Class

by Francesco Pacifico

  “Are you giving me an STD, bitch?”

  “That’s so Little Italy of you, Lorè. Mmm.”

  “Ciro. Call me Ciro. Mmm.”

  “I love you so much. Mmm.”

  “You taking the Coumadin? Mmm.”

  “Give me bruises. Mmm.”

  “Mmm. I’m gonna bruise you black and blue. You’re not drinking are you?”

  “Mmm. No, I’m not drinking.”

  “You like this? Mmm.”

  “Mmm. I do.”

  “My hair’s turning white and it’s your fault. It’s the pain. Oh.”

  “I love you so much Muccinomio. Mmm.”

  He squeezes her hips and then her ass, and after a minute of painful squeezing and desperate thrusts he comes inside her. (The pill.)

  He keeps a hand there as he pulls out to collect what’s dripping, holding her belly with the other hand, pulling her back with him. They trip on their pants and stumble, gasping, all the way down into the old, green armchair. Abandoned there, finally, the woman on top of the man, they breathe. Her comment: “What a mess.” She’s not going to clean herself like this, her hands dirty from the subway. “Clean me up, dummy.” she says. Her skirt is up, like a doll’s. His hand held humbly under her body, flattened beneath his wife’s weight, he manages to wipe, but he ends up staining her stockings as she lets out a goofy, inevitable queef.

  Then: “I might be getting the assistant director gig on Wes Anderson’s next movie.”

  La Sposina is still focused on the air coming out of her. “What the fuck?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Keep it to yourself for now. Through a friend of a friend of Elisa’s.”

  “Crazy. No, really. That’s crazy. Well done, love.”

  “It’s still just a possibility. To show you what we might be able to accomplish here.”

  (La Sposina is laboriously trying to recall how high up the food chain an assistant director is; she wants to figure out if her husband’s news is important. What’s the name for the guy who basically works as a full-time slave for the film crew? Is that the assistant director or the production assistant? There’s the one who’s the apprentice, who actually learns the craft as he works, and the other one, who brings everyone coffee.)

  The phone rings at the bottom of her bag. She stands up, and her husband follows, his hand still between her thighs, his pants still down. They do this contorted, parallel walk across the back of the store, as if inside an invisible camel costume. As La Sposina bends down to pick up the phone, he mimes penetrating her against her will, a childish gesture.

  Mother is on the phone.

  “So you got some Skype credit, ma?”

  “Yes, Fofi helped me with it.”

  “What did he want for it?”

  “Aren’t you happy I called?”

  “Mommy, I can’t really talk now.”

  “Okay. Tell Lorenzo I say hi.”

  “Bye…” She hangs up. “Mother.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Listen, Lorenzo. I was going to lay out my thoughts very clearly…And now you’ve thrown Wes Anderson into the mix, so what do you want me to say?”

  —

  LATER ON, AT a cafe, as the beautiful people walk by on the other side of the glass, they get back to it between sips of orange juice and a shared blueberry muffin.

  “So, what did you want to tell me?”

  “I had a speech all ready: If I asked you to, would you give up trying to be a director?”

  “Who knows what I would have said if I hadn’t gotten the Wes Anderson news?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Since you left home, I’ve felt like you’ve been very close to me. Like you’re taking me more seriously.”

  A single tear from Ludovica. “I totally get what you mean.” But then, after swallowing and bringing a napkin to the lower eyelid and sniffing softly: “I’m going back to Rome for a month. Let’s see how it goes. Let’s see what happens with you and this job. It sounds like big news. I don’t want to ruin it for you.” She flashes a Jasmine Trinca smile, heavy but hopeful. “But I want to tell you exactly what I think.”

  “So tell me, baby,” he says. He’s all puffed up right now. La Sposina wants to believe in the Wes Anderson news but she can’t. But she doesn’t want to treat him badly either, not without evidence.

  “This is what I’m thinking. If you don’t want an academic career, I’ll support you. So let’s borrow some money, and you can go look for a different job. You can even work in movies. But you’re thirty-four, and you don’t have any real connections with any producers, and I think it’s too late to think you can still be a director. I’m scared that all this trying is going to screw up our life. You understand how hard it is for me to tell you this, right? I’m saying this because I love you. I don’t want us to spend our whole lives waiting for this thing to happen when it’s not going to happen. Please consider what I’m saying.”

  “But it’s happening now.”

  La Sposina suppresses her rage. “Fine. I’ll go to Rome, keep my father happy, maybe even turn the bookstore around and keep it from ending up in Fofi’s hands. You—”

  “You know what I think about this father thing.”

  “Will you fucking let me finish?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m listening.”

  “You stay here and see if the Wes Anderson thing happens. If it does, fine, I’ll go along with the New York Film Academy plan. But I think you should give it some serious thought anyway, figure out if this dream is more important to you than I am. I don’t want to ruin my life because you’ve still got no clue if you’re going to make it. It’s not like it’s a bar exam, where they tell you if you haven’t passed, and you can just move on with your life.”

  “No, you’re right.”

  They clasp hands over the table.

  “I’ll go back to Rome. I’ll behave, I won’t fuck anyone, and you won’t either. We’ll see how it goes with old Wes, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

  —

  YOU’LL SPEND THE rest of Thursday alone at Berengo’s. At midnight you’ll pull his bedroom door open to suggest the very new idea that you want to spend some time with him. His face is gray in the glare of the iPad, the dumb noises of Angry Birds the room’s only soundtrack. He’ll say no thanks without raising his eyes from the game.

  —

  BUT ON FRIDAY night, Nico Berengo comes in to talk to you. You’ve spent the day alone. On Skype with your mother, you kept the camera off and went out of your way to pretend you were home in Brooklyn. You followed the results from the referendum over whether to close Mirafiori, the historic Fiat factory in Turin. You read the news about Berlusconi and Ruby Rubacuori, his former underage acquaintance. You complained about Italy. You hear Berengo sneak in around eleven p.m. with another man who seems to be dragging a heavy plastic shopping bag. They whisper inaudibly to each other. You decide not to emerge from behind the bamboo screen, and you don’t get a ciao.

  To your surprise, Nico comes in after dinner and lies down next to you on the sofa bed. “May I?” He’s so smooth, what with his tight, teal acetate tracksuit and the casual way he slips into your bed with you. Under the duvet, you’re in panties and a T-shirt. He stays on top of the duvet.

  So here he is, smelling of body wash and grape-scented moisturizer. He lies between you and an episode of American Dad!

  “Well, welcome,” you say. “Make yourself at home.” You give him room.

  Nicola lies on his back and stares at the ceiling. If he turns toward the TV, he’ll block your vision, and if he turns toward you, it’ll be too intimate too soon. (Right there on the sofa, shrouded in paisley bedspreads, he often falls asleep without brushing his teeth. He’s terrified of getting stains on the fabric [it’s a phobia], so even now, here, with her lying next to him, he investigates the landscape with his cell phone flashlight. He’s rarely seen me asleep, whereas a large part of my relationship with him involves his sleeping as I orbit aroun
d him reading or watching muted close-captioned TV.) Then, having resolved the moral conundrum, he slips under the duvet. You were already warm enough, and now you’re sweating.

  “I can’t sleep,” he explains. “Can we watch together? Can I try and fall asleep here?”

  Your heart is beating fast, but you feel you can remain in bed. For now the only thing you’re guilty of is enjoying someone else’s smell—the most modest form of guilt there is.

  Nico is awake and cheerful. “Or why don’t you come into the other room with my friend? He’s married with five kids, unhappy with his wife. It’d be cool to let him blow off some steam.”

  “Married?”

  “He spends the night here when he’s in New York for work. He’s a dear friend, an Italian. He’s super Catholic, so this isn’t his idea; he’s already asleep, actually. But I’d love to wake him up with a surprise. You.”

  Your breaths are short, your heart races. “You’re crazy, Nicola. Why are you only talking to me now?” You lean over, resting on the right elbow. “You haven’t talked to me since Monday.”

  “That’s not true, not true. I just let you be. I thought you needed it…”

  A lava of fear has climbed up your legs. You shut him up and tell him you’re having a panic attack. Nico gives you room. “Oh dear,” he says softly, considerately. “We’re family. So you get those attacks too, huh?”

  You start picturing a forest, the trick you use to calm yourself down. You’re sitting naked on the cold, moist soil in the middle of a dark grove. Berengo gets up and comes back with a tray. There’s a small glass bottle with a dropper and a glass of water. He starts praising Melissa—the liquid inside the bottle—in a goofy, over-the-top way that’s impossible to read. “It’s the grass from Serenity Now, the herbal tea. I’ll show you how to do it: you just pour drops into the water yourself. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m giving you roofies or anything. It’s the Serenity Now drug.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What is it, really? Is it any good?”

  “It’s natural, not chemical. But you have to sort of accompany it with thoughts; it’s not automatic. It relaxes the muscles. So if you’re thinking about how your throat is stiff, it’ll relax the throat.”

  You drink it, and you feel like laughing. The fear recedes back down your legs and into your feet until it disappears entirely. Maybe it’s the Melissa, or maybe it’s his voice.

  You stop talking and turn back to the TV. He begins again: “You were fine when I asked you a favor: he’s in the other room, married with kids, such a fine man, a bit uptight, a great job in Finmeccanica, but five kids, per-pe-tually tense, broom up his ass, you know what I mean? And even if he’d love to, he could never bring himself to visit whores or get himself a lover. I know, right?”

  “You’re silly, you know? You come to me and talk about bad marriages? To me?”

  “Oh.”

  “Come on.”

  “I need love.”

  “You do need love, Nico. We all do.”

  He turns his back toward you and watches American Dad! so you have to lean in closer and closer to hear him talk. You place your chin on his shoulder.

  “Gustavo, my friend in there, he’s tall and he’s smart,” he insists. “And he’s hung! I’d pay to see you two fuck. Huge cock. You can’t make that thing go away with Melissa, that huge cock.”

  She laughs. “Will you shut up? I don’t know what’s in the air right now. Everybody’s getting horny around me. It hasn’t happened for a while.”

  “Must be your desperation.”

  “Hey!” You punch him on the shoulder.

  “So, who wants you?”

  You tell him about Chip ‘n’ Dale, the Louis Vuitton afternoon, and the “demeaning” pictures, though they weren’t that demeaning, you say, or you wouldn’t have enjoyed the experience. Nico tells you that Cugino Hitler is Gustavo Tullio’s cousin, hence the nickname. And Gustavo Tullio is the guy sleeping in the bedroom. And—more confusingly—Cugino Hitler’s name is also Marcello.

  “It’s a nice nickname, Chip ‘n’ Dale. Serves them right. But you can’t bang Chip ‘n’ Dale; they’re nothing.”

  “Oh, really? Then how come you introduce them to all the important people? They’re super well connected.”

  “Well, sure, they’re good. They’ve got drive, and they work their ass off. But they’re fascists! You wouldn’t bang a fascist, would you?”

  He’s on a roll. The talk is such pleasure that you find yourself revealing to Berengo that on Thursday you made love to your husband in the back of the boutique where you work. Your chin is still on his shoulder as he watches the ending of the episode. When he hears that you made love in front of the big mirror, he wants details. You tell him about Lorenzo’s short film, say that it isn’t any good. But Nico doesn’t comment. He only wants “the details of the conjugal visit.”

  “It was so trashy. I expected him to show up like that: Lorenzo has this super-predictable imagination. When he came out of that changing booth, though, I loved him. It was so sweet.”

  “What a genius Lorenzo is—a real Italian director: he wants to do drama, maybe even drama with the nasty bits, sporcaccione, some nudity, then he shoots postmodern shorts with nods and winks all over the place. He should shoot something that has this exact scene in it. I hope he gets to it sooner or later.”

  “Isn’t it too late to become a director, though?”

  “Don’t ever tell him you told me you call him Muccino.”

  “No, of course not…”

  The cartoon ends. It was on a flash drive, and the TV shows a dark blue home screen, files and folders.

  He says: “He should shoot ironic, erotic movies where all that’s supposed to happen happens, no surprises, and the entire pleasure is the surprise of not having any surprises. You, though, you wouldn’t make a good director. You don’t give me enough detail. Did he finish inside you or all over you? Are you on the pill?”

  “You’re a perverted child, Berengo.”

  You’re abandoned on his arm, and you’re bigger than him, and you’re watching the screen and so is he, so that neither of you has to face the other. You describe in detail the scissors cutting through the stockings, he asks if you kept the ripped stockings, you reply that you threw them away, he shrieks, you laugh. He’s made you laugh, and now you tell him that you’re sleepy. But he transforms the moment. “You’re aroused,” he says, “I can tell: it was nice feeling you get aroused while you were talking, I’m so down with these things.” Then he clarifies his intentions: “Now you’re going to want to stay alone and finger yourself, and I’ll miss your show.”

  You laugh. He asks you about your climax habits, says he thinks you like cock. You laugh.

  “So, you only climax by hand or through intercourse, too?”

  “Oh, both ways, and plenty,” you confess. You want to brag that you’re a squirter, but you never tell anyone about this because men like the idea too much. It’s so fashionable these days: all the porn sites have tags and categories, and everybody knows what it means. It’s a status symbol. The last person you told was Fofi, but then you stopped when you realized that it’s the kind of confession men aren’t be able to get out of their system.

  But right now, at least, you don’t have a mother. Your facial features are yours; they feel disposable and nonhereditary.

  “When I heard you wrestling with Edele in there, I touched myself.”

  “It wasn’t Edele, it was another one. Her name’s Vera.”

  “Oh, good for you.”

  “I like girls so much,” he says, as if this were some kind of weird predilection, then turns his head to look at you over his shoulder. You tell him to go back to his previous position, to keep facing the TV. He obeys. You slip your hand inside his track pants, inside his underwear. You order him to remain still, spit on your hand, and put your hand back in his pants. After he shudders and tells you, without
disgusting you, that you are good and that you are family, you order him to stay still; you want to come, too, and you will do it alone while he stays put. You wipe your hand against his tracksuit, you lick your fingers out of habit, stick them in your panties. He isn’t very manly, and you can tell by how still he is that he’s exhilarated by your ways. He’s listening to every sound you’re making.

  —

  IN THE MORNING he’s gone. As compensation, La Sposina gets to meet Gustavo Tullio, the other guest. The sunny morning, slabs of light barely concealed by the blinds, wake her up slowly, over the course of two hours. Gustavo Tullio first appears as a slightly affected voice on the other side of the screens: “Good morning,” his voice is stuffy. “Sorry to disturb.”

  “No worries.”

  “Are you presentable? I need to get breakfast.”

  La Sposina scratches her eyes under the duvet. She also scratches the corners of her mouth, wipes her index finger on her shirt, licks the back of her hand, and smells it. “Help yourself.” The family man is busying himself in the kitchenette, knocking over pottery and wooden bowls and silverware with total gracelessness. He apologizes for the noise. As he stumbles around, a powerful image of Gustavo Tullio is being manufactured in Ludovica’s imagination, someone who’s not part of the usual Berengo crowd. She remains behind the bamboo.

  “Will you join me at the table?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, thanks.”

  Their voices climb over the screens. La Sposina is imagining a middle manager, aloof in a gray suit, a Don Draper.

  “I make American breakfast on Saturdays. In Italy. With my children.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Bacon and eggs. Are there any?”

  “No idea. Pancakes?”

  “Sure.”

  “Want me to go buy anything?”

  “No, no problem. All sweet stuff, then.”

  La Sposina sits down when the table is set. She doesn’t go to the bathroom, doesn’t change into something less revealing, doesn’t even rush to take a quick sip of orange juice to mask her breath. Gustavo Tullio spent the night in a shapeless red tracksuit with a round neck. He’s out of shape and looks tired: his eyes droop, and his head is covered in yellow curls. But he’s tall and obviously well endowed.