Page 94 of Only One Tour Bus

I shrug. She’s plenty responsible and cares a lot more about the tourists than me. I don’t know why she’s even on this remedial program. Me, I understand. I only enjoy one part of this job, which is hard to fix even with more training. And maybe she could stand up to the ungrateful tourists a little more and add a little more history to her tours. But that’s an easy fix that she doesn’t need me to help with.

“We’ll see what they say at the end of the tour, but this is not a good development. We’ll hold a meeting right after you land. Schedule it for four p.m. that day.”

Grand. The first thing I usually do when I get back is eat a meal unbothered by thoughts of the adults I’m babysitting, and then turn on one episode of whatever TV I missed, falling asleep about ten minutes into the show because of the exhaustion. But not this time apparently.

“Sounds great, Rob,” Asha says, trying to infuse her voice with cheer and optimism. At first I was irritated by her continued optimism, but now I’m just impressed that she can keep it up in the face of eejits. And mad at them for being eejits to her. “We’ll see you then.”

“Go give a great rest of the tour,” Rob commands us.

“Bye.” I hang up the phone. “Ah yes. Because I was planning on giving a subpar tour experience, you know, what with my job on the line, but now that he said not to, I suppose I can muster some enthusiasm for the tour,” I say.

Asha laughs with me, the worry lines on her forehead easing a little. For a second. A second where I feel like Hercules accomplishing one of his labors. But then they’re back and I’m feeling more like Atlas, the weight of wanting her to be happy on my back.

“I truly hate being told to do something I’m already doing. It’s my biggest pet peeve,” Asha says.

I gasp in an exaggerated manner she would appreciate. “Have we found something that the Wee Sunshine hates? Is sunshine even allowed to hate things?”

“Yes. But I don’t abuse the ability. Wouldn’t want to ruin sunshine’s reputation.”

I shake my head. “It goes against the established order of things. Spreading pure chaos into the world.”

“Ah well. Whatever happens will happen.”

I don’t know if that’s meant for me, her, or a little bit for both of us, but she picks up her wineglass and takes a sip. Her smile is a little more genuine when she looks at me again, but still smaller than it should be.

“He should have waited to tell us about the meeting until the last day in Rome,” I mumble.

“Yeah. I knew our judgment awaited, but it’s so much realer now that there’s a set meeting to discuss it.”

“Harder to be happy in the face of reality?”

“But not impossible! Wine will help.” She suits action to words and takes another sip.

I follow suit. “This is going to be the most tolerable leather demonstration that I’ve ever been to.”

The great thing about wine is how it makes me not care how many times I’ve already seen this demonstration and heard the history of leather in Florence. I whisper the lines of the speech to Asha before the expert can say it to the group.

She loses it when I go into detail about how unpleasant preparing animal hides were, giggling into my bicep. Then she takes over when the man starts talking about the founder of Gucci being the son of a leather artisan.

I don’t think anyone realizes we’re drunk. Not because we’re holding it together particularly well, but because a lot of the group is drunk, too. Italian wine is dangerous. I hope some of them at least saw the Uffizi. Several have souvenir bags from the museum in their hands, so at least they saw the gift shop and contributed funds to its upkeep.

Everyone shops after the demonstration, and then we stop for gelato on the way back, terrorizing the poor employee who didn’t expect to be accosted by twenty Americans and one Irishman. And we eat it before dinner, because these are the decisions that a tour leader can make. Even though they upend the social order.

Some people wander off for a late dinner, and some go to the bars. All I want is to throw Asha over my shoulder and spend the rest of the night in the hotel, only coming up for air to get room service so we don’t miss out on an opportunity to eat an Italian meal.

But before I can, Asha threads her hand through my arm and drags me to the bar with the group. I might be glaring at the group more than usual because of the interruption in the plans I hadn’t even discussed with her yet.

It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, spending time with the tourists. They’ve stopped asking quite so many inane questions and seem genuinely interested in the tour stories we have. And they have some funny stories of their own. Now that I’m being held down by Asha’s hand on my arm, keeping me in place, forcing me to listen.

But I put my foot down at around midnight, citing a need to review the next tour, Rome being such a historic city and all that.

But I’m not going to be looking at photos of the crumbled stones of Roman ruins. I won’t be staring into the marble eyes of the past in the various Roman sculptures.

I will be looking at the winding curves of Asha’s body, and into her warm, vibrant, opposite-of-cold-marble eyes.

And even as much as I love history, I won’t regret the choice at all.

“Want to see a Renaissance palace today?” Asha asks as we leisurely (for us) get up at nine a.m,, with no one to worry about for six more hours until we’ll be frantically praying everyone makes it to the bus.