Excerpt from Rome

      Joe from Iowa would come downstairs, late, after Michelle got back from swimming. We would be getting ready for bed, anticipating the rooster and the dark sky of morning, but he would coax us out. One drink on the corner -- a truly shitty cafe that as far as I know served no food whatsoever, and the worst wine in Rome. But it was close and it had tables outside and you could watch the foot traffic of Trastevere. Even our quiet neighborhood was alive at night when the air was finally cooler, "cooler" being a relative description.

      And because it was Rome and because Joe would smile in his irresistibly innocent and corruptible way, we would give in. We would slip back into sundresses and the soles of our sandals would slap on the carpeted steps as we ran down them, out the gated courtyard crawling with stray cats and up the block.

      The umbrellas were yellow, faded, streaked with a dingy gray in the daylight, but at night the streetlights made them rich and vibrant, new again. The chairs were plastic painted to look like metal and not a single one had even legs so wherever you sat you teetered on the pavement. It was something you got used to, though. A strange lack of balance that was life in Rome. I would sit with one leg pulled up to my chest, that foot adding weight to one side. I had to tuck the bottom of my dress in to make sure I was still as modest as possible. The steady flow of commentary from passerby was bad enough already. I always wondered how they'd learned those English words, but it was probably the same way I'd learned my Italian ones.

      We ordered red wine -- house wine they probably made in back -- bitter and stringent and barely better than fermented piss. But it was cheap, so we ordered it, carafe after carafe. And most nights we ordered espresso in equal measure. I don't drink coffee and didn't back then, either, but I would drink the espresso. In its tiny cup. With a packet of Equal stirred in, tapping the tiny spoon against the rim, not wasting a single drop. The espresso was everything that was Italy to me. Dark and hot and brutal and real. I didn't drink it to stay awake so much as I drank it to remember. To remember the lights reflected on the river, the sound of people laughing and singing. To remember being young and brave and alive.