13 Little Blue Envelopes(34)
“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 152
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.”
153
#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 159
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.) 160
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.