Abroad (11 page)

We took a table and watched the floor. Jenny was keenly aware of our competition, and just as she predicted, they began arriving from all over. It was amazing how much the other groups looked just like us—best friends of a few weeks, coy, an air of game if entirely unearned confidence. There was a German group, and then a pack of French girls. And the Israelis, breathtaking in their brief clothing. Jenny cut her eyes at them and proceeded to order another round of special Enteria shots, which that night were something sweet and green.

“It’s so
cheap
here!” she cried, delighted. “A true shithole. He gave me two of these ghastly things for
free.
”

By eleven, I’d had three shots. We migrated to the dance floor in a circle. It passes the time, dancing. Grifonia was a place, musically, that signaled no era: the DJ played Gnarls Barkley, Gem, Madonna, the Rolling Stones, the Birds, Wham!, Morcheeba. I’d drifted to the side to watch how the Italian boys patrolled the floor, always in pairs, turned out in pressed shirts. Never endearingly awkward like the English and American boys, but instead smooth and treacherous as rising water.

Jenny was getting a little sloppy. She tripped, fell, got up again, yelped.

“Whatever happened to dance cards?” I yelled.

“What?”

“You know—Jane Austen? Romance? Balls?”

“Did you just say
balls
?”

A man approached, cocking his head. He was tall, with tan skin, heavy eyebrows, and hair tipped in blond dye. I’d seen him often, standing outside the Albanian bar on a small street that bled down to the university. Up close he smelled heavily of bad cologne, but I didn’t want to stand by myself anymore. He drew close, moved my curls from my ear, and yelled that his name was Ervin.

I followed him to the dance floor, feeling the eyes of my friends on my back. Ervin began to move in a natural, graceful manner. His clothes—a Spanish football jersey and baggy jeans—were reassuringly familiar. He tried to talk again, but it was impossible to hear anything, so he shrugged and danced on, and I copied.

Given more time, I think, I might eventually have become a truly great dancer. The kind that mesmerizes. Like my sister, for instance. On the street, she’s far from beautiful, but when she dances, she hovers inches from her partner, looking into his (or her) eyes with just the right sort of challenge and promise. But at that point in life, it was all too intimate for me. I could do the moves, sure. I had even inherited a certain sort of grace. My mother, years before, had spun barefoot on a dance floor in Jaffa, catching my father’s eye. He had never seen anyone so alive, he once told me. So yes, I knew how to dance. I just wasn’t able to look at the person I was dancing with. A sort of glass cage fell over me, in the form of a distant, distracted smile.

Ervin grabbed my hand, then pressed into me.
There
, I thought.
See, Jenny? I’m with someone.
But good Lord, this song was lasting years. How long could I keep this up? His face was so
close
to mine. Did my breath smell? What if he saw the clogged state of my pores?

Suddenly, Anna was beside me, tugging my arm.

“Taz,” she said. “Jenny’s bought us some drinks.”

I looked at Ervin apologetically. “I’ll be back.”

He shrugged, turning away. I followed Anna, a bit deflated that he’d been so passive at my departure.

“Don’t want to dance with an Albanian wanker for too long,” Anna said.

“He wasn’t so bad,” I said, my voice lost in the din.

“Taz!” Jenny shouted. “Shots!” She handed me another Enteria special, which turned out to be vodka, blood orange juice, and a dash of absinthe. “Good Lord, look at that girl’s skirt. I can see her fucking Brazilian.”

Anna moaned in disgust.

“I told you girls all to get them,” Jenny said sternly. According to her, that was yet another B4 requirement. “Taz, have you gone yet?”

“Not—”

“Jenny, stop it,” Anna said. “Here, Taz. Have a drink.” I obeyed, relishing the burning in my throat. “Don’t worry. You can’t be expected to succumb to every one of Jenny’s ridiculous whims.”

I smiled gratefully and followed her back to the dance floor. Within minutes, another group of boys had enveloped us. I moved side to side, letting the alcohol numb whatever self-conscious thoughts were left. Then, an unmistakable wave came over me, and a web of thick saliva began to form in my mouth.

I broke away from the new boy and moved to Jenny, who was dancing nearest to me with a large dreadlocked white guy.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I shouted.

Jenny ignored me. I yanked her arm, causing her to whirl around in annoyance.

“Taz, come
on
, don’t be a killjoy. It’s early.”

My entire body cramped. Anna was far away in the crowd. I struggled to make myself heard over the music. “Please. Can you just get me to—”

“
Tab
itha!” I turned at my name. It was Claire. Unlike the rest of young Grifonia, she hadn’t dressed up at all for the evening. In fact, she seemed to be wearing what I’d seen her in the day before—baggy jeans, a T-shirt, and Converse tennis shoes. “What’s up?”

Just then a second wave of nausea hit, only this time I actually felt the bile in my throat, tasted it. I gripped Claire’s arms and stumbled into her.

“Claire, can you—I’m…”

My American flatmate understood instantly. Moving behind me, she took me by the shoulders and steered me at a sure pace through the crowd.

“
Scusa!
” she called. “Move please.
Scusa!
Move!
”

Once we reached the bathroom—a revolting, overused cell—she moved us right to the head of the line and banged on the door. “Sick girl here! Out, okay? I’m serious—get out!”

For you to understand how grateful I was to Claire at this moment, you’d have to know that I’d never been sick in public before. And that while I often drank to quiet my nerves, I’d never actually seen the room spin. You’d have to know that my mother regularly cleaned the house with bleach due to a slight obsessive compulsive disorder. That, due to this, I often had nightmares about being attacked by germs and bacteria. And so, when Claire held me away from the urine-slicked floor, cleaned my face, found soap to wash my hands, pulled me outside, and found me a bottle of water, it was all I could do not to cry as we walked down the sloped alleys toward home.

*   *   *

The next morning, I woke with the poisonous remorse that is often alcohol’s parting gift. The very air in my room felt acidic. Claire was strumming the guitar in the living room, and though there was a door between us, it sounded as if her fingernails were raking my head.

“Made you breakfast,” Claire said when I came out.

I shuffled to the counter, where she had set out a bowl of fruit and some yogurt. In my diminished state, the colors looked positively radioactive.

“Thank you.”

“Time-tested U of M recipe. Yogurt to calm down your stomach. Fruit for detox. Juice for sugar. And the most important food group? Advil.” She pointed to two pills she’d laid by my plate.

“This is so … kind.” I poked the yogurt with the spoon, knowing I’d never be able to get it down.

“No worries.”

“I’m so sorry about—”

“Please. You know how many times I’ve puked my guts out from drinking? God.” She sipped her coffee. I sat near her, setting the food on the table. “I’m just glad I was there. Did your friends not hear you or something?”

“No. I guess not.”

“Pretty insane in there, I guess.” She looked at me over her coffee. “Taz, can I say something to you?”

“I can’t pretend to be coherent. But yes, of course.”

“Just because we’re away from home doesn’t mean you have to be something you don’t
want
to be.”

I pushed the yogurt around. “I’m not following you.”

“The clothes. The drinking until you can’t fucking stand up. It’s not … you.”

“How do you know what’s me?” I said, my face flushing. “You just met me. And anyway, you’re the one who was talking all that liberation rubbish.”

“I’m not saying I’m a guru. Half of what I say is bullshit. You have to figure out what makes
you
happy. You’re different.”

“Different?”

“I’m saying don’t push yourself into being slutty because your friends want you to.”

“Well. Maybe I’m trying this freedom thing, too.”

“All right, okay.” Claire held up her hands in surrender.

“Who were you with, anyway?” I asked. “It was really nice of you to leave on my account. Did you get a chance to say goodbye?”

Claire shrugged. “I was just by myself.”

“At a club? Really?”

“I go out by myself all the time.”

“Seems lonely.” I tried to picture going to the Red Lion alone, without the promise of a single familiar face inside. “What for?”

“Oh, I like it, actually. I like to be able to come and go when I want. You know. If I meet a guy. Or get sick or something.”

She winked. I sipped my juice wanly.

“Kidding. So what are you doing today?”

“Dunno. I was planning on lying down, mainly.”

“And miss the festival?”

“Ugh—I can’t.”

“Come on. Come with me. It’s, like, the Capulet versus Montague parade, or some shit. It’s a big fucking deal.”

I looked out the window. The sky was an achingly clear blue. I could hear it now: the music from the square was already ricocheting off the hills.

You get to be this happy now.

“All right.”

I went back to my room and pulled on jeans and my Nottingham jacket. Too tired to shower, I rinsed my face and brushed my teeth, then froze when I saw my reflection in the mirror. My skin had a green cast to it, and there were dark smudges under my eyes. My teeth looked yellowish in the bathroom light.

“God,” I cried. “I look thirty.”

“You look great,” Claire said, crowding in beside me, her face right next to mine. Her cheekbones slanted upward whereas my cheeks were full. Next to my dark eyes, hers were a shocking hue of green. There was something otherworldy about her beauty. It made one blind to anything else in the room. I moved back, afraid I would disappear.

“Well, we both look kinda tired,” Claire said, nudging me. “But who cares, right?”

We stepped into the garden, through the gate, and made our way up to the main piazza. The air was thick with the smell of cooked sugar. The alley we took was narrow and steep; the sun was blocked on three sides by the high walls, so that the only light fell from the opening between the houses hundreds of feet above. Every balcony was crammed with herb pots and laundry. All around us students and families pressed upward toward the festival. Claire grabbed my hand, so as not to lose me. Then, just as the little street was too crowded to bear, we were tossed into the wide main square, punctuated by the huge fountain. We dropped hands and took a breath, looking around. A band was set up on a stage in front of the palace steps, and well-dressed children ran back and forth, darting by our legs.

Festive as it was, the crush of people was weakening my resolve. There was still too much alcohol in my system. My head felt caught in a vise grip, my vision blurred; it occurred to me I was still a little drunk.

“I really think a nap—”

“Wait here,” Claire said, parking me on the edge of the stone steps of the cathedral. “I’ll get us whatever it is they’re rioting over.” She muscled her way through a small crowd out of sight for a moment, before appearing a minute later with two paper cups. “Chocolate brandy, I think?”

“Claire, I can’t drink this.”

“No, it’s exactly what you need. Here—just try it.”

We put the limp paper cups to our lips and tasted it. The concoction was bitter, yet sweet and spicy. She was right—the warmth in my throat and stomach helped. She took my wrist and led me to the steps of the cathedral, where I’d first seen Claire just weeks before. We sipped our brandies and looked out at the throngs.

“Did your friends call yet?”

“No.”

Claire rolled her eyes.

“What?” I said.

She paused. “Taz, look. You disappeared from a club at like, four a.m., drunk. Don’t you think they should have called before now?” She looked at her empty cup. “Oh, fuck it. Never mind. That’s exactly why I don’t go out with swarms of girls like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Girls in groups have no qualms about stabbing one another in the back. Friend on friend? There’s some loyalty. Groups? Forget it.”

“Seems a bit of a generalization.”

“I really don’t think so. I mean, I get it. Women in a foreign country, blah, blah. It’s good to go out together so you can have, you know, someone to walk
in
with. Also so you don’t get fucking roofied. But then, after that, everyone’s just going for the same guys. Right? And by the end, no one can even keep track of anyone anyway.”

“Very modern of you.”

She shrugged. “Or stupid. Who knows? Maybe I’ll go out with you guys one night,” she said, standing too quickly for me to tell her she wouldn’t be welcome because of Jenny’s laws.

I bought some olive oil for my mother (found later under my bed, wrapped), then we wandered over to a less crowded pocket of the festival. There was a puppet show in the little square in front of the Irish pub, a rendition of
Peter and the Wolf.
Parents stood around as their children strayed in and out of the crowd. Their voices rose, melded, and spiraled around us, caught by the stone walls of the square.

Suddenly, to my left, I heard a roar. I looked around the corner and saw a Fiat—its driver obviously uninformed of the festival—hurtling up the tiny street. I grabbed Claire’s arm. Just a few feet from us, a little boy was playing with a ball directly in the path of the car.

“
Riccardo!
” a man shouted.

Claire shook me off and lurched forward, though there was no possible way for her to get to the child in time. A few yards ahead, a man—perhaps the father—launched his body in front of the car. He flew through the air, as if in a stop-motion movie, then bounced off the hood and rolled into the street. The impact didn’t stop the car, but it did slow it down, and an older man reached out and snatched the boy out of the way.