Sometime later—minutes or hours, it’s hard to know for sure—a telephone somewhere nearby will start to ring.
When the cops and nurses burst into his room, Curtis won’t even be aware of the sound. He’ll wake grudgingly, blinking at the overhead lights as cops gather: whispering into cellphones, setting up a recorder, stretching the cord of the hospital phone until the base rests next to Curtis on the mattress. He’ll watch their busy mouths as they talk to him, and he’ll nod, although he’ll understand nothing they say. And then, as someone’s finger mashes the phone’s SPEAKER button, he’ll angle his head, and he’ll try to listen.
Somehow he’ll know right away. He’ll hear the ghostly whine and hiss—long distances, strange satellites—and know exactly who’s calling, and from where, and why.
But he’ll ask anyway. He can’t help himself. Stanley? he’ll say. Is that you?
And then, after a long moment, you will answer him.
Good morning, kid, you’ll say. Or good evening I guess it still is, where you are. Been a long goddamn time, hasn’t it? I’m glad to hear your voice.
You won’t keep Curtis long. Not because of the cops—what can cops do to you now?—but because there isn’t much to say. Or there’s too much. Anyway, you’ll keep it simple. You’ll say thank you. Then you’ll say you’re sorry. Then you’ll say goodbye.
Another gust: the hotel window rattles. You hear churchbells ring, the scream of a gull. You draw the blankets tight around your chin.
In another minute or two you’ll get up, make the call. You put the kid in a bad spot, so it’s the least you can do. You should phone Veronica, too, while you’re at it. See if she found what you left her in the airport locker. Her inheritance. That’ll be a tough goddamn conversation. But you guess it ought to be done.
Veronica. Three hundred eighty-eight. A hard stone, like flint, or quartz. To veil. To conceal. To spread out. To be set free.
First things first: you should go to the window. Slide your feet to the slick hotel floor, grip your cane, rise. Somewhere down there—among the fruit-and flower-vendors in the Campo San Cassiano, the bundled old women on the bridge’s dainty steps, the black gondolas that slide down the mucus-gray canal—Damon is hunting you. He must know he’s running out of chances to do this his way: with each passing minute you slip farther from him. So you expect him soon. When he turns up, you want to be ready.
He’s an annoyance more than anything else. A distraction. You had big plans for coming here, but you waited too long. You’d hoped to make a last trip to the Bibiloteca. The lady librarians are probably relieved today to get a break from your questions. What’s this mean in English? How do I locate that?
You’d like to have seen more of the city, too, of course. So far it’s been mostly Disneyland bullshit: cameras and fannypacks, glossy maps and flapping pigeons. But every so often there’s a moment—a name on a sign that you know from Welles’s book; columns and windows that echo buildings on Windward and the boardwalk—that’ll freeze you in mid-step: trying to peek through the gap before it closes again, trying to see past overlapping screens of truth and fiction to Crivano. But it’s hard to catch these moments, hard to keep yourself loose and open to them when you’re looking over your shoulder all the time. Damon has spoiled this for you, too. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter, but it does.
In your younger days—not so long ago—you’d have fixed this by now. Sipped espresso at the Caffè Florian till you picked him from the crowd. Tracked him till the sun went down. Plenty of secluded spots. Bricks fall in this city all the time.
The strange thing is, part of you is glad to see him. Glad he’s here. The parting fuck-you that you delivered in AC on Sunday afternoon—I’d like to tell you gentlemen a funny story about your shift boss, Mr. Blackburn—seemed cheap, inadequate, like a copout. But this feels right, feels earned.