She started to mumble excuses and sail off into tangled and senseless explanations. When I saw she was on the verge of tears I laid my silverware in my plate and looked her straight in the eye.
“I love you and I have no intention whatsoever of giving you up. Make peace with Gemma. It makes no sense to break up such a fine and lasting friendship for a passing crisis of insecurity.”
“You’re right,” she stammered. “It’s a good thing we talked it over. I’m so relieved.”
And so was I. I needed to keep Gemma as my accomplice.
When I headed back to my restaurant, after my wife said goodbye and gave me a kiss on the lips, reminding me not to stay out late, I called that idiot friend of hers.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Why don’t you come over and I’ll show you?”
I hung up. She was drunk. A good sign. Then she’d be smitten with remorse, there would be streams of tears and useless words and everything would go back the way it was. Between the two of them. The real problem was that now I saw Gemma in a new light. I’d always been attracted by women in their forties afflicted with chronic fragility. In my other life, before my relationship with Martina, who represented the summit of perfection from that point of view, I’d broken into the personal lives of countless women, playing relentlessly unfair with their weaknesses and dragging them down into the abyss with me, leaving behind me nothing but smoking ruins or wreckage silent with the chill of death. With my boyish good looks and my old school gentlemanly manners, I was a past master at lying and acting out extended scripts. That kind of woman only figures things out long after the point of no return. To avoid temptation I’d set myself some rigorous rules: never to fraternize with the female clients and the waitresses in the restaurant. I’d always turned down the numerous offers of sexual relations. The monthly blowjob I let Nicoletta give me was just a reiteration of roles between business partners, but I’d never have dreamed of embarking on an affair with her. Among other things, she wasn’t my type; she basically devoured her men and then spit out the few remaining bones. But now Gemma’s emotional fragility had been served up on a silver platter and I had to do my best to rein in my imagination. I focused on my work. But it wasn’t easy.
Three days later, when Sante Brianese walked into La Nena with his usual brisk, energetic stride, he was accorded a hero’s welcome. He’d been so skillful at exploiting the situation that he’d managed to appear on all the news broadcasts, and especially on the afternoon shows, which were the ones with the highest viewership among his average voters. The tearjerking story of the poor Moldavian women with a disfigured face, and the way that he had reached into his own savings to ensure she received the best possible medical care, had stirred the hearts of all Italy. He’d made sure he was photographed and filmed at her bedside in the hospital. After all, years of delivering summations in court and political speeches on the campaign trail had honed his rhetorical skills to a gleaming edge.
I waited for the cluster of customers swirling around him to thin out, then I came out from behind the counter. I threw my arms around him in a transport of emotion and I whispered into his ear: “So there never really was a Dubai deal at all. It’s a bad thing to cheat your friends, Counselor.”
I felt his whole body stiffen. I pulled back just long enough to stare into his eyes round with shock and then I slipped the maid’s white cloth tiara into the pocket of his overcoat. I walked back to the counter. By the time I turned around Brianese was slipping out the front door. He’d be back soon. I felt sure of it.
A few minutes later Martina poked her head in the door and waved for me to join her outside.
“What is it?”
“That fool Gemma is ashamed to come in,” she explained, pointing to her.
Gemma was half-hidden behind the pillar of a portico. She was moving her feet as if she were dancing out of time to some unheard music, and she was greedily sucking down lungsful of tobacco smoke.
I walked over to her. “Look, I really don’t know what . . . ” she mumbled.
“Starting tomorrow morning, you quit smoking.”
“Excuse me?”
“Didn’t you say you were in love with me?” I replied in a harsh tone of voice. “I wouldn’t deign to consider a woman who reeks of tobacco smoke. If you want to put yourself on the market you’re going to have to straighten up and fly right.”
I turned around and returned to Martina’s side. “Everything’s fine now, darling,” I reassured her. “Your table’s the one in the corner. You’re going to have to eat in the company of a prosciutto producer from Montagnana and his wife, but they’re lovely people, you’ll both like them.”
Gemma avoided my eyes all evening. Her mind had been turned inside out. The next move was up to her. On the one hand, I hoped that she’d throw the door open to me, so I could take control of her life and pillage her self-respect. On the other hand, part of me hoped she wouldn’t do it. That would be the last thing I needed, now that I’d opened a hotline with Brianese on the matter of the two million euros.
I would have bet anything that the Counselor would come back in person but instead he sent Ylenia, his faithful secretary. She adjusted her designer glasses on the bridge of her nose. “The Honorable Brianese would like to speak with you,” she announced. “But he has a meeting and he won’t be able to come by until very late this evening. He begs you to wait for him.”
“For Counselor Brianese I’m always available,” I replied in the same pompous tone.
She turned to go, stamping her heels ever so slightly. It annoyed her that I hadn’t used the term of respect “Honorable” to refer to Brianese, but there was no way I could get the phrase out of my mouth without seeming irreverent.
It was an evening packed with exciting new developments. Martina waved me over to their table and proudly announced that Gemma had decided to quit smoking.
“It’s not an easy thing to do,” I commented as if she weren’t sitting right there. “I know lots of people who tried but couldn’t do it.”
“Don’t be so negative,” she scolded me. “You ought to encourage her, not discourage her.”
“No, he’s right,” said the smoker in question, rising to my defense. “But I’m going to do my level best to quit.”
Next it was the turn of the proprietor of a well known enoteca. He took a seat at the counter and ordered an amaro. The bartender reached around to grab the bottle but I stopped him. I pulled out a bottle of cognac from my personal stock and poured a couple of snifters. His eyes were red, with dark circles of anxiety and exhaustion. He was the picture of a man in trouble. It didn’t cost me a thing to be nice to him and see if we could be useful to one another.
“I wouldn’t expect you to drink a syrupy concoction like that,” I said, handing him the snifter.
“I’ve got problems with my shop and I don’t know how to get out of this situation,” he muttered in dialect. “Just think, my father started the business as just a humble little wine shop and tavern. Then, when everyone had plenty of money and started putting on airs that they were all wine connoisseurs, and my customers would only drink wine that came out of a bottle with a label and a certification of origin, I changed the sign and took the sommelier course at the Chamber of Commerce . . . ”
“And now you’re one of the countless businessmen and shopkeepers hit hard by the downturn, devastated now that the banks have turned off the faucet. You’re fifty years old and if you have to shut down your business you don’t know how you’ll make a living,” I summarized in a flat voice so I wouldn’t have to listen to the rest of the story of his life. “What can I do for you?”
He rubbed his face with both hands. “I don’t want to have to fold my business,” he answered with tears in his voice.
“Sorry, I don’t make unsecured loans,” I told him.
He shook
his head and gulped down the cognac. “I’m looking for a partner.”
“I’m not interested, I already have my hands full with La Nena,” I shot back. Then I pointed to a bundle of paper sticking out of his back pocket. “But I could help you clear out your warehouse.”
He unfolded his inventory and laid it flat on the bar. I read through it. First-rate wines and liquor, no question about it. “If I buy it all, what kind of price would you offer?”
He named a figure that was unquestionably fair and advantageous but which I had no intention of paying.
I handed back the inventory. “That’s a good price but I can’t afford it. Not even on installments.”
His eyes were like an open book. “If I don’t pay my suppliers soon no one will be willing to supply me with a single bottle of wine on credit.”
“Then forget about trying to make money on it. You can’t afford to.”
He nodded. The new price he named was much more affordable. I managed to clip a little more off the top and we shook hands on it. He turned down my offer of another glassful and walked out of the bar with his head pulled down between his shoulders.
He was just one of many businessmen hunting desperately for a way to keep the family business out of bankruptcy. They were the ones who’d noticed too late that the good times were over and they hadn’t run for shelter early enough. More than one of them had wrapped a noose around their neck or run a vacuum cleaner hose from their tailpipe to their car window. The newspapers carried the reports and the politicians even pretended to care. If it weren’t for my little ring of whores, La Nena would have dragged me down to the bottom. To keep from winding up like that guy I’d have had to go back to making bank withdrawals with a pistol and a scrawled note. That was just one more reason to make sure that Brianese gave me back my money.
I’d closed out the cash register some time ago and the cooks and waitstaff had already gone home when the Counselor stooped down to enter the restaurant under the half-closed metal roller shutter.
He took a seat on a stool at the bar. “Are we alone?”
“Of course. What are you drinking?”
“Nothing. I’m fine, thanks,” he replied before heading off to the back room.
I poured myself a drink and took my time following him back.
“What the fuck did you think you were going to achieve with that bloodbath in my house?” he launched into me, seething with rage.
“Well, this for starters,” I replied, continuing my show of tranquility. “An open, honest exchange of ideas. I’m not going to say between friends, but at least between two people who respect one another and behave accordingly.”
He smirked. “That’s it?”
“Counselor, you never had the slightest intention of paying me back the two million euros you stole from me with the fake scam in Dubai,” I started to explain. “You were planning to string me along with just enough bullshit to keep me happy and when the time was up you weren’t planning to give me a cent. And you know why?”
“I’m all ears,” he replied arrogantly.
“Because you made the mistake of continuing to think of me, with a healthy dose prejudice and contempt, as the man I once was, the man who first came to your office with a bag full of money and a criminal record that needed a good scrubbing.”
“Well, what happened, have you changed?” he taunted me.
“That’s right. And you’re the only one who hasn’t noticed.”
“You go tell my housekeeper or my wife about your transformation. You turned my home into a nightmare and now you tell me you’re an innocent lily of the field?”
“I’m more of one than you are, anyway. And it was the only way I could get your attention.”
“You’re a sick, dangerous man,” he hissed. “In this system nobody does any physical harm to anyone else. You might lose money, which is what happened to you, or you might lose your reputation, or even wind up in jail, but we don’t wind up in the hospital or in the boneyard. We’re in the Veneto, not in the south of Italy!”
“Then I must just be one of those unpredictable variables in your fucked-up system, Counselor, and I can promise you that I’ve shown considerable restraint and offered no more than a tiny demonstration of the extent of my professional skills in the field of inflicting violence. You can’t even begin to imagine how good I am at the work I do . . . ”
He turned white as a sheet, but his tone betrayed no fear. “Don’t you dare threaten me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Otherwise I’d be sitting here with a lengthy list of demands,” I shot back. “I want just one thing: from now on you are going to have to respect the obligations you’ve undertaken with me.”
“Is that all?”
“Two million euros, plus 25 percent interest, within a year.”
He stood there in silence and stared at me for a while, then he turned on his heel and headed for the door.
“Counselor,” I called after him in a loud, cutting voice. “The Nena, as always, is at your service, but it’s not free anymore.”
“That’s fine,” he said, as he wrapped his cashmere scarf around his neck in a loose knot. “I’ll have Ylenia get in touch with you. She takes care of all those details.”
“Go fuck yourself, asshole,” I muttered through clenched teeth. I sat there enjoying my cognac in the silence of the back room. I had created that room so that he’d feel secure as he negotiated deals and laid traps for his enemies.
Instead, the smart thing would have been to salt the place with microphones. As I came and went with plates and bottles I’d overheard snatches of conversation that, offered for sale in a tidy package, would have allowed me to triple the sum the Counselor owed me now.
The toxic leachings from a dump poured into the open sea in order to reduce waste disposal costs, bribes paid to tamper with the health department statistics on tumors caused by an incinerator, more bribes to persuade world-renowned university professors to express support for nuclear- and coal-powered electricity, defective but inexpensive prosthetic limbs and hip replacements, which would later have to be replaced at the price of two operations instead of one, engineering studies designed to ensure that two absolutely useless highway bypasses . . .
I remember once having to separate two furious engineers, each of them the director of a respected planning firm, who were trading punches over some deal involved in the design for a new hospital.
I’d been an idiot. Instead of playing dirty with Brianese, I’d protected him, coddled him, even served as his bootlicking pimp with the sole objective of winning the honor of his respect and his patronage of La Nena.
And how did he repay me? By conning me out of two million euros.
I shut the place down and went home to Martina and her creams and ointments.
The next morning my wife talked at length about Gemma and her efforts at self-improvement. The more she talked about her friend the more uneasy I felt. There was no way I was going to be able to restrain myself. The only thing left was to figure when and how I was going to cross that line.
I changed the subject. “How is your father?”
“No better. It’s inconceivable to me that modern science can’t come up with a cure for it.”
I looked up from the jar of yogurt that my cook made for me. “And it seems inconceivable to me that you should utter such claptrap.”
She stuck her tongue out at me while she added a spoonful of cane sugar to her mug of tea. “I thought I’d spend three mornings with him, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I’ll reschedule my Zumba Fitness, Pilates, and Gliding Disc classes for the afternoons, along with my massages and my jogging.”
“That’s too many things clustered together,” I commented as I glanced over at the sheet of paper with her weekly schedule hanging on the refrigerator. “Your body can’t take it all. You’re going to
have to give up running.”
She looked at me in surprise. She hadn’t seen that one coming. “I can tweak your diet, but there aren’t any other solutions,” I added. “Obviously, you’ll have to give up alcohol entirely, because that sly dog just turns into a nasty yellowish fat that you can never get rid of.”
“But I hardly drink anything!”
“So it won’t be a sacrifice to give it up completely.”
I smooched and cuddled with her for a couple of minutes. “Now I really have to go.”
“I wish we could just go on a holiday somewhere together. Just the two of us, alone on a dreamy beach . . . ”
I shuddered at the thought as memories of our honeymoon in Polynesia came back to me. “When La Nena is running smoothly enough for me to leave,” I said offhandedly, as I opened the door. I paused but there was no need for me to turn around to make my meaning clear. “This is a tough period and the last thing on my mind is a vacation.”
Ylenia was waiting for me, consoling herself with a cappuccino and rice cake. I ordered a glass of Alpine chamois milk for myself, La Nena’s newest breakfast offering.
“I’ve drawn up a prospectus with the various initiatives and a preliminary estimate of costs as a basis for discussion,” she began her pitch, opening an elegant leather portfolio. “We expect you to make a special effort with favorable prices, as a personal contribution to the political battle we’re about to undertake to defend the position of the party here in the region.”
I looked at her. She was attractive in spite of the severe cut of her suit, her flat heels, her smooth shoulder-length hair. Her body was petite but shapely, her features were slightly angular but agreeable. Her legs were her weak spot, with oversized ankles and calves.
She returned my look with an arrogant glance and at that very moment, for no exact reason, I felt sure that she and Brianese were lovers. I’d considered that possibility before but I’d dismissed it. I’d never assigned much importance to that young woman in her early thirties, always impeccable but never spectacular. I’d written her off as “the secretary that any professional would want”: presentable and efficient.
At the End of a Dull Day Page 5