He was right at the other end of downtown Venice from the embassy, now, up under the roof of a mostly empty tenement block. The rent wasn’t bad, as no Venetian really wanted to live this high up if he could afford to be lower down. Besides, after the plague tenants were thin on the ground. The landlord had been almost ecstatic to find a renter.
For his own part, Joe liked it well enough. Someone who’d had the room before him—could have been any time in the last couple of centuries, from the rickety feel of the place—had liked to have plenty of light in the mornings, so they’d enlarged the windows. That kept the rent low, as well, because Joe was quite sure the rooms would be very cold in the winter. But he didn’t care; he liked the light himself and planned to be gone by midsummer anyway.
The only real downside to the place was that his guidebook stopped working hereabouts. The map in the back had been drawn in the twentieth century and according to the street plan he was living in what would be, from the nineteenth century onward, a park. Finding the embassy was tough, too—where that stood would be Venice’s railway station in three hundred years’ time.
Buckley opened the package of laundry that he had picked up yesterday afternoon. That was an odd business. The modern clothes generally came back ruined, other than jeans, but the contemporary stuff usually got through fine. He guessed that was due to the local folks knowing how to deal with what they were used to, and not having a clue with care labels. That said, he’d never had a clue either. He’d gotten used to shapeless pullovers and faded colors in college.
Another change for the better in the seventeenth century: he was dressed better now. Natural curiosity had led him to go find out how they did it before the invention of the Laundromat. It turned out that they took the clothes apart to launder them, and then put them back together, an effort that made him appreciate all the more the pleasant sensation of pulling on clean clothes. Not that he did that as often as he used to. Wearing a shirt once and tossing it in the hamper was a luxury he couldn’t afford any more.
What to do with the day, he wondered? He got his little stove going and began to brew breakfast. He’d gotten hold of one of Grantville’s supply of primus stoves early on in his travels. He’d read a quote from Casanova’s memoirs—a local boy, that one—some years before the Ring of Fire, and been mightily impressed by the old seducer’s habit of carrying with him a bag packed with a stove and breakfast fixings wherever he went so he could “break his fast like a gentleman.”
Living out of a suitcase in upper-floor garrets, Buckley appreciated it more for the ability to get hot coffee down him first thing in the morning without having to lay a fire he wasn’t going to need to keep warm.
Still, as the coffee perked, he had a day to fill and no clear plan for what to do with it. And that idiot was still singing by the canal-side. He wished he’d spat on the caterwauling fool. Or worse. Something about love and the springtime, a folksong of some sort.
That put Buckley in mind of Frank Stone, and he grinned. What a perfect illustration of teenage maleness that was! Off at all hours hanging out with the Marcolis, a family of complete loons, because he was besotted with Giovanna. Okay, sure, the girl herself was gorgeous, but still. And hauling his brothers along with him every time! The three of them were fixtures at the Casa Marcoli these days, helping to spread the word of the coming new world order to the largely indifferent population of Venice.
Although . . .
Now that Joe actually thought about it, there was something a little odd about that picture. The two younger Stone boys weren’t even Frank’s brothers. They were really step-brothers. And Giovanna was the only Marcoli daughter, so what the hell were they getting out of it? Hanging out with an obvious crank while their brother tried to get into the pants of the crank’s daughter?