Laura Caldwell - Burning The Map

O ur taxi bumps and jostles its way along Romes cobbled streets, swerving around centuries-old buildings, narrowly missing women shopping at the outdoor markets. The scent that gusts through the open windows is old and heavy. Lindsey and Kat wrinkle their noses, but to me its a sweet, familiar fragrancebread and dust and wine and heat. The way Rome always smells in the summer.

I havent been to Europe since my junior year in college, most of which I spent in Italy sodden with Chianti and wide-eyed over a bartender named Fernando, yet Ive always considered Rome my second home after Chicago. Its a place that sticks with me, so that an image in a movie or a line in a song can immediately send me back here in my mind. Now I really am back, and I feel the first twinge of optimism Ive had in months.

The taxi driver continues his Formula One maneuvers through the slim stone streets, winding toward Piazza Navona. The Colosseum appears before us, a towering, earthy structure with gaping holes like missing teeth. I raise my hand to point it out to the girls, but the driver accelerates and flies by it with all the reverence of passing a 7-Eleven store.

We are definitely going to crash, Lindsey says through clenched teeth as a pack of mopeds streaks alongside and passes the taxi.

I laugh for what feels like the first time in a long time. No, he wont. This is how they drive here. He knows what hes doing.

Lindsey gives me a long look, which was designed, Im sure, to wither her underlings at the ad agency where shes been crawling up the ranks for the last four years. What hes doing is trying to kill us. You know some Italian, Casey. Tell him to slow down.

Lindsey, or Sin, as we call her, has always been a pragmatic, cut-through-the-crap type of person, but all that cutting seems to have sharpened her edges. Lately, she often borders on a state of irritation, and I find myself holding my breath around her, afraid to piss her off. Her nickname is something of a misnomer, since shes the most straight-laced of all of us. The name should have been bestowed on Kat instead.

I lean forward in my seat. My friends find you attractive, I say to the driver in rudimentary Italian. In fact, I think I may have referred to him in terms usually saved for food, but he seems to get the point.

The thirtyish, swarthy, perspiring man slows the cab considerably and gives Kat and Lindsey a meaningful look in the rearview mirror.

Grazie, Kat calls to the driver, trying out one of the Italian words I taught her on the plane.

Id also told Kat and Sin that one of the most important Italian words they could learn was basta, which, loosely translated, means get the fuck away from me. It would come in handy for some of the Italian men, I explained. Lindsey had nodded intently, mouthing the word, but Kat told me I was nuts. She wanted to meet Italian men, not tell them to take a hike.

You know that stereotype about how most men are like dogs, wanting to mate with hundreds of different women, while we gals pine away for the split-level suburban home, minivan and offspring? Well, Kat blows that one out of the water. She constantly has at least three guys on deck in case she gets bored with the current one, and I dont think shes been celibate for more than two weeks since I met her eight years ago.

By the time the car rolls down one of the side streets that lead to Piazza Navona, Im sweating along with the driver and sticking to the cracked leather seats like gum. Yet when the taxi stops outside the courtyard for Pensione Fortuna, the sight of its burbling fountain and abundant flowers rejuvenates me.

Its gorgeous, Kat says. She pushes open the door and practically skips down the path between the flowers, looking like Maria from The Sound of Music.

Sin and I follow her, Sin lugging Kats suitcase along with her own. Lindsey can be like thatbiting and impatient one minute, mothering the next.

The mothering is something Ive looked forward to on this trip, since my own mother seems more like a teenage sister right now. For the last year, Ive been trudging through my days trying to avoid lengthy, intimate discussions with her, while at the same time attempting to engage in them with my boyfriend, John, whos been practically living at his law firm, slaving over a huge M&A deal. Meanwhile, since I blew off my corporate law class, I cant even have an intelligent conversation with him about his work.

Id found Pensione Fortuna when my parents came to visit me in Rome, and Id hoped to bring John here this summer, figuring a few romantic weeks in Italy and Greece would be just what we needed. But he couldnt, or wouldnt, get away. So I turned to Kat and Sin, knowing that both had always wanted to go to Europe and had lots of vacation time racked up. I hadnt seen much of them this summer, and to be truthful Id been a little distant before then. Id spent most of my last year of law school studying at Johns condo on Lake Shore Drive, painting and repainting the walls of my own apartment in an attempt to find a color that would uplift me, or holing up in the schools library checking citations for obscure law review articles no one would ever read. Even though Ive been out of circulation for a while, or maybe because of it, they quickly agreed to the trip: a few days in Rome and then a few weeks in the Greek islands.