Patrick always offered me drinks on the job, and I couldn"t figure out what kind of message he was sending me. Since I wasn"t a big drinker I"d either turn him down or nurse a single gla.s.s of white wine all night.
Every day, Juve met me outside my grammar cla.s.s with a new stack of flyers, and I"d hand out a few between and after my cla.s.ses. I dreaded the hour between 9 P.M. and 10 P.M., when I"d have to stand by myself in Perugia"s main square, Piazza IV Novembre, calling out, "Le Chic. Via Alessi. Le Chic. Via Alessi." I felt vulnerable.
Piazza IV Novembre, home to both the Duomo, a ma.s.sive fifteenth-century Gothic cathedral, and an elaborately carved pink-and-white marble fountain, was the town"s main meeting spot. At night it filled with loud students milling around drinking beer from plastic cups. It reminded me unhappily of the fraternity bashes I"d attended as a freshman at UW. I"d gone to those parties, danced with those people, drunk too much. It took me less than a semester to figure out how much I disliked it. Being in school in Perugia, I felt as if I"d circled back to the same spot-ironic, since I"d come to Italy to figure out how to be my own person.
My job made me feel like a bull"s-eye in the middle of the chaos. Guys continually came up to me to flirt, saying they"d stop by Le Chic only if I promised to be there. Brushing them off, as I would have liked, would have been bad for business. So I hoped my chirpy "You should come by" came off as inviting for Patrick"s sake and not too suggestive for mine.
It was confusing to me. I was open to new people and experiences, but I kept ending up in situations I didn"t want to be in. Working for Patrick and Juve was part of that.
Since most of my days included standing there mute with my arm outstretched to pa.s.sersby who didn"t acknowledge that I was at the other end of the four-inch-by-five-inch sheet of colored paper, I was always relieved when my stack of flyers dwindled, and I could leave.
But no matter how many flyers I gave out, Le Chic wasn"t catching on. Meredith came to visit me there a few times so I wouldn"t be bored or alone, and once, she brought her girlfriends. But I could see why they didn"t come back. Le Chic didn"t get a lot of foot traffic, so the dance floor was usually empty. The bar felt forlorn-not exactly a recipe for a good time. Patrick was jovial and did his best to make it welcoming, but it was still noisy and dark inside and attracted a crowd of older men-often friends of Patrick"s-and not students.
There was nothing truly dangerous about Le Chic, but its seediness did hint at Perugia"s dark side. What I didn"t know when I arrived was that the city had the highest concentration of heroin addicts in Italy. I never heard about the high level of trafficking and drug use until I was in prison, bunking with drug dealers. During my trial, the prosecution and the media seemed to take for granted that our neighborhood was bad and our little villa a deathtrap.
Even without knowing this, my mom worried about my safety-a lot. One day, while I was e-mailing back and forth with her at the Internet cafe, she asked, "Who should I call if I can"t reach you?"
"We don"t have a home phone, but I can give you Laura"s number," I wrote. "But honestly, Mom, I think I"m safer here than in Seattle. My friend Juve walks me home from work most nights, and Perugia is much smaller than Seattle. I"ve really made a lot of friends."
"Okay," Mom wrote back. "I feel better."
I believed what I said-not because I had reason to but because I was in love with the city"s many charms. And I didn"t pick up on some obvious clues.
One night, when Le Chic was closing and Juve couldn"t walk me home, I saw an acquaintance of Meredith"s. I didn"t know his real name, only that Meredith and her girlfriends had nicknamed him Shaky because of the way he danced. He offered me a ride home on his scooter. I figured a friend of a friend was close enough to trust. I figured wrong.
We whizzed through the narrow streets. As we approached the intersection where the villa was, he slowed and yelled over his shoulder, "Would you like a cupcake? I know the best bakery in Perugia, and it"s open all night."
"No. I"m tired. I just want to go home."
"Come on. It"s nearby."
"No, thanks," I said, just as we pa.s.sed my house.
We went to the bakery, where I refused to get anything. "I don"t even like cupcakes," I said. "Now home."
"My home," he said.
"No!" I glared.
"Just for a minute. I have to pick something up."
"Okay," I said, feeling that it was not okay at all. But I had no idea where I was and no other way to get where I was going.
Shaky"s apartment was tiny and cramped with people. He took me to his bedroom to wait while he went off to do something. After a few minutes, he came back with a beer for me.
I said, "If you don"t take me home right now I"m going to walk." Luckily for me, since it was an empty threat, he shrugged, turned around, and we left. When we got to my driveway I climbed off the scooter without saying good-bye and stormed inside.
I was angry, and bursting to tell Meredith. She sighed. "I"m so sorry," she said. "He tried to do the same thing with my friend Sophie. But he was so responsible the night our friend was sick, I still really trust him."
After that, Meredith came up with a plan. She always went out with a group of girlfriends, so she felt protected by the pack. But knowing I was often on my own, she said, "If you come back to the villa at night and I"m not here, make sure to text me to say you"ve gotten home safely."
It was comforting to know that if she didn"t hear from me she"d realize something was wrong and would get help.
One night when the bar was slow, Patrick decided to close early. I texted Meredith, who said she"d meet me at the fountain by the Duomo, three minutes away.
As I made my way through the ma.s.s of drunk students in Piazza IV Novembre, I saw two of our downstairs neighbors, Giacomo and Marco. Giacomo handed me a beer, and I pushed my way through the crowd to find Meredith. When we had rejoined the guys, they introduced us to a friend who, I"d later learn, had moved to Italy as a kid, from Ivory Coast. His name was Rudy. They sometimes played pickup basketball with him.
The five of us stood around for a few minutes before walking home together. The guys invited us to their apartment, but Meredith and I first stopped at ours to drop off our purses.
"Ready to go downstairs?" I asked her.
"You go. I"ll be down in a second," she said.
When I opened the door to the downstairs apartment, Giacomo, Marco, Stefano, and Rudy were sitting around the table laughing. "What"s funny?" I asked.
"Nothing," they said sheepishly.
I didn"t think another thing about it until months and months later, when it came out in court that just before I"d opened the door, Rudy had asked the guys if I was available.
A short time later, Meredith came in and sat down next to me at the table. The guys pa.s.sed us the joint they were smoking. We each inhaled, handed it back, and sat there for a few minutes while they joked around in Italian. Tired and a little stoned, I couldn"t keep up with their conversation. After a little while I told Meredith, "I"m going up to bed."
One day in mid-October, about three weeks after I arrived, Meredith and I were walking down Via Pinturicchio to try out a new grocery store that was supposed to be cheaper than the Coop we usually went to downtown. I didn"t know it then, but it was just a few doors down from Perugia"s courthouse.
"Have you met any guys you like yet?" I asked Meredith.
"Giacomo," she said, shyly but decisively. She had talked about our downstairs neighbor before. "I think he"s cute and nice."
Not many nights later, the guys invited all of us in the house on an excursion to Red Zone, a popular club just outside of town. I was excited. It wasn"t usually my scene, but I"d decided to try something different and had already been to two downtown dance clubs, Domus and Blue Velvet. To my surprise, I"d had a decent time.
Laura and Filomena stayed home, but Meredith invited her friend Amy to come. The guys brought a friend from Rome named Bobby, whom I"d met once before. I had a cold sore then and was so self-conscious about it I just wanted to hide. Bobby said, charmingly, in English, "Why does it bother you? Many people get cold sores."
Red Zone took up an entire warehouse. It was the largest, most over-the-top dance club I"d ever been to. The line to get in snaked around the building, and people were crammed in as if the place had been vacuum-sealed. It was hard to find any air. Bright lights flashed red, green, and blue, and the heavy ba.s.s seemed to travel through the cement floor and into my bones. Somehow we snagged a table, and Stefano ordered a round of sweet, electric blue drinks. I don"t know what was in them, but I got drunk almost immediately. We were listening to the music and laughing, getting up to dance every now and then. It must have been 102 degrees, and I was sweating, dripping. Bobby tried to talk to me, yelling over the music.
When I went to the bathroom, he followed me and waited outside the door. As I stumbled out, I grabbed onto him and kissed him on the mouth.
"Do you like me?" Bobby asked.
I nodded.
Then he kissed me back.
Just then, Marco pa.s.sed by and started whooping and congratulating Bobby on our hookup. I have no idea how long we stayed at the club. When it was time to go, Stefano went for the car, and Bobby and I stood on the curb outside, kissing. Giacomo and Meredith stood slightly apart from us, entwined.
When we got home, Bobby followed me to the front door.
"Do you want to come in?" I asked.
"Are you sure?"