Stephen King's Maine... or the Motor City

The streets of Venice are lined with doorways, most of them shut, interspersed with metal roll-up storefronts that yawn agape during the day. Seducing passersby with glassware glinting in the sun, the negozi outshine the weathered portals, silent sentries are made from hard wood, the kind that forms piles upon which the city floats—wood so thick it cannot be breached except to sink a whole palazzo in the process.

In Venice, private life happens high above the street. The wealthy occupy grand estates while the baristas, butchers and cobblers live in apartments that share marble-lined foyers, decrepit elevators and grand staircases. On my fourth visit to Venice, I discovered such a place on the top floor of a palazzo near the Rialto Bridge. From the street, the white stucco façade was cracked, nothing special. Past the outer doors lay a vestibule through through which I followed a man up the marble staircase lined with a red tapestry runner; Denis never used the acensore, which was slow and cantankerous. Upon entering his apartment, I stepped to the window. We were far above the inky water that gurgled with the midnight tide. Across the water, the white bridge blazed into the abyss. I imagined it illuminated with torches in Napolean’s time when he was busy paving over the lesser canals, creating the walkways that we know today.

In the weeks to follow, Denis would show me a hidden world of alleys and gardens, private clubs and piping hot involtini sandwiches served at 3 a.m. by vendors who disappeared by day. I struggled to capture our time in Campo Santo Stefano and Campo Santa Margherita, the creamy pastel buildings and onion-shaped windows, the ebony-skinned Africans selling faux Fendi bags on blankets, the crush of promenading couples making the evening passagiata, and the path over the Accademia bridge whose splintering heft feels formidable yet fragile underfoot.

No photos could illustrate sensations like clambering inside Denis’s motor boat, a leaky little vessel mired in lagoon stink, as we bobbed precariously between the wakes of cruising ships on the Grand Canal. The images I took could only suggest a pleasant evening boat ride, not reveal how rare it was to be adrift on the lagoon without the sweaty press of tourists, the grinding clunk of a vaporetto against the dock or the schmaltzy swoon of “O Sole Mio” from a gondolier.

(Note: this is an except from a longer piece - the essay continues...)