Where To?

Chapter 2

It takes Clair about two or three days to sober up, or so she likes to say. She wasn't even that drunk, truthfully. She had powered through eight emails and a report to her father come Monday, which she told her parents would be when she would arrive. Clever girl, she got to get away with a night out the first night.

"Are we getting lunch first? Or are we just going to meet up downstairs?" She asked over the phone. She's still thinking with her stomach first.

She treated me to Mediterranean cuisine out at the patio restaurant of the hotel. I retracted what I said about Clair thinking with her stomach the moment she ordered a salad and pasta. Only. Whereas I poured over some cheese starters, roasted chicken and some potatoes. 

She had a defeated smile when I said she still owes me, but I told her I'd pay half for dessert. Clair was taken back by the word, "dessert." She's not particularly into sweets. But I reiterated the word, "experience," which made her roll her eyes and do that short laugh sigh thing no one's came up with a word for yet. A longer, sonorous version of that laugh happened when she patted my back and made me burp. We were both surprised; she found it more hilarious than it was embarrassing for me.

I insisted we walk to Destination Number One: The Tivoli Park. Clair said it sounded like a kind of pasta. Ravioli, perhaps? For a good two minutes, my head bobbed up the street names and down on Google Maps until Clair declared I didn't know where we were supposed to be going. 

"You don't know where we are."

"Yes, I do, Clair. Shush."

"You don't know where we are."

"I know where we are, Clair, stop distracting me." She pulled her hair up at this point, her teeth clenching the hair tie.

Tightening her ponytail, she started walking to some locals. She insisted we ask around, seemingly needing to since I insisted we walk today. So-called traveler I am, she jokingly teased. Although I did doubt she knew how to talk to the locals.

"Tivoli Park?" Clair pointed her arm in every street close to us, thinking the locals would point us somewhere. 

It did, though. We left the hotel a little after one p.m. and finally got to the gardens half past two. Both of us released a sigh of relief and took in the smell of the trees. I told her there was a rose garden in the park, and she grinned widely. I also told her there'd be a lake, and two museums. She repeated the museum part in question, to which I just nodded to. She rocked on the balls of her feet and gave her leather jacket a tug before a large sigh, urging us to go forth.

The park was huge. Most of it was trees, with so little to do unless you want to jog or breathe or meditate. We started going north, or at least, north in Google Maps. There were sport stores surrounding the bowling alley and the swimming pool, followed by more thin layers of trees until we got to the Museum of Contemporary History. 

Pink, remarkably pink, it was. 

"Ugh, art?" She muttered quietly.

"Not art, Clair. History." I couldn't help but smile at the idea.

"Jesus, what's the difference? I can't understand either." She looks stuck up when she pouts. I told her to fix her face and she gave me a giant grin.

Although, I guess one can say history is an art study, backgrounds and details in chronological cohesion that make up the totality of an ambiguous shape of a country on the map. But then again, Clair wasn't an art person, or a history person: She liked going places, a thrillist for the seemingly extraordinary, a certain swag to her steps. I guess she just likes to give everything her own special meaning, using her own dictionary and adding in more and more to it. Art to her was like a word you don't often hear, so you Google it once, but forget it the next instance you see it.

She pointed at the military hats and the Swastika symbols, asking quite shocked if Slovenia was part of that "regime." I liked that she used that word. Being the gigantic nerd the gang knows me to be, I looked up the history of Slovenia, finding it was once, in fact, part of the Nazi regime. I told her the city of Ljubljana was once under the occupation of Italy before Germany. And I started to get excited over what I'm saying, but she truthfully told me I lost her when I said 'fascism.'

"Spare me the social structures. I already felt stupid when we got inside." She shoved her hands back in her jacket and stared at the red and black war symbol that daunted Europe.

"You're not stupid, you know that right? Multiple intelligences."

"Sadly not intelligent enough for the system." She tapped her temple twice.

Clair sighed a lot today. She told me something interesting though: that, after decades of war, it was so certain a sign so simple scarred and killed so many lives and stripped nations of themselves. I applauded to that, and she was back to her fun self, striding quite full of herself.

We wound upstairs on a staircase marked with years and historical highlights, to which Clair found really neat. That and she admitted she hasn't been to many museums to be unimpressed by that. She said she wanted to play some board games with the gang soon after finding a Monopoly board on display. I pointed out to her that monopoly is the reason why Britain's so filthy expensive.

"But isn't that game from America?" she answered matter-of-factly.

"America was colonized by Europe, Clair."

She pouted again, upset that I ruined Monopoly for her forever. She took her fist and dug it onto my chest and she strutted off again. Stuck up old Clair, I thought. I also thought she had an idea of what monopoly was, given she was in the field of business. Unless marketing is a different branch farther away from that tree.

I called after her and told her I'd take pictures of her to make her feel better about herself, funny enough. Mostly because I feel guilty we might never be playing Monopoly ever again.

Clair's face brightened, taking her spot in front of the camera. She stood in salute in front of a display of military uniforms. She told me she thought of serving the army before. She found it fascinating to belong to a country compared to belonging to a man. 

"But seriously, imagine traveling everywhere and anywhere doing the world justice."

I nodded at her insight. Justice was often too big a word to use among us friends, mostly because Cohen hates politics and social structures. Cohen is gay. I remember how he came out to us on graduation day.

"You think I'm strong enough to lift a drowning body to shore?" she wondered out loud.

"You think Cohen isn't gay?"

"Awww, Jill. Thank you. You love us all dearly, don't you?" her smile got cheekier.

"Yeah, it just drains me to have to give all this friend love to you right now. You're a handful."

"Hey, no I'm not."

"You still owe me, Clair."

"That doesn't mean I'm a handful, Jillian. You just can't handle how awesome I can be."

"Sure, Clair. Whatever you want." I chuckled.

We walked out of the museum. She liked it. I could tell by the rambling she's making about war and order. She asked me what it was like to be a history geek, and then I just shrugged and told her to go back the museum and read if she wants to know so badly. She stuck out her bottom lip once again, but still went and asked about the museum. 

Great progression for Clair.