And resigned.
I tip my head in her direction.
“That one?”
“Yup. Nice dish.”
I look at Daytona, who’s already experiencing a movie in his head. Not a movie that they’d be able to show in any of the better movie theaters along the Corso Vittorio.
“How much is she worth, to you?”
“A C-note, if she’s willing.”
A hundred thousand lire would buy a nice pair of shoes, with prices these days. And these days are getting very pricey.
“Two hundred, and she’ll do it.”
Daytona stares, eyes wide. He’s not doubting my statement, he’s doubting the price.
“Christ, two C-notes.”
“A hundred and fifty for her, and fifty for me.”
“You piece of shit.”
I look at him scornfully, as if he were a newly landed immigrant with a cheap suitcase.
“It’s six in the morning, you’re all alone, you’re an ugly troll, and that’s a damn good-looking young woman.”
He hesitates. Maybe he can’t tell whether I’m serious or I’m joking.
I strike the fatal blow.
“You just won a million eight. That leaves you with a million six.”
“Okay. Let’s see what you can do.”
I turn my back on him and walk away. Now it’s his turn to sit and watch. I cross the street and approach the girl, who’s smoking her cigarette, purse slung over one shoulder, eyeing me, evaluating me as I draw nearer. She’s much cuter up close. Actually, she’s quite pretty. Her eyes are light hazel, with a hint of sadness, maybe from seeing too much of life on the outskirts of the big city; they’re eyes that have yearned for things she’s never been able to afford.
I smile.
“Ciao. Happen to have a light?”
She swings her purse around, rummages in it, and pulls out a plastic cigarette lighter. She must be new to the job. Her hands aren’t roughened and reddened from ammonia and chores, at home and elsewhere. From the way she looks at me I can tell that she knows that getting a light for my cigarette was just an excuse. And not a very original one, I have to admit.
I pull out my pack of Marlboros and light one up. I poke my finger through the cloud of smoke to point at the office building behind her.
“You work here?”
She bobs her head vaguely.
“Cleaning woman. If you call that a job, then sure, I work here.”
“What’s your name?”
“Carla.”
“All right, Carla. Can I ask a personal question?”
She silently assents. She’s curious. That means she’s smart.
“How much money do you make a month?”
She studies me, waiting to hear where I want to take this. There’s no fear in her eyes, and I like that.
“A hundred eighty.”
“Feel like making a hundred fifty in a couple of hours?”
She understands immediately. I brace myself for a slap that doesn’t come. Which is already significant. Maybe she’s familiar with propositions of this kind. Maybe she has a special need for money right now. Maybe, in a flash, she has simply glimpsed a way out of the misery of the city’s outskirts, frozen foods, clothing purchased off the rack in a UPIM department store. There are countless possibilities, and I don’t care about any of them.
There is only one thing left to clear up, so she asks.
“With who?”
I jerk my head sideways at a point behind me. She identifies Daytona on the other side of the street. Then she turns her gaze back to me, with a hint of disappointment in her eyes. She drops her gaze and stares at the sidewalk, before answering.
“He’s no Robert Redford.”
I put on an innocent expression, the way you do when something is patently obvious.
“Yeah, if he was I wouldn’t be here talking to you.”
She looks over at the other women, clustering a short distance away as if waiting for her. Since the two of us began our conversation, they’ve been studying us, silently surmising. An occasional giggle, a few sidelong glances. A few of those glances may have contained a hint of envy. Carla looks back at me, a note of defiance in her hazel eyes.
She speaks in a low voice, as if her lips were uttering a furtive thought. She suggests an alternative.
“If it was you, I’d do it for free…”
I lightly shake my head, firmly cordoning off that line of inquiry.
“I’m out of the question.”
She needs to understand.
“Is it that you don’t like me, or do you just not like women?”
“Neither one. Let’s just say that in this particular circumstance I’m a middleman.”
Carla says nothing. I sense that she’s weighing the pros and cons. I don’t have the impression that it’s a question of morality, just of convenience. Maybe she comes from one of those families in which the father is the proprietor of everything that’s in the house, daughters included. Maybe it’s just a matter of setting a fair price for something she usually has to give up without being asked. Or maybe those are all just fantasies I’m spinning in my mind and, as is so often the case, the truth is completely different. No one can say what’s really going on in people’s minds.
And sometimes all that matters is what people decide to do.
Carla nods her head.
“Tell him to wait for me out front of the Alemagna, on Via Monte Bianco. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
I point to Daytona’s orange Porsche. It’s an old model, a used car with dimmed status. Most of the status remained in the hands of the original owner, who is certainly now driving the latest model. But for people like Daytona and the people he frequents that car remains a glittering trinket, a badge of honor.
“That’s his car.”
“All right.”
While we talk, her fellow workers move off down the sidewalk. Carla seems relieved. She won’t have to come up with an explanation right now. I feel certain that by tomorrow she’ll have something ready. Cash and a sense of guilt are two excellent incentives for ingenious falsehood.
“Just a piece of advice.”
“Yes?”
“Have him buy you a cup of coffee and don’t get in the car unless you have the money safe in your purse.”
She looks at me with a smile that’s not exactly a smile.
“Is that how it’s done?”
“Yes, that’s how it’s done.”
I turn to go and my gaze settles on Daytona, waiting expectantly on the other side of the street. I cross the street and walk over to him. He saw the exchange, though he couldn’t tell what we were saying, just like Carla’s fellow cleaning women. As I approach him, I discard the cigarette and exhale the last lungful of smoke into the general haze of Milanese smog.
“Well?”
“Wait for her in front of the Alemagna. She’ll see you there.”
“How much?”
“A hundred and fifty, like I said.”
“Shit.”
Maybe Daytona can’t believe his ears and meant to express his astonishment. Or else he was hoping for a discount. He long ago stopped believing in his own personal allure.
“And fifty for me.”
I hold out a hand toward him, palm upward. He understands and reaches into his pocket. Then he hands me a wrinkled, rumpled bill, crumpled up the way you do with money you earn without lifting a finger. Only, this time, I’m the one who earned it. Without cheating. It’s the oldest game in the world, and I know all the rules. Daytona knows the rules too, but he won’t stoop to play by them. He likes to have someone to play for him. And like lots of others I’ve met, he’s willing to pay for that service.
As I slip the money into my jacket pocket, he gives me a hard, meaningful stare.
“No kidding around, Bravo.”
I shrug my shoulders.
“You know I don’t kid around.”
Daytona heads over to his Porsche, pulls
the door open, gets in, and starts the engine. He waits for traffic to pass, and roars off toward Piazzale Lotto. At the green traffic light, his brake lights blink on, and then he vanishes in a right-hand turn, accelerating toward a dubious tryst.
I stand alone on the sidewalk.
I slide my hand into my jacket pocket, find my car keys, and walk toward my car, a dark blue Innocenti Mini, parked a short distance away.
I get into my nondescript little car. On my left I see Carla walking fast, heading for her appointment. She spots me and looks sharply down at the sidewalk ahead of her. Good luck, sweetheart. A month’s salary for two hours of work isn’t a bad deal, if you’re adaptable. And she clearly knows how to adapt. For me, it’s been nothing more than an idle game, because I usually work with contacts and negotiations at quite a different level. I don’t think twice about the damage caused by what I just did and what I do on a regular basis.
The laws that govern society are a line drawn in the dirt by a fairly unsteady hand. Some cross that line, others respect it. I believe that I float a hairsbreadth above that line, never setting foot on either side of it. I don’t worry about it, because the world I live in doesn’t worry about it.
Like it or not, that’s who I am.
2
If it was you, I’d do it for free …
The girl’s words ring in my ears as I zip along the Nuova Vigevanese, heading for home. I can see her eyes. To rid myself of sounds and visions and desires, I cover them with Daytona’s mottled red face and all the predictable words he will grunt as he takes her to bed. I picture her, hastily peeled of clothes like an orange by his pudgy hands, the white flesh of his fingers dotted with dense black hair. I know the impatient way he must have pulled down his trousers and shoved her head between his legs. I know what’ll happen afterward, or maybe what’s already happened. Sex the way sex happens, dulled by the effects of the cocaine, the girl’s indifference, the shabby anonymity of the motel.
But Daytona’s not the kind of guy who notices certain things. He lacks the sheer power to be a predatory animal, and the girl is no shy antelope, for that matter. It’s nothing but a transaction, a contract involving an offer of consideration and a delivery of goods. There are people who care more about the anticipation of the act than its actual performance. This is one of those cases. In other ways, for other reasons, the same thing applies to me.
A traffic light blinks from yellow to red; I come to a stop and light a cigarette. While we were pretending to live the good life, for the rest of the world a Sunday turned into a Monday. All around me, morning traffic is beginning to weave itself into a tangle that half an hour from now, more or less, will harden into an inextricable knot. But by then I’ll be safely hidden at home. There’s nothing glamorous about being a creature of the night, there’s no glory to it. Sometimes it’s all deception and fabrication, because darkness blends everything together, beliefs indistinguishable from truths. Documentaries show us scenes of lions feasting on prey while packs of hyenas circle, waiting to fight over the remains. As often as not, it was the hyenas that actually brought down the kill. The lion showed up afterward and by the law of kings took first choice without lifting a paw, forcing the ones who did the dirty work to settle for his leftovers. That image is projected into the real world, upside down, making it hard to tell who’s the lion and who’s the hyena.
Alongside me, in a gleaming new Mercedes, some guy opens his mouth in an involuntary yawn.
I focus, trying to make out which kind of animal he is.
He doesn’t have the wrecked facial features of a sleepless all-nighter; rather, his face bears the stamp of an alarm clock that always rings too soon. An ordinary everyman, classifiable as a “not-not.” He’s not young and he’s not old, not handsome and not ugly, not rich and not poor. And so on and so forth. He’s probably got a wife and kids at home, and he bought himself a Mercedes because he’d made up his mind that life owed him one, the same way that, sometimes, he’ll buy a few hours with one of the girls that I handle. He must be a small businessman; he probably owns one of those warehouses that snake along the road leading to Vigevano. In his warehouse, maybe they machine-tool structural aluminum or they sell footwear at cost.
The traffic light turns green and simultaneously a horn honks behind me. So predictable that I don’t even waste a go-fuck-yourself. The sky has veered from colorless to blue and with the sunlight the shadows have put in an appearance. Other shadows are vanishing. It’s the law of the city and its daily buzzing drone, rising and falling according to the time of day. For those who can’t stand that drone, it’s almost time to cover your ears and burrow your head under the pillow.
When I reach the intersection at the Metro stop, I take a right, follow the service road for a short distance, and then turn into the Quartiere Tessera, where I live. The quarter is filled with five-story apartment buildings, sheathed in dark brown tile, wedged inside a metal fence to convey the idea of order and ownership. Between one building and the next, open spaces covered with sickly grass and the occasional pine tree or maple serve as vegetation. The buildings belong to the RAS insurance company. They’re just part of the reserve fund of real estate holdings that all insurance companies are required to establish by law. Before long, when the buildings start to deteriorate and maintenance costs rise to levels that become a drag on the balance sheet, the company will sell them. Then we’ll see which tenants were born to be homeowners and which will just spend a lifetime paying rent and be forced to migrate to some other part of town.
For the most part, the apartments are occupied by commuters, men dressed in suits they bought in a department store somewhere, with shirt collars always a shade too loose or a little too tight; men who go to work every morning, leaving behind a wife who’s always a day older when they come home at night; men who never know or wonder what made her age that day. I have to say that in my comings and goings I’ve run into more than one married woman who looked at me with interest and sent me a glance of urgent and unmistakable SOS. I’ve always lowered my gaze and walked on by. I have nothing to offer and nothing to receive. This place and this life make colors wither and it does no good to mix gray with gray. It might come out darker or lighter, but all you’re ever going to get is more gray.
I steer the car deftly into one of the herringbone parking spots, a space that another car has just vacated. The man driving away is young, but he already has an air of resignation. His expression turns him into a living, breathing white flag of surrender. It’s incredible to see how fast some people give up. They’re not losers, they’re people who never even put up a fight. And that gives them starring roles in something much worse than mere defeat.
I know lots of people like that.
There are times I think I see one every time I look in the mirror. I swing open the car door, get out, and lock this cloud of all-nighter depression inside my parked Mini. I turn and head for home, walking with one shoulder practically brushing the enclosure wall.
On my left, two hundred yards farther on, is public housing. That’s another world, fly-by-night and sedentary at the same time. Rough and continuously evolving. A patchwork of people live there, factory workers and small-time crooks, undifferentiated manpower that feeds into a larger and more complicated system. Fleeting instants of glory, a bundle of easy cash that gets shown off at the local bar along with a new car, and then a couple of Carabinieri squad cars pull up early the next morning. Plenty of room in jail for another inmate, plenty of room in society for another criminal. Come to think of it, it’s just another way of commuting.
The topography of the Milanese hinterland tells us that we’re in Via Fratelli Rosselli, number 4. I say that I’m in the place that I call home for a few hours every day. On the far side of the yard, there’s a lady walking her dog. The dog is a German shepherd, and he runs out and back and leaps happily around his yawning owner. The animal seems to have a higher opinion of that green space fertilized by smog than most of the residents.
I swing open the glass front door and climb the steps to the second floor without meeting a soul. I insert my key in the keyhole, click the lock open, and a voice catches me off guard.
“The click of the lock of a man returning home sounds different from the click of a man going out for the day.”
I turn and the silhouette of Lucio emerges from the doorway across the landing. The direction of his gaze is slightly off-kilter with respect to where I’m standing. He’s wearing a pair of black sunglasses. I know that when he’s alone he doesn’t wear them, but a blind man’s understandable sense of modesty demands that he cover his eyes, veiled with an unsettling white film, when someone else is around.
I sketch out a smile that he can’t see, only hear.
“You’ve got the ears of a cat.”
“I’ve got the ears of a musician. Keys are one of my fields of expertise.”
He hastens to disavow the joke.
“Questionable wisecrack. I could never do stand-up. I’m afraid I’m going to have to settle for being the Italian Stevie Wonder.”
Lucio plays acoustic guitar, and he’s incredibly good at it. In my apartment I often hear him practicing. That sinuous musical instrument, broad-hipped, accommodating, and womanly, represents his emancipation from darkness, his personal freedom. He gets by pretty well with his music. He alternates periods of playing in clubs in the Brera district with stretches of playing in the city subways. I imagine he does it to create a sort of variation between day and night, since as far as he’s concerned it’s all just permanent nighttime. He could have more if he wanted, but he’s satisfied with what he’s got. I’ve never asked and he’s never told me. For every man alive there’s a part of life that lies within the sacred boundaries of his own fucking business. The hardest thing to understand, for every individual, is just how big that area is.
“You want a cup of coffee?”
I stand there, motionless, with the door open. He shrugs his shoulders.
“Wipe that doubtful expression off your face. I know it’s there. Nobody can refuse to join you for a cup of coffee. This time is no exception. I can’t see a reason it would be.”