Looking for Marco Polo by Alan Armstrong Page B

when they got to his hotel.
    “Sure,” said Doc. “I’ll meet you at one for lunch at the signora’s.”
    Mark and Boss headed upstairs to Mark’s room. As Mark slid the Chinese pillow under his head, the dog floated up and lay down beside him, uttering a long whistling sigh of joy as he stretched out full length. But a few minutes later, Boss began to jerk and twitch in his sleep, quivering, his teeth chattering. A bad dream! Mark put out his hand to comfort him.
    Boss awakened, looked up at Mark, then licked the boy’s hand in gratitude, sighed, and went back to sleep. Mark lay there watching in case the nightmare came back. It felt good being needed. He’d never felt that way before.
    He was tired but he wasn’t sleepy. His mind was going all over the place, sights and images boiling around in his head like the flakes in one of those snow globes.
    Gradually the swirl of ideas settled on one thing: St. Mark’s. Seeing the light shining out, hearing the music—he had to get inside to see what Marco hadseen. He had to go back. He had some money, and his mother had given him a book of vaporetto tickets.
    Boss was suddenly wide awake, ready for whatever Mark had in mind.
    The boy tried to leave word with the hotel clerk, but when the man saw the dog again, he scuttled back into his night closet.
    They caught the waterbus and rode down the Grand Canal to the San Marco stop.
    The crowds in the cathedral yard were thicker than before. Mark gritted his teeth. There was a wall of people he figured he’d never get through.
    Then he noticed a display of Italian sunglasses on a souvenir cart. It gave him an idea.
    He went to the cart and tried on a pair. He checked them out with Boss. The dog nodded.
    Mark gestured to the man and said, “I’ll take these.”
    “Twenty euro,” the man said.
    Mark pulled out what he had in his pockets: thirteen euros plus the book of vaporetto tickets.
    “You have anything cheaper?” he asked.
    “No,” said the man. Then he smiled. “What you have there—the money and the tickets—I sell them to you for that, Mister Hollywood.”
    Somehow from behind the glasses the crowd wasn’t so intimidating.
    Mark took hold of Boss’s collar. The dog led him toward the open tourist gates slowly and deliberately, his great plume waving, his blue tongue out and slobbering as he grinned and hooted his way through the crowd.
    They got to the great doors.
    Mark nodded to the dog. Boss sat down, prepared to wait for Mark for as long as necessary. Mark let go of the leash and merged with the warm, shuffling tide that sounded like silk rubbing on silk.
    He was in. He pulled off the glasses and waited while his eyes adjusted to the smoky dim. There was organ music and singing far away. The space was huge, the domed ceilings soaring higher than anything he’d ever seen. The slanting winter light coming in from one side was golden, touching the mosaic pictures in the domes over his head. There was Noah tenderly helping a pair of long-necked green and turquoise birds into the ark while others just as gorgeous but azure with white dots waited their turn. And then, farther on, there were the merchants in their little black boat bringing back a long casket with the bones of Saint Mark over a vivid sea of black swirls on gold. As the boy stared, he could almost feel their boat pitching and heaving over the deep.
    He had goose bumps. The hair on the back of his neck went up. “Marco,” he whispered. “You were here. You saw those sailors, you knew the story, you could feel the water. Maybe you stood right where I am now.” He shivered, but he wasn’t cold.
    Moving deeper into the dusk and hush of the cathedral, it felt as if he were walking in the hold of a great ship, moving up toward her prow. He became aware of the incense and candle smoke. It was heavy to breathe. There were trays of candles in niches along the sides of the cathedral, their light flickering off paintings, polished panels of marble