“That was a long time ago.”
“Certain things always work, Fa’.”
When it became clear that Eugenio Brown was of the same opinion, Fabio’s feelings were crushed. He reluctantly jotted down the pitch that he’d been commissioned to develop, one of the most atrocious pieces of shit he’d ever concocted. Eugenio had it translated into English and sent an email to a contact of his at the Fun Company. The reply was quick in coming. “Prime.” Which, from the Americans, meant: first rate.
Not even three days after their first conversation, Fabio shows up at Sabrina’s place with a digital tape recorder and asks her to tell him the story of her life, from the very beginning, leaving out nothing.
And so it was that Sabrina entered the world of the movies by the front door.
Fabio’s digital tape recorder never did get used.
“That piece of shit is worthless!” she told him, giving Fabio a glare of contempt as he prepared a mojito in the belief that it would help her to remember. They had to do this another way. Her way.
“You know what let’s do, Fabbie’? I’ll take Eugenio on a nice guided whore-tour. You see what I mean? Forget about this bullshit tape recorder. Don’t take it the wrong way. But just Eugenio, though.”
When night fell, Sabrina got dolled up in what she still had left over from her previous life. Things that she’d had a hard time finding in her new wardrobe, the wardrobe of a great lady. She’d had no difficulty slipping into the hot pink microskirt, and her tits, free of any bra, still made quite a spectacular show under the skimpy black silk H&M tanktop, a thoughtful gift from an Italian stockbroker with a house and a family in London. One of her last customers, a guy who never failed to get her aroused, someone she’d always chosen to say nothing about to Eugenio. Standing in front of the mirror, smoothing her ass as she twisted and craned her neck, brushing her fingertips over her thighs, clad snugly in fishnet stockings, she decided she was quite pleased with what she saw. The monogamy and smooth sailing of conjugal life, as it were, had never really captured her imagination. Deeply amused, she’d watched as Eugenio chose a tweed jacket and a pair of heavy boiled wool trousers that rode low on his hips, along with a white shirt and a wool tartan tie.
“Sweetheart, we’re not going to one of your parties. And after all, you look like my grandfather.”
He had nodded with a gesture of pained reluctance, convinced as he was that this nocturnal scouting expedition that Sabrina had imposed upon him, and upon which they were about to set off, might well turn into an intolerable ordeal.
“Sabrina, are you sure we need to do this? Wouldn’t it have been better to just stick with the tape recorder? We could have just stayed here, in the comfort of our home, you and I. To tell the story of your life, you don’t actually have to relive it.”
“Oh no . . . this again? I already told Fabio: are you or aren’t you interested in making this movie? What’s the matter, don’t you know that certain things have to be seen? Haven’t you ever gone out with a whore, you?”
“Oh please, I beg you, you know that I don’t . . . ”
“Sure, sure. That’s what you all say.”
The outfit had turned her back into a hooker in the blink of an eye. And Sabrina had decided not to sacrifice so much as drop of that defiant erotic brashness that had made her what she was and that had brought her as far as she had come. One more night. Just one more night.
Sabrina wrapped her foxtail around her neck, switched on the ignition of the Porsche Boxster, and while Eugenio, in the passenger seat, was still fiddling with his seatbelt, she rocked it into first gear and jammed down the accelerator, running two red lights on Via Conte Verde, heading in the direction of Porta Maggiore. When they pulled onto the Rome-L’Aquila highway, Eugenio started looking around with a vaguely bewildered expression on his face.
“Sorry to ask, because I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but this road takes us to Abruzzo.”
“Euge’, it’s clear that all you chic lefties have overlooked a big piece of Rome.”
“We’re radical chic, if anything. Radical chic, Sabrina.”
“Oh, sure, whatever. Radicals, Communists. As you like it. You still don’t know a fucking thing. Does Ponte di Nona mean anything to you?”
“Tor di Nona is the other way, my love, toward Piazza Navona.”
“You might have gone to Tor di Nona. Ponte di Nona is what I’m talking about. Collatina, Palmiro Togliatti . . . Anything ring a bell for you, Euge’?”
He stared at her with a blank expression. Sabrina burst out in an impertinent laugh.
“I’m taking you to Patagonia.”
“What’s that?”
“A chow-down.”
“Oh, a restaurant.”
“Oh, let’s not exaggerate. It’s a place where you eat until you blow a gasket. And where I used to go when I first started working.”
“You never told me you worked as a waitress.”
“What are you talking about, waitress, Euge’? At Patagonia, you can eat a whole ox for thirty euros. All meat, only meat. You know what I mean? And do you know what happens to boys when they eat too much meat?”
Eugenio ran a hand over his forehead.
“There you go. Now you understand. The boys can’t hold it in. Fifty euros, five minutes, and you’re done.”
The parking lot at Patagonia was a large dirt area bounded by Via di Grotta di Gregna and Via Collatina Vecchia. Another piece of Rome that they’d started but never bothered to finish. If it hadn’t been for the greasy smoke from the grills and the neon sign with a stylized image of the great South American mountain, the three industrial sheds that the sign was announcing could easily have been taken for anonymous warehouses.
Sabrina locked up the Porsche, smoothed her dress over her hips, and locked arms with Eugenio.
“Beef, chicken, or pork?”
“Do I have to decide in the parking lot? Can’t we get a table and sit down, first?”
“If you want beef, you go into the restaurant on the left. Chicken in the middle, and pork on the right.”
“Ah.”
“I’d go for pork, Euge’.”
“You think?”
“I had the best luck with the guys from the pork side.”
“I somehow don’t have any trouble believing it.”
“Hey, no, Euge’. Don’t be like that, now. This is work. We’re working on a movie. You’re the one who told me you wanted to know.”
The guy who greeted them at the monumental refrigerator counter where orders were taken was wearing a butcher’s apron spattered with dried blood. His name was Enzo and he was in his early forties. He’d been born in Argentina but he grew up in Tor Bella Monaca. He had a trim physique, two muscular forearms, perfectly waxed and hairless, which he plunged into mountains of sausages, spare ribs, chops, and rump roasts. He then sliced everything into portions with a big old cleaver straight out of a horror flick according to the clients’ appetite, then, after weighing it, he sent the meat to the flaming grills behind him. He immediately recognized Sabrina, and displayed exactly the kind of knowing familiarity that Eugenio had been dreading.
“Well, would you look at who’s here . . . Hey, beautiful, it’s been a lifetime.”
“Ciao, Enzo, you’re just as handsome as ever.”
“Outside, but especially inside, Sabri’.”
“I remember, Enzo, I remember.”
“Have you decided to bring your handsome men back here again?”
Sabrina smiled, waving Eugenio over. Enzo reeked of testosterone and sausage. And he didn’t even give Eugenio time to introduce himself.
“If this is your first time, you can’t even imagine.”
Brown nodded.
“Yes, Sabrina told me that the food here is just exquisite. You do pork here, right?”
&n
bsp; “No, what did you think I was talking about? Sabrina, I mean. If this is your first time tonight, she’ll send you right out of this world.”
Eugenio delicately took Sabrina’s hand and led her to one of the tables set with a packing paper tablecloth. And as he watched her he understood that she was having as much fun as a little girl.
“Listen, my love, I overestimated my powers of endurance. I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle this.”
Her smile faded into a sudden pout.
“But we haven’t even started the evening.”
“You can tell me what you used to do and where you used to do it back home.”
“Oh, sure, with the tape recorder . . . Go on, get out of here.”
Brown knew that the boundary between capricious and downright furious was very thin.
“Then help me, Sabrina.”
“It’s very simple, Euge’. Wipe off that look of someone visiting the zoo.”
“Menagerie, Sabrina.”
“Have you ever heard of a whore in a menagerie?”
“You’re right, sorry.”
“My love, when you get right down to it, men are men. When I was in this line of work, that’s the way I thought about it. What difference is there whether you screw someone who’s got a platinum dick or a copper one? You worked out a price in advance. After all, it’s not like you’re supposed to fall in love with him. Because if you fall in love, the way I did, then you quit the business. If your prince finally arrives . . . ”
Sabrina let the consideration drop with a simper. And she ran the tip of her shoe up the inside of Brown’s thigh.
“Is that how it worked with your customers?”
“More or less.”
During the hour they sat at their table at Patagonia, Sabrina introduced him to a round half dozen of them. A masculine sampling of variegated humanity, as Brown mentally noted. Dario, a bus driver for ATAC, Rome’s public transit system. Sergio, a male nurse at the general hospital. Fernando, a bank teller at the main agency of a major bank from Northern Italy. Tiziano, a soccer player in Lega Pro, the Italian professional football league. Davide, a graduate student in Anthropology, and Silvio, a taxi driver, who also made a point of introducing his wife, a lovely young woman who hugged and kissed Sabrina like a sister. All those men shared a vitality and cheerfulness that he had perhaps never possessed. And the joy with which they greeted that woman who was now his companion, but who had given the same pleasure to them, made him think deeply about the shell he’d worn and carried with him all his life. Those horny men were brash but sincere. They had frequented whores and made no bones about it. They weren’t ashamed of themselves or of Sabrina. Who was staring at him again.
“Nice, aren’t they?”
“Do you miss them?”
“What a pain in the ass you are, Euge’.”
“Look, it’s not an issue of jealousy.”
“I know exactly what the problem is.”
“You do?”
“It’s the reason why, at a certain point, I couldn’t stand being an escort anymore. You see, Euge’, when you’re just a young girl and you walk the streets, you wind up with people like you. And when you start going out on dates and talking bullshit at parties, like the one at your place, then you wind up wanting to throw up all the time. Because men turn into assholes. They fuck you, but they’re ashamed of themselves, the rats, Euge’.”
Suddenly Brown had a splitting migraine.
“Do we have to stay here all night long?”
“No. I’m taking you to the Pashà Caffè.”
Eugenio couldn’t believe his eyes. What he was looking at was a hot pink rectangle along Via Tiburtina, in the Settecamini area. It boasted a crude Middle Eastern design and a large luminous sign in Arabic. Something midway between a Saudi Arabian nightclub of the third millennium and a neomelodic hallucination.
“Is that a joke, Sabrina?”
“Euge’, go look on the internet. Do you know what category the Pashà Caffè is under?”
“No.”
“Category ‘pick-up club.’ And also under ‘luxury.’ Did you think I was taking you to some dark spot along the boulevards? That’s strictly for losers.”
The space was immense. At least twenty thousand square feet, Eugenio decided as he entered the place, making a rough estimate. A slot machine room, a karaoke stage, a nightclub space and a large bar, with Asian-style chromatic light shows. Purple, red, blue, green, and yellow, in all possible shades of the rainbow. From pastel to electric. Capable of highlighting lithe young women’s bodies and the dilated pupils of chronically horny older men.
Brown was standing there, frozen to the spot, as he scrutinized that mass of humanity endlessly rubbing bodies together, shrouded in a mist of cheap perfume and throbbing with a desire that you’d have to describe as chemical more than hormonal.
“My love, at least this scrap of scarf that you call a tie, please take it off . . . ”
Sabrina’s perfidious observation finally convinced him to step away from the terracotta floor tile in front of the bar where, in a sort of trance, he seemed to have put down roots. He went over to a little settee where two women he guessed to be Ukrainian were picking at a sampling of feijoada. It was unclear to him why, in a place that seemed to have been decorated with a sultan’s caravanserai in mind, they should be serving Brazilian cuisine. But he preferred not to ask, clearly flattered by the insistent glances one of the two women kept turning in his direction.
Sabrina watched Eugenio with a smile of amusement playing over her lips, remaining at a safe distance, until a guy in his early thirties whispered into her ear a question about her price for a quickie in the parking lot. At that point she gestured toward Brown, and while the guy threw his arms wide in helplessness, she went over to him.
“Euge’, you can’t possibly think that you picked up these two with your charm.”
“Why not?”
“Perché so’ du’ zoccole.” Because they’re a couple of whores, she said in dialect.
But the way she leaned on the Z and the two C’s was so emphatic that the two women on the settee seemed to be flattered, rather than offended.
“We didn’t know that the customer belonged to you,” said the one who looked younger, and was clearly proud of a pair of tits that defied the known laws of gravity.
Sabrina took Eugenio by the hand and led him toward the bar, where he tried to order a malt whiskey. Sabrina changed the order to a can of Red Bull.
Brown turned the can over and over in his hands as if it were some mysterious object.
“What is it?”
“It’ll give you a boost.”
“Please, Sabrina. I’m begging you.”
And that was when she turned serious. Truly serious.
“Are you sure about the movie? Look, you can’t pull it off if you don’t understand how it works.”
“I already know how you pick up a prostitute. There was no need for you to subject me to this torture. I wanted to understand what it was like for you, in that other life.”
“And you still haven’t figured it out?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And that’s why you have to get it hard. If not, you won’t understand. If you want to understand what’s in the mind of a working girl, you have to start with what’s in the trousers of a man, my dear film producer.”
By the time they got home it was practically dawn. Without uttering a word. The time needed for Eugenio Brown to gag down the last drop of Red Bull. As they rode the elevator up to the penthouse, Eugenio tried stringing together a few mumbled sentences that could break the stony silence. But Sabrina wouldn’t let him get a word out, sliding a little pill under his tongue. He put up no resistance.
Eugenio fell asleep when the sun was already high in the sky. After one
last glance at Sabrina’s naked body beside him, and his own erection which still gave no sign of subsiding.
Prime, he thought, finally closing his eyes. That’s how the film would turn out, too, to use the word the Americans seemed to like: prime. It was the absolute best, goddamn it!
XL
Out of respect for Ciro Viglione, who was now under perpetual house arrest, and because the possibility of wiretaps was now so clearly elevated—a certainty, according to Parisi—the meeting was held in the office of Temistocle Malgradi, at Villa Marianna.
In a half-empty medical clinic, with long hallways lit by the asymmetrical glow of security lights, Samurai arrived on time, at nine on the dot, escorted by Max.
Rocco Perri, who was the master of the house, blocked the philosopher’s way.
“He wasn’t invited, Samurai.”
“He’s with me.”
“As you think best. But Ciro’s not going to like it. He’s already on the warpath, I’m warning you.”
“What about you?”
The Calabrian didn’t answer, entrenching himself behind a smile of false courtesy. Then he proceeded to carry out a thorough body search.
Once he’d established that everything was in order, Rocco accompanied them to Malgradi’s office, where Silvio Anacleti and Ciro Viglione were waiting for them. Viglione was in the boss’s chair, seated behind the chief physician’s desk.
As soon as he set foot in the room, Samurai, bothered by the odor of the Tuscan cigars that the Camorrista practically chain-smoked, went over the window and threw it open, without bothering to say even a word of greeting.
Ciro gave him a look of astonishment. Who the hell did he think he was, this fucking Samurai? Didn’t he realize that he might very easily be leaving that meeting feet-first? What the hell, had he finally gone completely and irrevocably insane?
He’d prepared a nice speech, Ciro had. A tough, decisive speech, the kind of speech a real boss might deliver, forget about Julius Caesar or even Il Duce, God rest his soul.
What the hell, Samurai! I ask you, no wait, I order you to put an end to the war, or let’s call it what it is, the agitation, as you like to say, and instead of doing what you’re told, you throw gasoline on the fire? Who on earth ordered you to kill Number Eight? And just when we’d come to an understanding . . . Now the result of this brilliant idea was right there, for all of them to see. They had the Carabinieri breathing down their necks, that bastard the colonel, and now even the judge had woken up, that son of a bitch Di Candyass who sure as could be, they had Parisi’s word on it, had already planted microphones and bugs and phone taps on them all. And they’d found the papers, the papers, by the blood of Christ! And how long do you think it’s going to take them to put two and two together and come up with four, eh? Excellent work, Samura’! Uncle Nino is clamoring for vendetta. We didn’t even invite Denis, who’s now ’o Masto, the commander in chief, because we don’t want any bloodshed in here, but you’d better watch your back, because that guy is a rabid dog . . . but most important of all, the whole deal could be about to fall through. The Great Project! So now, Samurai, either you give us a reasonable explanation, or there’s no point whining about it. It’s your ass that’s on the line!
Suburra Page 32