LOOK IN THE mirror. Jessica leans over the sink and gazes at her reflection in the center of the gold frame. Her dark eyes are hard to make out behind the strands of dark hair clinging to her brow. The warm water trickles down her neck to her back and comes to a stop at the towel she has wrapped above her breasts.
Jessica walks over to the open window. The canals in Murano are quiet: there are clearly fewer tourists in October than in the summer, despite the fact that weather-wise autumn is the best time to visit the city. In Helsinki, the leaves have presumably taken on their bright colors, and wedges of migrating birds are plowing the sky.
This morning is four months to the day since Jessica first set foot in Venice. Now summery San Michele and her plans of touring Europe feel as distant as Los Angeles, but somehow time has also passed incredibly quickly. A hazy, unreal period separates the present day from that rainy early morning when Jessica packed her bag at Colombano’s apartment, arms and throat hideously bruised and crotch bleeding, was stopped by him at the front door, and he stuck his rough tongue down her throat. And she hoped from the bottom of her heart that that one kiss would be enough for him. That that would be the end. That she would finally be free to leave.
Have a safe trip home, Zesika. Remember what I said. Your story is not going to move anyone, so it would be wisest to leave it untold.
A hug. Cheek against tattooed chest. Stench rising from skin. His gestures are tender, languid, as if the two of them had a sleepless but love-filled night behind them. No sign of uncertainty or regret. No rape happened. They had a brief romance and broke up. Without any disagreements, without any drama. That’s the way life goes sometimes.
It’s too bad things had to end this way.
A white smile. Knuckles on her cheek.
The last thing Jessica sees before the door shuts is the violin resting on its stand on the console in the entryway. Then the narrow stairwell where the wallpaper looks ugly for the first time, like a rusty well cover.
A moment later, Jessica and her bags are on a side street running along a narrow canal. She is too tired to continue, too shocked to cry. Jessica sits down on the quay stones, dangles and swings her feet above the water, and looks at the boats roped to the sides of the canal. Her primary feeling is bottomless shame. Followed by detachment, utter loneliness, and aimlessness. After all she has been through over the past few weeks, sitting on a train and flying to Helsinki feels like an impossible chore. She is too drained to think about the future, about what she wants to do when she grows up. She doesn’t want to see her aunt Tina, who is desperately trying to close some chasm she herself built. Jessica just wants to be. Here and now.
LIKE A THIEF, here and now has turned into three months. The autumn sea smells different: frank, fresh. Jessica returned to the hotel where she lodged when she originally arrived in Venice. She is the perfect guest: she eats at the hotel two or three times a day, is generous with tips, and pays off her tab every week. A standard room was exchanged for a junior suite at the end of July. Jessica has left the building only a few times; on those occasions, she has walked several hundred meters under cover of night before returning to the hotel. She doesn’t want anyone to see her; she wants darkness to cloak her ugliness, her disgusting skin and greasy hair. A few times she has been overcome by the eerie feeling that someone is following her. Footsteps trailing her that stop when she stops. A glimpse of a shadow scurrying away when she glances over her shoulder.
She feels safe at the hotel. No one there asks stupid questions. They probably think she’s a kept woman living off of some emir’s fortune who has simply decided not to go home.
Jessica spends her days lying in the enormous bed, watching TV. One day the neuralgia grows so severe that it renders Jessica totally immobile. In those moments, she clenches the sheet in her fingers and presses her eyes shut; she tries to recall that sense of overwhelming freedom she felt in the vaporetto the day she met Colombano for the first time. But Jessica never cries out. She will not give the world the satisfaction. The pain is often followed by a distressing thought, a flash of Mother, Father, her brother, Colombano. The episodes of pain are like stinging salt in wounds that her subconscious has ripped open. They always come together, the anguish and the pain. But not always in that order.
Jessica has put on weight, but it feels completely meaningless. When she leaves her room, she dresses in shorts and a hoodie, swipes gloss onto her lips, and pulls her hair back into a ponytail. She’s like a shadow of her former self, who never went out without looking beautiful and groomed. She’s a slowly dying freak in a foreign country, in a city that has turned from gloriously beautiful to abominably ugly. She is alone and, because of that, ready to give up.
What sort of idiot would Mom and Dad think she was if they were alive? Would Toffe squeeze her hand anymore? Would he even touch it?
A busker’s violin sounds from somewhere. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. “L’inverno.” Winter truly is making its approach.
Jessica eyes the tray she ordered from room service the night before, the half-eaten entrecôte and wilted French fries. Her fingers reach for the serrated steak knife, for its wooden handle. Her wet hair drips water to the carpet. The music carrying in from outside is beautiful, its strains so timeless and ingenious.
Her grip slips and the knife plunks to the floor at her feet. For a moment, Jessica looks at it as if it has betrayed her trust. The strings continue to play in the background, higher and higher. Faster and faster.
Jessica closes the window and looks at her trembling hands. Maybe it’s high time to do something. To go to a concert. To see the performance with fresh eyes.