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Elena wanted the basilica , not the water . She had one afternoon with a group in Venice , and the door of St Mark's was the appointment they had come for . Before noon her phone used the local name , acqua alta . A high tide was on the way . Another line said the MOSE barriers , the gates at the mouths of the lagoon , might be raised to keep that tide out . Might . The switch was not hers , and she had stopped telling guests that a machine had finished the problem . Piazza San Marco lies low . Water shows there sooner than in the higher streets , and visitors sometimes treat the shine as part of the ticket . Elena did not . A flooded pavement costs shops , floors , and the hours of people who live above them . The barriers exist so the worst tides can be shut outside the lagoon . They are not a promise about every wet morning , and they do not mop a street that is already under water . What she could change was the path and the hour . She moved the meeting forward and named a bridge that stays usable longer than the square . In the calle nearest the water , a narrow street , boards were already laid out , the temporary walkways the city puts down when the tide comes in . A vendor was selling thin overshoes . She paid for a pair for the guest in pale shoes and left the price out of the conversation . One man wrote that he had hoped to see the famous flood . She answered that if the water stayed out , the day had gone well , and that her work was the mosaics . They crossed on the boards where the stones were wet and on open pavement where they were not . At the door the square was shining at the edges and still crossable . She did not know , and did not pretend to know , whether the gates had risen or whether this tide had never been high enough to need them . She knew the group was inside , with time to look up , which was the thing she had wanted since morning . Outside again , a woman asked if Venice would be like this every season now . Elena said she would not promise the next autumn . She would keep changing the hour , the bridge , and the sentence she offers the person who came for the flood .
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