Class

by Francesco Pacifico

  Shall we be honest about the effect of the prank? Should we admit that Lorenzo Proietti and his wife were hurt by it? Maybe, but still, I’m not responsible.

  I want to clarify the extent to which I was involved. I have to reiterate that the personal fulfillment of the bourgeois isn’t worth the carbon footprint required to sustain it, particularly when you board a plane because you think you’ve been offered a chance to shoot a music video. I paid for my plane tickets with my money. I have a real job at a travel agency, and I write on the side for il manifesto, the Communist paper, and I do it for free. I do it out of pure love for literature and for the people. I buy any tickets I want, and I buy them to go fuck Berengo. My aim is true; I don’t go there in pursuit of success or status.

  My involvement in the prank was close to zero, and what was happening between Berengo and me at the time was much more important. Maybe I will be woken up again to revisit that, to revisit my responsibility for the amount of hurt Nico and I brought onto each other. It’ll happen before I die for good, unless it has already happened, and I’m being forced to forget.

  —

  SO YEAH, AFTER my flight to New York (via Amsterdam), I didn’t see Nico at the airport. I took the subway to Midtown and had his doorman buzz him while I tried to dry my t-shirt. A downpour had begun while I was underground. Nico let me up, but he didn’t rush down to grab my suitcase, didn’t take me to the Cosmic Diner like he normally did. When I got upstairs, he was in the shower; he’d propped the front door open with one side of a cardboard box from Amazon. He was listening to Spanish bubblegum pop. The locked bathroom door saddened me, and though I knocked hard, I got no response. I sat down on the couch to look out at the view. I pulled off my shoes. Because we’ve been discussing other people’s lives in detail, please pay attention to the image of a thirty-eight-year-old woman who pulls off her shoes after traveling across the ocean. It’s hot, it’s raining, my t-shirt is soaked. I pull it off and look out onto the shards of June light bursting through the window. This is me. Do you feel my tired ass cheeks? It’s been months since I last saw him in the flesh.

  This is what matters, not my involvement in a prank set into motion in a billiard hall: my swollen feet, liberated from my sneakers, resting on the warm wood in the afternoon; the pleasure I get from the cotton clouds as they move past the sun and out of the city, dark and gray in one corner of the window, glorious in the other.

  And then, yes, of course we fucked. It was nice. We had fun: we used The Box, almost every gadget in the Box. And it’s not as if I usually ask Berengo how he’s doing. We’ve both made choices; we don’t ask each other much.

  —

  THAT VERY FIRST night, we met Sergino at a bar on the Lower East Side, and he explained the prank and asked us to take part. So this is the moment of my supposed responsibility, when I agreed to participate. The other patrons slouched and spread their legs on random chairs and couches, irony or hostility thick in the air, half-closed eyelids or bulging eyeballs. It was the kind of night that put Anna in a bad mood because they were playing the Smiths, and for Anna, those songs gave off the wrong kind of nonchalance. Because it was the kind of environment where everyone was obsessed with perfecting and differentiating their own brands of nonchalance. Sergino and Berengo slipped the stems of some carnations into their pants and sang along. Vodka tonics; a stray, grandiose reference to doing coke in the bathrooms; the joint I’d smoked before sex; the MDMA Berengo and I had taken before going out, though just a hint, because he got paranoid whenever he thought he’d had too much booze for the combination to be safe, so we weren’t as high as we’d hoped.

  Is this the exact moment when the prank becomes my fault, too? Sergino has finished singing “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” and he sits on the arm rest of the couch. Berengo and I are slouched next to each other, our arms and legs interlaced (though he keeps his mouth away from mine). Sergio is telling us about this guy—a friend of Nico’s—he wants to play this prank on, uno scherzone. He has led this guy to believe he’s going to let him shoot a video. At the time I’m not aware of the short film and its creator’s good connections at a department of philosophy in Rome. I have no idea that he’s a raccomandato. So my fault here, technically, is laughing when Sergino tells me this guy pretended he was in New York so as not to miss the opportunity to discuss shooting a rap video. Is that the reason I’m now telling the whole story? Is it my fault that instead of scolding Sergino, I laughed when he said he’d hired a “hipster detective” to verify whether the guy was actually in Rome when he accepted the meeting? How could I not laugh with delight as I watched a coked-up Sergino tell the story with his fingers stretched out like the spokes of bike wheels? I couldn’t help but laugh, so I did.

  In that case, okay, I’m guilty of saying I wanted to be there when this guy showed up, pretending like he hadn’t just flown in.

  Nicolino begs me to go home. I humor him: “It’s all right, we’re going in a minute.” I wipe the sweat from his forehead. “And in the meantime just relax on the couch, you’re going to be all right in a second, drink some water.” (He’s the only person I know who gets paranoid on MDMA.) I wipe his face with a paper napkin and get him a couple cups of tap water. After a while, he gets up very slowly, like an old man, picks up his sweater, and walks out. I chase him out into the warm stench of garbage. I could never live here, not in the summer or the winter. Tonight the cloudy skies, the wind from the south, a mass of cold air—all of them make their way through the smells that rise from the river.

  Nico stops halfway, pulls out his phone, starts playing Candy Crush.

  “What’s up with you?”

  “Don’t make me mad. You’re bad. We’re bad. Sergio is bad. I want a Xanax and I need some sleep.”

  “Totally. No need to get mad; we’re going to sleep.”

  “Yeah, sure, go ahead and humor me like you always do. I know you think you’re right anyway, babba di minchia.”

  “That’s not your slang, ciccio…”

  We walk to Houston, where we raise our voices. The street is yellow, cabs everywhere. Berengo’s utter lack of tenderness toward me makes me think that he’s against the prank out of solidarity with a fellow well-connected bourgeois. I follow him down Houston through the clusters of people standing in line outside bars and waiting for the traffic lights to change. Firemen blast horns on passing fire trucks. Berengo is a child with a receding hairline, hunched over his phone, nearsighted.

  I get close and I scream at him. “You’re such a pariolino di merda”—a spoiled rich kid from Parioli—“and you’re making such a dumb-ass fuss, I can’t stand you, you’re bringing me the fuck down. You should get a job and try to find a way to show me a little respect. I used my vacation days to come here.”

  He responds robotically. “Sorry, you’re scaring me. Go.”

  “What? You fucking sociopath!” I start punching his back, and I find myself crying, sobbing, shaking. He slips his phone into his pocket, turns, hugs me. I slap his chest, and he says, “Oh we’re all bourgeois, all of us, but you, Pina Broz, you like soap operas.”

  I lean back. “You idiot,” I say as I sniffle and wipe my nose on his sweater. “Can we make peace? Can we not argue?”

  “I’m going home.”

  “Okay, let’s go home.”

  “No, stay with Sergino. Don’t worry. You should do the prank. He’s already pranking himself, the poor guy; he thinks he’s got it.”

  “But I don’t give a shit about the prank!”

  “Oh, yes you do, and I don’t want you not to do it. I know you’re thinking I went too far, that I overreacted, so it’s much better if you do it.”

  “Why would I care about a fucking prank? I flew here for you, not for Sergio.”

  “I’m out.”

  And here I may go after him, but that would mean becoming his babysitter. When he’s ten meters away and I realize he’s not stopping, I scream, “Hey, fuck you, Berengo! Why don’t you just fuck the fuck
off!”

  I watch him extend a hand into traffic. A cab slows down, but then it speeds up again. I catch up and stare at him as he stretches his arm out horizontally, his fingers also outstretched, as if testing the water of the busy road. He looks like a page in his striped sweater, solemn and dark. I get lost whenever I see him in person, away from the webcam. I remember him: he looks old in his sweaters, even as he tweaks them to fit new trends, changes the way the hoods cover his hair, welcomes fashions without a sweat, thirty years of sweaters, stripes, hoodies, zippers…

  Another cab slows down and stops. He climbs in and I follow, try to calm him down. “Are you tired, Nico? What’s up with you? You on your period?”

  His clammy hand lies dead in my hand on the fake leather seat. “Hey,” I say. “It’s fine if you’re weirded out because it’s been a few months since the last time. I know you, it’s okay.” His clammy hand. “We’re rolling.”

  We’re on East Eighth. I try to spot a sign to orient myself, but all I know is that it’s our third red light. A few minutes later, as we sit at another red light, Nico gets out of the car and tosses his keys onto my lap. I hurl them back on instinct and get out of the car. “Pay,” he says, but I don’t, so he walks around the car while the light is still red and goes to talk to the driver, who pulls over to the curb in protest and accepts the fare. I escort him as he walks among the horns and screeches. The sidewalk is busy. I can see Madison Square Garden. We step inside a McDonald’s and order two meals. I sit next to him, bewildered by the light.

  “Are you okay?”

  He doesn’t answer. When we’ve finished our burgers—he leaves a half-moon of bread, but I’ve wolfed mine down; all that’s left are pieces of lettuce and lukewarm fries scattered around open ketchup and mayo containers—I try again: “Why are you this mad? Do you want to talk?”

  “I can’t talk. I can’t tell you shit. I can’t do shit. I’m your prisoner.” He says this with a fry in the corner of his mouth.

  “Come on, ciccio, you’re a big boy now,” I joke. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I’m paralyzed. I don’t know where to go from here.”

  “Okay, but don’t make me feel like I’m imposing; you’re the one who invited me. If you hadn’t wanted me here, I wouldn’t have come.”

  “I must.” He stares at the table and eats more fries, one at a time. I feel calm. “I can’t help it.” His voice is climbing up to a falsetto. “You don’t really know what you mean to me.”

  “Well, say it then. Maybe it’ll be something nice?”

  In falsetto: “You are God.”

  “What does that even mean, ciccio?”

  With a baritone, after swallowing hard: “You are God.”

  “Nico,” I laugh. “Nico, listen to yourself, Nicuzzo.”

  “Please.”

  “I’m Daria.”

  “No, you’re not Daria. You are God.”

  I lower my head toward the tray, and my elbow is on the table. I’m tired, and he’s finishing his fries in a McDonald’s in a neighborhood I’m not familiar with. “I may be God, but I’m here, I’m here with you.”

  “I don’t want to be here.”

  “Let’s leave then.”

  He eats the last fry, gets up, and walks out. I follow him outside, where he’s waiting for a cab with the same horizontal arm.

  We hop in. “So you won’t even talk to me?”

  “I don’t want to make a scene in front of the driver.”

  “Of course, but take my hand. It’ll be all right, no scenes.”

  “But I’m not all right.” He gives me his hand. It’s still dead.

  “I’m not doing the prank.” I squeeze his hand, try to bring it back to life.

  “Don’t do it.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Why are you always trying to control everything?”

  “Oh listen to yourself…Me, controlling? I see you four times a year. I’m not controlling shit!”

  “See, you’re not even aware you’re controlling everything.”

  “Are you shitting me? Where are we going?”

  He stops talking to me again. I sweat as I hold his hand. We reach the traffic light at the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge. He asks the driver to pull up to the side, and we pay and leave. We’re at the entrance ramp in front of a vacant lot, surrounded by the smell and roar of traffic.

  “The difference,” I begin, “is that this is a vacation for me, while for you, you’re always on vacation.”

  Berengo is typing on his phone. He reaches out with his phone-holding arm, then starts typing again. He stops, waves to a new batch of busy cabs.

  “I wish,” I start again, “I wish that at some point you could try to do a week of office work. The whole thing: one-hour commute in the morning, one-hour commute in the evening. And then after you got home you’d have to indulge your love of books not by walking to McNally and hearing some imperialist novelist like James Murphy talk shit, but by sitting at home until four, reading and reviewing a book for free, for Alias or Nazione Indiana, totally out of love, just because you care. Only love keeps you up until four. I only wish I could see you do that.”

  Now he has his back to me. The phone is in his left arm, the right arm is stretched out in that dark exaggerated gesture I’ve seen him do all evening.

  “Nico, would you stop it?”

  “If you ask me to stop one more time I’ll throw my keys off the bridge.”

  “But I only told you once.”

  “I’m throwing the keys off the bridge.”

  “Berengo, what the fuck, you’re forty!”

  “I’ll throw them.”

  “The doormen have spare keys.”

  “I’ll throw myself in, then.”

  “Can we just stop this scene? I’ve come to see you. I’m not taking any other holidays this summer.”

  “So what. What?” He still has his back to me and is hailing cabs. “You’re saying you made sacrifices for me? What were they? You have a shitty job, but you can’t be bothered leaving it to come live here?”

  “You want me to?”

  “No! You should have done it earlier! Leave me alone!” He’s swaying as he speaks, still not facing me.

  “But I am…leaving you…alone…”

  In times like this I’m incapable of caring for myself, so I just wait for Nicolino to calm down. His harsh words change nothing. I can never know the outer limits of his insults, so it feels like he hasn’t yet said anything to me that he has to apologize for. I don’t know how I feel. It never seems like the moment requires me to know. He stops another cab, bargains with the driver over where to go and how to get there. When he’s seated, he pauses to watch me standing out on the street, where I’ve stayed because he hasn’t slid across the backseat to make room for me. “Get in,” he says. “Will you? We always end up doing what you want.”

  I obey. This car’s roof is lower than the previous ones, and I have a hard time finding a comfortable position. I cough. All this getting in and out of cabs has made me nauseous. This one has narrow armrests on the doors, and my elbow keeps falling off. I keep it on with the help of my left hand, and I realize that both my arms are in pain. Relaxing feels worse than being tense. It’s my first night here; it’s been a long one. I would settle for something unexpected, like a surprise sex party, but then I’d probably fall asleep.

  After driving down Bedford, the cab pulls up in front of the glass entrance to a fancy, pale blue building on the river. The driveway faces the water and leads out to a pedestrian area and a pier. I open the door and feel the cool breeze rising from the water. As I get out of the car, Berengo stays inside, talking to the cab driver. So I wait in the wind. His eyes have mellowed, turned sad. “This is Sergino’s place. He’s on his way home. He says there’s no problem with you staying here, and you can pick up his spare keys from the front desk. He’ll be back in a bit. Just tell the doorman you need the spare keys, and he’ll hand them over.” A b
arrage of antic hand gestures, staring at his fingers. “I need to be alone tonight. I’m not okay.”

  The cab pulls out in reverse and leaves, and it’s as if there’s no one around. I sigh—the sound I always make whenever I’m at a loss for words. What emerges from my nostrils is a gentle, high-pitched eeeeh sound, and it’s always a surprise, as if the shy ghost of Michael Jackson were skulking about.

  The doorman and the guy at the desk are supernice.

  —

  FROM THE TWENTY-FOURTH-FLOOR window, the island looks like it’s lying on its side, more horizontal than vertical. The effect is strange. I find an iPad and curl up to watch an alternative medicine video that shows viewers how to figure out exactly when they’ll get cancer. I have thyroid problems, I smoke bad hashish, and I eat sugar and carbs. I scratch my left breast, a Roman charm against the thought of Death, and I feel It.

  —

  AN HOUR LATER, in the couch perpendicular to the window, Sergino lets me suck his dick until he comes. I keep my hand tilted and, exhausted, I breathe through my nose. My eyes can’t stop looking out onto the luminous, scaly metal skin of the monster lying across the river.

  —

  A COOL NON–AIR-CONDITIONED night. Under the sheets, Sergio shows me the short film on his iPad. He wears bizarre black silk pajamas, we’re illuminated by the film in the dark.

  —

  “IT’S SO UGLY it’s good,” I humor him. “It’s so irritating. Let’s do the prank.” (Is this the moment when it becomes my fault?) Each of us lies on our own side of the king-size bed, and as I fall asleep, I realize I haven’t been asked a single question about Berengo.

  —

  I WAKE UP early on Sunday morning and read JR, which I find on a shelf. The wind and the violent haze distract me, and I think about the many acres of glass that haven’t yet been hit by direct sunlight. I wait for Berengo to call me. By noon, the temperature has risen to 74 degrees. Sergio is working in bed with his e-reader. Around lunchtime, the doorman buzzes up. There’s a suitcase for me, Sergio says, adding that I can take the bedroom and he’ll sleep on the couch. A young man in an elegant uniform hands me my compact lemon-yellow suitcase. I leave it near the door and go look for five dollars, which I hand to the bellhop. Then I put my bag in a corner of the bedroom. We play DJ Hero, smoke some pot, and discuss with affection how much of a nut job Berengo is, without pushing the argument too far.