Chapter 9

Andrew

 

Just like we had for the Colosseum, we left early for Pompeii. Our hotel was a fifteen-minute walk from the entrance to the ruins, and when we arrived, we were once again first in line. The ticket windows weren’t open yet, but that was fine, especially since people started lining up behind us within about ten minutes. By the time the windows opened, the line extended out of the shaded area and out of my sight.

“You’re good at this,” I said to Eric as we waited for the cashier to make change.

He chuckled. “What? Getting to places before everyone else?”

“Yes, exactly.”

Eric shrugged. “I just hate standing in line. I mean, we still have to stand here a while, but at least we’ll be able to grab our tickets and get in before it’s wall-to-wall people.”

“That’s my kind of impatience.”

The cashier slid our tickets and change under the window along with a map and directed us toward the entrance. We thanked her and followed the signs to the turnstiles where some tour groups had already gotten ahead of us. When it was our turn, we showed our tickets to the man with the scanner, then headed up the steep cobblestone street into the main gate.

A tour group was clustered along one side of the road, and we slowed a little to eavesdrop.

“What you’re seeing here is where ships would have docked,” she was saying. “This was the waterfront two thousand years ago, and Pompeii was a port city.”

We didn’t catch the rest because there was another tour group coming up behind us, and we didn’t want to get tangled up with them. So we kept walking. I’d known from reading about Pompeii that it had been a port city, but the modern coastline was miles from here. It was jaw-dropping to make sense of it all now that I saw just how far inland the city was today. I wasn’t even inside the ruins yet and my mind was already blown.

Pompeii wasn’t done blowing my mind. As we crested the top of the hill, the sight literally took my breath away. I had to stop and just… look at it. Just stare at the walls, pillars, arches, and statues that I’d seen in books and documentaries my entire life.

I was here. I was really standing here, taking in the ruins of Pompeii, and I had an entire day to explore it all.

Beside me, Eric was doing the same—staring out at everything laid out in front of us, slack-jawed and wide-eyed as if he couldn’t quite believe this was real. Because holy shit, it was like something out of a movie, especially with the forest-covered Vesuvius looming in the background.

I swallowed. “So, where do we start?”

“Looks like the tour groups are heading that way.” He pointed toward one of the roads. “So I say we check out everything up here”—he gestured around the plaza—“and then go that way.” He shifted his gesture to another road leading in a different direction.

“I like the way you think. Let’s go.”

We explored the plaza, which was mostly the remains of what I thought were a government building and a temple (there was a tour group clustered around the signs and I was too lazy to check my map). The ruins were more intact than I’d imagined, and in a lot of places, it was easy to picture what had been there before. Some buildings were nothing but foundations while others were empty shells missing their upper floors but with doorways and windows still mostly intact up to the third floor. From eavesdropping on an English-speaking tour guide, I’d gathered that the buildings had been buried to the third floor by the first flow, and the second wave had torn off anything above that. Which made sense—all of the buildings did seem cut off after about the second or third floor.

There was a school group who would hold their phones up to a particular building, and an app filled in what the structure looked like before the eruption. We saw another group with the same app, and damn, I wished I had some sort of cell signal out here so I could download it too. Oh well.

By the time we’d finished, the plaza was a zoo of tour groups and individual tourists. They were all heading for that main road, so we stuck with Eric’s plan and took a side street. Almost immediately, we were alone. If I really strained, I could hear the distant chatter of other people, but for the most part, it was silent out here. Just empty houses, a deserted street, and the two of us.

Intellectually, I’d understood that Pompeii was a city, but I hadn’t imagined just how big it really was. Most ruins we’d seen on this trip had been just fragments of a presumably larger place. A couple of walls where an entire city block had once stood.

Pompeii was… it was enormous. An actual city that you couldn’t just walk across in ten minutes.

Behind it all, Mount Vesuvius loomed, but it was farther away than I’d anticipated. Somehow I’d always expected Pompeii to be right up against the base of the mountain the way Gibraltar had huddled up against the rock, but it had to be at least a few miles away. Though that distance made the mountain seem relatively small, it made my neck prickle at the realization of just how big and violent the pyroclastic flow had to have been in order to take out the city and continue far enough to push the coastline out several miles. And people still lived here now? It had blown me away on the train when I’d realized how close people lived to Vesuvius, but seeing now that there were people living between the ruins and the mountain was wild. There were houses all around modern-day Pompeii, surrounding the ruins on all sides, not to mention Naples. Were these people insane?

“This must be especially wild for you,” Eric said with a smirk as we picked our way along one of the uneven sidewalks.

“Why’s that?”

“You’re from Iowa.” He gestured at Vesuvius. “Probably don’t see shit like that every day.”

“Do you?”

“I can see Mount Rainier from my office and from my condo, so yeah.”

I whistled. “Wow. Not sure I’d want to live in the shadow of a volcano.”

He shrugged. “Rainier isn’t quite that close though.” He paused. “Well, I mean, it doesn’t need to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if it ever actually went off, the mudslides alone would turn Seattle into…” Eric gestured at our surroundings.

I blinked. “And you live there. And you can see it.”

“Yeah.” Another shrug. “Dude, you live in Tornado Alley. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Okay, but if a tornado touches down, there are places I can take shelter. If a damn mountain goes off…” It was my turn for a pointed gesture at our surroundings. “Plus, don’t you guys have earthquakes and shit like that?”

“You people have blizzards.”

“Blizzards don’t usually knock over freeways and buildings.” I paused. “Then again, they do cause the occasional forty-car pile-up on the interstate.”

Eric shot me a horrified look. “Jesus. That would grind Seattle to a halt for a month. One fender bender, and you’re stuck in traffic for miles.” He tsked and shook his head as he stepped into one of the many houses along this street. “I’ll take earthquakes, thank you.”

“Uh-huh. And let’s talk about that traffic you all seem to think is normal.”

“Normal?” He scoffed. “Okay, maybe normal’s the word, but I promise you, we bitch about it regularly.”

“I would hope so. Because that shit is not normal.”

“Can’t argue with that. It’s bullshit is what it is.”

But at least Pompeii didn’t have the same problem. Though there were hundreds of tourists here, we were alone most of the time. There seemed to be two main roads cutting through the ruins, and most of the tour groups stuck to those two roads. The instant we’d turn down a side street, we’d be virtually alone. Another block or so, and there wouldn’t be a single person in sight.

As much as we could, we stayed away from the main roads. We wandered through the shells of houses and other buildings, taking pictures every few feet. Everything was interesting. Everything. Eric and I were constantly stopping to snap something, so I never had to worry about him getting impatient while I took a minute to get just the right angle. More often than not, he was doing the same thing.

Sometimes there was an old clay pipe, still relatively intact. Archways and columns drove home that this was ancient Rome. So did the occasional tile mosaic on a floor or a fresco that had somehow survived.

I’d never realized Roman columns were brick on the inside. For some reason I’d always imagined them carved from a single piece of stone or marble. Apparently not, judging by a few that had been partially damaged, revealing the masonry inside. They were brick cylinders coated in what I assumed was concrete, which was shaped into the familiar column.

We had to be careful when we walked, too. The cobblestones had settled over the centuries, and the road wasn’t just uneven, it was a rolled ankle waiting to happen. The crevices between cobblestones were deep and wide, and pretty much everyone was stumbling here and there.

Huge stepping stones formed crosswalks every so often, too, and after the streets had settled over the centuries, the stepping stones took some work to step over. Ditto with getting on and off the curbs of the narrow sidewalks. We managed, though, and carefully picked our way down the main street and side streets and through alleys and into buildings that had once been houses. I was completely lost, and I was pretty sure even the map in my back pocket wouldn’t be enough to orient me because everything around us looked the same, but that was okay. We didn’t have a destination in mind. I was perfectly content to wander aimlessly and be surprised by what was around the next turn, and Eric seemed onboard with the same.

The theater was more impressive than I’d expected. It was amazing to imagine something this big and precise, with its semicircular seating and the stage far below, being made out of stone with ancient tools. It was one thing to know from books that Roman engineering was ahead of its time. It was another thing entirely to see the precision of the stonework, archways, and columns, especially knowing it had weathered a volcanic eruption and almost two thousand years of being buried.

The ruins weren’t exactly empty, either. There were pigeons hanging around, which wasn’t surprising, but a lot of cats too. Stray dogs hunkered down in some of the old houses, probably trying to stay cool. They looked fairly well fed, and most of them were friendly, if a little shy.

At one point, a flicker of movement caught my eye, and I turned to see a lizard skittering up the wall. It was about seven or eight inches long including the tail, bright green with a tan belly, and covered in black spots.

“What do you see?” Eric asked.

“Uh.” I glanced at him, smiling sheepishly. “Just a lizard.”

“Oh yeah?” He craned his neck a little. “Where?”

“Right—” I turned back toward the wall, but the lizard was gone.

He squeezed my shoulder. “I think this heat is getting to you. You’re starting to hallucinate.”

“No I’m not! I swear, there was a lizard here.” I pulled up the pictures on my camera and turned it so he could see the screen. “See? Lizard.”

“Well damn. How did I miss that?”

“Gotta be quick. They’re fast little fuckers.”

We continued walking, and I had to chuckle as I realized Eric was watching for lizards now too.

The road took us to one of the more intact houses with the gardens I’d seen in photos and documentaries. We checked out the public toilets and brothels, not to mention the graffiti that had been carefully preserved under Plexiglas and the carved penises that pointed the way to a brothel. A tour guide was telling his group that they’d be continuing to a building where they could see the plaster casts of people who’d been killed in the blast. Eric looked a little green at the prospect. I wasn’t too keen on it either. I’d seen the contorted bodies in pictures. I didn’t need to see them in real life.

So we skipped that part and kept going our own way.

At one point, we turned a corner, and up ahead was a round building that I was pretty sure was—

“Oh hey, that’s the arena!” Eric beamed like a little kid who’d just spotted Santa Claus at the mall. “Let’s go check it out.”

“Hell yeah!”

We practically jogged over to it and went inside. Unlike the Colosseum, we could go in and stand on the arena floor instead of up in the stands, so we walked out into the middle and looked around. The Colosseum had been cool, but this place was impressive as hell too. Especially since the floor was still intact, so we could stand here and imagine spectators all around us and gladiators fighting right here where we stood. The stands were grown over now, with grass and wildflowers shooting up where people would have been sitting two thousand years ago, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the arena’s glory days. Hell, it wasn’t hard to imagine Pompeii’s glory days.

“I have to say,” I mused as we took in our surroundings, “nothing about this tour has been a letdown.”

“No, it hasn’t.” He turned to me and smiled. “Thanks for indulging me every time I want to stop.”

“Are you kidding?” I stepped closer and wrapped an arm around his waist. “I’ve been stopping every two feet myself.”

His smile broadened a little, and then he lifted his chin and kissed me softly. We held each other’s gazes for a moment before, without a word, we let each other go and continued exploring. As we walked, I still smiled like an idiot.

No, this tour hadn’t been a letdown at all.

And I couldn’t imagine exploring this place with anyone but him.

 

***

 

By the time we’d finished exploring the ruins, it was almost four o’clock and we were both exhausted. My feet hurt like they’d never hurt before—probably from those damn cobblestones—and I would have blown literally anyone for a glass of something cold.

Finding an exit turned out to be a challenge simply because the place was so big, but we finally found one and liberated ourselves from the ruins. We trudged down the hill to a pavilion of shops and restaurants, which was surrounded by tents full of souvenirs. The salespeople tried to flag us down, calling out to us that they had the best prices on everything, but we waved them off and continued on our mission to find food, water, and a place to sit down. We’d been warned time and again to ignore the guys dressed as gladiators trying to pose for pictures—every travel site was emphatic that these guys would pose for a picture and then try to charge you an arm and a leg after the fact—but we didn’t have to try to ignore them. I saw them, and I heard one trying to get our attention, but since he wasn’t a six-foot sentient glass of ice water, he didn’t register on my radar.

We finally found a place that wasn’t packed, and a cute waiter—Christ, was every waiter in this country hot?— showed us to a table under the shade of a white awning and a couple of tall, potted trees. I dropped into one of the metal chairs, and didn’t think any chair had ever been this comfortable in the history of mankind.

“What can I bring you?” the waiter asked.

“Orange juice,” Eric said. “In fact, bring me three.”

My mouth watered. “Same. Also three.”

The waiter eyed us, but shrugged and wrote it down. I couldn’t imagine it was that unusual of a request, given the number of sweaty, dehydrated tourists trickling in from the ruins across the street. He returned a moment later with half a dozen glasses of orange juice and lined them up in front of us. And okay, now it struck me as kind of ridiculous, having this many drinks between us, but after I’d inhaled the first and was halfway through the second without even coming up for air… fuck ridiculous. This hit the spot. I thought I might even order two or three more.

“Oh my God, I’m sore,” Eric groaned as he brought his second drink to his lips. “It was worth it, but holy shit.”

“Oh come on. I didn’t fuck you that hard.”

Eric choked.

I snickered.

Laughing, he rolled his eyes. “You’re an asshole.”

“Birds of a feather.”

He tried to glare at me, but we both chuckled, and he patted my knee under the table.

“Aside from being sore,” I said, “you still had a good time, right?”

“Hell yeah, I did. You?”

“Definitely. I hadn’t realized how big Pompeii would actually be. I mean, it makes sense—it’s a city. But somehow I pictured the ruins being a lot smaller.”

He nodded. “Me too. I’ve looked at maps of it before, but for whatever reason, it didn’t seem as big until I saw it in person.” He gestured past me. “Didn’t think Vesuvius would be so far away, either. That eruption must have been unreal to get this far.”

“Well, you heard that one tour guide saying it was a port city, and the water is…” I gestured vaguely in what I hoped was the direction of the Gulf of Naples. “Not exactly next door.”

Eric grunted, nodding. “Good point. Consider my mind blown.”

“Same here.”

“And with the way my feet feel, maybe skipping Herculaneum isn’t such a bad idea after all.”

I winced. “Are you sure?”

He smiled warmly. “Yeah. Honestly, as sore as I am, I’d probably be suggesting it even if we still had the time.”

That did make me feel a little better. I still wished we could have gone, and that my disaster of a job interview hadn’t killed our chance even before our sore feet did, but yeah, I felt better. And there was no way in hell I was doing another walking tour for a while anyway, so it all worked out. “Well, I think Pompeii was worth the sore feet, and I’ll get over not going to Herculaneum.”

“Me too.”

We clinked our glasses together because why the hell not, and continued enjoying buckets of cool orange juice and being off our feet.

Eric took off his sunglasses and set them on the table. Despite the sunscreen we’d religiously reapplied every hour, he had some pink across his nose and cheeks. It might’ve been from the heat and not a sunburn, but it reminded me of that fading burn he’d had the day I’d met him. Was that really less than a month ago?

He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “What?”

Oh shit, had I been staring?

Heat rushed into my already hot cheeks, and I cleared my throat. “Nothing. Just, um…” I gestured at my face. “You looked like you got a little sun.”

“I’m not surprised. You got some too.” He made the same gesture at his own face. “Guess we both should’ve worn more sunscreen.”

“Eh, live and learn. I’m going to be sore for the next few days anyway—what’s being extra crispy on top of it?”

He laughed. “Fair point.”

“And oh my God,” I groaned. “Don’t get your hopes up about anything tonight.”

Eric chuckled, shaking his head. “Are you kidding? I’ll be lucky if I can walk down the hall to our room.” He paused. “And I don’t care if it’s only a fifteen-minute walk away—we’re taking a cab.”

“Uh-huh. Agreed.” The thought of walking back to our hotel made me want to lie down on the hot concrete and die. A cab? Fuck yes. Especially since we’d come out of the ruins in a different place than we’d gone in, so for all I knew, our fifteen-minute walk to the hotel was more like an hour now.

“Speaking of…” He glanced at his phone. “Want to go back to the room for a while and just relax? Then go hunt down some dinner?”

“Sounds like a plan.”