Admittedly, I am not the one who looks fantastic in everything, but still I cannot help loving myself." She's got this ability to shut me up when I start fretting over metaphysical questions, such as, "What is the nature of the universe?" (Linda's reply: "My only question is: Why ask?") Linda would like to someday grow her dreadlocks so long she could weave them into a wire-supported structure on the top of her head "like a topiary" and maybe store a bird there. The Balinese loved Linda. So did the Costa Ricans. When she's not taking care of her pet lizards and ferrets, she is managing a software development team in Seattle and making more money than any of us .
So we find each other there in Venice, and Linda frowns at our map of the city, turns it upside down, locates our hotel, orients herself and announces with characteristic humility: "We are the mayors of this town's ass."
Her cheer, her optimism--they in no way match this stinky, slow, sinking, mysterious, silent, weird city. Venice seems like a wonderful city in which to die a slow and alcoholic death, or to lose a loved one, or to lose the murder weapon with which the loved one was lost in the first place. Seeing Venice, I'm grateful that I chose to live in Rome instead. I don't think I would have gotten off the antidepressants quite so quick here. Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; but you don't really want to live in it .
The whole town is peeling and fading like those suites of rooms that once-rich families will barricade away in the backs of their mansions when it gets too expensive to keep the maintenance up and it's easier to just nail the doors shut and forget about the dying treasures on the other side--this is Venice. Greasy streams of Adriatic backwash nudge up against the long-suffering foundations of these buildings, testing the endurance of this fourteenth-century science fair experiment--Hey, what if we built a city that sits in water all the time?
Venice is spooky under its grainy November skies. The city creaks and sways like a fishing pier. Despite Linda's initial confidence that we can govern this town, we get lost every day, and most especially at night, taking wrong turns toward dark corners that dead-end dangerously and directly into canal water. One foggy night, we pass an old building that seems to actually be groaning in pain. "Not to worry," chirps Linda. "That's just Satan's hungry maw." I teach her my favorite Italian word--attraversiamo ("let's cross over")--and we backtrack nervously out of there .
