A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [92]
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Sunlight pried open his sticky eyelids, forcing him awake. He’d forgotten to close the blinds. It had been five o’clock by the time he’d finally gone to bed, after hours of helpless wandering and a series of lousy directions to the police station; after locating it finally and relaying his sad tale (minus the pickpocket’s identity) to an officer with oiled hair and an attitude of pristine indifference; after the offer of a ride to his hotel (which was all he’d really been after) from an elderly couple he’d met at the station, whose passports had been stolen on the Amalfi ferryboat.
Now Ted rose from bed with a throbbing head and rampaging heart. Phone messages littered the table: five from Beth, three from Susan, and two from Alfred (I lose, read one, in the broken English of the hotel clerk). Ted left them where he’d thrown them. He showered, dressed without shaving, drained a vodka at the minibar, and removed cash and another credit card from his room safe. He had to find Sasha now—today—and this imperative, which had seized him at no specific moment, assumed an immediacy that was the perfect inverse of his prior shirking. There were other things he needed to do—call Beth, call Susan, eat—but doing them now was out of the question. He had to find her.
But where? Ted deliberated this question while downing three espressos in the hotel lobby, letting the caffeine and vodka greet in his brain like fighting fish. Where to look for Sasha in this sprawling, malodorous city? He reviewed the strategies he’d already failed to execute: approaching dissolute kids at the train station and youth hostels, but no, no. He’d waited too long for any of that.
Without a clear plan, he took a taxi to the Museo Nazionale and set off in what seemed the direction he’d walked yesterday, after viewing the Orpheus and Eurydice. Nothing looked the same, but surely his state of mind could account for the difference, the tiny metronome of panic now ticking within him. Nothing looked the same, yet everything looked familiar: the stained churches and slanting crusty walls, the hangnail-shaped bars. After following a narrow street to its wriggling conclusion, he emerged onto a thoroughfare lined with a gauntlet of weary palazzi, their bottom floors gouged open to accommodate cheap clothing and shoe stores. A breeze of recognition fluttered over Ted. He followed the avenue slowly, looking right and left, until he caught sight of the yellow smiley face overlaying a palimpsest of swords and crosses.
He pushed open the small rectangular door cut into a broad, curved entrance originally built to receive horse-drawn coaches, then followed a passageway into a cobbled courtyard still warm from recent sunlight. It smelled of rotting melons. A bandy-legged old woman wearing blue kneesocks under her dress bobbled toward him, her hair in a scarf.
“Sasha,” Ted said into her faded wet eyes. “American. Capelli rossi.” He tripped on the r and tried again. “Rossi,” he said, rolling it this time. “Capelli rossi.” Realizing as he spoke that the description was no longer quite accurate.
“No, no,” the woman muttered. As she began to lurch away, Ted followed, slipped a twenty-dollar bill into her soft hand and inquired again, rolling the r this time without a hitch. The woman made a clicking noise, jerked her chin, and then, looking almost sad, gestured for Ted to follow her. He did, filled with disdain at how easily she’d been bought, how little her protection was worth. To one side of the front door was a broad flight of stairs, splotches of rich, Neapolitan marble still winking up through the grime. The woman began climbing slowly, clutching the rail. Ted followed.
The second floor, as he’d been lecturing his undergraduates for years, was the piano nobile, where palace owners brandished their wealth before