Halfway to You(7)

At sunrise the next morning, I carried my notebook to a café overlooking the gold-splashed canal. Writing calmed me—it always had—and overseas especially, it gave me something to do with my hands to look content when I was alone.

After ordering a cappuccino and pastry—pain au chocolat was a habit I had developed in France, along with smoking—I lit a cigarette and watched the shiny water taxis pass slowly by, thrumming in the wide channel beyond the buildings. Boaters shouted in mellifluous Italian. Pigeons scattered with thwacking wings. Moored boats bumped and bobbed.

I’d always dreamed of being a writer. As a child, I found solace in reading and making up stories; I invented alternate endings to my nightmares and amused myself with tales of bravery when I felt alone or scared, which for me had been too often.

I’d had a crush on Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald and had written many mawkish short stories over the years. By some miracle or charity, I’d even had a couple published in small literary magazines. At twenty-five, I had cultivated a vision of myself: no longer living in American poverty but in European glamour. I imagined myself sitting in cafés like this, smoking cigarettes, writing novels, and partying with all sorts of lavish, artistic, eccentric individuals.

Of course, my summer of solo travel had not gone to plan. France was a wake-up call that I was not nearly as tough or experienced as I thought. In the span of four months, my young and hopeful heart had been broken twice: once by a one-night stand, and again by a man who I discovered had a fiancée. (I was not unlike my mother in that regard.)

Mostly, my summer had been lonely—but my notebook kept me company.

Now, I jotted down the Venetian details that captured my attention. The souvenir shopkeepers were reopening, dragging T-shirt displays out onto the street, propping their doors open, flirting with each other. It was the locals working their jobs and chatting with friends that helped me discover the dimension of a place. The drowsy in-between hours when one could see a city for what it truly was.

“Your coffee, madam,” the waitress said, setting my breakfast down.

“Grat-zee,” I said and stubbed out my cigarette.

She corrected my pronunciation with an amused smile. “Grazie.”

I wrote down the word, practicing the syllables to myself—grazie, graz-ie, graz-ieh—as I turned my attention to breakfast. The pastry wasn’t as flaky as those in France, but the coffee. The coffee. It wasn’t bitter or harsh as I had known coffee to be; I tasted only the sweet feather pillow of the foam and the essence of nutty, bold espresso. It was exquisite, transcendent. The liquid traced a line of warmth from my breast to my navel.

I closed my eyes and breathed in the stony ocean air of the city. The breeze ruffled my hair, shirtsleeves, and collar. For the next hour, I watched Venice awaken. I scribbled observations as the light changed. Everything was built shrugged up against everything else—in the best possible way—as if the buildings wanted to get closer, closer, closer. A stray cat wandered among the café tables, well fed and soft looking; I scratched its ears, already feeling less alone. And for a while after my cappuccino, I simply counted the tourists coming round the bend, so many of them walking hand in hand, as if this city compelled them to be in love.

And as I soon discovered, maybe it did.

I was on my eighth day in Venice when my life changed forever.

I was having lunch by the ferry terminal on the northern edge of the city, overlooking the island of Murano. The sea on this end was choppy, little boats bobbing as they zigzagged to and from other ports. A refreshing wind, whispering of autumn, cooled the summer sweat on my lip and ruffled the pages of my notebook.

I was studiously writing and rewriting the third chapter of a novel. Ever since my first morning at the café, my veins had coursed with inspiration—but I’d been grappling with the direction of the book. The words didn’t match the vision I had in my head, so I’d spent all day in a stifling pattern of rereading and tweaking.

My rescue was the arrival of the pizza I’d ordered—hot and gigantic and covered in prosciutto. I was still caught in a creative state, so as I cut into my meal with a knife and fork, I mentally indexed the jumbled, bustling features of the port: the gulls, ticket sellers, water taxi drivers, hurried locals. Details I would write about later.

My attention snagged on a harried man of about my age, sad looking and laden with bags. He had to have just arrived: his brow had a sheen of perspiration, his cheeks were crimson with vexation, and a lock of dark hair had fallen between his glasses and his eyes. The street was crowded with people disembarking a vaporetto, bodies shoving up against him—he was bulky as a bull with all his luggage—and I sensed his frustration even from afar.

As he came nearer to the stand of outdoor café tables, one of the bags slung over his shoulder swung forward, throwing him off balance. He stumbled and bumped my waterside table, causing my wineglass to topple over the street’s edge into the sea.

“Oh. Oh no. I am so, so sorry,” the man said, his American accent sounding out of place (was that how I sounded too?).

“I give you a nine out of ten,” I replied. “You didn’t quite stick the landing.”

He didn’t seem to like my joke. “Your wine! How much was it? I can pay you back.” He dropped his bags where he stood—much to the irritation of a woman trying to squeeze around him—and pulled out his wallet.