Losing Venice by Scott Stavrou

Author:Scott Stavrou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Life and finding love living in Venice
Publisher: Rogue Dog Press
Published: 2018-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Like Kings Of Bohemia

I went to my room and took a hot shower and felt too excited for sleep but too drunk to stay awake.

When I opened my eyes again, it was to the light of the morning sun and the now unfamiliar noise of the cars and traffic below. The bothersome noise of automobiles was always particularly jarring on one of these trips after you’d acclimated yourself to Venice. Another shower. A red taxi came and grouchily deposited me at the bottom of the sloping, tree-lined Vaclavske Namesti and I found Na Prikope street and walked in the direction that seemed right, which was left.

The street was just a few blocks long, and at its end, where three large streets came together, were several yellow and red streetcars, and one that was painted all over with the red colors and flowing white script of the Coca-Cola logo, and they clanged along in the grooves of the cobblestone street past one another heading different directions and a Coke sounded pretty good to me. I don’t know if it was because I was hungover and dehydrated or because I saw the tram and was just impressionable. It crossed my mind that some thousand miles away there was a church in Venice missing an old painting, but also that there was nothing I could do about it from where I was. That made me more thirsty and seemed to accentuate my hangover.

Where the streets came together, on the left hand side, was a large, ornate baroque building, all yellow and flowing intricate architecture that stood out from the rest of the buildings as having been recently redecorated, or at least well tended.

There were large picture windows along the street, and downstairs there were fancy people sipping some of Prague’s more expensive coffee in opulent surroundings. There were white tablecloths and suits and dresses and hats and a little band, an orchestra maybe. I wasn’t sure when it stopped being a band and became an orchestra, but there was a harp, and that was pretty. I walked in hoping my rendezvous was not at the fancy place. There was a man in a tuxedo standing beside a wooden door with frosted glass windows leading in to the fancy place, I could hear the music but not the harp and the clicking of spoons on fine china. There was a red carpet in the black marble foyer and a small sign at the bottom of a large curving staircase that said simply Martini Bar, with an arrow pointing up.

I trudged up the stairs, glad to be leaving the fancy people and the band behind but daubed with self-pity for the effort required to urge my tired and hungover feet upwards, and I thought of Steinbeck and how he’d written he’d always taken his hangovers as a consequence, never as punishment and this was a reassuring thought.

Inside the Martini Bar, there were empty red leather booths along the outer wall overlooking the square, and Aaron was alone sitting on a large and rather gaudy but plush stool at the bar.

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