COLOMBANO THRUSTS OPEN the doors to the French balcony; light floods the apartment. The outboard-motor sputter of the boat slipping through the narrow canal mingles with the blows of a rug beater. A salty tang wafts in, and Jessica can distinguish the odor of canal mud exposed during low tide.
“You know what, Zesika?” Colombano says, stepping over to the balcony doors. “If we were Vivaldi’s Le quattro stagioni, this morning, this very moment, would be ‘La primavera.’ Spring.”
Jessica smiles. “Is that a good thing?”
“Of course it’s a good thing, silly. That means that we’re at the beginning of something new, but better things await. We still have summer to look forward to.”
“But autumn will come someday. And winter.”
“‘L’inverno.’ It’s inevitable. But in the right company, winter can be gorgeous,” Colombano says, gazing out the French doors. “You know what I would like to do today?” Colombano glances over his shoulder. He has lifted his powerful hands to the doorframe and now he thrusts out his chest, stretching his upper back. The flood of light clearly reveals the definition of his shoulder muscles, as if Jessica is looking at Leonardo da Vinci’s sketch L’uomo vitruviano, the skillfully executed shadowing of details.
Jessica tugs the sheet higher and sweeps the hair out of her eyes.
“I’d like to go out on the water.” Colombano turns around. His naked skin is covered by a dozen prominent tattoos. But they don’t make him frightening. On the contrary. Colombano’s body is like an illustrated collection of bedtime stories with pleasant morals. Jessica has studied them, traced their dark green contours with her fingertips. Asked and heard dozens of stories.
“Out on the water?” Jessica asks, intrigued. In Venice, water is so omnipresent that referring to it specifically strikes her as peculiar. Boats are a transportation mode and tool here. They’re in a space station, and Colombano wants to take her for a rocket ride.
“Why not?” Colombano shoots Jessica a look that she has come to know over the past few days. The crooked smile is not purely tender; it is maybe the tiniest bit malicious. “Hasn’t little Zesika had her fill of playing indoors yet?” Colombano takes two long strides, dives into the bed, and wraps Jessica in his arms. “Is my Arctic princess insatiable?”
“No, let’s go out on the water.” Jessica smiles, shuts her eyes, and accepts a long kiss from Colombano. Their lips, tongues, and teeth touch. The kiss must be their millionth, but it still feels like the first one.
“Good. I have the feeling that we must go out on the water. Right this instant.” Colombano pushes himself up from the bed so quickly that for a second Jessica is lying there alone, thinking they’re still kissing. “I have a boat,” he calls from the bathroom a moment later. He twists on the shower taps. “Twenty horsepower. Ferrari of the seas.”
Jessica stretches her hands and tosses off the thin sheet. She has spent two days in this apartment, or three nights, to be exact. During the day, they have toured the city by foot or gondola, gliding down Venice’s hundreds of canals; they have cuddled as the gondoliers steered their vessels with long oars; they have leaned against each other and sat in silence. Jessica’s life has turned into the world’s biggest cliché: she’s living an unexpected love story set in the cradle of romance, taken on the role of protagonist in the middle of her lonely journey.
There’s a momentary break in the ecstasy of infatuation that casts all rational thoughts aside, and Jessica remembers the ring that adorned Colombano’s left ring finger while they waited for the vaporetto at San Michele. The ring is no longer there. All that remains is the strip of pale skin it’s left behind, and that only if you know exactly what you’re looking for and where to find it.
A surge of guilt washes over Jessica: she knows she’s standing on someone else’s toes. Whoever she is, she isn’t here. Perhaps she’s dead; perhaps Colombano was shedding tears for her at the cemetery. The thought makes Jessica feel like a vulture. She knows she is no thief; if anyone asked her to return Colombano, she would do so instantly and be on her way. But she hopes with all her heart it won’t happen. She is young, free, and her entire body is vibrating from the force of falling in love.
“I’m supposed to check out of the hotel today,” Jessica calls out, but Colombano can’t hear her through the shower’s blast. A fresh soapy scent wafts through the bedroom.
Since the night of the concert, Jessica has gone back to her hotel in Murano only once, to pick up clothes. Even then, Colombano didn’t ask what Jessica’s friends thought about her disappearing trick. Maybe he knows there are no friends. Ultimately it makes no difference.
Time has flown by. Talking, eating, drinking, exploring the city, making love. It wasn’t until last night that Jessica, after waking up in the dark and hearing Colombano’s snoring, stopped to think that she knows almost nothing about him. Asking significant questions is a true art: at the onset of a romance, prying can feel intrusive and premature, and after a few days of ecstasy the stakes are so high that one inevitably chooses one’s words carefully.
Jessica sits up and looks around the sun-drenched room. It’s not very large; as a matter of fact, the entire flat is very compact, in the old Central European style. The furniture is cheek by jowl; there’s stuff crammed everywhere. Not a square meter to spare.
Still nude, Jessica rises from the bed, feels the worn wooden planks beneath her heels, and walks over to the antique bureau. Colombano is singing something that sounds like Italian schlager in the shower. Jessica strokes the ornate frames; a skim of dust clings to her fingers. There are over a dozen pictures. A few faded black-and-white photographs of people she assumes are Colombano’s grandparents. The other photographs are more mundane; they have clearly been taken spontaneously without much preparation. Colombano and a string orchestra, Colombano and his violin, Colombano with a group of guys, Colombano and a woman cheek to cheek. Jessica reaches for the rearmost photograph and cautiously picks it up. A glistening blue sea and a blazing sun in the background. Two beautiful people posing for the camera. The man appears no younger than the one Jessica has gotten to know over the past few days and who looks at Jessica in a way that lets her know there is no one else. That there never has been.
Once again Jessica remembers Colombano crying at the cemetery of San Michele and reflects that, actually, she’s not supposed to know everything. They’ve just met, they barely know each other, and maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe everything will end just as quickly as it began. Maybe Jessica will board the train to Milan today, as she originally planned.
The rush of the shower dies. The singing continues. Jessica puts the picture back down, but it topples on the cramped bureau, setting off a domino effect that knocks over the entire arrangement of photos. Jessica can feel her cheeks color with embarrassment; she barely stops the photograph at the front from crashing to the floor.
She hears Colombano’s footsteps, draws her lips up into a smile, and prepares to say something apologetic, but he is already grabbing her shoulder, jerking her backward. The movement is unexpected and rough. His fingers press painfully into her shoulder skin.
Her voice trembles from being startled: “I’m sorry. . . .”
Colombano is at the bureau, towel in his hand, righting the framed photographs one at a time. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t so much as glance at Jessica. Water drips to his feet from his wet body. His movements are clipped with anger. Then he unclenches his fist, lets the towel drop to the floor, and turns toward Jessica, who has retreated to the bed and wrapped the sheet loosely around herself.
“What am I going to do with you?”
“What?” Jessica stammers, and for a moment, she feels like she ought to be somewhere else, in some other place, maybe on a train to her next destination.
But Colombano doesn’t look angry anymore. Jessica eyes him warily. There’s an unsettling passion in his gaze. It’s hard to say what he’s feeling. Maybe it’s love.
“What am I going to do with you?” Colombano repeats calmly, then steps slowly up to Jessica and wraps his rough fingers behind her neck, sinks them into her hair.
“What do you mean?” Jessica asks. The strong scent of shower soap assaults her nostrils. The dark green doves entwined on the muscular chest draw close to her face.
Colombano presses his lips to Jessica’s forehead. She senses his damp breath in her ear. And then the hand grips her neck harder, the sheet drops, and Colombano’s fingers push into her crotch. Jessica cries out; the touch feels good even though it lacks any of the tenderness Colombano has shown toward her thus far. And when he presses her down on the bed face-first, Jessica sees herself in the mirror hung next to the bathroom door. Her dark hair has tumbled over her face; her dark nails are clenching the sheet; her lips are parted in a moan. Colombano’s muscled stomach moves rhythmically above her buttocks. She doesn’t recognize herself in the reflection; she looks at it as if she is a complete stranger she is meeting for the first time. And a moment later, when she’s on the verge of orgasm, she thinks how razor fine the line is between pleasure and pain.
The bottomless uncertainty, fear, and loneliness don’t come until after.