“I’ve been thinking-it’s the safest thing we can do. Hundreds of witnesses. When anyone asks, we were at Mimi’s.”
“Are you crazy?”
“We can do it. People will be late. Everything’ll be a mess in the rain. We go in the back. Then we’re in the ballroom, dancing. That’s all anyone will remember.”
“Dancing,” she said, shocked. “After we just-”
I took her arms. “I know what we just did. And now we’re going to Mimi’s.”
“I can’t.”
“We have to,” I said, still holding her. “Otherwise, where were we?”
“How can we go?” she said nervously. “Like this? What do we wear?”
“Borrow something of my mother’s.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Claudia,” I said, gripping her now. “There isn’t time. I’ll run the bath. We’ll pick something out. It’ll be all right. It has to be.”
“But my hair, it’s all wet,” she said, putting her hand up to feel it.
“Your hair.”
She stopped, hearing the absurdity of it.
“Everybody’ll be wet,” I said. “Come on. We have to hurry.”
She didn’t move.
“We can do it.” I looked toward the tarp. “We can’t let anyone know.”
“And we’re supposed to smile? After this?” She shook a little.
“Yes. As if nothing happened.” I took her shoulders again. “Because nothing happened.”
She looked at me, then nodded, still shaking.
“All right. Hot water. Come on. Leave the lights. I want to check later. If there’s any blood we missed.”
“Oh,” she said, stopping. She looked back toward the steps, her face slack.
“You all right?” I said softly.
She nodded. “It’s just-I forgot about the blood.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
There was only enough hot water for one bath, so we took turns. While I was drying off near the space heater, Claudia went through my mother’s closet, her head wrapped in a towel, her skin flushed from the warm soak.
“You’re young. That already puts you ahead. Wear anything.”
“To a party like this? It’s easy for you.”
“If it still fits,” I said, picking up my jacket from the bed. “I haven’t worn it in three years. That’s nice.”
She was holding up an evening gown with a scalloped neck, as creamy and soft as lingerie.
“It’s from before the war.”
“Here, let me help.”
She slid the dress over her head.
“It’s loose,” she said.
“This much?” I pinched in some fabric at the back. “We can pin it. You’ll look wonderful.”
“Oh, wonderful,” she said, flouncing out her damp hair. “Everyone will see it’s old.”
“They’ll still be looking at you. That’s all we want.”
“Look at all this. Powder, everything. How can she have so much?”
I left her at the mirror, patting her face, and went to dress, hurrying, even managing my tie in a few minutes. Then I headed downstairs to check the water entrance, running a flashlight along the edge of the tarp. There were a few dark splotches of dampness on the stone floor, possibly from our dripping clothes, but nothing that looked like blood. One more check tomorrow in the daylight. What else? The ashtray in the hall. Not even a trace. When I got back to my mother’s room, Claudia was still at the dressing table, putting her hair up.
“We have to hurry.”
“There’s nothing else I can do with it,” she said, ignoring me. “This way it doesn’t matter if it’s wet.”
I saw the white back of her neck, like a girl’s, then looked into the mirror as she blotted her lipstick. The room was warm now, close with the smell of perfume and powder.
“You look beautiful.”
She met my eyes in the mirror, then looked down, suddenly upset.
“I can’t do this. All the time thinking-” She stopped, then reached for another tissue and raised her head to look at me again. “Where are the pins?”
It needed only two, which I covered in the back with the sash. The shoes were more difficult-we had to stuff wadded tissue into the toes to make them fit.
“So,” Claudia said, standing in front of the mirror, smoothing the skirt. “It’s okay?”
“Almost.”
I went into my mother’s closet and pulled out the false panel in the glove drawer that hid her jewel case. You had to lift the top tray of rings out to get to the bigger pieces. I took out a necklace.
“I can’t wear-”
“She’s not wearing it,” I said, fastening it behind her neck. “She won’t mind.”
She fingered the stones, just gazing into the mirror for a minute.
“My god. Are they rubies?”
“I don’t know. Garnets, maybe. Anyway, they suit you. Your coloring. Ready?”
But she stood there, still looking, then made a wry grimace. “All my life I wanted to go to those parties. In one of the palazzos. With jewels. And now-like this.”
Mimi’s ground-floor layout was similar to ours; a long hall stretching from the Grand Canal to a calle, flanked by old offices and storerooms converted tonight into cloakrooms and little parlors. As I’d expected, there was a crush at the water entrance, a swarm of flashbulbs and dripping umbrellas and harried maids running back and forth. Most of the maids were new, borrowed from friends or hired for the evening, and none of them recognized me. We were just part of the crowd in evening dress streaming in from all directions, handing over wet coats, adjusting hair in powder rooms, stamping our shoes dry on the marble floor. In the confusion of arrival, with everyone talking at once and music coming from upstairs, no one noticed us. We might have come in at any time. I glanced up to see if Mimi was on the stairs, receiving, but she had evidently already joined the party. Better still.
At the top of the stairs was a landing, an anteroom before the main sala, a place to catch your breath and gather your skirt, and for a moment we stood there, dazzled. Mimi’s ballroom was one of the grandest in Venice, as large as the Rezzonico’s, and tonight every inch of it seemed alive with light. The center chandeliers were electric, but the walls were lined with sconces holding real candles, hundreds of them, backed by mirrors, so that the effect was watery, constantly in motion, the nighttime equivalent of sunlight reflected off the canal. At the end of the room the high windows tapered to gothic points, but the walls themselves were rococo, paneled Arcadian scenes framed in gilt, moldings of swirling plaster. Waiters passed trays of champagne. Women glanced at themselves in mirrors. After the dark lagoon, the bulky tarp splashing over the side of the boat, I felt we had stepped into another world-not this one, maybe the one the room had been meant for, not real even then.
“Adam, you did come.” Mimi after all, standing guard at the door. Her hair, swept up, was sprinkled with jewels, not a tiara but tiny diamond pins, bits of starlight. Could she see it on my face? Washed now, but still somehow streaked with his blood? I felt my hands shaking and dug my nails into the palms. We could do this, had to.
“Hours ago,” I said, nodding toward the crowd below.
“And you’ve brought Miss-”
“Grassini,” Claudia said.
“Yes, I remember. So glad,” she said, shaking hands, her eyes sweeping down to take in Claudia’s dress. She
