He read one over, and then demonstrated the technique for Benito. Smile, accost, smile, patter, smile and hand over the flyer. There was a rhythm to it, even.
“See?” he said to Benito, after he’d unloaded a dozen or so. “You have to smile and have a little chat with them. They’re more likely to take something from you. Lots of confidence, lots of good cheer. They’re more likely to buy something from you, too. Go on, kid, give it a try.”
A couple of diffident tries and then Benito got the hang of it, getting maybe half the people he approached to take a flyer. Some still tossed the things aside when they’d read them.
“Thank you, Messer . . .” A frown. “I don’t know your name.”
“Buckley. Joe Buckley.”
“Thank you, Messer Buckley. See you at the Committee!”
Buckley grinned. Before he left Benito, he got directions from the kid, but took his time about going there. He had a couple of hours to kill and the Murano glassworks were, if not fascinating, then at least relatively interesting. Until it dawned on him that the bizarre and brightly colored glassware on sale was exactly the kind of thing his mother had liked to annoy his dad by buying. Joe spent a long time after he realized that, staring into the lagoon, homesick as all hell.
* * *
Evening was drawing near when he entered the neighborhood where the Marcolis—he had trouble thinking of them as the Venetian “Committee of Correspondence,” accustomed as he was to the political machine that operated in Magdeburg—held their meetings in a taverna. As he turned down the street where it was, he noticed something brownish nailed to a wall. He looked closer. It was a severed human ear, just starting to turn maggotty. Choking his lunch back down, Joe walked on hurriedly, sticking to the middle of the street and trying not to make eye contact. Talk about your rough neighborhoods!
He knew he was in the right place as soon as he turned a corner and saw some young guys kicking a soccer ball up and down, although with what level of skill he didn’t know. That would be the influence of the Stone boys, he thought. Stone had been a “soccer dad,” back up-time. The Venetian precursor of the sport wasn’t anything Joe wanted to see up close, though. He was sure it would be best described as a gang fight with a ball in there somewhere.
There was a signboard, a rather nicely lettered one, proclaiming a meeting of the Committee of Correspondence somewhere around to the rear of the big building. Buckley wound his way to the back and went in. Inside, once through a short corridor, was a standard type of Venetian taverna. It was more in the way of a big room attached to the kitchens that was primarily used by family and residents rather than being a public establishment as such, although they had it set up at the moment to serve drink at a temporary counter under the windows along the western wall. Despite being open, the one row of windows didn’t really allow that much air into the place. Between the poor circulation and the direct sunlight coming through the windows, the place was on the hot and stuffy side.
And this was still March. Buckley didn’t want to think how hot the place would get in midsummer. He got himself a jug of wine and sat down to wait for the show to start.
“Hi, Mr. Buckley, doing a story on us?” It was Ron Stone, coming over from somewhere in back.
“Hi, Ron, yeah, I thought I might.”
Ron grinned. “Do we get copy approval?”
Buckley grinned back. “What, you’re here five minutes and you’re head flack already?”
Ron laughed aloud. “Sort of assistant to the head flack, which is Massimo over there.” He pointed to a slightly rounded-looking fellow having an animated discussion with a shock-headed older guy. “That’s Messer Marcoli he’s talking to,” Ron went on. “You want an interview, just ask. We can use all the publicity we can get, I figure.”
“Happy to oblige. A lot of my readers are Committee types, or at least sympathetic. They’ll want to know what’s going on. Say, what’s the deal with Massimo teaching little kids to read?”