everyone, and every time they organize a coup they inform one another."
"I don’t know whether to be reassured or disturbed that you're so prepared."
"It was you to start the subject."
"So you also know why they did it?"
"What? "
"The corpse of Di Piano." Alida watched two elderly ladies who were talking quietly in front of their cups of tea. She wondered how they had taken the news of the theft of the remains of the old actor.
"Of course I do, but never mind," Riccardo said.
"We’re not leaving until you tell me, and don’t make it up, I’d realize if it is a lie."
Riccardo said through clenched teeth, "Collecting."
"Are you kidding?"
"No. The principal is the elderly wife of a wealthy industrialist from Veneto who started a chilling collection of dead celebrities. You remember when Umberto Cometti was hospitalized for that illness before going on air?"
"Yes"
"Before the news came out, the collector had already contacted the band that would take care to bring her the body. Unfortunately for her, the doctors saved Cometti, so now she’s anxiously waiting to know who will be the next celebrity to kick the bucket."
Alida was astonished. Not even the wind could stir up her hair. Riccardo looked at her for one last time before bursting out laughing loudly.
"That's bullshit?"
Riccardo had tears in his eyes. "So next time you learn to take me for a ride," he said, regaining a modicum of composure.
Alida stood still, then, as if someone had lit a fire under her butt, stood up, overturning the chair. The ladies turned their heads, rolling their eyes. One of them let her biscuit fall in her tea.
"You didn’t need to act as an actor for me to understand that you can’t or won’t give me a hand. I'll take care of it myself, thank you." Alida turned and walked away.
Riccardo ran after her and grabbed her arm before she crossed the road.
"Take it easy!" he said, making her turn.
Alida swallowed the saliva that was kneading her mouth. She didn’t know how much longer she could restrain herself before bursting into tears.
"I'm sorry, okay?" Riccardo said. "The story you told me is not what one expects to hear at three in the afternoon in a bar of Parioli. Did you really believe I would have no doubts?"
Alida tried to wriggle away from his grip, which was holding her one step away from the road. Riccardo had more strength, he raised his hand and wiped away a tear from her face with a fingertip.
"If you don’t believe me, let me go," Alida said as soon as she felt the light pressure of his finger on her face.
"I fear for you," Riccardo said. Sincerity vibrated in his words, and Alida realized it immediately. She got closer and buried her face in his chest, waiting for Riccardo to hold her tighter. She said something, but Riccardo did not understand a single word. He took her face in his hands.
"What did you say?"
"I said that if you really fear for me you can’t abandon me now."
"Alida, I know I can’t..."
The eyes of Alida, trembling like stones beneath the water of a river, took his breath away. He held her and she wept again, putting one hand on his shoulder blade. Riccardo felt the scratch send him a twinge of pain. He clenched his teeth and held her tighter.
July 30 – 15:49
"If you do a rain dance, don’t be surprised if it starts to rain!"
Riccardo turned to the subway exit of Monti Tiburtini, shrouded from the oppressive heat and fumes of the rubber flooring. Like a big rock in the middle of the sea, Oscar, a huge man, was planted in the centre of the passage, a few yards from the turnstiles. People were forced to change direction not to bump into him.
They had not seen each other for years. They hugged like brothers.
"Christ!" Riccardo greeted him, "I had forgotten of your moralizing aphorisms. Jim Morrison this time? "
"Nope, the Doors suck. It was Pasquale, the gardener of the Pelican," Oscar said, touching his shoulder with one spade-like hand. He wore a Boston Celtics tank top slipped into a pair of faded Levi's, which seemed on the verge of exploding. A chain was attached from a belt loop to the wallet tucked in the back pocket of his jeans. His feet were stuffed into wrinkled cowboy boots which heels had been eaten by the asphalt.
"Still tagging along with that ugly bird? How is he?" Riccardo asked, moving away from the exit, followed by Oscar.
"Always more plucked, but if he saw you I'm sure he would even grow a ridge."
"No doubt."
"He would have you dangling from your balls on a pool of piranhas and settle down in an armchair waiting for your nut sack to tear apart."
"Great picture. What do they call you now, Oscar the poet?"
There was little to laugh. If the Pelican had put his hands on him, Oscar’s fancy would have been nothing compared to what he would subject him to.
Riccardo and Oscar had been in the same band. They worked for a mobster of Abruzzi, whose double chin, although he had had it surgically removed some years ago, had earned him the nickname of Pelican. Before leaving the job, Riccardo had fucked his wife, a beautiful doll of twenty-nine. She no longer had the little toes. He had been good at not being found.
"Ricky, I didn’t think you were a gravedigger anyway," Oscar admitted, pulling out a dented packet of Marlboro red from the back pocket of his jeans.
"Then you didn’t understand, I told you I'm doing a favour to someone."
"And this someone, are you sure it’s coming?" Oscar lit his twisted cigarette and inhaled.
"She chose the place, although I would have preferred a kiosk in a cooler place near her house."
"You’d rather not be in the cooler, you know that."
Riccardo looked at his watch. Still four minutes to 3:30.
"We're a bit early. In a hurry?"
"I’m never in a hurry, but I like to hurry others."
"Try to relax."
Oscar leaned back against the wall.
"How you doin'?" Riccardo asked.
"Horribly. You?"
"The movie ended. The lights are on again."
"Listen to him, and he says that I speak in aphorisms. Are you out of the circle?"
"I said that the lights are on."
"And I bet not one burned out, fuck you! If it’s so good for you, though, something is wrong."
"What are you talking about?"
"If the movie ended, what did you call me for? Or is the director missing a scene?"
"I called you because we have to help a friend."
Oscar grinned satisfied, sporting a pair of gold teeth as yellow as grains of wheat.
"You’ve been out for less than a month and you've made a girlfriend already?"
"It's a childhood friend, we met again by chance and these aren’t the details you should care for anyway. You’re here to work."
"Work! What a wonderful word, you’re talented, you know? Not everyone can turn a trip to the cemetery into a business trip."
A woman threw the two men an inquisitive look.
"It was exactly this that the Pelican liked in you. You were clever, good at fucking people. He certainly wasn’t expecting you to go from words to deeds" Oscar laughed uproariously.
"Unless you stop immediately, you’ll make the trip to the cemetery in a wooden box."
"Alright, I quit, but I don’t see the shovel."
"Oscar, go fuck yourself and offer me a cigarette, I finished mine."
Other people came out jostling from the subway turnstiles. It seemed that there was a conveyor belt down there, working to constantly churn out hundreds of people every ten minutes.
While Oscar was passing him a Marlboro, Riccardo spotted Alida, helping an elderly lady who was having a hard time dragging a wheeled suitcase whose wheels had stopped turning.
"There she is, come on," Riccardo said, shoving Oscar "and be careful what you say."
When Oscar stood in front of Alida
she put her in shadow from head to toes. They shook hands and she felt that his was rough and dry, like that of one who worked hard for a lifetime. Oscar was careful not to tighten the grip too much: he was afraid that those small fingers could break like twigs. He smiled at her good-naturedly, but she did not reciprocate. She didn’t look tense, mostly she appeared determined to attend to the matter as soon as possible and no longer have anything to do with someone like him.
Oscar knew how to read eyes and in Alida’s were written the same things he had already seen in those of people who had hired him for jobs of all kinds. Those were the looks that people used to say, without opening their mouth, that there are two kinds of people in the world; honest ones and criminals.
Actually there was neither determination nor superiority in the eyes of Alida. Only a great fear. Fear that, for an intuition come out from the studies of a man that most people considered a charlatan, everything could end in a bloodbath.
"There's a bar across the street," Riccardo said as Oscar and Alida finished probing the depth of each other’s pupils.
On Oscar's insistence, as he wanted to smoke, they sat outside, near the bus stop, where a group of kids was making noise around a footballers sticker album.
"Let’s hope the bus takes them away soon," Riccardo said, annoyed.
"Holy Virgin, seems like you never had twelve years" Oscar addressed him, pulling the chain dangling from his thigh to reveal a leather wallet swollen like a balloon. On the leather, the outline of a condom stood out. "I have a friend who has a warehouse and distributes magazines and newspapers. He gave me this," he said pulling out the sticker of a footballer.
"What's that?" Riccardo asked lightly.
Oscar's eyes widened, "Where did this guy live so far?" he asked Alida without waiting for an answer. "Watch this,"