The Pairing(90)

“This is Angelo!” Fabrizio tells us. “When I first come to Roma, he gave me my first job driving on this Vespa tour when I was only eighteen. I learn everything I know from him.” He turns to Angelo. “And I was your favorite driver, no?”

“Sì,” Angelo says. “All the girls want to take the tour when they see you. Very good for business.”

“And now,” Fabrizio says, “when my tours visit Roma, I bring them to you. And as a special treat, you let me drive like the old days, sì?”

Each rider pairs with a driver—two honeymooners with two sturdy older men almost identical to Lars, Stig with a tiny woman who wears a lot of nose rings and has to stand on her seat to jam the helmet onto his head, Dakota with Angelo. I count the scooters and come up one short. All that remains for Theo and me is a single canary-yellow Vespa with a matching sidecar.

“Fabrizio, no,” Theo says as they realize what’s about to happen.

“Fabrizio, sì!” Fabrizio replies, holding out a helmet for each of us. “One of you will ride in the sidecar, and one of you will sit behind me. Like this!”

He points to Dakota straddling the Vespa seat behind Angelo, her thighs pressed against his and her arms around his middle. One of us will be doing that with Fabrizio while the other squats in the sidecar like a picture-book dog with goggles on.

Theo plonks their helmet onto their head and turns to me. “Should we flip a coin?”

“We could take turns? Swap at the stops?” I suggest. I sweep my hair back and put my helmet on, and Theo instantly starts laughing. I frown. “What?”

“Look at you!” They pull out their phone to take a picture and show me the screen, my frowning confusion and the tufts of hair that stick out from the bottom of my helmet. “God, it’s perfect.”

“I look chic,” I say. “I look like I ride motorcycles on the Amalfi Coast.”

“You look like they shoot you out of a cannon at a circus for gay people.”

“Even better.”

“I know,” Theo says, like they’re surprised by how much they mean it.

I wink and tighten my chin strap, gesturing toward Fabrizio already seated behind the handlebars. “You go first. Keep him warm for me.”

And, with a two-finger salute, Theo kicks a leg over.

The sidecar isn’t as cramped as it looks, and once I get my legs situated it’s almost comfortable. Theo, who continues to think this is the funniest thing that’s ever happened, snaps a dozen more photos, and then Fabrizio cranks up the throttle and pushes off.

The other drivers fall into formation as we turn onto one of the wide main roads of Rome, Corso Vittorio according to a glimpse of a sign. Buildings rise up around us in stately blocks of ivory and cream, distinguished and lined with stone balustrades, propped up by Ionic columns with curling scrolls at their tops. The sky is a blistering blue, and the road bends west, toward the green rush of the Tiber. The engine purrs, and Fabrizio sings into the wind as he weaves through Roman traffic, and from my sidecar, I look at Theo.

They’re a desert baby, brought back to life by sun and heat. Their grin grows wider and wider, the morning disappearing into Fabrizio’s rearview. They lace their fingers together around Fabrizio’s waist and put their face into the wind, gazing at Rome with honest wonder.

I think after everything, now that we’ve said what we needed to say, we might come out okay.

We cruise over an arched bridge to the round drum of Castel Sant’Angelo, atop which legend says the Archangel Michael sheathed his sword to signal the end of Rome’s great plague. Honking cars race us to the travertine facade of the Palace of Justice and back over the Tiber and into winding nests of narrow cobbly streets, toward the Pantheon.

As we reach the temple, Fabrizio turns back to Theo and shouts over the engine.

“When we finish, come back here, down this street, and then the first left, and the first right after this into the alley, and you will find the hostel between the osterias at the end. Orla leaves your bags in your rooms at the top of the stairs.”

“Uh-huh,” Theo says. They’re gazing in awe at the Pantheon’s ancient columns, not hearing any of this.

“Grazie!” I shout, happy to leave Theo’s moment uninterrupted. I’ll remember for us.

We pull into an alley with an ancient faucet spouting crisp, clear water. I’ve read about these—nasoni, public faucets fed in part by the original Roman aqueducts—but I almost couldn’t believe it until now. We catch water in our cupped hands, take turns pressing our fingers to the spouts to make them spray upward like a drinking fountain. Fabrizio tips his whole head sideways and puts his mouth under the stream, and I catch Theo looking when I follow his example, taking cool water into my open mouth until it spills down my chin.

After, it’s my turn to ride with Fabrizio. I wrap my arms around his firm waist, press my thighs against his, our shorts riding up high enough for our sweat to mingle. He compliments the softness of my skin as he cranks the engine, and I thank him with my most flirtatious smile. Theo watches with open, curious hunger from the sidecar below. Two things that endure the passage of time: Roman antiquities, and the thrill Theo gets from seeing me with a man between my legs.

The tour goes on through a blur of stone and ivy, the ruins of the square where Julius Caesar was murdered, the grassy stretch of Circus Maximus once pounded by racing hooves and chariot wheels, temples to Hercules and Portunus so well-preserved a Roman farmer might amble through with a cow to sell at the Forum Boarium. We finish at the Arch of Constantine, barely changed from how it looked when victorious emperors paraded through seventeen hundred years ago, still proud and imposing on the backdrop of the looming Colosseum.