“How?” asked Enrique. “If we get into a gondola, they’ll recognize us immediately.”
Hypnos pointed to the canal. Even this early, the river was alive with traffic. Zofia watched as three boats holding cargos of winter fruit pushed past the slower, Forged gondolas that wereheavily decorated and advertising plays and restaurants. Around the bend, a different boat drew into focus. This one was wider and shorter than a gondola, and sat only three people. Its wooden wings dragged across the surface of the lagoon. The boat’s prow curved like a swan bowing its head. Inside the boat, sat a man and a woman, their hands interlinked. They were staring at each other and smiling. A third person sat at the front, pumping their legs to cycle the boat forward. They skirted past the boats by less than thirty centimeters.
“Your solution is a bird boat?” asked Enrique.
He did not sound impressed.
“Non, watch,mon cher,” said Hypnos. “They are bound to do it soon.”
“Do what?” asked Enrique.
“Shhh.”
In the swan boat, the man and woman leaned forward and their mouths touched. Zofia’s face warmed at the sight, and she would have turned her head had not the boat suddenly transformed at their kiss. The white, swan wings folded up, swallowing them completely from sight.
Zofia started to count the seconds… fourteen, thirty-seven, seventy-two, one hundred and twenty. Abruptly, the wings flapped down and the couple appeared once more. Their faces looked red and their hair looked more mussed than before. They shared a small smile with each other.
“Keeps you on the other side of the watching Mnemo bugs, gets you close to the gondola,” said Hypnos. “And awfully cheap too at this time of day. Trust me, I’ve utilized many a Love Boat on my trips to Venice.”
Enrique’s face turned red. “I… um…”
“That is not a bad idea,” said Zofia.
“See?” said Hypnos. “I’m more than a pretty face.”
“Of course you are,” said Zofia.
Hypnos clapped his hands to his heart. “Ah,ma chère, so kind—”
“You have shoulders and feet, and a neck… though I do not know whether those would be considered pretty.”
Hypnos scowled.
“But who will be the couple?” asked Enrique. “And who will pedal the boat?”
Zofia looked at the two of them. She had seen them kiss more than once, and they seemed to enjoy it, so she didn’t understand Enrique’s hesitation.
“Oh,” said Enrique, turning even redder. “We aren’t—” He paused, gesturing between Hypnos and himself.
“We’re currently friends,” said Hypnos, not looking at Enrique.
“You don’t know how long you will be friends?” asked Zofia.
“Oh, we willalwaysbe friends, but whether there will be something more, who can say?” said Hypnos lightly. “So it will have to be you and one of us, Zofia. Which will it be? I vote me.” He bowed low. “First, I’m exceptionally handsome. Second, I’m certainly more handsome than our historian—”
Enrique frowned. “What does that have to do with—”
“Andthird,” said Hypnos, talking loudly over Enrique. “I am a wonderful kisser.”
He winked, which made Zofia laugh because it indicated that it was friendly and joking, but at the same time, Hypnos’s mention of a kiss summoned a strange gap in her plan that she had not considered.
With Séverin’s acquisitions in the past, acting was sometimes necessary. That did not bother Zofia. She liked being given rules of how to comport herself and what to say or do. It eased her mind toknow all the rules in advance. But she had never acted romantically. She had never even been kissed. It was something Hela had teased her about before she left for Paris.
“Going all the way to Paris, and yet to kiss a boy! Don’t you want to kiss someone, Zosia?”
In truth, there were very few boys Zofiawantedto kiss. She knew howwantfelt… a low pulse in her belly, her heartbeat rising faster… normally, the thought of putting her mouth on someone else’s struck her as awkward and faintly off-putting, but the idea of touching mouths with certain people made her feel caught somehow. As if she had been running to a place, and had been stopped against her will, and now all she wished was to get there. It had first happened around a young professor who was very kind and had light brown hair, but Zofia could not bring herself to speak to him. Now, she had those same sensations around Enrique, but they were more intense. Around him, she felt unsettling warmth and twinges, odd skips in her pulse that left her pleasantly light-headed when he looked at her for too long. She liked being around him. And when he left, sometimes she felt sad. This was attraction, but what was its fulfillment? What happened after? What if those sensations became so heightened she fainted? What if she wanted more than a kiss? Then what?
“It should be me,” said Enrique.
