"Now come on," she said, and gave me a lascivious glance. "Let's get you some clothes before I lose what's left of my willpower."

19. "Busy Child"

-The Crystal Method In a city like Venice, most of the nicer hotels claim to have been palaces at one time or another. But there were palaces and there were palaces, and the Gritti, where Paula said we had a room, was a silk-draped, marble-floored, gold-rimmed old-world marvel that didn't exactly go along with what I imagined when I thought about lying low. The kid staring back at me in the lobby mirrors didn't look like he belonged here, but then, at that moment, he didn't look like he necessarily belonged anywhere.

"You can afford this?" I murmured, gazing across the mostly empty lobby.

"Armitage keeps a suite here."

"Is he here now?"

"He'll meet us later for dinner. Just relax, all right? Go stand by the elevators and wait for me."

Paula went to check in while I hovered behind a pillar, trying to look inconspicuous. I was wearing skinny European jeans and a Venice T-shirt with a baseball cap and sungla.s.ses. I had a garment bag over my shoulder, the one that Benito, the desk clerk at the Pensione Guerrato, had brought back for me before we'd slipped out.

When Paula came back with the key, we took the elevator up to Armitage's suite, and I gazed out on the Grand Ca.n.a.l and the city beyond, trying not to think about how less than twenty-four hours ago, I'd been trying to get rid of a corpse from a similar height.

"You like the view?"

"It's great."

"Perry..."

I looked around. Paula was sitting on the bed, gazing at me in a way that I'd never seen before.

"We've still got a few hours to kill," she said. "Any ideas?"

"We could send down for some champagne."

"That sounds like a good start, but where do we go from there?"

I sat down next to her on the bed and we started kissing. Paula slipped her hand inside my T-shirt, and we sprawled backwards over the covers, and all I could think was This is it. You're in Europe now, you're alone in a hotel room, you can do whatever you want. I thought about how most guys, including my friends, had lost their virginity in the back seat of a car or on their girlfriend's couch, hoping like h.e.l.l that her dad didn't come down and catch them. Compared to that, this was a dream.

Paula sat up and looked at me. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I said.

"You seem distracted."

"No, I'm totally fine, really."

"I knew it." Her eyes didn't budge from mine. "It's her, isn't it?"

"What?" I shook my head. "Who, Gobi? Are you kidding?"

"I'm not stupid, Perry."

"Wait," I said, and grabbed her by the arm, "just listen to me, okay?"

She just sat there staring at me.

"I'm telling you," I said. "There's no one else I'd rather be here with right now. No one."

Paula kept her eyes on me, her expression unchanged. Somewhere down in the piazza, a church bell rang. She took a breath.

"Prove it."

"Perry, you ready yet? It's time."

"One second." It was almost six o'clock now, and I was still in the bathroom, trying to fix my tie. "I'll be right there."

"Perry, we have to go."

"All right." Taking a big breath, I turned the k.n.o.b and stepped out of the bathroom. "I'm ready, let's go."

Paula didn't say anything right away. She got an odd look on her face, a kind of half frown, half pucker that I'd never seen before, and bit the corner of her lip. The European-style suit that Benito at the front desk had brought back fit me well enough-in fact, it almost fit too well, the narrow, tapered pants and suit jacket clinging perfectly to my frame in straight, smooth lines. The shirt was made out of some flimsy, silky material that felt like it might dissolve if it got wet, and the lines of the tie were crisp and sharp. My narrow black leather shoes gleamed like mirrors. Somewhere in the universe, every guy that I'd ever hung out with and watched RoboCop was asking if I'd like a gla.s.s of chardonnay to go with my Celine Dion Greatest Hits CD.

"You look... great," she said. "I've just never seen you like this before. I sort of want to devour you."

"Still?"

"Again."

"Now?"

"Always."

"Oh," I said. "Well, thanks. You're looking pretty edible yourself."

"I packed in a hurry." Apparently "in a hurry" meant an extremely low-cut black c.o.c.ktail dress with a stylized zipper running diagonally down the front, a white cropped fur coat, and stilettos that probably could have doubled as projectile weapons. I had definitely spent too much time with Gobi, I thought-now I was viewing fashion accessories with the eye of a Secret Service agent. Her hair was pinned up in back, accentuating her throat and ears, where she wore no jewelry whatsoever. Something about that tan, uninterrupted skin made me want to kiss it, which I'm sure was the whole point.

"Don't forget your hat and sungla.s.ses." She offered her arm. "Shall we go?"

We took the elevator down, both of us watching the numbers. She reached over and put her hand on my chest.

"How do you feel?"

"Good."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm positive."

She turned to me and smiled. If you had told me at that moment that I had just spent several hours up in a luxury hotel room with a beautiful woman and I'd somehow still emerged from the whole thing a virgin, I think I would have skipped over disbelief completely and gone straight to exasperation. But that was how it had happened. Even as we'd wrestled half naked across the sheets, Paula had managed to keep her cool.

It's all right, Perry, she'd said. I don't want you rushing into anything you're not ready for, especially if you're just trying to prove a point.

I almost asked her what point she thought I was trying to prove, then realized I already knew.

I guess in the end, we both did.

20. "Darklands"

-The Jesus and Mary Chain We walked across the Piazza San Marco, making our way among the pushcarts selling masks and T-shirts to tourists in the gathering dusk. My new shoes felt tight on my feet. Pigeons fluttered and dive-bombed our heads, close enough that I almost had to duck to avoid being hit, and as we walked past the cathedral, I pointed up to the clock tower, where two bronze men swung their clappers to mark the hour.

"Those mechanized figures are called the moors," I said, remembering something from one of the guidebooks I'd read on the train here. "Supposedly back in the seventeenth century one of them knocked an unsuspecting worker off the top and he fell to his death. The first official a.s.sa.s.sination by a robot."

That got a smile out of Paula. "You're a good tour guide, Stormaire. Maybe if this whole rock-and-roll thing doesn't pan out..."

"You think Armitage will actually be able to help me sort this out?"

"We'll see."

I took a deep breath. She glanced across the piazza and I caught the faraway look in her eyes that I hadn't seen before.

"Hey," I said. "Are you all right?"

"I have a picture of me sitting on my dad's shoulders right over there." Paula pointed back to the cathedral, next to the folded-up platforms they kept in the square in times of acqua alta, high water, when the ca.n.a.ls flooded into the streets. "I was probably five or six at the time."

"I didn't know you'd been here before."

"Dad was here with the Stones back in the early nineties. He brought me with him. It was a good time."

Her melancholy tone caught me off-guard. "You guys still see each other all the time, right?"

"Things are different now." She tugged my hand. "Come on. We're going to be late."

We stopped outside a bistro with outdoor tables set up along the cobblestones. As we approached, I saw Linus pacing back and forth in front of the entrance, smoking a cigarette hard enough that it seemed to disappear in two long drags. He saw me and tossed the b.u.t.t aside.

"Perry, thank G.o.d, where have you been?" His attention immediately snapped to Paula. "What did you do with him?"

Paula sighed. "Good to see you too, Linus. Where's the rest of the band?"

"They're inside already, doing the sound check. Which is where he should be, right now."

I hustled inside and found Norrie, Sasha, and Caleb setting up equipment onstage. Caleb was eating an enormous slice of pizza while Sasha flirted with a strikingly beautiful waitress in a language that seemed to rely on nothing more sophisticated than hand gestures and smiles. None of them seemed particularly concerned about my disappearance. "What's up, jerkweed," Sasha said. "What happened? We thought you drowned in a ca.n.a.l or something."

Norrie squinted at me suspiciously, and when he got close enough, he lowered his voice and whispered, "Wuh-Well?"

"Well, what?"

"You nuh-know what, Stormaire. Duh-Did you fuh-find her or what?"

"Dude..."

"Yuh-You totally did, didn't you?" He shook his head. "Thuh-That's why you duh-ditched us."

" . . . it's a crazy, long story, and-"

"Nuh-Never mind. Doesn't muh-matter. Guh-Guess what?" When he looked at me again, he was smiling, and just like that, his stutter was gone. "I wrote a new song."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And it's good. All it needs is a ba.s.s line."

"No problem, man." In spite of everything, I felt that sudden lift that came along with our songwriting partnership, that sense that somehow we'd lucked into knowing each other, way back before either one of us could've guessed what that meant. "Ba.s.s line, I can do."

"Wuh-Wait a second." Norrie's eyes narrowed. "Wuh-Where's your ba.s.s?"

"I kind of... lost it."

"What?"

"Look," I said, "if I told you half the s.h.i.t that I've been through in the last twenty-four hours..."

"That's all right," a voice said. "I'm sure we can figure something out."

I turned around and saw George Armitage standing there.

In person, Armitage was exactly as refined and charming as I'd imagined from talking to him over the phone. He was in his midfifties, tall and fit, his skin almost Mediterranean, with just a few artfully arranged wrinkles around his pale blue eyes. Everything about him felt polished and real at the same time, and there was a certain smell, like suede and Lear jet fumes, clinging ever so faintly to his clothes. So this is what a billion dollars smells like, I thought.

The bodyguards on either side of him stood silent, their eyes hidden behind mirrored sungla.s.ses. I almost immediately started thinking of them as Ram and Rod.

After a brief introduction to the rest of the band, and to Linus, who for once seemed able to keep from making some kind of acerbic comment, Armitage led Paula and me across the square to the small cafe, where a table was waiting for us. Ram and Rod followed at a respectful but conspicuous distance.

"I won't keep you long," Armitage said. "I know you've got a sound check to get to."

"It's all right."

"How do you like the city?" He spread his hands magisterially across the cafe, the cathedral, and the piazza full of pigeons behind us in the gathering dusk, as if he'd conjured all of this out of the ether, just for us. "My absolute favorite place on earth. She's like a beautiful woman whose favor I've never quite managed to capture."

"It's really great," I said.