Love is in the Air, Rats Are Everywhere, and What's This Smell? A few weeks before I traveled to Rome with my friends from school, a friend and I decided to visit The Ritz in Beverly Hills. (Yes, our local movie theater was showing the classic James Stewart and June Allyson film of the same title.) When we stepped out of the taxi at the famed Ritz Carlton Hotel, a woman approached us to tell us that she loved our hair. My friend told her it was her natural color. We didn't even get out of the cab! As the weeks passed, I came to feel like one of the Ritz's loyal Ritzie Rats—as in the rats whose tails have been cut so they don't become dependent on their human owners. The hotel's restaurant is legendary for its Rat Pack history. When Frank Sinatra used to eat there, you couldn't miss him. As head of the kitchen at the time, "Macho" was forever asking one waiter to the next, "How's the Rat Pack tonight?" The staff referred to the place as Rat Alley, and it inspired the name of one of Sinatra's best-known songs. When the legendary gangster Johnny Rosselli (aka the Dapper Don), who had the ears of so many stars and presidents, was killed in 1943, he was at his favorite restaurant. On our last day in Rome, I told my friends, "You're about to see Rome and all its sights, but I think the best thing we'll do this weekend is to come back to my apartment in Beverly Hills. We're going to cook a feast there, and eat and have a good time." Everyone was intrigued, so off we went. There was a warm breeze coming off the ocean, and I got the fire going in my newly completed outdoor kitchen. From the kitchen I heard one of my roommates calling for me and asking me to come see some unusual rats he had in the front of the house. "Let's go to the dining room!" I exclaimed. My roommate smiled. "I hope it's not any weirder than the ones you saw in our apartment in LA." I laughed. I couldn't wait to see them. But before I did, I decided to make a salad dressing I had made up in my mind as a perfect addition to my feast, and so I walked into the kitchen to get the ingredients to make it. Just as I was about to pour the dressing onto my lettuce, I heard the back door open and in came my friends all saying, "Where's that salad dressing you were talking about?" I looked in the direction of the sound, and saw rats the size of cat-bunnies walking toward me. Yes, you read that right. Rat-bunnies! When I realized what I was looking at, my friend with the camera in hand called out, "Hahahahahaha! Do you think these rats are cute?" She captured one of them. It was the size of a large cat, the same as my roommate's cat. My head was spinning with so many questions. One was, why did the hotel allow those things to hang around? In the dining room, a rat the size of a small cat crawled into the flower pot on the table. We laughed and laughed. I asked about the rest of my rat stories, but no one could relate to them. The woman who served us bruschetta that afternoon (who was sitting next to me) said, "Oh, they're the same as rats in any restaurant." Then the other woman sitting next to her said, "Yes, those are the same as rats that everyone gets to see!" But she couldn't quite explain why. The last of my Rat Pack stories revolved around another one of my roommates who kept a rat for a pet (he called it "Bob"). He told me that when he gave the pet rat to a friend in Europe, he said, "Whenever you see a rat, remember that I named him Bob." Later, when my friends asked me how I felt after meeting so many animals and so many rats in particular, I told them my feelings were pretty good. "You have to remember that I have lots of rats at home," I said. When the group's leader asked if the dinner table was ready, I replied, "Oh, I'm ready. Bring it on!" But just a moment before the first rat-bunny got to the table, I said, "Oh, hold on, I have a question. When did they start serving rats in restaurants?" "When I was a baby," I heard my friends whispering behind me. As for my feast that night, all my friends would agree with me that the only way to cook with them is to be with them. It was delicious! —Brenda DiTomaso Rome, Italy ## All the World Is a Single Place Brenda is a friend from my high school days, who I've stayed in touch with all these years. She traveled with me when I spent an entire summer at the University of Cincinnati's Writing Program. While there, she was one of the few people who had keys to my sorority house, which was a housemother and her partner's home in Cincinnati. That's not really the point I want to make; it's that Brenda is a dear friend who I miss when she goes on a trip. A few years ago, Brenda and I were having lunch in New York City and she surprised me by saying she was going to give a book tour in Washington, D.C. She was headed back to her hometown of Washington, Pennsylvania, and the small town is really special to her. She came into the restaurant with a very heavy stack of books. She was so excited to show off her book, which just happens to be on rabbits. She didn't want to order any food, but she insisted that we enjoy some bread, butter, and water. We sat together for a bit, me reading my book, her reading hers, and then she noticed a lot of attention on her book, because it was the first time anyone had seen them. She didn't mind in the least. She told me that she was getting calls that day from family and friends, and she proudly held the books for anyone who wanted to see. At the end of the day, Brenda walked out the door of our lunch spot, leaving me at the table, alone with my book. I put down my napkin and my water glass, and I thought, _Maybe I should have ordered a salad._ But I looked up and saw Brenda's friend, the rabbit lady. She was just standing there looking at me, and I laughed when I realized I was looking at a "Rabbit Lady" too. After a few seconds, she asked, "Have you been here before?" I nodded. "Yep, I've been here before." "What did you think?" she asked. "Oh, she's really nice. But it is a weird thing to have to explain to other people." She seemed to be looking for more. She waited a little bit, then asked, "Did you just order something?" I nodded and told her I was having bread, but that my book was about rabbits. Then she looked up at me, like she was searching for something to say. Finally, she said, "People really like those books." She paused again and then looked around. "Did you know that if you stand still on Pennsylvania Avenue and look east or west, that is all you will ever see—and it changes every day?" Brenda had said the world is a strange place, but this stranger didn't agree with me. I thought she would tell me she never noticed the world changing, that it stayed exactly the same. She didn't, but I decided to tell her something that was true. "If you stare at a spot in the distance and then keep staring and looking at the same spot, you'll realize that it has changed, because you're still staring at the same spot!" I wanted to go along with her, but I didn't. I wanted to tell her that she was living in a place that was moving constantly. Because, as soon as I said that, I wondered what I was moving for, in my own life. A part of me was telling me to move on. I'm sure many people think we should move on when the world changes around us, but I wondered what it meant for me to be still for so long. Is that what living was? I wondered what our story was, in these changing times. Do you know what that means? I don't think I had time to ask my question, though. The rabbit lady was looking down at the city below us. "You see those buildings?" she asked. "They'll burn down someday and they won't be there when they do, so it's kind of a strange thing to look at, isn't it? But I'm sure that's what happens all over the world." I don't know if it was my fault or if she made me feel it, but as I looked down on this small piece of the earth, I realized that the place I am standing is not so big and it's not always there. This seemed very important to me. My home and my life are tiny and temporary. So am I! And so is the world. We are changing and moving, all the time.