Joe Schreiber - Pretty Lethal

Now that it was right in front of me, I wasn’t sure that I was ready to go in. I walked around the corner to the side of the building that faced the canal. Standing on my tiptoes, I could just see inside, where a group of fashionably dressed patrons were sitting at the bar.

This was it.

A voice in my head whispered, Do you really want to do this?

But I was already walking inside.

Harry’s was a long yellow room, warm and dry, with dark wooden tables glowing beneath wall sconces and an old metal fan in the corner. The bar itself was only long enough for the half-dozen patrons that I’d seen through the window, gathered together talking and laughing as if they had known one another all their lives. The bartender was wearing a pressed white tuxedo jacket. When I walked in, he didn’t say anything, just gazed at my wet jeans and windbreaker, and the guitar case at my feet.

‘Can I get a Mountain Dew or something?’

‘Mountain . . . Do?’

‘Or a Coke?’

A sigh. ‘ Si, Coke.’

I sat down at the end of the bar next to a glass cabinet of souvenirs for sale and sipped my ten-euro Coke, staring at the door. I didn’t know what I was doing here.

Gobi and I had talked about Harry’s Bar back in New York, as some fantasy rendezvous point in a future that neither one of us had ever expected would be real. Now that I was actually here, though, things seemed different, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how it would be if she really did show up. What if the night that we’d spent together had been a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, a potent but irreproducible mixture of hormones and gunpowder, never to be repeated? What would we say to each other – would there even be anything to say?

‘ Signori? ’

I jumped and looked up from my drink, and realized the bartender was staring at me.

‘We are closing for the night.’

I looked at the clock over the bar. It was five to eleven. That seemed early, but I saw that the other patrons had left or were putting on their coats and scarves, paying their tabs, saying goodbye, heading out into the cold Venetian night.

‘Can I just hang out here a few more minutes?’ I asked.

He sighed. ‘Si.’

I sat while the waiters wiped down the tables, put away glasses, and started turning off the lights around me, click, click, click. By now the bar had emptied out entirely. The bartender reappeared in front of me wearing his own coat, his face very serious now.

‘ Signori, I am sorry, but we must close.’

‘Okay.’ I got out my wallet, dug out the emergency Visa card, and paid the tab. ‘Thank you.’

‘ Prego. ’ The waiter let me out and locked the door behind me.

I stepped out. The rain was falling harder now, the wind gusting it straight into my face, and there was no one on the street in front of the canal. I thought about what I’d read about Venice sinking. Everywhere I looked, the lagoon was lapping up the steps and filling the doorways. Up ahead, I saw two men – the same ones in suits, smoking, that I’d talked to before – emerge out in front of me as if they’d been there waiting for me the whole time.

‘So you found it,’ one of them said.

‘What?’

‘Your little tourist trap.’

I turned and started walking in the other direction, and another man with a shaved head appeared in front of me, blocking my way, his gaze shifting up to the two behind my back. The bald one was young, wearing jeans and a shiny, puffy black coat that seemed like it was stitched together out of designer garbage bags. A second later I felt something hard and cold jab up against the back of my neck. Over my shoulder I could smell garlic and cigarettes mixed with overpowering cologne. One hand grabbed my shoulder, slamming me face-first into the alley wall hard enough that I heard my incisors scrape off the concrete before I hit the ground. Pain burst through the left side of my face and I tasted blood, salty and fresh, as fingers rifled my back pocket, yanking out my wallet.

‘Just take whatever you want,’ I said, my tongue flicking off my newly chipped tooth. ‘Just – ’

‘Where is she?’

‘What?’ I said. ‘ Who? ’

Then one of the men screamed.

All at once I heard feet scuffling above me and a series of quick, brutal thumps, like a glove stuffed with pennies smacking into flesh. Someone grunted, staggered, fell, and footsteps went slapping fast up the alley, through the puddles, and then there was no sound except for the rain.

‘I see you have still not learned to fight.’

I looked up.

Gobi was standing in the alley in front of me, hands on her hips, with two of the men sprawled at her feet. For a second I didn’t know if what I was seeing was real or just a delayed result of head trauma.

She was wearing a short leather jacket with lots of buckles, and some kind of stretchy black micro-skirt, torn black stockings, and big chunky shitkicker boots. Her hair was dyed and chopped above the shoulders.

‘How did you find me?’ I asked.

‘Perry.’ She shook her head. ‘You do not look so good.’

‘Yeah, well, I could’ve used you . . .’ – I stopped and coughed hard, looked at my hand, and saw a little spatter of scarlet across my knuckles – ’like, about twenty seconds earlier?’

‘So use me now.’ She extended one hand and I took it, lifting myself up. I was still getting my balance when she leaned forward, catching me in her arms, and I saw the little white scar across her neck, and all the rest of it came back from there.

We crossed a dark bridge to the Centurion Palace Hotel. It was a sleek slice of L.A.-style architecture built inside what looked like a five-hundred-year-old palace on the opposite side of the canal, and to get inside we had to cross a wide courtyard of perfectly oval stones that crunched under our feet as we walked over them. She led me into a high-domed lobby with a chandelier made of curved glass tubes and long sofas arranged across the wide marble floor. From the concierge desk I saw a pair of high-cheekboned faces, incurious and androgynous, peering back at us from a liquid cloud of blue light.

‘Lift is this way,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’

I stepped into the brushed chrome elevator, feeling it rise smoothly upward, transporting us to some upper floor. There, Gobi kept me walking forward down the silent corridor. She swiped her keycard and we entered her suite, a series of rooms, one flowing into the next, opening out toward a balcony overlooking the canal. I saw a bottle of champagne on ice in front of the flat-screen TV, the counter scattered with her BlackBerry, jewelry, a jumbled pile of euros and foreign coins, her passport and lipstick.

‘Take off your clothes.’

‘What?’

‘You are freezing with the cold.’

‘Look, I should probably tell you something.’ I managed to get the windbreaker off, turning one of the sleeves inside out as I pulled my arm free, then reached down to unbutton my pants. ‘Do you mind looking the other way?’

She cocked one eyebrow, then turned to face the wall as I peeled off my jeans, then my socks, and finally my T-shirt. ‘I’m involved with somebody. She’s back in the States.’