Burning the Map (8 page)

T
he ferry in Brindisi is monstrous, and yet they've managed to stuff in more passengers than there is space. We've already been laughed at when we asked for a sleeper cabin and learned that the rooms with cots were sold out weeks ago. Find a chair or someplace on the deck, we're told. The Irish guys were smart enough to book ahead, and they offer to share their bunks, but the other people in their cabin refuse to let us stay, assuming, apparently, that the six of us would be having raucous sex all night if we did. We say a temporary goodbye to the guys, promising to meet them at the Ios port.

Kat, Sin and I schlep from one level of the ship to another, struggling with our overstuffed backpacks. The inside of the ferry has a few lounge areas furnished with hideous, chartreuse-colored, faux-suede chairs. These, too, are completely occupied with travelers, most of them young, most of them sleeping, chatting or drinking beers, giving the boat the feel of an international floating college town. A bit stupid of us to choose the month of August to travel, when nearly every
European citizen is off for “holiday,” but it was August or never for me because of the bar exam.

We eventually resign ourselves to sleeping on the deck, but even that is a struggle. The floor is littered with sleeping bags and makeshift campsites. We finally locate a small patch of open space near three large metal cylinders. We look longingly at those people with plush sleeping bags while we spread out our pathetic little beach towels.

Despite the paltry accommodations, I know I'll have no trouble falling asleep, due to the minimal hours I logged last night. I prop a sweatshirt under my head, happy to be horizontal. The last thing I hear is Kat striking up a conversation with some German boys who look about fifteen.

“Where you boys heading?” she asks.

“Crete,” one replies.

“Really?” She sounds disappointed.

 

At 5:00 a.m., we find out the purpose of the metal cylinders we've curled up next to when these cylinders, otherwise known as steamer horns, sound off in three long, rumbling blasts, louder than anything I've ever heard. When they first start to boom, I have no idea what they are. I can barely remember where I am. All I know is that I'm being terrorized out of a wonderful dream where Francesco and I are kissing on a hardwood bench in one of the ubiquitous Roman churches. I bolt upright, terrified, my heart pounding almost as loudly as the horns. Lindsey sits up, too, and we stare at each other, our hands slapped over our ears, our mouths open in surprise. Kat is trying to untangle herself from the German boy who's sharing her meager towel.

Other than messing with the poor peasants on the deck, there seems to be no reason for the horns. We don't dock anywhere. There's no announcement of any kind. When the blasts are over, Kat and Lindsey slump back on their towels, but I'm entirely too awake.

I walk to the side of the deck, picking my way over the multitude of bodies. When I reach the railing, the sight of the sea overwhelms me. Last night, we'd boarded in darkness, and I'd almost forgotten that we were on the Adriatic. Now the sun creeps its way from the east, infusing the teal-blue water with a golden-white sheen. The water is peaceful, only a sailboat or two in the distance, no land in sight. The air smells of salt, and it's cool with an early-morning chill.

Kat joins me in hanging over the railing. The wind whips her chestnut hair and tangles it around her face, but this only makes her look like a model in front of a fan.

“So,” she says, “are you going to give me the play by play?”

“What do you mean?” But I know exactly what she means, and I'm thrilled that someone finally wants to hear about Francesco.

She gives me a little push.

“How's your boy?” I say, gesturing toward the towels and her German friend.

She shrugs. “Just some eighteen-year-old.”

“Right in your price range, huh?”

“Absolutely. Now tell me.”

“Where do I start?”

“Just tell me, damn it.”

“You know where he took me to dinner?”

Kat shakes her head.

“The Colosseum.” My voice carries a pride I barely recognize.

“What?” Her mouth drops open.

I fill her in on the details, polishing the extraordinary ones, sanding off the more mundane, going on and on about sneaking into the Colosseum and the picnic Francesco had planned.

“Oh, this guy is good.” Kat rubs her hands together. “Did you get any?”

I scuff a shoe on the deck, feeling my face getting warm.

“You did!” Kat says with a healthy amount of glee in her voice. “What happened?”

“Not much,” I say, but I can't stop a broad smile from moving onto my face.

“C'mon,” Kat says. She's practically jumping up and down now.

“No, I didn't sleep with him.”

She raises one eyebrow, a patented facial expression of hers.

“I didn't!” I say. “I mean, we did fool around, and then we did fall asleep, but we did
not
have sex.” I'm not sure this distinction would hold much weight with John, but I feel compelled to make it.

“Well, what then?” Kat says.

I give her the rest of the story, and as I do, I think, there's nothing better than this—hashing it out and reliving it with a friend, especially when that friend is Kat or Sin. During our senior year, we had a standing rule at our apartment that if you came home from a particularly good date—or a particularly good pickup, in Kat's case—you were allowed to wake the other two and bore them to death with all the gory details.

“It sounds magical,” Kat says when I finally stop for a breath, “like something you've been needing.”

I nod. “Exactly.”

“But what about John?”

I stop my head in mid-nod. “It had nothing to do with him.”

She raises one eyebrow again.

“Seriously, Kat. I know how shitty it was, being with Francesco, but it honestly had nothing to do with John. I still love him. I still want to be with him. This thing in the Colosseum, it was about me. A part of me that…I don't know, that I forgot about. Does that make sense?”

She falls silent for a moment. “It does, but what happens
when you get home? Are you going to pretend it never happened? Will you just forget about this, or did it really mean something? Are you going to tell John?”

In ten seconds, she has effectively cut through the jungle of excuses I have created for how I can keep this situation simple. Francesco and John swirl around in my head like a tornado.

I say nothing. Behind us, the sounds of conversation begin to grow as more and more people get up with the sun. It's becoming hotter, and I'm starting to feel a little rank and in need of a shower. Or maybe it's the conversation that's making me uncomfortable. Finally, I turn to Kat and give her a pathetic look.

She pulls me into a hug, laughing at my expression. “You'll figure it out, sweetie.”

I hold her tight before we pull away. “Do you think Sin will come around?”

“Sure. Give her a little time.”

I sigh. “And what's up with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for starters, what's the deal with the diamond earrings?”

Her full pink mouth opens and closes. She throws a hand in the air. “They were a gift.”

“And that's it?”

“Yeah. That's it.”

She seems irritated, but I'm not giving up on this. “If it's that simple then why is Lindsey ready to rip them out of your head every time she sees them?”

“Sin is overprotective.”

“I'm confused. What does she think she's protecting you from?”

“The Mad Hatter.” Saying her stepfather's nickname usually makes Kat laugh, but her voice is flat. “She doesn't like him.”

“Does anyone like the Hatter other than Patty?” Patty is Patricia Reynolds-Hatter, Kat's mom. A high-powered publicist for the arts, she met the Mad Hatter when he donated a million dollars to some play she was working on. I've always called her Patty because Kat has always called her Patty. In fact, Kat has addressed both her parents by their first names since she was twelve, something I thought very cool when I first heard of it. Over the years, though, I've come to see that this habit shows a certain lack of feeling, a certain sterility in their family.

“Sin thinks he's…well…” she trails off, finally adding, “dangerous.”

I scoff. “The Hatter? Please.” Phillip Hatter is a pompous, overeducated man with too much money and too much time on his hands, but he's soft and harmless as a basset hound, as far as I can tell.

Kat shoots me a look.

“What? What happened?”

She brings a fist to her face, lightly tapping her mouth with it. All at once, I get a sinking feeling in my chest.

“What is it?” I say, more demanding now.

Still she won't speak.

I take her hand, moving it away from her face. “Kat, what's wrong?”

“He hit on me. Sort of.”

I blink a few times, caught surprised. “What does ‘sort of' mean?”

Another shrug. “He kind of attacked me.”

“Kat! My God!” I say, completely shocked now.

“It's no big deal.” She gives a mini shrug of her shoulders.

“No big deal? Are you kidding? He's known you since you were a little girl.” Then a worse thought hits me. “Has this happened before?”

“No,” she says, her voice firm.

“So what exactly happened?”

She leans lower over the railing, staring at the water that's churning against the side of the boat. “I stayed with them one night. We'd gone out for Patty's birthday.”

“It was your mom's birthday? His wife's birthday, and he hit on you? The sick fucking bastard!”

She sends me a look to shut up.

“Okay,” I say. “Keep going.”

“I stayed because Patty and I were going shopping in the morning. I was asleep for an hour at least when I felt the covers being pulled back. I opened my eyes, and there was the Hatter.” She laughs, but it sounds brittle. “He had a robe on, this ugly silk thing he calls a ‘dressing gown,' but it was open and…” Her voice dies way.

“He had nothing else on?”

“Nope.”

“And was he…?”

She nods.

“Oh, God.” The thought of the Hatter naked with an erection is not a pleasant one. Under different circumstances, it might even be funny.

“Yeah, I got to see the
real
Hatter.” Kat laughs that dry laugh again. “And then he lunged and grabbed me.”

I gasp. “Jesus. What then?”

“He was putting his hands all over me.” She shivers. “I was so surprised, it took me a minute to react, but then I kneed him, and that took care of the hard-on.”

“He left?”

She nods. “He ran out of the room holding his balls.”

She hunches over the railing, like she's trying to protect her body from assault, or the memory of his, I suppose.

I reach out my hand and rub her back, not knowing what else to do. I can feel her ribs through her thin T-shirt. “So the earrings were a peace offering?”

She turns her face to me and nods.

“Why would you wear them, though, if they're from the Hatter?”

“Well, they're gorgeous for one thing, but mostly because I want to turn it around. I want to feel like I got the good end of that experience. And I did, don't you think?”

“Not really, Kat. It's fucked up, and it probably messed with you.” The Hatter has never been the epitome of good stepparenting, but he has held a fatherlike role for over a decade.

“Oh, hell no.” She wriggles away from my arm. “Like I said, no big deal.”

“It's a very big deal.” I begin to wonder if this has something to do with the overly affectionate kissing of Poster Boy at the table or fooling around with Guiseppe in front of me. Neither of those incidents were completely uncharacteristic of Kat, but they seemed a bit irrational, a bit over the top even for her.

“It's really nothing,” Kat says.

“Well, you told your mom, didn't you?”

Her body tenses. She shakes her head.

“Kat!”

I wonder for a second if she's going to tear up, but she only shakes her hair away from her face and over one shoulder, a five-star, supermodel hair flip if I ever saw one, but these things come naturally to Kat. “I really don't want to talk about this anymore,” she says.

“I think you need to.” This is true. I can't believe the Hatter attack wouldn't have completely freaked her out.