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  “Hello?”

  “Perry?”

  “Yes.”

  “George Armitage here. How are you, mate?”

  I stood up a little straighter, suddenly feeling wide awake. “Oh. I’m—I’m fine.” Even after all the time I’d been with Paula and talked about Armitage, what he was like and so on, I’d never actually spoken to the man.

  “How’s the tour going so far?”

  “It’s going great. We were in London… It’s been incredible—”

  “Splendid. Love the new songs, honestly. The reviews of the London show have been over the moon. You blokes are going to be huge—you do realize that, don’t you?”

  “Thanks,” I said. In front of me, Caleb and Norrie were now both sprawled out on their bags. They looked like they’d gone into matching comas. Norrie was drooling.

  “You’re in Venice now, aren’t you?” Armitage asked.

  “That’s right. We just got in.”

  “Brilliant, brilliant. Wish I could be there to show you the city.”

  “Yeah, that would be cool.” For a split second I toyed with the idea of asking him where he was, but I managed to stop the question from tumbling off my lips. According to Paula, George Armitage was an intensely private man. If you Googled him—and we all had—you’d find out that he was British by birth but had renounced his British citizenship and spent most of his time traveling, a media multi-hyphenate. Nobody was quite sure where all his money had come from. In recent years he’d expanded his operation globally and become, for all intents and purposes, his own free-floating sovereign nation. He ran his own production company, a publishing group, and an airline. By all accounts he had more cash than he knew what to do with.

  “While you’re traveling, if there’s anything you need, I hope you won’t hesitate to ask.”

  “Thank you,” I said, unable to shake the feeling that there must have been some other reason he’d decided to call. I didn’t have to wait long to find out what it was.

  “Listen, mate. I didn’t want to mention anything too early, but at this rate, there might be a record deal for you at the end of all of this.”

  I felt my heart stop. “Seriously?”

  “Absolutely,” Armitage said. “Ask Paula. The last band whose tour I set up sold six million units in the first two months. Legends are forged by fire. We’ll speak soon. Cheers.”

  I said goodbye, turned, and kicked Norrie’s duffle bag until he pushed himself up on his elbows, blinking, and gave me the finger. “Whuh-what the hell’s wrong with you, Stormaire?”

  “George Armitage just called me. He wants to get us a record deal.”

  “Armitage?” Norrie stared at me. All at once he didn’t look remotely tired. Caleb sat up next to him. “What? Now?”

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go find Linus.”

  They were both on their feet already and grabbed their bags, and I hoisted my guitar case, following them down the platform, my head whirling with what Armitage had said and with the abrupt influx of noise and commotion inside the train station.

  6. “Another Girl, Another Planet”

  —The Replacements

  The whole thing happened so fast that I almost didn’t realize what was happening until it was over. One moment I was following Caleb and Norrie through the automatic sliding doors into the main terminal, and the next, I was alone in the crowd.

  I turned around and looked back in the direction I’d come, thinking maybe I’d somehow gotten ahead of them, but they weren’t back there. Off to my left was a big café, and somewhere to my right was a row of ticket windows. I didn’t see Linus or any of the others up there. People buzzed by in every direction, wheeling luggage, toting backpacks. None of them was familiar.

  Ten minutes in Venice and I was already lost.

  I walked out of the station and down the gray steps leading to the Grand Canal, then stopped in my tracks.

  Not until that moment did it really hit me that I was in a city that had rivers instead of streets and boats instead of cars. There were intersections, alleyways, and bridges with gondolas tied up to them. Up above the half-submerged doorways and steps I saw ancient stone hotels and ruined palaces sinking into the lagoon. Fog hung over the surface, seagulls dipping and flicking up the waterway, their bellies glinting white and then disappearing in the dark.

  I bought a twenty-four-hour pass for the vaporetto, got on the next boat, and called Norrie.

  “Dude,” he said, “whuh-what happened to you? We thought we luh-lost you for good.”

  “I’m fine. I just lost you guys at the train station.”

  “Whuh-Where are you now?”

  “The Grand Canal.” I was standing on the deck of a vaporetto with my bag and my guitar case, heading down the canal. Overhead, high gothic arches and crumbling statuary moved slowly past on either side, lit from within like a Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Define lame: I was in Venice, and all I could think of was Disney World. “I’ll meet you at the hotel.”

  “Yuh-You buh-better. Linus is fuh-freaking out.”

  “Tell him to calm down. I’ll be there in an hour or so.”

  “It’s the Puh-Pensione Guerrato,” he said, “by the Ruh-Rialto Bridge.”

  “Got it.”

  “Whuh-What are you duh-doing?”

  “Seeing the sights.”

  “It’s luh-like ten o’clock at nuh-night!”

  “Relax, okay? I’ll catch up to you later.”

  Norrie fell quiet for just a second, and when he spoke again, there was no trace of a stutter in his voice.

  “You’re going to look for her, aren’t you?”

  I drew in a breath. I don’t know whether it was the unwavering certainty in his voice or just that we’d been friends for so long, but I knew instantly that I couldn’t lie to him.

  “Maybe.”

  He made an exasperated lip-fart. “Whuh-What about Puh-Paula?”

  “What about her?” my answer came back, probably too quickly. “It’s not like I’m cheating on her. I probably won’t even find Gobi anyway, but if I do, we’ll have a cup of coffee, catch up for a few minutes, and that’s it.”

  “Buh-Bullshit.”

  “Hey, believe what you want.”

  “Thuh-This is a ruh-really buh-bad idea.”

  I took in a breath and let it out. “Yeah. I know.”

  “I nuh-know you know,” Norrie said miserably. “Juh-Just like I know yuh-you’re going to duh-do it anyway.” He was silent again for a moment. “Shit. At least tuh-tell her wuh-we said hello.” Then, with more conviction: “And duh-don’t stuh-stay out all nuh-night! Wuh-We’ve got a gig tomorrow!”

  “Okay,” I said, and hung up.

  Up ahead I saw what looked like the open lagoon, the boat nudging its way up to the San Marco stop. On the shore, two guys in long dark coats and immaculate pointy-toed leather shoes were smoking and sipping espressos out of paper cups by the dock.

  “Excuse me.” My voice came out froggy and hoarse, like I was getting a cold. “I’m looking for Harry’s Bar.”

  “Like Hemingway, si?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I guess.”

  The first man smiled and said something, and they both laughed.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Italian.”

  “He said that even an idiot American could find that place from here,” the other man said, and as they turned and started walking away, I saw the sign behind them in the window, in art deco letters: HARRY’S BAR.

  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.

  7. “Waiting for Somebody”

  —Paul Westerberg

/>   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 facefirst 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.

  8. “Never Let Me Down Again”

  —Depeche Mode

  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.”

  Gobi didn’t say anything, just pointed in the opposite direction. “Shower is through there.”

  The bathroom was a green marble grotto. My reflection stared back at me from a full-length mirror, a skinny, pale American kid with a face that looked like two pounds of Genoa sausage. I kicked off my boxers and stepped into the shower. By now my teeth were chattering and it took me a moment to figure out the faucets, but once I did, the shower head rewarded me with an oscillating spray of hot needles that made my whole body realize that it wasn’t dead after all. Maybe things weren’t as bad as I thought. I breathed in steam, scrubbed myself twice, and stood there until the hot water started to go cold. After what felt like a long time, I stepped out and found a fluffy hotel bathrobe waiting on the back of the door. I was actually starting to feel human again.

  “This is a really nice place,” I said, stepping out of the steam. “How can you afford a place like this?” No answer. “Gobi?”

  A flicker of motion in one of the mirrors. “Over here.”

  “I—oh.”

  When she stepped out from behind the closet door, I saw that she’d slipped off the leather jacket. The top underneath it was lacy and black, with shiny thin strap
s that stretched across her clavicles.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Just—your clavicles. You have really nice ones.”

  “How are you with zippers?”

  “Excuse me?”

  She turned her back to me, tilted her head forward, and lifted up her hair from the back of her neck. “It’s stuck.”

  “I told you I had a girlfriend, right?”

  “I am only asking you to do my zipper.”

  “Right.” The zipper slipped down easily. “Don’t you want to know what I’m doing in Venice?”

  “No.”

  “I’m touring with Inchworm, and—”

  She turned around and kissed me, mouth open, tongue flicking up and in as her hands slipped into the bathrobe. I could taste the dry fruity flavor of champagne she’d just been drinking, and something almost bitter, like dark espresso beans or black licorice. From outside I could hear music and faint laughter down the canal. I drew back, catching my breath.

  “Her name’s Paula,” I said. “She’s really cool. You’d like her.”

  A smoky chuckle and she muttered something in Lithuanian.

  “What?”

  “I called you a stupid ass.”

  “Why?”

  “Is what you call a man who has a girl in his bed and still makes small talk.”

  “We’re not in b—”

  She pressed her palms against my chest and pushed me backwards onto the mattress, knocking the pillows aside, rolling over the blankets and up against the headboard, where I was pinned as she straddled me.

  “Okay, look, this isn’t cool.” The harder I tried to sit up, the harder she pushed back. “I don’t remember you being so—” I tried to think of another word for aggressive, but all of a sudden my word-finding ability seemed to have taken a serious hit to the word-place, whatever it was called. Randomly I noticed a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk in the corner of the room that looked like it cost about a million dollars, and then Gobi shifted her hips slightly on top of me and I forgot all about the steamer trunk and the million dollars it must have cost.