Class

by Francesco Pacifico

  “I belong to you.”

  “You have to faint.”

  “I took vitamins.”

  “I’m stronger than you.”

  Which makes me so slippery inside that afterwards I’ll lie on the cool wood floor, glued to it, sweating against the dust, as he rushes to shower and not be late to work. At some point he’s laughing and shouting from upstairs, “And you have to wash the shirt I used yesterday…and iron it!”

  We’ve bought three shirts and three pairs of socks and underwear. He uses the same suit every day. I hang it in the backyard at night, under the awning. The same blu di Prussia tie.

  I tilt my head as far back as it will go. Outside the sky is pale and white, clouds and air becoming hot. I stare at the ceiling so long it turns into a floor. I crawl over the window frame and lie on the grass to dry. The sun is warm but the air is still cool, and nobody can see me here except for an old lady next door, whose single window looks out onto the yard. I sneer, weak and smitten, and doze off.

  —

  I WAKE UP to the urgent trill of the buzzer along with a few distant knocks on the door. They sound rude, and I get scared, pull myself together, and rush upstairs to get dressed and see if my guess is right, which it is: it’s Lorenzo.

  I appear at the window. He knew that’s what I would do, and he’s retreated across the street, under the aqueduct. He’s never looked this serious. He joins his hands in prayer and says, “Let me in. Please.”

  I signal to him that he needs to leave, and I’m surprised by how vulgar the gesture feels. Who is this man? What does it mean that he is my husband?

  He’s stuck there, frozen and dumb, ruined, out of ideas. I turn my back to him and look at the things in the room. I want to give them all back. I pick up his Leica in its padded case, open the window, and hurl it as far as I can with both hands. “No!” he shouts, jumping. The two-handed effort throws me off balance, and I feel like I’m falling off the ledge. I don’t know whether he saved the camera or not. I have left the room. I go downstairs and realize that I smell of sex, so I roll down the shutter that faces the front yard and lock the door. I’m afraid he might climb over the gate, I’m picturing him pierced by its iron spikes.

  When I try to go back upstairs, my knee falters, and I have to rest on the steps for a moment.

  Lying on the bed, I write him an email from my mobile.

  “If you don’t stop now you’ll have to pay my alimony.”

  “Forgive me.”

  —

  THE NEXT MORNING, I get up even earlier to make orange juice, and the rest of the spread is ready by the time he wakes up. He examines my new bruises. “I took it easy on you last night, but these are becoming darker.” We’re back against the door that he loves, and as we do it standing up, facing each other, him holding my leg up, I feel my inside tingling, and he’s tingling, too. He tells me that this makes it even more pleasurable than usual, this tickle, and I realize my yeast infection has returned. The tingling makes for a decadent torture. You shouldn’t have fasted like that, I think. I’ve screwed up my balance and all my defenses. I won’t explain this now, though; I will when he’s back from work, after I’ve bought the medication. For the moment I let him finish fast in my hands while I’m on my knees, then I watch him go upstairs for a shower.

  I walk to the pharmacy against traffic. I have the feeling I’m being followed as I check the other gardens to see if their jasmine is richer and whiter than mine—my jasmine’s petals are starting to brown. After the underpass I walk up to Via Casilina and cross the boulevard under a gloriously feathery sky. The railroad and the road are parallel with the aqueduct, and I see old shacks, strange gazebos, and mysterious random buildings leaning against the Roman ruin. The yellow and white trolley heads to Termini Station, its rough pantograph combing the air.

  I enter Pigneto, go to a pharmacy I’ve never been to before. I buy Sporanox, a vaginal douche, fungicidal soap, ointment with an applicator, blueberry aloe vera, and vitamin C tablets. I’ll rinse and lather Gustavo’s cock, which I’m sure will soon be covered in blotches, if it isn’t already. He’s going to freak out.

  I can’t bring myself to go farther into Pigneto, beyond the train tracks, to buy greens at the farmers’ market. I’m annoyed that Lorenzo might be following me without making himself visible. I return to Via Casilina, cross the underpass, and stop there, looking over my shoulder. I hold my pharmacy bag in plain sight, though I don’t want Lorenzo and Gustavo’s wife—who I have a feeling is following me with Lorenzo—to guess its contents. So I hold it against my hip, trying to conceal everything other than the aloe bottle.

  I open the metal door to my yard, and when I shut it behind me I feel relief. As if I’ve escaped danger at the last possible moment. I spend the day catching up on all my viral marketing responsibilities.

  At dinner I tell him about the yeast infection. He panics and only then realizes that there’s swelling under his foreskin. I calm him down, but he keeps saying that he hadn’t noticed. I take him to the bathroom, promise it’ll pass quickly; it’s nothing, just stress related. He refuses medication at first, then enjoys it. He sits on the bidet, where I soap him up. “So, if you put cream on, then we’re not going to do anything tonight?” I laugh and tell him that he’s gotten over his fears in no time, that I’ll put my cream on just before sleep. We take a shower, and I pee on his shoulder, my first time. He’s down on his knees and squints and spits with a big smile.

  Later, I tell him that it’s a harmless disease, totally straightforward. I apply the cream with three fingers, get him hard, make him come, wash him again, then unscrew the applicator and stick it inside me.

  —

  I NOTICE SOMETHING over the weekend: Lorenzo and Gustavo’s wife, Maria, have been outside the house. My street is carrying the unmistakable air of having been brushed with danger. The ruffled jasmine, two cars I’ve never seen, long minutes without anyone walking or driving by, a window in the shack under the aqueduct opened and closed twice in succession.

  I jerked Gustavo off earlier in the morning, and now I watch him asleep in bed. I’ve just used the douche, and I’m sore from the penetration of the cold plastic. My hair is wet; I have a towel around my waist. I have to store Lorenzo’s equipment in a corner of our spare room. I pull the wires from the desktop Mac, the printer, the projector, and the Sony HDR-FX1. They’re all against the window now, and I’m crouching by them, trying to detect any hints of their secret operations. I should really move them to the toolshed outside, so that if he freaks out and wants them back I can buzz the metal door open and let him collect what he needs. I guess if I left the metal door open, he could come by himself with no need to make an appointment. I keep staring out the window, and I see more circumstantial evidence of his presence: the rake against the wall, the fact the metal door, though it’s shut, doesn’t seem to be hanging perfectly straight, as if it’s been warped.

  I move his things into the toolshed one by one. I can hardly keep myself from opening every device’s battery case to take out the long-term memory batteries. They’re recording, but I don’t think they can do much now that they’re in the toolshed. They must have already recorded what they needed. It doesn’t matter. Lorenzo’s cheating has been documented also, and it can be proven that it happened before I got together with Gustavo. So from a legal standpoint, I should be safe.

  I start a wash cycle in the backyard, barefoot on the Cotto tile floor and on the grass, and I realize I need more Polase—I’m soaked in sweat and I’m shivering. I run the hot, smooth, steamy tip of the iron around the buttons of Gustavo’s shirts. I smooth the creases on the pale blue hue that is so new to my home. I iron his ties delicately, then leave the iron in the vertical position on top of the washing machine to cool off. I go upstairs holding two shirts on hangers. I’m getting good at this. I hang them in the closet while he’s waking up, a hand on his crotch.

  “I’d like to.”

  “All right. It hurts, though.”r />
  “Backdoor, then.”

  I smile, even though it’s unpleasant with a condom.

  We stay in all weekend. I persuade him to not vote on the referendum on water and nuclear energy. We don’t agree on the nuclear question, so after arguing for a while, we decide that our votes would cancel each other out and we might as well stay home. He still wants me to go out for groceries on Monday. It’s too hot for proteins, we need more greens, a couple of peaches maybe, and what about some fruit for the juicer?

  —

  OUR SECOND WEEK of love begins, and his blisters are diminishing. His glans looks wrinklier. I keep it white with soap and ointments, and the antibiotic seems to be working, though it gives us both stomachaches. He begs me to buy an antacid. All I’m doing these days is running errands.

  My only problem is Maria: by now she knows that Gustavo is cheating on her; Lorenzo has told her everything. It’ll fall on Gustavo to support the kids, and it won’t be a consensual separation. It will dent our resources, and I have to be ready. Maria is outside on the street, I’m certain of this: the street is hers; I see it when I’m at the window upstairs. I can’t even go out to check Lorenzo’s devices for signs that they’ve started recording again.

  I have two garlic bulbs in my refrigerator, an onion, some ricotta that smells questionable, and my stomach hurts. Some prosciutto di Parma that dates back to Wednesday. I lower the refrigerator’s temperature by two notches. There are anchovies covered in mold and some leftover Philadelphia cream cheese that’s hardened over the last few weeks. The milk smells. Some Aperol plus flat tonic water. I have cod for two in the freezer, with spinach and a few green peas. I don’t want to ask Gustavo to buy food for me; he doesn’t know that his wife has stopped by several times, and I want to spare him the anxiety. Also I’m almost out of Polase.

  This evening we’re back to regular sex—with a condom. Gustavo is itching deliriously, and we laugh: love, the apex of love. He lets himself go and starts talking like a kid. He starts using a Milanese accent, laughing, “doppia libidine!”—some weird old slang. He seems so cheerful as he spanks his shiny wet belly while he lies next to me, and I feel more comfortable. “Running errands has become a bit of a problem,” I say. “The thing is that your wife is following us.”

  He starts drumming on his belly with both hands and makes a squishy sound with his mouth, then stops. “No.” Then another pause. “She is not following you, Ludovica.”

  “Believe me, she is.”

  Some more drumming, and then, “Don’t talk. Don’t talk.”

  I put some reggae on the Tivoli on the nightstand. It’s Lorenzo’s, so the next morning I go downstairs and put it in the toolshed with all the other devices.

  —

  I GO BACK to work on Tuesday after Fofi calls me and tells me I’ve been gone for a whole week.

  “You’re not paying me, so what do you expect me to do?” I tell him when I get there.

  “Don’t give me that. Your father told me that he wants to pay you, that he’s unhappy he has to do it like this.”

  “Let’s see how it goes.”

  “Will you come back, honey? We miss you.”

  In my absence he’s reverted to the old Fofetto caricature. He treats me like a flower, abandons his patronizing tone and his insistence on talking to my father about everything—his deference to authority.

  My mother spends the day not asking me about Lorenzo. It’s the first time this has ever happened, so it’s clear everyone knows what’s going on: Maria, my mother, and also Fofi, I guess. I wait all day for Lorenzo to show up like he did last winter in the boutique, when we were in New York and all of this was just beginning. But he seems to have vanished. Perhaps he has an elaborate plan to avoid being discovered. He’s not asking for his stuff back, so maybe he’s not working, or maybe he’s bought new equipment or borrowed it from friends. My mother, though, what does she want from me? Why hasn’t she hugged me?

  I gather the courage to water the bougainvillea and the jasmine, though I can practically hear Maria’s breathing on the other side of the metal door. Gustavo gave me the courage with his example. He came to pick me up at work, the daredevil, so I left my Vespa at the store, looking all Lorenzian, as if Lorenzo had spent the day sitting on it, waiting for me, and only left at the last possible minute. I’ll pick it up tomorrow when Gustavo brings me back on his bike, even though it’s not on his way to work. He says, “Spend some time at the bookstore; it’s good for you. Otherwise you’ll just spend the day waiting around for me to come back, and you’ll get all funny in the head.”

  —

  ON WEDNESDAY MY mother leaves Librici early in the afternoon to go cook minestrone, leaving me and Fofi alone—deliberately, it seems. There aren’t many customers around, and the ones who are there order iced coffee and juice—the two things it takes us the longest to prepare. Regulars know never to ask for either item.

  How can I describe my mother’s behavior these days? She must have talked to Gustavo’s wife, and she must have stopped by my house with them. I’m lucky I’ve changed the locks, lucky that I haven’t handed out my spare keys to anyone yet. Suddenly she’s gone without saying goodbye. This is how my parents are: they vanish when things get rough.

  I wear an empire-waist dress, which has a bit of a maternity look to it. The cotton rustles and feels a little see-through. I haven’t had anything to eat, and I spend most of the day sitting on a stool I’ve dragged behind the bar, which gives Fofi an excuse to try to squeeze by. “You won’t let me through!” says the teddy bear behind me, his stomach against the short back of the stool, his sweat a prickly whiff. He places his hands on my shoulders, and I let him kiss me silently on my head, but then he hugs me, and his heavy intertwined arms slide down around my shoulders. What is he doing?

  “Fofetto-or-treat? It’s hot in here, I need breathing room.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you too, Fofettopolis.”

  “Want me to fix you a juice? You look pale.”

  “Don’t bother, really.”

  “Something light and fresh? Apple, carrot, and ginger.”

  “Will you finish it for me if I leave it?”

  Up to this point it’s smooth sailing: I know how to handle him, and I hope they start paying me again. I’m not sure I want to be a kept woman. I’ve almost quit the marketing job, which always slows down in the summers, anyway.

  After closing time, almost all the lights are switched off, and we’re in the storage area. There’s a stack of fresh t-shirts; he’s just changed into a new one, a Polo that gives him some shape.

  “You look good in polos. I can tell you can’t stand button-downs, but polos make you look very distinguished.”

  “We’re all nice and friendly tonight. You trying to butter me up so you can get your paycheck back?”

  He sits on a chair, and I’ve never seen him this tired, or maybe I’ve never noticed. His five o’clock shadow makes him look younger. It’s possible that he knows everything and is taking my side. “Fofetto, would you ever go and work for my dad, I mean in the company?”

  He strokes his reddish cheeks with two symmetrical palms, from top to bottom, finishing at the chin where the two middle fingers touch. What to make of this gesture? I’m in the other chair watching him out of the corner of my eye while I flip through the pages of a big book, one of those art books I’ll have to buy back with my own money, eventually. I have the strange feeling that this place is an extension of my parents’ house. And my house, too, is an extension of the same spirit. The windowless room has a vent, but it’s off. A faint breeze finds its way inside from the bookstore.

  I don’t hear his reply, as I become distracted by the genital deformities portrayed in the big square art book on my lap, and suddenly I find Fofi kneeling in front of me like a beggar, looking at the genitals upside down, not looking at me. These balls that seem to be made of brownish dough.

  “Sorry, Fofetto, what did you
say?”

  “Why did you ask?”

  “What?”

  “If I’d work for your father.”

  “I’m just wondering.”

  I blow air on my bangs and pout my upper lip. He is staring at it—at my mouth.

  “It’s just, I don’t know, it’s like you totally forgot that you were ever a PhD student, that you’ve accepted the way things are.”

  “And do you—do you look down on me for that?”

  “Oh no, exactly the opposite.”

  “Working makes me happy.”

  “I can tell.”

  “But was there a reason why you asked that? Does your father want me there?”

  “I don’t know, but I could see it—in the long run.”

  “I like working with you, while it lasts. You shouldn’t have left Rome.”

  “I had a dream. I’m happy I did it.”

  He rests a hand on my thigh and tries to balance himself. He’s too heavy and unathletic for this kneeling, sumo-like position. The unforgiving fluorescent lights are off, and the room is lit by nothing but my old floor lamp, a metal thing from the seventies with two round spotlights that face in different directions. I know how beautiful I look right now—the neckline of my dress sags as I lean toward him—and I want to untangle myself from this bubble we’re in now. “Fofi,” I try, “you know you’re quite the catch these days. You’ll find a pretty girlfriend. I can show you around if you’ll let me.”

  “You’ll…” he falters, fidgeting in his place, standing up for a second to stretch his legs and sinking down again. He searches my dress with his eyes, angry now. “No to me, but yes to someone?”

  The book falls on the floor, and my breast is under his palm and my mouth is covered by his other hand, which keeps me from screaming. The chair is sturdy, it’s fake leather, uncomfortable even after I’ve covered it with a large linen scarf. Fofi is heavy on top of me, and he fumbles against my body. I’m not screaming, and I’m still on the chair, slouched but tense, with open legs, frozen. He is kissing my neck and squeezing my breast painfully hard under the thin cups of my bra. He is too heavy to be able to pivot on one hand on the chair’s arm rest while unbuttoning his pants, so he’s not undressing at all anymore. All he’s doing is rubbing against me, which is using up his energy. He has ruined my dress by ripping the collar to grab my breast. I have platform sandals on, with my toes exposed, and he wears broken Chuck Taylors that kick my pinky toe because of his clumsy wriggling. “Ouch!” I scream. This unfreezes me, and I press three nails into his forehead and scratch.