by Diana Cachey
Like James himself, Louisa sat alone, with the waterside life and lagoon spread before her below. Although she couldn’t afford a room with the lagoon view that James’ described, she sat as close to the side window as she could to be able to see passing tourists and peek at the San Giorgio tower. A row of gondole, their black silhouettes and royal blue covers bouncing gracefully, framed the shore leading into the lagoon.
Her mind drifted to an earlier century, one which James described, and she read about his view of the lagoon:
I had rooms on the Riva Sciaboni, at the top of a house near the passage leading off to San Zaccaria; the waterside life, the wondrous lagoon spread before me, and the ceaseless human chatter of Venice came in my windows, to which I seem to myself to have been constantly driven, in the fruitless fidget of composition, as if to see whether, out in the blue channel, the ship of some right suggestion, of some better phrase, of the next happy twist of my subject, the next true touch for my canvas mightn’t come into sight.
She laid her frozen, sore body down on the plush Danieli mattress. She heard the sounds of Venice clamoring outside her window. Water sloshing on the shore, public boats banging into the docks, the voices of gondoliers calling to tourists, pots and pans clanking in restaurants and the squawks of seagulls and clings of spoons on saucers.
In the soft bed with her computer on her lap, she found Rebecca online. She wanted to chat with her and thank her for the hotel idea. But mostly, Louisa intended to brag her way out of depression.
L: OMG it’s wonderful & just what u wanted 4me! 5 stars 4u. Pharmacy @ corner.
R: Pic u sent of lagoon view from bfast terrace wonderful. Glad u r loving the Danieli. I swear the plan came from above.
L: Bfast on the terrace overlooking lagoon. I can deal.
R: Weather forecast dire. Don’t overdo.
L: Pharm dottoressa’s eyes got big as saucers when I said I had the flu. Guess they don’t throw that word around like we do in USA?
R: Only bright spot? Maybe get a little snow? Cld b beautiful to watch if you’re sitting in lobby w/ high tea goodies.
L: Their snow looks like someone spit flakes of crystal meth. Yet freezes boats, bridges, people 4hrs. Invisible menace in Venice.
R: U there alone? Where’s Barbie?
L: Post coitus, we hope.
R: Barbie?
L: Barbie succumbed. Venice sent a hottie wearing Prada 2rub his fine hands over every inch of her. By now, he’s played piano w/ her body & is lapping up her mind.
R: Post coitus guaranteed. Maybe Rouge & Tom can come visit the Danieli for post coitus high tea? I do wonder if they have good heating @ apt I rented.
L: Bring fur, wear inside.
R: Perhaps I give more thought to idea of going as Cleopatra 4Carnival? Instead b Russian Czarina replete w/ fur, ermine capes & heavy velvet gowns.
L: If I had a tailor & Danieli money to throw around, I’d build that costume 2day. Too expensive.
R: Cleo most definitely will b wrapped in fur. Got a velvet gown idea, u know Cleo did go 2Rome, as history recorded. I heard it does snow in Rome every 100 yrs or so. Like now.
L: Mayb thrift store has velvet something-something poor Louisa can wear 4Carnival 2save her winter sojourn.
R: Cheaper idea might b 2buy silk underwear like 4skiing 2layer.
L: 4get that big dept store. It’s. Very. Far. Away. Plus shops only have spring collection. “So sorry, signorita.” Trust me, they ain’t sorry.
R: You can tell by the way they say it. Snotty, disdainful.
L: Like “oh stupid tourist, all of my gorgeous winter clothes r here where I live, in Venice. Too bad you don’t live here.”
R: So please leave me alone, tourist.
L: Like “Run along now, blondie. Go out in the cold looking fat & miserable.”
R: “Maybe one of ‘em actually did say it?”
L: I’m sure I heard it.
R: Or at least u heard, “U didn’t bring enough sweaters, scarfs, gloves, stockings, furs, hats? Necklaces, bracelets, earrings, make-up, perfume, high heels?”
L: Tight jeans, sexy lingerie, fur-trimmed parka, fur hats/in several colors, silk shirts, mini-skirts?
R: And more more more, all stuffed in that huge suitcase u must load onto carts.
L: And we force u 2haul in boats & over bridges?
R: U must know better, need 2look perfect. Hhm?
L: Very neglectful.
R: Where are your priorities, signorita?
L: I did buy 4 pairs of knit stockings from the nuns. Ha!
R: They still have their winter collections at the thrift shops.
L: So there.
R: They’re either thieves at the big stores or idiots.
L: What happened 2Merchants of Venice anyway?
R: It’s the V way, their way, or else.
L: I’m fed up with “their way.”
R: Unless they’re having “their way” with me.
L: At breakfast.
R: What exactly do U get 4a 50 euro Danieli bfast? Inquiring minds want 2know. It will be great fun eating and watching everyone freeze.
L: I’ll tell you all about it later. For now, know that a team of waiters in tuxedos will dote on Ms. Mangotti. Every morning. It will cure my cold.
Louisa strutted every morning up to the Danieli terrace, where she ordered several double cappuccinos, scores of Bellinis and more Prosecco. She devoured San Daniele prosciutto, chocolate cake and a few varieties of cheeses, fruits and yogurt. The tuxedoed waiters greeted Miss Mangotti each day like a celebrity and the Mangotti celebrity status invoked a certain air in her, which caused her to stare into the lagoon like it wasn’t real, but instead was a Canaletto painted landscape. She sat there each morning eating, staring and drinking for as long as the breakfast waiters allowed, all in the name of curing her cold.
And it did.
Rebecca knew well the chaos Matteo created for Louisa. Her best friend since high school, she’d heard and seen too much of their drama. Louisa, now lonely, lost, and sick with a cold, was perfect Matteo bait. It wasn’t going to be easy foiling the bastard’s designs on Louisa. It would take more than her mousy sister Barbara to head off this impending, inevitable destruction of Louisa.
It’s gonna take Rouge, she thought.
Rouge was on it. Rouge would run interference. Rouge was the counter force to Matteo’s inertia. The Calvary had arrived.
Her boat from the airport rounded the corner of Murano Island near one of many glass making factories.
Many bad things happened there, she thought.
She wasn’t referring to the deaths of glassmakers. She meant the bad things that happened at the home of Matteo’s sister, the beautiful Angelica. The house apparently served as a Nazi outpost during the war but Rouge didn’t mean the Nazis either. She meant Matteo.
Nazis could take a lesson from that skillful manipulator, Rebecca concluded.
Her boat passed Angelica’s home and Rouge turned from it with a disgusted sigh.
The man taking tickets on her boat addressed Rouge and she forgot all about Louisa’s predicament and her intendant rescue mission in favor of molto flirtation. Ah Venezia. She blinked at his fine physique then glanced at the San Marco bell tower through the window.
“Signorita,” he said realizing that Venice’s beauty had distracted her from his own.
“Si?” she replied not the slightest bit demurely.
“Where are you going, bella signorita?”
“With you?” she boldly suggested with barely a question mark attached. He balked not at all and asked for her name and number. She snagged his information too, in case of complications with his phone, like if he didn’t have enough “credito” on it to call her or, as likely, he found another bella signorita on the next boat.
It’s gonna be a good trip, she decided as she alighted the boat at Arsenale. She had her own pad. In Venice. Not by choice, by request of Louisa. Even if there were room at Louisa’s, she wo
uldn’t let Rouge stay with her during Carnival again. Their last Carnival here together had sealed that fate. No wall was thick enough and Vivaldi couldn’t be played louder than the noise of Rouge and her men. Laughter, stomping, moans even slaps could be heard above Vivaldi in any adjoining room. They would also drink all her champagne.
Rouge chuckled at the thought. My she was a wild child in those days. She chuckled again as she realized she’d turned a complete circle to check out some passing men, even while holding her roller luggage, purse and briefcase. She did me a favor making me get my own place. Or did she do me in? At this point, she didn’t care.
One of three passing men, as if reading her mind, turned to find her still staring, mouth agape. He mimicked her then pushed up his chin up to closed his own mouth, which caused her to straighten-up and smile. He grinned back and said, “prego.” He offered his hand for her luggage.
“E niente,” she blurted out, “its nothing” in Italian, to which all three men started towards her. Frozen and unable to respond, she noted that each one seemed more handsome than the other. Without a word, each man took a bag and one nodded at her, put out his hand and said, “Franco.”
“Un altro Franco?”
“Yes, another Franco,” he confirmed in sweetly accented English.
“Franco. Okay. That’s easy.”
“Yes, so easy,” he said.
“It’s so easy,” Rouge repeated.
“It’s so easy to fall in love,” he sang while carrying her bags to her apartment.
“Its so easy to lie to you,” sang one of his friends, in his own amusing accent.
She wasn’t the least bit scared. She knew they wouldn’t harm her. They couldn’t, really. With buildings everywhere, it’s impossible to attack a woman on the streets of Venice without someone hearing or seeing it.
Instead she was worried about the temptation. How long would it take her to get them off her doorstep? Would she outlast not one, but three, persistent Venetians? Could she resist any Venetian, whom always seemed to get their way in the end? Did she want to fight it?
It turned out Franco was either a gentleman or did not intend to share her. Either way, he politely said farewell without groping.
“Buona serata,” he bowed and said at her door.
“Grah-seee,” she said, attempting to thank them in Italian.
“Ahhh niente,” they chanted back, mocking her high-pitched American accent.
She paid all her porters with double-cheek air kisses. With a well-healed finish, the men departed and soon turned a nearby corner.
They vanished -- before she could rub her eyes to insure they had been for real.
Despite her jet lag, sleeping in wasn’t an option for Rouge once the garbage barge outside her window on a Venice canal began to perform its early morning job. The boat’s long, old arm lifted bagged trash off the shore on the Fondamenta del Piovan del Erizzo. The grind of its engine lasted mere seconds but was abrasive, loud and frequent enough to wake her.
Only an asshole would wake a sleeping baby, thought Rouge from beneath a pile of blankets. She recalled her father saying this to her as a young girl, whenever she picked up kittens that the barn felines had birthed.
“What asshole has woke me?” she said aloud from the warm comfort of her bed.
Wrapped in three wool blankets and with jet lagged grogginess, she peeked out from her covers. From her bed she could peer through the iron bars that added security to her windows. She saw a brief vision blur by and between the window bars.
Veneziano. A man. One so exquisite that with eyes half shut, her heart sprang wide open.
“I’m up,” she declared to the room, to the world.
And to the man, too, for he turned towards the yelp he apparently heard come from within her building. She flung the wool blankets off herself and she saw him full-on. She felt faint, in wonderment.
Wow, they sure know how to breed ‘em here.
Perfect compliments to the weather tanned face, his Romanesque nose and his square jaw competed with dark eyes and darker lashes. He squinted through the window bars for the source of a woman’s yell.
She marveled at the delicious lips with cigarette perched lovingly between them. She grabbed her fur -- for the kitchen was sure to be frigid -- and pulled a wheeled cart topped with space heater behind her. She opened her bedroom door to a blast of arctic air.
“Blast of all blasts, be gone, you drafty thing,” she told the air.
To whom was she talking? Since she and the new deep chill had arrived in Venice the day before, she treated her space heater like a pet -- saying things such as, “Where are you, my darling, come here right now, get closer.”
She pulled her heater puppy on its handy cart from room to room -- but she also treated the frosty apartment draft like an unfriendly ghost of Venice past. Once in the kitchen, she lit the fire under a prepped cafe moka pot then turned to see the boat parade on her canal.
Another fabulous parade of Italian men, thought Rouge.
Each barge carried one or more men going off to their jobs down Rio Ca Di’Dio, a working canal in Parochia San Martino.
It was impossible to decide which one of the workers she liked best.
“Oh,” “Ah,” “Oh,” she kept exclaiming as each new boatful floated on the canal.
Even without her first espresso, Rouge was aroused.
She remembered the phrase she and Louisa coined years ago regarding Venetian men: Each one cuter than the last. Certainly that was the case this morning.
“Him, him, him, that’s the one I want,” she declared. She pressed her face against the icy window until the sight of the latest him vanished down the rio.
Back at her dining room table, with full view of any new parades, Rouge waited. Impatiently waited for the espresso to perk and a separate pot of water to boil for she liked her cafe “Americana style,” hot water added.
She heard another boat motor and hurried over to the window. Too late, his speed boat more urgently cruising to its destiny than she’d been to her own. She enjoyed more worker boat parades and a lingering man who stacked furniture on a barge while his assistant walked to and fro with dollies full.
She noted that, strangely, no man was with her this morning nor did she have a hangover.
How is it possible that I got neither drunk nor laid at that fabulous Dixieland jazz party last night with all of my bounty, she inquired of herself, rhetorically.
Perhaps she’d gotten drunk and had a man, but neither the man nor hangover lingered? No, she was fairly certain the night had been a bust.
Hhhmmm? Well, there is always today with each one cuter than the last.
She saw her phone’s blinking red alert of an email. Excitedly she grabbed it, hoping she’d collected an interested suitor the evening before. Unfortunately, it was from the apartment owner. The subject line rudely announced, “Venice Freezing.”
His email disturbed Rouge’s glee regarding the men in the most recent passing boat, as Carlo, her landlord, informed her.
Dear Mrs. Rebecca:
A very low temperature is forecast for Venice to last for some time more than the next night and days.
Lower than this?
The email further diminished her fervor because it pleaded with her to act fast and avoid frozen pipes.
Mrs. Rebecca, I ask a favor. Would you be so kind as to open slightly one of the faucets, so the water circulates inside the pipeline and will not freeze?
Really, I hope you are kidding me, Mr. Carlo.
He wasn’t kidding. He added one final line and it worried Rouge the most.
I also tell you Mr. Martelli, a neighbor, tried to push your bell, but you did not answer. He was just being friendly and going to give you this piece of advise for the pipes. He will be back.
While Rouge was sleeping? A neighbor pushing the loud Venetian doorbell? She didn’t mind the request nor the piece of advice (not advise, as he had misspelled it). She did mind her annoyi
ng buzzer going off again. By the same asshole who really woke the sleeping baby. She also hated this very bad news about the weather.
Rouge had carefully selected a sexy Cleopatra costume for Carnival, meant to be worn with sequined gold bra, bare tummy, mini skirt and thigh high boots. Nude legs for effect. Now what would she wear?
It’s so hard to be a floozy when it’s freezing, she thought.
She noticed the handsome faces of the men on passing boats. The faces had become more difficult to discern under the increased bundles of hoods, scarfs and fur trim. Their fabulous rumps now covered in goose down parkas. A few fashionistas braved it in short leather jackets and tight jeans but they trembled, visibly frozen. She knew that, one-by-one, the men of her window parade would retreat to mommy’s heated apartment. Momma would comb those locks of hair tussled by the hats, not Rouge. Momma would warm the prize physiques with pasta and grappa.
Unless I get ‘em first, she thought, but felt defeated.
Cold and still sleep-deprived, she turned off the stove, rolled her space heater puppy into her room, laid her fur on the bed. The baby then snuggled under three wool blankets and fell back asleep.
What seemed like minutes but was hours later, her annoying buzzer went off again.
“Asshole, hello, I am a sleeping baby. A baby. Go away.” she murmured.
Whoever it was, Mr. Marvelli she suspected, was going nowhere and kept pushing her buzzer, having no part of her ignoring his persistent, no, insistent “wank wank.” Five more wanks and she’d had enough. She bolted from her bed, put on fur and slippers on and stomped to it.
“Who is it,” she asked in the most nasal American accent she could muster.
“Tom,” he answered sheepishly. “It’s half past noon. Did I wake you?”
Tom? How did he know where her apartment was, maybe she had gotten laid? No, she was fairly sure she had not.
Fairly sure, not definitively sure.
“I came by to check on you,” he said lowering his voice because by now the always nosy neighbors had ears to the walls.
