L'America by Martha McPhee

eye and then looking around the sad, quiet train station. "Would you rather sleep here or in a bed?" It was a big warm bed with a huge soft goose down comforter. He fed them soft-boiled eggs at 4 A.M., using his grandmother's silver spoons. Then he let them sleep well into the afternoon.
    "How did you know he wouldn't murder us?" Sylvia asked, curling up to Beth in the grandmother's bed. The bed and the room smelled like rose petals and old age. "He still could," Beth said, and fell asleep.
    The next day she said, "Season! Murderers don't have grandmothers who go away for the season."
    From Austria to Paris to Nice to San Sebastiàn they zigzagged their way, the itinerary designed by their whims. In Nice they met Chas, an American who serenaded them from the street beneath the tiny balcony of their tiny pension, singing Cat Stevens songs.
    "It's him, it's him," Sylvia said, lighting up. She had a large smile that opened her entire face.
    "Who?" Beth asked. They were having a midnight snack of
pain au chocolat
and white wine that tasted a little like whiskey. They could buy all the wine they liked and no one ever said a thing. They could sleep late and no one ever said a thing. They could eat chocolate for dinner, lunch, and breakfast, and no one said a thing.
    "The cute man from the single down the hall." Sylvia leaned over the balcony and smiled down to him on the street, his songs rising up to them as if the three of them were the only people in the world. From the balcony the girls could glimpse the silver Mediterranean seeming to hold the moon. Beth thought he was singing to both of them, but learned, when he changed his easy plans to come with them to San Sebastian and climb 425 feet up the famous Mount Urgull (presided over solemnly by the imposing statue of the Sacred Heart) that Chas was serenading Sylvia alone—beautiful Sylvia Summerhaze, with her long auburn hair and her sea green eyes (set just a fraction too close together).
    Sylvia was Beth's best friend and Beth was jealous, the way a lover might be. Freshman year in high school they had once contemplated sharing a boyfriend simply so they could experience everything together. The boy was Jacob, a blond drummer in a band called Random Joe. Random Joe played a lot of the Police, and Jacob sort of looked like that band's drummer, Stewart Copeland—tall and lanky with dusty blond hair that framed a long angular face with lips as red as lipstick. "He has a strong jaw," Sylvia liked to say. And she kissed him and shortly thereafter Beth kissed him and, lying in bed at Beth's farm, the girls compared notes. Sometimes what Beth wanted most was simply to kiss Sylvia, one of those unspoken ideas that even she herself did not fully comprehend. Jacob sang "Walking on the Moon." He sang it often for Beth and Sylvia. He said he loved Sylvia for her mind and Beth for her body. For a while Beth liked the idea of being liked for her body. She had confidence in her mind.
    On Mount Urgull, Beth was admiring the view, her face turned away from Chas and Sylvia, feeling quite light with independence and with the excitement of Chas's company. Chas was four years older than the girls. He had just graduated from Harvard and was working his way around the world before getting serious with a job. He spoke of trekking in Nepal, riding elephants in India, teaching English in Taiwan. He was a good boy, a gentleman in the making, but a type all the same, with his guitar and easy manner. The kind you see traveling the world, privileged and rich, trying on poverty for a year or two before settling down to earn millions in some banking job or other, this excursion a reminder for the rest of his life of what he had seen of the world and of what he didn't want, though he would never admit it. This type, he spoke of eating dog in China just as enthusiastically as he spoke of camel treks, eager to let people know he really had been adventurous—once upon a time, long ago. Back then he