Saints+Sinners

by Saints

  She looks over his shoulder at the map they were given at the train station. The city looks so manageable on paper—the canals and bridges organized like the pieces of a particularly intricate jigsaw puzzle. Actual navigation through Venice, however, makes her suspect that the cartographer was blind—or at least mildly sadistic.

  They must trust their instincts, each turn to the left requiring a later turn to the right in order to maintain an approximation of a straight line. A distance that should take five or ten minutes to travel (on paper) actually takes closer to forty. But that, of course, is supposed to be one of the charms of Venice.

  Crossing a bridge, she looks down at the canal as a gondola slides underneath, a couple snuggled together in the back. Everywhere she goes in this city, she sees the same thing: couples holding hands and smiling. Half of them, she suspects, are on their honeymoon. Venice is Italy’s answer to Paris; everyone is supposed to be in love.

  “This place is ridiculous,” Cynthia says as they backtrack down yet another dead end. “I can understand the tourists—they’re attracted by the myth of Venice, I suppose—but why would anyone want to live here?”

  He affects his diplomatic face now. James prides himself on his diplomacy. “I’m sure they get used to it. Venice is probably as boring to them as New York is to us.”

  “New York is on a grid, James. You can’t get lost.”

  “I guess you haven’t been to the Village lately.”

  He makes her stop on the crest of yet another bridge and pulls his camera out of its case. “Look out at the water,” he says, holding the camera up to his eye and twisting the dials around the lens.

  She leans back, both hands on the rail behind her, and turns a three-quarter profile to the camera. After two weeks of traveling, she knows exactly the kind of shot he wants. James seems to live behind the lens; if a tree fell in the forest and he weren’t there to take a picture of it, it wouldn’t exist.

  She turns suddenly at the sound of a large splash in the water. On the other side of the canal, an elderly woman, dressed in a dark apron and matching kerchief, stands with her hands on her hips, staring up at her building. The splash is followed by a clatter on the roof, and Cynthia looks up in time to see a shingle fall off and follow its companion into the canal. The woman throws her hands despondently into the air. Shaking her head, she goes back into the house, mumbling under her breath.

  “What’s going on?” James says, finally drawing the camera away from his eye. He moves toward the rail and stands beside her, adjusting his camera strap.

  “Venezia,” Cynthia says dryly.

  They find the Guggenheim eventually, thanks to a few conveniently placed signs. Entering the courtyard, her feet crunch into the graveled walkway, past Henry Moores and Giacomettis that bring them startlingly back into the modern world.

  Inside, they’re immediately assaulted by cool, crisp air. “Oh, thank God,” Cynthia says, relishing the goose bumps that emerge suddenly on her skin. “I was beginning to suspect that air conditioning hadn’t been introduced into this town yet.”

  “Glad to see you’re enjoying yourself, Cynthia.”

  She sighs and lets out a tiny puff of laughter. “I’m sorry. Guess I’m just a little cranky.”

  “You were fine until we got to Venice.”

  They start to the right of the entrance and make their way around in an ellipse through the various galleries. Cynthia stops in front of a Jackson Pollock and they stand back to get the full effect.

  “What a relief from all that ancient stuff.”

  “It is nice for a change,” James replies. “Reminds me of MoMA.”

  She turns away from the Pollock and leads him into the next gallery, which is dominated by a display of blue glass objects set on shelves in the window. The summer sunlight pours through, bathing them in the reflected blue. Cynthia speaks softly to the exhibit. “I was supposed to come here with Glenn.”

  “I didn’t know you had plans for a vacation together.”

  “We didn’t. It was just my plan. We were going to honeymoon in Venice.”

  “Honeymoon?”

  She turns to him with a scowl. “It was a fantasy, James, all right? Allow me.”

  James takes the hint and drops the subject. They make their way through the rest of the collection separately, wandering in and out of the galleries a minute or so apart. Cynthia prefers to absorb art silently; she talks about it only afterward, fearing that another person’s opinion as she’s studying it might interfere with her own and destroy the experience.

  She has come to Italy to forget Glenn—especially Glenn. She succeeded, too, until Venice. It’s too great a test, she tells herself, being unattached in the most romantic city in the world. Like deliberately wandering through a candy store when you’re on a diet.

  James is sitting on a bench in the courtyard, waiting for her. She steps down onto the gravel and stands before him. His dark hair spills delicately over his forehead, giving him the look of an innocent yet mischievous little boy. James, she thinks, hasn’t changed much since college. He was her best friend then, too. She laughed when her women friends teased her about him, accusing her of having a slight but hopeless crush. To them, James was the epitome of the cliché—all the best men are married or gay. But if James were different—if their relationship had become what she’d once wanted it to be—she has no faith that it would have survived half as long.

  Spotting her, he gets up and takes her hand. He seems to know that she needs that right now; she needs the feel of his skin against her own. “Now it’s my turn.”

  “Where to, o wise one?” she asks as he leads her out the gate and back onto the narrow quay.

  “You’ll see.”

  Of course, James is just pretending to know where he’s going, but she doesn’t call him on it. He seems just as surprised as she when their destination suddenly appears before them.

  “This is the Ca’ Rezzonico,” he whispers as they enter the palazzo, “where Robert Browning died.”

  “Why does everyone come to Venice to die?” she asks. It’s never occurred to her before—the irony of the city of love becoming the city of death.

  “Can you think of a more beautiful place to spend your last days?”

  They step into an enormous hall, brilliant in the sunlight pouring through the French doors. The brocaded walls are hung with paintings in various styles. Their footsteps echo through the nearly empty room: this is not one of the more popular tourist spots in town.

  “Paul told me about this,” he says, pacing slowly through the room. “It was his favorite place in Venice. He loved Browning.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed that,” Cynthia replies. “Paul struck me as more of a Romantic.”

  “All poetry is romantic, don’t you think?”

  She laughs. “‘My Last Duchess’? I hardly think a poem about a man who collects wives like some people collect stamps is romantic.”

  “Well, Paul thought so.”

  They drift toward the open French doors, and step out onto the tiny balcony overlooking the Grand Canal. The white balustrade is severely chipped, revealing black lines here and there like veins in the stone. Bright sunlight glints off the water as two or three gondolas float slowly by.

  She knows very little about Paul. They met only a few times, at parties and other, smaller gatherings. She’s always felt somewhat uncomfortable around James’s gay friends, like an intruder from the enemy camp. Alone, they get along perfectly; James understands her so well, certainly better than other men, even better than her few women friends. But he behaves differently with his own group. When they’re around, she feels like the outsider. She’s reminded that James belongs to another world, a world she can’t possibly understand.

  She went to the memorial service, out of respect. But she sat in the back, apart from the rest. She caught sight of James from time to time, up at the front with his friends. They were smiling, laughing at the stories each speaker told about Pau
l. It seemed wrong to her somehow, laughing at a funeral. But they had all grown accustomed to death by then, she supposed; perhaps they saw it differently.

  Now, with the warm Venetian wind blowing through her hair, she watches James. He’s staring down at the water, the gentle waves that shimmer back and forth on the canal. Paul was just a friend, she knows, not a lover, but she wonders if that might actually make it harder. Friends are usually thought of as permanent.

  She doesn’t know much about James’s love life, actually. Perhaps he senses her discomfort and graciously chooses not to tell her. But still, she wants to ask him what it’s like—whether it’s easier for two men to love each other than for a man to love a woman. She wants to know if gay men are really different somehow; she wants to know if she will ever find a straight man with whom she can feel as comfortable as she feels with him. And she wants to know what it’s like to watch your friends die. She wants to know if he thinks about death every time he takes a man to bed, if death lies between them, obstructing or heightening their passion.

  “You know,” she says, looking out across the canal, “I’m beginning to think the legends are true. Venice is haunted.”

  “Maybe.” He looks back at her finally. He’s wearing the same smile she saw at the memorial service—painful, but honest. “Let’s go,” he says. “I think I know the perfect solution.”

  “A stiff drink?”

  “Okay. The second-best solution. We’ll have the stiff drink later.”

  She smiles and takes his hand.

  Piazza San Marco, fortunately, is the one place in Venice that you can find without getting lost. There are signs everywhere to lead you there. It takes them only a few minutes to find the square again. They arrive just as a swarm of pigeons springs up from the cobblestones. “Tippi Hedren’s worst nightmare,” James jokes, leading Cynthia toward the campanile.

  They have to wait a while; the elevator can hold only a few people at a time. Other tourists mill about, checking their cameras and conversing in a variety of American accents.

  A few minutes later, they are atop the bell tower, looking down upon the city. The domes of the basilica remind her of women in hoop skirts, preparing for a ball. On the other side, she sees a less picturesque view of Venice—an endless cluster of red-tiled roofs stretching toward the horizon.

  They stand side by side, looking out over the piazza, James’s face once again lost behind his camera. A few large clouds hover in the distance, but otherwise the sky is a pristine baby blue, the horizon miles away. From this height, everything is brought into sharp perspective—the pattern of white lines on the pavement of the piazza, even the route back to the train station; it all seems so simple.

  She hears the click of the camera and James lowers it from his eye. His arm brushes against hers as tourists scuffle behind them in pursuit of their own idea of the perfect photo op. On the far side of the piazza, a gold awning ruffles delicately above the table where they had sat in the morning. The wind is brisker up here, bracing. Instinctively, she leans in and James rests his arm on her shoulder to lend her warmth.

  * * *

  Cynthia’s right: Venice is haunted. No matter where he goes, he can’t escape the ghosts. Every part of the city arouses déjà vu: he’s seen it all before, through Paul’s eyes. Paul lived here for a year, researching his dissertation. Venice is a veritable treasure trove for the art historian.

  There are no surprises left; everything is exactly as Paul described it. The long black gondolas, stroked along the water by gorgeous men in tight striped shirts. The narrow, shadowy canals slicing their crooked paths through the city. The sepia and gray buildings, crumbling piecemeal but still refusing to fall, refusing to surrender to time.

  Cynthia has toured him most of the way up the peninsula with her nose in a Michelin guide, peeking out only when one of the standard sights comes into view. Rome zipped by, a jumble of fallen arches around the Colosseum, and Florence was little more than one museum or church after another. Only in Milan did she slow down the pace: shopping couldn’t be rushed. He’s grateful they’ve saved Venice for last. Compared to ancient Rome, Renaissance Florence, and depressingly modern Milan, Venice belongs to no particular age. It defies history at every turn, as it defies road maps and the laws of urban planning. Venice is timeless.

  Heady from the chill and the view from the campanile, they emerge into the square, not quite sure where they’re going. Cynthia’s arm is locked inside his, their footsteps matched evenly, like those of languid soldiers sleepwalking in formation. To the hundreds of strangers passing through the piazza, they probably look like just another couple on a romantic stroll.

  Cynthia hasn’t mentioned Glenn in weeks. Even at the time of the breakup, months ago now, she didn’t say much, and he hadn’t wanted to push. The end was actually the only part of the relationship he wasn’t in on: she had told him every last detail when she first developed her interest in Glenn, seeking his advice for how to break the ice; later, James received late-night phone calls with intimate descriptions of each date immediately after she got home; and he was her primary confidant for every bump and turn in the relationship. But she seemed to want to keep the end to herself, as if the pain were her own exclusive property, as if pain could not be shared.

  “It’s over,” she announced abruptly one midnight. Whenever the phone rings after eleven, James’s first thought is death, so her choice of phrase was particularly upsetting. He asked her to clarify, visions of funerals hobbling through his still half-asleep mind.

  “Glenn,” she said simply. “We broke up.” He asked for details, but none were forthcoming. She changed the subject almost immediately. He had the feeling this was just an informational sound bite, like an on-the-hour TV news report. “Have you ever been to Italy?” she asked.

  And now, two months later, they’re lost in the labyrinth of Venice.

  “How about that drink?” he says, gesturing toward a café beside the Grand Canal. Miraculously, they’ve made their way this far without ever glancing at the map. Maybe, he thinks suddenly, that’s the secret.

  She nods silently, attempting a smile, and follows him to a table near the water. Twilight has begun to fall and the café is lit by a series of tiny colored lamps, whose reflection dances on the waves.

  “Still hate Venice?” he asks once they’ve settled down with their drinks.

  She smiles, running a hand slowly through her hair. “I never hated Venice. It’s just—” she seems to be searching for the word—“a very moody place.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” His mouth twists around the bitter Campari; it’s definitely an acquired taste, and after two weeks, he still hasn’t managed it. Reluctantly, he sets the glass back down on the table. The tabletop is stained with a series of rings, all identical in size. He wonders how many cups and glasses it took to make all these marks. How many people have sat here before them today? He’s settled his own glass in at least five different spots already; the pattern resembles a lopsided Olympic flag.

  They’re silent for a long moment, lulled by the rhythm of the water that slaps gently against the moorings below. Cynthia’s voice finally drips out in a whisper, as if she’s really speaking to herself. “I thought I was over him.”

  “Glenn?”

  One elbow resting on the tabletop, she toys with her bangs. Clearly, she isn’t used to her new haircut. She said at first that it made her feel naked to have so much of her face exposed. “Yeah. What was it, six months? That’s not very long to know someone. Why did it seem so important?”

  James settles back in his chair. The Campari is out of reach now—just as well. “You never know what’s going to be important,” he says. “Sometimes you just feel it.”

  She sighs loudly and turns her eyes toward the canal. “Oh James, why are men such shits? Why do they always do this to me?”

  “Why do you let them?”

  She continues to stare out at the water; he can see only half of her cynical smile. “
Hope, I suppose. I keep holding out for the one guy who’s going to be different.”

  “How close have you come?”

  She laughs. “What do you think? Just one long string of jerks, from ninth grade to now.” She faces him again and takes a long sip of her drink. “I just keep finding them—or they find me. As soon as one walks away the next one shows up. I don’t even have to try.”

  “Poor baby.”

  “So how do you manage?” she asks.

  “I thought you had that all figured out. One-night stands, right? The back rooms of tacky bars?” There’s a sudden rumble as a vaporetto starts up behind her and powers its way along the canal. As it passes, he sees people standing on deck, luggage piled defensively around them, their hair thrashing in the wind.

  “I never thought that,” Cynthia says, peering at him beneath a furrowed brow.

  “You never asked before.”

  “I know. I guess—”

  “It makes you uncomfortable.” He smiles and crosses his legs, ankle to knee. “It’s okay. Most people seem to feel that way. Even these days.”

  She’s clutching her glass by the base, like a protective talisman. “So?”

  “What, the history of my love life? Cynthia, believe me, if I were in love, discretion would be the last thing on my mind. You would already know every gory detail. The fact is, I haven’t been in love since—” He lets his voice trail off, surprised to find that he doesn’t want to be in this conversation after all.

  “Craig?”

  Of course, she knew Craig. There were no secrets in those days. “Just dates since then,” he says after a moment, long enough for the name to fall and drown in the water beside them, “an occasional almost-relationship. But I don’t really want more than that now. I’m just trying to enjoy life.”

  It’s his turn to look away, into the water that seems to be turning black in the encroaching darkness. Paul wanted his ashes emptied into the Grand Canal; he had to settle for the Hudson.