“Everything is known in Venice anyway. But it is also known who my family are and that I am a good girl. Also they know it is you and it is I. We have some credit to exhaust.”
“Good,” the Colonel said. “By stairs or elevator?”
“By elevator,” she said, and he heard the change in her voice. “You can call a boy or we can run it ourselves.”
“We run it ourselves,” the Colonel said. “I checked out on elevators long ago.”
It was a good ride with a slight bump, and a rectification at the end, and the Colonel thought: Checked out, eh? You better be checked out again.
The corridor was now not simply beautiful, but exciting, and putting the key into the lock was not a simple process, but a rite.
“Here it is,” the Colonel said when he swung the door open. “What there is of it.”
“It is charming,” the girl said. “But it is awfully cold with the windows open.”
“I’ll close them.”
“No, please. Leave them open if you like it that way.”
The Colonel kissed her and felt her wonderful, long, young, lithe and properly built body against his own body, which was hard and good, but beat-up, and as he kissed her he thought of nothing.
They kissed for a long time, standing straight, and kissing true, in the cold of the open windows that were onto the Grand Canal.
“Oh,” she said. Then, “Oh.”
