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strongly of incense. He came to our table. There was a slight commotion, the spilling of a glass, the knocking over of a chair, and then Grace was gone.
    I sit and stare at nothing. My heart is pounding so fast I think it will cease at any moment. What I have in the place of vision is a blank wall of blurry illumination no longer filled with the silhouette of my Grace.
    I push out my chair. Stand. My legs knock into the table and my glass spills along with Grace’s.
    I cup my hands around my mouth.
    â€œGrace!” I shout. “Grace! Grace!”
    The people who surround me all grow quiet as I scream over them.
    The waiter comes running back over.
    â€œPlease, please,” he says to me, taking me by the arm. “Please come with me.”
    He begins leading me through the throng of tables and people. He is what I have now in the place of Grace. He is my sight.
    â€œShe’s gone, isn’t she?” I beg. “Did you check the toilets?”
    â€œWe checked the toilets. They are empty. I am sorry. I am sure there is an explanation.”
    â€œGrace is gone!” I shout. “A man took her away. How could no one have seen it?”
    â€œYou’re frightening the patrons, signor. Please just come with me and we will try and find her.”
    â€œShe’s gone,” I repeat. “Don’t you understand me? My. Grace. Is. Gone.”

Chapter 14
    BY THE SOUNDS OF it, I’m led though a near silent dining room into what I’m told is a small office located in the very back of the café. The wood door is closed behind me, and I am offered a chair. After showing him one of the many photos I have of Grace stored on my mobile phone, the waiter pours me a snifter of brandy and tells me to drink it.
    â€œIt will make you feel better,” he insists in broken English.
    I do it.
    In the meantime, I am able to speed-dial Grace’s cell phone by touch, while he makes a check for her in the area surrounding the exterior portion of the café. I get only the answering service. After leaving five messages begging her to call me, I get an automated message telling me her mailbox is full. I imagine that the man who took her away from me has tossed her phone into the Grand Canal.
    When the waiter returns some fifteen minutes later, I know what he’s about to tell me before he says it. I don’t need eyesight to see his ashen face or ears to hear the sad sluggishness of his gait and the soles on his leather shoes shuffling defeated on the wood floorboards.
    â€œPerhaps it is time to call in the police,” he whispers.
    My pounding heart now drops into my stomach.

Chapter 15
    HE’S A SLIM, WELL-DRESSED detective of middle age. Or so I picture him, judging by his excellent English and the smooth, low tone of his voice. Like a pack-a-day smoker now trying to quit but not succeeding. When I hear him lighting up with a good old fashioned Zippo-style flip-top lighter, I’m confident that the picture I’ve painted in my head is not entirely inaccurate.
    I’m seated at a wood chair before his desk inside the Venice Polizia headquarters located only a few buildings up from the train station at the busy top of the Grand Canal. I was transported here by a uniformed policeman who, despite grilling some of the café patrons with a few questions, insisted that a crime-scene investigation was not yet in order since it’s possible my fiancée simply could have disappeared of her own accord. A notion that not only fills me with dread, but that makes my already ailing heart nearly quit on me altogether.
    After the detective orders hard-copy prints of several photographs of Grace from the batch stored on my mobile phone, he begins making note of her vitals: Name, age, weight, height, eye, hair and skin color. He then begins probing into what he defines as, “the situation.”
    â€œMy fiancée and I were having lunch at the café outside the cathedral in