The perfect country niece.
The Professor introduced her to a few people. They all greeted her courteously but without warmth, and there was no lack of ironic eyerolls. Oh, sure, the niece, those glances eloquently stated. Hey Professor, give us a break! You’re out of date, no doubt about it, but still, you’re one of ours, so we willingly accept these little peccadillos of old age. Still, you could have chosen her more carefully, this young niece of yours.
Once they had made their way through this first round of helloes, the Professor collapsed into an armchair “designed by poor old Sottsass in ’73” (“Sossas, armchair , ’73?” Sabrina diligently jotted down on her iPhone), and started telling his usual round of anecdotes. Four or five losers listened to him, sincerely delighted. Or, perhaps, who knows, they might have been faking it: out of pity, or who knows why. Sabrina was sitting next to Uncle Mimmo, and she laughed when the others laughed and let the old man distractedly stroke her thigh when he thought that no one was watching. Eight hundred euros was still eight hundred euros, after all, but what a pain in the ass! It was obvious that the heart of the party was elsewhere. Maybe out on the terrace that overlooked Piazza Vittorio. In the heart of the Esquiline quarter where Sabrina took great care never to set foot, a hotbed of shit-kicking immigrants that, however, the Professor and his friends found “charming, irresistible, so authentic and alive, the genuinely multiethnic Rome . . . ”
What the fuck? Around here you can’t find an Italian for love or money. They’re all Chinese, and that’s how it is.
At last the Professor felt the urgent need for a quick trip to the bathroom. Sabrina took advantage of the opportunity to scurry out onto the terrace. It was a clear night in late June, but she had other thoughts in her head. The Professor was just a passport to left-wing parties like this, but she’d rather have a nail driven into her head than face another evening’s entertainment like this, so it was time to get your ass in gear, Sabrina.
She started wandering around among the knots of people standing around, she went over to the tables. Everywhere people were talking, talking, talking. They were talking with such passion and determination that they seemed to be deciding the future of the world.
“We’ve got to convert to the zero-mile diet, it’s all about being locavores. Absolutely.”
“I couldn’t agree more. I’ve started drinking only fair-trade, vino libero wine. No more sulfites. They’re a plague. Do you have any idea of how much poison they can legally put in a bottle of wine these days? Up to eighty different components, can you believe it?”
“I adopted a cat. Poor little thing, he’d been meowing outside my door for a week. It broke my heart to just leave him out there, all alone and abandoned. And after all, it only cost four hundred euros for the vaccinations, the veterinarian, and the castration.”
“Four hundred euros? That’s what Luisa charged me to take the cycas plant to the botanic hospital. It needed treatment, she said.”
“Ah, and how did it go?”
“She managed to kill it in just six months.”
“Cycas? Huh? Sidekick? What’s a sidekick plant, someone they take with them to parties? And how did she get sick, this poor sidekick plant?” Sabrina wondered to herself.
Biting into a chili pepper-flavored tarallo, a bald man, just like the bouncers you see at Malgradi’s parties, sighed and said: “I’m reading American Pastoral by Roth. A masterpiece.”
“You’d like to write something like that, wouldn’t you, my friend!”
“I’ve give ten years of my life.”
“Do you think anybody wants ten years of your life?”
“I hear that Matteo Garrone is planning to make a movie about Fabrizio Corona, the photographer . . . ”
“You got that information at the freezer counter, sweetheart. Matteo lives downstairs. He thought about it for a good long while, then he decided to drop it.”
“Too bad. No doubt, he found Corona just as disgusting as everyone else.”
“The thing is that Corona represents the television, the bunga-bunga parties, all those things, and those things are the horror, and the horror can’t be depicted. Not even Fellini knew how to do it, back in his day.”
“The terrible thing is that none of this ever seems to stop!”
“It’s our fault as much as anybody else’s, my dear. We’re just too soft. We stopped putting up any opposition long, long ago.”
A short, fat, bearded guy launched into a sermon about politics.
Sabrina was tempted to yawn. She was drowning in boredom.
They were talking about all sorts of abstruse things, and even when they did say something you could understand, they did it in a way that . . . as if it were only and exclusively their property. And the whole rest of the world could take a hike! For that matter, none of those she’d approached to strike up a conversation had made the slightest effort to involve her.
Teresa had warned her.
Teresa had brooked no discussion on the point.
“That’s an exclusive circle. They’re all little comrades, I don’t know if you get the picture. Getting in is almost impossible. Say the wrong word, and you’re out on your ear!”
And that was the exact impression she was getting. An exclusive circle. Sabrina found herself missing the crude cheerfulness of Malgradi’s social circle. There, surrounded by that herd of satyrs intoxicated on Viagra, at least she’d never felt out of place. They were welcoming, warm, protective. Certainly, the first chance they got they’d dump you and wave a hasty goodbye. But in the meantime, it was thanks to them that she’d gotten as far as she had. And without them, she felt lost.
But when it’s all said and done, where the fuck have you wound up, Sabri’? Holding hands with some toothless old man for eight hundred euros?
She jammed her hand in her purse with a nervous gesture. A line of coke, that’s what she needed right now, to put up with the stress and the disappointment. But Teresa had been categorical on this point, too.
“Forget about the coke. It’s not as if there’s not a little of it going around, but if the larger circle is, so to speak, closed off, the sector of the nostrils is absolutely impenetrable!”
Which means, Sabri’, deal with it, and let’s just smoke ourselves a nice fat ciggy.
“May I?”
Sabrina practically couldn’t believe her own eyes. Someone had finally noticed her. Before her loomed the tall figure of Eugenio Brown, owner of the house. In his hand was a lighter, already aflame.
He was a handsome man. In his early fifties, tall, salt-and-pepper hair, in an Armani suit. A producer. A word that exerted an unquestionable allure over Sabrina. Producer meant film. Maybe television. Why not? She had a fine figure, she’d never had any hesitations. So why not? She wouldn’t exactly be the first girl to pass directly from the bed to the soundstage. Why not?
Eugenio Brown. If you’re going to sell yourself, might as well do it with someone who’s at least somewhat attractive.
“Thanks, I just couldn’t find my lighter.”
“Are you getting bored?”
“No, it’s just that . . . ”
“There are times when my friends manage to be completely detestable.”
“The thing is, I don’t know anyone here.”
“I understand you. Beginnings are always so difficult.”
Sabrina flashed him her most seductive smile. Eugenio Brown put a hand on her arm.
“Do you like this place?”
“It’s a little jewel box.”
Eugenio Brown smiled at her. This was the first time anyone had described the 2,400 square foot penthouse as “a little jewel box.” He stared at her with increased interest.
He was decidedly a good-looking man.
She sensed the desire in him.
But he didn’t seem to be making up his mi
nd to make the first move.
Sabrina felt a surge of impatience. She laid a hand on his. She amplified the seductive effect of her smile.
Eugenio Brown’s lips parted.
A hairy-looking individual in a checked shirt grabbed him by the arm, forcing him to turn around.
“Sorry. Eugenio, Signora Baldini is looking for you.”
“Yes, I’m coming. Until later, then, Signorina . . . ”
“Justine.”
“Justine, right.”
The producer vanished, striding with a lithe step toward a tableful of people concealed behind a lush banana tree.
Checked-shirt lit a Tuscan cigar. Sabrina would gladly have chewed him up and spat him out, the asshole. He’d carried off her prey just at the crucial instant. She turned around to go back to the Professor, but Checked-shirt barred the way. He was smiling, the damned vulture.
“May I have a word with you, Signorina Justine? Or should I say . . . Lara?”
Sabrina looked around. It seemed as if no one was paying them the slightest bit of attention. She raised her hand and was about to sink it into that self-satisfied face. She wanted to leave a mark on him, a scar on that animal. Yes, a visible scar, maybe. After all, at this point, it was clear that the situation was irremediable. But instead he took her hand, lifted it to his lips, and planted a tiny, damp kiss on the back of her hand.
“Don’t worry. I’m not dangerous. I like men. Come on, let’s get something to drink, I need to talk to you.”
There was a curious delicacy to the guy, which somehow she found disarming. She followed him, docile, over to the liquor table. He poured a couple of whiskeys and then steered her into a deserted little corner of the terrace.
His name was Fabio and he was a screenwriter. He was gay, which is how the people on the left say that someone’s a faggot, and he had recognized her even with her short, dyed hair.
“And how did you recognize me, excuse me?”
“From the website. You were the girl on www.larasecrets.com, right?”
“Sorry, but if you’re a faggo . . . if you’re gay, how did you . . . ”
“Ah, but I’m essentially a libertine.”
“Which means?”
“I like everything that has to do with sex.”
“And so?”
“And so I wanted to talk to you about Eugenio Brown.”
“What, him too?”
“No, quite the contrary, Eugenio likes women very much.”
Sabrina heaved a sigh of relief and admitted that, if nothing else, she had to admire his style. For Malgradi and his men, there was no such thing as women. There were only pussies.
“Well?”
“He was recently widowed,” Fabio started over again. “A long and painful disease carried her off. They were a very close couple. Eugenio is one of the few film producers left who still believes in a quality product.”
“Yes, but what’s that to me?”
“He’s a fine person. And he’s very fragile. Don’t hurt him. That’s all.”
The hairy screenwriter withdrew with a smile that was meant to be friendly but that also clearly stated: I warned you, as a friend, but I could easily turn into an implacable enemy. Oh, man, as if she had anything to be scared of from that orangutan. Sabrina tossed back the whiskey and was swept with a wave of excitement. A fragile man. Fragile men can conceal major surprises. Fragile men fall in love. Fragile men can easily pass from the role of customer to that of lover.
Eugenio Brown was walking toward her.
But now Sabrina wasn’t feeling impatient. Now she knew that she’d soon have him in her grip. This was the time to play a little hard to get.
She rushed inside. She found a notebook and a pen, tore out a page and wrote down her cell phone number. Then, seeing that no one was paying any attention to her, she searched the place until, atop a narrow spiral staircase in a little loft, she managed to identify the master bedroom.
She left the sheet of paper in plain view on the bedcovers with their Indian motifs and went back downstairs.
The Professor had fallen asleep. A stream of drool was oozing down his scarf. Sabrina gently awakened him, called a cab, took him home, and put him to bed, just like the good little niece she was supposed to be. That was part of their deal. The only extra that she conceded him was a quick squeeze of her tits. The Professor gratefully peeled off a 200 euro note.
Now she only needed to wait.
She didn’t have to wait long.
Eugenio Brown called the next day, in the morning.
VIII
The Anagnina district had the unmistakable, sickly sweet odor of those places where the stench of humans and cement has not entirely overpowered the scent of the countryside. It reminded Abbas of his Teheran. Certainly, seen from Via Mongrassano, the Castelli Romani were not the Alborz Mountains, and the green terrace on which you could just guess at the location of Frascati had neither the power nor the dark elevation of Mount Tochal. But the air, the air was the same. Especially now that it was summer. It gummed up the mucous membranes of the mouth like sand. It dried out your nostrils. It scratched at the throat with that aftertaste of carbon monoxide and pitch, veined as it was with a reek of rotting carrion and garbage.
His shop was at the corner of Via del Casale Ferranti. It was beyond the last station of the A Line of the Rome metro. Where the sheep had been driven by their hunger for cubic feet. That little hole of a shop must once have been a parking spot, but the fence he’d bought it from swore that it was registered as an “artisanal workshop.” Abbas had made do. He’d lined the wall with cartons and newspapers to insulate it against a perennial and detrimental humidity. The work bench was an old butcher’s counter standing on rusted saw horses. In a cheerful disorder, the blocks of marble served as bases for counters in unfinished cherrywood, holm oak, and the strips of ebony upon which he practiced the art that had belonged to his father and his grandfather. He’d been carving since he was a boy, and those hands of a pianist, with the long graceful fingers, reminded him every day of his good fortune. Even now that, at age sixty, his grip on his mallets and chisels had become less sure and his brown skin had become like onion paper, throwing veins and tendons into relief.
He’d never been able to figure out whether his customers valued his skill or the cut-rate prices he set. But it never seemed as if anyone gave a damn about his sketches. For instance, with that Rocco Anacleti, the one who lived in the Romanina quarter, the one whom everyone in the quarter greeted with all the humble deference you give to a tyrant, things hadn’t gone especially well. With a certain pride Abbas had displayed his grandfather’s sketches on parchment, sketches that he kept lovingly arranged in a leather album.
“And what are these supposed to be?”
“Persian floral motifs.”
“And you think I’m going to put this piece of faggotry on the headboard in my bedroom? This is Rome, we’re not at your house. What I do in bed is I fuck.”
He’d made do with a well-endowed satyr in relief.
“I want it made out of wenge. And it better smell like it’s old,” Rocco had ordered.
But then when he’d seen the finished product, he’d gone out of his mind.
“What am I, a nigger? Do you see my face? What color am I? Am I a nigger, to your eyes? Brighten up this fucking wood. And right away!”
Abbas had been forced to start over. Using bleached holm oak, this time. The cost had spiraled. To dizzying heights, considering the startling vulgarity of that boiserie. A thousand euros. Money he still hadn’t seen. Though he never tired of asking for it. At first, courteously, on the phone. Then he’d gone so far as to send a registered letter to Rocco Anacleti, with a flood of Sirs and capital letters, pointing out that, “in the absence of the courtesy of a reply,” he’d be obliged to contact the lawyer of his artisan’s guild.
At the stoplight at the end of Via Tuscolana, Max pressed the gear shift of his Triumph Street Triple with a gesture of intolerance. The clack as it shifted into first always gave him a subtle rush of pleasure. Because it was the nerve signal of what was yet to happen. It was horribly hot for nighttime. The exhalations of the 108 horses between his legs made his jeans stick to his thighs, the ski mask under his helmet had been reduced to a sponge drenched with sweat, and inside his red sneakers his feet were sizzling like two grilled cheese sandwiches. The Castelli Romani loomed ahead of them. Max detested the Castelli Romani. They had always seemed to him like a dam erected precariously atop an anthill. A few evenings back, on Radio FM 922, Spartaco Liberati, the Voice of Rome, had come out with a riff on his nostalgia for the ponentino, a beloved local westerly wind. And we just don’t have the winds we used to have, it’s all suffocated by the buildings, taller and taller . . . Ah, the Castelli Romani, the ponentino wind . . . the kind of horseshit tour guides love to foist off on you.
The truth was that he felt uneasy.
Rocco Anacleti had told him that there was a matter to be settled with an Iranian. Rocco Anacleti was on edge. That would normally have been a job for Spadino, but Spadino had disappeared. Rocco was on edge and he started coming out with some strange things.
His assignment: to stand watch, and guard Paja and Fieno’s backs.
He didn’t like those two. He didn’t like this job. He didn’t like Rocco Anacleti.
Soon he was going to have to make some decisions.
The meeting had been scheduled out front of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Just past the glass-and-cement rectangles where the Ministry of the Interior had moved the executive headquarters of the anticrime section, the political police, and the highway police. Max rode in second gear until he heard the bike begin to scream, and as he passed the big electrically operated gate surmounted by the escutcheon of the ministry, he beeped his horn as he always did. How could he forego the fun of mocking that cluster of besieged cops in a quarter where they controlled nothing?
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