Any Day Now (25 page)

I didn't get on the boat, couldn't, but walked back to the hotel. I cried all the way, not caring who saw. A few cars slowed, a whole busload of people stared out their tinted windows. The street was already mad with tourists, people with third-degree sunburns and sweat circles under the arms of their tank tops. These people had all missed the boat, too, missed their one chance to spend the day in Venice. Instead they were here in a little world made just for them.

Though it was only 10:00, I bought a coffee gelato and stood on the sidewalk eating it and crying some more. I'd never cried and eaten ice cream at the same time. It was an experience. I looked at people. Even as they shoved pizza into their faces, even as they bought yet more postcards, they seemed relaxed. These people didn't mind that they weren't in Piazza San Marco. They could buy the same fans, hats and T-shirts right here in Jesolo, the same gelati. The view was a little different, the light a little less magic, but if they really wanted to, they could do the palace tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that.

Denise Roig is the author of
A Quiet Night and a Perfect End
, a short-story collection that found critical favour when it came out in 1995 and again in 2000 when it was translated in French as
Le Vrai Secret du bonheur
(Editions de la Pleine Lune.) CBC Radio's “Between the Covers” broadcast selections from
A Quiet Night and a Perfect End
in the fall of 2003. Denise lives in Montreal where she teaches journalism at Concordia University and is working on her next book,
Butter Cream: A Year in a Montreal Pastry School
.