got into a big fight with the management and told them we were checking out. They insisted we pay for that day because we had not checked out by noon. The management said they were calling the police. We huddled, came up with a plan and took off running. Two couples and two little girls.

The plan was to separate. Each couple take a kid and run in a different direction. We also turned our jackets inside out so they wouldn’t recognize us that way (Spanky had a honking dalmation pattern on hers).

It was a good thing too, just a minute later we saw a cop car talking to a group that looked like us, two couples and two little girls.

Suckers.

Traveling with Good and Bad Angels

A few weeks ago Dr. Gorgeous asked me where I would want to be for the holidays if I could choose anywhere in the world. “Rome,” I told him, followed by a snicker.

We’d been there at New Years in 2002. It was a big trip with all of us and Angela who was Blane2′s new girlfriend at the time. I’d gotten rail tickets for five countries and we’d do it with backpacks. I’d speak the French and Angela would take care of the Spanish and the Italian. Just travel Italian. I gave her my tapes which I hadn’t listened to in years.

We did Paris without a hitch. On the Rivera, I nearly got my ass beat by a gypsy grandmother. We were sitting on a bench, people watching, mainly the legless man on the sidewalk with a cane who would tap the ladies on the butt as they walked past him. Some of the women would look back, spot him, then laugh. Others would give him a tongue lashing. One woman beat him with her purse. But he was a funny guy, he had a toothless smile and his face was animated. Before long there was a crowd watching the reactions of his “victims.” Then, as all street acts go, he passed the hat.

The gypsy part was a side drama. A girl (about nine) had four little kids sitting around watching her dance. By force. Every time a kid tried to get up and leave, she would shove them back into their “seats.” They might have all been from the same family or together, but oddly, there were no adults with them.

Spanky, around the same age, grew tired of the bullying and upstaged the kid with a sound she used to make. It was an odd sound, like something a fish would vocalize, if fish could talk. The kid cussed and threatened Spanky in French, which at the time, she couldn’t understand.

I go and try to break things up and the gypsy kid curses me lower than a dog, tells me her grandmother is a monster and will beat me unmercifully, that I better watch my back for the rest of my life… I told her to go get her, I was ready for a fight and she said, “My grandmother will get you when she is ready, and you are not.”

Not the first time I’ve been cursed. On to Italy.

The train sitch is a disaster that time of year in Italy, something we didn’t anticipate. We’d been there in the summertime. Piece of cake. During the holidays, however, everyone is traveling to see family. Since we don’t make plans, we had no seat reservations. We had to Mad Max fight for our seats just like the others. When a train pulls into the station, mobs of people shove into the doors and stuff the trains. Since there were six of us, two of which were little girls, we had to be cautious. Lots of trains left the station without us.

Once on a train, we shove into a compartment, two to a seat, with other stinky and weary travelers. Each stop we pick up more people. Soon there are people sitting on the floors, in the aisles, practically hanging out the windows. Some people outside our compartment have a guitar, drum, and tambourine, and start playing some music. Next thing you know, everyone on the train is singing to whatever they are playing. The Italians don’t get worked up about being stuffed on a train, they make the best of it.

We finally get to Rome, find a room and rest our exhausted bones. We only came here for a couple of days. To see the Sistine Chapel, spend New Years Eve here, and welcome the new euro when it comes out at midnight. We get a tiny amount of lira from the ATM as we want to use Euros on the very first day of issue.

We get to the Chapel and it is closed for New Years Eve and New Years. We weren’t going to see it. So Blane2 and Angela go on their own to do some things and we take the girls to do the usual, Trevi Fountain, Colluseum, etc. When we get tired, I suggest we get on a bus, any bus and just ride to the end of the line, get another bus and ride back. Simple. Cheap.

I am known for bright ideas and although they frequently get us into trouble, I have this crazy optimistic outlook and the ability to convince everyone that this time things will not fall apart. I also have two angels watching over me. One is a practical joker and the other is a hero that comes in at the last minute to save the day. Everyone knows this and in the spirit of adventure, they are always willing to do what I say might be fun.

Poor bastards.

The bus takes us out to the suburbs and when we try to get back on, the bus driver says the bus is finished for the evening, we’d have to find another way home. We get off the bus and what’s the first thing we see? A cement fence with a six feet tall swastika painted on it.

Great.

Funny thing, too, this suburb is high up on a hill and we could clearly see Rome below us, beautifully lit. Miles away, however.

We walk and walk and just see houses. It gets dark and a little cold. There are no businesses open, no pay phones anywhere. Not a human in sight for what seems like hours. The homes look so warm, in fact we are certain they are lit by candles. And food. We could smell it everywhere.

Finally we find a restaurant but no one speaks English. No problem, I whip out my phrasebook. Find out this is a private family function. We tell them we are lost as all hell and just want to get a taxi out of there. They tell us it will cost a fortune.

A fortune we don’t have because we only had a few lira, remember, the euro doesn’t come out for a few hours.

The kind people in there had mercy and fed us one of the best meals we’ve ever had. When the taxi driver got there, they bargained with him to take us to Rome for about one fourth his normal price and to take American dollars.

I’ll finish Rome and get to Milan and Barcelona tomorrow.

Edited Note: The story continues here.