The Accidental Socialite

by Stephanie Wahlstrom

  “Are you trying to get shot?” he asked, waving his arms over-dramatically.

  “Easy there, Carlito, nobody has guns in England, not even the police. I honestly don’t get it, nobody harassed me like that at the airport back home.”

  “That’s because the world doesn’t need to worry about the three flights a week that leave out of there.”

  “Sooorry,” I said in a really Canadian accent and he laughed, shaking his head.

  “Paige, you are so lucky you’re cute,” he said, linking my arm with his.

  Yay! Best friends again.

  We were waiting in a very long line of people even though the flight wasn’t boarding for another twenty minutes. I went to find wine while Carlos kept our place. Carlos said this airline didn’t assign seats; it was a free-for-all, like when you got on the bus.

  “Am I going to have to stand for the flight?”

  “Of course not,” said Carlos as he rolled his eyes.

  I wasn’t convinced.

  “Paige, are you so posh that you’ve never been on a budget airline?”

  “Posh, ummm no. I don’t think it’s ‘posh’ to have an assigned seat and be allowed to check a bag for free.”

  “Welcome to Europe. Have you really never been anywhere?”

  “When I was a cheerleader in high school we went to Vegas for a competition and second year of University I went to Mexico for spring break with my best friend. That and the plane trip to London is basically my air traffic history.”

  “Of course you were a cheerleader. Do a cheer for me?” he asked, pretending to wave pom poms.

  I glared at him. “Conversation over.”

  We finished our bottle just as boarding began.

  “Paige, once we get on the plane, go as far back as you can. You’re first because you’re small and can push by people. Save the aisle and the window and hopefully nobody will want to sit between us,” Carlos coached me for my first seat race.

  I did as he asked and we managed to keep the seat between us clear. The flight was cramped, bumpy, and water was £5, but we landed at Ciampino Airport on time according to the loud trumpet announced over the speaker as soon as the wheels touched down. Carlos rushed us out of the plane and since we didn’t have to wait for luggage, we were out in the muggy Italian air in just a few minutes.

  “Ciao Bella!” shouted a taxi driver as I walked out of the airport. That’s when I realized I was in another country. I was in London just two hours ago, and now I was in Italy. Dorothy, this would totally never happen in Kansas.

  Without me realizing it (I was understandably caught in the excitement of the old fat Italian men trying to get me into their cars), Carlos had gotten us our bus transfers to the city. The coach was waiting and again, we needed to beat the rush of people. Apparently the driver was on Carlos’s team, because a little flirting from my travel partner and we had cut the line and grabbed the best seats.

  Once in Rome, Carlos walked us expertly to our bed-and-breakfast hotel, which was actually just someone’s apartment. Through the crooked streets I was trying to catch a glimpse of anything old, cultural, or that resembled something I might have seen on TV. Nothing. That was, until Carlos and I turned the corner onto the street where our apartment was located and I walked into a giant foot. Seriously, it was as big as me.

  Carlos had texted our landlord, Fernando, when we landed and he was waiting on his bicycle, his basket filled with a man-bag and two baguettes. They looked like the ones that were soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside. I was officially hungry.

  Fernando let us into the small three-bedroom apartment where Carlos and I had one room and the other two were occupied by some unknown tenants. There was no living room, only a kitchen, which had a fridge, toaster, and a basket of bread and fruit.

  “One hundred euros, please,” said Fernando as I wandered involuntary towards the fridge, led by my stomach. Carlos had found an amazing deal for this place; it was fifty euros each for the whole weekend. Obviously I initially had my reservations, but this was perfect.

  Carlos handed him half the cash and I resisted the food in the fridge long enough to fish around in my bag for the other half, knocking out most of the contents in my Mulberry in the process. Our host bid us goodnight once I forked over the money and Carlos and I went to our room.

  It was huge. There were two double beds on either side of the room and a large wooden wardrobe in the corner. The exposed beams in the high ceiling gave the room a very grand feel and I almost didn’t want to leave, but Carlos already had plans for us. Twenty minutes and half a can of dry shampoo later we were on our way out to sample the nightlife of Rome.

  The first stop on our walk from the apartment was a small square off a main road called Campo Di Fiore. I found a table outside facing the front of a large statue and placed my designer bag on the chair, a kind of peeing on a tree for Italian fashionistas.

  The place was heaving with people, mostly teenagers sitting around the monument in the center drinking out of bottles in paper bags, not able to be served in the bars. Couples were holding hands and it seemed like everyone was more in love when you heard them speak to each other in Italian. I suddenly wished I was with someone who wasn’t solely interested in penis.

  In his limited Italian, Carlos confidently ordered a bottle of red wine.

  “Here’s to having no bloody clue,” declared Carlos as he raised his glass of deep burgundy liquid.

  “And loving every second of it,” I said, then clinked his glass and took a sip.

  “Paige?” A vaguely familiar voice came from behind me. I turned and almost forced my wine through my nose.

  It was Nicholas, one of my “yes men.” In fact, it was the last one before Lucinda and I agreed I should have some standards. After Glory Hole came SBD, who farted in regular twenty-minute intervals through the whole date and didn’t once acknowledge the putrid smell that seemed to follow us from the movie theater to dinner to the pub where I eventually threw in the white flag and took the night bus home. Then there was the Italian guy who offered to make me dinner at his place, where we had a very long conversation about how 9/11 was a conspiracy despite the fact that I kept reminding him I was Canadian. Apparently to Italians North America was just one big country. Canada really was America’s hat.

  Nicholas was hot, French, and open-minded, which meant we went on a date and he thought it would be fun to take me to a gay bar. It was really fun, but it was also lesbian night and the two of us in a sea of four hundred lesbians made for an awkward evening.

  Later on that fateful night, once I had finished a pitcher of cosmos with the bartender, Nicholas decided we should go, which I agreed to because I was incredibly offended that none of the women in the bar were hitting on me. From there, Frenchy took me to an all-night brasserie in South Kensington where he proceeded to sing French folk songs with the waiter while I ate a croissant and drank wine until 2:00 A.M. I hadn’t seen him since.

  “Paige!” He hugged me and kissed both cheeks.

  “Hi, Nicholas,” I said, genuinely surprised to see him. Unfortunately it wasn’t a happy surprise. Nicholas was staring at Carlos, who was eye-fucking him right back.

  “So good to see you here. I am just about to meet some friends from work, but if you are here tomorrow, we are all going out for a big dinner. Would love for you to join us,” he said, mostly to Carlos, and then tossed his card on the table.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” said Carlos as he picked up the card and winked, which I thought was a little much.

  Nicholas walked away as Carlos stared at him and I stared at Carlos.

  “What? He’s cute. Why didn’t that one work out?”

  I raised my left eyebrow clear into my hairline. “Oh, you mean other than the fact that he is clearly gay? I got sick of him asking me questions about Celine Dion.”

  “What makes you so sure he’s gay?”

  “He’s French and wearing a turtleneck.” Obviously.

 
Carlos shot a look at me, exasperated. “Well, if you don’t want to go … ”

  “Fine, we’ll go, Carlos. I can’t believe we’ve been here for like an hour and you’ve already picked up a guy.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and threw his head back. “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”

  ***

  It was morning and the sun came through the sheer curtains in the room. I groaned and swore loudly at the exuberant birds outside of our window who clearly hadn’t spent their evening drinking bottles of Italian red wine.

  The tweeting wasn’t going away and although my head was spinning, I was aware that today was my day to see Rome, and I was wasting it. I threw my pillow at Carlos.

  “Bell end,” he murmured as he threw it back at me.

  “What’s a bell end? For real, Carlos, we need to get up. I wanna see old stuff.”

  Throwing the pillow at him one last time, I rolled out of bed and got into the shower, which washed off some of my hangover. I went back into the room and turned on the blow dryer.

  “Alright, fine! I’m up.” Carlos tugged violently at his sheets until they let him out of bed. “Wanker,” he whispered under his breath as he shuffled to the shower. Evidently, Carlos wasn’t a morning person.

  Walking out of the apartment, I had on Italian sunglasses and was wearing my Italian leather wedges, which were on the approved list of things I could wear according to Carlos, and clung onto my Mulberry for dear life. I’d Googled Italy before we left and every site warned me that pickpockets were ubiquitous. My bag weighed almost as much as I did containing the rough guide to Rome, a pair of flats, a large bottle of water, and all of my makeup, as I feared the job I did this morning wouldn’t last past lunch. If my knight in shining Armani was here, I needed to be in top form.

  The first thing on our list of things to do was have a very strong cappuccino, which fortunately, in Italy, was easy to find. We wandered farther from our hotel than we had last night, hoping to find a café with a nice view. What felt like half an hour later, but in reality was probably closer to four minutes, we turned the corner to face a massive fountain built into the side of the building. I abruptly stopped, in both surprise that something this magnificent could be hidden around a corner, and also because it was vaguely familiar.

  “This is Trevi Fountain,” Carlos explained as I stared at the massive marble, semi-naked bearded man commanding the scene, trying to figure out why he seemed so familiar.

  “It’s just like the one in Vegas!” I blurted out once it occurred to me where I had seen this statue before. This looked exactly like the one outside of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

  “Promise me you’ll never change,” Carlos said as he laughed and put his arm around me.

  We sat down for our overpriced coffee at a café that had a view of the tourists throwing their coins into the pool below. According to my Rough Guide, it was tradition to stand with your back facing the fountain and throw a coin in with your right hand over your left shoulder, ensuring your return to Rome some day.

  We finished our cappuccinos and I made Carlos take a picture of me throwing a coin, which incidentally was a euro because that was the only change I had on me. Then I checked the picture he’d taken on my camera, didn’t like it, and made Carlos take it three more times before I had one I was satisfied could be a possible Facebook profile picture. A very expensive profile picture.

  Next on my list was the Coliseum. Next on Carlos’s list was finding a restaurant and getting a bottle of wine. We flipped a coin. I lost.

  “Come on, can we see one more old thing? Please?”

  “Fine.” And he took me to Largo di Torre Argentina.

  Would you believe the people of Rome had turned it into a giant litter box? Literally. It was a cat sanctuary and I was playing spot the kitty while taking pictures. There was one on the edge of the entrance sitting next to a pair of abandoned tan loafers. I tried to pet it and it tried to bite me. Recoiling, I let out a yelp, hoping that it hadn’t broken skin and praying it didn’t have rabies. When I turned to Carlos for help he was busy wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, and therefore unable to offer any assistance.

  “Come on, now I need a drink.” I was officially pouting.

  Three hours later, we went through three and a half bottles of wine and were ready to stumble to our next venue. It was four o’clock, which meant the Coliseum was closed and one of the only things still open on my list was The Vatican. Carlos had a thing for unattainable men so he agreed.

  Our totally inappropriate and yet totally fun drunken trip to the Vatican lasted one magnificent hour until I ruined it. St. Peter’s Basilica had secret tunnels underneath the main floors just visible through metal grating, and my overactive imagination imagined all sorts of Da Vinci Code shit going on. At first Carlos joined in my sacrilegious shenanigans, encouraging me to think of even more conspiracies.

  “Carlos, do you see a map in the background of that painting?”

  “No, but doesn’t that man over there look suspicious?” he asked, pointing to an overweight man in a Hawaiian shirt and fedora. “I bet you he’s illuminati,” deduced Carlos.

  We followed him through the Basilica as he stopped at several monuments that he admired and photographed. I watched him take a picture of a small inscription on the bottom of a statue and, once he left, took the exact same picture for evidence.

  He moved on to the center of the Basilica, where he took pictures of the ceiling. I took a picture of him taking pictures of the ceiling. Finally we followed him back to the entrance and bag check where he stood in line for the restrooms. That’s when I got bored.

  “Let’s try and get into the tunnels.”

  “Paige, people aren’t allowed down there. You know this is a working building, not just a place for you to play.”

  We went back into the main area of the Basilica and I thought that maybe my camera could get a better view of what was in the tunnels, so I got down on the ground and started taking pictures through the mesh-covered slats in the floor.

  At first, Carlos let me do what I wanted. However, he insisted we leave after I spotted a suspicious shadow down below and in my excitement began to point and shout, eliciting some pretty aggressive shushes from the sober people in the church, which was most of them.

  Carlos felt it was time we had a power nap in order to show up for dinner in a relatively appropriate state, meaning not drunk enough to stalk tourists at a sacred site. It was one of the best sleeps I ever had, and I woke up two hours later fully refreshed and ready to go out to dinner with my gay best friend and former flame, with the likely outcome being them hooking up.

  We met Nicholas and his friends at one of those places that looks like any other doorway in Italy from the outside, but inside they managed to create a fabulous restaurant with modern lines, big heavy tables, and leather furniture. At the table, Nicholas was flanked on his left by a very handsome man with dark brown hair and warm brown eyes, and on his right was a heavyset girl with a very big personality. Next to her was a balding man in his mid-thirties.

  I raced Carlos to the seat next to the hot guy whose name I later found out was Adrian. He was Swedish, worked at Google, and lived in South Kensington. As the evening went on I was completely taken with him. This Swede had a fantastic sense of humor, fueled mostly by the fact that he’d lived at least one year on every continent. A feat that went immediately on my “Things To Do With Your Life So You Have Something To Tell Your Grandkids” list.

  Meanwhile, Carlos and Nicholas were getting along very well. So well in fact, that big personality girl traded places with Carlos so that she wouldn’t have to be spoken over in really terrible French.

  Dinner led to drinks in a nearby lounge which led to an all-night party at the hottest nightclub in Rome housed in what, upon first glance, looked like the President’s mansion. Nicholas and Adrian bought a bottle of vodka. We drank until I was sure I saw the threatening light of dawn crack through the window
s draped in heavy velvet to fool us into drinking until mid-afternoon the next day.

  It was four-thirty in the morning when Nicholas, Adrian, Carlos, and I found a taxi and paid the driver to take us on a personal tour of Rome and its monuments. Through the empty streets of Rome in the early hours of the morning, I was able to see the Coliseum, Pantheon, Spanish Steps, and even the Trevi Fountain again. It came with stunning views of the sunrise and a personal version of the history of Rome from the driver in broken English and Italian. It felt as though we were the only five people awake in all of Rome. I had pictures totally alone in front of the Coliseum, did cartwheels under the awning of the Pantheon, and threw coins into Trevi Fountain from every angle.

  The sun was officially up at six when we stumbled back to our respective hotels, Nicholas draped over Carlos and Adrian and I doing our best while sleepwalking. I desperately wanted to invite him back to our apartment, but that would encourage Carlos to bring Nicholas, and that would just be weird. We arrived at the marble foot at the bottom of the windy street indicating we were home. I tried to avoid staring at Carlos and Nicholas as they kissed goodbye.

  “So, Paige, is there anyone waiting back in London for you?” Adrian was holding my hand and my waist to make sure I didn’t stumble over.

  “Probably not. I doubt my flatmates even noticed I was gone. There is a good possibility that when I get back the house will have burned down or Philip will have gone postal on us and I’ll come home to police tape.”

  “Paige, I’m asking if you have a boyfriend.”

  “Oh. Well, that answer is no too.” Unable to focus on his face in the sunlight, I just tilted my head towards him and grinned.

  “Good, because I don’t have anyone waiting for me either, and since your … previous encounter has moved on,” he indicated to Nicholas and Carlos playing tonsil hockey. “I thought I could take you out on Wednesday for dinner.”

  “I’ll have to check my diary.” I didn’t want to seem too eager.