Venetian Masks (17 page)

The next picture continued the aquatic theme: Max nude in a stone-tiled shower, legs slightly spread. His back was to the camera and he leaned slightly against his left arm, which was stretched out along the wall. His right hand was hidden, but the angle and position of his elbow suggested he was stroking himself. He looked back over his shoulder, mouth and eyes wide, as if he’d been taken by surprise. As Jeff’s eyes traced the line of Cleve’s spine, the narrowing at his waist, the slight dip above the swell of buttocks, Jeff’s hand tugged harder, faster. He was dimly aware of the slick sounds of skin against skin, of the slightly splintery seat under his ass, of the sound of the refrigerator humming away.

But still Jeff clicked on another photo. This was one he’d looked at earlier in the day and, as far as he could tell, one of the most recent. Max was sitting on a couch, naked, legs splayed. But his cock was lying softly on his thigh, and he was looking off to the side, not at the camera. He wasn’t smiling or trying to look sexy, and somehow Jeff had the impression that he wasn’t posing at all, that the photographer had seen him sitting like that and couldn’t resist snapping a candid shot. Cleve looked a little sad, as if he were longing for something he couldn’t have. Or someone, maybe.

With a sigh, Jeff climaxed into his hand.

T
HE
Santa Lucia train station sprawled along the banks of the Grand Canal. It was a long, low building, many centuries more modern than the rest of the city, with a winged FS symbol on the front. The broad stairs in front of the station were full of people sitting next to suitcases and shopping bags, munching on slices of pizza or just watching the boats go by. Santa Lucia wasn’t far from the time-share, so although he kind of wished for one last
vaporetto
ride, Jeff had simply walked.

Inside the station, he had a fairly confusing conversation with a ticket agent, the upshot of which was that he could not exchange or return his Vienna ticket but he was apparently eligible for some mysterious discount on the ticket to Zagreb. He paid only thirty euros for something the agent called a couchette.

The train wouldn’t leave the station until 2120—which Jeff recalculated as 9:20 in the evening. That left him with most of the day free, so he left his suitcase at the station’s baggage consignment office and made his way back outside.

It was another lovely day, and after buying a bottle of water and bag of potato chips from a nearby shop, he took a seat on the concrete stairs. He watched the pigeons and the passersby. Several boats were tied up a few yards away, and in one of them a cute young guy was sitting on a stack of what looked like bags of cement, talking animatedly on his cell phone. Jeff watched him for a while, careful not to catch the man’s eyes. When a boy and a girl in their early twenties descended a few of the slippery steps alongside the canal and posed for pictures, smiling and kissing, Jeff was reminded of the photos the gondolier had taken. Silently cursing his own stupidity, he fished out his phone and scrolled through them. He and Cleve looked every bit as happy, every bit as in love, as the couple by the canal.

In love. It was a strange concept. Jeff had cared about Kyle a great deal—he’d even loved him. But now he wondered if he and Kyle had ever truly been
in love
. Kyle had never made his heart race the way Cleve did, had never made him feel so strongly. After five years together, Jeff hadn’t even bothered to chase Kyle across town when he’d run off to his new boyfriend. But after only five days together, he was chasing Cleve to another country—despite his deep doubts about whether Cleve reciprocated his feelings, and despite the lurking and sinister Eddie Weibull.

Jeff had read hundreds of books in which characters fell madly head over heels. He’d even believed that this happened sometimes to real people in real life. His parents, for example—even when they squabbled, even after forty years of marriage, they adored each other. But he’d always assumed emotions like these were beyond him and that comfort, companionship, and commonality were the best he could have. Those weren’t such bad things to settle for. He’d believed that the capacity for anything deeper and more romantic was missing from his psyche, perhaps sunken to the bottom of a waterway in the Sacramento Delta.

But now, sitting on the hard stairs in front of the train station, an empty water bottle and crumpled chip bag in his hand, Jeff was quite certain that he
was
capable of falling in love—and that he was now in very, very deep.

This is stupid
, he thought.
You don’t even know his real name. You can’t fall in love with a guy you don’t know.
Except that maybe you could.

“Fuck,” he said out loud.

He stood and walked, crossed a very modern-looking long bridge, then walked some more. He walked, in fact, until his feet were sore and his legs ached, pausing only for a gelato and, later, an espresso. The amazing thing was that no matter how long he walked or how randomly he wandered, he was never lost. Thanks to the time he’d spent on foot in Venice, both alone and with Cleve, he knew his way around the city better than he knew most of Sacramento. The realization comforted him somehow. He still didn’t speak the language, and he still hadn’t figured out which euro coin was which, but he felt… in place. It was like playing tag and having not one home base but a pair: two widely separated locations where you could go and feel safe.

Safe, that is, aside from potentially scary mobsters.

J
EFF
had never ridden a train before, unless you counted the antique ones in Old Sacramento. The one that chugged in on track eight at Santa Lucia did not have a steam engine. He couldn’t decode his ticket and had to ask for help from one of the employees, who pointed out the proper car. A porter waited on the steps of the carriage, checked Jeff’s ticket and passport, took him inside, and led him to one of several small compartments.

As it turned out, the couchette had six bunks per compartment, three on each side. Jeff’s was at the top. He hauled his bag up, and when he lay down, he had about as much space as in a coffin. A slightly undersized coffin, and he had to bend his legs a little to fit. The four bottom berths were soon filled with a quartet of quiet men he thought might be Hungarian, while the bunk opposite him remained empty.

It wasn’t long before the train began to move, sluggishly at first and then picking up speed. The porter shut the door to the compartment, and one of the Hungarians locked it. The hour was still early, and Jeff supposed he could have gotten up and explored the train a little. But dreams had prevented him from sleeping well the night before, and he was nervous about what he would face when he arrived in Zagreb, so he decided to take his meds. A small bottle of water had been provided, which was handy. He swallowed three pills instead of his usual two—something he very rarely did, but he didn’t want to wake up his bunkmates by screaming.

The pillow was tiny and the blanket thin, but the train’s motion was very soothing. He was probably asleep before they left the suburbs.

He wasn’t sure what woke him—the rustling sounds, the movements of the other passengers, or the weak overhead light. He almost bashed his head on the ceiling of the car before he remembered where he was. He looked blearily at his watch. Three thirty. Christ.

Someone knocked lightly on the door, one of the Hungarians unlocked it, and the porter squeezed in. He was carrying plastic trays. He handed one up to Jeff, who had to sit far hunched over to accept it. There was a cardboard cup of terrible coffee, another diminutive water bottle, and a plastic package containing a plasticky pastry. It was the first bad meal he’d had since arriving in Europe.

He managed to make his way down to the floor without kicking anyone in the head and then traversed the swaying carriage to the bathroom, which was smelly. He pissed, rinsed out his mouth, and splashed water on his face. What he really wanted was a hot shower and a big bed. Preferably shared with a companion.

By the time he returned to the compartment, the porter had folded the bunks back into the wall, leaving the five men crammed onto bench seats, their suitcases around their legs. Two of the men spoke softly to each other, one leaned against the window and dozed, and the fourth stared openly at Jeff, as if Jeff was something exotic in a zoo. Jeff didn’t know whether any of these guys spoke English, and he didn’t bother to find out.

He had almost dozed off himself when he felt the train slow and then stop. A few minutes later, he heard voices and footsteps, and two men in uniform appeared outside the compartment. They both looked very young and stern. “Passports,” said the shorter one, holding out his hand, and then repeated the request in what Jeff assumed was Slovenian. He took his time inspecting each of the documents very carefully, peering slit-eyed at the passengers and comparing them to their photos. When he got to one of the men, the guy who’d been staring at Jeff, the man in uniform spelled what Jeff guessed was a name into his radio. The staring man didn’t look concerned. The taller border guard stamped each passport with a loud
click-clunk
and handed them back.

Before Jeff could relax again, another man arrived—this one to check everyone’s tickets. He was followed by a woman in uniform who wanted to know if anyone had anything to declare. Jeff was a little fuzzy on what sorts of things needed declaring, but decided five days’ worth of clothing, a Kindle, a laptop, a scarf, earrings, and a mask probably didn’t count. He shook his head.

Fifteen minutes later, the train began to move again, signaling that the gauntlet of Slovenian border customs was complete. Yet along came another uniformed man. This one seemed a little less officious than his predecessors and even wished Jeff a pleasant visit. Jeff checked the newest stamp on his passport. Apparently he was now in Croatia.

Zagreb was only a short distance from the border, and less than half an hour after leaving Slovenia, the train pulled to a stop. Most of the passengers were already waiting near the doors, although Jeff’s bunkmates remained seated. Maybe they were going to ride all the way to Budapest. Jeff tipped the porter five euros, receiving a smile and thank-you in return, and stepped off the train.

The Zagreb station—Glavni Kolodvor—was much smaller than Santa Lucia and very quiet. Of course, it was barely four thirty in the morning, so he hadn’t expected much activity. Apart from the debarking passengers, the only person in sight was a man in a blue jumpsuit who looked as though he’d been slowly sweeping the platform for the past hundred years. Jeff followed the other passengers along the tracks, down some stairs and then back up, and into the station proper. The building had a soaring ceiling, was older than the Venetian train station, and smelled like bread. The aroma probably had a lot to do with the three bakery counters located in the main hall. Two of the three were open, with sleepy-looking women in white waiting behind the glass cases. Their wares were tempting, but first Jeff needed cash.

Following an overhead sign with a picture of a hand holding bills, he entered the slightly smaller room next door to the station’s main hall. There were several cash machines there. The one he chose had the option for instructions in English, and it cheerfully dispensed him several hundred kuna. According to his currency conversion app, kuna were worth roughly twenty cents each. The room also contained a tourist information counter, which was closed, so he grabbed a couple of brochures from a nearby rack. A few moments later, he ventured out of the station.

It was still far too dark to make out many details, but across the street was an expanse of park, flanked on either side by three- and four-story buildings. He knew from the quick glances he’d had at Google Maps that the park continued for many blocks ahead of him. To his right was a large structure with a flight of stairs leading to the entrance.
Pošta
said the large yellow sign, so he guessed it was a post office. To his left was a small formal garden, with more buildings on the other side. A line of taxis idled at the street in front of him, the drivers leaning against their cars, smoking, talking quietly with one another. As he stood there, a blue tram came rattling up the tracks near the park, stopped, and let out a dozen passengers. Nothing about the scene was frightening, but it was still very foreign. At least he’d seen lots of pictures of Venice before he went and could decipher a word or two of menu Italian. Zagreb, the entire country of Croatia, and the Croatian language were almost complete unknowns to him.

The time-share was only a short walk from the train station, but it was much too early to check in. He briefly considered going to Cleve’s hotel instead—he’d looked up that location as well—but he didn’t know which room was Cleve’s, or who might be there with him, or even whether Cleve was still there. Maybe he’d left town already, on his way to Christ knew where. According to the big timetables in the station, a lot of trains left Zagreb each day.

Jeff had never felt quite as alone as he did at that very minute, standing in front of a train station in the early morning, suitcase clutched in one hand.

Another tram arrived, this one white with pink advertising on the sides. Jeff watched as a few silent people got off and a few got on. One of the arriving passengers, a man in a blue uniform with a
Pošta
insignia, crossed over to Jeff’s side of the street, turned right, and sat down at one of the café tables that was arranged alongside the station. To Jeff’s surprise, a waiter came outside and took the man’s order. Somewhat heartened—at least he could wash the taste of the train breakfast from his mouth—Jeff followed the postman’s lead.

The only menu was a small laminated card that appeared to list several kinds of espresso drinks and some other things Jeff didn’t recognize. The waiter gave a cup to the postman and then walked to Jeff’s table. “Dobar dan,” the waiter said, unsmiling.

“Uh… English?” God, Jeff was blushing again. But the waiter only nodded, which gave Jeff a little courage. “Um, do you have food?”