Temporary Perfections

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  “Ghost.”

  “Gladiator.”

  “The Green Mile.”

  “Schindler’s List.”

  “You’re rolling out the big guns. The Way We Were, the whole movie, especially the final scene, and the soundtrack.”

  “Cinema Paradiso. The scene with the reel of censored kisses.”

  “It’s true, it’s wonderful. I think that movie won an Oscar for that scene alone. It’s just the kind of thing Americans go crazy over. What about the final scene of Thelma and Louise?”

  “Spectacular. There’s a line in that movie that I’ve always dreamed of getting a chance to say, someday.”

  “What line?”

  “Harvey Keitel is questioning Brad Pitt, and to get him to talk, he says: ‘Son, your misery is gonna be my goddamn mission in life.’ Now that’s the way you threaten someone.”

  “It’s your turn.”

  “Jesus Christ Superstar. Mary Magdalene singing by Jesus’ tent while he’s sleeping.”

  “ ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him.’ ” As she said the title of the song sung by Mary Magdalene, the prostitute who was in love with Jesus Christ, I realized I’d said the wrong thing.

  She didn’t notice. Or rather, she noticed so openly that it didn’t matter.

  “As you can imagine, I really identify with that scene.”

  At that point, inevitably, there was a pause.

  “Okay, fine, I identified with Mary Magdalene. What about you?” Nadia said at last.

  “I actually identified with both of the protagonists of Philadelphia, Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks.”

  “My God, that final sequence with the Super 8 home movies of Tom Hanks’s character, Andrew, as a child! I remember it as if I were watching the movie right now. The swing, the children playing on the beach, the mother dressed in those sixties clothes with a scarf on her head, the dog, Andrew dressed as a cowboy … the music by Neil Young. It’s so heartbreaking.”

  “The final scene is the most moving one, but my favorite is during the trial, when Denzel Washington does that direct examination of Tom Hanks.”

  “Why is that your favorite scene?”

  “If you like, I can recite it for you, and then you’ll see why.”

  “Recite it for me? You know the whole scene by heart?”

  “More or less.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You remember the story, of course?”

  She looked at me as if she were a Grand Slam tennis champion and I’d just asked whether she remembered how to hit a backhand. I raised both hands in a sign of surrender.

  “Okay, okay, forgive me. So it’s a crucial point in the trial, and Denzel Washington is questioning Tom Hanks, who plays a lawyer named Andrew. He’s in the advanced stages of the disease and he doesn’t have long to live:

  “Are you a good lawyer, Andrew?

  “I’m an excellent lawyer.

  “What makes you an excellent lawyer?

  “I love the law. I know the law. I excel at practicing.

  “What do you love about the law, Andrew?

  “I … many things. What do I love the most about the law?

  “Yes.

  “It’s that every now and again, not often, but occasionally, you get to be a part of justice being done. That really is quite a thrill when that happens.

  “Thank you, Andrew.”

  After a few instants of breathless silence, Nadia started clapping slowly.

  I hadn’t played that game in a long time. Years and years ago, I’d had a strange facility for repeating from memory the words of movies, songs, books, and poems. Then, for a number of reasons, I began to find it increasingly difficult.

  There is nothing that evokes the disquieting idea of the passage of time as much as observing the deterioration of an ability that you had always taken for granted. It’s more or less the same thing that happens in the gym. You’re sparring with someone and you see—to give an example—that he’s leading with a straight right punch. You know exactly what you need to do in this case: duck, feint, straighten up, and hit back, all in a single, fluid movement. Your brain issues the order to your back and your arms, but the order arrives just a fraction of a second too late, the punch hits you, and your counter-attack is slow—it seems to you—and slightly off-kilter. It’s not a reassuring sensation.

  The fact that the words of the movie came back to me that night so easily, so clearly, made me feel good. As if I’d returned to something fundamental about myself.

  “How do you do it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve always had a gift for learning and reciting things that I liked—and I really liked that exchange—but recently I thought that I’d lost that ability. I’m as amazed as you are that I was able to pull it off. Though, of course, it might be more impressive if we checked the actual words of the movie to find out if I got it right.”

  She looked at me, and it seemed as if she were searching for the right words. Or the right question.

  “Do you like it so much because you see yourself in it?”

  “I think so. It’s not something I talk about much. I became a lawyer pretty much by accident. I always thought of this work as something I settled for. I was a little ashamed of it. And it’s always been hard for me to admit—to myself, much less to others—how much I’ve ended up liking it.”

  She flashed me a beautiful smile, the kind that tells you the other person really is listening to what you’re saying. She didn’t speak; she didn’t need to. She was telling me to go on.

  “The truth is that I’ve always looked upon my work with an element of condescension. In college I enrolled in law because I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve always had an ideological and stereotypical vision of the work that lawyers do, and I’ve almost always denied myself the right to be proud of being one. I never had the moral courage to revise my slightly childish idea of practicing law being an ethically unacceptable profession. The work of shysters and hair-splitters.”

  “Isn’t that true, though? I’ve never had a good experience with any lawyer except you.”

  “Sure, it’s often true. The profession is full of scoundrels, shysters, virtual illiterates, and even a few genuine criminals. For that matter, the same is true of the magistrate, or any other profession you care to name. The issue, though, isn’t whether there are bad or incompetent people practicing law, or whether the work tends to exaggerate some of the worst qualities of the human mind, and of human beings in general.”

  “So what is the issue?”

  “The issue is that this is a profession in which you can be a free man. It’s a line of work that can offer you certain things … well, I don’t think there are many things in life that rank with the feeling of winning an acquittal for a defendant you know is innocent, especially when he was facing hard time or even life in prison.”

  “But I wasn’t innocent,” Nadia said with a smile.

  True. Technically, she hadn’t been innocent. She had committed the crime of abetting prostitution, that is, she had introduced pretty girls to wealthy men and had received a substantial fee for her intermediation. No one had been forced into it; no one had been blackmailed; no one had been hurt. The idea that we send people to prison—that we deprive people of their freedom—for actions of this sort becomes increasingly inconceivable to me the more time passes.

  “It would have been an injustice if you had been convicted. You never harmed anyone.”

  I was about to say too much. Something along the lines of, if anything, you did good. Which, when you’re talking to a former prostitute, a madam who recruited and employed other prostitutes, is not exactly the right thing to say. Those words left the neurons of my brain, hurtled at top speed through my nervous system, and were teetering on my lips, about to spring into the air, when I managed to snatch them back.

  “You’re a good lawyer.”

  It was hard to tell from her intonation whether it was a question or a statement. It seem
ed to hover halfway between the two.

  “Is that a question?”

  “It is and it isn’t. That is, I know you’re a good lawyer. I remember when the judge emerged from his chambers into the courtroom and read out the verdict. Never in my life, would I have believed that with the things they had on those wiretaps I could have been acquitted.”

  “The wiretaps were inadmissible as evidence. There had been a procedural flaw that—”

  “Yes, I know, I know, I remember word for word what you said in your summation. But at the time, I just assumed you were posturing to prove you were earning your fee. I was positive they would find me guilty, and I was completely astonished when I was acquitted instead. It was an unexpected gift.”

  “Well, yeah, that went well, it’s true.”

  “And you want to know something?”

  “What?”

  “I was ready to throw my arms around you, at that moment. I was about to do it, and then I decided it would be crazy and I would have embarrassed you. So I did nothing.”

  Then, after a pause: “Anyway, it was a statement, but it was also a question.”

  “What?”

  “Do you consider yourself a good lawyer?”

  I didn’t answer right away. I took a deep breath.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes it seems to me that the words and the concepts and my own actions all fit together perfectly. Compared to most other lawyers, I think I’m pretty good. But if I measure myself against some abstract standard of good practice of law, then I see things very differently. I’m disorganized. I’m inefficient. Often I don’t feel like working, and I rely upon improvisation far more frequently and extensively than wisdom or caution would recommend.

  “I imagine a good lawyer is one who is capable of great self-discipline. When a good lawyer needs to write something—an appeal, for example, or a brief—he sits down at his desk and doesn’t get up again until he is done. What I do is I sit down and I write a few sentences. Then I decide that I’ve completely taken the wrong tack, and I start getting upset. So then I do something else, obviously less important and less urgent. Sometimes I even leave the office, go to a bookstore, and buy a book. Then I come back and sit at my desk and write, but without much interest or determination. And then finally, when the pressure is on, I focus on the task at hand and I write and I do it. Every time I do it though, I have the impression I’ve just dashed it off at the last minute, that I’ve cheated my client. In general, I feel I’m pulling the wool over the eyes of the world.”

  Nadia scratched the side of her head. She looked at me as if I were a deeply strange individual. Then she shrugged.

  “You’re crazy. I can’t think of any other way to put it.”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a statement that shut down discussion of the topic. I was crazy, and there was no other way to put it.

  “And what are you good at?”

  I don’t know why I kept putting my foot in my mouth. Even I know better than to ask a woman who has been a porn star and a prostitute what special talents she possesses.

  “I really would like to be good at something. Let’s just say I’m still looking. I know how to sketch and I know how to paint, too, but I wouldn’t say I’m really good at either. I know how to sing. I have a good voice and a good ear, though I can’t really belt it out. But when I hear a song, I can reproduce it immediately, either by singing it or playing it on a keyboard. I have a great ear, and I’ve let it go to waste.” She experienced a visible twinge of self-pity but suppressed it immediately.

  “And I’m good at listening to people. Everyone says so.”

  “Yeah, you told me you had clients who came mostly to talk with you. They wanted to be able to tell you about themselves without feeling judged.”

  “Exactly. If you pay someone for her time, you don’t have to worry about your performance. When you talk or when you fuck. I had one client who was a stunningly handsome man, about fifty—wealthy, successful, and powerful. He could have had all the women he wanted, for free, and instead he came to see me, to pay me money.”

  “Because when he was with you, he was free of anxiety.”

  “He was free of anxiety, that’s right. Since he was paying me, he didn’t have to worry about whether his performance was up to expectations, in terms of both conversation and sex. He wasn’t afraid to be himself.”

  She paused, smiling, then continued.

  “We might say he could take the paper bag off his head.”

  Those words hung in the air, dissolving slowly into a fine, drifting dust.

  Our glasses were empty and it was very late.

  “Shall we drink one last glass and then go home and get some sleep?”

  I nodded slowly, my vision slightly blurred. She filled two glasses but didn’t hand me mine. She kept both on the table in front of her, as if there were a ritual to be completed, before we could drink.

  “You know something?”

  “What?”

  “I notice that when I talk to you I try to choose my words carefully.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s as if I want to sound intelligent. As if I’m trying to choose the right words, so I say something smart.”

  I didn’t reply. All the answers that came to my mind were—in fact—unintelligent. So I said nothing.

  “I noticed that because I was sitting here and trying to think of a clever, original toast, but I couldn’t.”

  I took my glass and touched it against hers, which still sat on the table.

  “Let’s forget about words,” I said.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she picked up her glass and raised it while looking at me with a shy smile. Then, at last, we both drank.

  From the darkness outside came the muffled, muddled sounds of a moment out of time.

  26.

  The next morning, I slept a little later than usual. Yet when I woke up, I could still feel the whiskey from the night before coursing through me. To exorcise the remaining fumes, I decided to have an extra healthy breakfast of yogurt and cereal with my usual big cup of coffee. I broke the metal band of pain around my forehead with an aspirin, took a shower, shaved, brushed my teeth a little too vigorously, threw some clothes into an overnight bag, said good-bye to Mister Bag, doing my best to ignore the quizzical look he gave me, and went to get my car.

  I showed up at our agreed-upon location a few minutes late. Caterina was there, waiting. We were dressed identically. Jeans, dark-blue blazers, white shirts. Even our luggage was similar. We seemed to be wearing a uniform. I wondered if that would make us more or less conspicuous at the airport.

  “Cool car,” she said, after fastening her seat belt. We began heading north toward the airport.

  “I hardly ever drive it. It’s always in the garage. I walk everywhere, or ride my bike.”

  “That’s a shame. When we get back from Rome, you’ll have to take me somewhere fun and let me drive.”

  “What time is our appointment with Nicoletta?”

  “I’m supposed to call her when we get to Rome. By the way, do you have anywhere to stay tonight?”

  “I reserved two rooms in a hotel near Piazza del Popolo.”

  “Then we’ll have to take a taxi to Nicoletta’s apartment. She lives over by Via Ostiense.”

  She paused, then said, “Why did you reserve two rooms? You could have saved some money and just reserved one room. Are you afraid to be alone with me?”

  We had just turned onto the highway, and the traffic was heavy, but I couldn’t keep from turning to look at her. She burst into laughter.

  “Come on, don’t make that face. I was just kidding.”

  I tried to think of a witticism to defuse the situation, but I couldn’t come up with anything. So I concentrated on driving. There was a huge semi right ahead of me, in the right lane. I pulled out to pass the truck when it veered sharply left into the passing lane to pass yet another truck ahead of it, cutting me off. I stomped on the brakes and h
it the horn hard. Caterina screamed. I glanced into my rearview mirror, hoping I wouldn’t see someone chatting on their cell phone while coming up fast behind me. I managed to avoid hitting the behemoth in front of us by a few inches, but it was so close that I felt the terrifying virtual impact of the accident I’d been sure was coming.

  When the huge truck pulled back into the right lane I accelerated and passed it. Caterina lowered her window and gave the driver the finger, holding her hand out until distance must have made it completely invisible. As a rule, I’m opposed to this method of manifesting one’s dissent, especially when the guy driving the other vehicle easily weighs over two hundred pounds. But in this case, his driving had been so insanely homicidal that I couldn’t really blame Caterina. In fact, I almost did the same.

  “What an asshole. I hate those fucking trucks. The drivers would kill you as soon as look at you,” she said.

  I nodded, waiting for the adrenaline surging through me to ebb. As often happens in these cases, an idiotic thought had come to mind. If we had been involved in an accident and the police had come, they would have discovered that I was about to fly to Rome with a twenty-three-year-old girl, unbeknownst to anyone. They would have assumed questionable intentions. If I had died in the crash, I would have been unable to tell anyone about the real reasons for that trip, and—in the world’s recollections of me—my death would forever be linked with a tawdry trip with a young woman more than twenty years my junior.

  That demented thought brought up an old memory from years earlier.

  One of my friends from the eighties and nineties was getting married. He was the first of our group to tie the knot, so we decided to organize a big bachelor party for him. Since it was our first bachelor party, we had no idea how squalid and unseemly the whole business is. Somebody said we should get some hookers or at least some strippers, or it wouldn’t really be a bachelor party worth holding. All—or nearly all—of us agreed, but it turned out that none of us had the contacts, the knowledge, or even the self-confidence to contact hookers or strippers. After further consultation, we changed plans. We’d get some porn films and show them at the party. It was much easier to get porn flicks—and much less awkward. Each of the organizers managed to get at least one videotape. For reasons that now elude me, I was appointed to transport the batch of pornography to the party location.