Italian for Beginners (9 page)

“I don’t want to spend a fortune, but I want to be in a decent, safe place,” I said. “There’s actually a great little hotel
near the train station where rooms are about seventy-five dollars a night, which is really reasonable for Rome. With all the
taxes and everything, it comes out to about twenty-five hundred for the month.”

Becky whistled, long and low. “Whoa,” she said. “That’s a ton of money. That’s, like, twice what our honeymoon cost.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll be gone for four weeks,” I said. “It’s actually not that bad for that amount of time, I think.”

“You have that kind of money?” she asked.

I shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable with the conversation. I talked about other people’s money all day long but hated talking
about my own. “I’ll manage,” I said. I shot my dad a weak smile. “Plus, I’ve been told that’s what credit cards are for.”

“Wow,” Becky said. Then she smiled. “Well. Good for you.” She paused and added, “So, are you going to call that guy? What’s
his name? Francisco?”

I swallowed. “Francesco,” I corrected. “And yes. I mean, I’ve e-mailed him already.”

For the second time that night, Becky’s jaw literally dropped. “You did? That’s so unlike you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying to step out of my comfort zone a little more, you know?”

“Well, wow,” Becky said. She shook her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I do,” my father said firmly. “I’m proud of you, honey. You’re going to have a great time.” He raised his coffee mug. “To
Cat!” he said.

“To Cat,” Becky and Jay echoed as all four of us clinked mugs.

By the next day at four, I was so excited I could hardly concentrate on my work. Kris kept assuring me that she’d be fine
in my absence and that Puffer & Hamlin wouldn’t fall apart without me. I knew she was teasing me, but I still felt uneasy.
I’d never left for more than a few days since I’d started working here. What if one of my clients needed me? What if some
disaster happened when I was gone, and I wasn’t here to fix it?

“We can always reach you by e-mail,” Kris soothed with an amused expression on her face. “And since you also have three hundred
capable coworkers, I have the feeling that someone here will be able to solve any problem that comes up.”

“ But—”

“No buts,” Kris said firmly. “Seriously. Just go. Stop worrying. Have a good time for once in your life.”

I avoided two more cell calls from Michael that day and deleted the messages he’d left without listening to them. There was
a sliver of me that wanted to tell him that I was going to Italy, but I knew I shouldn’t even be thinking about him still.
I called the cell phone company and asked them to up me to an international plan for the next thirty days. And I called my
cable company and suspended service while I was gone.

“Geez, is there anything you don’t think of?” Kris asked, shaking her head in amusement.

“I like to be prepared,” I said.

Just then, my cell phone rang. It was Becky’s cell number. She never called during the day unless something was wrong. I answered
immediately.

“Cat?” Her voice sounded small and far away. I could hear her whimpering a little.

“Becky?” I asked. “Are you okay?” Kris shot me a worried look.

Becky paused. “Not really,” she said. “I kind of messed up.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. I’d heard those words from her more times than I could count. “What happened?”

More sniffling. “I, um, borrowed Mrs. Cohen’s car.”

I sighed. Mrs. Cohen was a sweet old lady whose miniature poodle Becky had been walking for years. “Becky, you don’t have
a driver’s license.”

“I know.”

“And?”

She paused. “Well, I just wanted to use it to take Mitzi up to Central Park for a walk. And you know, I couldn’t exactly take
her on the subway, because they don’t allow dogs, and I didn’t have the money for a cab ride all the way uptown.”

“A cab would have been cheaper than paying to park up there.” I couldn’t help interjecting a little logic into the story.

“Cat, as
if
I couldn’t talk some young parking lot guy into letting me leave my car there for an hour while I walk the dog,” Becky scoffed.

I considered this. It was true. Becky batted her eyes, and men lined up to do what they could to assist her. When I batted
mine, people just thought I needed eyedrops.

“True,” I said. “So what went wrong?”

She heaved a big sigh. “Well, everything was fine, and I was just driving uptown when this total jerk cut me off, so I took
a left to avoid him, and I wound up on Broadway, heading north.”

“But Broadway is southbound,” I said.

Becky paused. “Er, yeah,” she said. “That was the problem.”

“You drove into oncoming traffic on Broadway?” I demanded. I glanced up to see Kris shaking her head.
Typical
, she mouthed.

“ Uh-huh,” Becky whimpered.

“And?” I asked.

“I kind of got hit.”

“Oh, my God! Are you okay?”

“Just a little banged up,” she said. “I’ll be fine. Mitzi’s okay, too, thank goodness. But the car…”

“Totaled?” I guessed.

“Not exactly,” she said quickly. “But it’s pretty bad. I talked to the guy at the repair shop, and he said he could knock
the price down, since I was so sweet to him and everything, but it will still be a lot to fix it.”

“Doesn’t Mrs. Cohen have insurance?” I asked.

“I haven’t exactly told her,” she said. “She doesn’t even drive the car anymore. I mean, it’s a waste, if you ask me. How
can you just let a Porsche sit in a garage and rot?”

“You wrecked a
Porsche
?” I asked in disbelief.

“The guy can fix it,” Becky said in a small voice. “He says that when he’s done with it, Mrs. Cohen won’t even notice.”

I took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to channel calm. “What do you need?”

“I don’t exactly have the money to pay for it,” she said. “We kind of spent everything on our honeymoon. My credit cards are
maxed out.”

“Can’t you just come clean with Mrs. Cohen?”

“Well, the thing is, she’s friends with all the other ladies whose dogs I walk,” Becky said. “So if she gets mad at me, I
know she’ll tell her friends, and I’ll lose, like, all the business I’ve built up over the last five years. It would be devastating.”

“So you want to borrow money from me?” I guessed.

“Only a little bit,” she said quickly. “And I’ll pay you back. I swear.”

I paused for a moment. I knew I’d say yes. I always said yes. I’d bailed Becky out of messes at least a dozen times. But I’d
always had a cushion in the past, too. Now, between buying my apartment last year, using my credit cards for a few months
to scrape by while I made the initial mortgage payments, and putting the airline reservation and Rome hotel on my card, I
was pretty much out of spending power. Because of my good credit, I’d been allowed to take out a higher loan amount than I
should have, but that also meant that I couldn’t request a credit line increase anytime soon; I was already overextended.

“How much do you need?” I asked. I held my breath, hardly wanting to know the answer.

“Two thousand nine hundred fifty-one dollars and sixty-five cents,” she said quickly.

“Three thousand dollars?” I repeated. Across the narrow hallway, Kris’s jaw dropped.

“Now you’re exaggerating,” Becky said. “It’s not quite that much! And I’ll pay you back, Cat! You know I will!”

“Becky,” I said slowly. “I can’t. I’m out of room on my cards.”

She was silent for a moment. “You’re out of room?”

“Hang on,” I said. I logged on to the Web sites for the three credit cards I owned and did the quick math. “Becky, I only
have about fifteen hundred dollars between my three cards.”

“But I need twice that,” she whimpered. “I’ll lose my jobs. And if I lose my jobs, we won’t be able to pay the rent. It’ll,
like, ruin our lives.”

I closed my eyes. “Becky, isn’t there anything else you can do?”

“I can’t ask Dad.”

We both knew our father didn’t have the money. He was barely scraping by as it was. In fact, Becky didn’t know it, but I’d
had to loan him his rent money a few times this year when he didn’t have it. “I know,” I sighed.

I thought for a moment. I glanced up at Kris, who was just shaking her head. I knew exactly what she was thinking. She would
be furious with me if I bailed Becky out of yet another mess at my own expense. But Kris didn’t have sisters. She’d never
been in this position. You had to help your family if you were capable of doing so.

I closed the credit card Web sites and opened the site for the hotel in Rome, which I had bookmarked. I gazed longingly at
it for a moment. “Give me five minutes, and I’ll have the funds available, okay?” I said.

“Thank you,” Becky said in a small voice. “You’re the best. I promise I’ll pay you back.”

“I know,” I said.

“You can just read me the numbers, and I can give them to the guy,” she said helpfully. “You don’t even need to come down
here.”

I told her I’d call her right back, then I slowly pushed
END
. I typed a few things in the computer and hit
ENTER
. Then I looked up to find Kris exactly where I’d expected her to be, standing over me, glaring down.

“What did you just do?” she asked accusingly.

“Becky got into a car accident and needed some money,” I mumbled.

“You told her you were out of money,” she said.

“I was,” I said. I paused. “But she needed me.”

“And?” Kris asked impatiently.

“And I canceled the hotel in Rome,” I said in a small voice.

“What?”
Kris demanded. “Cat, are you insane? Where are you going to stay?”

“I don’t really need to go,” I said. “I mean, maybe this is a sign. I’m just not meant to go over there. And what’s more important?
Some frivolous trip? Or my sister?”

“That’s a ridiculous question,” Kris snapped. “In this case, the trip was more important. Your sister has asked you for money
and favors more times than I can even count!”

“But that’s what you do for family,” I said.

“That is
not
what you do for irresponsible, selfish family members who always take advantage of you,” Kris said. “And besides, your airline
ticket is nonrefundable.”

“So I lose nine hundred dollars,” I said. “The world won’t end.”

Kris took a deep breath. “How much do you have left between your cards?”

“Not enough for a hotel,” I said. “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.”

She stared at me for a moment. “The hell it’s not,” she muttered. She bent down next to me and pushed me aside. She opened
up my AOL in-box, which I was already logged in to, and she scrolled down my incoming messages until she got the last note
from Francesco. She opened it, hit
REPLY
, and typed something quickly. She hit
SEND
before I could see what she’d written.

“What did you just write?” I demanded.

She crossed her arms defiantly. “None of your concern,” she said.

I pushed her back aside and opened the sent mailbox. My jaw dropped as I scanned her message.

Hi, Francesco
, she had written.
I made a really, really stupid mistake and decided to loan my sister some money. Now I won’t be able to pay for a hotel in
Rome. Do you think it would be possible for me to stay with you?

“Kris!” I exclaimed. “I can’t believe you just did that!”

She shrugged and narrowed her eyes. “Someone had to. You are way too ready to keep living on the safe side.”

We both stared at the computer for a moment. I knew Francesco had just been scared away, that he wouldn’t reply, and that
I’d feel even more foolish than I had when this whole fiasco had begun. After all, he hadn’t seen me in years. Surely he wouldn’t
want me to be his random houseguest.

And then a new e-mail popped up in my in-box.

“Told you he’d write back,” Kris said as she clicked to open the message. We both stared at the words on the screen.

You with me would be perfect
, he had written.
I am counting the moments until I see you. Love, Francesco.

“Oh, my goodness,” I said.

“Cat Connelly,” Kris said, grinning triumphantly, “you’re out of excuses. You’re going to Rome.”

T
wenty-four hours later, I was sitting in a middle seat of an Alitalia flight from New York to Rome, still in disbelief.

Even after Francesco had said I could stay with him, I had fully expected something to go wrong.
Perhaps
, I told myself,
my boss will tell me I can’t possibly leave on such short notice.
But in fact, my boss was so pleased that I was taking vacation time that he even ordered me a going-away bouquet from the
florist in our lobby.

As I sat on the plane, unable to sleep thanks to my racing mind and the full fleet of butterflies flapping around in my stomach,
I tried to conjure what it would be like when Francesco and I saw each other for the first time again.

I knew I’d recognize him, of course. But how would he look after thirteen years? Would he have gained weight? Would he have
lost some of his muscular physique? Would the laugh lines around his eyes have grown much deeper?