A Beautiful Crime

by Christopher Bollen

  The summer’s humidity had clung to the Adriatic seaside that September. The evening light was a tarnished copper, coloring the palazzi along the Grand Canal a hazy, Middle Eastern umber. Late summer brought out the Byzantine. It also brought out sweat rings around the collar of Clay’s one decent dress shirt. Dry cleaning in Venice was too expensive for his weekly stipend, so he wore the shirt buttoned to the Adam’s apple.

  Clay looked for people to save. He worried the supervisor would catch him doing nothing, talking to nobody, and it would be a strike on his record. The nearest bodies were blasted by the orange radiation of the sunset; behind them lay a shaded, impenetrable forest of partygoers. That’s when Clay noticed a flash of white hair and the face it helmeted, a handsome older man who looked like he could be herding cattle in an old cigarette ad. Their eyes met, and Clay glanced shyly away. When he looked back, their eyes met again. It kept happening in this flirtatious manner, away and back, away and back. Clay appreciated the attention, particularly in light of his Venetian dry spell. In truth, he’d never found himself attracted to older white men. White guys in general had remained something of a mystery. His first boyfriend in high school had been Vietnamese, the second (his prom date) Bangladeshi, and he’d dated a Jamaican for two years of college, even introducing Mark to his parents (how his mother had swooned over hunky Mark). He figured his first memorable Caucasian would be a Venetian, but instead nulla e niente. Before he knew it, though, this handsome older man appeared at his elbow, wearing a crisp white suit and green velvet slippers. There was a tiny red slash on the lower corner of his shirt, right at his ribs; Clay initially confused it for blood, but upon closer inspection realized it was a monogram: R.F.W. The man was chatting with a woman cocooned in navy lace, and he was using his wineglass like a magnifying glass to illustrate an anecdote. Suddenly a passing waiter knocked the woman in lace off balance. She fell against the white-haired man, who himself tripped backward, his feet drawing perilously close to the roof’s low ledge. Clay thrust his arm out, grasped the man’s shoulder, and tugged him away from the drop.

  “Whoa,” the man roared as he registered the jeopardy he’d been in. Thirty feet below the ledge was the erect Marini statue. “Thank you.” Then he turned to the woman next to him. “Silvana, you nearly killed me!”

  “Sorry,” she muttered in the hostile tone of someone whose philosophy is never to apologize.

  The man patted Clay on the back. “You’re Clay Guillory, right?”

  “Yes,” he replied, taken aback. “I am.”

  “I’ve heard about you. Intern extraordinaire!”

  Clay didn’t realize he had a reputation. “Well,” he answered demurely. “Let’s not go too far.”

  The man laughed, raising an eyebrow dotted with a mole. “You’re not making this easy for me!” He extended his hand, which Clay shook. “Richard Forsyth West,” he said. West’s fingernails were manicured, but his palm was calloused. “It’s nice to meet you. I was told you might be interested in some extra work on your days off. For pay, of course.”

  An Oh escaped Clay’s lips. It was a collective Oh encapsulating two distinct disappointments: Oh, you aren’t interested in me sexually. And Oh, the museum thinks I’m a charity case in need of extra money. Clay’s eyes sought out the traitorous shaggy-haired supervisor on the rooftop.

  “I’m sorry. Did that come out badly?” West asked earnestly. “I get ahead of myself. You see, I’m starting my own preservation society in Venice.” He laughed again. “Society of one, to be honest. You’re looking at the one. I hope I’m looking at the second. It’s an organization dedicated to the conservation of monuments that no one around here seems to be in a rush to protect, mostly because of the Italian bureaucracy and paperwork that ties every hand before it can so much as point.” West nudged Clay’s elbow. “What’s Italy’s biggest contribution to modern civilization besides pasta and paparazzi?” West had already stepped on his own joke, and Clay wouldn’t indulge him by speaking the canned answer: paperwork. “Anyway, I asked Peggy Guggenheim who her best intern is. I want an American, someone smart, but I also want someone who speaks Italian. Peggy said ‘Clay Guillory.’ Only she promised I couldn’t steal you from her. Apparently, you’re too valuable. All I’m allowed to ask is if you’re interested in helping out on my project on your days off.”

  West was a charming salesman for himself. His beseeching expression and self-deprecating humor softened the blow of dual disappointments. And Clay was certain that he sensed a playful flirtation in the wide eyes and the toying smile.

  “Peggy told you all that, did she?”

  West was studying his face carefully, his blue eyes flickering. “You can tell me to stop bothering you. Feel free to walk away.”

  Clay began spending his two days off each week from the Peggy Guggenheim at West’s palazzo. Although they technically shared a roof and there was a rumor of a secret connecting door, Clay left Il Dormitorio on his free Sundays and Mondays, walked down the alley, turned left, commuted ten yards, passed through a garden, and used the key that West had given him to access Palazzo Contarini. Yes, the whopping three hundred euros per day was enough of an incentive—Clay was barely scraping by on the museum salary, and his college-loan payments loomed at the end of the year like muggers waiting outside the gates of Port Authority. But Clay actually enjoyed spending his days with Richard West. A majority of the work was relegated to menial assistant tasks—stocking office supplies, updating West’s brand-new and ultimately short-lived website, making reservations at restaurants with local conservators, ordering his suits from tailors in Naples and Turin. But one afternoon each week was always devoted to “site visits,” which consisted of the two men venturing out together to explore a small church on the island of Torcello or investigating a dilapidated Bellini painting in an abandoned barracks near the Giardini. They talked about their upbringings. West had grown up poor, “as poor as concrete because we didn’t have a backyard with dirt, because dirt cost too much.” He had earned his zillions in the 1990s investing in California technology from the comforts of his Chicago office. “People attack you if your money comes from the Internet,” West said. “They think you’ve ruined the world. But don’t blame the medium for what your fellow man used it for! My belief has always been, when you see an opportunity, take it. You can brood over the ethics later.” West talked a tough game, but Clay sensed that the role of Evil Tech Lord had left its wounds. Perhaps that explained West’s passion for safeguarding the relics of Venice. He wanted to do something that he could point to and say with absolute assurance, “There! It’s better now.”

  Two days each week plotting strategies to save Venice, the remaining five keeping his true love, Peggy, guarded and coat-checked and buzzing with happy visitors. It was paradise with money in the bank. The arrival of Richard West hadn’t entirely cured Clay’s loneliness—his eyes still hunted for golden boys on his walks to work—but he’d found a companion, someone to confide in and to laugh with. West had been divorced for seven years and was “mildly maybe dating” a woman who ran a hospital in Germany that specialized in research on the brain. And yet there was an intimacy to their walks and dinners and jokes that confused Clay; had West’s vague flirtations ever advanced into an unmistakable expression of interest, he might have entertained the possibility of more between them. Once, after letting himself into the palazzo a few minutes early, Clay caught the reflection of West toweling off after a shower in the bathroom mirror. Clay allowed himself to examine the older man’s thick, burly body, one foot anchored on the toilet seat, the purple sac of testicles hanging below his round ass, the circular scar from a childhood TB shot pressed like a time stamp into the upper arm, a slice of frost-white hair dangling over the prominent forehead.

  For all of West’s networking and social engagements, it was clear that he too was lonely in Venice. A month into their arrangement, the two began having dinners together on nights that weren’t Sunday or Monday, at different Michelin st
ars around town. They often texted each other at night. Clay had never stepped foot in West’s bedroom; the doors were always shut. But he liked to imagine West in bed on the other side of the wall, laughing at whatever joke Clay had just zapped over to him.

  One night as Clay lay in his own bed, unable to sleep, slapping mosquitoes on his arms and counting the others perched patiently in the rafters—the mosquitoes in Venice were wilier hunters than the blood-drunk idiots that came right at you in New York—his phone beeped with an incoming text from his boss.

  Please take a picture of it. I’m dying to see what it looks like.

  I don’t know, Clay texted back. Might get me in trouble. I wouldn’t want anyone to know I’m sending it around. It’s private.

  I’m not going to tell anyone. Come on, just take a couple quick shots of it right now.

  “It” was the Blue Madonna fresco by Sebastiano Ricci on Il Dormitorio’s kitchen ceiling. Clay knew all about West’s unhealthy obsession with the van der Haar family and the treasures they’d once amassed—he uttered that last name, van der Haar, with the kind of reverential awe that teenagers reserve for Italian sports cars or French fashion designers. West had never managed to secure an invitation inside Il Dormitorio from its current heirs, and he occasionally drilled Clay on any hidden riches it still might hold.

  Clay sneaked into the kitchen, turned on the lights, and, in what felt like a weird violation of her privacy, snapped a few photos of the nude Madonna on his phone. He texted them over to West. Ahh, wow, yes, beautiful, thank you . . . If only Freddy and his sister took care of it like I would.

  That busy, hopeful autumn passed too quickly. November brought chilly Adriatic rains and a future in peril. The Venetians had their tricks to mitigate the notorious acqua alta that flooded the city during high tides. They boarded up the bottoms of their doors with slats and assembled long wood beams as planks for piazza crossings; they donned special plastic knee-high boots over shoes to wade through campo lakes; they placed the legs of their furniture in vases and cups to protect them from the surging water. Clay’s future, however, remained impervious to small acts of deterrence. His internship would end along with the month, and without a job or a visa, he was required to return to the United States. He didn’t want to go back. His very survival depended on staying.

  Peggy once again offered salvation. One morning as Clay was leaving the guardaroba station, the supervisor pulled him aside in the garden. With an uncharacteristic grin, she notified him that he was being considered for the Capo position. Clay was vaguely aware that there had once been a job nestled somewhere in the museum hierarchy between the interns and the supervisor, but he had assumed it had long been scrapped due to budget cuts. No, the supervisor explained, there simply hadn’t been any recent candidates in the intern pool to their liking. Now they had two candidates, and Clay was one of them—if he was interested. Was he?

  The miraculous part was that Capo was a full-time post with a working visa and a living wage. No, he wouldn’t get rich off the position, but it would allow him to stay in the city of his dreams and continue working in the museum he loved. “Yes, consider me! Please!” he begged the supervisor, who assured him that both candidates would be assessed fairly. It was only after she darted across the courtyard that Clay spied his obvious competition. Bridget Messmer was leading three rotund Saudi sheiks on a tour of the outdoor sculptures. The sheiks demanded to take a picture of pretty blond Bridget, and she reluctantly consented to pose in Peggy’s iconic stone chair.

  “I need this job,” Clay confided to West over dinner that night at Da Arturo, a tiny, airless trattoria off San Marco. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything so much in my life. They can’t give it to Bridget.”

  West nodded and pushed a plate of fried squid toward Clay. “You’ll get it,” he said confidently. “No one has worked harder than you or cares about the museum as much. This other candidate doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “Bridget Messmer.” Just saying Bridget’s name caused Clay’s mouth muscles to tighten. “She’s supersmart, superambitious, super everything.”

  “No match for you,” West replied and reached across the table to grip Clay’s knuckles. “And if they’re stupid enough not to pick you, something else will come along. Because you’re young, this seems like the be-all, end-all. But, I swear to you—listen to an old man—there’s more out there if this job doesn’t work out.”

  Clay shook his head and pushed West’s hand away. He refused the comfort of a soft crash landing. “You don’t understand. There aren’t other jobs. Not like this one. That museum is where I want to be. Plus, it offers a work visa so I can stay in Italy.” He was on his fourth glass of wine, and the next declaration burst out without thought. “I can’t go back to New York. Not after my mom died. My life is in Venice now.”

  West wiped his mouth with his napkin and poured more wine in their glasses. “You’re going to get it, all right? Stop worrying.” Clay noticed that West’s eyes were glassy—not crying exactly, but more like the first symptoms of an allergy. West stared down at the table. “I suppose being Capo means you won’t have time to work on our projects—my projects—anymore.”

  Clay laughed. It was a good feeling, this rarity of being in high demand. “Probably not,” he said. “But you’re going to need someone full time soon anyway. And, as Capo, I can send the best interns your way. Hey, I can still order your suits if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  West smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Even if we aren’t working together, you can always depend on me. I want you to know that.” West snapped his fingers and pointed across the table like a reprimanding father. “Under no circumstances are you going back, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “New York,” he grumbled. “Only in New York City and a few war-torn parts of East Africa is mere survival considered an accomplishment. New York’s fine, but Venice—” he said that word like he said van der Haar—“is living.”

  It proved nearly impossible to outshine Bridget Messmer at the museum. Clay possessed American charm, the national anthem of a white smile and a friendly greeting, and the willingness to work morning to night on any task without complaint. But Bridget had her native country’s formidable efficiency, her sober Swiss reason, the effortless, almost meteorological ability to forecast tourist congestion and direct visitor traffic flow. In the days before the final decision was made, Clay felt like he was dancing for his life, while Bridget was probably filing the museum’s tax returns. Every morning before work he slipped into a different church, plunked a euro into the metal box as the signs charged per prayer, and lit a candle.

  The supervisor led him downstairs into the break room, shut the door, and allowed him to sit down at the conference table before she delivered the bad news. The walls of the break room were painted the brightest yellow, a shade that Clay might later describe as happiness-at-gunpoint yellow. But as the supervisor spoke, all the yellow went gray. “We’ve decided to offer the job to the other candidate,” she told him, her hands clenched in front of her in a defensive posture. Clay heard the verdict, although his heart must not have because it continued to beat. In fact, it was beating so loudly in his ears that for a few seconds its throbbing was all he could absorb, just his heart beating in the basement of a palazzo in a watery city four thousand miles from New York. “I’m very sorry, Clay. I know you wanted the job. And we’ve appreciated your dedication to the Peggy Guggenheim for these six months. I hope they’ve been beneficial to you. Of course, you can stay in the room you’re renting for another two weeks. And, as promised, we will be providing your airfare home.”

  Clay’s eyes were burning under the glare of track lights. The faux-wood conference table with its shiny veneer surface was equally painful to look at.

  “So you chose the pretty white girl,” he finally said.

  The supervisor’s eyes widened. She looked alarmed but also, with her sucked-in cheeks, determined to
withstand the fallout. “Please, Clay,” she said sternly. “That’s not fair to Bridget.”

  Richard West was the person he ran to for consolation that afternoon. Clay sat in West’s living room on a leather footstool he’d dragged into a slant of bright winter sun, while West paced in circles behind him. Here, in this sanctuary, Clay could allow himself to cry. “I’m going back in two weeks.” Two weeks; no visa; a one-way ticket to New York; his angry, miserable father.

  “Complete idiots not to promote you!” West stormed around, bare feet slapping the terrazzo. “It’s their loss. They’ll never find anybody as talented and diligent. What idiots!” He circled and circled and stopped. Clay didn’t dare to turn around. “You know, this doesn’t mean you have to go.”

  “What?” Clay asked in a confused tone that wasn’t entirely ingenuous. He had hoped that West might throw him a lifeline. “What do you mean?”

  “Stay!” West cried. “You said yourself that I need someone full time once the projects finally get under way.” He grinned down at Clay in a flush of excitement. “You can work for me! That way you don’t have to go back! We’ll figure out your visa. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m letting you go!”

  It was far from his dream job, but it would keep him in Venice. Clay’s savior had spoken on cue.

  One mild afternoon a few weeks later, Clay was hurrying through the neighborhood of San Polo, finishing up an errand for his boss. His mind was on his impending move from Il Dormitorio. He’d found a cheap garret studio by the Ghetto that was a six-minute walk from Palazzo Contarini. Distracted with thoughts of packing, he took a wrong turn and found himself in a small, unfamiliar campo. On one side stood a dusty porcelain shop and, on the other, a caffè with a pink-striped awning shading two outdoor tables. As Clay stumbled toward the square’s iron cistern, he discerned an owlish face in the shadow of the striped awning. It was the director of the Peggy Guggenheim. He sat alone reading a newspaper, his tweed blazer caped around his shoulders. Clay’s first instinct was to turn and flee before being spotted. But three steps into his escape, he stopped. Why should he run? He was allowed to walk through the city. He was even allowed to say hello to this man. Clay spun around and forced himself to walk calmly toward the caffè. Each advancing step offered Clay’s brain time to propose new and persuasive reasons to flee. But it was too late.