First published as Perry’s Killer Playlist in the USA in 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Published in Great Britain in 2014 by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2012 Joe Schreiber

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Published by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

First e-book edition 2014

ISBN 978 1 4052 5944 6

eISBN 978 1 7803 1112 8

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

PROLOGUE: ‘American Idiot’ – Green Day

1. ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ – The Killers

2. ‘Ever Fallen in Love’ – Buzzcocks

3. ‘Is There Something I Should Know?’ – Duran Duran

4. ‘The Loved Ones’ – Elvis Costello and the Attractions

5. ‘You Are a Tourist’ – Death Cab for Cutie

6. ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ – The Replacements

7. ‘Waiting for Somebody’ – Paul Westerberg

8. ‘Never Let Me Down Again’ – Depeche Mode

9. ‘Run (I’m a Natural Disaster)’ – Gnarls Barkley

10. ‘Police and Thieves’ – The Clash

11. ‘Jump’ – Van Halen

12. ‘Here I Go Again’ – Whitesnake

13. ‘Church of the Poison Mind’ – Culture Club

14. ‘The World Has Turned and Left Me Here’ – Weezer

15. ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ – The Beatles

16. ‘Know Your Enemy’ – Green Day

17. ‘There Are Some Remedies Worse Than the Disease’ – This Will Destroy You

18. ‘Panic Switch’ – Silversun Pickups

19. ‘Busy Child’ – The Crystal Method

20. ‘Darklands’ – The Jesus and Mary Chain

21. ‘Sweetest Kill’ – Broken Social Scene

22. ‘Love Removal Machine’ – The Cult

23. ‘If There’s a Rocket Tie Me to It’ – Snow Patrol

24. ‘Hold Your Colour’ – Pendulum

25. ‘Everybody Daylight’ – Brightblack Morning Light

26. ‘Hurt’ – Nine Inch Nails

27. ‘99 Problems’ – Jay-Z

28. ‘King of Pain’ – The Police

29. ‘Family Man’ – Hall & Oates

30. ‘Timebomb’ – Beck

31. ‘Blow Up the Outside World’ – Soundgarden

32. ‘Wake Up’ – Rage Against the Machine

33. ‘Cold Hard Bitch’ – Jet

34. ‘I Will Buy You a New Life’ – Everclear

35. ‘This Is Not America’ – David Bowie

36. ‘Bullet with Butterfly Wings’ – The Smashing Pumpkins

37. ‘Don’t Let Me Explode’ – The Hold Steady

38. ‘Needle Hits E’ – Sugar

39. ‘I Am the Highway’ – Audioslave

40. ‘The Metro’ – Berlin

41. ‘Teenagers’ – My Chemical Romance

42. ‘Baby Goes to Eleven’ – Superdrag

43. ‘Icky Thump’ – The White Stripes

44. ‘Walking Far from Home’ – Iron & Wine

45. ‘Stand Up’ – The Prodigy

46. ‘Brand New Friend’ – Lloyd Cole and the Commotions

47. ‘We Own the Sky’ – M83

Acknowledgements

‘American Idiot’ – Green Day

‘Don’t kill me.’

Nine hundred feet up in the November wind, it’s hard to enunciate properly, especially with the barrel of a Glock nine-millimeter jammed in your mouth. They don’t tell you these things on the Travel Channel.

Gobi takes the automatic out from between my lips. Her eyes sparkle and shine. I think about what she told me back in Venice, what she said at the hotel that night. That all seems like a long time ago now.

She smiles, blood and lipstick smeared over her face. Down below, blue lights on the Champ de Mars flash off the steel framework of the Eiffel Tower, warping in the rain. Over her shoulder I can see the gendarmes on the other side of the observation platform with automatic weapons, yelling at us in the language of love. I remember just enough from two years in Mrs. Garvey’s French class to decipher ‘police’ and ‘surrender.’

‘As tave myliu,’ Gobi says. With her free hand, she reaches out and brushes the wet hair out of my eyes. Her fingers are ice cold. ‘Your hair is getting shaggy, mielasis.’ Then she points the pistol back at my head.

‘Just tell me what you’ve done with my family.’ I’m begging now, and I don’t care how it sounds. ‘Just tell me where they are.’

‘I am so sorry, Perry.’ An almost inaudible click as she switches off the safety. ‘Au revoir.’

‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ – The Killers

‘Miss me?’ she asked.

I leaned forward to kiss the ice cream from her upper lip – maple fudge ripple, arguably the best flavor in the known universe. We were standing barefoot next to the picnic tables by the Twin Star restaurant on Route 26, watching the gray waves of October rolling up and crashing on the shore.

Me and Paula.

It was Fall, the best time of the year for this battered stretch of shoreline that Connecticut shares with the sea. All around us, the rest of the beach was deserted, a long, unhurried curve of sand, eel grass and wooden fence slats bullied and pushed over sideways by decades of rough Atlantic weather. During the summer this place was mobbed with families and kids, teenagers, bikers, couples – my parents had even come up here on a date once, according to family lore. Now it all felt pleasantly haunted, the parking lot almost empty, the restrooms already locked up for the season, leaving the two of us and the guy behind the ice cream counter just itching to put up his handwritten SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER! sign in the window.

High above us, seagulls squeaked and wheeled in the gunmetal sky, sounding lost and far away.

Paula hugged herself and shivered. ‘It’s chilly.’

‘Here.’ I took off my Columbia sweatshirt and wrapped it around her shoulders. ‘Better?’

‘Always the gentleman.’ She smiled and looked down at the beach, her cell phone still clutched in her hand from the call that she’d just finished. ‘So, do you want to hear the big news?’

‘I thought you’d never tell me.’

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

‘Officially asking.’

‘I just got off the phone with Armitage . . . and he wants to book Inchworm . . .’ she paused, making me wait an extra split-second . . . ‘for the whole tour.’

‘Europe?’

‘Twelve cities in eighteen days.’

‘No way!’ I laughed, and she grabbed me, and I hugged her, lifting her up off her feet and spinning her around. ‘Paula, that’s unbelievable.’

‘I know!’ Her smile had blossomed into a full-out grin, and I looked at all eleven of the sun freckles across the bridge of her nose. I’d counted them when we were waiting in line for one of the rides at Six Flags last month.

‘How did that happen?’

‘I told you the new songs were great, Perry. Armitage heard your demo and flipped.’ Now she was clutching my hands, bouncing up and down on her tiptoes with excitement. Her toenails were painted a very dark shade of plum, almost black, and they looked great against the sand, ten little black keys, like the kind you use to play ragtime. ‘He’s booking you guys on a twelve-city tour, starting in London on the twenty-ninth, then Venice, Paris, Madrid . . .’ Paula got out her phone, clicking up the screen. ‘I’ve got all the dates here.’

‘This is amazing,’ I said. ‘I can’t wait to see Europe with you.’

She sighed softly, and her shoulders sagged a little. ‘I wish.’

‘Wait – you’re not coming?’

‘Armitage needs me here in New York. And I’ve got to be back in the studio at the beginning of December. Moby’s recording a new album in L.A., and . . .’ She saw my expression. ‘Hey, maybe I can sneak out to Paris for a weekend.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘Perry, this is a huge step for you guys. If this works out . . .’

I smiled. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘I’m serious,’ I said. ‘You made this happen.’

‘Well, that’s sweet of you to say.’ Her blue eyes sparkled, appearing and disappearing as her hair blew in front of her face. She’d spent most of the summer in L.A. and somehow held on to her tan into the Fall, so that her blond hair looked even blonder by comparison. ‘But we all know who really deserves the credit.’

‘Stop it.’

‘You wrote all of those new songs, Perry.’

‘Norrie and I wrote them together.’

‘Then you and Norrie are the next Lennon and McCartney,’ she said. ‘And now the entire European Union is going to find that out for themselves.’

‘This is amazing.’

‘I know.’ She frowned a little, seeing the hint of apprehension in my eyes. ‘What?’

‘Nothing – it’s just great news.’

‘Stormaire . . .’

I smiled. ‘I just wish you could go with me, that’s all.’

‘You’re adorable.’ She kissed me again, and the kiss lingered this time, her mouth warm and soft against mine, her hair tickling my ears.

‘I know.’

She stood there looking at me. We’d been dating for less than three months, but I’d told her everything, and she could read me like a book.

‘Europe’s a big continent, Perry.’

‘I know.’

‘You don’t even know if she’s there.’

‘Right.’

‘It’s not like you’re going to run into her.’

‘I never said – ’

‘You didn’t have to.’

‘I wasn’t even thinking it.’

‘There’s a reason why I’m not sending you guys to Lithuania,’ Paula said, and squeezed my hand. ‘Come on. I’m cold. Let’s walk.’

‘Ever Fallen in Love’ – Buzzcocks

Paula and I had met back in the beginning of August, at a party in Park Slope, not long after I’d seen Gobi for the last time on the steps at Columbia. It turned out that I didn’t really know a lot of people at the party, one of those friend-of-a-friend-who-wasn’t-really-a-friend type of things. Someone kept playing old Elton John tracks on the iPod docking station, and I was in the process of saying my goodbyes when a voice I’d never heard before said, ‘Hey.’

That was how she’d started out, as a voice over my shoulder, sounding raspy and unfamiliar and amused. ‘You’re that guy,’ the voice said.

I turned around to look at her, my brain immediately struggling to crunch the numbers. Laid out on the chalkboard, it would’ve gone something like this:

(blond hair) + (blue eyes) x (killer body) = don’t even try

Yet here was this woman, a little older than I was and a whole lot hotter, not only looking at me but actually seeming interested.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I saw your picture in the Post,’ she said. ‘You’re Perry Stormaire, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re the guy whose house got blown up.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘That was insane.’

‘Yes,’ I said, because I never know what to say in these situations. She was referring to what happened on the night of my senior prom, three months before, when the Lithuanian foreign exchange that had been living in our house – a girl named Gobija Zaksauskas – turned out to be an assassin with a hit list of names. With Gobi’s gun to my head, we’d spent the night careening around New York City in my father’s Jaguar while she killed her targets one by one, ending with my house getting blown up. Describing the night as ‘insane’ could arguably be considered an insult to the mentally ill.

‘Your family was all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And they never found that woman’s body?’

‘Destroyed in the fire,’ I said. ‘That’s what they think, anyway.’

‘Wow.’ We stood there for a moment, and she seemed to realize that she hadn’t introduced herself. ‘I’m Paula Daniels.’

She held out her hand, and I shook it in that smiling, somewhat awkward way that people shake hands when they’re flirting, and it occurred to me that that’s what we were doing. When a couple of people stepped past us on their way through the door, Paula edged a little closer, her bare shoulder brushing against my arm, and the party noise seemed to fade way down in the mix so it was as if just the two of us were standing there talking to each other. Something happened right then. It was that weightless moment when you stop worrying about riding the bike and just starting riding it.

‘Can I ask you a personal question?’ she said.

‘Sure.’

‘Was it all true?’

‘Are you kidding?’ I said. ‘I couldn’t have made that stuff up.’

‘I had a feeling.’ A tiny smile touched the corner of her lips and echoed in her eyes with a shimmer that I could almost hear, like the soft chime of an incoming text message. ‘I pride myself on my ability to separate truth and bullshit.’

‘That’s a rare talent,’ I said.

‘Not as marketable as it used to be.’

‘Maybe you should be a detective.’

She laughed an easy, natural laugh. ‘I bet you get asked that a lot.’

‘What?’

‘You know – fact or fiction.’

‘Actually, no,’ I said. ‘It’s weird, but most people don’t really seem to care.’

And it was true. They had read about what happened with me and Gobi on prom night in New York in the newspapers and seen it on TV, posted about it on their blogs, forwarded it and ‘liked’ it on Facebook and tweeted about it to their friends. As far as the American public was concerned, what happened to us that night was the truth, yet another improbable chunk of ‘reality’ gone viral in a post-MTV world, and everybody had just kind of accepted it and moved on.

‘So you’re not a detective,’ I said.

‘No.’

‘What do you do besides read the Post and go to parties in Brooklyn?’

She smiled, cocked an eyebrow. ‘There’s more to life?’

‘Depends who you ask, I guess.’

‘Fair enough. The truth is, I work in the music industry.’

I felt my heart do a little stumble-step in my chest, because this conversation really did seem to be entering the department of Too Good to Be True. ‘Really.’

‘Yes.’

‘You know,’ I said, ‘that’s funny, because I sort of play in a band.’

‘Inchworm.’ Paula nodded. ‘I remember from the story.’

‘Yeah.’ I was starting to think I could really fall in love with this girl. ‘Well, ah, anyway . . . we all decided to take a year off before college, just to see if we can make something happen. If not . . .’ I shrugged.

‘If you don’t try, you’ll always wonder.’

I nodded. ‘Exactly.’

‘You should slip me your demo.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Absolutely. I work for this European promoter, George Armitage – ’

‘Wait a second,’ I said. ‘The George Armitage?’

‘That’s him.’

‘Are you kidding? Armitage is, like, the hottest promoter in the world right now. Ever since the Enigma festival in the U.K. last summer, plus he owns his own airline . . . You actually work for that guy?’

Paula smiled. ‘Well, I’m sort of the liaison between him and the labels. Technically I’m on Armitage’s payroll, but I spend about half my time in L.A., working with new bands in the studio. It’s kind of a position that I created for myself.’

‘That sounds amazing.’

‘I grew up in Laurel Canyon.’ Paula reached up, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘My father was an A&R guy back in the day, worked with all the legends – Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, the Eagles. Madonna and Sean Penn practically got a divorce in our pool. It’s in my blood.’

And that was how it started. People talk about fate and luck and blind chance, and even now I’m not sure where I stand on those issues, but I will say this: In the weeks and months that Paula and I got more serious, I found her to be exactly as confident, ambitious, imaginative, and funny as she was that first night, and as I got to know her better, I sort of ran out of adjectives. She was that mixed mouthful of flavors, the kind of person that would walk through a farmer’s market and in the middle of a conversation about Soviet cinema in the 1940s, pick up two bananas and pretend they were her eyebrows.

And she was unfathomably beautiful, totally out of my league. The kind of girl you write songs about. She was twenty-two years old, and I was eighteen.

Then again, historically, I tend to prefer older women.

‘Is There Something I Should Know?’ – Duran Duran

But hows the sex????

I looked at my iPhone, knowing the message was from Norrie before I even got a look at the screen. He was the only one that texted me on a regular basis, even though we saw each other practically every day at practice. Everybody else – including Sasha, our lead singer, and Caleb, our guitarist – just called.

It’s awesome, I typed.

how awesme?

Tantric.

A long pause, and then:

yr still not getting any, r u?

‘Who are you texting?’ Paula asked from the driver’s seat.

I switched off the phone and stuffed it in my pocket. ‘Norrie.’

‘Did you tell him yet?’

‘I told him there’s a band meeting at my house in an hour. I want it to be a surprise. Unless Linus already talked to them.’ Linus Feldman was our manager, a five-foot-two, hundred-and-eight-pound Jewish tsunami who’d blown in sometime last summer from the wilds of Staten Island. He was old-school management, a scarred veteran of a dozen legendary management teams from back in the go-go eighties, when rock-and-roll was minting millionaires on what seemed like a weekly basis. From the moment he’d come out of semi-retirement to represent Inchworm, he’d been waiting for someone to try to take advantage of us so he could rip their head off. So far, to his great disappointment, we’d been treated with an unprecedented level of fairness and respect.

‘I’m not sure how crazy Linus is about the idea.’

‘A European tour? How could he not be thrilled?’

‘He’s got his own ideas about the band,’ Paula said. ‘We’ll see how it goes.’

She signaled left and turned from the beach road onto the two-lane highway and I watched the ocean receding in my side-view mirror, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

I checked my phone to see if I might have missed any more texts, but the last one was from Norrie, accusing me of not yet having sex with Paula. Unfortunately, he was right. Paula and I had spent hours on the couch, kissing until our lips were numb and tingling, and we’d done plenty of other stuff, basically everything you can do – but the Deed itself remained undone.

It definitely wasn’t Paula’s fault. She’d made it pretty clear that she was ready whenever I was, which I guess made me one of the worst deal-closers of all time. Throughout junior high and high school, all I’d thought about was the day I’d finally get rid of the virginity problem. Now here was Paula with her knockout face and smoking body – an experienced woman, no less – patiently waiting to teach me so that I wouldn’t knee-and-elbow my way through the chicken dance of sexual initiation the way my parents’ generation had, decoding the lyrics of bad eighties hair-metal power ballads as our Kama Sutra. Exactly what did you say to a girl after she shook you all night long? And was pouring some sugar on someone as sticky as it sounded?

We were an enlightened generation. Chow had lost his cherry to his girlfriend back in his sophomore year of high school, Sasha and Caleb had never had any problems scoring (‘Dude,’ Sasha once said, with absolute sincerity, ‘why do you think we even play in a band?’), and even Norrie sounded like he was at it pretty routinely with his current girlfriend. Here I was, paralyzed at the starting line, waiting. For what? True love? A sign from God? A long weekend in Paris?

Therapy was what I needed, and a lot of it. Meanwhile, I wondered if there was a Virgins Anonymous program in some church basement somewhere, or at least a cult in southern Connecticut in need of one to sacrifice.

Throughout it all, Paula remained super cool about the whole thing. She always said she’d wait until I was ready. But how long before her anticipation turned to exasperation?

Meanwhile, I tried not to think about it.

It was a great plan, and sometimes it almost worked.

‘The Loved Ones’ – Elvis Costello and the Attractions

When we got back to the house, Mom was in the kitchen with her laptop and a glass of wine. We’d just moved in at the end of the summer – the workmen were still finishing the addition over the garage, and there were color tiles spread out on every surface, two thousand shades of white. It looked like a Michael Bolton concert on our kitchen table.

‘Hi, Perry. Oh, hello, Paula. How was the beach?’

‘It was great.’

‘I’ve always loved that stretch of shoreline, especially in the Fall.’ She cast her gaze across at the sea of nearly identical rectangles fanned out across the table. ‘Which color do you like best for the upstairs bathroom, honey? Isabelline or Cosmic Latte?’

‘Mom,’ I said, ‘Paula and I have got some really great news.’

Mom looked up, her face suddenly slack with surprise. ‘You’re not getting married, are you?’

‘What? No.’

‘Thank God.’ Mom reached for her wine glass. ‘I mean, not that you’re not a wonderful, terrific person, Paula, but – ’

‘It’s all right, Mrs. Stormaire,’ Paula said, and flicked her eyes in my direction. She still hadn’t gotten to the point where she could comfortably call my mom ‘Julie’ yet. ‘For a second there, the way Perry said that, I think I almost had a heart attack too.’

‘So I assume that means you’re also not . . .’ Mom gestured with her hands in front of her stomach.

‘What?’ I said. ‘Full?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Seriously, Mom?’

‘Honey, I’m sorry, but these are the thoughts that run through a mother’s mind.’ And before I could ask her why they had to be the thoughts that ran out of her mouth, she was back on the laptop, clicking away, talking and typing at the same time. ‘You know, I was thinking, since this is going to be our first Thanksgiving in the new house, and Paula, I know that your family is out in California . . . would you like to come and have Thanksgiving with us?’

I took a deep breath. ‘I might not be around for Thanksgiving.’

The typing noise stopped. From here I could see that she’d been updating her Facebook page, and in the silence I could feel her status changing. ‘Oh?’

‘I was trying to tell you – ’

‘Tell us what?’ That was Dad, coming down the stairs and around the corner with his iPhone in his hand and the Times under his arm. Immediately reading a disturbance in the emotional weather of the room, he turned to my mother. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know.’ Mom was frowning, and two red spots had appeared on her cheeks. ‘Your son hasn’t told me yet.’

‘Perry?’ My father put on his stern attorney voice. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Look,’ I started, and that was probably a good start, but at that moment, the rusty Econoline van came squealing up into our driveway and I saw Norrie and Caleb jump out and start lugging their guitar cases and drums up toward our garage with the unquestioning sense of purpose that comes from not being able to go anywhere without hauling five hundred pounds of equipment along. We’d been using my house for practice for the past couple weeks, and they must have assumed that my announcement of tonight’s meeting was business as usual.

‘I should go talk to those guys.’

‘Maybe you should wait,’ Paula said.

‘Why?’

She pointed out the window, not that it was necessary. There was no mistaking the tubercular gargle of the vehicle as it charged down the street and pulled in behind the van and Paula’s car. Linus Feldman drove a burgundy 1996 Olds 88, its chassis rusted and flaking down the primer, its remaining paint the color of an old bruise. Linus’s car doubled as his office, meaning the passenger seat was usually overflowing with unanswered correspondence, disputed contracts and flyers for our shows, past and future. Stepping out, he emerged in a swirl of paperwork and Starbucks cups.

‘Stormaire?’ he bellowed, arriving at the front door without bothering to knock. ‘Is Paula in there? Send that duplicitous wench out here now.’

Paula sighed.

‘Linus?’ Dad blinked. ‘What’s he doing here?’

Having trumpeted his arrival in no uncertain terms, Linus stood on our porch, arms crossed, with the air of a man who could wait forever. He was floating in a corduroy suit jacket with suede elbow patches and khaki pants, and his fluffy white popcorn hair seemed to swell, doubling and tripling with the sheer ferocity of his indignation.

I opened the door. ‘Hi, Linus.’

‘Did you sign a contract?’

‘No, I – ’

‘But you’ve seen it.’

‘A contract for what?’ Dad asked, alternating his attention between me and Linus. He knew that Linus was a lawyer like himself, a brotherhood with an overlap that might ideally permit them to use some kind of professional shorthand, although on the few occasions when they’d met, it seemed to work the opposite way, signals crossing, interfering with each other’s frequencies. ‘Perry, what’s going on?’

‘Take it easy, Linus,’ Paula said. ‘Let’s all just breathe.’

‘Don’t patronize me, Yoko.’ Linus held up a sheet of paper, thrusting it in our faces as if it were a warrant for someone’s arrest. ‘An e-mail from George Armitage’s assistant? This is how I find out that you’re taking Inchworm on a European tour?’

‘That was an oversight,’ Paula said. ‘George was supposed to let me tell you myself.’

‘This is completely unacceptable.’

‘Wait – ’

‘Europe?’ Mom said. ‘Perry? When were you planning on telling us about this?’

Dad reached for the e-mail in Linus’s hand. ‘May I see this, please?’

‘These terms are absurd,’ Linus said, snatching the e-mail away before any of us could see it. ‘You can tell George Armitage that he can take his tour and shove it up his – ’

‘Perry’s never been out of the country before,’ Mom said.

‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘I went to Toronto for the Shakespeare festival my junior year. And we all went to Paradise Island for Christmas that year. My passport’s up to date.’

‘Okay.’ Paula took in a deep breath. ‘With all due respect, I think we’re focusing on the wrong things here.’

‘For once we’re in perfect agreement.’ Linus put his arm around my shoulder and led me aside, lowering his voice. ‘Perry, you know I respect you. You know I want what’s right for the band. I’ll go to the mat for you every single time.’ He held his head as if it were in danger of flying apart. ‘But these terms – ’

‘What about if we all went with you?’ Mom said. ‘We’d stay out of your way, let you play your shows . . .’

‘Wait.’ That was Annie, from all the way upstairs in her bedroom, where she’d apparently been monitoring the entire conversation through the ductwork. ‘We’re going to Europe?’

At that moment the entire east wing of the house exploded with the heavy, chugging drum and guitar notes that meant Caleb and Norrie had plugged in and were warming up at top volume, waiting for me to come out and join them. Sasha, our lead singer, wasn’t here yet – he was always the last to arrive, and, ever since he’d bought a vintage Indian motorcycle that broke down every other week, it wasn’t uncommon for him to show up in his mom’s Volvo, or even on a bicycle.

‘Family summit.’ Annie moved past me in a cloud of conflicting perfumes and hair treatment smells. ‘Oh, hi, Linus.’ She looked at my dad. ‘Are we going to Europe?’

‘No,’ Dad said.

‘How come Perry gets to go?’

‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ Linus said, glaring over her head at Paula. ‘Uncle Linus isn’t going to let the evil lady take anybody to Europe for this kind of chump change.’

‘Perry’s going on tour,’ Mom said, ‘with his band. Isn’t that exciting?’

Annie rolled her eyes. ‘I’m all a-flutter.’ Irony was her new ketchup, and she was putting it on everything.

‘I think I’d better take a look at that contract,’ Dad said, reaching for his reading glasses, which weren’t in his breast pocket.

‘Don’t bother,’ Linus said, and his hands had gone from his head to his stomach. His initial wave of outrage had passed, leaving him with what looked like chronic dyspepsia. ‘Just let me kick you in the balls and you’ll get the idea.’

‘Linus,’ Paula said, ‘I know this is your preferred method of negotiation, but – ’

‘Negotiation?’ Linus wailed, flung back by the very apogee of disbelief. ‘What is there to negotiate? How am I supposed to negotiate with nothing?’

‘In case you didn’t notice,’ Paula said, putting her arm around me, ‘I’m on Perry’s side here. I’m kind of crazy about the guy.’

‘Oh, that’s rich. You’re good.’ He waved his hands to anyone who might listen. ‘She’s good. This is worse than the Jacksons’ Victory Tour back in eighty-four, when we had to leave Tito in Vancouver.’

‘Linus, that’s enough,’ I said. ‘Let’s just listen to what she has to say, okay?’

‘This is how it starts,’ Linus moaned. ‘This is how it always starts . . .’

Out in the garage, the guitar and drums had stopped, and I heard Caleb and Norrie come blundering inside, Cokes in hand, to find out what was taking me so long. They saw Linus standing there with Paula and my folks and stopped in their tracks.

‘Hey, dude,’ Norrie said. ‘What’s up?’

‘I think you’ll find that the terms are boilerplate for any new band with no track record internationally,’ Paula said. ‘Armitage is working out the merchandising deals with promoters for shirts and promotional items, and the exposure for Inchworm – ’

Caleb blinked. ‘What’s she talking about, Perry?’

There was a clattering noise, and I looked out the window and saw that Sasha had arrived. He was wearing leather pants and a feather-plumed boa and pedaling the old twelve-speed Schwinn, which meant that his motorcycle had broken down yet again and was drooling oil somewhere in the back of his mom’s garage – but for once, none of these setbacks seemed to be bothering him in the least. Instead, he leapt off the bike while it was still rolling, letting it rattle to a halt into our garbage cans, and came sprinting up my front steps, bursting into the house, taking in the sight of me and Caleb and Norrie with a huge grin on his face.

‘Did you guys hear?’ He pumped his fists. ‘Did Linus tell you? We’re going to Europe, bitches!’

‘Wait,’ Caleb said. ‘Whaaaat?’

Norrie’s mouth dropped open. ‘Seriously?’

‘Hell, yeah! Inchworm’s first world tour! Linus says once he negotiates the contract it’s gonna put us over the top, and – ’ He turned around. ‘Oh, hey, Linus.’

Linus dropped his face in his hands. Through his fingers I could hear him murmuring to himself, praying for strength to persevere in the face of insurmountable obstacles – first among them the band that he’d agreed to represent.

‘So,’ Paula said, ‘can I call Armitage and tell him we have a deal?’

‘You Are a Tourist’ – Death Cab for Cutie

‘Man,’ Norrie said, ‘anybody else feel like wuh-we’ve been doing this for about tuh-ten years already?’

It was eight-thirty at night, Italian time, and the Inchworm European tour had just rolled into Venice’s Santa Lucia station – meaning that we were lugging our own gear down onto the platform, having spent the better part of the last two days on the train playing Nintendo DS and trying not to drive each other crazy.

Time had become a blur. With Linus leading the way, we’d left London yesterday at midday, taken the Chunnel into Paris, and left after lunch today to go to Venice.

Things had started out a little shaky. At our first gig in London, Caleb couldn’t find his Stratocaster, Norrie was still sick from the airline food, and half our amps weren’t wired to run off European power outlets. Backstage, Linus was pacing a hole in the dressing room floor, chain-smoking some obscure brand of foul-smelling British cigarettes while reassuring everybody that it was going to be okay. Outside, the crowd was getting antsy while the roadies fiddled with the amplifiers until finally, at a quarter past nine, Sasha stood up and said screw it, he didn’t know about the rest of us, but he for one hadn’t flown halfway around the world to sit in some dressing room like a bunch of American losers.

Then we went out there and rocked.

In the end it had taken approximately thirty seconds to realize what we should’ve known from the start: When the four of us got together, it didn’t matter if we were playing in New York, in London, or on the moon – when it came right down to it, at this particular moment in our lives, when our backs were to the wall, we could set that shit on fire.

Even with half the amps off, Caleb’s loaner guitar squealed and soloed like the devil’s own chainsaw, Sasha was pulling out moves that none of us had ever seen before, spoonfeeding the crowd until they were shrieking for more, and Norrie sounded like he was setting off cherry bombs in the drum kit. We roared through every song on the set list, including a few new ones that we’d only practiced a couple times, until even the bouncers came up front and started dancing. Midway through the show, I glanced back at Norrie and saw him grinning back at me, a perfect reflection of that slightly dazed feeling of wonder. This is real, we were both thinking, at the exact same time. Holy shit, this is actually happening to us right now.

Up front, Sasha gave his patented Navajo war whoop and a flying helicopter kick that just cleared the microphone stand. ‘Hello, U.K.!’ he yelled. ‘We are Inchworm and we are here to rock you – ’kay?’

The place went absolutely bonkers. Finally, after playing almost three straight hours and closing with a rousing cover of Sham 69’s ‘If the Kids Are United’ that had the whole place up on its feet and singing along, we stumbled offstage, exhausted and soaked with sweat, grinning like fools, and collapsed into a black cab back to the hotel with a couple of girls from the front row. I called Paula in New York and told her how it had gone, while Sasha leaned out the window and howled, ‘Who wants to do that again?’

We all did.

Now, forty-four hours later, we were here in Venice. Two steps off the train, Norrie dropped his duffle bag on the platform next to Caleb’s and flung himself down on it as if it were a huge body pillow, pulling down his baseball cap and closing his eyes. Linus had fought his way into the station to buy tickets for the water taxi, and Sasha had tagged along, already on the prowl for Italian girls. Of the four of us, he was the only one with a seemingly limitless supply of energy, propelled forward by the libido of an adolescent rhino.

I was digging through my bag for the last Red Bull when my phone started ringing. I looked at the screen and saw an international number I didn’t recognize.

‘Hello?’

‘Perry?’

‘Yes.’

‘George Armitage here. How are you, mate?’

I stood up a little straighter, suddenly feeling wide awake. ‘Oh. I’m – I’m fine.’ Even after all the time I’d been with Paula and talked about Armitage, what he was like and so on, I’d never actually spoken to the man.

‘How’s the tour going so far?’

‘It’s going great. We were in London . . . It’s been incredible – ’

‘Splendid. Love the new songs, honestly. The reviews of the London show have been over the moon. You blokes are going to be huge – you do realize that, don’t you?’

‘Thanks,’ I said. In front of me, Caleb and Norrie were now both sprawled out on their bags. They looked like they’d gone into matching comas. Norrie was drooling.

‘You’re in Venice now, aren’t you?’ Armitage asked.

‘That’s right. We just got in.’

‘Brilliant, brilliant. Wish I could be there to show you the city.’

‘Yeah, that would be cool.’ For a split second I toyed with the idea of asking him where he was, but I managed to stop the question from tumbling off my lips. According to Paula, George Armitage was an intensely private man. If you Googled him – and we all had – you’d find out that he was British by birth but had renounced his British citizenship and spent most of his time traveling, a media multi-hyphenate. Nobody was quite sure where all his money had come from. In recent years he’d expanded his operation globally and become, for all intents and purposes, his own free-floating sovereign nation. He ran his own production company, a publishing group, and an airline. By all accounts he had more cash than he knew what to do with.

‘While you’re traveling, if there’s anything you need, I hope you won’t hesitate to ask.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, unable to shake the feeling that there must have been some other reason he’d decided to call. I didn’t have to wait long to find out what it was.

‘Listen, mate. I didn’t want to mention anything too early, but at this rate, there might be a record deal for you at the end of all of this.’

I felt my heart stop. ‘Seriously?’

‘Absolutely,’ Armitage said. ‘Ask Paula. The last band whose tour I set up sold six million units in the first two months. Legends are forged by fire. We’ll speak soon. Cheers.’

I said goodbye, turned, and kicked Norrie’s duffle bag until he pushed himself up on his elbows, blinking, and gave me the finger. ‘Whuh-what the hell’s wrong with you, Stormaire?’

‘George Armitage just called me. He wants to get us a record deal.’

‘Armitage?’ Norrie stared at me. All at once he didn’t look remotely tired. Caleb sat up next to him. ‘What? Now?’

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go find Linus.’

They were both on their feet already and grabbed their bags, and I hoisted my guitar case, following them down the platform, my head whirling with what Armitage had said and with the abrupt influx of noise and commotion inside the train station.

‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ – The Replacements

The whole thing happened so fast that I almost didn’t realize what was happening until it was over. One moment I was following Caleb and Norrie through the automatic sliding doors into the main terminal, and the next, I was alone in the crowd.

I turned around and looked back in the direction I’d come, thinking maybe I’d somehow gotten ahead of them, but they weren’t back there. Off to my left was a big café, and somewhere to my right was a row of ticket windows. I didn’t see Linus or any of the others up there. People buzzed by in every direction, wheeling luggage, toting backpacks. None of them was familiar.

Ten minutes in Venice and I was already lost.

I walked out of the station and down the gray steps leading to the Grand Canal, then stopped in my tracks.

Not until that moment did it really hit me that I was in a city that had rivers instead of streets and boats instead of cars. There were intersections, alleyways, and bridges with gondolas tied up to them. Up above the half-submerged doorways and steps I saw ancient stone hotels and ruined palaces sinking into the lagoon. Fog hung over the surface, seagulls dipping and flicking up the waterway, their bellies glinting white and then disappearing in the dark.

I bought a twenty-four-hour pass for the vaporetto, got on the next boat, and called Norrie.

‘Dude,’ he said, ‘whuh-what happened to you? We thought we luh-lost you for good.’

‘I’m fine. I just lost you guys at the train station.’

‘Whuh-Where are you now?’

‘The Grand Canal.’ I was standing on the deck of a vaporetto with my bag and my guitar case, heading down the canal. Overhead, high gothic arches and crumbling statuary moved slowly past on either side, lit from within like a Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Define lame: I was in Venice, and all I could think of was Disney World. ‘I’ll meet you at the hotel.’

‘Yuh-You buh-better. Linus is fuh-freaking out.’

‘Tell him to calm down. I’ll be there in an hour or so.’

‘It’s the Puh-Pensione Guerrato,’ he said, ‘by the Ruh-Rialto Bridge.’

‘Got it.’

‘Whuh-What are you duh-doing?’

‘Seeing the sights.’

‘It’s luh-like ten o’clock at nuh-night!’

‘Relax, okay? I’ll catch up to you later.’

Norrie fell quiet for just a second, and when he spoke again, there was no trace of a stutter in his voice.

‘You’re going to look for her, aren’t you?’

I drew in a breath. I don’t know whether it was the unwavering certainty in his voice or just that we’d been friends for so long, but I knew instantly that I couldn’t lie to him.

‘Maybe.’

He made an exasperated lip-fart. ‘Whuh-What about Puh-Paula?’

‘What about her?’ my answer came back, probably too quickly. ‘It’s not like I’m cheating on her. I probably won’t even find Gobi anyway, but if I do, we’ll have a cup of coffee, catch up for a few minutes, and that’s it.’

‘Buh-Bullshit.’

‘Hey, believe what you want.’

‘Thuh-This is a ruh-really buh-bad idea.’

I took in a breath and let it out. ‘Yeah. I know.’

‘I nuh-know you know,’ Norrie said miserably. ‘Juh-Just like I know yuh-you’re going to duh-do it anyway.’ He was silent again for a moment. ‘Shit. At least tuh-tell her wuh-we said hello.’ Then, with more conviction: ‘And duh-don’t stuh-stay out all nuh-night! Wuh-We’ve got a gig tomorrow!’

‘Okay,’ I said, and hung up.

Up ahead I saw what looked like the open lagoon, the boat nudging its way up to the San Marco stop. On the shore, two guys in long dark coats and immaculate pointy-toed leather shoes were smoking and sipping espressos out of paper cups by the dock.

‘Excuse me.’ My voice came out froggy and hoarse, like I was getting a cold. ‘I’m looking for Harry’s Bar.’

‘Like Hemingway, si ?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I mean, I guess.’

The first man smiled and said something, and they both laughed.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak Italian.’

‘He said that even an idiot American could find that place from here,’ the other man said, and as they turned and started walking away, I saw the sign behind them in the window, in art deco letters: HARRY’S BAR.

Now that it was right in front of me, I wasn’t sure that I was ready to go in. I walked around the corner to the side of the building that faced the canal. Standing on my tiptoes, I could just see inside, where a group of fashionably dressed patrons were sitting at the bar.

This was it.

A voice in my head whispered, Do you really want to do this?

But I was already walking inside.

‘Waiting for Somebody’ – Paul Westerberg

Harry’s was a long yellow room, warm and dry, with dark wooden tables glowing beneath wall sconces and an old metal fan in the corner. The bar itself was only long enough for the half-dozen patrons that I’d seen through the window, gathered together talking and laughing as if they had known one another all their lives. The bartender was wearing a pressed white tuxedo jacket. When I walked in, he didn’t say anything, just gazed at my wet jeans and windbreaker, and the guitar case at my feet.

‘Can I get a Mountain Dew or something?’

‘Mountain . . . Do?’

‘Or a Coke?’

A sigh. ‘Si, Coke.’

I sat down at the end of the bar next to a glass cabinet of souvenirs for sale and sipped my ten-euro Coke, staring at the door. I didn’t know what I was doing here.

Gobi and I had talked about Harry’s Bar back in New York, as some fantasy rendezvous point in a future that neither one of us had ever expected would be real. Now that I was actually here, though, things seemed different, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how it would be if she really did show up. What if the night that we’d spent together had been a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, a potent but irreproducible mixture of hormones and gunpowder, never to be repeated? What would we say to each other – would there even be anything to say?

‘Signori?’

I jumped and looked up from my drink, and realized the bartender was staring at me.

‘We are closing for the night.’

I looked at the clock over the bar. It was five to eleven. That seemed early, but I saw that the other patrons had left or were putting on their coats and scarves, paying their tabs, saying goodbye, heading out into the cold Venetian night.

‘Can I just hang out here a few more minutes?’ I asked.

He sighed. ‘Si.’

I sat while the waiters wiped down the tables, put away glasses, and started turning off the lights around me, click, click, click. By now the bar had emptied out entirely. The bartender reappeared in front of me wearing his own coat, his face very serious now.

‘Signori, I am sorry, but we must close.’

‘Okay.’ I got out my wallet, dug out the emergency Visa card, and paid the tab. ‘Thank you.’

‘Prego.’ The waiter let me out and locked the door behind me.

I stepped out. The rain was falling harder now, the wind gusting it straight into my face, and there was no one on the street in front of the canal. I thought about what I’d read about Venice sinking. Everywhere I looked, the lagoon was lapping up the steps and filling the doorways. Up ahead, I saw two men – the same ones in suits, smoking, that I’d talked to before – emerge out in front of me as if they’d been there waiting for me the whole time.

‘So you found it,’ one of them said.

‘What?’

‘Your little tourist trap.’

I turned and started walking in the other direction, and another man with a shaved head appeared in front of me, blocking my way, his gaze shifting up to the two behind my back. The bald one was young, wearing jeans and a shiny, puffy black coat that seemed like it was stitched together out of designer garbage bags. A second later I felt something hard and cold jab up against the back of my neck. Over my shoulder I could smell garlic and cigarettes mixed with overpowering cologne. One hand grabbed my shoulder, slamming me face-first into the alley wall hard enough that I heard my incisors scrape off the concrete before I hit the ground. Pain burst through the left side of my face and I tasted blood, salty and fresh, as fingers rifled my back pocket, yanking out my wallet.

‘Just take whatever you want,’ I said, my tongue flicking off my newly chipped tooth. ‘Just – ’

‘Where is she?’

‘What?’ I said. ‘Who?’

Then one of the men screamed.

All at once I heard feet scuffling above me and a series of quick, brutal thumps, like a glove stuffed with pennies smacking into flesh. Someone grunted, staggered, fell, and footsteps went slapping fast up the alley, through the puddles, and then there was no sound except for the rain.

‘I see you have still not learned to fight.’

I looked up.

Gobi was standing in the alley in front of me, hands on her hips, with two of the men sprawled at her feet. For a second I didn’t know if what I was seeing was real or just a delayed result of head trauma.

She was wearing a short leather jacket with lots of buckles, and some kind of stretchy black micro-skirt, torn black stockings, and big chunky shitkicker boots. Her hair was dyed and chopped above the shoulders.

‘How did you find me?’ I asked.

‘Perry.’ She shook her head. ‘You do not look so good.’

‘Yeah, well, I could’ve used you . . .’ – I stopped and coughed hard, looked at my hand, and saw a little spatter of scarlet across my knuckles – ’like, about twenty seconds earlier?’

‘So use me now.’ She extended one hand and I took it, lifting myself up. I was still getting my balance when she leaned forward, catching me in her arms, and I saw the little white scar across her neck, and all the rest of it came back from there.

‘Never Let Me Down Again’ – Depeche Mode

We crossed a dark bridge to the Centurion Palace Hotel. It was a sleek slice of L.A.-style architecture built inside what looked like a five-hundred-year-old palace on the opposite side of the canal, and to get inside we had to cross a wide courtyard of perfectly oval stones that crunched under our feet as we walked over them. She led me into a high-domed lobby with a chandelier made of curved glass tubes and long sofas arranged across the wide marble floor. From the concierge desk I saw a pair of high-cheekboned faces, incurious and androgynous, peering back at us from a liquid cloud of blue light.

‘Lift is this way,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’

I stepped into the brushed chrome elevator, feeling it rise smoothly upward, transporting us to some upper floor. There, Gobi kept me walking forward down the silent corridor. She swiped her keycard and we entered her suite, a series of rooms, one flowing into the next, opening out toward a balcony overlooking the canal. I saw a bottle of champagne on ice in front of the flat-screen TV, the counter scattered with her BlackBerry, jewelry, a jumbled pile of euros and foreign coins, her passport and lipstick.

‘Take off your clothes.’

‘What?’

‘You are freezing with the cold.’

‘Look, I should probably tell you something.’ I managed to get the windbreaker off, turning one of the sleeves inside out as I pulled my arm free, then reached down to unbutton my pants. ‘Do you mind looking the other way?’

She cocked one eyebrow, then turned to face the wall as I peeled off my jeans, then my socks, and finally my T-shirt. ‘I’m involved with somebody. She’s back in the States.’

Gobi didn’t say anything, just pointed in the opposite direction. ‘Shower is through there.’

The bathroom was a green marble grotto. My reflection stared back at me from a full-length mirror, a skinny, pale American kid with a face that looked like two pounds of Genoa sausage. I kicked off my boxers and stepped into the shower. By now my teeth were chattering and it took me a moment to figure out the faucets, but once I did, the shower head rewarded me with an oscillating spray of hot needles that made my whole body realize that it wasn’t dead after all. Maybe things weren’t as bad as I thought. I breathed in steam, scrubbed myself twice, and stood there until the hot water started to go cold. After what felt like a long time, I stepped out and found a fluffy hotel bathrobe waiting on the back of the door. I was actually starting to feel human again.

‘This is a really nice place,’ I said, stepping out of the steam. ‘How can you afford a place like this?’ No answer. ‘Gobi?’

A flicker of motion in one of the mirrors. ‘Over here.’

‘I – oh.’

When she stepped out from behind the closet door, I saw that she’d slipped off the leather jacket. The top underneath it was lacy and black, with shiny thin straps that stretched across her clavicles.

‘What are you looking at?’

‘Just – your clavicles. You have really nice ones.’

‘How are you with zippers?’

‘Excuse me?’

She turned her back to me, tilted her head forward, and lifted up her hair from the back of her neck. ‘It’s stuck.’

‘I told you I had a girlfriend, right?’

‘I am only asking you to do my zipper.’

‘Right.’ The zipper slipped down easily. ‘Don’t you want to know what I’m doing in Venice?’

‘No.’

‘I’m touring with Inchworm, and – ’

She turned around and kissed me, mouth open, tongue flicking up and in as her hands slipped into the bathrobe. I could taste the dry fruity flavor of the champagne she’d just been drinking, and something almost bitter, like dark espresso beans or black licorice. From outside I could hear music and faint laughter down the canal. I drew back, catching my breath.

‘Her name’s Paula,’ I said. ‘She’s really cool. You’d like her.’

A smoky chuckle and she muttered something in Lithuanian.

‘What?’

‘I called you a stupid ass.’

‘Why?’

‘Is what you call a man who has a girl in his bed and still makes small talk.’

‘We’re not in b– ’

She pressed her palms against my chest and pushed me backwards onto the mattress, knocking the pillows aside, rolling over the blankets and up against the headboard, where I was pinned as she straddled me.

‘Okay, look, this isn’t cool.’ The harder I tried to sit up, the harder she pushed back. ‘I don’t remember you being so – ’ I tried to think of another word for aggressive, but all of a sudden my word-finding ability seemed to have taken a serious hit to the word-place, whatever it was called. Randomly I noticed a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk in the corner of the room that looked like it cost about a million dollars, and then Gobi shifted her hips slightly on top of me and I forgot all about the steamer trunk and the million dollars it must have cost.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine . . . ?’ My voice went up at the end, sounding like one of the Chipmunks. I put my hands behind me and tried to pull myself free, but her knees had pinned the bathrobe to the mattress. ‘I’m just kinda naked under this thing?’

‘Perry.’

‘What?’

‘I need your help.’

I looked into her eyes. ‘You need me?’

‘I am not joking.’

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘whatever I can do.’

And then the Louis Vuitton trunk started to move.

‘Run (I’m a Natural Disaster)’ – Gnarls Barkley

I sat up fast, looking around so quickly that I felt my neck pop.

‘Wait – ’ I stared back at the steamer trunk, where something was definitely thumping around inside. ‘Is there somebody in that thing?’

Gobi sighed and climbed off me, sliding from the bed in one graceful move. With the resigned air of a woman going about some onerous but necessary task, she opened the drawer of the nightstand next to the bed and pulled out a pistol, screwing the silencer onto the barrel as she walked over to the trunk.

‘Wait, what is that? What are you doing?’

Gobi pointed the gun at the steamer trunk and pulled the trigger. The silenced gunshots weren’t particularly loud – three metallic champagne corks – and whatever was inside gave a shuddering howl and collapsed to the bottom with a thump. In the frozen moment of realization, I saw smoke drifting out of the bullet holes in the trunk, uncurling like ghostly pigtails in the tastefully recessed lighting.

I floundered off the bed and across the room to my wet pile of clothes, the bathrobe flopping open as I tried to get backwards to the door. Behind me, Gobi’s voice was quiet and stern.

‘Perry.’

‘What?’

‘I told you that I need your help.’

‘Yeah, well, dead bodies are kind of a deal-breaker for me in that department.’

That was when the pounding started outside the door.

‘Police and Thieves’ – The Clash

‘Who is that?’ I was standing in the corner by the door, trying to put my jeans back on, but they were too wet and I couldn’t even get one foot through the leg hole. I finally just gave up and tied the bathrobe tight around my waist, all too aware that I was naked underneath it. ‘What the hell is going on?’

‘This way.’ Gobi was dragging the trunk away from the wall with one hand, holding the pistol in the other. ‘Come on.’

‘There’s a person in there!’

‘Was, yes. Is dead person now.’

‘No. No – I’m not – ’

Wham-wham-wham! Heavy, authoritative fists hammered louder on the door of the suite, seeming to make the air shake around us. I stumbled forward, my spine suddenly electrified inside me, shooting down from the base of my brain all the way to wherever humans’ vestigial tail had dropped off two million years ago. Right now I was ready to dive back into the primordial ooze and take my chances with the single-celled organisms – maybe they had the right idea, staying where they were.

Voices came from outside, angry, urgent – soldiers or cops, it sounded like, shouting in Italian.

‘Oh, shit, who’s that?’

‘Carabinieri, probably.’

‘Carbon who?’

‘I will explain to you later if we are still alive,’ she said. ‘Right now, you need to . . . How do you say it? Hold up your end?’

BANG! BANG! BANG! More angry voices, giving orders, making demands in voices that sounded more and more like Mussolini’s Blackshirts on a bender.

‘What am I supposed to do?’

She hoisted the steamer trunk by one of its straps, dragging it toward the balcony. ‘Lift. Now.’

‘What? Why?’

She gestured over the balcony, down to the canal.

‘Oh, no. No way. No.’

‘We must get rid of the body before . . .’ She nodded at the door where the knocking and the shouting had fallen abruptly, ominously silent.

‘Forget it!’

She pointed the pistol at me. ‘It was good to see you again, Perry.’

‘Wait, hold on. I’m not getting involved in this.’

‘Already you are involved.’

Click. Safety off. Argument over. I gripped the leather strap and hoisted up my end of the trunk. As I lifted, I felt something inside do a slumping barrel roll over to my end, which got suddenly heavier, and we heaved it up onto the balcony, balancing it on the wrought-iron railing. For just a second I looked down, four stories, where the Grand Canal shimmered below in the darkness, jewels of light reflected from the hotels and buildings on the other side. Venice never looks lovelier than when you’re using it to dispose of a body.

Then Gobi shoved the trunk over the edge and it fell.

There was a long silence followed by a splash below just as the hotel door swung open behind us. When I looked back at Gobi, she was already climbing over the railing into the night.

‘What are you doing?’

She let go of the railing and disappeared.

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