Alluvione by Vincent James Perrone

There was Christmas; there was Venice. Both arrived too late for us. The word, alluvione, meant flood but sounded less frightening, and—like everything in this country—it ran precipitously off our tongues. Then it was screamed in the streets, and we were afraid.

The waves were skyscraper-tall, shorn at the top with froth turned crimson in the sun. And they were nearly here. We craned our necks, dropped our wicker baskets, and fell into a mushy embrace. Our last dusk on the shores of the lagoon. Romantic as any honeymoon.

We’d heard the warnings too late. The port emptied out like a good restaurant with a rat problem. Everything scurried. And the bridge to the mainland buckled under the weight of escape, turned to a smile half submerged. No exit.

Apocalypse had been a joke for so long, and we finally had the opportunity to laugh.

Shouldn’t we run?

On water?

It’d been a balmy afternoon, sipping fernet under a beach umbrella, kissing with too much tongue, and wobbling up toward San Marco where all the tourists looked like slick fish with lures stuck through their bellies. Perfect.

And just a day before, we were marching down the alter of a clandestine church while a priest in a tuxedo t-shirt pelted us with rice. Mirth and kitsch. We could have it like Las Vegas here, Roman columns instead of casinos, our love just the same. We’d married in an American way, in a foreign country, on a holiday neither of us celebrated. These were the myths we lived by.

Now the basilica shined dull pewter under the wringing sky; tiny Saint Mark statues floated up from the sewer grates, their pious, bearded faces blotted out by rain.

We called our families but they didn’t pick up. We called the concierge but they couldn’t translate. When the lights went out in our hotel room, we boarded up the windows with Caravaggio prints in heavy gold frames. We felt the city turn dense and sopping. Water up to our linened knees, then our chests, then our chins. Our hands clasped as we rag-dolled in the current. Nothing final to be said as catharsis had already come when we’d said our vows.

In sickness and in wellness, in truth and in fiction, on time and late. Could it be connected? Marriage and death? Or are these just illusions of the tourist sort?

For a moment, we weren’t in love; we were alive. And that was better. We let go of each other and grasped the chandelier.

But nothing stays impending for long. The crest and its apex make for a vain moment and collapse twice as fast. We sunk back toward the floor in reverse levitation. The tides slipped out the backdoor and down the granite stairs. We watched the gondolas slide back into their canals like eager bones into sockets. Above us, the chandelier dripped on our heads.

It’s over, I said.

That’s it, you said.

We were amicable until the new year, when the earthquakes hit Rome.

Vincent James Perrone is the author of Starving Romantic (11:11 Press, 2018) and a contributor to the anthology, Collected Voices in the Expanded Field (11:11 Press, 2020). His recent work can be found in Three Fold, Pithead Chapel, and New Flash Fiction Review. Find him at vincentjamesperrone.com

6 December 2024