The Carnival at Bray (23 page)

By late afternoon the hills and farmland had given way to concrete buildings, the multiplication of human settlement. They were approaching the ancient city at last. It did not look the way Maggie had imagined it. As the train slowed, approaching Termini Station, they passed high concrete walls scrawled with colorful graffiti. On the other side of these walls stood tall apartment complexes with iron balconies where faded laundry hung to dry and old women lazed over the railings, smoking cigarettes and folding sheets. Through a haze of train exhaust, the women looked down at the people coming and going, flicking their cigarettes down into wilting vines.

Eoin had torn the Roman subway map from a Fodor's travel guide on sale at the airport book shop, a petty crime which had mildly scandalized Maggie, but in the dark stink of the station, with strangers jostling them and gypsies swaying by in flowered skirts shaking cans full of change, she was grateful for it. They found an open bench and sat down, gathering their bags under their legs.

“There are two subway lines here,” he said, tracing the map with his finger. “The A and the B. It looks like we just need to take the A train and get off at Furio Camillo. The Jesus-feet church and the Casa di Santa Barbara are a short walk from there.”

The afternoon rush hour had already passed, and the A train was quiet. Maggie and Eoin sat down beside each other, and as
the subway jolted forward, they looked out the windows at the dark concrete maze of underground rail, their white, curious faces reflected in the glass. Ever since she'd known Eoin, Maggie had always been the outsider, he, the native. But here in Italy they were both strangers and foreigners. Here, they could hold hands and nobody would gossip. They could laugh through their bungled pronunciations and whisper their excitement in a mutually foreign tongue. They could be lost together, and in their anonymity, they had the freedom to be themselves.

As they climbed the stairs and emerged from the subway station, Maggie discovered that the Eternal City actually looked pretty ordinary. Bits of trash clogged the gutters, horns honked, and people in office clothes, their faces hooded by helmets, buzzed by on scooters.
But what did you expect?
she asked herself.
Crowds of toga-clad plebeians?
This was a real city, after all, not a movie set. The convent hotel was a few blocks from the station, a rambling old building with peeling wooden shutters and sandstone walls. It had a big front door made of frosted glass, decorated with etchings of Saint Barbara. Inside, there was a sleek concierge desk, decorated with bowls of winter jasmine, but the air still smelled nunnish, like boiled meat and old textbooks. A woman in a plain black dress and tight ponytail looked up from the newspaper she was reading when they approached.

“English?” Eoin asked, setting down their bags.

“Yes, may I help you?”

“We need a room for a couple nights.”

The woman looked at them in silence for long enough to make Maggie squirm. Maybe she didn't understand English after all?

“Are you sharing a room?” she finally asked. She appraised Maggie with calculating disapproval from beneath a thick pair of eyebrows.

“Well, we were planning on it,” Eoin said, looking confused.

“You are—married, then?”

“Oh! Of course,” Eoin answered before Maggie even had time to look in his direction. “I'm Eoin Brennan and this is my wife, Maggie. We're here from Ireland for our honeymoon. We're neighbors of Dan Sean O'Callaghan. He recommended this place. Are you Marta?”

The woman's iron face broke instantly into a maternal smile. She swiped off her glasses.

“Ah, yes!” she said. “I am Marta! I know Dan Sean well—Ireland's oldest pilgrim, we call him. You are very welcome!” She leafed through a large ledger made of leather and wrote down a number. “Signor and Signora Brennan. We will put you in room 19. And many congratulations to you.”

She handed them an old-fashioned key with ornate edging.

“May I carry your bag for you, Signora Brennan?” Eoin said, swinging Maggie's duffel over one shoulder.

“Oh, by all means, Signor Brennan!” They fell over themselves laughing behind the metal grating of an ancient elevator, which deposited them at the end of a dark, narrow passage lined on either side with plain wooden doors and ending, at the far side, with a large ceramic statue of the Madonna and Child, her robes the same azure color as the shrine in Dan Sean's bedroom. But while Eoin walked ahead, carrying their bags, Maggie's giggles gave way to a nervous counting down of room numbers: twenty-five. Twenty-four.
I'm staying in a hotel room.
Twenty-three.
With a boy.
Twenty-two.
Did I bring pajamas?
Twenty-one.
What if I snore?
Twenty.
Are we going to
—nineteen. Eoin stopped in front of their room and fiddled with the key. The Virgin Mary stood frozen on her throne adjacent to their door. Her blue eyes said nothing. In her head, Maggie remembered the words of Dan Sean's rosary:
Hail, Holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.
The key clicked in the old lock and the door swung open.

Their room was as plain and quiet as one would expect of a former nuns' quarters. A naked lightbulb hung from the
ceiling, spotlighting the center of the room in bright white light and leaving the corners in darkness. The only decoration on the whitewashed walls was a simple wooden crucifix above the narrow bed, which was covered in starched white sheets and several layers of faded quilts. Next to it stood a desk with a small reading lamp. On the far wall was a window, shuttered by tight wooden slats. When Eoin went to open it, the cold air flooded in, and it sucked the door shut behind them.
We are alone in a hotel room together,
Maggie thought. Trying to appear casual, she flopped onto the bed and watched as Eoin unzipped his bag and began putting the small pile of clothes he'd brought into the top drawer of the dresser.

“So,” she said, “what do you want to do tonight?”

He took two neatly folded pairs of underwear from the bag and Maggie looked away quickly, scrutinizing the buzzing lightbulb in the middle of the ceiling.

“Well,” he said, closing the dresser drawer, “I've heard it mentioned that Italy has some pretty good food. Maybe we should go check out one of these Roman restaurants I've been hearing about all my life?”

“We
are
newlyweds, after all,” Maggie laughed. “So I guess we do have reason to celebrate. Do I have time to take a shower?”

“Course,” Eoin said. “I'm going to go downstairs and check out the rest of the lobby. Guidebook said they've converted the old convent infirmary into a hotel bar. This, I have to see for myself.”

“I'll meet you down there?”

“Okay, then.” He stepped forward, as if he was thinking about kissing her, but then, changing his mind, he stepped back again. Maggie was left in the middle of the tiny room leaning toward him, waiting to receive his kiss, as he fumbled, blushing, out the door.

The bathrooms in the hallway were shared by all the guests staying on the floor. When Maggie entered the steamy women's area, she saw three shower stalls covered in white plastic curtains,
and two of them were occupied. The women behind these curtains had youngish voices, and were speaking in a language that Maggie could not identify. It was not Italian, though—Portuguese, maybe. Or even French. She couldn't tell. Stepping into the shower, she felt the thrill of excitement of an American on the European continent for the first time. She strained to listen over the pelting water to their lilting voices, the unrecognizable trills and drops in language, peppered occasionally by girlish laughter. The hotel had provided a tiny tube of lemony shampoo with Italian wording scrolled across the package, and she squeezed some into her hair, then lathered her body with a seashell-shaped soap that smelled of tangerines. After Dan Sean's corrugated tub, the little shower stall and the fruity toiletries felt positively luxurious.

She rinsed off, wrapped herself in a towel, and stepped out into the steamy haze of the white-tiled bathroom. The two women were standing before the sinks. They were both completely naked.

“S-sorry,” Maggie stuttered, fumbling back toward her shower stall, but they just turned and smiled at her.

“Hello,” one of them said. She turned back to the fog-glazed mirror and dabbed some makeup across her eyelids.

“Hi.” Maggie pulled her towel closer and stepped shyly to the vacant sink between them. She ran her toothbrush under the water. She'd never been in the presence of such bold, unselfconscious nudity. She'd thought Ashley had been the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen in real life, but these women were practically otherworldly. They were tall and large breasted, with lean muscles coursing beneath their pink skin and rich thatches of pale pubic hair. Each woman had long blond hair combed seal-slick down her back. Their eyes were an ice-gray color Maggie had only seen at the bottom of pools. She did not know it was possible to have eyes that color.

But what was most fascinating about them—what she really couldn't believe—was the tattoos. Maggie always thought that
tattoos were for sailors, like the faded anchor on the inside of her years-dead Grandpa Lynch's forearm. She had never seen one on a woman, let alone a woman this spectacularly beautiful. The one to her left leaned toward the mirror and applied eyeliner in studied, precise strokes, and her plank-thin back, with its perfect shoulder blades, displayed a huge tattoo of a naked female figure, hands splayed, with intricately feathered angel wings that spread in pale red ink all the way to the tops of the woman's shoulders.
Why does that look so familiar?
Maggie combed her lemon-scented hair and tried not to stare. Suddenly she realized: it was the same image that adorned the cover of the Nirvana album
In Utero.

The woman caught her eye in the mirror and said, in perfect and beautifully accented English, “Toothpaste?”

“Oh—sure!” Maggie unclutched her towel to fumble with her travel tube of Colgate. She handed the woman the toothpaste just as her towel dropped in a pool around her ankles. Her cheeks flaming, she reached down to grab it. But then she stopped.
I may not look like these women, but I'm no little girl.
She kicked her towel aside, straightened her bare shoulders, and continued to comb her hair.

“I like your tattoo.” She smiled at the woman in the mirror, resisting the urge to cover her own untattooed skin.

“Thank you!” the woman said, absently reaching back and grazing the tattoo with long fingers. “It's still a bit sore—I only got it finished last week.”

“That's from the
In Utero
cover, isn't it?”

“Yes! Is everyone in America as in love with Kurt Cobain as we are in Norway?”

“Pretty much,” Maggie laughed.

“I have waited years for this,” sighed the other woman. She held out a long arm for Maggie to inspect. A fragment of lyrics was tattooed across the soft whiteness of her forearm:
I'm not like them / but I can pretend …

This confirmed it: these were the coolest women alive.

“Are you in Rome for the show?”

“Yeah, I'm here with my boyfriend,” Maggie said. “My uncle got us the tickets.”

“Well, you must have a very cool uncle.”

“The coolest,” Maggie smiled, rummaging through her bag for her mascara. For a second, she forgot completely that Kevin was dead.

“The whole city is full of Nirvana fans,” the woman to her left said. “It's incredible.”

And it was.
Here I am,
Maggie thought,
in Rome, combing my hair next to two Norwegian models with Nirvana tattoos.
Meanwhile, downstairs, a handsome boy—a boy she'd called her boyfriend and it hadn't felt like a lie—waited for her at a bar that had once been a nun's infirmary. This time last year, she'd been a high school freshman, lonely and bored, sitting through Mr. Blackwell's English class and reading
Our Town
in her pleated school skirt, staring out the window at the gray Chicago winter, a winter as drab and endless as her adolescence.

“See you at the show!” the Norwegian girls waved, covering themselves with minuscule towels and heading out to the convent hallway.

In the empty bathroom, Maggie put on her makeup and her tight black dress and dabbed her drugstore perfume on her neck and wrists. She zipped up her bag, dropped it off in room 19, and took the ancient elevator down to the main floor.

Eoin sat at the bar counter in the shadow of a large potted plant. He was drinking a bottle of Italian beer. He'd changed out of his Saint Brendan's uniform and put on a pair of jeans and a dark sweater. His close-cropped hair was neatly combed.

“You look so handsome.” It was an old-fashioned thing to say, and far more straightforward than Maggie had intended. It had just come out of her, a remnant of the confidence high she
was riding after her meeting with the Norwegians. But before she could qualify it with a friendly slap on the back or a careless laugh, Eoin swallowed the last of his beer and stood up.

“And you look beautiful.”

At the front desk, Eoin asked Marta to recommend a place for dinner. She circled a spot on their map—“a short walk, very romantic for newlyweds,” she explained—and the two of them walked hand in hand down Via Monserato until they found the restaurant by its hand-stenciled sign hanging from an arched stone doorway.

The narrow room at the front of the restaurant was a butcher shop crammed with slabs of cured meat, some with the bristles still attached; barrels full of hooves; thick wheels of cheese behind refrigerated glass, and links of sausages hanging in chandeliered loops above the ceiling. The closest Maggie had ever come to such a place was the Mars Cheese Castle, off Highway 94 on the way to Milwaukee, which despite being not nearly as rustic as this place, had still always managed to fill her with horror and vows of vegetarianism. But here, as they followed the bowlegged butcher, with his stooped shoulders and bulbous, scarred knuckles, through the barrels of molding cheese and casks of fermenting wine, out into a covered courtyard with cool dark tiles and tiny lights crisscrossing the ceiling, the magic of Rome began to sink in. Maggie suddenly became aware of the power of her long, young legs, the short hem of her dress, even the flaky mascara that fringed the green eyes she'd inherited by her mother. Her heels clacked on the stone tile as she moved across the floor, and she felt not just Eoin's eyes but the eyes of all the men in the restaurant watching.
So this is what sexy feels like,
she thought.