She’d said goodnight and gone to change: you two go to bed, I’ve got the keys, I’ll see you in the morning.
Rosaria in her head. Rosaria in her heart. Eagerly awaiting Rosaria on her flesh.
She’d chosen a pretty aggressive set of intimate wear, a thong and a push-up bra that she’d bought in a shop in another part of town, far from home and far from the police station, as well as a garter belt supporting a pair of fine-mesh fishnet stockings.
Then she had put on a dark dress, neither particularly short nor with a plunging neckline, but snug and close-fitting, which emphasized her lithe, petite figure. The dark makeup she’d applied made her cheeks look slightly gaunt and hollowed, giving her a feral look. Which is what she wanted.
I’m a she-wolf tonight, she thought, as she gazed into the mirror. Tonight I want you to know that you’ll be devoured by my ferocious maw. Tonight, you’re not in charge, Senior Director Martone. Tonight, I’m in charge.
Her overcoat, her purse, and out the door. Five brisk strides down the hallway, and she’d be gone.
Her father, in his dressing gown, was standing by the door, barring her way.
She felt as if she were about to die. She thanked God she was already wearing her overcoat, and she immediately clutched her collar tight to her throat to conceal the dress and the thin gold chain she wore around her neck.
“Papà, are you still up? You scared me.”
Her father studied her. For the umpteenth time, she felt the same sensation she had when she was a little girl and she felt those empty eyes delve into her, bringing her darkest emotions up into the light.
“So you go to meetings at the office all dolled up? With all this makeup?”
Her heart was pounding in her ears. Now what am I supposed to do? What am I going to do?
“No, you know, Papà, it’s just that . . . yes, it’s a meeting, that’s true, but afterward we’re all going out to dinner and I just . . . ”
Unexpectedly, the General broke into a smile.
“You’re a big girl, now. Do you think that your mother and I don’t know that? You don’t have to tell me about it, I know that you’re a shy, intensely private person and there are certain things you don’t like talking about, but I do understand that there’s someone you’re sweet on, one of your colleagues from work. And I’m happy for you. I just hope he’s a serious, respectable young man, because you deserve someone like that.”
In some strange way, that sly conniving smile filled her with even greater horror than the severity that terrorized her on a daily basis.
“Come on, Papà, please, don’t think that . . . there’s no one, don’t be silly, I . . . ”
The man gave her a wink. That had never happened in her twenty-eight years here on earth. Oh my God, now I’m going to vomit on his slippers.
“Go on, go ahead. Maybe, if you feel like it, you can tell me all about it tomorrow morning. But not a word to your mother, or she’ll start to worry. You know how apprehensive she can be. Have a good evening.”
Have a good evening, that’s right.
But instead, maybe, it’s anything but a good evening.
Maybe it’s just the umpteenth fake pearl in a necklace made up of evenings all the same and without a reason why.
Maybe this evening will come into existence and then die without a trace, if not for the usual wake of melancholy.
Maybe it would have been better if it had never come at all, the damned evening. Because at least during the daytime you can throw yourself into your work, seeking out problems and worries elsewhere, while instead, in the damned evening, you bump your nose up against the you that you’re not.
Maybe it’ll kill you, the good evening.
The effect of the car’s heater took just two seconds to vanish when Romano shut the engine off. Too cold outside.
And likewise too cold inside, he thought.
He couldn’t hold out for more than a couple of days at a time. Every time he swore to himself that he’d never go back there, but instead, not forty-eight hours later, here he was again.
Even when it was a thousand degrees below zero, like it was tonight. Even after a long day of working myself blind. Even when I could be cozy under a blanket, fast asleep.
Here I am, outside of Giorgia’s place.
To be exact, he thought to himself, this is Giorgia’s mother’s place. Giorgia’s place is the apartment I have the keys to in my pocket. Giorgia’s place is the apartment I can’t bring myself to come back to, now that she no longer lives there. Giorgia’s place is the apartment she abandoned with a fucking letter.
He could just glimpse the dull glow of a television set on the fourth floor. Couldn’t I offer you anything more than an evening in front of the TV? Wasn’t it better to stay with me?
The temperature had dropped even further. The body of Francesco Romano, AKA Hulk, showed no sign of awareness: no shivering, no sneezing. Maybe it’s true that rage makes me stronger, he thought to himself. Maybe I really do turn green and incredibly strong. I’m full of rage, you know that, my love? Jam-packed with it.
The irony was that if a woman had come into the police station and said: you know, Warrant Officer Francesco Romano, my husband, the one I broke up with because he hit me, that’s right, just once, but hard, terribly hard, well, every other night he comes and parks downstairs from my mother’s apartment, where I’m living now, and he sits there looking up at the windows, if anyone had come in to report such a thing, then he himself, Warrant Officer Francesco Romano, would have gone straight out to pick him up, and he would have told him, look out, buddy, keep this up and you’ll find yourself in deep trouble.
And instead it was none other than he, Warrant Officer Francesco Romano, sitting there doing it. Sitting in a car outside her house and watching. And waiting.
Waiting for what? He couldn’t say. If someone had asked him, he wouldn’t have been able to answer.
Maybe she’s going out tonight. She certainly would have every right to do so. She’s a free citizen of a free country. Maybe she feels like going dancing, who knows. She could do that. It would be her prerogative. Policemen like him were paid to ensure that people enjoyed their rights. What would he say, if he actually did see her go out, those spectacular legs, that thick head of chestnut hair, that generous, sensuous mouth, if he saw her leaving for a dinner out, followed by dancing and even, why not?, taking some strange man to bed?
What would he say?
What would he do?
He saw the light turn on in the narrow bathroom window. Maybe she’s getting ready to go out. The light went off again almost immediately. No, she was just taking a pee.
He settled in to his seat to get more comfortable and raised the lapels of his overcoat. Then he put both hands under his armpits to keep them warm and got ready for the wait ahead.
Have a good evening, Warrant Officer Francesco Romano, he thought to himself.
Have a good evening.
XLV
There was something going on, thought Lojacono. There was definitely something going on.
Or more than just something.
It had been obvious from the beginning of the evening, from the instant he’d come face-to-face with her, made up and dressed to the nines—high heels and slit skirt under her short overcoat—in the parking lot of the Hall of Justice, as if she were leaving a beauty parlor, her hair perfectly coiffed, scarlet lipstick gleaming and long earrings glittering in the light of the streetlamp.
It had been obvious as well for three lawyers who’d crossed paths with her, elbowing each other as they turned to eye her from behind as she strode away, though only after greeting her respectfully when face-to-face with her, and equally obvious to a couple of young men loitering nearby, as they’d opened their big yaps to express their shameless and overt appreciation.
And it had been
especially obvious when, climbing into his beat-up compact as if stepping into a Bentley, she’d brushed his lips with a rapid, surprising kiss.
Lojacono, wearing the only decent suit he owned, had immediately felt inadequate to the challenge. Because of his car, his shoes, his extremely ordinary aftershave; because he hadn’t bothered to get a haircut, because he didn’t have enough money to take her out to some stunning restaurant; because of the rudimentary conversation he could offer her, what you’d expect from a policeman, because of the Sicilian accent that he generally flaunted with pride, but which was so distant from the polished language that her drooling colleagues, the other assistant district attorneys, could bring to bear.
The sensation of inadequacy only worsened when, determined to park courteously and legally, and therefore spurning all the cheap and easy options, the sidewalks, the spots marked handicapped only, the no parking zones, the apartment building driveways and the pedestrian crosswalks, he was forced to leave the car several hundred yards from the restaurant’s front door, forcing the woman to take an unexpected walk on her high heels. But she surprised him by resting her weight on his arm with a tender intimacy that he never would have dared to imagine.
The stroll to the restaurant was easygoing and cheerful, because Laura kept making fun of herself and the way she wobbled and swayed in her high heels on the uneven pavement; it was also intriguing and alluring because of the weight of the prosperous breast that he could feel swaying against his biceps. A distant but audible siren song, calling out to his senses, through the layers of cloth of the two overcoats, the two jackets, a bra and a blouse and a shirt. In spite of the terrible cold, he wished it would never end.
Lojacono had identified the restaurant during his anxious preparations for the evening out, focusing first and foremost on his determination not to run into anyone else who might happen to know them.
It was a discreet, cozy place, with a panoramic plate-glass window overlooking the sea, and the kitchen put a lively new spin on classic Neapolitan cooking; the reviews were excellent. Even though the table offered a breathtaking view, it was reasonably private, set off to one side from the center of the dining room.
For the lieutenant, the situation began to spin out of control the minute he had helped Laura out of her overcoat.
Piras had decided to weigh in with her heaviest armaments. The dress that she’d brought in to headquarters in her handbag, only to put it on in her own office, behind a locked door, was the fruit of a well considered choice made at the end of a long and, for her, highly unusual session of clothes shopping in the center of town. Up top, it presented a plunging neckline that only a woman with a remarkable bosom could dare to wear. Luckily she’d had the good sense to bring a silk shawl as well, so as to limit the spectacle somewhat. She’d put it on almost immediately, otherwise most of the customers and the male staff would have had a hard time directing their attention elsewhere, but for Lojacono the damage was already done. The wave of physical attraction that he’d felt steadily rising within him since the day they’d first met had now received an explicit visual confirmation, and the dinner became, in his head, a prelude to the moment when he’d finally hold the woman in his arms.
They had a wonderful night out. They talked about shared acquaintances and the city, that strange place, so difficult and yet so lovely, exotic to them both, yet which offered such alluring opportunities. Lojacono admitted that the fact that they’d met, for instance, gave him a more benevolent feeling toward the numerous negative characteristics that so annoyed him.
They tacitly chose not to talk about the past, even though they each would have been curious to know more about and better understand the other’s loneliness: they didn’t want to run the risk of letting sadness or melancholy cast a dark veil over that long-awaited evening out.
Laura ran her eyes over Lojacono’s facial features, his shoulders, his broad, powerful hands. She sensed a surge of weakness growing beneath her sternum, and one part of her chastised the other part for having kept it so long under lock and key. She wanted him. She had wanted him the minute she met him, she was sure of that now. This was the first time such a thing had happened to her, at least since she had attained the consciousness of a real woman. Her mind went back to Carlo, her first boyfriend, the man she thought would be the only one in her life, dead so many years now, and the occasional flings of the years that followed, flings that had left not a trace on the surface of her heart. She compared those emotions with the wonderfully unsettled feelings that filled her now, as she ate and laughed her way through a dinner whose flavors she’d never remember, and she realized that she couldn’t miss that opportunity.
Lojacono talked about Marinella, and as he did he sought, without finding it, any memory of Sonia, his daughter’s mother. Ancient history now, belonging to another land and a different man. He had a chance to leave it all behind him, once and for all.
The dinner ended, and it was strange, because they both would have gladly gone on talking, drinking wine and shooting brief, enchanted glances at the array of lights wreathing the waterfront; but they also felt the overwhelming urgency to get away from there and be alone together.
Little by little, their words dwindled like drops of rain at the end of the night. Their eyes were locked. Laura laid her hand on Lojacono’s and said, in a soft voice: Let’s get out of here.
The drive to Piras’s house was short and, at the same time, extremely long. As if she were afraid of losing the hard-won intimacy, the woman never once stopped caressing his thigh, though very gently. His desire was starting to verge on the painful. They went upstairs, each of them listening to their own heartbeat as it accelerated.
They hadn’t uttered another word, after that “let’s get out of here” whispered at the restaurant. Words weren’t necessary.
In the little elevator they stood facing each other, Laura’s breasts rising and falling as her breathing grew ever so faintly labored.
She opened the door and, once they were inside, leaned back against it, in the dim light that came in through the windows. He took off his overcoat and stepped toward her. He kissed her, gently and deeply, as their bodies pressed together and they became acquainted inch by inch. She stood on tiptoe and he leaned down to meet her. During that kiss, she emitted a brief moan of pleasure. He ran his hand over her back.
His cell phone and hers both started ringing at the same time.
XLVI
Alex’s cell phone started ringing just as she started the car.
It was Rosaria, who started talking without even bothering to say hello.
“How about you come to my place, instead of us going to some useless restaurant? I can make an excellent penne al pomodoro.”
There was a smile quivering in Alex’s reply: “My favorite dish, penne al pomodoro. It’s what I would have ordered at the restaurant.”
“Fine. Via Atri, number 8. You know the surname. You’ll have to use the parking structure, because you can’t find street parking to save your life.”
When she got there, and after galloping up a narrow, twisting staircase, out of breath, Alex found the door open. She was greeted by her friend’s voice coming from the kitchen.
“Come on in. I’ll be there in a minute.”
In the living room, the lights were low, the walls were lined with books and DVDs, a television set, a comfortable-looking sofa, a table set for two, lit by tall candles. The care for the details, comfort favored over elegance, and a heartwarming attention to knickknacks and curios, carpets, doilies, and tablecloths betrayed a feminine dedication that Alex would never have suspected. Rosaria’s home seemed like that of a completely different person. She had expected a modern atmosphere, a setting of steel and glass, functional and cold. She was delighted to have been mistaken.
She took off her overcoat, breathing in a faint aroma of incense from a burner that sat on one of the bookshelves. She ran
her eyes over the titles, discovering a tireless reader who roamed freely through all genres. Albert Camus, Bertolt Brecht, and Jorge Amado alternating with Rex Stout, Massimo Carlotto, Donato Carrisi, and Gianrico Carofiglio; the collected works of Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Eduardo Galeano, along with Andrea De Carlo and Alessandro Baricco.
“When do you find the time to read all this stuff?” she murmured, as if talking to herself.
“I find it, I find it,” a subdued voice replied from behind her.
She looked around and saw Rosaria’s eyes over a pair of wineglasses full of red. Rosaria was wearing a cheerful-hued dressing gown, protected by an apron lightly spattered with sauce. Her smile was enchanting, veiled by a thin layer of makeup.
“God, you’re so beautiful,” she said.
Alex blushed slightly, picked up a wineglass, and clinked it against Rosaria’s.
They drank in brief sips, all the while staring at each other. Only then did Alex notice that the speakers, hidden away amongst the books, were emitting the warm notes of a blues number being sung by a woman.
“Oh my God, the sauce!” Rosaria exclaimed.
She set her glass down on the table and hurried into the kitchen. When she came back, she was heaving a sigh of relief.
“Mamma mia, another second and—”
She never finished her sentence, but stopped, jaw hanging open. Alex had stripped off her dress and was curled up on the sofa.
“I’m not hungry. Not hungry for food, anyway,” Alex said, looking at her.
Her voice, low-timbred, seemed like the voice of a cat purring with satisfaction.
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