Midnight in Venice (3 page)

“I will.”

“And one more thing,” Marco said, his hand on the door. “Wear something smashing to go with those eyes of yours.”

Olivia laughed. “What about all those ‘be careful' lectures? You know, I'm starting to think you might have a ‘thing' yourself for Silvio Milan.”

“Wouldn't matter if I did. He's a ladies' man, through and through. But how about that cop you were talking to back there?”

Olivia laughed again, feeling her cheeks burn a bit just at the mention of him. “I don't know much about him,” she said, “but I'd pretty much swear on my father's ashes that you'd stand even less of a chance with Alessandro Rossi than with Silvio Milan.”

“Alessandro Rossi, eh?” he said, raising an eyebrow at her. “Last time I asked, you said he was ‘no one.' Oh well.
È la vita
—that's life. Or at least
my
life. How come women are always complaining that all the good-looking men are gay? It's not my experience at all.” He gave her kisses on both cheeks and promised to return at the appointed time.

Once alone in what was to be her home for the next six months, Olivia spent the first few minutes putting things away. She needed to go shopping soon. Other than the lingerie and the black dress she was going to wear tonight (classy but short of smashing), she'd brought very little. “Why would you buy clothes now?” Ellen, the art student taking care of the gallery in her absence, had asked. “You're going to Italy! Spend your money there.”

She placed the wind-up teeth on the bedside table, marveling at how something so silly could cause so much trouble, and took out the business card:
Alessandro Rossi
,
Buon Natale
, and his number.

The card had made her so happy in the airport, yet now when she looked at it, she wasn't so sure. He seemed nice, but she knew nothing about him. He could be a cheating husband with a wife and two children. Surely no man that good-looking could still be single, and weren't Italians known for that kind of thing? But then, no man could be that nice and cheat on his wife.

Anyway, how could any opinion she had of him be accurate after such a short meeting? He'd been pretty brusque with her until she started to cry—and then, she supposed, anyone with a heart not made of stone would have been somewhat sympathetic. No doubt he'd given her this on impulse and was now kicking himself, already coming up with an excuse if she called.

She turned over the card.
Guardia di Finanza
, it read, with a crest, an address, a phone number, and his name again. It all looked very official. Well, even if she was going to call, she couldn't do it yet—wouldn't that seem too eager?

She could ask Marco's opinion, but there wasn't much point as she could guarantee he'd say “go for it,” a strategy that didn't seem to work particularly well for him. When it came to love, Marco was the unluckiest person she'd ever known.

Besides, what made her think it was personal at all? Other than the
Buon Natale
and the smile with which he'd given it to her, it was just a business card. He probably handed his card out to everyone, just in case they needed to get in touch with him again. Though everything seemed to have been settled pretty neatly in her case. Shrugging, she tucked the business card under the chattering teeth.

She took a long hot shower and wrapped herself in a thick white bathrobe with silvio milan embroidered on the lapel. She had known her new apartment was to be furnished by the company, but she was still surprised by the luxurious attention to detail. But then, like Marco had said, what else did she expect from Silvio Milan?

Feeling very fortunate, she went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. She surveyed the fresh fruit and cheese, doubtful she'd be able to eat it all before it went bad. There was a bottle of Prosecco and another of Valpolicella. She decided not to open either, settling instead on a glass of Cinzano to toast her new home. She poured it over ice cubes and went into the main room to the French windows.

Not wanting to go onto the balcony in her bathrobe, she drew back the white lace curtain and looked out. Running from the Grand Canal to the Giudecca Canal, her own little canal, the Rio de San Vio, flanked by low brick walls, was narrow and straight. She admired the terra-cotta-colored palazzos with dark green shutters across from her, their doors opening right onto the stone-paved streets that ran alongside the canal.

She glanced to the left with its view of the bridge and was about to let the curtain drop back into place when a movement caught her eye. A tall figure in a long black robe and a black hat with a white feather plume had materialized seemingly out of nowhere and stood in the middle of the bridge. Its back was to her, and despite the stillness of the day, the robe undulated around the figure as if caught by a gentle breeze.

At first Olivia watched with no other emotion than curiosity. Why would someone be dressed for Carnival at Christmas?

But when it turned and looked directly at her window, she felt herself go cold. Like some sort of great evil bird, the figure's face was obscured by a white mask with a large beak-like protuberance. Dark eyeholes hid the wearer's eyes, making the gaze seem extra intense.

Instinctively she stepped back, her hand shaking slightly as she clutched the curtain. Still the shrouded figure watched her. Olivia was sure there was no coincidence in this meeting. She could feel a dark purpose in its presence and sensed herself caught helpless in its spell.

As she stood there, mesmerized, the apparition conjured a red rose from the fold of its robe. It held it up in a white-gloved hand, as if in offering. Then, with deliberate slowness, it began to pull out the petals, holding each one out to her before letting it drift to the water below.

 

I've frightened her. I didn't mean to. I just want to keep an eye on her. Where she goes. Who she meets. What she does. Perhaps this plague-doctor costume isn't the best idea, since it's not Carnival. But it's such a good disguise—anyone could be under here. It is strange, though, looking out through the little eyeholes and seeing people staring back at me, wondering . . .

But I can't go back to my own place dressed like this. No can know where the plague doctor really lives. That empty apartment was a lucky find. It has a window that looks right into hers.

 

When Alessandro returned to the station, he faced a repeat of the airport. The news of the “bomb” had arrived before he had, and his entrance was greeted with applause and laughter. His boss, Mario Columbo, lived down his comparison to the gentle American television detective with a dry, sardonic wit that, right now, was drier than usual. “So,” he said, “I hear that, thanks to you, Italy is safe once more from the threat of wind-up toy teeth. You'll get a medal for this one for sure.”

Alessandro was impatient to get on with business. “Not to worry. Next time, I'll ignore protocol and let the president and everyone else in the airport take their chances.”

“Don't get your knickers in a knot, Rossi. Of course it was the right thing to do. But we're busy enough here without the newspapers turning this into another story of how we're incompetent and a drain on the country's finances. I can picture the morning headlines now:

Venice Police Take a Bite out of Terrorism with New Top-Secret Weapon.
The president's plane was diverted to Treviso, you know. This is what happens when you try to help someone out.”

Rossi knew the airport security job shouldn't have been the Guardia di Finanza's, but the Carabinieri, facing cutbacks like everyone else these days, had them pulled in to help.

Columbo called over the chaos for someone, anyone, to bring him a coffee, before addressing Alessandro again. “I'm going to have to justify this to every fool bureaucrat in the city, if not the country, before I can go home for dinner tonight.”

But it wasn't just Columbo whose day was taken up with what the office was now calling “The Chattering-Teeth Caper.” Alessandro himself had to fill out a dozen reports justifying his decisions. Determined to finish by the end of the day, he worked straight through lunch, until his partner, Pamela de Vivo, finally took pity on him and brought him a panini.

“You should've just asked her out on a date,” she said sarcastically as she handed him his sandwich and a coffee from the café next door. “It would've been a lot less paperwork.”

“Not you too, Pamela.” Pamela was the only female who worked in this office of the Guardia di Finanza, and she silenced any lingering sexism in the unit with a glare that Columbo said could turn a man into a pillar of salt. Tall, with a model-like figure and good looks that required no enhancement from makeup, she wore her long blond hair pulled back into a tight bun. The men in the office, having had their advances haughtily rebuffed, declared that her bun wasn't the only tight thing about her. Still, Columbo, to ensure he didn't have a sexual harassment suit on his hands, had made them partners, knowing Alessandro Rossi hadn't given any woman a second thought since his wife's death.
Besides
, he remembered Columbo saying,
you're the only guy here who has advanced beyond a caveman when it comes to women
.

Alessandro sometimes felt sorry for Pamela. Besides her job with the Guardia di Finanza, she was married with two small children. Her husband Fabio's family owned a bar near San Marco, and Pamela was expected to work there on her days off, with her kids in tow. And while Pamela could turn the toughest suspect into a crybaby, she was powerless against her mother-in-law, who disapproved of her job and instead expected her to bear several more children and work in the bar alongside Fabio.

“Where's she staying?” Pamela asked.

“On the Rio de San Vio. And I have to admit that I did give her my card.”

Pamela raised one eyebrow at him before going back to her own desk to answer the phone. Alessandro ran his fingers through his hair and started typing again. It was true that every time he typed the name
Olivia Moretti
, he couldn't help but picture her lovely violet eyes. And Pamela would never know just how close he'd come to asking her out on that date. He was going to frame it as an apology:
I think I owe you an apology. Can I take you out for a drink after
. . . ?
But then her cousin had appeared, and he'd panicked.

Pamela called over to him, interrupting his thoughts. “I'm heading home, Alessandro.”

He glanced at the clock. “Bit early for you.”

“I've got a stop to make on the way home. Have a good night.”

“You too.” He sighed again and resumed typing.

 

The alarm went off at four in the afternoon, and it was all Olivia could do to stop herself from hitting
snooze
and going back to sleep, not just because she was still tired, but because the alarm had interrupted a very nice kiss between her and the handsome cop. Too bad they hadn't met under different circumstances. Her thoughts returned to the card he'd given her. If he'd really wanted to see her again, wouldn't he have just come out and asked her?

Olivia pulled back the curtains over the bedroom balcony doors, remembering as she did so the costumed figure on the bridge. It was gone now, of course, and in its place in the waning afternoon light stood a smiling young couple. The man held his smartphone at arm's length and took their picture together at the bridge's railing. They laughed when they looked at their selfie and continued on their way. Olivia chided herself for reacting so strongly to the strange apparition. It was just a costume, and this was Venice, after all.

True to his word, Marco rang Olivia's doorbell at five o'clock. “You look fabulous,” Marco said approvingly. “You're going to knock Silvio's socks off.”

“Sure,” Olivia said. “And I thought that was the last thing you wanted.”

“You're right. I take that back. Didn't you bring any flour sacks with you? Though something tells me even those would look good on you. Here,” he said, handing her a small box. “An early Christmas present.”

Thanking him, she opened it. Inside was a string of glass beads in swirling hues of violet. “They're beautiful,” she said. “Murano?”

“Of course, and chosen to go with your eyes,” he said.

“You are a true friend, Marco.” He fastened them around her neck, and she straightened her dress in the full-length mirror on the back of the wardrobe door. The dress was simple—short, black, and sleeveless—but it did fit her well, and the beads, as Marco had promised, brought out the violet of her eyes. Her shoulder-length black hair shone, and her skin glowed with excitement. She didn't think she had “knock his socks off” looks, but she had been blessed with her parents' good features and complexions. “Can I get you a drink,” she asked her cousin, “or should we be on our way?”

“Let's go. Something came up for Silvio, so I have time to show you my apartment first.” He held her coat out for her.

“I can't help but feel a little nervous,” she said as she and Marco closed the courtyard door behind them and proceeded out into the night down the narrow street.

“About meeting Silvio?”

“I'm not exactly used to meeting famous jet-setter types. I get kind of tongue-tied and worry I have spinach stuck in my teeth or my bra strap is showing.”

“You'll get used to it. He's a ladies' man for sure, as smooth as they come, and very, very rich. He must have other sources of income than just art. But you'll have a lot to talk about—no one knows the art world better. But as I've said before, be careful so you don't get your heart broken.”

“Okay, that's now the hundredth time you've said that. I get it. Don't worry. I'm a big girl. Besides, from what you describe, I'm pretty certain he's not my type,” she said as they crossed the large wooden Accademia Bridge.

Not like the cop. If nothing else,
he'd
certainly made for one sexy dream that afternoon. A forgotten fragment of it came back to her, and her breath caught in her chest as if he'd really just done that.

“So tell me, little cousin,” Marco asked, “what is your type? Somehow I doubt it was that nerdy guy you dated last year. You never did tell me what happened to him.”

She laughed. “That nerdy guy was a surgeon. Mom would've been thrilled if I'd married him. And I know my sister thought I was insane to break it off. She gave me some big lecture about how being a starving art historian might seem romantic now, blah blah blah. You know Claudia. I think she made poor Phil complete an application form when she met him, complete with a credit reference check.”

Claudia didn't share Olivia's fondness for Marco. Marco was, in her opinion, an impractical, unrealistic dreamer and a disaster in the making.
I can't believe you'd pass up a good job in my firm to work for his crazy enterprise
, she'd said.

Claudia was also furious that Marco didn't hire her company to do his taxes.
Why would he, when you're barely polite to him?
Olivia had countered.
He probably thinks you're a homophobe.
Claudia had rolled her eyes and said that had nothing to do with it and she only hoped for Olivia's sake that he was paying his taxes. Olivia had rolled her eyes in return and thanked her lucky stars yet again that she'd been saved from working for Claudia—it was bad enough she was her sister.

“So why did you break it off?” Marco said. “Now that I know he was a surgeon, I'm thinking he wasn't
that
nerdy looking. This better be good, since I'd hate this to be the first time I ever agreed with your sister.”

“Because he was a jerk. All the time he was dating me, he was also sleeping with his research assistant. It was pretty obvious too, but I was so preoccupied when Dad got sick, I didn't see it at first.”

They had just crossed a campo and turned into a street when she stopped short, frozen to the spot.

“What is it?” Marco asked.

It was the figure from the bridge again. Standing outside a shop, looking straight at her over its hideous white beak. “That!” she exclaimed. “It was on the bridge outside my window earlier.”

Marco laughed. “I doubt it,” he said as a woman emerged from the shop, picked it up, and carried it inside.

It was only a mannequin. She felt so stupid.

“What were you saying about being a big girl?” he asked.

Olivia gave him a sisterly swat on the arm. “It scared me, that's all. I thought it was following me.”

“You
are
jet-lagged,” he said, taking her hand and tucking it beneath his arm. “During Carnival, you'll see lots of those. It's based on the garb worn by seventeenth-century plague doctors. I think it was intended to scare the plague away. Worked too. Instead of dying of plague, everyone died of fright.”

Olivia looked in the shop door and saw the mannequin beside the cash register. “But it's Christmas, not Carnival . . .”

“You know how some tourists come to Canada thinking it's winter year-round and expecting to see igloos and polar bears in July? Well, it's the same with Venice. Only instead of winter year-round, it's Carnival. And some people just can't resist dressing up.”

“That makes sense,” she said. Suddenly she felt very silly. Marco was right. She was jet-lagged, and it was only exhaustion and an overactive imagination getting the better of her.

“Come on,” Marco said, giving her an impatient tug. “We're almost there.”

Admiring the beautiful but ridiculously expensive clothes in the shop windows, she soon forgot the plague doctor. All those legendary Italian brands: Prada, Gucci, Versace, Armani . . . She'd never be able to afford them, but she'd sure have fun window-shopping.

They turned down a quieter street decorated with strings of white lights, and the fashionable shops gave way to a more residential feel. Tall stucco buildings punctuated by heavy doors faced each other across the narrow street. Marco stopped in front of one and pulled out a key.

“Here we are,” he said, pointing out his name inscribed on a brass plaque beside the bell. “The Fenice Opera House is very close by. A selling feature for me.”

The door swung inward, and they walked into a dimly lit, cavernous space with a stone floor and heavily beamed ceiling. “Nothing much here,” he explained, “on account of flooding. Those doors at the other end lead out to the gondola landing.”

She followed him up the stone stairs, gasping when he opened the door. As elegant as she thought her apartment was, it was nothing compared to this.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Marco said with unmistakable pride.

“You own this?”

“Just this floor. But it
is
the
piano nobile
.”

It certainly is a noble floor
, Olivia thought. It had to be sixty by forty feet. Massive Murano chandeliers hung from a high ceiling frescoed with a scene from mythology, complete with gods, cherubs, clouds, and chariots, all the colors bright, as if it had been recently restored. Paintings adorned the walls, some that looked to Olivia to be seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Venetian, others far more modern. Middle Eastern carpets dotted the marble floors, and precious antiques—tables, settees, and chairs—were grouped around the enormous marble fireplace.

It was true he had only one balcony, but it took up the width of the room, and she stepped out onto it and looked down to the canal. There were no streets along the water, so she knew she was getting a privileged view of this stretch of canal.

“I have the same decorator as Elton John,” Marco said as he led her through the smaller rooms that ringed the
piano nobile
. “It used to belong to a very famous opera singer.”

She suppressed the urge to ask him how much he'd sunk into this apartment. The artwork alone was worth more money than she'd ever see in a lifetime. Any residual guilt she felt about him paying her student loans vanished. If he could afford all this, her monthly student loan payments were nothing.

“It's all thanks to Happy Spiders,” he said as if reading her thoughts.

Olivia thought she detected a slightly bitter edge to his tone, and as they paused in his bedroom with its massive canopied four-poster bed, she looked at him.

“Just wish I had someone to share it with, that's all,” he said, averting his eyes.

So that was it. All this wealth hadn't made him less lonely. She gave him a hug. “There'll be someone. I just know it. You're wonderful, intelligent, good-looking, and, dare I say it, rich.”

“So far the rich part only makes me worry no one will care about the rest.”

“
I
care. I know you're my cousin, but I loved you before you gave me this wonderful job and started paying my student loans. You'll meet someone. Who knows—maybe the man of your dreams will be in Iceland!”

He laughed. “I hope so. Now let's get you to Silvio's.”

The offices of Silvio Milan were located in Silvio's palazzo on the Grand Canal. Since its front door, like Marco's, was on the canal, they entered by way of the courtyard. “It's not very interesting now,” Marco explained, “but in spring it explodes with roses.”

He led her up a flight of stone steps to a heavy, ornate door and opened it. She was more prepared this time for the magnificence that greeted her, though surveying it beneath a stunning Murano chandelier, she quickly concluded that Silvio's taste was much more restrained than Marco's, perhaps illustrating the difference between old money and new. Even the cherubs on the painted ceiling seemed more reserved. Everything was exquisite, down to the Christmas tree, hung with delicate mercury-glass balls. The far end of the room culminated in French doors, beyond which could be seen the dome of the Salute basking in the glow of floodlights.

At home in these refined surroundings was their owner, Silvio Milan. Not even Marco's glowing accounts had fully conveyed his confidence and style—late thirties, slender, of average height, signature Italian dark eyes, dark hair, with that fashionable not-quite-shaved look that only Italian men seem to pull off. He was also one of those men who looked as if he were born to wear designer suits, elegant and yet casual at the same time.

He greeted Olivia with a dazzling smile and kissed her on both cheeks. She could see why women (and Marco) found him attractive, but she thought maybe she liked her men a little more real, like the cop, Alessandro Rossi. The very thought of him made the heat rise to her cheeks, which she hoped Silvio didn't notice or at least attributed to the fact she was still wearing her coat.

“
Piacere
,” he said warmly. “It's nice to meet you at last.”

“It's nice to meet you too.”

“I was sorry to hear about your father. Marco said you were very close.”

“Thank you, we were,” she said with that familiar tug at her heart whenever he was mentioned. But thinking of the chattering teeth sitting in her apartment, that tug seemed a little less painful and a little sweeter. For all the trouble and embarrassment those teeth had caused her, they'd already become an important part of her healing—and that was what this Christmas in Venice with Marco was about.

Marco started to help her with her coat, but Silvio stopped him. “Before you do that, let me show Olivia her first glimpse of our view.” He gestured toward the French doors, and she and Marco followed him out onto the narrow balcony. “I can't wait until you see it at sunset. The sun is like a molten ball about to set the canal on fire. All of Venice seems wrapped in its rosy, golden glow. To paint Venice is to capture its light. Without the right light, you have but stone and water. With the light, you have magic.”

“Sounds amazing,” Olivia said. Below her, two gondoliers rowed a lone passenger across the canal. While the boat looked the same as the gondolas the tourists loved so much, Silvio explained that this was a
traghetto
, a ferry, on its last run of the day—one of the many that transported people from one side of the Grand Canal to the other. The passenger stood in the boat, his nose in his smartphone, seemingly oblivious to the glory around him. How could anyone cease to marvel at this place? Surely, Olivia thought, Venetians walked home from work completely enraptured by the beauty around them.

“Venice is a city of illusions,” Silvio continued. “It appears to float on water, but it is all firmly anchored. Everything you see is built on top of tall wooden piles driven through the water and into the mud to make foundations. There are over a million piles under the Salute alone.”