by Diana Cachey
“Go to Venice,” whispered Barbara aloud to no one. In her cold meditation room, in the dead of winter, she nodded back her consent.
**
Flights, hotels, apartments. Clothes, jewelry, shoes. Check, check, check. She’d tried on sweaters, jeans, jackets, surveyed each item to determine the most Italian look and picked only the most flattering combinations. She lined up toiletries, stockings, scarves, lingerie and make-up, but not too much, she’d buy better stuff in Italy. Cat sitters were called to assess availability and suitability. Processed food was sneered at in grocery stores for savoring of fresh Venetian produce. The voluntary time-off she scoffed at months earlier when offered it, turned out to be a perk, not a temporary discharge due to shortage of work.
For Barbara, getting to Venice was easy. Finding ghosts in Venice? Harder. Fetching Louisa and releasing Matteo’s grip?
Impossibile.
Louisa would scheme and stick until everyone else became unglued. If ghosts were to be found, Louisa would find them. Barbara hadn’t stopped Louisa from going to Venice so how would she get her home? Investigate the ghosts, disprove their existence?
Barbara imagined her own escape into those Venetian palaces, their moldy facades toppling into canals. Those quiet evenings with no traffic, strolling along sea water, visiting quaint bars or vegetable markets that hugged tiny bridges. Foggy thoughts of Venice led Barbara to recall how Louisa had written her about a fall, not into the arms of Matteo, but into a canal. She’d slipped on the algae-coated steps leading into a traghetto that ferries passengers across the Grand Canal and the only gondolas still in regular use by Venetians. This traghettowas her daily ride to work, so exposed algae didn’t concern her. Yet, one day she’d been unable to maintain her balance long enough to avoid the dive. She’d fallen into the drink, straight out of the helpful hand of the gondolier, with her expensive Italian boots, cell phone and all.
“Venetians rallied so fast,” she’d written to Barbara.“thatmy shoulders barely touched the water when they lifted me out of the canal as easily as a floating plastic bag.” Her Venetian rescuers assured Louisa that all self-respecting residents fell into canals at some point in their lives. She’d been baptized, Venetian-style.
The young gondolier, feeling somewhat responsible for not holding her securely enough, made up for it by embracing her tightly. With both arms, he enveloped Louisa in his goose down parka and rubbed her wet body vigorously and lovingly.
Barbara smiled as she sensed Louisa’s presence deep in her heart, thousands of miles across the pond--as was the Atlantic Ocean referred to by jet-setters like Louisa.
Don’t fall in again, dear one, Barbara quietly prayed, until I get there.
She tried sending those words to Louisa, knowing not whether they fell onto her sister’s distant ears.
**
Tre (3) Prada
The San Marco bell towered behind Louisa during the brief walk to Rialto. With enough time for memories of Matteo to distract her, she almost missed the cafe, another cafe, the one where the medical examiner had asked her to meet him.
Where is this place anyway?
As usual in Venice, the minute she asked herself this, she was no longer lost and was standing in front of it. She smelled it. The sweet aroma of freshly baked croissants drifted out of the cafe and mingled with the pungent aroma of strong coffee. Inside, she ordered brioche, as they called croissants in Venice, then glanced around the room.
Prada. The single most alluring thing about him. A small red label on a grey ribbed knit wool hat. A design label that caused her to listen more closely to the sound of his soft, melodic voice. Especially the sweetness in it and the harmonic words he used.
Compelled to look closer at him, she eyed his blue wool sweater, obviously expensive and nicely finished, with a silk shirt collar standing up underneath it around his neck. From wealth, concluded Louisa. Nothing wrong with that.
Indeed everything was right about that. Wasn’t it always right, when a man had money? This man with money stood casually confident with half-grown beard, dark curly hair and pale blue eyes. Wearing Prada.
“Nice,” she mumbled softly. Nonetheless she was heard by others nearby, which was fine because if you want an Italian to admire you, you make it obvious that you admired him first. You stare directly at him, being certain to make eye contact. Then, when he sees you staring, you hold the stare. In Venice, the stare produced instant results. Instant sex in a bottle.
She didn’t have time for sex. She didn’t stare. She avoided eye contact. Still he magnetized her with some peculiar pull. Strong sensations flowed from him. She could see it. She saw flecks of gold between them. He saw it too, she noticed him look at the flecks then shake his head. As he shook, the gold burst apart and his pull relaxed from her.
She considered moving away from the Prada man and closer to the fire, more to see if he would follow than to elude him. She moved, he followed.
Ah, the wonderful ease of snagging a man in Venice, thought Louisa when the handsome stranger did indeed lean towards her.
However, her accumulated confidence shattered and was destroyed by his first words to her,“I knew you were American.”
These harsh words spoken in English from the mouth of this pretty Prada boy crushed her. How did he know for sure she was American? Louisa possessed the striking features, the deep-set green eyes, full-lips and necessary bump on the nose, of her Italian heritage. She’d also dressed to emphasize her Mediterranean curves and head to toe in designer threads--that is, the latest fashion, not“last year American” as her Venetian friend had described Louisa’s style when she arrived in Venice. To be sure, Louisa wore an ensemble that her Venetian gal pal had approved, when she dragged her into the nearest boutique to re-outfit her suitably in tight, somewhat revealing and expensive clothes. In the shop that day, her fashion-police friend had even looked at Louisa and said,“Who is dis woman? Everyone is staring at you. Sono gelosa,(I am jealous.)” Louisa herself had done a double-take and thought, oh I wish I could look like that, beautifully Italian, before realizing she was looking at her own made-over reflection.
For the man wearing Prada to say she looked American, well, it made her cringe.
Seeing her expression prompted him to correct himself.“Excuse my English. I think that was not correct. I mean to say I knew you were American who I am to meet here today.” As he explained this, he again left out the word "the" because he could not properly pronounce the sound of an English th, a sound not found in the Italian language. Probably the reason he hadn’t used it the first time.
Louisa had forgiven him and thought, oh I’m definitely the American you are supposed to meet today, you rich, sexy Venetian. She almost said it out loud too. Instead, she laughed and offered her hand, hoping the attraction was mutual.
“I’m Louisa. Mangotti. An Italian surname, but I’m American,” she said.“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”
“Massimo Ricco,” he said and nodded as they shook hands. His hands. So soft, so strong, so lingering. She couldn’t help but see a gleam in his eyes during his brief scan of her figure.
In such a manner as to infer that his scan of her figure was to what she was responding, she said,“I see that you are Italian.”
“Venetian,” he corrected. Meaning not just another Italian or even one from another northern city -- for it was common knowledge that Northern Italians sometimes thought they were superior to other Italians, you know, like ones from the South. No, not an Italian nor a northerner, but a Venetian, superior to all other Italians. Superior for at least hundreds of years due to Venice’s position, power, wealth, beauty and, as the once great republic, its status as the most powerful merchant state in the world. As if sensing that she was on the right track in deciphering his meaning, he said,“Venezia e piu bella, no?”
“Si,” agreed Louisa, for she, like many people including Italians, thought Venice was the most beautiful city, one whose mystique goes back ages, ins
piring poets, composers, painters. A museum itself, the city seems to topple into a lagoon as it rises from marsh. It is filled with ornate palaces, priceless paintings, hand-blown glass, carved furniture. It is embellished with angels, gargoyles, birds, crucifixes, flowers and saints, festooned with endless bas-reliefs and gilded-mosaics. Venice’s unrivaled beauty then ripples out in endless reflections upon water, which heightens its appeal and distinguishes it from other great cities.
“I was born here,” he added, meaning better than other inhabitants, ones who were not bred and born in Venice. She remembered Matteo often said of Venetian blood,“It is the top.” Matteo, of course, being also pure Venetian.
Ah Matteo. In the way that Matteo was rough, bad, deceptive, Massimo was clean, pristine, true. Equally sexy, equally Venetian.
“I hope you understand,it is not possible to give you information of deaths. You ask me on phone,” said Massimo. He then seemed to stumble for an English word, but finally said,“Of our investigation.”
What Louisa heard him say and saw in his eyes was“I find you very attractive and you find me attractive too. Let’s give each other an excuse to meet again. To discuss our investigation.”
“Oh I see,” she replied in such a manner as he could guess what she really heard him say and that she was agreeable to whatever he wanted. He didn’t try to hide his interest in how provocatively she spoke those three words.
“Oh you see,” he said in the same provocative way.“You are a lawyer and you’re helping out our department with the Interpol translations and other matters and you understand? Of course, you do."
Yet, Massimo knew Louisa didn’t understand at all. Not one bit. Despite an overwhelming attraction to her, he would need to be very careful with this one, clever and inquisitive. Any hint that he didn’t want her snooping around would fuel her curiosity about the case, about him. He knew she liked what she saw of him, his physique, his style, his chiseled Venetian good looks.
But she didn’t understand. She didn’t know the real Massimo.
That morning at his private estate on the barely inhabited island of Vignole, Massimo had meticulously pieced together his latest picture, glueingseeds, creating detailed scenes. At age five, he developed a unique and sometimes bizarre fascination, a strange hobby of roaming the fields and gardens behind his grandfather’s house on Vignole to look for seeds, to create pictures he knew he could never show to anyone. Massimo planted and plucked vegetables and flowers but he always picked and spilled their fresh seeds into sacks for his projects. By age fourteen he had amassed thousands of such pictures, his seed pictures, which collected dust in his tiny boathouse, which no one else could find. Mostly the pictures showed sadness and death and sex.
Massimo’s obsession with death began after his parents and grandmother died in an alleged boating accident. Only his grandfather, his nonno, remained alive to comfort him. In his own grief-stricken life, papa Vito never asked why Massimo picked the seeds nor did he seem to care that the young boy spent so many hours in the remote boat shed.
Ten years after the death of his parents and grandmother, his dear Vito washed up on a trash-strewn beach on VignoleIsland. The police department declared Vito’s death an accidental drowning. Massimo never accepted it, nor any of these four deaths, as accidents. For his father and grandfather, like all Venetians, were skilled sailors, rowers, and swimmers who would not drown or wreck a boat. He resented and suspected the police involved in the investigation, who knew well the skill with which any member of his family could captain a boat, large or small. The conspiracy of silence won again.
Then Massimo inherited the family estate from his nonno at age fifteen and it negated the need for Massimo to ever have to work, for the rest of his life. It left him wealthy beyond all measure, even for a long-standing Venetian family like his, but it also left him with no other purpose and no one left to comfort him in his grief and anger. His isolation complete, he compulsively picked more seeds, glued them together, created mosaics, as he called them, which grew darker and more grotesque.
His obsession with death began with the loss of his parents and his grandmother, his nonna. It festered with the demise of his nonno. It fueled other obsessions. Creating seed pictures had much in common with dissection. To his great satisfaction, at age sixteen, he was accepted into a prestigious Italian university, where he received an advanced degree in Anatomy. He remained alone with his fears and science. Live humans long ago lost their appeal as did companionship and love. After he studied medicine and law, he became driven by the need to find justice for those who could only speak through their corpses. Holding a still hand, tweezing small areas and gluing and stitching others proved valuable in a current career as medico legale. He dissected these silent victims with the utmost care and respect, searching for answers where no one else could or would look. For he knew something about the criminals, the obsessed ones, that very few knew or would ever know. He knew what drove them.
“What can you tell me about the deaths of the glassmakers, Dottore?” Louisa asked, seeing something distant in his eyes, something dark.
“Not too much,” he said blandly,“no more than you read in the paper and you can read Italian, Dottoressa Mangotti,” he stated, not asking.
“I’m learning to read more Italian, yes, and call me Louisa,” she said but pride in her title and language skills bubbled up.
“Louisa. I know you are working with our department in the translation and organization of data for the international crime agencies. It is the only reason I agreed to meet with you. Yes, I know you not only read Italian but speakit fluently and that you know Venetian as well,” he said. He tried to say it in a formal tone but Louisa could see in his eyes that the thought of an American blonde speaking Venetian turned him on.“Now, you are intelligent and maybe trying to be help to us so I will tell you this, we are working on this case and it involves you not.”
He was no longer interested in her sexually and hid something that even his sex-drive wouldn’t allow to surface. Until now, Louisa decided.
“I don’t think so,” Massimo said, which interrupted her thoughts and she wondered if he was reading them.
“Dottore,” she began.
“Please call me Massimo,” he said as he bowed his head.
“Massimo. I think you will find it does involve me although it may not appear that way to you now.”
“Splainme,” he said. He mispronounced the word explain. His head tilted, not understanding the paradoxical statement Louisa had made.
Louisa had come to learn that paradoxes, satire and jokes often got lost in translation. She’d also come to learn that language ambiguities could be used to an advantage.
“I will explain it to you,” Louisa promised,“but not today.” Although she knew very little about the victims or their deaths, she planned to get more information in her usual determined way. Soon. From Matteo or his friends or both. Or from anyone she could persuade to reveal it.
She looked up and saw the half-smile on Massimo’s face, almost as if he were giving her the go ahead in her plans to question Matteo and others about the case.
“When you bring information to me about these deaths,” he said,“then I will bring information to you. Not before.” Those were the same words that Louisa had planned to say to him next.
Louisa became all business-like in stiff body language but managed to flirt with her eyes.“Fair enough,” she said and she handed him her business card. She turned to leave before he could beat her to that too. Damn, I’m good, she thought as she departed.
“Not as good as me,” she thought she heard him say but she saw that his mouth was full, drinking coffee, when she heard it.
**
Outside the bar, she saw Matteo huddled near the window, waiting.
“You’re following me?” Louisa asked.“How did you get here? How did you find me?” She picked up her pace. More than the jealous-type, he could be violent.
“I’m Venetian.
We know everything,” he replied. He put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, took a long puff then blew smoke at her in a sensual, almost coy, way.
“Oh you know? Everywhere I go?” she said although she believed it was true. Venetians watched out windows onto canals, campos and streets. They knew the bars each other frequented, the people each associated with and seemed to appear like mist in the maze-like city to magically find you around odd corners.
He nodded affirmatively, more like he was gracing her with a new truth than agreeing with her.“We see you when you don’t see us.”
“That may be true but I am not in Venice for you, Matteo.” she said.“I have moved on from our, our...”
“Our what? Our love?”
“Yes,” she said. Then she shook her head.“No. Not our love. Our affair.”
“No, my darling, it is not possible to leave our love,” he said. He pronounced it loave and drug out the word. He raised his chin and turned his long neck to her, his neck, tanned even in the winter from riding in boats and being outside. It looked as if he were presenting his neck to her. To kiss.
And kiss. And kiss. Louisa body shook. She tried to hide it and gasped for air.
His body shook and his lungs grabbed for air too. He met her eyes and didn’t try to hide his own breathlessness or to apologize for it. Instead he perched his lips and gazed at her figure, then moved in and devoured her lips with his own. They both sighed as blood pumped through their loins and flushed their faces. Just like that, they both saw it, the fantasy. A frenzy of passion, not in bed or on a boat, but right there on the curb.
She tried to leave, but he stepped in her way.“What were you doing with, that, that,” he paused as if looking for an unflattering word or could even end the sentence right there.“That man,” he finally said in a brash tone. He grabbed her neck from behind, pulled her close and pressed his lips on her ear.“You,” he paused again this time for emphasis,“are a candlein the wind.”
