Four Things My Geeky-Jock-of-a-Best-Friend Must Do in Europe by Jane Harrington

(which just WON’T fade away).
    Before I could respond, Gorkon wandered up to us.
    Truthfully, it’s a mystery that he ever figures out where we are. His head is always in straight-ahead-robot mode, and his eyes never venture anywhere NEAR our faces.
    “Remember, Gorky, Brady needs SPACE,” Noori said, when he’d planted himself a little too close to me again.
    “Space,” he said, not moving a muscle. “The final frontier.”
    Tatyana gently pulled him back a few steps. “Brady doesn’t really want you there in HER frontier, Gorky,” she said.
    (Clever, isn’t she, Delia? I will NEVER let you two meet.)
    “AS I was saying, Brady,” Tatyana continued, poking at the word “Euro-hottie” on my hand again. “TODAY is your last chance.”
    “Brady,” Gorkon said, “do you hurl heavy objects?”
    I was grateful for this question. It represented a change of subject. “Yeah, sure!” I said. “Why?”
    Smiling, he answered, “Klingon women hurl heavy objects.”
    Quickly realizing I’d made a bad move, I turned my attention back to Tatyana. “I think I’ve proven I’m not very good at finding, uh, the #4 thing,” I said, making discreet head motions in the direction of Gorkon.
    “Klingon women roar when they hurl objects,” he said.
    “Oh, well, sorry, then,” I said to him. “I’m not much at roaring.”
    “What do Klingon men do?” Noori asked him.
    “They duck a lot,” Gorkon said.
    We laughed at that for a while—including Gorkon, but I’m about 100% sure he hadn’t meant to be funny.
    Mio madre has returned from the Internet Café with reams of printouts, and she is doing that clapping thing again. I’ll write later, although it may be on postcards I scribble out between shifts at the factories in Livorno, where I’ll likely be working to earn money for a plane ticket home when we miss the boat later today, which will make us miss our plane tomorrow. But, hey, I guess it would give me more time to meet a Euro-hottie.
    Arrivederci . . .

Thursday evening
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    Dear Delia,
    I am COMPLETELY BUMMED about tonight being my last night on this ship. Even though it’s been less than a week, I feel strangely at HOME here. The stateroom may be the size of a walk-in closet, and the bed the size of an ironing board, but there you are.
    There’s a farewell party tonight, and I really should be taking a shower and figuring out what to wear. Of course, what to wear shouldn’t be a huge deal, because all my tops are dirty except my “Alexandria Recycles” T-shirt. (Uh, why did I bring THAT?) The matter of taking a shower may be a little more difficult, though, because our porter has shaped my bath towel into a rabbit tonight. Very cute, but I’m feeling squeamish about taking a furry animal apart. So, I will instead take the time to write you now, since you are probably patiently (HA HA HA) waiting for the report of my day in Florence and my pursuit of the Euro-hottie.
    Mio madre and I took a bus to the Livorno train station, which I am guessing took longer than she had scheduled for in her carefully planned itinerary, because when it arrived, she felt the need to grab my hand and RUN at top speed. The train station was buzzing with Italian life, much of it male, so I began doing some hottie hunting right off, which ended abruptly when my mother stopped short in front of a vending machine, causing me to run into her with such force that I almost flipped over her head like a circus performer.
    “This is the place to buy tickets,” I could hear my mother’s voice saying through the dizzying chirps of cartoon birds around her head. “According to Rick Steves, people in these stations don’t always speak English, so it is best to use these machines.”
    I was curious about this but didn’t dare ask any questions for fear of having to hear the (potentially boring and long) answers. The things I wondered: Who is Rick Steves, and is he the Euro-hottie I’m looking for? AND, why is an Italian