The Disappearance of Grace Page 3

  “We have mobile phones,” she points out. “It must be for the owner of the apartment.”

  “Maybe we should let it go.”

  “But what if it’s important? Like a family member in trouble?”

  “Hope your Italian is sharper than it was at the café,” I laugh.

  The phone continues to ring.

  “That means I’m getting it?” she poses.

  “I’m blind,” I say, rolling over onto my side under the comfort of the covers. “Besides, I might stub a toe or something. It’s a health risk.”

  “Oh, now I see what you’re up to,” she says, sliding out of bed. “Poor, poor, pitiful me. Some G.I. Joe you turned out to be.”

  “Hoo Rah!” I bark.

  I hear her lift the receiver.

  “Pronto,” she speaks into the phone. Then, after a silent beat. “Hello. Hello.” Then, “There’s no one there.”

  “Just hang up. Probably a wrong number.”

  She issues one more exaggerated “Hello!” into the phone. She gives the nobody who’s there a couple more seconds to answer. When it doesn’t happen, she hangs up, and starts back towards our bed.

  And then the phone rings again.

  Chapter 7

  GRACE STOPS BEFORE SHE reaches the bed. I hear the sound of her bare feet stomping on the wood floor. I can’t see her face, but in my head, I see her rolling her eyes, shaking her head. She just wants to get back into bed and cuddle before we get up, pop the cork on a bottle and make something fantastic in our little kitchenette. Rather, before she makes something and I sit on the stool, drink wine, and watch. Or should I say, listen.

  “Whoever it is must be calling back,” she grouses.

  She picks up the receiver off the cradle once more.

  “Pronto!” she barks into the phone. Grace isn’t fooling around anymore. “Excuse me?” she adds. “I don’t understand.”

  I sit back up again. I feel a slight start in my heart.

  “Do you want me to take it?” I say.

  In my head I see her waving her hand at me while she presses the phone hard against her ear.

  “You see what?” she says. “Non capscio. I don’t understand.”

  I’m sitting in bed trying to understand what’s happening. Who is seeing who or what?

  Silence fills the room for another beat. It’s louder than the water splashing against the stone and brick walls in the feeder canal outside the open window. That silence is broken when the phone is hung up.

  I hear Grace shuffle back to the bed.

  I feel her getting into bed, curling up beside me. I feel her warmth. I smell her sweet skin and hair.

  “Strange,” she says.

  “Care to extrapolate?”

  “The man on the other end of the line. He kept repeating. ‘I see. I see. I see.’” She laughs a little under her breath. “I had to ask him, ‘What do you see?’ But he just hung up.”

  I roll onto my side, facing her, as if I can see her. But then I do see her. I see her dark hair fluffed back, her green eyes open, staring into me, through me, onto some distant possibility.

  “Did he sound Italian?”

  “I’m not sure,” she exhales. “The accent was different. I can’t put my finger on it. But I don’t think the call came from here. From Italy.”

  I turn onto my back, stare up at the ceiling. A big black blank nothing of a ceiling.

  “I’m guessing whoever owns this apartment made the call, thinking someone he knows is staying here.”

  “Sure,” Grace says, after a beat. But I know what she’s thinking. She’s thinking she’s weirded out, just like she was when that overcoat man kept staring at us this afternoon. Grace is in tune with her inner voice. Her mantra. Her karma. The man on the phone with the strange accent telling her “I see,” falls into the realm of “be warned.” But as for me, it’s just a stupid phone call. And an easily forgettable one at that.

  I pull the covers off.

  “Wine for the great artist?” I pose. I pronounce “artist” like “arteest.”

  Grace pulls the cover off, slides out of bed, stands.

  “I’ll get it,” she quickly offers.

  “Grace!” I bark. “I’m perfectly capable of seeing in the dark.”

  “On second thought,” she says over the gentle sound of her slipping back into bed, “I think I’ll lie here for another minute and drink up Venice.”

  “Splendid choice, Madame.”

  “I am your state of Grace,” she says. “Never forget it.”

  Chapter 8

  I’M DRESSED IN A pair of jeans and a T-shirt, while Grace has tossed on one of my big green “Army” T’s over a pair of silk black panties. Or so she tells me. But I run my fingertips gently across her bottom just to make sure, and the charge the touching gives me nearly causes me to pull her back into bed with me. T-shirt and black panties is the standard Grace sexy-post-sex uniform that I remember so well and that makes my heart skip a beat when I see her in it.

  I’m sitting on a wood stool in between Grace’s easel and the kitchenette. To my right is the open window. To my left a wood harvest table that’s become a kind of catch-all for our computers, spare eyeglasses, paper, smart phones, and Grace’s shoulder bag, as much as it is a place to sit down at to eat together. And yes, I still use a computer. Comes in handy when I can see, and even when I can’t, I can simply toss on the speak application. Not that I’ve actually attempted to use it yet. Just the thought of writing something new leaves me with a dull, hollow pain in my stomach.

  I hear the sound of pots and pans banging, and already I’m smelling the good smell of fresh garlic simmering in olive oil.

  “Why do you think that man would say something like ‘I see’?” Grace poses after a time. Like I said, my fiancée is not the type to allow these, let’s call them life events, to fade away easily. Always there must be a hidden meaning, even if there is none.

  I sip my red wine, allow the liquid to rest in the back of my throat for a brief moment before swallowing. In Europe, I love the red wines. Back in the states, they give me a headache. Sulfites, I’m told. Additives and preservatives. In Italy, as in most of Europe, the food and drink is fresh. No chemicals. Makes for a far healthier experience.

  “Maybe it’s someone’s idea of a sick joke,” I say, following up with a laugh.

  The noise from the kitchenette stops.

  “You did make a spectacle of yourself at the café this afternoon, Nick,” she points out.

  “Ouch,” I say.

  “I’m merely pointing out the fact that a lot of people saw what was going on. My ring dropping from out of your hand onto the cobblestones. You spilling your beer on purpose—”

  “It wasn’t on purpose.”

  “Okay, whatever, we still made a spectacle of ourselves. You were in a foul mood and that creepy man kept staring at us.”

  “And you don’t like to be noticed, nor stared at.”

  “Yes, I like my privacy and my anonymity, believe it or not. As an artist, I prefer my work to do my talking for me. You, my lovely fiancé, are a writer who has been to the wars and back. And for that you should be commended. But please, please, please do not become Norman Mailer.”

  I laugh aloud.

  “Blind Norman Mailer,” I correct. “I could do a lot worse.”

  “The blindness will pass, baby. Trust me. One day soon you will wake up and see again and the sight will be permanent. Think of this short period as your eyes taking a rest for a while. Soon your troubles, my troubles, our troubles, will all be behind us. You’ll write and I’ll paint and pen the loveliest poems in the world and together we will conquer planet Earth.”

  I don’t know if I will ever see outside my head again, like Grace believes. But like her, I can only believe it will happen. But it will take time. When it comes to all our separate and collective wounds, the healing will come, but it will take its own special time.

  “Our troubles behind us,” I say, c
ocking my head towards the open window and the canal. “What a truly splendid thought.”

  My Grace and I take our dinner to bed. We eat the pasta swimming in fresh tomato sauce and olive oil and we drink the red wine. When the food and the wine are gone we make love again, this time to the evening breeze and to the sound of the wood boats on the canals and the gondoliers who make music with their voices inside them. And when the love-making is done and we are emptied and happy, we spoon into one another and fall to sleep.

  That’s when the happiness leaves me and memory slides her cold body into the bed, settles herself inside the narrow space between my love and me.

  * * *

  In the dream I’m climbing the hill.

  There’s about as much distinction between hills and mountains in this brown, desolate territory as there are friends and enemies. Seems there are no flatlands at all, other than in the valleys. But you don’t want to be in the valleys because there you are exposed. Sitting ducks. Best to keep climbing. And when you run out of hill to climb, you walk down, cross the road while hoping to avoid an IED, and find another hill to climb again.

  Do it quickly.

  I reach the top of this hill and come upon a road carved out of the rocky floor. At the end of the narrow road is the village. The village is enclosed by a small stone wall that rises up no farther than my knees. At the entrance to the village is a gate made out of wood slats. The wood is too worn out and dilapidated by time and wear for it to remain any other way than wide open. Someone once told me that the difference between a Tajik village and a modern city is about one thousand years.

  As if guarding the collection of small huts and buildings made of stone and thatched roofs, is a cow. The black and white cow is chained to a post by the stone wall. The closer my squad and I come to the cow, the more she shakes her head like she’s saying “Nooo” instead of “Mooo,” and all the time the cowbell strapped to her old flesh-drooping neck bangs out a dull, muted metal warning to the village occupants. The still- alive ones anyway.

  I find myself holding out my hand to the fly-infested cow as if to tell her to calm down. What’s done is done.

  In the near distance now, I can see the smoke that rises up from the bombing.

  I can see just a hint of orange-red flame dripping up towards the brilliant blue sky. I sense a slight commotion coming from sandaled feet against a gravel floor, and the occasional high-pitched cry of the wounded. Some of the chickens and dogs are running around in confusion. A saddled horse is bucking and trotting a crazy circle inside a small wood corral. I also make out something else. A gut-wrenching wailing. It sings of grief and breakdown.

  Then a gunshot breaks the plate-glass tension. It’s followed by a solid thud, like a big old tree falling in the forest. I look over my right shoulder to see that the cow has dropped to the earth, her big head propped up by the chain around her neck, her fleshy tongue hanging out of her black mouth. I about-face and observe one of my men lower his M4 carbine just as the brass casing catches air, rapidly spins end over end, then makes a slow arcing descent to the ground, the sound of brass against rock making a somehow pleasant but infinitely sad ping.

  “You. Stupid. Bastard.” I say, turning back to the dead cow.

  “I’m gonna eat good tonight, Cap,” the kid chuckles.

  I shake my head, step on through the already open gates. That’s when I spot the village center and the same fresh water well where I met the elders only yesterday morning after prayers.

  There are a few bodies lying on the ground by the well.

  One of the bodies belongs to a little boy.

  Chapter 9

  WHEN I WAKE, I’M no longer in bed. Instead, I find myself perched four stories above the feeder canal. The roof beneath me is shingled with clay tiles, some of which have been crushed under my dead weight.

  The good news is that my sight has returned, however briefly.

  The bad news: I’m up on a roof, dressed in nothing but a pair of pea green US Army issue boxer shorts, barely a few inches from dropping some sixty or seventy feet into a filthy feeder canal. That is, if I don’t hit the narrow stone pavement that runs along its opposite side.

  The obvious question is screaming inside my head.

  How the hell did I get up here?

  The answer is that I must be sleepwalking.

  I’ve never been known to sleepwalk. I can’t ever remember waking up somewhere other than where I laid my head prior to falling asleep. Be it the solid ground of an Afghan hillside or my queen-sized mattress back in Troy. So why should it start now at forty-three years old? The ultimate reason behind it must be the ultimate cause behind the blindness.

  Post-traumatic stress the doctors call it.

  But I’m supposed to be improving. Forgetting the war. Forgetting that little boy. I’m supposed to be making progress. Instead I’m up on a roof and I have no idea how to get down.

  Then a voice.

  Grace.

  “Oh dear God!” she shouts. “Oh. Christ. Oh God. Don’t move, Nick. Please don’t move. Don’t. Move.”

  “Good idea,” I say.

  She’s standing on the small stone terrace that’s perched against the side of this old building directly outside the open French doors.

  “How in the world…?” she begs.

  “I’ve been asking myself the same thing, my love.”

  Off in the distance, the view is spectacular. I see the Grand Canal, the early morning delivery barges coming and going from the different docking points all along the main water artery. Beyond that, and beyond the tile roofs of the buildings, I see the wide open basin and the sea and the outlying islands and a rare winter sun rising brilliant orange and warm. I see the birds. I see the sun. And it feels wonderful.

  “Nick, do your eyes work?”

  “Fleetingly, my dear.”

  “Great. Keep joking. You’re about to end up in the bottom of that canal, and I just might be widowed before my wedding.”

  “There’s always your ex-husband,” I say. “He obviously still loves you.”

  I shift myself, just slightly. The tiles crumble beneath me. I begin to slide.

  Grace screams.

  “It’s okay!” I bark.

  I’ve stopped sliding. For now.

  Then, “Grace, I need your help. I’m going to try and shift my body onto my stomach so that I’m perpendicular with the edge of the roof. After that I’m going to lower my left arm and my left leg. If I can place my left foot onto the terrace railing, I can give you my left hand to hold tight. Make sense?”

  “Yes, love,” she says, her voice trembling.

  Gently, slowly, I extend my right arm out and lower my body onto my right side. Then I extend my right leg out so that it too rests on the clay tiles. Many of the tiles break underneath my body, sending shards of sharp clay up into my skin. It stings like dozens of needle shots. But I try and ignore the pain.

  Now that I’m lying prone on the edge of the roof, I try and lower my left leg. I start by sliding it off the edge and then gently down towards the terrace’s stone railing.

  “How’m I doing, Gracie?”

  “Almost there, love.” Her voice is high-pitched, full of stress. My every movement bears its weight on her beating heart.

  Then I feel it. The solid firmness of the banister.

  “Okay, now for my arm,” I say. “When you can reach it, take hold of my hand.”

  “Yes, love. I’m here. I’m. Here.”

  This time, in order for me to extend my hand down over the roof edge, I have to stretch. I must bring my body so close to the edge that I find myself on the brink of dropping. It’s as if I’m floating in midair. Makes me wonder how I managed to climb up here onto this steeply angled roof in the first place. But take it from an Afghan vet: The climb is always the easy part. Especially when you’re doing it under the fearless guise of sleepwalking. It’s getting back down that’s treacherous.

  “Can you reach it, baby?”

/>   “I’m trying!” she cries.

  In my head, I see her struggling to make herself taller so that she can reach my fingers and then my hand. I stretch all the more, until I feel our fingertips touching, and then our hands, and then her tight grip.

  “Gotcha!”

  “Don’t let go,” I insist.

  I pray I don’t suddenly drop and pull her over with me. How will the headline look? Blind solider/writer and artist fiancée fall to their tragic death in romantic Venice. The news will be an international sensation. Death in Venice…Tragedy in Midst of Rekindled Love…Fiancé Falls for Fiancée…

  I press my weight onto my left foot.

  “Grace!” I shout. “When I tell you, I want you to pull me in towards the door. You got that?”

  She’s already pulling on me.

  “Got it!”

  “On three,” I insist.

  “I’m ready.”

  “One. Two. Three—”

  She pulls me in towards the apartment and I slide off the roof, drop onto the banister and onto the slate-covered terrace floor, my left hand still gripped in Grace’s.

  A wave of pain shoots up and down my butt cheeks since they cushioned the fall. But at least I didn’t drop to my death onto the stone cobbles or into a filthy, shallow lagoon.

  Grace drops to her knees and hugs me.

  “You stupid jerk,” she says through a haze of tears. “What could have prompted you to do something so stupid? So selfish?”

  I try and stand. I peer into Grace’s swelled, tear-filled eyes. I want to see them before I lose my sight again.

  “I was sleepwalking,” I explain. But the truth sounds ridiculous.

  “We’ll learn to lock the doors,” she says. “I’ll hold you all night long.”

  I pull her into me and as I do, I see the light of the sun begin to fill the studio. I see the back of Grace’s canvas and the new painting it contains. I see the couch and the harvest table and I see our bed, the covers and sheets tossed about. As I soak in the vision, I sense the darkness coming on. It’s a like a total eclipse of the sun, only not as achingly slow.

  We enter back into the apartment, hand in hand.