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pause at the other end of the phone line. “Where are you, darling?” Etienne asked, a humorous lilt to his voice.
    “In a taxi.”
    “Who’s with you who just said, ‘Dwarves amuse me at the circus’?”
    “That would be Jackie. She’s demonstrating her flair for languages.”
    “
Non sei spiritoso!
” the cabbie fired back, gesticulating wildly.
“Come sei sciocco! Sei proprio scemo! Ma vorrei leccare il sudore della tua pelle!”
    “Did you hear that?” I whispered into the phone. “Can you translate?”
    “He’s telling her she’s not funny, she’s tasteless, and she’s really stupid, but he still wants to lick the sweat off her skin.”
    “Hold on.” Jackie posed one finger in the air as she consulted her book. “Okay, he adores my spirit, he loves my taste in clothes, and…he thinks I have killer legs.” She smiled like the Cheshire cat. “I might give him a tip after all.”
    “Figlio di puttana!”
wailed the driver, jamming on the brakes.
    “ ‘Son of a bitch!’ ” said Etienne.
    “What’s wrong?” I winced into the phone. “Did you just lose all your money?”
    “I was translating what your taxi driver just said. What’s happening there?”
    I peered out the front windshield at a major commotion surrounding a building that looked vaguely familiar. Cars. Trucks. Sirens. People clustered in knots on the sidewalk, pointing fingers at the upper stories.
    “That’s it!” cried Jackie. “That’s our hotel!”
    Unfortunately, it was on fire.
    “The fire started in the kitchen and spread from there,” Duncan announced to us three hours later over the bus’s loudspeaker. Duncan Lazarus stood a couple of inches over six feet, had shoulders like a lumberjack, thick, sun-streaked hair that was a hint too long, and a voice that resonated with calm authority. I suspected his early ancestors might have played the gladiatorial circuit in Rome or resided somewhere atop Mount Olympus with the other immortals. “You’re all aware this is Rome’s Jubilee year. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult to find accommodations for fifty-five tourists anywhere in the city, especially on such short notice.”
    A low hum of discontent spread through the bus as we headed north on the Autostrada, watching cars the size of windup toys roar past us in the outside lane. It had taken a couple of hours for people to recover from the shock of their luggage, laptops, and powerpoint presentations becoming charcoal briquettes, but to their credit, all the guests had made use of their neck wallets, so no one needed to replace either passport or credit cards. A handful of people had lost their daily meds in the fire, but they’d followed Landmark’s instructions to carry scrip for all their prescriptions, so they’d already replaced them in a pharmacy near the hotel. And since the structure had already been fully engulfed in flames when the tour bus pulled up, no one in the group had been injured, but my knees still felt a little gimpy at the thought of what might have happened if the fire had started later in the day rather than earlier. The bright note here was that we were moving on to our second city and everyone was still alive! Was I on a roll, or what?
    Beside me, Nana flipped through some fresh photos taken with her Polaroid OneStep. “See this corner window that’s engulfed in flames?” She slanted the picture toward me. “That was my room. It was a pretty nice one, too.” She heaved a dejected sigh. “I spent a fortune on naughty bloomers for this trip, Emily, and they all went up in smoke. I didn’t get to wear my reptile print Dream Angels teddy even once, and it looked real good on me. Slimmed my hips right down to nothin’.”
    I stared at her, wide-eyed. “You bought a reptile print teddy?”
    “What? You think the leopard print woulda been better?”
    “Given our housing problem, we’ll be leaving Rome and traveling to Florence a couple of days early,” Duncan continued.