Burning the Map (24 page)

S
in shakes me awake. “The boat leaves in two hours, Case. Let's go so we can get tickets and a good seat.”

I struggle to sit up, groggy from the few hours of sleep I was able to muster. I finish packing, but when I'm done I realize that I've left a book and my black dress in the room John and I stayed in. I let myself in with quiet, cautious footsteps, as if something of John might have lingered there. The room is barren, the air stuffy with the windows closed. I collect my dress and book, and I stand staring at the bed, feeling the smoothness of John's skin as he held me the last night. I'll never feel that again—at least not with John.

“Case!” I hear Kat calling from down the hall. “Let's go!”

I move to the doorway, but I can't seem to get any farther than that, nor can I tear my eyes away from the bed, seeing John and me in sweet embraces over the years.

“Casey!” I hear again. “We have to go.” I finally turn, and slowly I shut the door.

 

“You okay?” Kat and Lindsey keep asking me as we walk to the dock, joining a parade of other travelers lugging suitcases and backpacks.

“Just thinking,” I tell them, but I stay silent.

I feel like a prisoner being led to execution. Sure, Athens will be fun, but it's merely the beginning of the end. The end of this vacation, the end of my life as I know it. My future looms bleak. I glance down at my cotton shorts and fitted T-shirt, a vacation uniform of sorts, soon to be replaced with navy suits, pearls and tasteful pumps.

You're just scared to work for a living,
I try to convince myself.
Everything will be fine.

But I know that I'm lying to myself, as I've done so often before. I'm not afraid of working for a living. I'm terrified of working as a lawyer, because I have no passion for it. There will be nothing to get me up in the morning except the promise of a paycheck and the threat of the unemployment line.

We stop at a travel agency to purchase ferry tickets.

“Three to Athens, please,” Lindsey tells the attractive young woman behind the counter.

“Certainly,” she says.

I watch her turn and move to a table behind her, picking up three blue ferry vouchers. She writes the time of departure and the price on the first one, the second one. And just as she's about to start with the third, I say loudly, “No. Just two tickets.”

“What are you doing?” Sin says, sounding irritated. “We've got to get to the boat and save seats.”

“I'm not going to Athens,” I say, sounding more sure than I feel.

“
What
are you talking about?” Kat asks, plopping her backpack on the linoleum floor.

“Excuse me,” I say to the woman behind the counter. “We'll be one minute.”

I pull Kat and Sin to the front corner of the store. “Look, I'm going to stay here or maybe go to another island for a while. I don't know. I just need to figure out what I'm going to do with myself.”

“What you're going to do with yourself?” Sin says. “You're going to Athens with us and then home to start your job.”

“That's just it. I'm not going to practice law. At least not right now.”

“Are you crazy?” Sin says, her eyes wide.

Kat gives me a conspiratorial grin. “What do you have up your sleeve?”

“Absolutely nothing.” I tell the truth. “I just know I don't want to be a lawyer.”

“You could've thought of that three years ago, before you started law school,” Sin says.

Remembering my dad's words, I tell her, “Better late than never.”

I
'm sitting on my balcony at the Astras Villas in Santorini. I'd considered staying at the youth hostel in the island's main village of Fira, but I opted instead for this secluded spot at one of the highest points on the island. It's more expensive, but my credit cards aren't maxed out yet.

I know I'm an idiot for spending this kind of money, which comes with an eighteen-point-five-percent interest rate, but it can't overshadow the absolute giddiness I feel when I look around my room. It's sparse but cleanly furnished with a double bed, a tiny refrigerator like I had in the college dorm, and a pine dressing table with a red brocade stool. The room is always filled with light from the French doors that open to this balcony. Below my porch a kidney-shaped pool sits surrounded by lime-green tiles, and much farther below that is the Aegean Sea. Only the occasional cruise ship
and a tall, jagged chunk of rock, a remnant of a long-ago volcano, interrupt my view. Fuck the credit cards.

I cut a slice of the cheese I bought today in Fira, lifting my legs up onto the empty chair opposite me. The sun is only beginning to start its descent. I take another sip of crisp white wine, remembering my friends' reaction to my announcement that I wasn't returning to the U.S. just yet, nor did I plan to begin my job at Billings Sherman & Lott. Kat was thrilled, telling me she'd join me if she didn't like her job at the hospital so much. Lindsey was characteristically leery at first, interrogating me until she realized that I was set in my decision. I wasn't. I was terrified, but I held my ground. For once in my life I was going against the path that seemed the logical, proper route, and instead following what my gut told me was the right road.

Sin had finally broken into a cautious but warm smile and hugged me close. “Be careful,” she said, “and get your ass home so you can tell us all the details.”

“I love you guys,” I'd said more than once as they prepared to board the Athens ferry. I'd promised never to let anyone or anything come between our friendship again. They waved frantically from the top tier of the ferry, like two passengers on the
Love Boat.

Gordy Brickton had not taken my news nearly as well as they did. “This is akin to professional suicide,” he'd said when I called, his voice rising. “You will never work at Billings Sherman & Lott, and after this gets out, you may never get a job in the Chicago legal community.”

The Miss-Can't-Be-Wrong in my head jumped up and down, yelling,
“Tell him you'll be starting in a week. Don't throw this away!”
If Gordy was accurate, the law wouldn't be something to fall back on. There'd be no safety net at all. The new me gave a sharp jab, though, and said,
“Stick to your guns, girl.”
I remembered the words of Nicky, the Aussie girl I'd met in Ios, telling me that travel and time alone wasn't about escape
but about the learning curve, finding out what you're made of, finding yourself. That's how I intend to use this time.

So I'd taken a deep breath and spoken into the phone as calmly as possible, telling Gordy, “I'll cross that bridge when, and if, I decide I want to go there. Thank you for everything, Gordy.” And I hung up. Just like that.

Surprisingly, my parents were both calm, my dad elated even, each telling me to take all the time I needed to straighten my head out (my mother's words). My mom even told me that she's started reconnecting with her own friends lately, that she'd forgotten how wonderful friends could be. It's a lesson we both had to learn, I guess.

There are times that I can convince myself that I'm like Julia Roberts at the end of
Pretty Woman,
when she has her shit together and is off to a better life. Then reality hits three minutes later, along with the reminder that I have no money, no job and I am a total lunatic. This lunacy is freedom, though, the first I've ever had. I know that I'm as messed up as I always was. It's just that I feel better about it all.

As for what I'll do, I haven't yet decided. I might stay on this gracious island for a while, possibly tend bar. I've always thought female bartenders were a higher echelon of cool, with the notable exception of the French bar wench from Ios. When I return home, I'll have to do something to support myself. I might start taking interior design classes, my profession of choice a long time ago, before I'd forgotten my passion for it, before I'd convinced myself that lawyering would be more profitable, more secure.

I will certainly have to face the music, or should I say cacophony, of my parents' rift. I can't imagine what it will be like to have them living in two different places and to have to take care of them, when I'm not so well off myself. It feels like a hand closing over my heart to think that something once so stable is now disintegrating, the same way John had been a stable and integral part of my life until Francesco and
Billy had inadvertently shown me passion, and I'd faced up to the doubts that had haunted me. Nothing will ever be the same, but at least I've had a semblance of a normal family life for twenty-six years. And I have a collection of friends who round out my family and whom I will never let out of my grasp again.

Fear puts me to bed and wakes me up in the morning, but in between I smile a lot. I am alone, jobless and without a man. Yet I have myself, or at least more of myself than I've ever had before. I have found a piece of home within my own skin.

The only plan I have set in stone at this very moment is to enjoy this wine and cheese and this sunset beginning to burn a rust-red. I might spend the night by myself sitting on the terrace or writing in my journal. I might go into Fira to the Orinos Café along the water to visit the waiter I met today while shopping for wine. Or I might not.