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there wasn’t time to call, I texted O’Brien from the airport. I debated over how much of the trip to tell her about. Describing the Thin Woman on a cell-phone keyboard in the first-class lounge proved impossible, as did the parameters of my “consultation” on a “case,” about which nothing has been revealed, other than my over-generous compensation. In the end, I wrote only:
    Off to Venice (the Italian one, not the Californian one) with Tess. Back in a couple days. Explanation TK.
    Her reply came almost instantly.
    WTF?
    I get up to stretch my legs. The jet humming and whistling, soothing as a mechanical womb. This, and the sleeping passengers on either side of me, give the odd impression that I am a transatlantic ghost, hurtling through space, the only wakeful spirit in the night.
    But there’s another. An elderly man standing between the washroom cubicles at the top of the aisle, looking down at his shoes in the way of the politely bored. When I approach he looks up at me and, as though in recognition of an unexpected companion, he smiles.
    “I am not alone,” he says in welcome. His accent charmingly Italian flavored. His face mildly lined and handsome as a commercial actor’s.
    “I was reading.”
    “Yes? I, too, am a lover of books,” he says. “The great books. The wisdom of man.”
    “Just travel guides, in my case.”
    He laughs. “Those are important, too! You must not become lost in Venice. You must find your way.”
    “All the books say that becoming lost in Venice is among its greatest charms.”
    “To wander, yes. But to be lost? There is a difference.”
    I’m pondering this when the old man puts a hand on my shoulder. His grip strong.
    “What takes you to Venice?” he asks.
    “A job.”
    “Job! Ah, you are a thief.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “Everything in Venice is stolen. The stone, the relics, the icons, the gold crosses in every church. All of it comes from somewhere else.”
    “Why?”
    “Because there’s nothing there . No forest, no quarries, no farms. It is a city that is an affront to God, built solely upon man’s pride. It even stands upon water! Could such an act of magic possibly please the Heavenly Father?”
    Despite the devout meaning of his words, his tone somehow communicates its opposite, a kind of undercutting joke. He isn’t the leastconcerned about the offenses of “man’s pride” or the displeasure of the Heavenly Father. On the contrary, such things excite him.
    He looks over my shoulder at the slumbering passengers.
    “The blessed innocence of sleep,” he remarks. “Alas, it no longer visits me with its comforts of forgetfulness.”
    Then his eyes find Tess.
    “Your daughter?” he asks.
    All at once, I’m struck by the certainty that I’ve gotten this guy wrong. He’s not an elderly charmer making conversation with a fellow insomniac. He’s pretending. Hiding his true wants. Along with his reason for standing here, now, with me.
    I consider various replies— None of your goddamn business or Don’t even look at her —but instead just turn and head directly back to my seat. As I go, I hear him enter the washroom cubicle and shut the door behind him. He’s still in there when I settle in my seat.
    I pretend to read, keeping my eye on the cubicle door. And though I remain awake for the next hour or so, I don’t notice him come out.
    Eventually I get up and knock on the door myself, but it’s unlocked. When I pull it open, nobody’s there.
    V ENICE SMELLS.
    Of what? It’s hard to say at first, as it is an odor of ideas more than any particular source. Not cooking or farming or industry, but the stink of empire, of overlapping histories, the unbleachable taint of corruption. In the New World, when a city has a smell, you can say what it is. The sugary rank of an iron-belt paper mill. The roast chestnuts and sewer belches of Manhattan. But in Venice, our North American nostrils are met instead with the unfamiliar reek of the grand