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No, I'm sorry, I don't think so. My husband. The kids. You know. This to the girlwoman standing beside you at the sink in the restroom. You're most of a morning north of Rome. You went in to pee and, as you rinse your hands at the sink, she steps up beside you and asks if you happen to have a little extra room in your car. She asks politely, almost shyly, and yet in a tone that suggests the gesture isn't by any means new to her. She is heading to Milan for a shoot, she explains. She's a model. She looks like a model. Her purpleblack hair cut short and spiky. Her cheeks high, her skin olive and faultless, her eyes a coffeebean brown, her lips thin and lipsticked moist red like a movie star from the fifties. She has that quality models have: you glance at them and they look like one person; you glance at them again and they look like another. Their changeability makes you nervous when you see them on television or in the tabloids. In person, it's even more disturbing. Her accent is strong, but not Italian. Swiss, maybe? Dutch? She doesn't take no for an answer. She asks you again, this time saying she'd be happy to help with gas. She won't be any trouble. She promises. She enjoys children, loves entertaining them. Think of her as a nanny for an hour or two. She's sure you and your husband could use a break. She isn't wrong. You've been traveling for nearly two weeks, first around London and Paris, now here on a road trip from Rome to Venice. Truth is, you're all a little tired of each other. You all know what the others will say or do before they say or do it. You always have, but you are a little more conscious of knowing every day. You wouldn't admit this to each other, yet it's true. You could use the insertion of a fresh personality into your expedition. But you tell her Robert doesn't pick up hitchhikers. It's nothing personal. It's just family policy. Not with kids in the car. It makes sense. As teenagers in college, on spring break, you once thumbed all the way from New Brunswick to the Green Mountains outside Middlebury on a camping trip. You told your parents you were visiting friends in D.C. Here, though, you don't know how far to trust your intuitions. You and the girlwoman aren't looking at each other while you're having this conversation. Your eyes are meeting in the mirror. You're speaking to each other's reflection. You finish rinsing your hands, reach for two sheets of paper towel, wipe. She's petite, almost implausibly cute. She barely comes up to your chest. She's wearing a black turtleneck, an Army-surplus jacket, weathered bellbottom jeans with a large sexy tear above the right knee, a heavy Army-surplus daypack slung over her right shoulder. You've never seen such perfect skin. It isn't fair, you catch yourself thinking. Why should some people receive such skin and others not? You know if you asked her she would tell you she does nothing more to maintain it than wash her face twice a day with soap. You can tell with people like her. It's genetic, something deep in her cellular reality, and it lends to your suspicion that models are members of a different species. Genuine human beings never have such skin. Hers looks airbrushed. Maybe I could talk to him? she suggests. She isn't rinsing her hands. She isn't drying them. She's just standing next to you, talking. You feel strange because there is no particular social etiquette for moments like this. Other travelers are filtering in and out of the restroom behind you. Urine is squirting into water. Toilets are flushing. Someone is coaxing her child in Italian to climb up and do her business. Just inside the exit, the squat old woman responsible for keeping this place clean is sitting in a metal chair by the money basket, touching her arms delicately as if searching for the site of a bone fracture. She is treating her own body parts as if they were someone else's. Chlorine and shit cause each breath to be a surprise. Maybe he would make an exception? the girlwoman next to me proposes. You say I don't think so, and apologize again. You flash her a quick yet sympathetic smile and turn to leave. She follows you out into the day noisy with traffic on the Autostrada. Cold car exhaust worries your lungs. The girlwoman with the perfect skin isn't crowding you, not in a way that makes you uncomfortable in any case. She simply won't stop following, talking. Where are you from? she asks. Are you from America? She's always wanted to visit New York, she says. Maybe someday, if she works hard enough, her modeling career will take her there. Her mother and father would be very proud. They're very proud already, but they would be even prouder. They've given her nothing but support over the years. The girlwoman is very lucky — except that modeling isn't the easy and enjoyable enterprise some people seem to think. The hours. The sleep deprivation. The travel, travel, travel. You never know where you are. You wake up in the middle of the night in a hotel room and don't know if you're where you think you should be or if you're somewhere else. You can't remember the way to the bathroom. You're not sure which side of the bed to get out on. And when you're just beginning, when you're still finding your feet (isn't that the way Americans put it?), yes, when you're still finding your feet, there is a lot less money in it than most assume. There's also the daily pressure to keep down your weight. It's a cliché, but it's true. That's what makes clichés clichés — which, if you stop to think about it, is another cliché, isn't it? She knows girls who eat nothing but lettuce and cocaine. They look like they died a week ago. Like someone opened up their arteries and bled them. She'd never think of doing such a thing. There are limits. What would Papa think? She's just using the example to make her point. Her point is that everyone is jealous of models, but they shouldn't be. Models are like puppies in a pet shop window. They yip and jump around and look adorable and do what they have to do to get attention so someone will take them home and care for them. Call her Nayomi, she says as you cross the parking lot toward the gas pumps. With a y in the middle. She's always liked her name. Did you know it means pleasant in Jewish? That's what she says: In Jewish. Listening, walking, you spot Celan and Nadi standing by your rental car eating slices of pepperoni pizza Robert bought them inside the restaurant. This is the kids' favorite part of Italy, this fastfood pizza. The kind they tried in Travestere was only okay, they said, a little weird, but okay, but this pizza is beyond perfect. It tastes just like the stuff at Monetti's in New Jersey. The Parisians wouldn't know good pizza if it bit them on the butt, Celan said very loudly in a restaurant on the Champs-Elysées. Londoners put blueberries and corn on theirs, which as a family you agree is sheer madness, yet somehow appropriate for a people who are wont to live in bulky, sooty buildings while supporting the medieval tradition of kings, queens, carriages, and pomp. But this isn't what you're saying. You're not saying anything. You're just listening to the girlwoman going on and on, feeling increasingly awkward. Despite your silence, she's already figured out from your trajectory which one is your husband, which ones are your kids, already sped up imperceptibly, already outpaced you, is already talking with Robert. He is in the process of opening the back door for Celan and Nadi when Nayomi catches him off guard. He straightens, smiles the semi-smile he puts on for strangers stopping him in the street to ask directions to the nearest mailbox. It's a two-door 1962 Saab station wagon the color of desert sand on the outside, the color of Nayomi's lipstick on the inside. There is already rust around one of the front headlights. You rented it two blocks away from the hotel in Rome. Driving out of the city was a loud congested awfulness. It took two hours longer than you had anticipated. Nothing went the way it should have gone. Not one road followed a straight line. Just when you needed them, all the signs disappeared. By the time you pull alongside them, you can see Nayomi has already softened up your husband. You don't hold it against him. Partly it's her petiteness. Partly it's her faultless skin and dark eyes. Partly it's her vulnerability, the way she gives off the aura of a lost child. You can see the confusion in Robert's eyes. He's trying to figure out what just happened and why. While Nayomi recounts her plight, Robert glances at you quickly over her head. His semi-smile-for-strangers is stuck in place. You move around him, settle the kids in the backseat, set them up with comic books from home, join the girlwoman and your husband with a mind to apologize to her again and prompt Robert that it's time to get going. You have a lot of road to cover today. You've already made reservations at a pensione in Bologna for the night. Tomorrow you are due in Venice. You made the reservations back in the States. With the children in tow, you don't like leaving things to chance. When you were in college, you and Robert left things to chance all the time. You enjoyed the idea of every day arriving as a series of mild disruptions. With kids, chance has become something dangerous. The more of it there is, the less you take pleasure in it. Now chance seems unavoidable each minute you're awake. Your response has been to leave nothing to chance. But the more you plan, the more chance seeps in. Nayomi is saying how she understands what an imposition her request is. She really does. She understands completely if Robert says no. It would be totally cool, she says. That's what she says: