Chapter 11

THE STUDIO APARTMENT ABOVE the old bookshop is a peaceful oasis surrounded by the memories of war. It is a safe haven for a blind man who is neck deep in love and war. But it is also small and cramped. Which is why, blindness or no blindness, we decide to get dressed and take the boat taxi to Piazza San Marco where we can blow a week’s pay on lunch and a bottle of Valpolicella at the outdoor café across from the cathedral.

Grace is happy with the idea.

Giddy happy.

I don’t have to see her to be able to feel her happiness. Her infectious happiness. It is better than the absolute panic she experienced when I nearly fell to my death from up on the roof. Better than the anxiety-ridden woman she was yesterday afternoon at the café when I gave her a hard time and a strange man with black eyes kept staring at her. She keeps placing her open hand on her flat belly. I don’t require perfect eyesight to know she’s doing it. She is always holding my hand and she must release it in order to do this. I know she is touching her belly, because just moments ago, when I wrapped my arms around her from behind, she once more took hold of my hand and pressed it there for a time that seemed very long. Her hand was warm and so was her bare belly. I know she was trying to tell me something. Sometimes the best conversations I have with Grace are the ones we carry on silently.

When we are dressed and have our black leather coats on, Grace opens the door. I’m about to step out behind her when the phone rings again.

“Let me get it this time,” I say.

I step back inside the apartment, shuffle the couple of steps to my right, where the wall-mounted phone is located beside the door. I feel for the receiver, pick it up.

“Pronto.”

My ear fills with white noise. Not loud white noise. More like the static that comes from a bad connection, or a cell phone with bad reception. I listen for a voice, but thus far, I hear nothing but the static.

“Who is it?” Grace asks from outside the open door on the stone landing, her soft voice echoing in the open stairwell.

I find myself turning in order to glance at her. But of course, this is just instinct kicking in.

The sound of her booted feet shuffling against the stone landing tells me she is taking a step closer to the open door.

“It’s him again, isn’t it?”

I hold up my hand as if to say, Please don’t talk.

Grace gets the message and goes silent. It’s possible she’s holding her breath.

“Who’sthere?” I say into the phone. Tone even keeled, not at all threatening.

There is only the white noise. Until it’s broken by a faint voice.

“I.See.” says the voice. It sounds like a man. Perhaps an old man who is talking to me over the phone from a great distance away. But this is the age of satellites. He can be located on the other side of the world and it’s possible for him to sound like he’s standing in the room next door.

“What do you see?” I pose.

More white noise.

“I. See.” he repeats.

“Who is this? What is your name? Please tell me your name.” I’m lobbing the queries but they don’t seem to be registering in the least.

Once more the receiver fills with white noise, and once more come the words softly spoken: “I. See.”

And then the line goes dead.

* * *

“Hello,” I bark into the phone. “Hello. Hello. Hello…”

But it’s no use. The man on the phone is gone. Disconnected.

Grace comes back in.

“May I?” she begs.

It startles me when she pulls the cordless phone from out of my hand and punches a couple of numbers into the handset. In my head I see her face. Her cheeks will be tight as a tick, her lips pressed together, her green eyes bright and wide. It’s the face she wears when she’s angry or upset.

“What’s happening?” I say, standing inches from her in the corner of the room by the apartment’s open door.

“Star sixty-nine.”

“You sure that works in Europe? In Italy?”

“We’ll soon find out.”

I wait along with Grace. Even though the phone is not pressed against my ear I am still able to make out the faint, tinny sound of the computer-generated operator speaking in rapid-fire Italian. I can’t make out a word she’s saying, but I sense that Grace is trying her best to make sense of it all.

“Well?” I pose.

“Greek to me,” she jokes. But I know it’s not funny. Then she adds, “Something about the number I just dialed is not correct or can’t be connected.”

“More than likely the man is calling from a cell phone, his number blocked.”

Graces reaches beyond me with the phone, her arm brushing up against my shoulder, hangs it up in its cradle.

The room fills with a hard, icy silence. After a beat, Grace breaks it.

“Does anyone know we’re here, Nick?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“Far as I know,” I answer, “only Uncle Sam.”

“Do they often rent this apartment out to other wounded soldiers?”

Wounded soldier. I’ve never thought of myself as a wounded soldier. A casualty of war. But I guess that’s precisely what I am. A casualty.

“I have no way of knowing.” I go for the phone. “But I can make a call or two—”

Grace grabs hold of my arm just before I’m able to grab hold of the phone.

“Let’s just go,” she insists. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for whoever’s called and lets us know that he can see something…whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“I still say it’s some kind of bad joke,” I add, lowering my right hand.

“Or bad timing,” Grace says. She heads for the open door. “You coming, Nick?”

“Yes,” I say, trying to picture in my head an old man standing somewhere in the world speaking the words, “I. See.” into a cell phone. I picture a bald, craggy-faced old man. Perhaps the man who used to own the rare bookshop.

“Close the door behind you,” Grace insists as she begins to descend the steps down to the first floor.

I do it. I close the door behind me, reach out for the railing, and begin to make my way down the staircase.

“Be careful,” Grace reminds me after a beat.

“I will,” I say, carefully feeling my way down each step with the bottom of my feet. “I survived Afghanistan. I’m not about to die in Venice.”