She is always late, sometimes tragically so.

I shake my head and utter silent curses as I sit in the busy and atmospheric little square in front of the Teatro La Fenice, Venice’s famous opera house.

It is a Sunday afternoon. Late June. It is not hot enough to cause Venice to reek of the sewerage that flows freely into the canals, and the fine Adriatic breeze wards off any untoward odors that rise from the drink.

A flowered ceramic carafe of white wine—nondescript table stuff from Tuscany—is sitting in front of me. It is half-empty. Definitely not half-full.

It is my third of the still-young afternoon in La Serenissima.

I am waiting for my girlfriend Lisa. She is late. By an entire day.

I have never known Lisa—a blonde, busty and brassy interior designer—to be on time. We have been together for a while, even though we have little in common. I am borderline anti-social. She is almost pathologically sociable. I like going to foul little bars and dives where cirrhotic drinkers hang out. She likes snotty clubs and even snootier restaurants.

Lisa’s awful propensity for tardiness—the spark that has ignited many domestic conflagrations—apparently extends to airlines. Delta has personally explained the nature of the delay to me—she missed one flight, there was bad weather, another flight was canceled, the planets were misaligned, etc. I don’t even want to contemplate what will happen when she hits the train station in Milano and makes the acquaintance of the Italian State Railway.

Confronted with her, Mussolini would probably have thrown up his hands in utter despair because even he would not have been able to make the trains run on time. There is only so much, after all, even a fascist can do.

In any case, the pique I feel about Lisa being late by a day is why I am now soaking up booze like a sponge. I’ve been sipping vino bianco since eleven. Breakfast was espresso, rolls and a shot of cognac. Lunch consisted of several Xanax.

Not only am I feeling no pain, I am giggly.

The strains of operatic singing, of someone practicing somewhere in the Teatro Fenice, have flowed steadily for an hour. Now, an Italian couple is having a loud argument about a woman in one of the apartments above.

I smoke, listen to the entertainment, watch the world walking past, and drain the carafe of vino bianco.

Then, I order another.

Our hotel is in a Seventeenth Century building; it is called the Ala, right off the Campo Santa Maria del Giglio, which is named after the splendid church a few steps away. The church of Santa Maria del Giglio, like many things in Venice, is slowly rotting under a thick layer of pigeon shit.

I meander back to the Ala around five, after polishing off the fourth carafe of wine.

I ask the guy at the front desk for the room key.

He turns, checks the slot, and comes back empty handed.

“Is my friend here?” I say.

I speak Italian, but I am way too far in the bag for that right now. The only Italian words that readily come to mind are vulgarisms.

“You friend?” he says, in thickly accented English.

“A signorina.”

“I look,” he says.

He assumes an officious air—chin slightly elevated, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose—and flips through a ledger.

He turns pages. Paper rustles. He runs his fingers down the pages. How many people could possibly have checked in and out today?

“Si,” he says. “La Signorina Barletta? She is arrive.”

This is both good and bad. Good in the sense that my female companionship is here. Bad in that I am drunk as a skunk—and sedated to boot—and, as such, best suited to flopping on bed and watching the room spin around until I pass out.

I take the elevator upstairs, go down the hall, knock on the door.

Lisa opens it.

I put my arms around her and kiss her hard and drunkenly.

“Have you been drinking?” Lisa says, when we break apart and close the door.

Damn right. If you lit a match near me, the entire hotel would go up in an alcohol vapor fueled fireball.

“I had a little wine,” I say. “I didn’t know when you’d be here.”

She looks at me hard, and says, “You’re drunk.”

“Nah. Just some wine. I didn’t sleep too much last night. I went to Arturo’s for dinner and stayed up late with him and Fabrizio drinking grappa and talking.”

Arturo owns a restaurant on the Calle dei Assassini. Fabrizio is his chef. We are friends going back several years. I spend many long nights in his place drinking, smoking and talking.

I look at the nightstand by the bed. One of the bottles of grappa I stock for serious in-room drinking is nearly empty. She’s clearly been drinking, which gives us some common ground. I get a bottle of grappa—which is neither the cheap stuff that bears a close resemblance to turpentine nor the expensive stuff that’s so refined you taste droplets of it from spoons not much bigger than an average coke spoon—and walk out to the balcony over the little canal behind the Ala.

We sit and drink and talk. Lisa lays out her agenda, most of which entails shopping for a variety of her clients, including a particularly loathsome Middle Eastern millionaire I suspect she’s sleeping with on the side. Lisa concentrates on high-end clients. Her partner develops business while horizontal. Regardless, I will be spending much time looking at oriental rugs, antiques and blown glass during the next several days.

A gondola bearing Japanese tourists glides under the balcony. I tell Lisa about the time I spent in Zurich and Lausanne, leaving out a few relevant details about some of the slumming with models that transpired.

We put a significant dent in the bottle of grappa, and eventually wander out in search of solid sustenance.

It is getting late, and I am defying several laws of nature by remaining conscious.

We settle on a seafood restaurant that Lisa finds aesthetically appropriate, in the sense that it is sparse and modern and suitably pricey. I go to the john between courses and return to find a gay guy dressed in black talking to Lisa.

What’s he doing at my table?

I ask Lisa as much in Italian.

He was eating alone, she answers in Italian.

Who cares? I eat alone all the time when I’m traveling.

“Stronzo disgraziato,” I say in Italian.

Disgraceful little turd.

I am not feeling gracious tonight.

Far too much wine, grappa and Xanax have flowed beneath the bridge.

I glare at him while I silently eat my seafood risotto, drink more wine and listen to a lot of patter about designers I don’t know whose furniture I can’t afford.

Mercifully, I am ripped and dinner doesn’t drag on forever. Afterwards, Lisa and I are staggering down a narrow passageway near the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. I am laughing and giggling, and making crude remarks about the designer who joined us for dinner.

The sudden and tragic bout of sickness that follows comes on without warning. It is not preceded by any queasiness whatsoever. One moment I am walking and feeling exceptionally jolly. I am looking forward to going back to the Ala and screwing until I pass out. The next minute, I am hunched over in a doorway puking my guts out.

“Bob!” Lisa says, a bit loudly. “Stop it!”

“Wwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” I say.

Stop it?

How the am I supposed to stop it?

“Stop it!” she repeats.

“Hwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaawwwwhhhhhhhhhh!”

I’m drunk and barfing my brains out in a little Venetian alleyway and I’m supposed to stop it?

“Bob!” Lisa says. “Stop throwing up! People live there.”

“Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaahhhhhhhh,” I respond.

“Jesus Christ. That is sooo rude.”

Look, I understand your point. I feel badly about puking in somebody’s doorway. But, that’s the price of living in a town so loaded with tourists that you can’t even walk two feet without bumping into somebody born three thousand miles away. One minute, atmospheric Venice. The next minute, frat party.

“Hooooooooooo…….Hooooooooooooo…….Hoooooooooooo,” I heave.

This is not a Thomas Mann moment. Or maybe it is, but with puke.

“Uck,” Lisa says. “Cut it out.”

“Gggggggggwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!”

Oh, dear God. An entire day of boozing it up and popping pills and now it’s all coming out. It is like the Olympics of vomit.

“Hhhhhwwwwwaaaaaaahhhhhhhpppppplllllaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!” I grunt.

When I finish, Lisa is glaring and shaking her head.

“Don’t look at me that way,” I say. “What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve never seen you do that before.”

Heh. I normally don’t start drinking wine at eleven in the morning, chase it with Xanax and then move on to grappa.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I feel a lot better now.”

I suggest that we look at it as a bonding experience. Throwing up is one of the things that brings a couple that drinks heavily closer together. There is no reason for guilt.

“Do you want to go back to the hotel?” Lisa says.

Why? The night is still young. And, we’re in Venice.

“Nah,” I say. “Venice is sinking. Won’t be here forever. Let’s find a café and have some espresso or some grappa.”

Better still, some espresso with grappa.

Why not kill two birds with one stone?

Robert Guskind has been writing for a long time. An award-winning Washington-based journalist
and contributor to major national magazines and newspapers, he now lives very close to Manhattan,
where he continues to write, shoot photographs and work on a book based on his travels and
experiences as a reporter and formerly disreputable dope fiend. He is all better now. He is a regular
monthly contributor to Cherrybleeds and had just launched Gowanus Lounge a new blog that has
nothing to do with either addiction or recovery. He hopes to make Gowanus Lounge a full-fledged
literary website in the very near future.