From the heights above the Spanish Steps, I could see these huge boulevards leading like spokes down to the river and to the Vatican City beyond. For some reason, the sight brought Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz to mind. Who was I? Dorothy?
I trotted down those steps in triumph. I hadn’t felt this glorious since before the whole depressing deal with Dad and Mom and the house went down. It felt like I had survived some trial by fire and emerged hardened and ready for the next phase in life.
I hung a right at the fountain and made my way down the long and wide Piazza di Spagna. Some sort of commotion was going on around several islands of grass and palm trees edged by curbing. Each island was crowded with little tents and protest signs. Apparently, this was part of Occupy Roma.
It didn’t look like much. There were people banging away on laptops, handing out food to whoever wanted it, and another bunch standing in a circle banging on drums. I stood beside the other tourists and gawked for a bit before continuing on.
I weaved my way through and around the throngs, cruising all the way to the river into the blinding sun without stopping. I crossed the Tiber just as the river fell under shadow. I knew it was the Tiber from the plaque in the middle of the bridge—the Ponte Umberto.
All these ancient marble arches and glittery domes made my head flutter with the unreality of being here. The place seemed so ethereal and surreal, even more so than Root. Each time I stepped it felt like my feet were not quite landing on the ground.
There again was that dome in the distance—St. Peter’s. I recognized it from a picture on a tourist map I had rescued from a trash barrel. Karla had said that she lived only a few blocks away from St. Peter’s Square, which was called Piazza San Pietro on the map. I decided to focus my search on a couple neighborhoods immediately adjacent to the Vatican City.
I hurried along while there was still light, coming up on this huge fortress-looking thing called the Castel Sant’angelo. When I came to the next intersection and crossed the road, there was that dome again, looming ever larger.
I saw some people on the corner make the sign of the cross, so I did the same, for good luck and to blend in, if nothing else.
The apartments in the few residential buildings I passed on the main road had huge doors, lavish balconies and picture windows. They looked like places bankers and business executives might live—way too upscale for Karla. Something about her made me doubt that she was a rich girl.
I turned up a small street past yet another small church, until I found a street where the apartments looked more humble, built on a more human scale.
My head threatened to flutter off my shoulders. I suspected that some of my giddiness was due to low blood sugar. I had to eat something, so I stepped into this neighborhood pizza joint. My lack of Italian proved less of a hurdle than expected, once I figured out their ass-backwards system for paying for food.
I pointed at a couple of squares of cheese pizza and they whisked them up, wrapped them in paper and ribbon as if they were a birthday present, set a skinny can of Coke beside it and then handed me a slip of paper that looked like a receipt. But the big guy behind the counter refused my money, and when I went to reach for the pizza, he yanked it away.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a lady at a cash register behind me. I handed her the receipt and a ten Euro note. She rang up the order and handed me back a different slip along with some change. This was the ticket to free up my gift-wrapped pizza. I walked out of that shop victorious, feeling like I had mastered some arcane ritual.
So I went down the street, munching pizza and systematically examining the names on every mailbox and doorbell in the foyers and outer walls of each building, looking for Raeths.
That pizza was gone before I had reached the end of the block. And man, that crust made Sbarro’s taste like sawdust. Even the Coke tasted better here, somehow less sweet than the American stuff and much more effective at quenching my thirst. I kind of liked this Roma place.
***
Street after street, building after building I searched and found not a shred of luck. I couldn’t find a name posted anywhere that was even close to Raeth. It was enough trouble finding names on name plates that didn’t end in vowels.
I did buzz a Carla with a ‘C’ at one point, just to be thorough, but he turned out to be a man whose brother’s name was Andrea. Go figure.
I worked my way up another short block, all the way to this major east-west thoroughfare between the castle and the walls of the Vatican. It was starting to get dark. Though the sidewalks were well-lighted, in some doorways I had to squint to make out the writing on the mailboxes. I wish I had brought a flashlight.
When I started, I was determined to find her if it took all night, but now I was beginning to wonder if I had badly miscalculated. Not every apartment was marked. Some buildings had no names above the buzzers, only numbers.
So I had probably bypassed dozens of anonymous apartments by now. Karla could be a needle living in a part of the haystack that I never got to see. That realization made my stomach bottom out.
I sat down to rest on a bench just outside the walls of the Vatican, on a street called the Via Belvedere. It had been dumb of me to assume I could just show up and find her without an address.
If I could only get back to Root, I could simply ask her. There, I knew where she lived.
But coming to Italy had raised the stakes. Would she be more or less likely now to tell me where she lived?
Why she had to play so coy with me, I didn’t know. It didn’t seem fair. She knew I was risking my skin, coming all this way.
I closed my eyes and invited those viny tendrils to come and wrap me in a ball and take me away. And when I felt something brush against my leg, I thought I had hit pay dirt, but it was just someone’s cat strolling by.
Though, I was starting to feel discouraged, I was a long way from abandoning all hope. Just being in Rome meant there was the possibility if running into her simply by chance, and as long as any shred of hope remained there would be no Root and no Karla. Coming to Italy had trapped me in a vicious cycle.
One would have thought that realization alone would suffice to drive me down a spiral of despair. But something was gumming up the works, and that something was that I was too darned close to finding her. For all I knew I could be sitting in her fucking neighborhood.
I still believed I could still find Karla here in Rome. I would just need to try a different tact.
