Abroad (6 page)

As soon as I took the drink, I regretted it. Would they think of me differently now? But how could they not, when they didn’t even know me at all?

Too late, I realized that Jenny was abstaining most of the time. And of course it was she who asked the most lurid questions, only to smile and listen quietly, her glass sitting primly on the table.

“
Don’t
tell me you haven’t done
that
,” Luka erupted when Jenny refrained from the
I never gave a blow job
question. “Come on!”

“A goddess never tells.”

“What?” Anna cried, her thin voice wavering. “A goddess never
tells
? You—you bloody
started
this game!”

Jenny picked up a spoon, as if inspecting it for filth. “That’s true enough, dearie. But I never said
I
was actually playing.”

We stared at her, stupefied.

“Oh, don’t be so shocked. See, you’ve already learned a lesson. An important one.”

“I’m going,” Anna said, rising.

“You don’t really want to do that, do you?”

A look of dread came over Anna’s pale face. She looked so fragile that, in my grappa-infused state, I wondered if she might break.

I glanced at Jenny. What could possibly have frightened Anna so?

“I was actually trying to make a point, girls. The thing is, you don’t have to tell anyone what you’ve done. Ever. Fact, it’s ever so much more powerful if you
don’t.
We’re the only ones who have to know our own secrets. If you drink too much, we’re not going to get on you for it. If you go home with the wrong fellow, who cares? Blow an old codger, vomit into a plant. We have a pact, eh?
We keep these things to ourselves.
”

“It’s true,” Luka said.

“So come on, Anna,” Jenny said, lighting a cigarette. “All right? Come around. Don’t rip me a new arsehole over a stupid game. Or should I be saying that to Taz?”

Luka burst into laughter, while Anna looked at me to make sure I was all right, then smiled reluctantly. My face burned, but I managed to grin.

“I’m joking, Taz, darling. Girls.
Really.
Don’t be upset. We are going to have
such
a lovely time here, the four of us. All right? We’ve been counting on it. And now I have a surprise.”

“What now?” Luka drawled.

Jenny pulled four substantial, unfamiliar-looking coins out of her pocket. “These are passes to a private party in the country.
Very
insidery.”

“How did you get those?” I asked.

“I get a lot of things. You’ll see. All right. Luka, the bill?”

Luka signaled the waitress and handed over her card without looking.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Can’t I chip in?”

“Luka will get it,” Jenny said.

I glanced at Luka, who met my eyes with an impassive gaze.

“All right.”

“Here we go then.”

The cab ride took over an hour, jerking us through a tangle of steeply pitched streets and into the countryside. The other girls seemed perfectly calm, aloof even; Luka produced glasses and a bottle of wine from her bag, somehow nicely chilled. I knew nothing about wine, but even I could tell from the complex notes on my tongue that it was very good. These girls were not foodies, exactly, but they knew what was of value, and always insisted that we partake of it. Wines of the right year and month; crumbling white cheeses from the correct region, veined with sapphire; restaurants of the moment tucked away in stone basements with famous visiting chefs on sojourns away from Rome and Paris. I never quite knew how they’d learned such things, for I never saw any literature on the subjects, which, if not exactly complex, were certainly esoteric. It was as if people of the class they so obviously inhabited were simply born knowing the right way to do things, while the rest of us had to silently observe and study in order to catch up.

I stared out the window of the taxi, trying to look for markers in order to memorize where we were going. We went through several small towns, past a long, flat expanse of dead sunflowers, their burned shadows cast over the ground in the moonlight, and then up a steep mountain, lurching and spiraling onto a web of switch-backed dirt roads.

“If we don’t get there soon I’ll vomit,” Anna whispered. Luka poured her another glass of wine. Finally we arrived in a tiny, nondescript town—less a town, really, than a grim string of damp, dimly lit houses, clinging to either side of the road.

“This can’t be it,” I said, but Luka elbowed me and pointed to the building reaching up before us toward the black sky.

Even in the dark, you could see that this cathedral had once really been something, and not simply because of its size. The face of it rose high into the night, formidable with its stained glass windows, which I now saw were lit from within. As we rolled down the car windows we could hear the muffled roar of music and voices—that intoxicating swell of a party that imparts both excitement and dread.

“It is,” Jenny said. “Pay the man.”

The fare was over eighty euros. Looking nervously at the meter, I ticked off in my head how much my share would affect the balance I had left for the semester. But once again, before I could produce my wallet, Luka paid. When I protested, she ignored me and got out of the car.

“But really—” I went on.

“Taz. No.” Jenny’s command was firm and businesslike, almost as if she were speaking to a spoiled dog.

Grasping at one another’s arms, we approached the scene. I was trembling, and I caught myself thinking rather inappropriately of the war story of Oradour-sur-Glane—the women and children being locked in the church there and burned alive. The cathedral’s great wooden door was shut, but seemed to visibly pulse with sound. I had to shake away the urge to run.

“Are you sure we’re invited?” Anna said.

Jenny ignored her and pounded on the door in sharp, staccato bursts. After a moment, the door creaked open, revealing a woman with black hair pulled into a painful-looking bun and skin so pale I could see the blue at her temples. Jenny dropped the coins into her palm and the woman opened the door wider, revealing the inner world to us.

Jenny went first, her chin thrust forward. I was still clinging to Anna’s hand, the tableau rendering me both elated and petrified. Candelabras big as trees lit the cavernous space with a flickering, ghostly glow. All the pews had been ripped away, leaving only the black-and-white marble floor, which someone had polished to a wet-looking shine. Everyone—young and old, male or female—was in black and white, as if utterly bled of color this night, the men’s hair combed flat and glistening, the ladies’ artfully arranged in chignons, bouffants, or glistening, wing-like sculptures. They clustered together in ever-changing groups, filling the air with the rolling syncopations of their chatter. Smooth, grim-faced waiters circled the room with precarious trays of Prosecco, served in delicate crystal glasses held miraculously aloft above the revelers. Some of the guests were dancing near an orchestra playing intricate, seductive music of a sort I’d never heard before, brimming with cymbals and a tight band of electric cellos and violins, while a small troupe of gymnasts in scarlet performed slightly lewd acrobatics in the middle of the floor. Elaborate as the party was, the room had a somber feeling, and I understood that this celebration was not just a frivolous gathering, but also an occasion that signified something.

“What is this party for?” I asked Jenny.

“A local club or whatever,” she called out, and shrugged. “Patrick wasn’t very clear about it.”

“Jenny’s flavor of the week,” Luka whispered to me with a nudge.

I looked around to see if anyone else from Enteria was there, but of course they weren’t. I looked silly in my jeans, yet the other three were dressed almost as casually as I.

“I wish I’d
known
it was a ball,” Anna said. “I do hate being unprepared for these things.”

“I’ll get us some sauce,” Jenny said, then disappeared into the crowd. The frenzy was rising, the great door swinging open and shut with a great
slam
twice a minute as more and more figures in black and white filed into the hall. The lights grew dimmer, the music louder, the dancing more feverish. Anna, Luka, and I stood so close our shoulders were touching.

“Taz,” Luka said, “you’re
gaping.
”

“I know,” I said, wondering only how they were managing not to. I’d never been to an event like this—a happening so clearly exclusive, so … desirable. Yes, that was the correct word.
Desirable.
You could feel it in the air, the privilege of being somewhere others would die to be.

“I once went to a wedding like this in Ibiza,” Anna said.

Luka leaned into my ear. “The Jaggers, she means.”

“Shut up, Luka.”

“Odd, isn’t it? How the
real
bluebloods are always the least discreet?”

I smiled, as if I had any idea what she might be talking about. Suddenly, I froze. There, just a few feet away, was the man from the Museo Archeologico. His figure jutted up through the crowd, his shoulders broad, his suit nice but a bit misshapen.

“Excuse me,” I said to the girls, then, emboldened by the alcohol, made my way over. As I got closer, I felt an unreasonable chill, splitting me in two. His brown hair was soft, drifting over his collar. He held a glass of whiskey, neat, and was carefully looking at the faces in the crowd.

I tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hello,” I said.

He turned and looked at me rather fiercely for a moment. Was he placing where he’d seen me before? And then he smiled—a smile broad as any girl would wish for. A surprisingly kind smile for a face so uneven and severe.

“Ah. Museum girl. The one after blood.”

“What?”

“You were the one after that Agamemnon story.”

“Oh, yes.”

He looked down at my jeans. “Who invited you? You don’t look Grifonian to me.”

“Neither do you.”

I thought he would smile, but the words fell flat. Before I could say anything else, my new friends were flanking me on both sides.

“Hello there,” Luka said, elbowing me playfully. “Who are
you
? Glad to see a familiar. You know Taz from the Enteria class?”

“No,” he said abruptly. My new friend (was he a friend?) then excused himself, disappearing pointedly into the crowd.

“Well,
that
won’t do,” Anna said. “What could he be on about?”

“I suppose that he … he doesn’t like me very much.”

“Impossible,” Anna scoffed. “That’s like not liking…”

She paused.

“Bread?” Luka offered.

“Cham
pagne
,” Anna corrected. “Anyhow. Perhaps he’s socially awkward.”

“Perhaps he’s a
bore.
”

Just then, Jenny returned, followed by a waiter with four glasses of Prosecco. He presented them to us with a short, barely perceptible glance at our attire, and then moved on.

“Took a while to sort that out, I tell you. Christ. My Italian is inexcusably rotten.”

We stood there, the four of us, in the middle of the throng. The other girls danced slowly with one another, and I followed suit, trying not to feel too awkward.

Surprisingly, Jenny knew a lot of people at the party. Every once in a while, someone would tap her on the shoulder, kiss her cheeks, and pull her aside. She would bend her head, nodding and listening. Once she beckoned me over to translate to a twentysomething blond woman sheathed in white sequins.

“Tell her I’m going to the lake on Monday,” Jenny instructed. I did, and the woman kissed both of us and wandered off, looking like a cat who had lapped up a cup of cream.

“Lake Trasimeno?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’ve got a friend with a house there.”

Of course you do
, I thought. What else to expect from a girl who got us invites to the most enchanting gathering I’d ever seen? Eventually the candelabras went completely out, and somehow the light transitioned to red lamps, bathing the room in a thick, smoky amber. Everyone was dancing now—it didn’t seem to matter much who with—and even keeping off to the side, I was twice swept up in the sea of bodies. Round and round the room the four of us spun, finding and losing and finding one another again, until finally Jenny caught my arm and pulled me to a corner.

“What do these blokes want?” she asked, looking with annoyance at an intense little group of men in tuxedos gathered in a tight circle. “They keep talking to me.”

Patting her arm, I turned to find out, only to see that the man from the museum was among them. Again, when I approached, he hurried away.

“My friend’s Italian is very bad,” I said. “May I help you?”

“You are no longer invited,” an older man said curtly. “All nonmembers must go.”

“Nonmembers of what?”

“You must go,” he repeated, gesturing firmly toward the door.

I relayed the message to the others, feeling as if I’d somehow failed them.

“Fucking long way we’ve come, just to get kicked out at two-fucking-thirty,” Luka said.

“It won’t do to argue,” Jenny said. “Lot of new friends here. Let’s go while there are still cabs.” She herded us toward the door, which was already clotted with other wilting female figures in black and white. Jenny wiggled out, cutting the line, and the rest of us followed with our heads down. In a moment we found ourselves—despite the jeers of those behind—in the very first car in the queue. The driver seemed hesitant, but once Luka presented a quick bundle of bills, he hurtled us down the mountain without further question.

“One last drink,” Jenny said, popping a bottle. “Knicked it from the bar.”

“Jenny, you are spectacular,” Luka said. “Just has to be said.”

“
We
are spectacular,” Jenny corrected, handing me the bottle. “Say it,” she commanded.

“You are spectacular.” I took a drink.

“Nooooo,” she said patiently, as if to a small, rather dim child. “The B4 is spectacular.”

“Right.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“No.
Say
it, Taz.” She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against mine. “Write it in fucking blood.”