He reached up to the spinning cylinder.
“Be careful, Signor Dalton. I think it has bees in it.”
Incisions — slices — had been carved into the wall of the cylinder. They ran in wavelike forms all around the circumference. Standing close to it, watching it turning in the wind, Dalton could feel the sound waves swirling around it, rising out of its mouth. He reached up for it with both hands, hesitated.
And then he closed his hands around it.
The music ceased at once, and silence settled into the room. He raised the cylinder enough to slip the thong off the ceiling hook, and turned around to say something to Miss Vasari.
As he turned the motion disturbed a small round leather pouch balanced on a ledge inside the cylinder. It plopped to the floor at his feet, a swollen little leather balloon. Cocaine, he thought, kneeling down to touch it with a fingertip.
As soon as he touched it the neck of the bag burst open with a puffy little pop and a cloud of palepinkish smoke; the scent was almost exactly but not quite like eucalyptus, and it rose upward and covered his face. He fell back, dropping the cylinder onto the marquetry floor, where it shattered into pieces.
His head was pounding.
He could not draw a breath.
He was dimly aware of Alessandra Vasari’s voice, but it was coming from a great distance. Incapable of either speech or motion, he watched as each shard of the terra-cotta cylinder changed into a scuttling spiderlike creature. They began to close in around him. The whole room turned a soft pale blue and then flashed into a blinding bright white—
— and he is in the basement of their decrepit old federal town house in Quincy standing at his paint-stained workbench with a broken alabaster lamp base in his left hand and a tube of porcelain glue in his right but not really thinking just watching the snow fly sideways across the frost-glazed window and beyond the falling snow the slope of their lawn now mounded six feet deep with snow and past that to the churning sweep of Quincy Bay and Long Peddocks harbor; this would be his last happy memory of Boston Bay. He hears the front door open and then Laura’s voice calling. No, not calling.
Crying his name, and the urgency of her tone is so electric that he drops the alabaster vase onto the workbench and runs up the staircase toward the half-open kitchen door, through the door, sliding on the braided rug; yes Laura is everything okay?
She is still screaming his name as he rounds the final turn down the front hall. Laura is standing in the open door with the blizzard swirling around her and her blond hair flying. At her feet is a paper sack of groceries spilling out its contents like a cornucopia of baby food and Handi Wipes. What chills him is the look on her face, as if she has been bled white and flash-frozen: the only color is in her wide open deep blue eyes and they are filled with horror. Past her, just out on the front porch, is the antique emerald green baby carriage with the gold trim and the golden springs, and now Laura is whispering his name and her face is as white as the snow that is whirling around her; she turns to point at the emerald green carriage, he rushes past her, she reaches out for him but he breaks through her grasp and blunders out into that wind-driven swirling white cloud of powdery snow. He looks down into the mounded green blankets and he sees—
— an unknown woman leaning over him, an aura of light surrounding her, and under his back he’s aware of a hard wooden floor and now he recognizes her scent, whiskey and cigarettes and the name of that perfume. It was Eau de Sud by Annick Goutal, Laura’s favorite, drifting around him. The woman is leaning close, and as he focuses on her he sees that her strong, handsome face is full of worry and her voice is low, urgent, and frightened. He also notes, dimly at first but with increasing interest, that she is holding a large hypodermic needle in her left hand. And she’s wearing surgical gloves.
“Signor Dalton? Are you all right? Are you okay?”
Dalton tried to raise his head. The room started to go white again and he let his head fall back against the tiles. He looked up at—
What was her name?
“I… I think I passed out.”
“Yes. You did. Sta prendendo medicine? Do you take any medicines? Are you allergic to anything? Are you sick with anything?”
Dalton blinked at the ceiling for a minute, trying to get the room to stay still and not fill up with the disturbing white light again. For a moment he seemed to be caught between two worlds: Boston; Quincy, Mass.; the snow swirling around the window, his broken alabaster lamp, the baby carriage with its terrible little pink-wrapped package.
He shut those pictures down and by sheer force of will brought his unsteady focus back to Miss Vasari’s strong Italian face and to the frightened expression in those amazing eyes.
“No. No medicine. Not sick. Just lost my balance.”
She pursed her lips and shook her head.
“You did not lose your balance. You have been drugged by this powder. You were hallucinating. I have given you some Narcan and some Adrenalin to counter it. I have wiped the powder off your face. Can you stand up?”
Narcan? Adrenalin?
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps I should call the Consulate?”
Please, don’t, he thought to himself.
“No. No, I’ll be fine.”
He raised a hand to rub his eyes and saw that he wasn’t wearing his black leather gloves. She must have pulled them off. He looked around him. His topcoat was lying in a heap beside him, next to his tie and his suit jacket, and his right shirtsleeve was pushed up to expose the vein in his arm. He closed his eyes and managed to sit up.
The room stayed mostly in Italy, and with her help he managed to get to his feet. She moved in close and put her arm around his waist, supporting him. Her body heat came through his shirt and her perfume — Laura’s perfume — filled his head.
“You should sit. Here, on the chair.”
She half-carried him — God she was strong — across to one of the two green leather club chairs in front of the big fireplace. Shards of pottery cracked under their feet as they crossed the floor.
Pottery.
Not spiders.
She got him into the chair and knelt down in front of him, the tanned skin on her fine knees dimpling white, her black leather skirt creaking.
“Would you like some water?”
“Water? Dear God. No water.”
She smiled up at him. Some of the tension went out of her face.
“A scotch, then?”
“Yes. That would be wonderful.”
She got up, peeled off her latex gloves with practiced skill, picked up what looked like a leather-bound medical kit, and considered him warily.
“You will be here when I get back?”
“I’ll do my best. No… wait.”
She stopped, an impatient look on her face.
“What did you stick me with?”
She glanced at the leather-bound kit, and shrugged.
“Narcan. And Adrenalin. It’s an antidote for most narcotics.”
“How did you know what to give me?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“You’re not a medical doctor.”
Another shrug, which reminded him of Major Brancati.
“E vero. You wish to sue me?”
“No. God no. I’m sorry. Thank you.”
Her broad smile reached all the way into her deep brown eyes.
“Un momento. Aspetta. I’ll be right back.”
Dalton watched her leave the room and thought in a pale lemon yellow kind of haze how nice it would be to watch her leave a room the way she left rooms for the rest of the long Venetian winter.