Ghost City Blues: Love and Death in the time of Corona Virus

Fifteen

Venice, Italy. Early March 2020.

The cell was in some kind of basement. It was damp. The tiles must once have been white, now they were smoker's teeth yellow. Something was dripping in the darkness and the narrow little tunnels Dylan had been brought down were so tight they'd had to walk in single file. The main holding area was a little larger, room enough for the barred cell and a desk but there was no natural light. A few bulbs. It stunk of earth and mildew.

The cage itself was in darkness and Dylan, as he stood being processed, the seated and standing police talking to each other in low voices, saw figures on the concrete benches in the cells. Now, roused, a dishevelled looking man came and stood at the bars. He had a red face and big double-chin, ratty teeth and high hair.

Dylan was walked to the cell and the key rattle from the guard made the two shapes on the benches stir and reveal themselves. They were young women, early twenties, in dirty, happy T-shirts. Both looked cold and seriously pissed off, obviously unable to sleep in the scratchy brown blankets they'd been given. The older man, who'd been leaning against the bars, moved aside as Dylan was pushed in. He asked the guard, in Italian, for something. The guard patted his pockets and shook his head.

"Don't have a fag, do you?" said Dylan's new cellmate.

"A what?"

"A fag? A cigarette?" The dishevelled man was English and very hungover, possibly still a bit drunk. He was wearing a baggy brown suit with no tie, his grey shirt stained with sweat or grease in spots. He looked like a big rat.

"No, I don't smoke."

"Oh, for fucks' sakes."

"Are you American?" asked one of the young women on the benches. She might have been pretty if she hadn't been so scared and exhausted. Hungover too.

Dylan sat on the floor in the corner of the cell and hung his head. Tousled blonde hair covered his face and he laughed. It was partly at the memory of Plague but also a show. It was the image he usually projected: a little bit of insouciance, a drop of insanity.

"I wouldn't sit down there, dude," the other young woman told him. She had a strong Texan accent. "Roaches everywhere, man."

"Fucking appalling creatures." To the Englishman's great delight the Italian policeman had come back with a lit cigarette and handed it to him through the bars. "Grazie! Grazie!"

Dylan exhaled strongly through his nose as if to say, "I don't care." But on the pretext of itching the back of his neck he got his hands up off the floor just in case.

"You are a yank, though, aren't you? No bloody point denying that." The Englishman blew smoke out of every hole in his face. "What did you do? Go for a swim in the Grand Canal like these two morons?"

"Our boat capsized," said the Texan. "Asshole."

"So?" The Englishman tapped a toe near Dylan. "I'm talking to you."

"I came here with a goddess. We were out on the canal. The police came. She left."

This quietened the cell a moment and then the Englishman put his cigarette in his mouth and clapped slowly. "I like it, I like it." The smoke curled up into his baggy eyes. "Prick."

"Are you, like, crazy?" asked the other girl on the bench. She was from Sioux City, Iowa. Her name was Megan and she'd met Paige the Texan in Madrid a week before. They'd come to Venice together right before the lockdown started. The Englishman was called Matt. He taught English in Padua. He hadn't worked out quite how or why he'd got there yet.