We made our way around the damp corner of an alley called Via Mallzo. A sun shower had just ended. For some reason, we thought sun showers were strange for Rome. Having already been there a week, we thought we’d experienced every climate the city offered because we were oh-so-cultured. So informed of the world.

Why? Because last night, we both threw up next to each other into a marble fountain at three in the morning, where our echoing retches filled a silent traffic rotunda. We thought that was experience. After that episode and our subsequent hop from club to club, no one wanted to talk to us, dance with us, or kiss us, so we settled for each other. We were looking forward to the return flight so things could be normal again.

On our sweaty walk, we passed under archways of feathering clotheslines with the belief we were following the faded footsteps of scribes and philosopher-kings: elaborate artist tombs, dusty cathedrals, perforated statues adorned with noticeably small penises. But Via Mallzo was an urban formula removed from Roman mystique. One building next to the other—stacked—the complexes surrounded a gray train station with caricatured American fast-food restaurants on either side of the platform, a waiting room of slick neon fluorescence.

As we continued, street vendors sold fake luxury purses and gimmicks like rattling magnets, yo-yos, lighters resembling the David. The kinds of gimmicks divorcees bring to their child on a weekend visitation where the one who left says, Look what I got you while I was in Rome…Would you like to visit Rome one day?

We longed for our hotel room so we could sleep—or drink. Maybe we’d drink then fall asleep. Or maybe, we’d sleep through the afternoon, so we could drink later on at a bar in the basement of a hostel at the city’s edge, each of us trying our hands at speaking Italian with other ditsy weekend expatriates.

Passing by the vendors, we saw pockets of Romani frescoed onto the walls, walls supporting this newer, industrial Rome we did not expect while booking the flight. There was one with a clubbed foot, but it might have been papier mache. Another was missing her left breast. At first, we felt disgust. Not at her but ourselves, how we assumed she was faking her condition because of the way she just…had it all out there. Bearing such an absence felt wrong to us. We kept walking but soon realized we made a wrong turn. The rain picked up again.

Matt Gillick is from Northern Virginia. He is a co-founder of a brand new literary magazine, Cult. He received an MFA from Emerson College in 2021. Most recent published work can be found on mattgillick.com.