DOING THE RETARD DANCE FOR FUN AND PROFIT [also from the Hopwood portfolio]

I will never forget the moment Margaret Lattimore, world famous opera star, first laid eyes on me. I remember because I was faking a seizure.

It takes a very special kind of talent to look retarded in an evening gown. The evening gown, after all, is designed to make its wearer look dignified, graceful, shapely, and important. I personally long for any occasion to adorn myself in yards of satin, embroidery silk and subtly tinted pearls.

I repeat, it is difficult indeed to look stupid in an evening gown. I, however, am blessed with that special gift. By performing a knock-kneed dance in which I spasm wildly while jabbing two fingers into the air, I achieve the impossible. The 'retard dance' has become so popular amongst colleagues that I am often begged to perform it by near-strangers.

I oblige them. That is how I found myself compromising my dignity in the sweltering backstage of an Italian playhouse. The backstage doors were propped open to let in the fresh night air ... Italians strolling by on the street stopped to stare in as the young American opera singer jerked her satin-clad hips back and forth, fingers stabbing at the sky.

Margaret Lattimore burst through the open doors in a stunningly reflective dress; and when I say “burst”, I mean the kind produced by a land mine. Ms. Lattimore is not the sort of presence one ignores. She is an enchanted hybrid of Russian ballet dancer and college line backer. She is large, imposing, athletic, at once coarse and graceful.

“God, is it dry or what? Somebody get me some yogurt!” she bellowed. I froze, my hips akimbo and my fingers raised incriminatingly over my head – the picture of John Wayne during a shootout, were John Wayne to occasionally wear silk couture.

Lattimore looked the assembly up and down. “Katie?”

I wanted to lower my arms. Truly, I did. “Yes, ma'am,” I replied, motionless.

“Move,” she said as someone handed her a yogurt cup, “You're on.”

I don't remember much about my aria, to be honest. I seem to remember intermittent applause. The performance itself was incidental when compared to the clap Lattimore plastered on my back as I exited. “Nice work,” she said. She swept onto the stage in her mobile disco ball and proceeded to blind the waiting audience with her voice. It was so rich and powerful that the rafters creaked in sympathetic vibration.

What I felt that night for Margaret Lattimore, I have never felt for Jesus.

There is an unwritten law amongst young singers that one has not begun to study until one has sung in Europe. Like most overeager amateurs, I subscribe to all the laws, written and otherwise – so, one Friday in June, I boarded a flight to Rome. Several months earlier I had landed my first role with a real opera company as a chorus member in a production of Verdi's Falstaff. It was not a large company, and the role was so negligible as to have a number attached, but it satisfied my requirements: it was in Europe.

Within five minutes of stepping off the plane, I was hopelessly lost. The stage manager had promised to meet me at “the gate”, but there were several gates in the terminal: the gate exiting the plane, the security gate, the ticketing gate. Instead of picking one and waiting patiently beside it, I decided to lap all three. I returned to the first gate without my stage manager, having gained only an understanding of my utter incompetence. The Rome Airport has little signage and its floor plan would make the Minotaur cringe. Stoically warding off tears and panic, I paced the deserted exit gate until in the distance I spotted a mousy-haired woman in a blue sun dress and glasses. I had never met my stage manager, but there was something distinctly American about the woman approaching me ... her no-nonsense gait, her unstyled hair, her tattered luggage. I waved, and she waved back. The pressure behind my eyes quickly faded, but the omen remained.

We were going to be living in the mountain town of Novefeltria for a month while we rehearsed the opera. The managers of the program had arranged Italian classes for weekday mornings, so that we might better assimilate into our surroundings. Our stage manager stood in the front of the bus, bracing herself as it jolted, trying to make announcements over the roar of the decrepit motor. “I know most of you have been to Italy before,” she yelled. “You're used to running into people who speak English. Well, I've been to Novefeltria, and trust me, you're gonna want to show up for classes. Trust me.” She looked haunted for a moment, as if reliving an unfortunate linguistic mishap – probably one involving an Italian waiter and a food allergy. She said sternly, “I repeat: Language classes are not optional.”

On the route from Rome to Novefeltria, we made two rest stops. At the second, my wallet was stolen. I had been in the country for approximately six hours and twenty minutes.

We stepped onto the cobblestones of the Novefeltria piazza, jet lagged and sick from enduring 40 miles of steep mountain road in a bus without shocks. Under the piazza's fountain, there were picnic benches lined with food and warm soda. Little Italian flags pierced American-style sub sandwiches. Computer print-out signs read “Welcome, singers!”

As we lunged towards the food, our manager cleared her throat and produced a sheaf of papers from her luggage. “Excuse me,” she said hoarsely, “I'm going to start assigning accommodations. Please listen for your name.” We barely glanced in her direction, much less looked up from our food. I never heard my name called – I was gathered up along with my luggage and told to follow the ancient Italian woman in front of me. Two other bewildered girls also followed. I already knew one of them: Mary, a wispy Michigan native, studied at my conservatory. We made quick introductions.

To my left, my other roommate Rebecca swore under her breath. “Think she speaks any English?”

Ahead of me, Mary called over her shoulder, “Why don't we just find out?” She bounded up to the woman's shoulder, tapped it, and asked in a cheerful Midwestern accent, “Parlo un po' d'Italiano, ma non capisco molto ... Parlate inglese?”

The woman, we later learned, was deaf in that particular ear ... not that it mattered.

I muttered, “She's asking if the old lady speaks any English.”

Rebecca answered, “Five bucks says, not a fucking word.”

I didn't take the bet. It was a five-minute walk to our apartment, which turned out to be the second story of the old woman's house. She took us through it, cheerfully chatting away in Italian. Mary and I nodded, smiled and picked up what we could – Mary even tried haltingly to translate. Our new landlady raved about the new appliances and the spectacular view.

There were two bedrooms. Mary claimed the smallest for herself, leaving Rebecca and I with the larger. Rebecca unpacked a few things – shoes, a hair straightener, some clothing. Once these items were put away, she dove into her purse. “Mind if I have a cigarette on the balcony?”

Without thinking I waved her away. “Go ahead.”

Two minutes later, Mary entered, wrinkling her nose. “Ew!” she said loudly. “I hate smoke!”

“Good thing there's nobody smoking in here, then,” I said as I folded my socks.

“God,” Mary whispered to me, “Does she know what smoking does to you?”

“Presumably,” I answered.

“But she's a singer!”

I shrugged, as if to remind myself of my own indifference, and returned to my sock drawer.

We had our placement exams at 8 am the following morning in the high school situated off of the piazza. We hadn't been able to find a grocery open at 9pm the previous evening, so we breakfasted on tap water. The exam was maddeningly simple: conjugations in a few tenses, grammar, and basic vocabulary. Hungry and annoyed, I scribbled a few begrudging answers and left for the cafe down the street. I had not yet discovered that my wallet was gone. I returned an hour and two canceled credit cards later. I was now not only hungry and jet lagged, but also pissed off. I was in no mood for a romance language. There was a paper posted on the cork board in the lobby listing the results of the placement exam. I checked my assigned room number and started down the hall.

I opened the door of my classroom to find Mary sitting in the center. To her left were two girls I had never met, and two her right were two older men. I recognized them – Dr. B, our director, and Tim, our rehearsal accompanist. Mary patted the seat next to her with a smile. I skirted the tiny room and settled heavily into my plastic chair.

“What's your name?” asked one of the girls I had never seen before. “I'm Kate and this is Melissa.”

“Nice to meet you,” I scowled. “My name's Katie.”

Kate squealed with what I assume was delight. One would think that having the most popular baby name of the 1980s would condition one to expect encounters with other Katherines, Katies, Kates, Kathys and Kathleens within one's age bracket. But no – in Kate's eyes our meeting was pure fate. I could tell what that squeal meant for me – it meant B.F.F. necklaces and pillow fights, professions of endless devotion and the exchanging of emails. It meant that unless I did something drastic, Kate was going to follow me everywhere for two months of my life. I could either let her down easy now or, in due course, spend a hard night digging her shallow grave.

As I opened my mouth to crush her, Melissa jumped in. “Nice to meet you, too, Katie.” Her voice was even and soothing, like a hostage negotiator's. “Where are you from?”

“Most recently, New Jersey.”

“Jersey, huh?” Melissa smiled. “We're from Utah.”

Mary nodded. “How nice.”

Oh, Mary. Mary, Mary, Mary. Utah is many things. It is red and salty and jagged. It is hot. It is underpopulated. It is the Mothership of a certain special sect of a world religion – you know the one. It is the polygamy capital of the U.S.A. But nice, Mary?

“How did you start learning Italian?” Kate asked us. “Melissa and I learned it on our mission in Rome. We were here for two years.”

The word 'mission' set off warning bells. Only two kinds of people go on missions in this world: secret agents and religious fanatics. If the former, you should probably duck and cover. If the latter, you should probably play dead. I fought the urge to curl up into the fetal position.

“Really?” Mary leaned towards Kate and Melissa. “How nice.”

Something inside me snapped. It might have been an artery, or maybe a synaptic link. Whatever it was, it called for food and some type of alcohol. I got up, left the room silently, and did not return for the rest of the afternoon.

I walked to the nearest bank, which was closed. I stared at the numbers painted onto the glass. The bank, they told me, was closed every day between 1 o'clock and 4 o'clock. It was open for four hours in the morning and two in the evening. It was not, of course, open on weekends.

A passing teen thrust his thumb towards the door: “E' chiuso.”

“Yeah, no shit it's closed,” I answered in English. “Fuck off.”

The young man threw up his hands and walked away. I don't know if he understood.

I sat down on the ledge of the fountain in the middle of the piazza, silently hating every person that passed. I imagined the other singers and smug Italians meeting with unfortunate, colorful ends. That baritone would fall down a well, that young Mediterranean woman would break the heel of her stylish shoe and roll helplessly into the street, that dog would be accidentally shot by a disoriented big game hunter. Imagining these things distracted me from the returning pressure behind my eyes.

“You hungry?”

I nearly fell into the fountain. “Jesus H.” I turned around. “What?”

A short, thin, red-headed boy was sitting just behind me on the fountain ledge. “I'm Anthony,” he said, offering his hand. “I'm in Falstaff, too – I think we met on the bus?”

It was true, I had met him. He was the sort of guy that liked to sneer and pretend he was an acclaimed Times critic. He offered his comments on all things related to art, politics and music without prompting. As I remembered, I had switched seats to escape him. On the other hand, he had just mentioned food.

“Yeah.” I took his hand. “I'm Katie.”

Anthony nodded his head towards the cafe. “I heard about your wallet. That sucks. I was just thinking, you must be hungry. You want lunch? Caffeine, maybe?”

“Um ...” Yes. Yes, I wanted lunch. I did not, however, want all that an Anthony-sponsored lunch implied. In some countries, when a man buys you a meal, your father gives him a dowry.

Anthony smiled and pointed to his hand, which incidentally I was still holding. “It's OK,” he said. “I'm married.” Sure enough, he was wearing a ring.

“Oh. OK!” I said cheerfully. While I had some reservations about forming relationships, I had no trouble at all being the Other Woman. “Let's go!”

Anthony, I would later learn, was only twenty-five. He had married young and made his home in Salt Lake City, Utah. Luckily for both of us, my need for espresso and pizza went deeper than my religious intolerance.

I'm still not sure how it happened. The opera company went scouting all over the country, and between their stops in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, they apparently found time to stop off in that other reputed hotspot of vocal talent: Utah. In a cast of about 30, 8 singers were Mormon. 6 were married. Our Falstaff had 3 children at the ripe old age of 26.

Somewhere in the social milieu, in between the begging for money and the alcoholism and the swearing, in between the references to unwed sex and drugs that fell like manna from the sky, in between my war stories involving cop cars and strip joints, I attracted the attention of all eight Mormons. Perhaps they sensed in me the spirit of a True Sinner – a soul that not only strayed from the path but did so with all the spite, arrogance, and misplaced passion of youth. They ate it up.

Almost against my will, I found myself surrounded by a circle of friends that enjoyed a good swig of cough-syrup or a Saturday night spent with a book and hot water bottle. What could possibly be more amusing than tying oneself hand-and-foot to a group that does not condone drinking, smoking, or screwing in the land where all three vices were born?

There is only one explanation. My God is a vengeful god, and I really pissed Him off.

Luckily, God and I weren't on speaking terms anyway. I prefer to engineer my own miracles. Lattimore was scheduled to teach students during the tour. I'm not going to say I killed one of her other students and took the vacant space for myself. I am, however, happy to imply it.

My first voice lesson with Margaret Lattimore was as close to religion as I come. Luke, Paul and Peter were not more enamored of their leader. She was playful, self-effacing, and fond of the phrase, “Say it, sing it, dammit!”

“I have a Jersey accent that used to be a Texas accent,” I reminded her.

“Shut up and sing,” Lattimore replied.

Let's face it – most of the time, Luke, Paul and Peter had no freakin' idea what Jesus was talking about. But they straightened their togas and followed – because honestly, what else is an ambitious turn-of-the-millennium fisherman to do but follow the crazy Jew?

There were many moments during my tenure in Italy when I contemplated going home to my attic apartment, downing a bottle of deliciously cheap wine, and then flinging myself from my kitchen window. The only preventative was the size of the window ... I was afraid I wouldn't fit through it.

Nothing fit me in Italy, you see. In Italy, I am known as Olga, the blond giantess from the hills of Manless. When I strolled down the street it was as if a huge neon sign reading “Heckle Me” lit miraculously in the sky.

I threw off my covers and sprang from bed one morning – hitting my head on the ceiling as I went – trudged to my refrigerator, and then, as I stared into it, realized: My god. This refrigerator could fit into a pair of my Skinny Jeans. I paused. Breathe, Katie, I told myself. It's just a tiny refrigerator. In a tiny apartment. In a land made for tiny people. It was too late. Oh god. OH GOD. I was trapped. Trapped in Muchkinland.

I was surrounded by mountains and beautiful valleys and the backdrop from the Sound of Music, and I had cabin fever because everyone on that peninsula was three feet tall. When a size large fit me at the market, I knelt down and said a prayer to nearest crucifix (and in Italy, there is always a nearby crucifix). I was always the shoe bridesmaid, never the shoe bride – the saleswomen would make fun of my obscenely proportioned feet in vernacular Italian and then cackle as she informed me that in Europe, footlery is not afforded to those with the audacity to grow above the allotted five foot maximum.

I know that there are those amongst you inclined to disagree. “Katherine,” you are saying to yourselves, “surely it can't be as bad as all that. Don't you think you might have been a tad paranoid, perhaps over-dramatic, even?” To put it bluntly: No. One day while I was walking along the sidewalk on my way to a cafe, a young male motorist stared at me so hard that he literally forgot to steer and ran his car up on the curb beside me. Quod erat demonstratum, you disbelieving bastards – I was, indeed, being ogled as blatantly as a bearded lady at the circus.

I found myself alienated by my appearance with the Italians and by my social ineptitude with fellow Americans. It was me versus everyone else in a 2000-mile vicinity. This was war. It didn't take long to come up with ways to anger, sadden and confuse my foe, the Common Italian. One good way is to watch the Giant Panda Cam of the D.C. Zoo website with many American compatriots while chanting, "Panda!! Panda!! Panda!!!!" One may also refer to Nutella as "The Devil's peanut butter" and then try to explain the concept of peanut butter for about 34 minutes. Or you could do what I did my second week in Novefeltria: struggle to order a Cosmopolitan at the local bar only to realize that they don't have cranberry juice here either, become angry and demand to see the official Italian Import Goods sheet while the bartender stares at you, and then ask the bartender what he's staring at.

“Katie! Get down here!” Anthony and I had developed an evening ritual. We would pick a road and follow it until it inevitably led into one of the adjacent mountains.

“Yeah!” I yelled off my balcony. “Wardrobe change, don't rush!”

“Change bras, I can see that one through your shirt!” Anthony yelled from the courtyard. He often took a fatherly kind of interest in my appearance – “Katie, you cannot climb a mountain in a skirt that short”; “Katie, those shoes are going to send you to hospital someday”; “Katie, is that hip flask really necessary?” It didn't bother me, somehow – perhaps I was comforted by the knowledge that these suggestions were futile.

I did not change my bra or my shirt. I did, however, wear jeans and sensible shoes. Anthony took it in stride, and even managed to look grateful for small mercies ... I'd left my hip flask behind for the evening. “Ready?” I bounded down the porch steps.

“Sure,” Anthony said. “Which direction tonight?”

“Gosh,” I spun around. “Have we tried that one?”

We had not.

The road curved gently up away from Novefeltria, morphing into a two-lane highway. We wandered along the edge, kicking pebbles uphill as we went. The weather was bearable at dusk – there was a wind off the sea and the sun had all but set, greatly reducing the heat. “How's the wife?” I asked this every evening.

“She misses me,” Anthony said.

“You are such a girl,” I said. “You miss her.”

“It's mutual,” Anthony pouted. “Anyway, I barely have time to miss her.” It was true. Maestro had us working 8 hour rehearsals on top of our four-hour morning Italian classes.

“You call her every night,” I insisted. “Every. Night.”

“Just wait until some guy collars you,” Anthony shrugged. “Then you'll see.”

“Sure thing, Dad.”

Our banter was cut short as the path became flat and we stumbled into a strange piazza – somewhere along the way we had apparently passed city lines and stumbled into a new town The piazza was almost deserted. The surrounding houses were literally cut into the mountain. The fountain was old, and a bit mossy with disrepair. “Um, should we?” I whispered. I felt like a kid about to cut across a neighbor's lawn.

We tread softly through the piazza, following the road up through the rows of houses. Soon the road became a rocky path and began once more to curve steeply upwards. We continued until we were picking our way through boulders and it was getting dark.

Anthony turned around and exhaled loudly. “Shit.”

When Anthony swears, it means something catastrophic or wonderful has happened: a miracle has occurred or World War III has just broken out. I turned around, unsure which to expect.

We were wedged on one of the countryside's many peaks. The sun was truly setting now – in a few moments it would be dark. As the sun went down, all the peaks began to flare up like enormous torches. The cities became phosphorescent, glittering, living things – for a moment they glorified the already glorious terrain, lighting the forgotten stone ruins of abandoned Roman forts and dotting the skyline like new constellations.

It was wonderful, and yet somehow routine. I breathed in, absorbing the granite, the smell of pine, Anthony's face, the black smudges on my sneakers, the bugs and the humid air – waiting for a sense of awe that never came. “What's missing?” I asked. “Is it ...what, is it God?” I stared out over this lush Eden, confused. “Why doesn't this feel special?”

Anthony laughed loudly, making echoes. “Well, it's definitely not about God.” He squinted out onto the world. “What do you want?” he asked me.

“Fucked if I know.” I stared off into the panorama.

Anthony chuckled. “Me either.”

“Maybe what we're missing,” he said, “is the whole picture.”

We sat on a pair of boulders like twin monuments, heads on chins, befuddled.

We walked back down the main south-bound road, no cars coming in either direction, the indescribable smell of green things and flowers in the air.

I turned to Anthony. “You know something?”

“What?”

Begrudgingly I announced: “Italy is a damn beautiful country.”

Anthony smiled. “It hadn't escaped my notice.”

“No! Say it, sing it, dammit!” Margaret rested her elbow on the top of the piano. “Don't open your mouth like that. You're modifying the sound too much.”

“Yeah, did we miss the part about my Jersey-Texan accent?”

“If you try to do too much the sound is going to lose its focus and it won't spin out. Make a choice, Katie – do you want your sound to be bland and pretty or intelligible and sharp?”

“Is this a trick question?”

“No.” Margaret's patience was wearing thin. “Try it again.”

I did. Margaret stood across from me, staring directly into my eyes. When I tried to look away she jabbed a finger towards my chest and moved in even closer. Distracted by her disconcerting stare, I did my best to keep up with the accompaniment. It was all I could do to reach the cadence in tact.

“Yes,” Margaret said. “Like that.”

I cocked my head. “Like what, exactly?”

“Like you're not trying to sing.” She leaned against a desk. “Like you're talking on pitch.”

I blinked. “But then what's the point? Where's the music in that?”

Maggie sat back down at the piano and gave me a look. “In the words.”

Through carefully planned social maneuvering, I now had two non-Mormon friends. Cameron was tall and slender with pitch-black skin and a gentle disposition. Even his speech was tinged with a quiet lisp that effortlessly took the edge off a long day. Rachel was buxom and thin-waisted with eyelashes that extended almost to her aristocratic nose. Men went mute around Rachel – Cameron, however, seemed strangely unaffected.

Rachel had an apartment across the street. Cameron and I walked together to the market and bought the wine, and then we'd knock on Rachel's door with bottles in each hand. Rachel invited us in to sit at the kitchen table; we'd get drunk and walk together to the piazza, where we'd linger at the cafe-cum-bar and watched as three-wheeled cars sped wildly around the piazza fountain.

“Let's go dancing,” Rachel offered.

“Where?” I asked. “In the street?”

“Let's get into a town.” Rachel shifted in her wrought-iron chair. “A real bar.”

“A city,” Cameron corrected, inching nervously away from a nearby tenor, whose glazed eyes were fixed delightedly on the racing carts. “Please, God, make it a city.”

We decided it was time for a weekend in Rome. It was expensive to rent a car, so we invited along a few others to come along. Cameron, Rachel and I crammed into a little Volkswagen with Anthony, my roommate Rebecca and Mary. Everyone in Novefeltria had a cousin with a hotel in Rome, and everyone's cousin seemed to want to offer Rachel a deal. Cameron and I accepted for her. Our hotel was a little suite made for two. Cameron and Anthony agreed to share a bed, Rachel and Mary took the other; Rebecca took the floor and I took the bath tub. We didn't waste any time there.

There was a little club on the beach, scattered with little pavilioned mattresses. The DJ set up right on the sand, and the bartender stood under a linen awning. Rachel and I kicked off our shoes without bothering to order a drink – Rebecca and Cameron beelined for the bar, and Mary and Anthony retired to a white-pavilioned seat near the dancers.

I danced with a man until he eventually suggested something inappropriate, at which point I gently excused myself and moved onto the next man. Rachel and I kept an eye on one another, flirting just enough for the next drink and not enough to need our mace. We attracted swarms of Italian men, boys that covered us like angry bees hoping to be fed. We were, after all, American women – and we liked to move our hips.

It was awkward, Anthony watching me dance. I didn't mind Mary ... Mary had seen me sneak sips of cheap Italian liqueur during morning class, she had seen me in my ratty underwear, she had seen me try to waltz, she knew that I didn't care if Rebecca smoked. Mary openly disapproved of drinking, swearing, and of “judgmental people”. Mary's disappointment was old news.

Anthony was different. I led the dancing away from his pavilion and back to the bar near Rebecca and Cameron. They were sipping mojitos and leaning contently against the bar railing, enjoying Civilization. Anthony and Mary were sitting on the other side of the beach, wondering whatever had happened to Civilization.

Mary got up and left for the bathroom. I slipped away from the packed sand of the dance floor and dove onto the mattress next to Anthony. “Nice night.”

Anthony was trying to angle himself so that he could see the stars past the white linen of the pavilion. “Yeah, I was just thinking that.”

“Do you want anything?”

Anthony stared at me.

I shrugged. “They have food, you know. And probably a couple drinks without alcohol.”

Anthony shrugged back. “You looked like you were having fun out there.”

“It is fun,” I said defiantly. “And I haven't paid for a single drink all night.”

“That's impressive, considering the number you've had,” Anthony replied.

We sat in silence until Mary returned. I gave up my seat and returned to the vortex of bass and kicked-up sand, where Rachel and Cameron and Rebecca were all having a glitteringly good time.

The following evening, Cameron, Rachel and I went out on our own. We took a cab to the entertainment district and stayed out til 4 am. Little did we know, the cabs mysteriously disappear from downtown Rome right around 3:30 am. As we were wandering the streets looking for some way of getting back to the hotel, a man stepped out of the shadows.

“Per tutte le due,” he said, nodding from my friend Rachel to myself.

“Mi scusi?” Cameron asked in disbelief.

“Le ragazze,” the lecher said slowly, as if speaking to an infant. “Per. Tutte. Le. Due.” The girls, he was saying, for both of them.

Horror registered clearly on Cameron's dark, gaunt face – as I am sure it did on my own. Rachel turned to us with an oblivious but charming Georgian smile and asked, “Is he going to help us get a cab?”

Cameron laid a hand on Rachel's shoulder and said, in his kindest, most sibilant voice: “No, sweetie. You should turn around. Right now. And then we should all start walking.”

I nodded in shocked agreement.

When we were halfway down the poorly-lit block, Rachel said mournfully, “He seemed like a nice old man to me. I'm sure he could of helped us get a cab.”

“Rachel?” I licked my lips, unsure how to continue. “Rachel, honey. The nice old man thought Cameron was ... um, how to put this ... our pimp.”

Rachel turned so white that she reflected lamplight and began to walk a little faster.

We spent the following day together shopping and sightseeing, and then we drove all night to get back to Novefeltria. I took the 2-4 a.m. shift. Anthony sat next to me, crammed between the passenger seat and the transmission, too uncomfortable to sleep – the other four were soundly unconscious. There was an awkward silence as we sat thigh-to-thigh, staring out onto the deserted pavement at the endless yellow dotted line.

“I hope you had fun,” I said quietly. I meant it.

Anthony paused. “I ... had fun,” he said finally.

Careful not to raise my voice, I replied, “You did. Really did.”

Anthony would have shifted his weight if he had had room. “Yeah.”

We both stared at the dotted line rocketing past.

Anthony said, “That one night at the club. That bothered me.”

“What about it bothered you?” I asked, feeling vaguely antagonistic.

“It bothered me,” Anthony said. “Seeing those Italian men with their hands all over you.”

“What, you jealous?”

Anthony didn't answer. I fiddled with the cruise control. “But seriously,” I prompted him.

Silence. “Seriously, come on,” I said. “I mean, come on. You're happily married.”

Silence. Pavement. Dotted line.

“I told my wife all about you,” he said quietly. “I think she understands.”

“Understands what?” Dotted line. Dotted line. “What's there to understand? That you've got female friends? Come on.”

“You come one,” Anthony said angrily. “You think because I'm married I'm not human?”

I focused intently on the road. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

“Jesus Christ, Anthony, this is not funny anymore.”

“You think this was ever funny? God damn --” Anthony took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “It means you're an attractive girl and I'm a guy.” He turned away as best he could, pinned in by Rebecca's shoulder. “It just means I'm a guy.”

I sat as still as I could. “Your wife knows.”

“She knows.”

“What'd she say?”

Anthony tapped his finger against his knee slowly. “She trusts me.”

I stared at the pavement for a long time, not really watching the road.

“Well, okay then. She should.” I eased up on the gas a little.

Anthony stopped tapping. “We're okay?”

I nodded. “We're okay.”

Neither of us said another word for the rest of my shift. The silence was alright.

Monday morning was brutal. We all felt the effects of our roman holiday. I nursed liqueur under my desk and quietly dreaded my coming encounter with Margaret. As I slunk into the classroom where we had our lessons, Maggie looked me over. “Rough weekend?”

I did my best to keep my bloodshot eyes averted. “Not really.”

“Uh-huh.” She sat down at the piano. “Let's warm up, then.”

She led me through a series of drills and scales. After a few minutes, she said, “Let me hear ... Must the winter come so soon.”

I began the piece. She stopped me a few bars in. “You're modifying your r's,” she said.

“Of course,” I said. It is common knowledge that r is an ugly consonant to sing on.

“Don't,” she said. “Sing the r just like everything else.”

We began again. I sang the ugly consonants, and discovered that I enjoyed doing so.

Maggie let me sing through the whole piece. “See?” she said. “Without the ugly sounds, the words don't mean anything.”

Tired but satisfied, I walked back to my apartment after rehearsal, taking my time on the uphill climb. I trudged up the stairs, into my room, and sank onto my bed. I had just laid down and pulled up the covers when I heard a shuffling noise. I reopened my eyes. Rebecca was on the balcony, hunched over in a plastic chair, her back to the door.

I got up and went onto the balcony. Rebecca was trying to light a cigarette, tears drying on her cheeks. “Hey,” I said.

She didn't look up. “Hey,” she said, her voice raw.

“Um ... are you OK?”

“Yeah,” she said, brushing the moisture from her cheeks.

“Right.” I pulled up a chair. “You know,” I said as I looked out onto the view, “This place gets to be a little much sometimes.”

Rebecca didn't say anything – she just struck the flint of her lighter again. The sun was going down, and the mountains were changing color. “I don't know,” I said as the mountains acquired a rusty stain, “why I'm here.”

Rebecca managed to light her cigarette. She breathed in like it was the last bit of nicotine on earth. “I'm here because I don't know where else I should be.”

“That doesn't make it the wrong place to be,” I said.

“I'm just ... scared,” she said, taking another puff – she was shaking. “I feel like I'm wasting so much time.”

A voice behind us answered, “That's okay. We've got time to waste.”

Mary was standing in the doorway. She strode over and put a hand on Rebecca's shoulder. “Come on,” she said evenly. “I think there's still a couple bottles of wine in the cupboard.”

Mary laid out three wine glasses as Rebecca and I entered the kitchen. She sat down and tugged the cork out of a bottle of sangiovese. She poured our glasses before her own. In the warm red light, I saw Mary for the first time. Out our kitchen window, the view was spectacular.

The tour came and went in a few weeks. It wasn't long before we were riding a bus back towards the Rome International Airport. Anthony sat with me in the very last row. We watching the picaresque landscape glide past, in between scattered banter. Mary and Rebecca were sitting together in the next row up, talking. Across the aisle, Cameron and Rachel were listening to pop songs on an Ipod, heads together, sharing the headphones.

I sat quietly, trying to cram as much into those last few moments as I could. I had completely taken for granted the beauty, culture, food and above all, the people that surrounded me. As I was staring gratefully at those people, I was suddenly caught by an unexpected bout of nostalgia. I decided that I would miss the smell most.

I can't for the life of me tell you what that damn smell is, but I still miss it. I love that in urban Italy, you see people out walking with their baby strollers at 11 p.m. I love it that when you say “coffee” the barrista assumes you mean “espresso”. I love it that Italy's most commonly heard pick up line is, "I speak English!" followed by a series of "What?"s as the conversation breaks back down into Italian. I love that in the piazza around 1 a.m., the cafe becomes a bar and people sit outside, watching as 3-wheeled cars race on the cobblestone like maddened hornets. I love that the wine is cheaper than the water and that yogurt and sausage are imported from Germany.

I love that damn smell – the smell of grass and weeds and flowers and tomatoes and cigarettes and sewage, that complex smell that hangs on the Italian air. It is not a particularly pleasant smell – but it reminds me of the long, winding road down the mountain, the road that I walked once with Anthony.

“Scarecrow, I think I'll miss you most of all.”

Anthony grimaced. “Maybe you'll wake up and this will all have been a concussion.”

“Hey, maybe when I wake up I'll have my wallet back!” There was a pause. “Are we going to talk?” I asked him. “When we get back?”

“Sure,” he lied. I smiled.

“Did we have fun?”

Anthony smiled back. “Yes, we did.”

Maggie gave me her contact information at our last lesson. “You're going to be graduating from undergrad soon, aren't you?”

I nodded.

“You should keep in touch,” she said.

On impulse, I threw my arms around her. “Thanks.”

Without surprise or chagrin, Margaret hugged back. “You're welcome.”

The airport was hard. Cameron was less composed than usual, Rachel's mascara ran, and Rebecca couldn't seem to stop fingering the nicotine patch on her shoulder. Mary was all smiles and giant hugs. She was as bright and cheerful as our first day in Novefeltria, but her Italian accent had improved considerably. She asked a passing stranger to hold her camera as she herded us into a group. As we posed for the photo, Anthony squeezed my hand. That was how we said goodbye.

They say a trip to Europe changes your life. They say an aspiring opera singer's training hasn't begun until she's been to Italy. They say everyone should learn a romance language. They say cultured girls have grace, poise, and quiet self-assurance.

Bottom line is, I still do the retard dance; when I see Margaret again, she might even ask for it.