“You understand this is a matter that requires the utmost discretion.” The Senator holds out an envelope. She tries for frost, the same control she displays on the Senate floor, but her voice fails.
“I’ll be in touch,” I say, looking at a point beyond the Senator’s left shoulder.
A subtle tugging wraps threads around my spine. I’m amazed at the Senator’s self-control, her talent for denial. How can she not feel what the world has become? How can she resist the temptation to slip into the future? She has the perfect pretense—looking for her son. She could see how it all ends.
I pocket the envelope and Marco’s photo, and step past the Senator. Her mouth opens, snaps audibly closed; she isn’t used to being dismissed. My bootheels click as I walk away, thinking about her son.
A family vacation in a city of masks and illusory streets—the perfect place to hide, the perfect place to disappear. Twenty-six and vanished—of course Marco doesn’t want to be found. Even photographed, the desire to run shines clear in Marco’s eyes. Desperation and fear, they bring a flicker of memory, which I push aside. There is no place far enough, but he’ll still try, fleeing forward to test the notion that the future is infinite.
I know where to start—Harry’s Bar. I step forward, and slide cross-wise, surrendering to shattered light, burning stars and the aching space between. Tentacles as insubstantial as breath slide beneath my skin. They want nothing, but they take what I have to give. Cold, cold, cold, they grip my spine, caress my skull, and scoop out the heart of me.
If they were beings to be reasoned with, I would ask them to take everything. It doesn’t work that way.
Firelight flickers. My scars itch, stretching tight across my back. I hold the memories up as an offering, but the tentacles find their own prize. I don’t know what they take from me; I only feel the familiar, hollow ache when it’s gone.
It’s 2071 when I enter the bar. The light is green, but the waiters still wear immaculate white jackets and ties, a terrible joke. I slide into a seat.
“A double.” I don’t specify of what, but it hardly matters.
Behind the bar, where mirrored shelves used to hold bottles of liquor, pendulous nets hold a jumble of perpetually dripping starfish, conch shells, mussels, and clams. Breathing, wavering things cling to the wall. Occasionally, the waiters pause, offering their fingers, as if feeding choice morsels to a favourite pet. Fragments of shadow stretch in tacky strands, linking the waiters’ hands to the creatures on the wall as they draw away. The air smells of brine. Things at the corner of my eye shift, skirl, unfold impossible dimensions, and retreat—deep-sea anemones shy of the light.
The bartender slides a drink in front of me. Misery haunts his gaze. This is our life now, our life then—this is the life to come. His mouth doesn’t move when he breathes. His nostrils don’t stir. If I didn’t know to look, I wouldn’t see the gills slitting his throat above his starched collar, nictating almost imperceptibly. His eyes bulge, moist, blood-shot. I place a bill on the bar and add a stack of silver-gold coins, a generous tip.
I wait a moment, then place Marco’s picture next to the coins. The bartender’s skin sweats oil and sorrow. People determined to vanish come to Harry’s Bar and, for the right price, the miserable waiters in their starched, white uniforms show them how.
“When?” I ask.
“Can’t say.” The bartender’s voice is frog-hoarse.
I know he means ‘can’t’, not ‘won’t’. Everything can be bought and sold here: sugar-sweet cubes that melt on the tongue and bring oblivion; death; pleasure; escape; even answers. The man behind the bar taught Marco how to leave, but didn’t ask questions—a good bartender to the last.
“Thanks.” I down my drink in one shot.
The liquor unfolds in my mouth, sending a spike through my lungs. My eyes water. I walk back outside.
It’s dark. The stars are right. But the stars have always been right.
Where would I go if I were Marco? A useless question. He knows what he’s running from—a suffocating life of expectation, his parents’ blind oblivion a shadow pressed between his shoulder blades. Some people can feel the future coming; others refuse to believe in anything but the infinite Now. The future reached out blind tentacles, snaring my heart. Marco chose R’lyeh’s ways; R’lyeh’s ways chose me.
Firelight flickers. A horse whinnies—a soft, breathy sound. The scent of wet leather and dry hay overwhelms me. Lips trace mine, arching my throat, shivering across my belly. I gather sweat on the tip of my tongue, briny-sweet like the sea. The horse’s whicker turns to a scream. My scars tingle, hot and cold at the same time. Fragments tumble, edges sharp like splinters of bone lodged beneath my skin. Some things can’t be outrun, taken, or let go.
Suddenly, I don’t give a fuck about Marco. And I have all the time in the world.
I walk along the water’s edge, where there used to be a restaurant. Once—after R’lyeh, but before now—the entire city burned. The canals turned to oil and fire swept from rooftop to rooftop, sparing nothing.
Centuries of human existence, wiped out in the blink of an eye. I was there. I will be there again.
Venice, as always, survived. It rose from the ashes, born anew in brick and stone and marble, in deference to the old ways. It was also resurrected in glass and steel, in deference to ways old-yet-new. Finally, it shambled back from the dead, with walls that bled and seethed, flickered and writhed, in deference to the way things are now and always will be. Venice—an impossible city, impossible to kill.
I turn inward, crossing a bridge made of glass. A canal creeps, sluggish, beneath it. Lights glimmer on the water’s surface; things sleep in its depths. Venice floats, it sinks, it is drowning, it is drowned. And it survives. So do I.
I’ve been to the underwater city where Venice used to be. I’ve kick-pulled through cathedrals lit by the unearthly, phosphorescent glow of things best left unseen. I’ve worshiped at unholy altars, caressed by tendrils of night, studded by unnatural stars. I’ve witnessed the twisted images of saints spider-walking up church walls, their mouths open in silent screams. I’ve kissed the greened marble lips of the Mary who wept tears that weren’t blood, as she watched the fish nibble her children’s bones. I’ve seen Venice in all its guises, peeked behind all its masks, witnessed all its states of decay. Venice survives, no matter how ugly its scars.
My feet guide me through twisting ways to a little restaurant off Calle Mandola. It’s almost unchanged since the old days, except for the light, and the sick-green smell, and the taste of salt in the air. They still serve a killer martini—an olive and a twist. Inside, the sound hits me like a wall. My heart skitters, painful.
Guilt persists, even when I’ve given up love.
The place is nearly empty, but Josie sings as if the restaurant is full. Her voice is heartbreak: smoke and burnt amber and chocolate so dark it draws blood. It suits the restaurant’s mood, and mine. Waiters move listlessly between tables, bringing baskets of bread, plates of limp vegetables in heavy, oily sauce, and pasta—everything but meat, which ran out long ago, and fish, which is forbidden.
I tried to bring Josie fresh meat once—unspoiled, untainted. She wouldn’t touch it. The thought of anything that had been in-between made her shudder and gag.
I remember—as much as I want to forget—how I held Josie’s hands. Her moss-green eyes glowed with fear. I asked her to trust me. We stepped in-between.
Just as soon, we were jerked back, as if R’lyeh’s ways had spit us out. Josie pulled away from me, the brief touch of otherness enough to shatter her already fragile mind. I followed her back. I could have kept running, but I didn’t even think twice.