Jacob Strunk

Train to Trastevere

It’s hot on the train. Even with the top windows tilted open along the length of the car, the air feels thick and wet, like she’s breathing through a warm towel. Eve sees the girl fall, crumple and drop like one of those collapsing thumb puppets her grandparents had, carved wooden dowels held tight and upright by tension until Eve depressed a button in the base and slack in the string cause the whole mess to fold in on itself.

“Ali! Ali!” Commotion rises and begins to swirl on her side of the car like a whirlpool, and Eve stands and pushes forward. The girl, Ali, is on the floor of the car, her boyfriend motionless over her, his mouth open, his hands splayed and frozen with surprise, shock, fear. “Ali!” he says again, the idiot, as Eve kneels next to the girl. Ali’s glazed eyes swim in their sockets, and Eve watches the girl raise an arm, grab the stainless steel rail, try to raise herself.

“No, just be still,” Eve says, or tries to, but then the girl’s grip on the rail fails and she collapses, her eyes rolling back, her head hitting the floor. It makes a sound like a softball pitch hitting a catcher’s mitt. Then Eve has one hand under the girl’s head, another at her wrist, then their fingers entwined. Eve squeezes the hand, leans in, whispers, “Just be still.” Then she turns her face up to the idiot man, his own eyes wide and clear, and says, calmly but forcefully, “Help me get her into that seat.” She motions with her chin to the seat she just left. The idiot man does not move. “Now,” she says, and finally his eyes lock on hers and he kneels beside her, clasping Ali’s other hand.

The two of them raise the girl up, guide her into the open seat as the other passengers part, backing away as if from contagion. Eve reaches back over her shoulder, pulling her water bottle effortlessly from her pack. She twists it open, holds it to the girl’s mouth. She tilts it gently, slowly, and a kiss of water touches Ali’s lips. Her eyes clear, just a bit, and she swallows. 

The man, the idiot boyfriend, towers over them. Eve crouches in front of Ali. She dribbles more water onto the girl’s dry lips, pushes a shock of sweat-damp hair behind Ali’s ear. Eve pulls a handkerchief from her back pocket, wets it, holds it to Ali’s forehead. 

“I’m okay,” Ali says, but she doesn’t mean it. “I’m okay. Really.”

“Ali—” the man repeats, seemingly his only available word. 

“Shhh,” Eve coos, pressing the handkerchief to Ali’s cheeks, to her nose. “Shhh, just a sip. Breathe.” Ali sips. “Just be still. You fainted. It’s fine. It’s the heat.” To the man, “It’s the heat.” With the slightest bit of venom, “She fainted.” Then the man kneels beside Eve on the floor of the train, and she sees for the first time on his flushed face the love behind the fear, the softness behind his dumb face, and she allows herself to pity him. 

“She’s never done this before,” he says, as if Ali isn’t right there, inches from him, her face a red saucer, her eyes struggling to focus on his. As if this was something Ali planned. “I didn’t know. Here.” He holds up a crackling plastic bottle of water, nearly empty, even as Eve tilts her own bottle again to Ali’s lips, watches a rivulet of cool water run down Ali’s pink chin, drop onto the mottled flush of her chest, trace a wet finger down her breastplate and disappear into her floral print sundress. Then Eve hands the water bottle to the idiot boyfriend, and she takes Ali’s hands again. 

“We’re almost to Termini,” she says. Squeezing Ali’s hand, she says, “Just breathe.” Turning back to the man, the boyfriend, she says, “How far are you going?”

His name is Zack, the boyfriend, and at Termini they stand on either side of Ali and walk her to the terminal café. Zack stands at the counter while Eve sits with Ali, still clutching one hand. 

“I’m okay,” Ali offers again. “But that was crazy. Crazy.” She shakes her head slowly, grimacing as if in pain, then turns to Eve. “I’ve never fainted before.” Eve nods, licks her lips. 

“Blood sugar!” It’s Zack, holding out a bottle of water, a croissant. “Un cornetto,” he says, beaming, proud of himself. Ali lets go of Eve’s hand and grabs for the water, wrenching off the cap, raising the mouth to her lips.

“Slowly,” Eve says. Ali takes three big chugs, then Eve’s hand is on hers, barely, softly running her fingertips along Ali’s wrist. Ali gets it, stops drinking, and takes a big breath. Then she takes the croissant from Zack and twists it in half. 

Through a mouthful of croissant, muffled, she says, “Thanks again.” Washing down a bite of croissant with water she says, “I just don’t know what happened.” Wiping her mouth with the back of one wrist, she asks, “What’s your name?”

Eve tells her. 

“I’m Ali. That’s Zack.” Zack raises one hand weakly in a little wave, and Eve nods acknowledgement. “Now that we’re all introduced, can we, I don’t know, can we buy you dinner?”

“Oh, yeah,” Zack offers, late to the game once again. “Least we can do.”

“Well,” Eve says, her eyes locked on Ali’s. “I wouldn’t feel right leaving until I know you’re okay. So yes. Yes, let’s.” Ali smiles now, warm and genuine, and relief settles in Eve as she sees the girl’s color is mostly returning to normal. A few flyaway hairs dance in the breeze on Ali’s brow. Her full lips shine. Her skin is dewy, healthy. 

“Great,” Zack says, nodding as if he’s settled everything. 

“Let’s walk,” Ali says. “It’ll be good for me. I’m okay, I swear.” She stuffs the rest of the croissant into her mouth. “We’re staying across the river, in Trastevere.” Then Ali pushes herself up with her arms, standing, holding her hands out for just a second, tentative. 

Eve, standing beside her, ready to steady her if necessary, replies, “How about that?” Her hand lightly in the small of Ali’s back, she says, “So am I.”

* * *

Eve first noticed them at a café in the small town’s main square. They sat at a table outside, each sipping an Aperol spritz. Zack, though she hadn’t known his name at the time, fumbled with a fanny pack, counting out Euros, apologizing in English. But it was Ali who caught Eve’s eye. The young woman had an effortless grace, Eve thought as she watched them finish their drinks and stand, especially next to Zack’s bumbling yokel aloofness. They couldn’t have looked more American, and Eve chuckled to herself as she imagined one of the hundreds of pickpockets working the tourist areas unclipping the idiot boyfriend’s fanny pack and disappearing into the immeasurable, meandering crowd. 

Eve watched them leave their table, watched Zack pull one last mouthful of spritz up through his straw, leaning over the table, while Ali waited patiently. She’s a saint, Eve thought, to put up with the likes of him. But she reminded herself that, really, one never knew. Maybe he was charming in his way, kind. Perhaps he provided for her, nurtured her, took her on European vacations, for instance. Watching them cross the piazza—surely headed for the train station—she wondered again for the thousandth time what it was that those people had that she did not, what kept her isolated, even here, surrounded by throngs of summer tourists. Just what the hell was wrong with her that meant she was doomed to be forever alone.

Stop being so dramatic, she told herself silently but firmly, then stood and dropped a few Euros at the table. The 16:00 train north left in half an hour, and she was sure that’s where the handsome young couple would be, waiting patiently to board, probably with dinner reservations back in Rome, somewhere they read about on Tripadvisor or in a Rick Steves guide.

She started the casual stroll toward the station. Why not head back to Rome? She’d taken the high speed train to Naples a few days prior, then another regional line to Pompeii, where she’d wandered the ruins sipping a Peroni. She’d met a man there, Paolo, she thought it was. And she’d spent that night with him. He was charming enough, and they drank wine and flirted late into the night, and Eve wanted him, and when the time was right she opened her mouth to his. He filled her up, yes, as they always do, but by that afternoon, back in Naples, she felt empty again. Hungry. 

And so she’d spent the past three days on the Amalfi coast. After Paolo was Danny, a young Englishman on holiday with a few mates from school. They’d all left on an overnight fishing excursion, and so Danny brought Eve back to his bed, and Eve put Danny inside her. After Danny was Federico. Eve never had trouble finding a place to stay, a bed for the night, a good meal. She knew how she looked, pretty and alive; she knew how to carry herself, how to tease and flirt and push and pull, how to bite and chew and make her eyes look even bigger, even more innocent, when smiling over the rim of a wine glass. But the next day was always the same, the hunger chasing her from villa to villa, man to man to woman to woman; and always she was left the same as she’d been the day before. Alone. Empty. Ravenous.

She made her way casually toward the train station, taking in the pulsing mobs of tourists, their dialects and accents melding and swirling like churning waters in a great, maddening river, swollen, racing toward the sea. Often, she’d let herself be pulled. These past two months, floating across Italy, she’d given herself over to the whims of the current. An American here. An Italian there. Danny the Englishman, pale and dull. The Trinidadian woman with skin soft as velvet and large, dangerous, chocolate-colored eyes; she’d tasted sweet, and Eve hadn’t wanted it to end. But it had. It always did. There was no lifelong romance waiting for Eve, it seemed, in the alleyways and historic plazas of continental Europe any more than in the woods of New England.

Before Italy was Spain, where she had a string of suitors, would-be lovers, wannabe flings. And before that, winter in Greece. It all felt mad, like she dreamed it, like the coursing charge of the river inside her was nothing more than fantasy. But hadn’t she expected that? Hadn’t she known, somewhere deep inside, somewhere innate, in her reptile brain where thoughts dissolve into feeling, into instinct—hadn’t she known that running would never make any of this feel real? No matter how many cobblestone streets she walked down, how many strange beds she awoke in, how many new showers she’d stand beneath, pushing her face up into the water, letting it course down her body and wash her clean, no matter where she went or who she met, who she was wouldn’t change. Wherever you go, after all, there you are. And so she let herself stop running, stop chasing, and gave her body over to the current. Carry me somewhere better, she’d think. Feeling pity in the stares of older men, their eyes on her body, their wives scowling as she passed, she called, Carry me somewhere safe. Feeling the emptiness inside her twist up like a fist, she wished, Somewhere I won’t feel so alone. And she let the current suck her up and take her away.

Now, though, she was curious, maybe more than curious, and she pushed against the current, shrugging at the men who watched her stroll past, the ones offering flowers or drinks, the ones selling postcards. Now she directed herself toward the train station. Why not? Let’s just see, she thought, picturing the woman’s hips, the curve of them in the light sundress as she stood from her table, the sun kissing the bare skin of her shoulders.

On the platform, Eve saw the two of them waiting. The woman fanned herself with an unfolded brochure, her cheeks already rosy with heat. The man drank absently from his bottle of water, looking down at his phone, scrolling. Then the train arrived, and the couple got on, and Eve followed.

* * *

“I just can’t believe this,” Zack says through a mouthful of cacio e pepe. He takes a slug of the house red, swallows. “I mean, what are the chances you’re there, another American on the train?” He twists his fork, spinning a thick bindle of the stuff onto his fork, pushes it into his mouth. Eve was annoyed when he ordered it, grinning like he’d unlocked some secret Roman code, like he hadn’t seen fifteen television shows touting it as the local specialty, like he hadn’t bought a jar of the premade sauce at Trader Joe’s the week before their trip. This is speculation on her part, of course, but Eve’s developed quite a talent for reading men.

“It’s not that weird,” Ali says, sipping her own wine, and her eyes meet Eve’s. “We’re all over the place over here, aren’t we? I mean.” She sets her glass down, her gaze still locked on Eve’s. “In Europe, I mean.”

“We are everywhere,” Eve says. “Like rats.” She stabs a gnocchi and brings it to her mouth, and it’s only then that she breaks eye contact with Ali, when the salty sweet rush of the carbonara blossoms in her mouth and her eyes instinctively shut. She hears herself moan softly, then opens her eyes to find Ali and Zack both staring at her. “Sorry,” Eve offers. “I’ve always had a thing for gnocchi.”

Their osso buco arrives, and Eve takes the liberty of ordering another carafe of the house red, kept chilled in a cooler in the back, next to a sturdy wooden table where two women even now pound dough flat, flour it, run it through a press before slowly submerging handfuls of limp, dusted noodles in salted water. Eve pushes her fork through the osso buco. It falls apart under the barest whisper of pressure, sloughing off the bone, and she pushes a portion onto Ali’s and Zack’s plates. She watches, waiting for Ali to take a bite before starting on her own. Ali closes her lips around her fork, and Eve watches as her cheeks flush for the second time today, and Ali lets out a moan just like Eve’s, and then the two of them are laughing, and Zack is so lost in his first bite he doesn’t even notice.

After dinner, they cross the Ponte Sisto. The river is calm beneath them, and the bridge is awash with musicians, bohemians, tourists tossing Euros into baskets beneath painters and dancers. They pause at the Piazza Trilussa, watching a man spit fire toward the sky while techno music thumps on a battery-powered speaker at his feet. After a moment, they head north across the piazza, and it is then that Ali reaches out and takes Eve’s hand, lacing their fingers together, squeezing gently and biting her lip when Eve looks toward her. 

Ahead of them, Zack watches two jugglers, oblivious.

At Vicolo del Leopardo, they slow, and Zack reaches deep into his pocket, produces a key. They stop in front of a thin blue door, and Zack pushes it open, turns to face them. Ali’s hand drops from Eve’s, and at their feet two feral cats begin to circle and meowl. 

“Well,” Eve says. She lets it hang there for a second, that word, heavy and wet between them. “I better get back to my hostel.” 

Zack steps toward her, reaching out his hand, opening his mouth to spill, “Thank you again, and it was—”

“No.” It’s Ali. And she reaches out and takes both of Eve’s hands in hers. “Please stay. We have another bottle of wine upstairs, I think some cheese. It’s still early.” Zack might have tried to argue, might have agreed, may have faded into the dark like a boogeyman; Eve wouldn’t have noticed.

“You need to rest. I better not,” she says, not remotely meaning it. 

“I think I’d feel better,” Ali replies, and she does mean it, she means every word, “if you came up. I don’t want you walking home alone after dark. At least for a bit.” She squeezes Eve’s hands. “You can come up and try to change my mind, how about that?”

“Yes,” Eve says softly, then she follows them through the blue door, up the narrow stairs and then up some more, down a long balcony along a claustrophobic courtyard to an even more narrow door at the end. There is another bottle of wine, and Eve is sure Ali has sufficiently recuperated, but still she stays. And they drink and laugh. They play records on the rental’s turntable. The host’s collection is eclectic: The Doors, Serge Gainsbourg, A Chipmunks Christmas. But as the wine goes down and the volume goes up, and as they laugh and dance, as Eve watches Ali push herself tight against Zack, their mouths open, almost touching, as Ali falls onto the couch beside Eve, dropping a hand on Eve’s thigh and squeezing, the music seems perfect. A parody, perhaps of these nights, the nights where drunken Americans dance and grope in the streets of Rome or Milan or Paris, the nights Eve’s been both chasing and running from for months. This night is different, she thinks, watching Ali laugh big and loud, her eyes squeezing shut and her mouth open wide, exposing her teeth.

Sometime after midnight but before dawn, Eve lies awake in the dark on the cheap futon. Her pants are on the floor beside her, an afghan they found in the closet pulled up to her chin. The din of the bars on the street below is finally dying down. The feral cats have curled up on car hoods and in flower beds. And Eve listens to the slow, rhythmic creak of the bed on the other side of the wall, barely hears Zack breathing hard, grunting. She listens to them, and she knows they know, especially when Ali moans loud and long, and Eve’s hand is already on herself, working to the rhythm of the creaking bed. And later, when she hears the soft pad of Ali’s feet on the worn hardwood, a weak snoring somewhere beyond in the dark of the bedroom, Eve lifts her head. And across the room, Ali stands at the kitchen sink. 

Ali raises a glass of water to her lips, drinks, and Eve sees a glimmer of water spill from the corner of her mouth, run down her chin and onto her breast bone, then glide down into what is surely Zack’s oversize button-up, loosely draped over her shoulders and barely closed. And Ali sees, too: sees Eve on the couch, the afghan pushed to her ankles, one hand still between her legs. In the blue light of the high moon, they regard each other in silence, and Eve feels the undeniable first tug of the returning hunger.

* * *

She parked her car in the lot behind Wingers, double-checking there was nothing of apparent value in view. She’d left her car here overnight before. More than once, in fact, and besides, what would anyone want to steal? She tapped the lock button on her key fob, heard the reassuring beep, and dropped it in her purse. 

At the bar, she ordered a double gin and tonic. Her slight white wine buzz had faded by the time she left Rebecca’s, and she wanted to chase it down, spin it around, climb back on and then some. She downed her drink, glancing around the bar for people she knew. It was busy, but a Wednesday, and she didn’t recognize anyone. The crowd was older than on the weekends, older than she usually hung with, all worn men and women with wet mouths. Someone sat beside her just in time to pay for her third drink. He was generically handsome, but his eyes seemed warm, and she could overlook the years written on his brow, around his eyes. His beard was short, mostly grey. She accepted the drink, raised her glass in cheers. She thought he said his name was Ray.

At Ray’s apartment, she had another glass of wine, and then they kissed in the kitchen before falling onto the couch. He took the lead, and she was fine with that, fine to give herself over. It was enough. She was used to it. He carried her into the bedroom, dropped her on the bed, pulled her pants off until they got caught on her shoes. They laughed together, fumbling with the laces, and then he was on top of her and he was inside of her and suddenly it wasn’t enough, after all. She clawed at him, pulled him deeper, wanted more of him. All of him. She was hungry. 

She felt his heart thumping in his chest against hers, the sweat of his shoulders as he buried his face against her neck. She pulled at him, wanting to be filled up with him, wanting to know something other than alone. She grazed his collarbone with her teeth, then sunk them into the flesh of his shoulder, and he called out, and she bit down. Hard. Hard enough to taste blood, hard enough to feel the give as his skin split, and still it wasn’t enough. All the years of wondering, of brooding, of asking why; she wasn’t just lonely, she was empty. She always had been, had always sensed the hollow void inside her, the hole yawning hungrily to be filled up. Above her, she felt his body tensing, knew he was close, that this would end soon. She needed more. She needed all of him. All of him in her. And so she bit again, and again, and she filled herself with him.

In the morning she stood long under the hot water of Ray’s shower, scouring herself, watching the water run red and spiral down the drain. Then she dressed in her clothes from the night before. She strode the six blocks back to the bar, to the parking lot, to her car that had not been robbed. She turned her key in the ignition and adjusted the mirror, eyeing herself, picking something out of her teeth. She smiled at herself then, as if she’d spirited away a secret. And she had, hadn’t she? 

Because for the first time in her life, she felt full.

* * *

Eve wakes the next morning to a finger on her lips. She startles, but her eyes adjust and she sees hovering over her the beaming face of Ali, another finger to her own lips. 

Ali leans in close, whispering, “He’s still sleeping. Coffee?” Eve nods and sits up, watching Ali tiptoe down the hall in her bare feet, the same long button down shirt ending at the top of her thighs. Eve rubs her eyes, then stands, stretching. She reaches for her bag, finds her toothbrush amidst the chaos of ticket stubs and makeup compacts. 

Ten minutes later, they pull shut the door behind them and follow the cobblestone down the block and around a corner. They sit at one of the small bistro tables outside Caffé del Cinque, sipping cappuccinos, tearing at pistachio croissants with fingers and teeth. They walk north along the river, then cross into the heart of the old city. They hold hands crossing the street and duck into an Irish pub when a rain shower unexpectedly falls from the sky. They drink Guinness and throw darts, and when the rain stops they float back out the door, leaving nothing behind, moving through time, beyond it, falling through narrow passageways and piazzas, leaning over fountains, seeing through them, watching their reflections shimmer against the clear blue canvas of the sky. They stop at the hostel where Eve checked a suitcase of clothes the week prior and take turns wheeling it back through the crowded streets, past fountains and ruins, stray cats and babies, happy couples and grumpy American men.

When they return to the flat, buzzing on Aperol spritz and invincibility, Zack is streaming a sitcom on his iPad. He waves, takes a bite of a panini. Ali takes Eve’s hand and leads her down the hallway, into the bedroom. They open Eve’s suitcase and paw through her outfits, marvel at how an entire life can fit in such a small case, how some people fill houses with anchors, tie themselves to the ground, how here, now, they are free and effervescent and always moving and they will never stop because to stop is to die, and the hollow inside Eve begins to yawn open, the hunger whispering to her, running its fingers up through her, all the way to her mouth, which yearns to snap, to clench, to close on something.

Eve finds her hand on Ali’s back, finds her fingers walking up, squeezing Ali’s shoulder, turning her around. Their fingers intertwine as their lips touch, softly grazing.

“Oh.” It’s Zack in the doorway, his shoulders hanging as if carrying a great weight. His dumb eyes stare, his mouth slack. He swallows. Ali holds out a hand to him, beckons him, and he takes it. And they know what to do, Eve and Ali, somehow as if practiced, as if designed, choreographed, perfected over time. The three of them fall into the bed, all sweat and toes, reaching fingers, ravenous mouths. Zack cries out at the first bite, and Eve places a hand over his mouth. Eve bites again, feeling him give under her teeth, feeling him start to spill out, to run into her. She chews, swallows, goes back for more, and she is drunk on it, the feeling of him inside her.

Eve runs her hand over her mouth. Blood runs down her chin, streaks across her wrist, paints her fingers. She holds one of those fingers out, an invitation, and Ali sucks it into her mouth. Then their lips are on each other again, and their hands, and all across them in strokes of red hums the salted copper taste of eternity. 

They eat until they are full. Sated, they dream of a future.