Текст книги "Alibi"

Автор книги: Joseph Kanon

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CHAPTER TWO

My mother picked that evening, when my head was groggy, still flooded with sex, to put her foot down about dinner with Gianni.

“He’s going to think you’re avoiding him. I waited until the last possible minute. Where have you been, anyway?”

“Looking at art.”

“Art.”

“I’m not avoiding him. I’m just tired.”

“You’re always tired.” She bit her lip. “Do this for me, would you, sweetie? I don’t want to have to make apologies again. It’s rude, aside from anything else.”

“Well, I can’t go like this,” I said, patting my soaked jacket. Everything crumpled, like the sheets. It occurred to me that I might even smell of it, the whole sweaty afternoon. “I have to wash.”

My mother sighed. “All right. Meet us at Harry’s. I’ll send the taxi back and tell him to wait. You won’t even need the traghetto. But darling, quickly, please?”

“All right. Chop-chop. What do you want me to wear?” I said, looking at her, primped, even some of her good jewels.

“We’re going to the Monaco, so something decent. You know. Not the uniform, please. That wasn’t funny at all, at Mimi’s. How do you think it makes them feel?”

“It was the only thing I had at the time.”

“Well, not at the Monaco.”

“God forbid.”

She looked at me. “You’re not going to be in a mood, are you?”

“Promise. Actually, I’m in a good mood.”

“I can see. The art, no doubt.” She raised an eyebrow. “I can smell the wine from here. Go easy at Harry’s. As long as you’re doing this, you might as well make a good impression. He’s nervous about you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the only family I have. You know what Italians are like about families.”

“What about Aunt Edna?”

She laughed. “Darling, she’s what I use when I want to get out of something.”

I looked at her. “What do you want to get into?”

She turned away, picking up her purse. “Nothing. I just want us to have a nice dinner.” She looked back. “I live here now, you know. Gianni is a good friend. It’s not too much to ask.”

“No.”

“You used to be so charming. I suppose it’s the war.”

It seemed such an extraordinary thing to say that for a minute I couldn’t think how to answer. But she had caught my look.

“You know what I mean. I know—well, I don’t know, that’s the problem. But you never say, either. And anyway, it’s over, that’s the main thing. Now look at the time. I’m going to be late.”

“He’ll wait.”

She smiled. “That doesn’t make it right.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Don’t be long. And no politics.”

“Why? What are his politics?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. I never ask. And I don’t want you to, either. It always ends in arguments, no matter what it is. Besides, it’s their country—things never make sense to outsiders.”

“All right. No politics. Art?”

“Art.” Her eyes were laughing, full of their old spirit.

“Maybe we’ll just talk about you,” I said, smiling. “What could be more interesting?”

“Mm. What could?” she said, throwing me a look, then heading for the stairs. Below us, I could hear the motorboat taxi churning water at the canal steps. “Good thing I’m going first. I can tell him you’re adopted.”

I was ready by the time the taxi returned. It was still raining, and after we rounded the tip of the Dogana and headed across to San Marco even the lights seemed blurry, as if the city were actually underwater. The campanile disappeared somewhere in an upper mist and the piazza itself was deserted, with nothing to fill the empty space but lonely rows of lamps.

Harry’s, however, was snug and busy, all polished wood and furs draped over chairs and eager American voices. The bar was hidden behind a line of uniforms, officers on leave. My mother and Gianni were both drinking Prosecco, their second by the look of the half-filled olive dish.

“Ah, at last,” he said, getting up. “I’m so happy you could come.” A polite smile, genial.

“Sorry to hold you up. Should we just go over?” I gestured to the door and the Monaco just across the calle.

“No, no, there’s time. Have a drink.”

A waiter appeared, summoned apparently by thought.

“Well, a martini then,” I said to the waiter, ignoring my mother’s glance.

“What is the expression?” Gianni said. “Out of wet clothes and into a dry martini.” He smiled, pleased with himself.

“Yes,” I said. “Look, there’s Bertie.”

He was at the far end of the room, drinking with a woman in an elaborate hat. Between us was the usual crowd, half of whom had probably been at his party.

“Yes, we saw him earlier,” my mother said. “Gianni, who’s he with?”

“Principessa Montardi.”

“Really a principessa?”

“Well, the prince was real. And she married him. Her father was in milk products. Milanese.”

“The things you know.”

“It’s a small city. We know each other maybe too well. Ah, here’s your drink.”

The martini was strong and I felt the heat of it right away, pleasant, like the warm light of the room. Bertie had waved, the others who vaguely knew us had noticed, and now we could retreat to ourselves. I felt lightheaded, wanting to grin, still thinking about the afternoon. And there’d be tomorrow, another room. Then another. Afternoons of pure pleasure. In Germany there had been an army nurse drunk at a party, and one German girl, who had asked for tinned meat afterward, both times sad, furtive, closed off, like the country itself now. Here everything was pleasure—sex and buildings glimmering on the water, even Harry’s green olives. I realized—was it only the martini?—that I was happy.

“You look like the cat who swallowed the canary,” my mother said. “What are you thinking about?”

“Just how nice this all is.”

“You’re enjoying Venice, then?” Gianni said.

“Yes, very much. Doesn’t everybody?”

“Most, yes, I think. Even we do sometimes,” he said.

“Does it bother you, all the visitors?”

“No, it’s important for us. How else could we live? Of course you cannot choose your visitors. The Wehrmacht loved us, for their holidays. In the spring all the tables in San Marco, nothing but uniforms. Their city. So that was difficult.”

“Awful,” my mother said automatically.

“You have been in Germany, Grace said?”

I nodded. “What’s left of it.”

“The bombs, you mean.”

“The cities are gone. Flat.”

“So that’s how it ended for them. You see how lucky we are. Imagine Venice—” He shuddered. “How long will you stay?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“He’s been looking at art,” my mother said wryly.

“Yes? Then you will never leave. There is always more art in Venice. Where have you been? The Accademia?”

I nodded. “No one’s there this time of year. You can look at The House of Levi for hours and not have to move.”

“Really,” my mother said, surprised.

Dr. Maglione smiled in agreement. “Veronese. Maybe the finest of them. Tintoretto, it’s too much sometimes. You must see San Sebastiano, Veronese’s church.”

“Yes, off the Zattere. Before the maritime station.”

My mother was now looking at me in real surprise, aware suddenly that my time here was unknown to her, something I did between meals.

“So you know it. I can see you don’t need me for a guide,” he said pleasantly. “Now Grace—” He smiled at her.

“He thinks I’m hopeless,” my mother said.

“Hopeless, no.”

“I follow those yellow signs with the arrows and I still have no idea where I am. They always say Per Rialto and I never want to go there.”

“No, especially not there,” Dr. Maglione said, laughing.

A look passed between them, so intimate that I went back to my martini, feeling in the way. Even with my skin still flushed with it, I couldn’t make the leap from the damp sheets of my own afternoon to whatever time they were remembering. I had not imagined anything beyond friendship, a way to pass the time. And yet there must have been sex, maybe even with sweat and gasps, open mouths. I looked at him, now lighting a cigarette. Thinning gray hair brushed back at the temples, intelligent eyes. But what did she see? He caught my glance, meeting my eyes through the smoke in a question.

“Turned up at last, has he?” Behind me, Bertie had put a hand on my shoulder.

“Hello, Bertie,” I said. “Where’s your princess?”

“In the loo. So I thought I’d say hello. I hate staring at an empty table, don’t you?”

“Join us,” Dr. Maglione said.

“No, no, she’s quick as a bunny usually. I don’t know how you do it,” he said to my mother. “All those layers.”

My mother laughed.

“And where did you get to last night?” Bertie said to me. “Now you see him, now you don’t.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt. You were about to go into confession.”

“And so should you, once in a while. I know I don’t want to be caught unawares. Between the old stirrup and the ground.” He looked at me. “You haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you? Heathen. A fine job you’ve done, Grace.”

“Still, he went to the Accademia,” Gianni said. “So maybe that was his church today.”

“Did you?” Bertie said, looking at me, letting the phrase hang in the air.

“Would you join us for dinner?” Gianni said, polite. Or was he already beginning to tire, seeing the evening before us in our odd triangle, idling talking about Veronese but looking at one another, wary, pretending to be a family?

“Molto gentile, but you’d never forgive me. The boredom of her. Old hunting days in the Piedmont. You don’t want to hear it, I promise you.”

“What about you?” my mother said, laughing.

“Well, I have to. One of life’s little crosses. The husband was a peach, you know. Funny how people find—oh, look sharp, the Inquisition. Been up to anything?”

I turned to find a thickset man in a natty suit coming toward the table. Neatly trimmed mustache and shiny face, a man who might just have come from the barber’s. Gianni stood up, frowning.

“Dottore,” the man said to him. Then a stream of Italian, obviously friendly. He put his hand on Bertie’s arm. “And Signor Howard. I’m sorry, don’t let me interrupt.”

“No, no. My friend Mrs. Miller. Her son Adam. Grace, Inspector Cavallini.”

Cavallini bowed, a stage gesture.

“Inspector?” my mother said. “Police inspector?”

“Yes. Have you done anything wrong?”

“Do people tell you?”

He smiled. “No, usually I have to catch them.” He nodded and touched my hand halfheartedly, glancing at Dr. Maglione.

“And he does. Always,” Bertie said.

“Here? At Harry’s?” my mother said.

“No, here I take Prosecco. Off-duty.” He was enjoying my mother. “You don’t think it would disturb the customers?”

“I think it would make their night.”

He laughed, then said something in Italian to Gianni that I took to be a word of approval, and bowed a leavetaking to the rest of us. “Signora, a great pleasure. Signor Howard, you are behaving yourself?” He wagged his forefinger teasingly.

“Me? I’m one of the good. As you know. Practically Caesar’s wife.”

Cavallini smiled. “Yes, practically,” he said, and headed for the frosted glass door.

“Bertie, give,” my mother said, interested. “How on earth do you know him?”

“I’m a foreign national, you know. We had to report during the war.”

“Report? I thought they locked you up.”

“Irish passport, lovey. Thanks to me dad. So there’s that to be said for him anyway. Convenient being a neutral just then.”

“But weren’t you both?”

“Not here. Green as a clover. Had to be. Otherwise, you know, I’d have had to leave. My pictures, my house. Then what?”

“Yes, then what?” I said.

He looked at me sharply, then back at my mother. “Anyway, they couldn’t have been nicer. Came to the house, had a drink, and that was it. Never even had to go to the station. Now that it’s over, I rather miss it, the little visits.”

“Oh, Bertie, you don’t mean it. He’s creepy.”

“You don’t find him charming?” Bertie said.

“The police?”

Gianni smiled. “Police are men too. In America maybe it’s different.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, they’re not drinking at Harry’s. How can he afford it, aside from anything else?”

“Grace, dear,” Bertie said, “that is exactly the sort of question one should never ask. Not here.”

“You mean he’s—” My mother started, eyes wide, imagining, I suppose, black-market storerooms and goods hidden under raincoats.

“Bertie makes a joke, I think,” Gianni said, calming her. “It’s not so expensive, one drink. Even at Harry’s.”

“But imagine a policeman at ‘21’,” my mother said, still toying with it.

“There she is,” Bertie said, spotting the principessa. “What did I tell you? Less time than it takes to—fresh lipstick too. She’s a wonder. Enjoy your dinner.” He hurried away, intercepting her at their table and helping her with her coat.

“We must go too,” Gianni said. “Have you finished your drink?” He turned, surprised to find me looking at him.

“How is it that you know him?” I said.

“Inspector Cavallini? Sometimes they come to the hospital for help. Medical evidence.”

“Really?” my mother said. “Did you ever solve anything?”

Gianni smiled. “Not yet. Shall we go?” He leaned over to wrap my mother’s fur around her shoulder.

I got up. Dizzy for a second, I pressed against the table for support.

“Are you all right?” he asked, a doctor’s voice.

I nodded. “Just a drink on an empty stomach. I forgot I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Too busy looking at art,” my mother said, amusing herself.

The dining room at the Monaco was formal and starchy—waiters in black tie, silver serving trolleys, soft, flattering lights. Gianni made a pleasant fuss ordering us schie and polenta to start, a winter specialty, then took his time with the wine list. I had a cigarette and looked around the room—a light crowd, off-season, but dressed for an evening out, elegant, as if they, like the quails on the serving cart, had somehow been preserved in aspic. The room was almost as warm as Harry’s, immune to fuel shortages. There were arrangements of winter branches, like abstracts of flowers, ice buckets, the smell of perfume. At one point I noticed Gianni smiling at my mother, and I followed his eyes, wanting just for a minute to see what he did and realized that for them the room was somehow erotic. Not cheap hotels and tepid baths, worn sheets and bare skin, nothing that had made my afternoon exciting. For them the furs and perfume and rich food were part of what sex had become. He was looking at money.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” I said, drawing their attention back to the table. “Is he an inspector now?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And he has been—I mean, he consulted you on cases. So that means he was working for the Germans.”

“Technically. At the end. We were an occupied country.”

“But he’s police. Not a doctor or a waiter or something. Police. Why hasn’t he been thrown out?”

“For doing what?”

“Enforcing German laws. And before that—”

“Fascist laws? Yes, you can say it. Well, who knows if he enforced them?” He tasted the wine, the waiter hovering. “Yes, very nice.” We said nothing as the waiter poured.

“But if he didn’t, what makes you think he’ll enforce new ones now?”

Gianni smiled. “Well, it’s a question, yes? But you see, you make the problem for yourself. I don’t expect him to enforce them—not too many anyway. Just the ones we need to live. The others, we bow, we tip our hat, we ignore. Shall we make a toast? To happier times?”

“Yes,” my mother said, raising her glass.

We clinked glasses—celebrating what?

“You’re still troubled by this?” Gianni said, looking at me.

“But if he was a police officer, he must have been a Fascist. I mean, in the party.”

Gianni nodded. “It was required. But what was in his heart, I don’t know. People do things to survive. So we must give them the benefit of the doubt.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” my mother said lightly.

Gianni smiled. “Well, innocent, maybe that goes too far.” He looked at me. “I understand what you mean. But how can I explain it to you? To live under—you know the word tyranny is from the Latin tyrannus. So we have known how to live with this for a long time. You bend. Maybe you think we bend too much, but we look at history and it tells us, the important thing is to survive.” He opened his hand, gesturing. “And we did. Now with this good wine. In this beautiful city. All still here, still beautiful. It’s the Germans who have gone. We survived them too. For us it’s a kind of strength, to bend.” He paused. “When it’s inevitable.”

“Like The House of Levi,” I said, thinking to myself.

“What?” my mother said.

“It was The Last Supper. He changed the title because the pope didn’t like it.”

“The Inquisition didn’t like it,” Gianni said. “More Nazis. Torture. Burnings. Worse, sometimes. Castrating people. You learn how to bend with a history like ours.”

“But that was a question of belief.”

“You think Goebbels didn’t believe? Any of them? Right up to the end they believed in something. I don’t know what—their own hate, maybe. And when the Inquisition lit the fires under people, what did they believe? To save them. By killing them. Compared to the Church, the Nazis were amateurs. At least the Nazis didn’t ask you to think they were right to do it. They didn’t care what you thought.” He studied his wine. “Forgive me, no more speeches. But your painting—does it matter what it’s called? So long as it’s beautiful?”

“No.”

“You see, an Italian answer. And Veronese, you know he was also being a tiny bit naughty. Putting all that in, the dwarfs, the drinking. A sacred scene. He knew what they would think. But that’s Italian too, maybe, to tweak the nose—that’s right? tweak?—of the Church. You can do that if you bend. The Germans never understood that—they never bend and they destroy themselves. Why?” He shook his head. “Northern people. Sometimes they are all a mystery.”

“All of us?” my mother said, flirting.

“Oh, you, certainly. A great mystery. But that’s because you’re a woman. All women are mysteries.” A stage courtliness, the two of them practically winking at each other.

The polenta arrived, covered in tiny brown shrimp from the lagoon.

“Funny about Bertie knowing him,” my mother said. “He was careful with him, did you notice? I’ll bet it wasn’t half as easy as he makes out. During the war.”

“No, not for anyone,” Gianni said. “Of course, Bertie has many friends. I don’t think it was dangerous for him.”

“Irish, my foot,” my mother said, laughing to herself. She glanced over at Gianni, her face soft. Not just a dinner companion, someone to take charge of the wine list.

“In Germany, you were a soldier?” Gianni said, keeping the conversation going.

“G-2. Intelligence. We investigated Germans suspected of Nazi activity.”

“Ah, that explains your interest in Cavallini. One investigator to another, eh? You want to compare methods?” He was smiling.

“Ours was mostly pushing paper around.”

He laughed. “So was his, I think. But it must have been difficult, yes? Surely the real Nazis would lie. So how do you know?”

“We don’t always. That’s what makes it difficult.”

“Impossible, maybe.”

“Maybe. We still have to try.”

“But why? The war is over.”

“Their crimes aren’t.”

“Ah. A passion for justice,” he said, nodding, a paternal indulgence. “Maybe you’ll be a lawyer.”

“Maybe.”

“Oh darling, really?” my mother said. “I haven’t wanted to ask. You’ve seemed—at such loose ends.”

“Don’t rush,” Gianni said. “To be this age, it’s wonderful. You don’t have to decide anything. Not yet. Not like us, eh?” he said to my mother. “We have to hurry with everything now.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Ah, you see,” he said, ostensibly to me, “how she makes fun of me.” His hand moved slightly toward hers and just grazed it.

I looked away. “Did you always want to be a doctor?” I said.

“Well, for me it was different. A family tradition. One of us was for medicine and one for—well, to carry the name. But he died, so it’s the end. I have only a daughter.”

“You’re married?” I said, not expecting this.

“I was. She died.”

“I’m sorry. Where is your daughter?”

“Bologna. At the university.”

“Medicine?”

He smiled. “No, an avvocato. Another one with a passion for justice. How did it happen?” he said to my mother. “To have such children?”

“Think of theirs.”

“Would you like to see the hospital?” Gianni said to me, not an offhand invitation, an obvious effort to get closer.

“The hospital?”

“For the architectural interest. It was once the Scuola di San Marco. Near Zanipolo. The library has the most beautiful ceiling in all of Venice.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” I said, the only possible answer.

“Even the hospitals,” my mother said, a little dreamy, finding romance in everything now.

“The joke is that you can see San Michele from the wards—the cemetery island. So they say the doctors finish you and the priests at San Lazzaro bless you and the boat outside takes you away. One operation, door to door.” He winked at my mother. “You see how practical we can be.”

And so it went, through the grilled branzino, the radicchio from Trevisio, the little cups of coffee and the shared plate of biscotti—light, aimless conversation meant to make us easy with one another, a kind of wooing. My mother was happy, enjoying herself, her eyes shiny, catching the light the way her earrings did, in tiny glints. She made jokes, laughed at his, until the table seemed as carefree as one of those afternoons at the Lido. Gianni looked at her with a fondness that surprised and then disconcerted me. And I, who was the object of the wooing, sat wondering why they were bothering. What did it matter what I thought, if they wanted to make eyes at each other and play at being twenty again? What could be nicer? A season in Venice with something to talk about later, over drinks at the Plaza. An old friend, not somebody she’d picked up in a hotel lounge. With a daughter at the university. That respectable. What business was it of mine? The truth was that I didn’t want to think about them at all. My mind was elsewhere, back at the station hotel, in that perfectly hermetic world of sex, where no one else existed. In the warm dining room, with my body loose and tired, all I wanted was my own life.

When we got up to go to the lounge for brandy, I took it as my cue to leave. Gianni would want to sit with my mother in the dim light and look across the water to Salute, letting the evening settle around them. I imagined a kiss tasting of cognac, a last cigarette, low voices—everything the lounge was meant for, what you paid for. But when I suggested going, he insisted I stay for a nightcap. For some reason it took a while to order—everything seemed to have slowed down, even the waiters—and then we drank without saying much. There were only a few other people and a piano near the door, played so softly it seemed the pianist too was logy with food and drink. Gianni fixed a time next week for me to go to the hospital. He sat back with a cigarette, looking contented. Outside the hotel, gondolas with different-colored tarps bobbed on the tide. I slouched, exhausted. There was nothing to do now but wait it out.

“Such a surprise, darling. A lawyer. So sensible.”

“It’s just an idea,” I said, but she waved her hand, brushing it away, and I saw that she hadn’t actually been talking to me but to some unseen audience.

I looked over, hearing the abstract, self-amused talk of drink. My mother, like all her friends, had a strong head, but it had been a long evening since the first Prosecco, through Gianni’s special bottle of Soave and the vin santo at table. Her words were still precise, but everything else about her seemed to have grown a little blurry. Even her lipstick was no longer fresh, faint at the lines. She was nestled into the corner of the settee, her fur draped around her, smiling, in love with the world.

“It’s late,” I said. “We should go.”

“Oh, Adam,” she said, teasing. “So sensible.”

“If you’re tired,” Gianni said to me. “Don’t worry, I will take her home. She’s happy here, you see.”

“Maybe too happy,” I said to him, not loud enough for her to hear.

“There is no such thing as too happy,” Gianni said mildly. “I will see that she gets home.” Firmly, a dismissal. “Can I call you a taxi?”

“No, that’s all right,” I said, getting up. “Thanks for dinner.”

“Oh, you’re going,” my mother said, evidently a new idea to her. She leaned forward to be kissed.

I bent over for a quick peck, and as I stood back I stopped, suddenly dismayed, seeing once again what Gianni must be seeing, not a carefree girl this time but a woman slack with drink, pliable, draped against the couch, her soft white throat tilted up. What he’d waited for all evening, what came after brandy. Did he take a room here, part of the Monaco service? My heart sank a little as I looked at her, a physical drop. When had this happened, this fading into someone else? While I’d been away, not paying attention. And each year she’d become a little more vulnerable, until all it took was a kind word and table manners, someone like Gianni.

I looked at him, half expecting a leer, something predatory, but he was smiling blandly, at ease with himself. What he must be used to, another of the lonely women who floated through Venice, away from home, a little drunk, easy. Without daughters at university and family names. Without anything, except money to buy a little pleasure, an evening out. This one had come with a son—an inconvenience, but now he’d been charmed too, taken care of, and he was leaving. Would they come back to Dorsoduro? Appear at coffee in the morning without even a blush, all of us grown up?

For a second I stood there, trying somehow to put myself between them. It’s not what she is, I wanted to say to him, but wasn’t it? Isn’t it what she wanted too? Who had actually paid for dinner? I couldn’t remember there being a bill, the sort of discreet arrangement a lady might make. But how do you protect people? And after all, what was the harm? One of those things. Unless it wasn’t. I looked down at her again, wondering what bargain she was making with herself. A fling? But maybe she hadn’t even thought about it, just followed an impulse, the way she’d come to a city where she could read menus and street signs but whose real language was unknown to her.

“Darling, you say you’re going, then you don’t go,” she said, laughing.

I smiled, shaking my head. “Just thinking.”

“Oh, god.”

I held up my hand. “All right, I’m off. Don’t be too late,” I said, imitating her.

“You don’t have to worry,” Gianni said without a hint of guile. “She’s in safe hands.”

The next day I found a hotel near the Rialto with cheap off-season rates and a side view of the canal. The old-fashioned radiator in the room actually produced heat, a luxury that winter, so I took the room for a week, using a chunk of my separation pay. Not what the army had intended, precisely, but in fact the room did finally separate me from the war. Every afternoon we sealed ourselves away behind the fake damask walls, too absorbed in each other to imagine anything outside.

After that first day, we settled into a pattern. At one Claudia would walk over from the Accademia—ten minutes, if she hurried—and we would make love until she had to go back, dressing and leaving me in bed. I think it excited her to leave first, as if the room were in a brothel and she had somehow bought my time. She liked everything about the room—the touristy Murano chandelier, the chipped gold paint on the sideboard—because it seemed to her what such a room should look like, a little tawdry, worn from years of afternoon sex. She never came to my mother’s house and didn’t want me to go to hers. An affair was set apart from real life, something you did in hotels.

I had never had sex with anyone who responded the way she did, not just with pleasure or curiosity but the way I’d seen children eat in Germany, with a greedy determination to fill themselves up, not sure they would ever eat again. The afternoons were for both of us a kind of daily feast, sampling and tasting. Day after day in our cheap hideaway room, warm with radiator heat, we slid against each other, slick with sweat, until, finally exhausted, we felt the world begin to come back a little. Then she would dress and lean over to kiss me in the damp sheets, not saying good-bye but fixing a time for tomorrow, when we’d begin again. Days of it like this, drunk with sex.

We didn’t go out for dinner or have a drink at Harry’s or meet each other anywhere but at the hotel. At first she said she had to be careful, she didn’t want people at work to know, but after a while I realized the secrecy itself, the sense of being illicit, was erotic to her. When she closed the door to the hotel room, she could do anything, away from everyone, even herself.

Then, after a few days, the afternoons weren’t enough. I wanted to know where she went, how she spent her time. Wanted her, in fact, to spend it with me.

“I don’t want to go to restaurants. It’s nice the way it is.”

“But I want to talk to you. To know you.”

“Who knows me better than you? Do you think I’m like this with everyone?”

“I don’t mean that.”

“I know what you mean. I know you a little now too. You like the fans, the masks. Old Venice.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You know, all the fans, that was to end up here,” she said, patting the bed.

“So maybe we missed something, skipping all that.”

She shook her head. “No.” She pulled me down to her. “Do you think we missed something?”

“No.”

“Then it’s enough. Here.”

“All I did was ask you to dinner,” I said, kissing her.

“I can eat anytime. Wouldn’t you rather do this?”

“Yes.”

But a few days later I got a chance to force the issue when my mother came down with a cold and Gianni, now the attending physician, offered me his seats at La Fenice.

“I’ve never been,” Claudia said, tempted.

“Let’s do it right. We’ll take a gondola.”

“Ouf. A gondola from San Isepo, with everyone at the window. I’ll take the vaporetto.”

“Then you’ll come?”

“I always wanted to see it, La Fenice.”

“Do you have something to wear? We can buy you a dress.”

“No, you don’t buy me a dress. I’m not—” She turned away. “I can dress myself. Even for La Fenice.”

I hired the gondola anyway and met her at San Marco, then maneuvered her into the rocking boat for the short trip through the back canals.

“You’re extravagant,” she said.

“You have to go this way. Where else can you do it? Pulling up to the opera in a boat?”

“You can also walk,” she said, but smiling as the dark houses glided by, surprised to see a different city from this angle. Under her wool coat she was wearing a long evening dress she said she had made herself, gloves, and rhinestone-studded slippers.