Ten minutes in Venice and I was already lost.
I walked out of the station and down the gray steps leading to the Grand Canal, then stopped in my tracks.
Not until that moment did it really hit me that I was in a city that had rivers instead of streets and boats instead of cars. There were intersections, alleyways, and bridges with gondolas tied up to them. Up above the half-submerged doorways and steps I saw ancient stone hotels and ruined palaces sinking into the lagoon. Fog hung over the surface, seagulls dipping and flicking up the waterway, their bellies glinting white and then disappearing in the dark.
I bought a twenty-four-hour pass for the vaporetto, got on the next boat, and called Norrie.
“Dude,” he said, “whuh-what happened to you? We thought we luh-lost you for good.”
“I’m fine. I just lost you guys at the train station.”
“Whuh-Where are you now?”
“The Grand Canal.” I was standing on the deck of a vaporetto with my bag and my guitar case, heading down the canal. Overhead, high gothic arches and crumbling statuary moved slowly past on either side, lit from within like a Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Define lame: I was in Venice, and all I could think of was Disney World. “I’ll meet you at the hotel.”
“Yuh-You buh-better. Linus is fuh-freaking out.”
“Tell him to calm down. I’ll be there in an hour or so.”
“It’s the Puh-Pensione Guerrato,” he said, “by the Ruh-Rialto Bridge.”
“Got it.”
“Whuh-What are you duh-doing?”
“Seeing the sights.”
“It’s luh-like ten o’clock at nuh-night!”
“Relax, okay? I’ll catch up to you later.”
Norrie fell quiet for just a second, and when he spoke again, there was no trace of a stutter in his voice.
“You’re going to look for her, aren’t you?”
I drew in a breath. I don’t know whether it was the unwavering certainty in his voice or just that we’d been friends for so long, but I knew instantly that I couldn’t lie to him.
“Maybe.”
He made an exasperated lip-fart. “Whuh-What about Puh-Paula?”
“What about her?” my answer came back, probably too quickly. “It’s not like I’m cheating on her. I probably won’t even find Gobi anyway, but if I do, we’ll have a cup of coffee, catch up for a few minutes, and that’s it.”
“Buh-Bullshit.”
“Hey, believe what you want.”
“Thuh-This is a ruh-really buh-bad idea.”
I took in a breath and let it out. “Yeah. I know.”
“I nuh-know you know,” Norrie said miserably. “Juh-Just like I know yuh-you’re going to duh-do it anyway.” He was silent again for a moment. “Shit. At least tuh-tell her wuh-we said hello.” Then, with more conviction: “And duh-don’t stuh-stay out all nuh-night! Wuh-We’ve got a gig tomorrow!”
“Okay,” I said, and hung up.
Up ahead I saw what looked like the open lagoon, the boat nudging its way up to the San Marco stop. On the shore, two guys in long dark coats and immaculate pointy-toed leather shoes were smoking and sipping espressos out of paper cups by the dock.
“Excuse me.” My voice came out froggy and hoarse, like I was getting a cold. “I’m looking for Harry’s Bar.”
“Like Hemingway, si?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I guess.”
The first man smiled and said something, and they both laughed.
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Italian.”
“He said that even an idiot American could find that place from here,” the other man said, and as they turned and started walking away, I saw the sign behind them in the window, in art deco letters: HARRY’S BAR.
Now that it was right in front of me, I wasn’t sure that I was ready to go in. I walked around the corner to the side of the building that faced the canal. Standing on my tiptoes, I could just see inside, where a group of fashionably dressed patrons were sitting at the bar.
This was it.
A voice in my head whispered, Do you really want to do this?
But I was already walking inside.
7. “Waiting for Somebody” — Paul Westerberg
Harry’s was a long yellow room, warm and dry, with dark wooden tables glowing beneath wall sconces and an old metal fan in the corner. The bar itself was only long enough for the half-dozen patrons that I’d seen through the window, gathered together talking and laughing as if they had known one another all their lives. The bartender was wearing a pressed white tuxedo jacket. When I walked in, he didn’t say anything, just gazed at my wet jeans and windbreaker, and the guitar case at my feet.
“Can I get a Mountain Dew or something?”
“Mountain… Do?”
“Or a Coke?”
A sigh. “Si, Coke.”
I sat down at the end of the bar next to a glass cabinet of souvenirs for sale and sipped my ten-euro Coke, staring at the door. I didn’t know what I was doing here.
Gobi and I had talked about Harry’s Bar back in New York, as some fantasy rendezvous point in a future that neither one of us had ever expected would be real. Now that I was actually here, though, things seemed different, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how it would be if she really did show up. What if the night that we’d spent together had been a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, a potent but irreproducible mixture of hormones and gunpowder, never to be repeated? What would we say to each other-would there even be anything to say?
“Signori?”
I jumped and looked up from my drink, and realized the bartender was staring at me.
“We are closing for the night.”
I looked at the clock over the bar. It was five to eleven. That seemed early, but I saw that the other patrons had left or were putting on their coats and scarves, paying their tabs, saying goodbye, heading out into the cold Venetian night.
“Can I just hang out here a few more minutes?” I asked.
He sighed. “Si.”
I sat while the waiters wiped down the tables, put away glasses, and started turning off the lights around me, click, click, click. By now the bar had emptied out entirely. The bartender reappeared in front of me wearing his own coat, his face very serious now.
“Signori, I am sorry, but we must close.”
“Okay.” I got out my wallet, dug out the emergency Visa card, and paid the tab. “Thank you.”
“Prego.” The waiter let me out and locked the door behind me.
I stepped out. The rain was falling harder now, the wind gusting it straight into my face, and there was no one on the street in front of the canal. I thought about what I’d read about Venice sinking. Everywhere I looked, the lagoon was lapping up the steps and filling the doorways. Up ahead, I saw two men-the same ones in suits, smoking, that I’d talked to before-emerge out in front of me as if they’d been there waiting for me the whole time.
“So you found it,” one of them said.
“What?”
“Your little tourist trap.”
I turned and started walking in the other direction, and another man with a shaved head appeared in front of me, blocking my way, his gaze shifting up to the two behind my back. The bald one was young, wearing jeans and a shiny, puffy black coat that seemed like it was stitched together out of designer garbage bags. A second later I felt something hard and cold jab up against the back of my neck. Over my shoulder I could smell garlic and cigarettes mixed with overpowering cologne. One hand grabbed my shoulder, slamming me facefirst into the alley wall hard enough that I heard my incisors scrape off the concrete before I hit the ground. Pain burst through the left side of my face and I tasted blood, salty and fresh, as fingers rifled my back pocket, yanking out my wallet.
“Just take whatever you want,” I said, my tongue flicking off my newly chipped tooth. “Just-”
“Where is she?”
“What?” I said. “Who?”
Then one of the men
screamed.
All at once I heard feet scuffling above me and a series of quick, brutal thumps, like a glove stuffed with pennies smacking into flesh. Someone grunted, staggered, fell, and footsteps went slapping fast up the alley, through the puddles, and then there was no sound except for the rain.
“I see you have still not learned to fight.”
I looked up.
Gobi was standing in the alley in front of me, hands on her hips, with two of the men sprawled at her feet. For a second I didn’t know if what I was seeing was real or just a delayed result of head trauma.
She was wearing a short leather jacket with lots of buckles, and some kind of stretchy black micro-skirt, torn black stockings, and big chunky shitkicker boots. Her hair was dyed and chopped above the shoulders.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“Perry.” She shook her head. “You do not look so good.”
“Yeah, well, I could’ve used you…”-I stopped and coughed hard, looked at my hand, and saw a little spatter of scarlet across my knuckles-“like, about twenty seconds earlier?”
“So use me now.” She extended one hand and I took it, lifting myself up. I was still getting my balance when she leaned forward, catching me in her arms, and I saw the little white scar across her neck, and all the rest of it came back from there.
8. “Never Let Me Down Again” — Depeche Mode
We crossed a dark bridge to the Centurion Palace Hotel. It was a sleek slice of L.A.-style architecture built inside what looked like a five-hundred-year-old palace on the opposite side of the canal, and to get inside we had to cross a wide courtyard of perfectly oval stones that crunched under our feet as we walked over them. She led me into a high-domed lobby with a chandelier made of curved glass tubes and long sofas arranged across the wide marble floor. From the concierge desk I saw a pair of high-cheekboned faces, incurious and androgynous, peering back at us from a liquid cloud of blue light.
“Lift is this way,” she said. “Follow me.”
I stepped into the brushed chrome elevator, feeling it rise smoothly upward, transporting us to some upper floor. There, Gobi kept me walking forward down the silent corridor. She swiped her keycard and we entered her suite, a series of rooms, one flowing into the next, opening out toward a balcony overlooking the canal. I saw a bottle of champagne on ice in front of the flat-screen TV, the counter scattered with her BlackBerry, jewelry, a jumbled pile of euros and foreign coins, her passport and lipstick.
“Take off your clothes.”
“What?”
“You are freezing with the cold.”
“Look, I should probably tell you something.” I managed to get the windbreaker off, turning one of the sleeves inside out as I pulled my arm free, then reached down to unbutton my pants. “Do you mind looking the other way?”
She cocked one eyebrow, then turned to face the wall as I peeled off my jeans, then my socks, and finally my T-shirt. “I’m involved with somebody. She’s back in the States.”
Gobi didn’t say anything, just pointed in the opposite direction. “Shower is through there.”
The bathroom was a green marble grotto. My reflection stared back at me from a full-length mirror, a skinny, pale American kid with a face that looked like two pounds of Genoa sausage. I kicked off my boxers and stepped into the shower. By now my teeth were chattering and it took me a moment to figure out the faucets, but once I did, the shower head rewarded me with an oscillating spray of hot needles that made my whole body realize that it wasn’t dead after all. Maybe things weren’t as bad as I thought. I breathed in steam, scrubbed myself twice, and stood there until the hot water started to go cold. After what felt like a long time, I stepped out and found a fluffy hotel bathrobe waiting on the back of the door. I was actually starting to feel human again.
“This is a really nice place,” I said, stepping out of the steam. “How can you afford a place like this?” No answer. “Gobi?”
A flicker of motion in one of the mirrors. “Over here.”
“I-oh.”
When she stepped out from behind the closet door, I saw that she’d slipped off the leather jacket. The top underneath it was lacy and black, with shiny thin straps that stretched across her clavicles.
“What are you looking at?”
“Just-your clavicles. You have really nice ones.”
“How are you with zippers?”
“Excuse me?”
She turned her back to me, tilted her head forward, and lifted up her hair from the back of her neck. “It’s stuck.”
“I told you I had a girlfriend, right?”
“I am only asking you to do my zipper.”
“Right.” The zipper slipped down easily. “Don’t you want to know what I’m doing in Venice?”
“No.”
“I’m touring with Inchworm, and-”
She turned around and kissed me, mouth open, tongue flicking up and in as her hands slipped into the bathrobe. I could taste the dry fruity flavor of champagne she’d just been drinking, and something almost bitter, like dark espresso beans or black licorice. From outside I could hear music and faint laughter down the canal. I drew back, catching my breath.
“Her name’s Paula,” I said. “She’s really cool. You’d like her.”
A smoky chuckle and she muttered something in Lithuanian.
“What?”
“I called you a stupid ass.”
“Why?”
“Is what you call a man who has a girl in his bed and still makes small talk.”
“We’re not in b-”
She pressed her palms against my chest and pushed me backwards onto the mattress, knocking the pillows aside, rolling over the blankets and up against the headboard, where I was pinned as she straddled me.
“Okay, look, this isn’t cool.” The harder I tried to sit up, the harder she pushed back. “I don’t remember you being so-” I tried to think of another word for aggressive, but all of a sudden my word-finding ability seemed to have taken a serious hit to the word-place, whatever it was called. Randomly I noticed a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk in the corner of the room that looked like it cost about a million dollars, and then Gobi shifted her hips slightly on top of me and I forgot all about the steamer trunk and the million dollars it must have cost.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine…?” My voice went up at the end, sounding like one of the Chipmunks’. I put my hands behind me and tried to pull myself free, but her knees had pinned the bathrobe to the mattress. “I’m just kinda naked under this thing?”
“Perry.”
“What?”
“I need your help.”
I looked into her eyes. “You need me?”
“I am not joking.”
“Sure,” I said, “whatever I can do.”
And then the Louis Vuitton trunk started to move.
9. “Run (I’m a Natural Disaster)” — Gnarls Barkley
I sat up fast, looking around so quickly that I felt my neck pop.
“Wait-” I stared back at the steamer trunk, where something was definitely thumping around inside. “Is there somebody in that thing?”
Gobi sighed and climbed off me, sliding from the bed in one graceful move. With the resigned air of a woman going about some onerous but necessary task, she opened the drawer of the nightstand next to the bed and pulled out a pistol, screwing the silencer onto the barrel as she walked over to the trunk.
“Wait, what is that? What are you doing?”
Gobi pointed the gun at the steamer trunk and pulled the trigger. The silenced gunshots weren’t particularly loud-three metallic champagne corks-and whatever was inside gave a shuddering howl and collapsed to the bottom with a thump. In the frozen moment of realization, I saw smoke drifting out of the bullet holes in the trunk, uncurling like ghostly pigtails in the tastefully recessed lighting.
I floundered off the bed and across the room to my wet pile of clothes, the bathrobe flopping open
as I tried to get backwards to the door. Behind me, Gobi’s voice was quiet and stern.
“Perry.”
“What?”
“I told you that I need your help.”
“Yeah, well, dead bodies are kind of a deal-breaker for me in that department.”
That was when the pounding started outside the door.
10. “Police and Thieves” — The Clash
“Who is that?” I was standing in the corner by the door, trying to put my jeans back on, but they were too wet and I couldn’t even get one foot through the leg hole. I finally just gave up and tied the bathrobe tight around my waist, all too aware that I was naked underneath it. “What the hell is going on?”
“This way.” Gobi was dragging the trunk away from the wall with one hand, holding the pistol in the other. “Come on.”
“There’s a person in there!”
“Was, yes. Is dead person now.”
“No. No-I’m not-”
Wham-wham-wham! Heavy, authoritative fists hammered louder on the door of the suite, seeming to make the air shake around us. I stumbled forward, my spine suddenly electrified inside me, shooting down from the base of my brain all the way to wherever humans’ vestigial tail had dropped off two million years ago. Right now I was ready to dive back into the primordial ooze and take my chances with the single-celled organisms-maybe they had the right idea, staying where they were.
Voices from outside, angry, urgent-soldiers or cops, it sounded like, shouting in Italian.
“Oh, shit, who’s that?”
“Carabinieri, probably.”
“Carbon who?”
“I will explain to you later if we are still alive,” she said. “Right now, you need to… How do you say it? Hold up your end?”
Perry's killer playlist ps-2 Page 3
