Chapter 9

WHEN I WAKE, I’M no longer in bed. Instead, I find myself perched four stories above the feeder canal. The roof beneath me is shingled with clay tiles, some of which have been crushed under my dead weight.

The good news is that my sight has returned, however briefly.

The bad news: I’m up on a roof, dressed in nothing but a pair of pea green US Army issue boxer shorts, barely a few inches from dropping some sixty or seventy feet into a filthy feeder canal. That is, if I don’t hit the narrow stone pavement that runs along its opposite side.

The obvious question is screaming inside my head.

How the hell did I get up here?

The answer is that I must be sleepwalking.

I’ve never been known to sleepwalk. I can’t ever remember waking up somewhere other than where I laid my head prior to falling asleep. Be it the solid ground of an Afghan hillside or my queen-sized mattress back in Troy. So why should it start now at forty-three years old? The ultimate reason behind it must be the ultimate cause behind the blindness.

Post-traumatic stress the doctors call it.

But I’m supposed to be improving. Forgetting the war. Forgetting that little boy. I’m supposed to be making progress. Instead I’m up on a roof and I have no idea how to get down.

Then a voice.

Grace.

“Oh dear God!” she shouts. “Oh. Christ. Oh God. Don’t move, Nick. Please don’t move. Don’t. Move.”

“Good idea,” I say.

She’s standing on the small stone terrace that’s perched against the side of this old building directly outside the open French doors.

“How in the world…?” she begs.

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing, my love.”

Off in the distance, the view is spectacular. I see the Grand Canal, the early morning delivery barges coming and going from the different docking points all along the main water artery. Beyond that, and beyond the tile roofs of the buildings, I see the wide open basin and the sea and the outlying islands and a rare winter sun rising brilliant orange and warm. I see the birds. I see the sun. And it feels wonderful.

“Nick, do your eyes work?”

“Fleetingly, my dear.”

“Great. Keep joking. You’re about to end up in the bottom of that canal, and I just might be widowed before my wedding.”

“There’s always your ex-husband,” I say. “He obviously still loves you.”

I shift myself, just slightly. The tiles crumble beneath me. I begin to slide.

Grace screams.

“It’s okay!” I bark.

I’ve stopped sliding. For now.

Then, “Grace, I need your help. I’m going to try and shift my body onto my stomach so that I’m perpendicular with the edge of the roof. After that I’m going to lower my left arm and my left leg. If I can place my left foot onto the terrace railing, I can give you my left hand to hold tight. Make sense?”

“Yes, love,” she says, her voice trembling.

Gently, slowly, I extend my right arm out and lower my body onto my right side. Then I extend my right leg out so that it too rests on the clay tiles. Many of the tiles break underneath my body, sending shards of sharp clay up into my skin. It stings like dozens of needle shots. But I try and ignore the pain.

Now that I’m lying prone on the edge of the roof, I try and lower my left leg. I start by sliding it off the edge and then gently down towards the terrace’s stone railing.

“How’m I doing, Gracie?”

“Almost there, love.” Her voice is high-pitched, full of stress. My every movement bears its weight on her beating heart.

Then I feel it. The solid firmness of the banister.

“Okay, now for my arm,” I say. “When you can reach it, take hold of my hand.”

“Yes, love. I’m here. I’m. Here.”

This time, in order for me to extend my hand down over the roof edge, I have to stretch. I must bring my body so close to the edge that I find myself on the brink of dropping. It’s as if I’m floating in midair. Makes me wonder how I managed to climb up here onto this steeply angled roof in the first place. But take it from an Afghan vet: The climb is always the easy part. Especially when you’re doing it under the fearless guise of sleepwalking. It’s getting back down that’s treacherous.

“Can you reach it, baby?”

“I’m trying!” she cries.

In my head, I see her struggling to make herself taller so that she can reach my fingers and then my hand. I stretch all the more, until I feel our fingertips touching, and then our hands, and then her tight grip.

“Gotcha!”

“Don’t let go,” I insist.

I pray I don’t suddenly drop and pull her over with me. How will the headline look? Blind solider/writer and artist fiancée fall to their tragic death in romantic Venice. The news will be an international sensation. Death in Venice…Tragedy in Midst of Rekindled Love…Fiancé Falls for Fiancée…

I press my weight onto my left foot.

“Grace!” I shout. “When I tell you, I want you to pull me in towards the door. You got that?”

She’s already pulling on me.

“Got it!”

“On three,” I insist.

“I’m ready.”

“One. Two. Three—”

She pulls me in towards the apartment and I slide off the roof, drop onto the banister and onto the slate-covered terrace floor, my left hand still gripped in Grace’s.

A wave of pain shoots up and down my butt cheeks since they cushioned the fall. But at least I didn’t drop to my death onto the stone cobbles or into a filthy, shallow lagoon.

Grace drops to her knees and hugs me.

“You stupid jerk,” she says through a haze of tears. “What could have prompted you to do something so stupid? So selfish?”

I try and stand. I peer into Grace’s swelled, tear-filled eyes. I want to see them before I lose my sight again.

“I was sleepwalking,” I explain. But the truth sounds ridiculous.

“We’ll learn to lock the doors,” she says. “I’ll hold you all night long.”

I pull her into me and as I do, I see the light of the sun begin to fill the studio. I see the back of Grace’s canvas and the new painting it contains. I see the couch and the harvest table and I see our bed, the covers and sheets tossed about. As I soak in the vision, I sense the darkness coming on. It’s a like a total eclipse of the sun, only not as achingly slow.

We enter back into the apartment, hand in hand.

“When I was sleepwalking,” I say, “I was asleep. But I could see.”

“How can that be?” Grace asks. “What difference does sleeping make?”

We approach the bed and I sit myself on the edge, then lie back, feel the small cuts and scrapes from the shards of the broken rooftop tiles.

“Because there’s nothing wrong with me,” I say, my chest filling with a strange sense of optimism.

“How can there be nothing wrong?” Grace asks. “You spend most of your life in the dark.”

“There’s nothing physically wrong. There’s only my memory. I fell asleep last night to some bad remembrances.”

She lies beside me, curls into me.

“What remembrances, Nick?”

I see the little boy . I see the bodies that surround his . I hear my voice ordering the bombing. I hear the jet and see the rockets shooting out from below its straight wings. I feel the concussion of the explosions.

“Never mind,” I say, as I close my eyes. “I just can’t talk about it yet.”

Grace exhales but doesn’t respond, as if to make another sound will somehow send me back up onto that roof. With the sun coming up and bathing our top floor studio in radiant warmth, I once more feel exhaustion invade the blood that swims through my veins, and I surrender to a deep sleep.