FRIENDLY PHANTOM CLUE

What's wrong with me? Bella wondered this morning with a headache and nausea.

Whenever she proposed to herself this question, which was usually when she woke up with a hangover, she answered her own question with a defiant Nothing, nothing is wrong with me.

The answer jumped out too quick, as if to conceal a reality sting. Wasn't it easier to run away, escape to where the question "what's wrong?" no longer mattered, hide her feelings of inadequacy, worry, doubt? Behind of her carefully woven veil of self-assuredness? The problem was that most people, including Bella, didn't believed her false self and saw through the masks. Some days it seemed everyone sensed her insecurity and it resurfaced inside her at all the wrong times. Like now.

Suppose I could stay in this layer of relief and never surface? She longed to stay hidden under the blankets until it passed. Why not? If saying to 'I'm fine, nothing's wrong?' makes me believe that nothing is wrong, safe and secure, I can live there? Correct? Incorrect.

The problem remained. It didn't work. Lying there in bed all day didn't help. Something, some fear, some uneasiness broke through her provocative, protective layer. She tried to lie to herself, to plunge whatever was wrong back inside her deeper, still it rose from her subconscious. Something, the something wrong, still remained to disturb her body, mind and soul. The disturbance, this unknown feeling of "something is wrong with me" occurred at unpredictable intervals, as it had done to her today, all day. It paralyzed her thoughts and actions. Bella, confused and sorrowful, stayed stationary while the world outside her windows moved forward.

This feeling like something is wrong with her, being such a common ailment of Bella's, or at least her commonly imagined one, seemed hardly enough as to require an entire life change of sorts, such as joining the convent or deciding to take steps to become a single parent. Temporary paralysis could produce permanent damage if movements were made too quickly or without caution.

Move the stretcher slowly with the spine protected and straight, she thought remembering instructions from her first aid courses about possible paralyzing physical injuries, but hers today were mental. Mental paralysis resulting in body stagnation. It wasn't altogether a reason to drop off the face of the earth, which is how she felt right and what she wished she could do. That is, she felt useless.

She made a plan to take charge of it and nurse herself back to heath, or rather reality. The reality that life isn't really that bad and she had no reason to feel down. A little indecision and confusion was all it was. She decided she would take a nap, but first she would take a bath. A long bath, in freshly harvested detoxifying sea vegetables, then she would take a nap.

The sea veggie bath served a specific purposes, several really. Minerals in her body were replenished and bad stuff was detoxed. So she gathered them up in a shallow bay outside Venice and took a bath in them. The long the strands of seaweed were slippery, they smelled like salt water and she wrapped them around herself as they soothed and relaxed her. She took some pictures of her feet, hands and head all covered in green seaweed like a mermaid.

Finally she could feel herself melt into the experience, the soft, some might say slimy feel of these long strands of algae surrounded her like a cushion of the finest silk. She sung down further, content, but strange sounds, which she assumed were coming from the canal below her bedroom, echoed outside the bathroom door. She tried to ignore these sounds, even as they clicked like the bills of the seagulls she often saw wrestling each other for leftover seafood at the fish market. She did not want to let it interrupt the wonderful experience, traquility and relaxation she was feeling in her sea bath. Ever since she started looking into all of the ghost traces, her senses were heightened, odd sounds seemed to be everywhere. Especially today when she felt so sluggish and now again while relaxing in the bath. She pulled the drain out of the tub and began to place the sea veggies in a pail she set next to the tub for them, rubbing some pieces a few more times across her thighs, stomach and lymph nodes. Click cluck click she heard again and again, much like those stupid gulls.

She exited the bath and slowly moved to the bedroom, where she knew at the appointed hour, around five in the afternoon, the gondolas that passed below her window each day would awake her from her nap with their window serenade. "O Solo Mio," she loved to hear them sing everyday. "My only love," she whispered to herself, O solo mio. Click cluck click, there it was again interrupting her memories of the lovely gondola serenades.

She crossed the thresh hold to the bedroom and as soon as she stepped through it, the seagull clucking noise abruptly stopped. For a moment she considered testing it by crossing back through the doorway into the hall where the sounds were loudest to see if they might return, but she was too exhausted from her earlier spell of depression and relaxed from her bath to do anything but dropped onto the bed. She breathed a huge sigh of pleasure as she curled up under an old wool blanket, piled two more on top to hold in the heat as well as the minerals from the bath. Ah my plan may have worked. I feel so much better.

As she began to doze she heard singing, but it wasn't the gondoliers. Was it a woman? One woman, a woman who sounded more like an oboe or a flute than a voice.

"Half of me wants to live in the ocean, half of me wants to die," the strange voice sang.

She woke, frightened, opened her eyes, glanced at the clock and realized she had only been asleep for two minutes. Had time stood still? How could she possibly have drifted into a dream so quickly? Such a vivid dream with singing. Surely there was no Siren, no mermaid, under her window down in that murky canal. She tossed for a minute or two until sleep overtook her anxiety again and she dozed off.

"Half of me wants to live in the ocean, half of me wants to die. If I am caught in the seaweed, a drift or a hook, my gills, full of air, might burst. I swim in the salt, my new found love, not hiding in caves with no light from above. "

Bella tossed, turned, tried to tame it in her brain, in her dream, not quite awake but aware she was dreaming.

"I'm a fish with the will of a wandering wave, sliding, gliding, taking my fill. Then half of me snaps on a line of bait, though fake pulls me up, flips me over, my fears all awake."

This time she did wake up, suddenly, not slowly and looked up towards her bedroom window where a soft breeze was blowing wispy sheer curtains towards her. She squinted as she saw the face of a woman in the glass. Wasn't the window open, the wind blowing the curtains, right? She blinked and still saw a woman's face in a pane of glass. Frozen momentarily by fright, she then jumped up and out of bed to check the window, close it or get closer to it. The second she moved towards it, the woman's face vanished. Her bedroom window was indeed open and the glass pane that appeared to reflect the woman's face disappeared with it.

Before getting back into bed, Bella got on her knees and prayed "please help me, let me know I am okay, what is going on?" She heard her God, or whomever that intuitive voice was, say to her "Go back to sleep, its okay. Listen to the song."

She did. Then the same shrill but harmonic voice began singing again as Bella slept.

"Half of me wants to live in the ocean, half of me wants to die. If I am caught in the seaweed, a drift or a hook, my gills, full of air, might burst. I swim in the salt, my new found love, not hiding in caves with no light from above. I'm a fish with the will of a wandering wave, sliding, gliding, taking my fill. Then half of me snaps on a line of bait, though fake pulls me up flips me over and my fears all awake."

Bella next heard laughing and then saw herself twirling underwater with a shadow of something below her, following it, as if she were snorkeling above a large fish only she was underwater breathing with it as if she too had gills. Or was she holding her breath like a sea mammal. Bella was laughing underwater, it felt like she was flying. She tried to sing along but didn't know the words, so she hummed in her dream while the woman's sultry drone continued.

"Should I drown as a nymph, should I broil as a dish,"

"La la la la la la." Bella felt as if she was singing, as she twirled underwater.

" Either way just the same, I decay. I pull to left then the right then I stop, for I'm caught or I'm sinking again." The voice kept singing as the woman's shadow vanished into the watery abyss.

Bella floated a little longer in her dream ocean and slept for hours more after the fish-woman and her eery voice disappeared. Finally Bella was awakened by her daily five o-clock gondola serenade floating through the canal below her window. She jumped up to watch them as she always did after a nap, in her amazing front row seat. This time when she looked down at them, she thought she saw a shadow of a woman in the canal below and that reminded her of the song she had heard in her dream. Was that just a ghost in the canal or just a reflection of somebody, anybody nearby? Was it her own reflection? It couldn't be. What was that song? She couldn't remember the words though she tried and tried. Why hadn't she wrote them down each time she woke? Darn it, she forgot it all. The whole song.

The gondoliers soon had passed through the canal, under the bridge and off into the distance where she could no longer see or hear them. She went into the kitchen and put on her shoes to take the walk she had wanted to do all morning. The walk she hadn't been able to do while she sat still, feeling sorry for herself.

There, lying on the carpet, she noticed a torn piece of paper blowing near the terrace door. As she picked it up, she saw two more pieces also torn that seemed to fit together. She gathered them up off of the floor, sat down and crossed her legs to put them all together: She read them aloud:

"Should I drown as a nymph, should I broil as a dish, either way just the same, I decay?"

The song! It was the song. How strange? Had someone coe in and read this, singing while Bella was asleep. Where had the song come from? What was it? Who wrote it?

"No," she heard a man's voice say in a kind, quiet way. She looked behind her thinking the apartment owner had come by to check on her. Next she searched her apartment, all two rooms of it and the bathroom and found no one.

"It was a dream?" she attempted to ask herself and the voice, if it was still around.

"Yes and no," the man's voice responded.

"Oh that doesn't help me much," she remarked. Oddly she wasn't afraid.

"It should."

"Scare me?"

"No, don't be afraid of me."

"Give me another hint."

"Ask me another question?" said the man's voice.

"Was it a dream and why do I have this part of the song, its the part I hated."

"Is this better?" he asked.

She looked back down at the paper, all three pieces of paper at once crumbled themselves up into one ball. She jumped when she saw this and chuckled nervously. Whatever or whoever was there was playing with her.

"Its not a game. I won't hurt you. You can trust me."

"Yea thats what every man says."

"You trust the wrong ones."

"Hey stay out of my business." She heard him laugh at that.

"Read it," he said.

She picked up the ball of paper, which she thought had been three torn pieces, but when she opened it, three pieces were all now together as one, as if taped but without tape. She could see the torn edges, but couldn't see any tape. The words were perfectly typed onto it.

She stared at it for a moment, then she heard "I said read it."

"I'm a fish with the will of a wandering wave, sliding, gliding, taking my fill.

"Better?" he asked.

"I'm a fish with the will of a wandering wave, sliding, gliding, taking my fill," she repeated. "Much better. There was one line in the song I really liked even more."

"Put the paper back down."

She did.

"Now turn it over."

Bella turned it over and there was handwritten another line, which hadn't been there before when the paper was crumbled in a ball. Or at least she didn't think so.

"I swim in the salt, my new found love, not hiding in caves with no light from above. "

"Like it? Is that the line from the song that really sang to you," he said in such a way as to let her know that he thought his play on words was as funny one.

"Yes that's it. I love that line. But there is more. Of the song. Where is it?"

"You will remember later. Go for a swim."

"What?"

"You will know where to go. Swim. Bye," the man said and a strong cold breeze blew through the open terrace door and the door shut itself quietly.

Bella sat there stunned. She went to pick up the paper again to see the lines that she heard the mermaid singing in her dreams in the canal down below her window but the papers were gone. Not just the lines from the song, but all the pieces of paper. Frantic she got up and looked through the entire room. Nothing. She remembered the wind had blown while she was asleep in her room so she searched the hallway between the kitchen and her room. Still nothing. Then she ran back in the kitchen and looked out onto the terrace. There they were, all three pieces on the terrace. When she opened the terrace door, the wind from the door blew the papers up into the air.

Oh no, she thought and shut the door again. They fell on to the patio floor. Slowly she reopened the door and the three torn papers laid there still. She walked carefully over to them so as not to disturb them and heard a voice say something from above her. There, where the cast iron elaborately detailed winding staircase took you from the terrace onto another terrace, known as an altana, was a seagull. Not a voice?

"Silly bird" she said to it. Strange how it sat there looking down at her from the staircase. The voice that she heard must have come from below her or from another roof or from a nearby window. Apartments were stacked upon one another and voices echoed on her quiet venetian street. She started to turn back down to retrieve the papers and heard "not a dream, not a voice, just a bird." It was parrot sounding words.

"What?" She looked at the bird again who was just staring at her sitting there like he came there often to hang on the terrace with her. "Okay you can stay." Bella told it and as she did the seagull got up and flapped its wings and away it went. Bella turned back to pick up the papers but she saw she was too late. The papers were flying away too, trailing behind the seagull in perfect formation, gliding as if in its flock.

Jeez maybe that nap wasn't long enough, she thought.

"Go for a swim," she heard the parrot say.

"Go for swim, its freezing out" she yelled at the bird far off in the distant canal route, the same one the gondoliers had taken.

She recalled a story that Anna had told her that had happened on one of her trips to Venice. Anna was walking home after dinner and saw a drunken girl walking in front of her with her handsome venetian boyfriend. A blonde woman, Anna said, she reminded her of Bella. The man reminded her of Edward, so she watched them curiously to see what transpired. He was trying to hold the girl up and kept stopping to kiss he, but the girl kept pushing him away. Anna, back in her hotel room, heard shouting outside her window and saw that the girl had jumped into the canal to swim. Anna, concerned for the woman as there was much of boat traffic coming through the small canal to get to the Guidecca Canal, thought of how many dangerous things she done when she was drunk.

Well I aint drunk and I aint swimmin in no canal, thought Bella. What else did Anna say about that event? Bella tried to remember because for some reason she thought that was where the man wanted her to swim. She recalld that Anna had said the blonde women was with a man, dressed in all white, blonde as well, with the usual perfect venetian rump, which the light fabric of his pants draped perfectly over. Yes Anna clearly remembered that detail of his nice butt.

Shortly after Anna first saw the blonde girl swimming in the canal, she saw the man furiously trying to persuade blondie to come out. He kept pointing at passing boats and eventually dove in with her. At first he pulled her away from the middle of the canal near the edge away from the traffic, but soon he was trying to take advantage of the situation, embracing and kissing her.

"What the hell? Why me? Why swim in a canal? A canal with lots of boat trafiic. Jeez, now?" she said out loud to whomever might want to care to answer and looked up as if waiting for the parrot to tell her more.

"Anything?" she prodded but nothing happened. So she did what she thought was the next best thing, she went into the kitchen and poured herself a huge glass of red wine. Upon finishing it, she started to remember the words to the song.

"I'm a fish with the will of a wandering wave, sliding, gliding, taking my fill." It was all she could remember, so she wrote it down. Was there some sort of code in it she was supposed to translate? Go for a swim?

"Oh what the hell. I will try to find that spot, but I'm not going in," she said defiantly in the direction of the canal then waved up at the sky, the strange sky that brought talking birds and flying pieces of paper with song lyrics written on them. As she put on her hat, coat, gloves, scarf and boots-all the latest italian ones of course-she grabbed the piece of paper where she had written the few words of the song she remembered. Then she pour herself another glass of wine to take for the walk and left.

Walking towards the canal, she tried to remember which hotel Anna had stayed in. She knew that the canal she spoke of would be the one with a window above it at that hotel. All she knew was that it led to the Guidecca canal. Usually she would pass the Cafe Forscari where the handsome owner might be working and other assorted characters would try to stop and chat with her. She halted before she crossed the bridge leading to the corner cafe and said to her intuitive self,

You are leading me. If someone in the cafe sees me and tries to delay me, please tell me if I am supposed to stop, tell me if that is part of your plan or if you want me to keep moving on.

This short prayer calmed her and she knew she was on the right track. No sooner did she say the prayer and she heard a boat coming down the canal. She saw her friend Tom, an American who had first married a dutch girl, lived in Holland but since had moved to Venice where his wife grew up and went to school. They now lived in a fine palace overlooking the splendid Grand Canal.

She waved at him and he immediately pulled the boat over to the side of the canal where she stood and asked her "You headed out or home."

"Out."

"Hop in."

"Great. Not sure I know exactly where I am going."

"Even better. The best way to see Venice," he said as he maneuvered the boat with a series of back and forth thrusts of the engines into a spot where were a few steps lead into the canal for her to climb into his boat.

He reached out to the concrete ledge at the edge of the canal, hung onto the shore, the fondamente so Bella could step from the fondamente onto the side of the boat and then down into it.

"You had dinner?" he inquired apparently looking for company.

"No haven't even had lunch. Slept all day."

"Good idea its been a strange one. Wind howling. Papers flying everywhere. Freaky shit."

:Like what?" Bella now curious having had her own freaky shit to deal with during the windy day, and in her own apartment no less.

"Sit down and I will tell you."