We'll Sleep When We're Old

by Pino Corrias

  “Why in the elevator?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s one of those things straight out of the gossip mags that make boys and housewives dream.”

  Instead of some grim Mafia plot, what will pop out is a story of radiant passion. The movie will go great guns. And nobody’ll get hurt.

  “Does Jacaranda already know all about it?”

  “I talked to her.”

  “And?”

  “She played a little hard to get, but just because she enjoys busting my balls, making me yearn for her, and then upping the price. No two ways about it, she’s an actress. You know her, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve talked to her once or twice by mistake. I doubt she remembers me.”

  “Oh, yes, she does. She remembers you perfectly.” Oscar always knows how to apply tiny areas of pressure to the imaginations of his audience. “You’re not going to tell me you don’t like her?”

  “She’s pretty and off the balcony.” Oscar smiles, drinks, and takes tremendous pleasure in laying out the net.

  Andrea is walking into it with both feet: “She’s what?”

  “Off the balcony, a little bit nuts.”

  “Those are the ones we usually like, aren’t they?”

  In fact. The idea of running away with Jacaranda Rizzi, acting out a love story with her, spending time with her, completely free of any of the anxieties attendant on performance or courtship, at this point piques his curiosity more than it worries him. He’ll see what it’s like to live in someone else’s shoes. And maybe even in his own shoes, and in the shoes of the divine diva—you never know.

  Oscar keeps pouring. He asks the waiter for more ice, then he slips his hand into his inside jacket pocket and pulls out a roll of bills, held tight with a rubber band. “Let me advance you a roll of large for your pocket expenses; that way nobody will use credit cards or fuck things up some other way. Count it.”

  Andrea looks at the stack of cash, hefts it, and whistles.

  Oscar specifies, “That’s five thousand.”

  “Fuck. Why are you so generous all of a sudden?”

  “I feel like it. But you have to promise me you’ll take her out at least once to Le Boeuf sur le Toit, just a couple of blocks from the Champs-Élysées, the food is fantastic and one night Helga and I even had sex there, slipping into the women’s bathroom and fucking. That was our first trip to Paris.”

  “While you’re at it, why don’t you tell me what to order.”

  “Asshole. Do what you like, but if you made an effort to fuck her in that restaurant, you’d make me happy. A memory that blooms once again. You know what a romantic guy I am.”

  They laugh, they drink a toast with the last of the whisky. And they even hug before paying the check. They’re so in tune, so on the same wavelength, that Andrea doesn’t even begin to suspect that anything could possibly go wrong. The movies are so much more innocuous than real life. Even when real life seems like an innocuous dinner among friends.

  The Big Villa, the Party

  Milly Gallo Bautista’s oversize villa is on the beach of Sabaudia.

  Sabaudia is the consolation of all of La Dolce Roma. It speaks of adventures from years gone by. It has white villas designed by Michele Busiri Vici, set since the long-ago thirties between the green of the maquis and the sand dunes, locations that make one imagine before-dinner aperitifs at sunset among the columns of Villa Volpi, matrons with broad hats and Dalmatian dogs. Here there has been real estate speculation, illegal construction, and general slovenliness, and yet the aesthetic harmony has never been lost. There has been the messy disorder of certain movie sets built out on the dunes, not only the sentimental shadows of Germi’s Divorce Italian Style, but also the cheerful bright light of Salce’s Crazy Desire, with an unsettling Catherine Spaak, the queen of the cinema of those years. And then the technicolor assault of mass holiday-going, the famous swims of Alberto Moravia, king of horny writers (“A guy with his dick always slung over his shoulder,” says Oscar, the oracle), the hastily organized soccer games of Pasolini, before his atrocious murder, the new millionaire monsters, the soccer players, the fashion models, the producers, the paparazzi, and the latest generation of beachside houses, just a shade less ugly than those of the seventies, like Milly Gallo Bautista’s huge imperial villa, entirely disproportionate in every detail, to give you some idea of the sheer wealth of majestic ignorance.

  The low green sea is perfectly suited to the place. Certain days it’s transparent to the point of perfection, buffed to a gloss by the north wind, and certain others it transforms into a green the color of the bottom of a bottle, deaf to light like the seacoast in August, crushed by the heat, by the automobiles caught on land in traffic jams, and by the swimmers who fill the water. Or else it’s perfectly immobile under the May moon, as it is now.

  Oscar and Andrea come screeching up to the front gate, which opens automatically, revealing the trees of the grounds beyond, the terraces descending, and behind them, the sea. A bodyguard in black gestures for them to park farther on, toward a cluster of other automobiles with aggressive bodywork clogging up an oblique clearing. They wedge the golden Jaguar between a metallic convertible and a camo-patterned Jeep. Once they get out, a breeze charged with salt air and music caresses their faces.

  Before locking the car, they put on their jackets. Oscar’s wearing a navy blue Tasmanian wool suit with a dove-gray shirt buttoned to the collar. Andrea is wearing a black Paul Smith suit in light corduroy with a steel-gray crew neck T-shirt.

  Oscar looks him right in the eyes. “All right then, are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “We’re about to go onstage.”

  “Okay.”

  “To the bitter end, don’t forget.”

  “To the bitter end.”

  He hands him the silver-and-leather keychain with the Jaguar tattoo. “Treat my baby right,” he says, pointing to the hood of the car, which is emitting a glowing warmth.

  “What time is the driver coming to get you?”

  “I told him to be here at sunrise, when you and Jacaranda will already be at the Swiss border.”

  “Is there anything I should know about the car?”

  “Yes: that a beauty like this one is well beyond your reach. So if you wreck it, you’re in trouble.”

  “Nice, what else?”

  “It has a turbocharged gasoline engine. It’ll do two hundred miles per hour. If you try it and they catch you, they’ll tear your license up in front of your eyes and then handcuff you. So do as you think best.”

  “I know how to take care of myself. Relax.”

  “I’m already relaxed, what about you?” And as he says it, he clicks open the trunk, sticks in his head, and snarls, “Fuck, I should have guessed!”

  “What?”

  “That bitch Helga never even took the luggage out of the trunk from her trip to the mountains.”

  In the dim luminescence of the luggage compartment there are three bags in rigid blue plastic, covered by canvas, and tucked so far back you can’t even see them.

  “Well, what’s it matter to us? We’ll just leave them there. Let’s go see what that cokehead Milly has cooked up for us.”

  Even while they’re still under the portico they greet faces that emerge from the darkness. A couple of babes call out loudly and cheerfully, “Oscar, my love!” A guy in a white jacket with a face to match gets up from his table: “May I introduce you to my new girlfriend?” he asks, pointing to a big-eyed blond with crossed legs. Oscar says, “I just got here, give me a chance to catch my breath.” And the other guy, “Of course, sorry, it’s just that I never see you. I have a new story I’d love to have you read.” Oscar, without even slowing down, pats his cheek and flashes a broad, cardsharp smile. “In that case, I’d rather have you introduce me to your girlfriend,” he says, still walking. “What’s the story?” The guy tags after him. “Actually, it’s two stories, a psych
ological intrigue between a man and a woman that eventually turns sexual. It’s set in the world of stocks and bonds.”

  Oscar slows down. The blond has stood up, after the guy in the white jacket did. The blond is a bombshell and well deserving of a halt. Oscar stops entirely. The blond smiles at him without breaking eye contact. Oscar drinks her in; the blond laughs instantly, and the connection is established. As Oscar heads off, he says to her, “Don’t wander away.”

  Andrea grabs a vodka from a passing waiter, says hi to Antonia Morganti, the screenwriter of the multiple-prizewinning movie Love and Sand, and she gives him a hug. “You and your Oscar go everywhere together, you wouldn’t be a little gay for each other, would you?” He kisses his friend Fernanda, a.k.a. Ninni, who says to him, “I just signed up for the new movie. I’m moving to London for two months. All right with you if I pop you into my suitcase?” Andrea smiles at her, and as he gives her another kiss, he remembers her perfume. “I’ll think it over. I might have to leave for a while myself. But trust me, I adore you.” Continuing toward the front door he ignores a fat man who offers him a sparking, sizzling joint, a guy reading the tarot cards of a dazzlingly beautiful young black woman, and a bunch of people farther on, sitting in white armchairs, surrounded by candle flames, gusting whiffs of hashish, hands brushing, all of them apparently reliving a long-ago time of their lives.

  When they walk in through the villa’s two sets of front doors, first the outer doors, then the inner ones, Andrea and Oscar find themselves plunged into a weltering bedlam that reeks of an array of different deodorants, nicotine, and fried foods. The music tumbles down from on high like a thunderstorm. The herd of human beings mills around beneath. Getting drenched.

  “Jacaranda must be down there.” Oscar and Andrea walk into the semidarkness of the party, heading for the maximum density of bodies and furnishings that, at the end of the second hallway, lay siege to the big living room. Among the moving bodies they recognize the producers of the two series Wait for Me and The Crocodile’s Heart, both recipients last year of awards at Capri, Siracusa, and Capalbio; the two leads in Indecent Love, who’ve just finished writing a book about their favorite vegan recipes; the star of Robbery Squad, Vittorio Migliore, muscle bound from bodybuilding, with his third wife, Anouk, ex-model and ex-junkie; the French financiers behind the series Isn’t Life Grand? as they drink toasts with the two lead actresses, Sissi and Margot, still a longtime couple ever since the days when they were picking up gigs in the network of apartments used for couple swapping.

  For everyone Oscar had a hug, a smile, as if they really were friends. How are you? How long has it been? Do you have good shit? The usual things, then the wave of bodies slackens, the music in the new living room towers over them.

  “If we run into Milly, don’t tell her anything about the plan.”

  “Ah, good to know. You hadn’t mentioned that.”

  They shout at each other.

  “What?”

  “About the plan!”

  “There are only three of us who know: you, me, and Jacaranda. And that’s already too many.”

  “What about the two muckrakers?”

  “Who?”

  There are people dancing. Percussions, synthesizers, and lights make the air vibrate.

  “The muckrakers!”

  “All they know is what I told them and they don’t ask questions. They obey and nothing more.”

  There’s more human flesh sprawled all over the sofas, young women zapped by alcohol, barefoot men and men wearing ties, a couple of girls touching each other, a zoned-out DJ with a headful of dreadlocks, surrounded by spinning colored lights, transforming the walls into a multitude of shadows that loom and depart in surging waves. And even a little beagle, in the throes of a canine trance induced by excessive noise, spinning on his tail. The percussions bombard the walls. The walls tilt and sway.

  Out of a reef of shoulders with clouds of smoke pops a fat woman dressed up in strawberry-colored latex and blue enamel. She points both her forefingers straight at Oscar, opens her mouth wide, and shouts, “You filthy goddamn son of a bitch!” Then she bursts into a loud laugh when she sees Andrea. “You’re here, at last!” This is the mistress of the house. This is, in fact, Milly Gallo Bautista.

  Milly and Her Two Hundred and Forty Pounds

  Milly has an inner world that you can’t see, covered up by her two hundred and forty pounds of white fat. Not satisfied with the outer shell, she adds into the bargain the laughter, the embraces, the slaps on the back. All methods for steering attention away from her black heart, which beats in silence from down there, pumping aggressivity, resentment, thirst for revenge, and a sugar-sweet rage that she savors in solitude.

  To look at her now, you’d never imagine how slender and sweet she was in her youth, as melancholy as a frightened pit bull puppy, clear confirmation of the rule that the dogs that are most timid as puppies will become the most aggressive adults, if only to even up the score.

  From age zero to age eighteen, Milly was just another out-of-sorts inmate at the orphanage of Our Lady of Sorrows, in the hills around Narni, in Umbria. In those grim days, she possessed a rag doll named Ophelia, a bed, a little woolen overcoat, and no memories that made her particularly unhappy. All of her torments belonged to the present: she loved music, but she was forbidden to dance. She loved life, but she was forbidden to live. Released from the orphanage with a teaching certificate, she took off. In Rome, after a year of substitute teaching, she finally found a job that allowed her to breathe. She was working as a cashier in a pastry shop in the Trieste neighborhood, and she loved it. She adored chatting with the customers. She adored the smell of the custard, the little brightly colored pastries lined up in the display cases, the fragrance of the chocolate, the sweet blizzards of confectioners’ sugar dusting the maritozzo currant buns: all of these were things she’d only drawn pictures of as a girl. She was lovely as only freshly blooming wildflowers can be. She was just waiting for the sunlight that would let her stretch her body in sensual elasticity, filling her fleshy lips with passion and her eyes with emotional flame. A young theater director fell in love with her and became that light. His name was Filippo Parodi, Genoa born, a little nutty and kindhearted, with the soul and the literary gifts of a poet, and he’d bring her camellias and tremble as he took her clothes off. She even became an actress for him. She put on a beauty mark and a blond wig to play a Marilyn from the Ligurian provinces in a play that was as half baked as it was romantic, and in the course of that experience, as she learned to perform someone else’s life, she understood things that had never even occurred to her. For instance, that love and sex can make human beings do crazy things. As can loneliness. And that beauty is a mineral deposit riddled with deceit, which can give you the world on a silver tray, but sooner or later it’s bound to present you with the bill, until you just can’t sleep nights. Which is why the real Marilyn died in the poisonous aftermath of an overdose of sleeping pills. But that was never going to happen to her, Milly Gallo, an orphan, alone in the world, but an enemy to all loneliness.

  And so when cruel fate took everything away from her for a second time, robbing her of her sweet Filippo, who died in her arms, killed by a neglected case of pneumonia, Milly confirmed to herself that she wouldn’t allow herself to be bent low by destiny: she’d do her best to bend destiny to her will.

  She dried her tears and reined in her grief. She stopped acting on stage and started doing it in life. She used her impatience with shyness to become even more aggressive, more ostentatious, and perhaps even more beautiful. Selling herself on the installment plan would have been easy, too easy, especially now that sex had become of the utmost indifference to her. And men no longer scared her. But she didn’t want life’s spare change, she wanted to carve out a place for herself in the world that was big enough to hold her new dreams without necessarily having to clear out all her memories.

  From a fantastic coworker at the pastry shop—blond, Roman, with stil
etto heels and a prodigious laugh—she learned her first rule of life, which ran thus: “Never give blow jobs to men with small dicks if you don’t want to get wrinkled lips.”

  And so it was with judicious care that she selected the lovers she meant to crown. The first one would have to have a fortune. And so she chose Mariano Lupi, building contractor and real estate speculator from the Castelli Romani, nicknamed “Cement” in honor of the much-loved raw material he worked in; she’d landed him during the before-dinner drinks catered by the pastry shop for the inauguration of a major construction project. Mariano was twice her age, so cheerful that he verged on lunacy, and he drank, and cheated, and bribed, and fucked anything that moved within arm’s reach, including waitresses. She pretended to yield out of sheer passion, but she had the wit to give in slowly, until he was on tenterhooks, consumed with lust, and finally in love, until he plunged head over heels and she surfaced six years later. At the end of this time, before remarrying the first of his three wives, he was kind enough to put her name on the deeds to six one-bedroom apartments (“an apartment for every year of love, my darling tea sandwich”) in a planned satellite community he was building not far from Fiumicino.

  Her second sweetheart, three years later, became her first husband: she married José Bautista, who also dreamed of becoming a poet, but unlike the late, lamented Filippo, he lacked the demented patience required to hunt for words. To earn a living, he worked as a screenwriter. He had landed from the Canary Islands in the nocturnal gulfs of Testaccio in search of a little cinema and fortune, and he was handsome with a nice dark smolder, specializing in the two-bit Westerns that lazy Roman producers like Eusebio Reverberi were still underwriting, following in the glittering wake of Sergio Leone, the Maestro. It was during one of those productions in El Desierto de Tabernas, in Almería, that Milly first crossed paths with Oscar Martello, at the time Reverberi’s chauffeur, but already giving the impression he knew more than he let on, a specialist in smiles, special favors, and first-rate cocaine at bargain-basement prices. So successful that every night there was a line outside his hotel room, which is where, one night, who knows how, she wound up coming back with him. It was an old Marriott chain hotel, she could still remember every detail of the place, white plaster and red bougainvilleas, with a view of the Alcazaba walls, which she stared at, leaning with both hands braced on the minibar in Oscar’s room, while he was screwing her from behind. And she let him do it, entranced by the tinkling of the mignon bottles in the minibar with every thrust of his pelvis, doing nothing more than to play the part of the kitten in heat. But that idle fling did nothing to stand in the way of her engagement with dear old José; in fact, if anything, it hastened the wedding preparations. And with them, the best intentions of living a conventional life, though within the eccentric and melancholy whirl of the Roman movie industry, where Milly came to understand the lash of time as it disintegrates dreams and careers, making high-tone asses sag and shattering already fragile nerves.