He really must not like you.
Holly
___________________________________________
To: Holly Caputo <holly.caputo@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Jane Harris <jane@wondercat.com>
Re: His Mother
Wow. That’s really nice to know. Thanks so very much for that.
J
PS Oh, and thanks for trying to fix me up with him, but even if I COULD stand him, which I can’t, he’s a modelizer. You KNOW once a guy’s had a model, he can never go back. So, nice try.
___________________________________________
To: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
The girls are emailing back and forth about us.
Mark
___________________________________________
To: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
That is blatantly obvious.
Cal
___________________________________________
To: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
What do you think they’re saying?
Mark
___________________________________________
To: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
I honestly could not care less.
Cal
___________________________________________
To: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
Don’t you like her? Jane, I mean? Holly was sure you’d like her.
Mark
___________________________________________
To: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
She seems harmless enough.
Cal
___________________________________________
To: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
You don’t like her.
Mark
___________________________________________
To: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
I didn’t say that. All I said was that she seemed harmless. Much in the way an anaconda seems harmless, when it’s wrapped around a tree branch ten feet above your head.
Cal
___________________________________________
To: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
She’s not like that.
And she already has a boyfriend, anyway.
So get over yourself, fathead.
Mark
___________________________________________
To: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
Fathead. Harsh.
Cal
___________________________________________
To: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
Seriously. ARE you seeing anyone—anyone SPECIAL—these days?
Mark
___________________________________________
To: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
They’re all special, my friend.
But special enough to shackle myself to her for the rest of eternity, the way you’re doing?
No.
But your concern for my romantic well-being is, as always, greatly appreciated.
Cal
___________________________________________
To: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
Look, it’s just that I know how tough things were for you after—
___________________________________________
To: Mark Levine <mark.levine@thenyjournal.com>
Fr: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>
Re: Benvenuto
Oh, look. The hotel. Stop e-ing me, please.
Cal
___________________________________________
RICEVUTA TAXI-ROMA
Percoso:
Da… Fiumacino A… Hotel Alexander
Firma
Importo Corsa 80.00 Euro
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
Benvenuto al nostro albergo!
(Welcome to our Hotel!)
Gentile Ospite,
Nel porgerLe il nostro cordiale benevuto, abbiamo pensato fe FarLe cosa gradita offrendoLe, al suo arrivo, un assaggio di acqua dalle proprietaria salutari.
Dear Guest,
We wish to express our warmest welcome to our hotel. Given our genuine care for our Guests, we invite you to enjoy the healthy qualities of this bottled water.
___________________________________________
Travel Diary of Jane Harris
Travel Diary of
Jane Harris
We’re HERE!!!!!!!! At the hotel, I mean.
It’s the sweetest little place, tucked into a side street that isn’t wide enough to let a car coming from the other way pass by. And packed with people! I thought it was a pedestrian walkway and that the taxi driver was going the wrong way. But it turned out it was the Via di Buffalo, which is the street our hotel is on.
Still, it was kind of scary when those Italian school kids kept knocking on the car windows. I wonder what the driver yelled at them to make them run away like that. This is what comes of not having enough social programs for young people. Those kids should have had something better to do on a Saturday than stand around the Via di Buffalo, knocking on tourists’ car door windows.
Not that I want to tell another country how it ought to be bringing up its children, or anything. But still.
All I wanted to do was get to my room and take a nap, but Cal had to start arguing with the taxi driver when he saw the receipt. He said over his dead body was he paying 80 euros for a ride from the airport and that the taxi driver might think he could bilk the tourists that way, but that he, Cal, had been to Rome before, and he knew the fare from the airport wasn’t a cent over 40 euros. In English. Which it turned out the driver perfectly understood. And after a lot of grousing, he finally agreed that 40 euros would do.
So it’s good Mark invited Cal along with us. I guess.
Anyway, my room is so adorable, a tiny little blue-and-white thing with gold curtains that, when I opened them, turned out to be for a window that looks out over the most beautiful courtyard, with white doves flying around it, and bougainvillea spilling from window boxes all over the place, and a sky stretched over it that, I swear, looks bluer than the sky over Manhattan, somehow. It is EXACTLY like Helena Bonham Carter’s room in the pensione in Room with a View . Only there’s no view. Well, except for the courtyard and the sky.