by Joseph Grady
“You don’t mind Italian espresso do you?” Irene was already filling the machine in the kitchen with two plastic espresso pods.
“That’s wonderful,” said Brian.
Lucy snapped out of her HGTV trance and tried to match Brian’s professional pose, fighting off the weakness in her legs brought on by Galli’s absolutely perfectly furnished apartment — the same weakness that was also sometimes caused by proximity to Scott. She pushed her glasses back up. “You speak English very well, Mrs. Spiga.”
“Oh thank you. There is no need for false flattery. My English is far from where it was a time ago.” She placed two espresso cups beneath the machine’s spout. “I am an English teacher. Or, at least I was… um… eh… a teacher before the children came. They are away with my parents right now.”
Irene turned back to the machine and Brian looked over at Lucy with worry in his eyes. Lucy couldn’t see any detail of Brian’s face through her glasses, but she knew just what that look was about. She smirked back and shrugged her shoulders. What are you going to do? That’s a rough break, but we’ll do fine.
They sat at the dining room table — a long heavy rectangle made of repurposed antique wood and old plumbing pipes. Two blurry shapes arrived in front of them, which Lucy assumed must be the coffee.
“Sugar?”
“No, thank you,” they responded in unison.
“Mrs. Spiga.” Brian’s accent turned into a 1970’s trendy Anglican vicar. “We were saddened to hear of your recent loss.”
“We’d prefer not to take up too much of your time,” continued Lucy. “So perhaps we should just get right to it.”
Irene sat across from them, and Brian set his briefcase on the table, removing a folder and a stack of papers.
“We understand your husband had significant business interests in South Africa,” said Brian. He set a number of forms in front of her, all printed in color on what appeared to be official embassy letterhead. “As such, in concert with local authorities, we would like to ask you for some more information, so that we can file a police report in South Africa as well.”
Irene looked back confused.
“Here, of course, is a document explaining all of your rights.” Lucy passed over ten pages of absolutely incomprehensible — even for native speakers — English legal jargon, followed by ten more pages of Harry Potter in Zulu, formatted to look the same as the legal documents. If you can present people with letterhead, sections full of unchecked boxes, abbreviations, and areas of ‘Do not write: for certified office use only,’ then people will trust you with their lives. Irene remained, deep down, defeated, but she became trusting in front of official paperwork.
“Well, okay,” she said. She took the pen that Brian offered her, and got to work filling out the forms.
I took the liberty of searching the apartment. There were three perfectly arranged bedrooms, one of them with two beds for two young boys. The walls of every room were full of art, but there were hardly any family photos. One corner of the master bedroom did have photos, but they were all clearly full of Irene’s family, not Eugenio’s. Based just on the photos, you would think Eugenio only started to exist beginning with their marriage. Everything smelled just like a typical Italian apartment — a little more wood polish than normal, but that’s about it. No blood. No drugs. No hidden piles of cash. No guns or anything even slightly illegal anywhere. Even the desk with their tax returns smelled honest.
By the time I returned, Irene had finished filling out the forms and had passed them back to Brian. Lucy leaned over, and peered at them from the bottom of her glasses. It was all filled out neatly in block capital letters until… Lucy stopped and slyly pushed up her glasses to look at the form more clearly.
“There is no one written down in the parents category for Eugenio,” she said to Irene.
“Yes,” said Irene. “He never met them.”
“Was he adopted, then?” Lucy asked. Brian’s silence grew heavier. He degraded from professional to uncomfortable.
“No, he was growing up in an orphanage in Varese, staying there until he came to University in Rome.”
“Did he ever know who his parents were, then?” Lucy pressed.
“No, we never knew.”
“Hmm. Perhaps you could put the name of the orphanage on the form?”
“Sure. Why not.” Italians are very familiar with bureaucratic nonsense. An administrative insistence that forms be complete was not foreign to Irene.
“Can you describe your husband’s business interests in South Africa for us?” Lucy asked Irene. Brian grew even more uncomfortable.
“Yes. His job was to… how do you say?… import?”
“Yes, import.”
“Okay, yes, he was importing luxury furniture to Italy from Africa. So he was there, maybe, for a few months every year to look at nice furniture, traveling around with business partners to various of the furniture workshops in Western Cape province to search for popular products to sell in Italian stores.”
“Very good,” said Brian. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Spiga.”
Brian gathered up all the forms, closed his briefcase, and stood up to leave. Lucy wasn’t going to give up that easy. She wasn’t quite sure why they had come in the first place, but she wasn’t going to leave empty handed. “Just one more thing.”
“Sure.”
“What do you know about anyone named Ginevra?”
“Ginevra?” Irene frowned and looked at the ceiling. She shook her head and raised her shoulders. “Nothing. I am sorry.”
Brian was already on his way to the door, so Lucy stood up and followed him. Irene was the last to rise.
“Thank you, so much, Mrs. Spiga,” said Brian, shaking her hand. “Again, we’re so sorry to hear about your loss.”
“Thank you so much for your time,” said Lucy, distracted again by the furniture. She lowered her glasses and took one last unabashed look at the perfection of beauty in the most well furnished house she had ever encountered.
“Yes, it is… uh… no problem,” Irene answered.
Lucy returned an unfeigned consoling look to Irene, shook her hand, and followed Brian out the door. They got on the elevator and I took the stairs. It was all over much quicker than any of us had imagined. By the time I got outside, Brian was already halfway down the block, still in silence, with Lucy trailing after him from behind. So I left them and headed off to Villa Ada, a large park that I hadn’t smelled in a while.
Brian and Lucy went the other direction, back towards the metro stop, under a pall of silence for three blocks. Lucy fought to keep up with Brian, who suddenly felt the need to walk quickly, and to throw his weight around more than normal. When she was sure they were far enough away from the apartment, she took off her glasses and her embassy badge, and almost jogged to catch up to Brian. He came to a sudden halt in front of the metro stop and waited impatiently. When she was close, he held out his briefcase.
“Here.”
She grabbed onto the bottom and held it as though she was only going to keep it for a second, but Brian was already backing away.
“I’m done,” he said. “I’m never — ever — doing anything like that again.”
His jacket fluttered as he turned around and the heels of his shoes clicked away. It was amazing how so much angry weight could move so swiftly while balanced on such small and shiny dress shoes. Lucy lowered the briefcase and held the handle in front of her with both hands, watching the back of his suit descend down the stairs into the metro station, wondering what emotion she was supposed to be feeling after such a bizarre half hour.
Before she could come up with an answer, her phone went off. After just one week of smartphone ownership, the only people who had called her were in her contacts, a long list of just two names, one of whom was Brian. It was clearly not Brian, meaning it must be the other contact. She dropped the briefcase and shot her hand into the exterior pocket of her jacket. But it was not a real pocket — friggen’ busines
s suits! — So she dug both of her hands into both pockets on the inside of the jacket and finally extracted her phone, almost losing the jacket off her shoulders in the process. Cell phone amateur.
“Dai, porca troia, lavora!” she swore at her phone when she had to remember how to work the screen lock. “Come on. Just work with me.”
Despite her derogatory words, a subtle grin of anticipation had already spread itself over her lips, and the tension of the last twenty minutes was suddenly a distant memory. She finally got the screen unlocked and … no… cazzo… it wasn’t Scott. Who the…
“Pronto?” she answered.
“Hi, this is Cristiano Ludovici from La Repubblica.”
“Yeah?”
“Can we meet?”
“How do you have this number?”
“Can we meet?”
“Sure.”
“Can you be at Piazza Navona in half an hour for an apperitivo?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, sounds good. See you then.”
“Alright, ciao,” she said, but Cristiano had already hung up.
Lucy dropped her phone back into her jacket pocket, doing her best to make it look like a phone call was something normal for her. She turned around to get her bearings, picked up the briefcase and caught the sixty-four from termini. All the way down Corso Emmanuele, up to the stop in front of Sant’Andrea della Valle, she couldn’t help but think of the Galli furniture, trying to remember as much detail as possible. Piazza Navona was just a short walk away, but she took her time navigating the paving stones, this time without Brian’s assistance.
From what I understand of human feet, in moccasins it’s easy to feel the pavement or cobblestones beneath you and get around without having to look at the ground too much. In dress shoes, though, you constantly risk a sprained ankle on Italian streets. Roman women, although they can’t run to save their lives, still manage to break the laws of physics by the way they skate around the city sidewalks in high heels. And what’s more, they do so while sending texts, and yelling at the person next to them, seemingly oblivious to the dangerous streets, and never missing a beat. Though she was dressed completely in Italian clothes, Lucy was immediately identifiable as a foreigner by the way she walked with clear attention to the objects beneath her.
And below the cobblestones, a few yards still further beneath her feet, Piazza Navona sat upon the ruins of the large oval shaped ancient Roman stadium, that still mimicked its stadium shape. Contrary to popular belief, in ancient times, the venue had never been used for horse races, but only foot races, so on Sunday mornings — when the light was best for viewing monuments, when nobody in the city was awake, and when Lucy scheduled her long runs in the empty city center — she would always make a point of taking a lap of Piazza Navona.
At midday, though, it was packed to the gills with vendors dressed as artists hawking paintings, obnoxious tour groups taking pictures and buying paintings, and migrants peddling selfie sticks, laser pointers and authentic designer purses. One side of the piazza across from Sant’Agnese was full of expensive outdoor restaurants where important or rich people would sit and watch the world go by, somehow under the impression that the world was interested in watching them. Lucy took a seat on a bench right in the middle, in front of Bernini’s fontana delle quattro fiumi. A young german couple asked her to take a picture of them. She pretended not to speak English, so they made sign language at her, and she said, “No, go away.”
The young couple then thrust their cell phone on a tall woman who was standing next to the bench with a large camera around her neck. That woman looked familiar. Very fashionable. Lucy stood up and surveyed the crowds. The other two weren’t hard to spot, stationed on opposite ends of the piazza. They all occasionally glanced over at Ludovici, who was seated at an outdoor café across from the fountain, scanning the crowd for Lucy. She put her glasses back on, straightened her wig, and headed for the Piazza’s exit, texting Ludovici:
I’ll be at the Abbey Lounge down the street. Call off the sharpshooters.
She pushed the frames of her pink round goggles down to the tip of her nose. Cristiano picked up his phone, extinguished his cigarette, and pounded out another message on his phone. Even when texting, Italians still talk with their hands. In unison, all three models pulled out their own phones, met in the center, and wandered away.
Cristiano left a few euros on the table and strolled in Lucy’s direction with his hands in his pockets. As he passed by, she took out her phone and pretended to be texting. He didn’t recognize her, and progressed down the narrow lane that led to the Abbey Lounge.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ANCORA IL GIORNALISTA
Lucy followed Cristiano Ludovici as best she could, which was not very fast at all. By the time she rang the little bell attached to the pub’s heavy wood and stained glass door, Cristiano was already seated at a corner table behind a pint of Guinness. The Abbey Lounge was an Irish pub tucked away in an alley in central Rome that’s popular with local English speaking residents. The place was mostly empty, but there was already a steady trickle of people in and out — those leaving work early, or taking a very late lunch. Within an hour it would be packed, and would stay that way until the wee hours of the morning. It was a small thing, but Lucy preferred to meet Cristiano on her territory, not his.
She headed straight for the bathroom, where she removed the blond wig and glasses, and did her best to put some life back into the compressed helmet of braids and hairspray that her real hair had become. She tore off her suit jacket, took a long look at the trashcan, but, just in case it might come in handy later, she stuffed it into the briefcase. Rubbing water on her eyebrows did nothing to make them any less blond, so she shrugged her shoulders at her reflection and went out to meet Cristiano.
“Ciao Cristiano. Sorry, I hope you weren’t waiting too long.”
“Not a problem.”
“Lucy Fox!” a round Irishman with a black Dropkick Murphy t-shirt and three day’s worth of gray beard stubble approached their table with a big smile on his face. “It’s been a long time! Why the hell did you just up and disappear on us? Some of us were worried stiff and we were all beginnin’ to place bets on when your body would turn up somewhere.”
“I’m alive.”
“Well, let’s see if we can’t fix that. You’ll have a pint then?”
“Yeah.”
He shuffled off towards the bar humming along with the background music.
“I like this place,” Cristiano glanced around at the wood panelling and the laid back atmosphere. “I must be the only Italian here.”
“Shhh,” she put her finger in front of her lips. “Don’t let ’em know. They’ll kick you out.”
“Really?”
“No, not really. As long as you pay, they’re happy to have you. But you’re not going to be anybody’s favorite here if you don’t speak English.”
“I worked at an Irish pub in New York for five years.” Lucy felt like kicking herself in the back. So much for meeting on my own terf.
“An Irish pub with Italian staff?” she said. “That’s very New York.”
“Very New York indeed. This must be a place that you expats keep as a secret among yourselves.”
“I mean… I don’t know if it’s a secret… I’d just never thought of inviting an Italian here until just now.”
“There you are, love.” The waiter returned with a coaster and a pint, and turned to Cristiano, “Now, listen, do you realize what you’re getting yourself into with this girl here?”
“I have a vague idea, but I’m not sure,” he answered.
“Did you ever read any Patrick Kavanaugh?”
“No.”
“It often occurs to me that we love most what makes us miserable. In my opinion, the damned are damned because they enjoy being damned.” He wandered back towards the bar, turned around, pointed at Cristiano and yelled across the room, “Now don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
“That’s Pete.”
“Seems like a nice guy.”
“Jovial, yes. Nice isn’t the first word I’d use.”
“Anyways, that guy Kavanaugh’s wrong. La grandezza dell’uomo sta in questo,” Cristiano muttered quietly at his beer, more to himself than to Lucy, “che esso ha coscienza della propria miseria. La vera dignità dell’uomo sta nella sofferenza.”132
Cristiano remained silent, and Lucy wasn’t sure what to do with that, so she said the first thing that came to mind, “I used to come here a lot,” she held her glass aloft, clinked it next to Cristiano’s, and took a sip. “Too much.”
“There are worse ways to spend your time. Here, at least, there’s a good spirit, friends, nobody gets killed.”
“Oh, there’s spirits alright.”
“In vino veritas.”
“We’re still off the record, right?”
“Of course. You know, I didn’t imagine you as the sort of person to be a regular at a bar.”
“I’m not anymore. I was, but I’m not anymore. When I first got to Italy, the roommates at Palazzo Mortimer were all Italians, so I’d come here late at night when they broadcast American sports, to argue with other Americans about football and baseball and fight over the remote control.”
“So you’re into sports, too, then?” Even off the record, Cristiano was always a journalist.