“What do you want?” Not even turning around.
“I should ask you the same question, don’t you think?”
“I wanted to see how you looked.”
“That’s all?”
No. That’s not all.
“You’re doing well, I see, Mr. Architect. Not me. You must know that. So, good for you.”
“Isn’t there anything else you want to tell me?”
The dirty fingers of the inveterate, psychedelic gambler of Happy Farm stop. Before his hands start to shake, Sandro puts them in his pockets and rotates on the stool to face Enrico.
“What the hell should I have to tell you? Let’s hear it.”
“You came to my house to spy on me. The other night they found you in the car in front of my house again. I’m leaving, Sandro. I’m selling everything. I only came back so I could leave for good.”
“Bravo, leave it all behind and have a good life.”
“Blaming me didn’t help you to live your own better.”
“What the fuck do you know? Huh? You come back here after ten years and you want to talk? What do you want to hear? That nobody holds it against you for what happened to my sister? Fine, get the fuck out. You made a new life for yourself and you did well. It wasn’t your family after all, it was mine.”
“Why did you send me those messages, after the funeral?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You wrote that there were things I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t send you any messages.”
“I only saw them now. They were in the phone memory. You could have found another way to contact me if you had something to tell me.”
“What the fuck are you saying?”
“Sandro, you sent me two text messages from Alice’s phone.”
“Now you’re really busting my balls. I didn’t send you any fucking messages, much less from Alice’s phone.”
“What is it I don’t know?”
“Will you listen to me? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Tell me!”
Focus. Like when he was at the gym, in that other life, and had to do one last extension with a weight that was too heavy, but he couldn’t quit. His energy is drained, only rage remains. And a body now wasted by heroin that has to find the strength to do it. Sandro makes a fist, turns, and punches Enrico in the face. Enrico slams into the wall behind him and stares at Sandro with the look of someone who doesn’t understand what’s happening. All Sandro can feel is the pain in his hand, his fingers have now started trembling again. Maybe he fractured something.
He caught him smack on the cheekbone. A drop of blood. Enrico takes a tissue and dabs at the wound. Then he looks at him. Sandro feels his eyes on him, as if Enrico were only now seeing him for the first time. He’d like to see in those eyes the same hatred he feels inside, instead it pains him to see something there that resembles pity. He doesn’t want his fucking pity. He makes a fist again, but the pain is so intense that this time he moves too slowly and leaves Enrico time to block his arm.
“That’s enough, Sandro.”
He’d like to answer him, but he’s ashamed. For what he has become, for what he just did. For what no one knows. So he breaks free from Enrico’s grip and walks away. The cramps of withdrawal become more intense, and he has to lean against a chair to avoid ending up on the floor. A guy eating a sandwich at the bar turns and looks at him with the same expression he’d have if he were looking at a piece of shit he just stepped in. Come on, Sandro, just a few steps between the chair and the door. Focus. Again. Remember? Strong and handsome like a Greek hero. You can do it. He leaves the chair and heads off into space. And somehow he manages to make his way out of the bar and into his car.
Enrico goes over to a table and keeps dabbing at his cut. It’s still bleeding a little. The place has changed. The tables, with all the inscriptions carved into them, are gone. It’s become an Irish pub, sterile and anonymous like all the others.
“It’s okay with me if he comes here to pass the time when he’s not stoned.”
Enrico turns to the voice. A guy he doesn’t know, maybe the manager of the place.
“But go settle your problems someplace else. I don’t want to see that kind of stuff in here. Got it?”
Too many things to explain. None of which would make sense.
“Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”
The manager nods: that’s the answer he wanted to hear. He goes back to the bar. Exchanges a glance with the guy eating the sandwich.
Enrico leaves.
Outside the pub, the boy is kicking the deflated ball against the wall. When he sees Enrico come out, he catches the ball and stops. He’s wearing a red down jacket with an Ironman logo on the chest and a pair of very thick glasses; he has tiny little eyes behind the lenses and a booger sticking out of his nose.
“Do you know Messi?” There’s something not right about his voice.
“You like him?” Enrico asks, dabbing at his cheekbone with the bloodstained tissue.
“Messi is the greatest of all.”
The boy sniffles. Smiles. Gives the ball a kick and slams it against the wall, continuing his imaginary game.
Sandro drives off, and Enrico’s eyes follow the car as it moves away.
It’s like a stain that won’t come out. The stench of burnt toast that lingers in the kitchen when you forget the bread in the toaster. The ache of a years-old injury that on rainy days starts hurting again. There’s nothing you can do, except wait until it passes.
Sandro’s car disappears, swallowed up by a time curve. The boy with the Ironman jacket goes on throwing the ball against the wall, without a clear purpose.
His face still hurts, but it’s not bleeding anymore. Enrico drops the tissue into a trash bin.
At this point the feeling of no longer belonging to that place is almost liberating. There is nothing left for him here. He’ll go back to the house, turn on his laptop, start working on the Remeres project, and Monday morning, after he’s signed the papers, he’ll leave this place for good.
It’s over.
Maybe he had to take that punch. To look Sandro in the eye and say, “That’s enough.”
Five
Sandro is lying on the bed watching television. The run-in with Enrico made everything more difficult. His anxiety has risen, but he has to wait a little while longer for his fix, otherwise the effect will wear off too soon and the whole weekend schedule will go up in smoke, and then he’ll be in danger of doing without for a day.
A day is long and doing without . . . No way . . .
“The second suggestion for the Pizzarotti family is a house two kilometers from San Teodoro, overlooking La Cinta beach.” Images scroll by of a house with white walls, a pool, a backyard with thatched umbrellas, and a terrace on a strip of white sand that stretches before a blue sea. “Four bedrooms, kitchen, two living rooms, a den, three baths, and a large terrace on two acres of land. The cost is a little over their budget but . . .”
Click.
“The taipan is the most venomous snake in the world.” More images scroll by of the reptile as it slithers among the rocks. It’s a strange color, more or less electric blue. Or maybe the plasma screen is completely shot. “It’s typically found in Australia and can reach lengths of more than three meters. Its venom is the most toxic and deadly in the world. It is also very fast. Just think—it can reach a speed of sixteen kilometers per hour. It is virtually designed to bite swiftly and with extreme precision. And it is also known for its good memory.”
Australia is a shitty place. If something poisonous and deadly exists, you’ll find it there for sure. Why would anyone go there? If you want to harm yourself, isn’t it simpler to just swallow a bottle of pills? In a moment of weakness, Sandro turns to the bedside table. Maybe he could at least prepare the syringe, that way it’ll be ready. But like fuck he’ll put it back in the drawer once it’s ready.
N
o, that would be a very bad idea. No way . . .
Click.
“Now Maria Elena is ready to discover her new look.” The lanky guy is wearing a suit like that of the Mad Hatter, while the woman with the Targaryen albino hair moves quickly to reveal a mannequin clad in garish colors. The damned plasma screen is definitely off.
Sandro goes on changing channels in the hope of finding something that will grab his attention, so he won’t think about the withdrawal cramps that are becoming increasingly intense and unbearable.
Click.
“To make a perfect cheesecake it is very important to work the base well.” The fat guy is wearing a white apron, leaning his hands on a work counter where he’s arranged bowls, ingredients, spoons, and other rather strange utensils. “We take one hundred and eighty grams of biscuits and crush them. To do so, however, we do not use a food processor, because that would pulverize them, and we’d end up forming a base that’s too compact and therefore too hard. Instead we take a napkin, place the biscuits in it, and start kneading them. Like so.” His hands work forcefully, crumbling the contents of the napkin. “It’s a bit as if this were your brain in here, don’t you think?” Right, that’s exactly what it feels like. “We’ll smash it up real good, working the result into an amorphous pap, nice, huh?” Not really. No, I’d say I don’t like what you’re doing to my brain, not one little bit. “So, now that we’ve prepared the base, let’s think about the filling. We take the heroin . . .” What did that fat guy say? “We take the heroin powder and dissolve it in a teaspoon of hot water, which we heat with the flame of a gas lighter, not with a cigarette lighter that quickly overheats it, and then add a few drops of lemon juice to facilitate solubility. Finally, to remove any residual solids, we take a metal filter, even a tea strainer your grandmother once used, and pour the preparation through it before filling the insulin syringe with it. Like sooo.”
And he finds himself holding the disposable Insumed syringe with the eight-millimeter needle and minimal diameter. Ready to be injected. And so, okay, all defenses surrender. “In the vein it ensures an immediate, intense effect,” the pastry chef continues, “while with intramuscular, it’s more relaxed, and after a slow start it can take as long as ten minutes to achieve a feeling of well-being.” Sandro chooses the second option. The needle penetrates his flesh, the plunger is lowered, and the liquid that works wonders will soon make everything more bearable, including the fat pastry chef who is spreading the cheesecake mixture over the base made from crumbling his brain.
Chiara checks WhatsApp. Margherita hasn’t responded to her message. Odd. You can tell she’s busy. Saturday night in London is not like Saturday in this lousy place. Maybe she’s hanging out with her friends, in a colorful world of aperitifs, cocktails, live music, and fun until dawn.
The history book is on the nightstand, she’ll think about that tomorrow. Today is not a good day. It seems things are happening purposely to distract her. And, in an hour, Gibo will come and pick her up to spend the evening together. They’ll go for a ride somewhere, sit in the car listening to some music, and he’ll talk about something. Then they’ll go have a pizza in some place along the Aurelia toward Rome. And after that she hopes he’ll take her to the beach. And kiss her. And touch her.
The thought is pleasurable. She lies on the bed, pulls the quilt over herself, and unzips her jeans.
The screen is animated by a tube that changes color and produces a series of hypnotic geometries. Sitting at the table, laptop in front of him, Enrico follows the movements of the screensaver, which switched on some time ago. Under there, somewhere, is his latest attempt to find a solution to the Remeres problem, buried by a tangle of thoughts that went round and round. He follows the lysergic evolutions of the tube and thinks about the inexcusable lack of a command to reset his brain. If Alice had answered that question—Is there someone else?—before getting out of the car, it would have all been simpler, but to admit it out loud would be a little like minimizing everything that happened afterward, so he can’t do it. That thought must remain as is, unspoken, lost in the bright, colorful trail of a changing tube that glides across a black screen.
The door is locked, the lights are off, the sign on the window with the hours eliminates any doubt: Beta Realty is not open on Saturday afternoons. Maurizio is shut up inside. He said he was going there to check some documents. Just to say something, not worrying too much about whether it sounded true. The computer is turned off. His desk chair is a nearly perfect imitation of a designer piece, a note of class in an office that he retained so he wouldn’t have to come in contact with clients. As he sits there, motionless, the smoke from the cigarette he’s holding rises in an undisturbed vertical column, geometrically perfect. Maybe Enrico shouldn’t have come back. He should have found a way to send him the documents and close the deal by mail. But how could he ever imagine . . .
He can’t stop thinking about what Enrico told him. About the messages he received. That phone no longer existed. It had been retrieved and made to disappear. Yet someone used it. And may have found, in that same phone, the messages that Maurizio had written to Alice. So why hadn’t that someone ever said anything? Why had he or she remained silent about such a thing? Maybe Alice had deleted them? But then what else could Enrico not know? What else could those words be alluding to? Isn’t it obvious? His darling girlfriend and his best friend. A plot so predictable, so trite, like one of those pathetic movies that Betti loads in the DVD player. So then that phone must still exist. And those messages must still be there. All of them.
The light filtering through the small window grows dimmer. Saturday night looms ahead, with the telecast of the nationals qualifying match, Sky TV, the sofa, pizza heated in the oven, and a mug of beer. But it’s as if everything has gone flat. Lost its color and definition.
Someone knew about him.
Only Sandro could have that phone. Why has he kept silent?
I punched him. If Sandro were able to think, he would think about that. If the weak electrical impulses filtering through that heroin-cooked brain made sense, that’s what they would tell him. I punched him, my hand hurts, I nearly fell over, right there in the pub. Because he told me that I had sent him some messages. From Alice’s phone.
Alice’s phone.
“Sandro.” There she is, sitting on the edge of the bed. For his sister, time has not passed.
“Ali . . .”
Sandro nimbly stands up. He feels like he did when he was okay. The muscular, peroxided guy, the Greek hero, is back. He looks at his arms and flexes them, letting the biceps swell under the tight black T-shirt.
“I think you need to explain,” his sister says.
He sits down next to her.
“She won’t talk to me about it, you know that. I’ve tried plenty of times,” he says, taking her hand. Her skin is so soft. He brings her hand to his face and sniffs the scent that he misses so much. “She knows I’m to blame and she won’t say anything, as usual.”
“No, you have to tell him.”
“Enrico?”
“Did you hear what he said? She sent him those messages. She wanted to tell him something. Something he doesn’t know.”
“But then it will all come out. I’ll end up in trouble.”
“Sandro . . .”
“Ali . . .”
“You’re already in trouble.” She points to the bed. The scrawny, limp body lying there with a fresh hole in his arm. “It was a mistake to hide everything. Dad thought he was saving you, but he couldn’t. You can do it, though. You can tell him. He’s looking for the truth. Maybe there’s more that’s been kept hidden. Maybe if you were to help him find it . . .”
“I’d feel better?”
Alice smiles. She strokes his face. She seems sad. Sandro would never want to see her sad.
“Hey, what’s this?” he says, sliding a hand behind her neck, where he knows she’s ticklish. Alice laughs. But only for a moment, then she slips away. Sandro hears a sound and
turns. Across the room, behind his work counter, the fat pastry chef is still at work. Those huge, tough hands of his are like bricks. They’re smeared with mortar. His body looks more and more like that of a gorilla, his face more and more pasty and misshapen.
The light-blue cap.
The Half-Wit stares at him.
“Sandro, will you throw me the ball?”
Six
It’s time. Chiara puts on her jacket and zips it up to the chin as usual. The white wires of the earbuds emerge from under the hood. Chris Martin. Cigarettes taken from Maurizio’s supply and double-mint chewing gum. She goes down the stairs. Passes the kitchen. Her mother is sitting at the table with the phone to her ear. She looks at her, says something into the phone, and places her hand over it. Chiara removes an earbud.
“Going out?”
“Yep.”
“With Gibo?”
“You know that.”
“We didn’t talk much today, did we?”
“Is there something you have to tell me?”
“Maybe we should talk more.”
“Not now, though.”
“It wouldn’t be polite to keep Mr. Gibo waiting.”
“Anything else?”
Betti hesitates.
“Don’t be back too late.”
Chiara puts the earbud back in and leaves.
Gibo will pick her up at the corner. He doesn’t want to stop at her house because he doesn’t like the way Betti looks at him. Another thing she wouldn’t stand for, if it wasn’t Saturday night. There’s also the problem of the oil slick and the fact that her street is a dead end.
Her father’s car is gone. Strange, usually at this hour they’re both already on the couch watching television.
When she gets to the corner, she takes out the cigarettes. She lights one, careful to hide it in the palm of her hand. The sound of a car approaches and soon its headlights. She recognizes Gibo’s car, a huge off-road vehicle that feels like a truck when you’re inside it. When it stops in front of her, she opens the passenger door, climbs in, and waits for him to give her a kiss like he always does.
The Night of the Moths Page 13