Page 17 of Casanova LLC

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I loved having Jacopo living at Ca’ Casanova. Since the beginning of our family line, the agreement had been that once a new Casanova took over, the outgoing one could retire in the palazzo for the rest of his days. There was plenty of space, even if there was much to repair.

As we walked through, Jacopo was showing-and-telling what he’d fixed while I was gone. The first floor, or piano nobile, was the showstopper, as that’s where we entertained our guests. A modern kitchen, a dining room, a massive salon—or parlor, or more accurately, sala—with adjoining bedroom and bathroom. The curtains were all cleaned and rehung; the bolt on the French doors leading to the smoking balcony was no longer sticking; the rugs had been steamed. He’d cleaned the windows overlooking the Grand Canal, washed all the tile floors, had the marble ones buffed by a friend who owned the proper machine, and polished every railing. There’d been a leak in the roof last year (a repair that one of my Saudi clients had made possible), and Jacopo had redone the plasterwork on the ceiling. And repainted.

We continued up one more flight to the fully equipped guest residence: a kitchenette, comfortable sitting area with a couch and club chair, a television above it, and a simple desk next to the window seat. A nicely appointed bedroom and en suite with separate tub and shower, toilet and bidet. Everything was ready, as if it had never been used, as if only history had lived here. He showed me the new upholstery on the bench at the end of the bed. He’d over-ordered for the boat, used the extra here.

He had this unparalleled ability to bring life back to anything he put his heart and mind to. He treated things like they were people, never the other way around. A truer man of service I’d never met.

My grandfather had begun the process of modernizing the palazzo back in the 70s, flush with Iranian and American money. He got into the internals, fixed the bad wiring and outdated lead paint and plumbing. He’d made it safe, but Jacopo had made it art. When I’d asked him what he was most proud of during his “reign,” he spoke only of the house. Being good with his hands came naturally and that had translated to his clientele.

He informed me the chicken wire we’d put up in the attic the summer before had held. Nothing was roosting in there. He’d only found two mice in the traps in the androne. A first for the palazzo. He said the winter had been kind, even if it had been lonely. He sighed. Then grinned.

He invited me to have a glass of wine on the sailboat when I was settled, as he trotted back down the stairs to his apartment on the ground floor. A place I jokingly called The Dowager Cottage.

I walked up one more flight, luggage in hand, to my private residence. This I called, not jokingly, my Fortress of Solitude. Only I was allowed to set foot here. It was one long room spanning the canal-side length of the palazzo, containing a living room and kitchen, office and bedroom, art studio and gym. It was exactly as I’d left it. Jacopo had cleaned it but made sure not to move anything out of place. I opened a few of the eight-foot-high windows and unlatched the outer wooden shutters. The early evening air was sweetened with magnolia blossoms.

I turned and looked into the room.

Another season.

Sixty-five bookings, give or take.

My eye swept to the studio area, where a blank, lifeless canvas sat on the easel, collecting dust.

The past few years had been dry for me. Like paint in its tube, cap off—ready and waiting—but the longer it sat, the more unusable it became. What would it take to bring my brush back to the canvas? Would the reclaiming of my paintings do it? Or was it more than that?

The longer I stayed away from it the more I was convinced it wasn’t about my lost paintings. It was about me.

* * *

Jacopo had made surprising progress on the boat. All the cabinetry in the galley was refinished and back in place. He showed me the compound miter work he’d done and the locally sourced wood that was used to repair some of the doors. The velvet on the seats—and now in the guest residence—came from the workshop of an old friend. Mechanical troubles aside, she was done. A Venetian boat through and through, its integrity and authenticity made whole again.

Made whole again.

Which made me think of Claire. Who I had yet to hear from.

Inside the palazzo’s boat garage, or cavana, we sat on the stern, opened the sliding wood door, and looked out into the side canal while we sipped wine and caught up.

As the light of the day retreated toward evening, I watched how it played upon my uncle’s face. You’d think we would have long tired of each other, but the opposite was true. Even as a kid, when I would visit him during the summer, our time together would seem to evaporate and I’d be sent back to New York in September, counting the days until I could return. He was a good man, a great man, where my father—his brother-in-law—was a…hadn’t been.

I looked at his hands as he poured us refills from the carafe. They were rough now, calloused and nicked and cut, cuticles stained with varnish. He used to wear gloves when he worked; women liked strong hands, but rough? Only to a point. Now, his hands belonged to him.

“Retirement suits you,” I observed.

He smiled at this.

“Do you miss it?”

He laughed. He must have seen the look on my face at his laugh because he shrugged. “As careers go, there are worse.”

“I like it.” I didn’t know why it had come out defensive.

“Well, you’re better at it than I was.” I rolled my eyes. “You are. I hear things, you know. I have spies.”

There were a handful of guests we either shared or who now sent me their daughters. Jacopo had maintained genuine if arm’s-length friendships with three of them. They’d known each other for decades, after all. He’d seen them through marriages and divorces and births and deaths and…life. They may no longer fuck, but they’d never come to him solely for that anyway. They could have easily formed an attachment to him if he had allowed it.

But he controlled the outcome. Always.

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