In a Heartbeat (16 page)

I shook my head. ‘No way. I have too much going on right now to add anything else.’

That was an understatement. ‘If you change your mind, just tell Salima.’

‘OK.’ Then I had an idea: honest and generous. Why not? I didn’t know anyone else like this guy. ‘So, I imagine that these people don’t pay you, right?’

‘Sometimes it happens but not often. Why?’

I took the letter from the procuratore and passed it to him. ‘Maybe you need a client with money?’

He moved under the light and skimmed over it and then passed it back. ‘Did you do it?’

‘I don’t think so, so what do you think? Are you up for it?’

‘I’m a bit overwhelmed at the moment, as I’m sure you can imagine. Call me tomorrow and I’ll see if we have someone at the law firm who’s free.’

He gave me his business card while the mess in the street was dying down. I gave him my number; I knew it by heart now and he saved it on his phone. The armoured cars rumbled away, the firemen’s ladder folded back down into place. ‘I’m going to talk to Salima. Are you coming?’

I followed him into the courtyard behind the call centre on the other side of a line of regular cops. I saw her. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing a sweater that she had got from who knows where to cover her karate suit. The girls, along with about thirty boys, were drawing on a wall with coloured chalk. She consoled the ones who were crying and pretended that everything was OK. Ragiul was helping out, playing football with the older kids.

It was like something out of a tearjerker book, had it not been for the carabinieri with semi-automatic weapons and parents with their hands up. Mirko showed his card and the cops stepped aside to let him pass. He went in and I stopped. Salima ran to hug the lawyer; she looked at me over his shoulder. We stared at one another, and she stopped smiling.

I turned and pushed through the crowd that was still packed into the street. I took the first tram in Via Vitruvio. I changed, following the tram signs that also indicated the waiting time. The route had been changed since my time but I managed to orient myself. I didn’t sit down because I was afraid I’d never get up again. About halfway there I saw a chemist’s sign. I got off and bought a pack of painkillers, paying through a small window just like junkies do when they’re scoring. Behind the hole there was bulletproof glass and video cameras. I swallowed half the box, no water, and I tasted again the sting of ammonia and dust.

Another tram. I was the only one on board except for a couple of Chinese teenagers holding hands and listening to a tiny white Walkman. There were very few cars on the street. A utility truck was parked; men were fixing some tracks, a drunk was arguing with a cat. I didn’t go home; it wasn’t just because of the bombs. That place held the unknown that the Ad Exec had left for me, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find out anymore. I had to go back for sure but everything that I did brought out something that confused and frightened the hell out of me. I hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours and my head was pounding.

I closed my eyes. SWAT. Children. Foetuses. Nausea. Pain. I took the bus to Linate airport and I got out a bit before the last stop. The only motel that I had ever been to in Milan was called ‘Cupid.’ A model used to live there; her nightly dinner was a glass of water and a gram of coke. Then she’d let you screw her as if she were already dead.

The Cupid Motel was still there and looked more or less the same. There was a booth that let you pay without getting out of the car. It had a quiet and discreet atmosphere, just like in the advertisements. The guy at the reception didn’t even raise his eyes from his newspaper (Learn:
Wi-Fi
.) Credit card, zip. A bungalow between the trees. A lampshade with a red light.

I took off my coat and my shoes. I drank two small bottles of vodka from the mini-bar. I hit the bed. In the mirror on the ceiling there was a filthy bum with a bump on his forehead sticking out like a horn, and a sock with a hole in it. Another bottle of vodka. I killed it and threw it against the door to see what kind of a sound it’d make.
Toc.
I turned off the light and tossed and turned. I turned it back on again. I turned it off. I turned on the TV. There was a guy on it selling knives that could cut everything: shoes, stone slabs, hammers, frozen foods and even bread. On another channel a woman in a thong was touching herself while a series of phone numbers ran along the side. Underneath read:
Hot Mistress. Shut Up and Enjoy. Girls Waiting. Horny Housewives. College Girls in Heat.
There was a documentary about uranium dust. Soldiers were dropping dead after coming back from the front and no one cared. There was an old movie that I had already seen. Tits and ass. Inflatable mattresses. Shoe racks. Two lesbians.

Another bottle. Whisky, nausea and sharp pains in my back and my stomach. I managed to drag myself in the bathroom and vomited in the jacuzzi. I went back to bed. Something was trembling inside me. I heard sirens and screaming. I turned the light on and off. I tried to jerk off. I tried not to think about anything. Foetuses. Cops. War.

I sat on the step outside my door. It was cold and I like the cold. A woman came out from the bungalow next door. She had dark hair and dark eyes and was wearing a fur coat. She looked at me.

‘How much?’ I asked.

She didn’t say anything.

I took out a handful of euros from my wallet. ‘Hey. It could’ve been the last screw of my life. Who knows what would happen tomorrow. I also have credit cards, three, all different colours.’

A car got out of the bungalow garage. A man opened the door for the woman.

‘What did he want?’

‘Nothing. He’s wasted. Leave him alone.’

They left. I went back inside. I flipped through the channels again. I found one that showed music videos. There was one of Bob Dylan’s, ‘Like a Rolling Stone
.
’ I couldn’t believe it. I put the volume on full blast until the room rumbled. After five minutes the guy from the reception came. He came in using his key. He switched off the TV and looked at me.

‘What the hell do you think that you’re doing? Do I have to call the police?’

I got up and grabbed him by the collar.

‘I want to go back!’ I yelled. ‘I WANT TO GO BACK!’

Day Four

1

A carpet hair tickled my nose and I sneezed. I opened my eyes. I was stretched out on the floor again but at least this time it wasn’t on the toilet floor. My head throbbed but much less than the night before. My tongue felt like I had a dead rat in my mouth. I only had fragmented and confused flashes of the past few hours … again. Before going to sleep, who knows why, I had drawn an enormous question mark on one of the mirrors using the complimentary toothpaste that was now floating in the clogged bathtub. The television was gone; I vaguely remembered that the reception guy had taken it away.

There was only a beer left in the mini-bar and I used it to quench my thirst. I popped back a few more anti-evil pills. In the mirror I looked dazed. The bump had gone down and had become a black bruise that went from my hairline to the bridge of my nose. Red eyes. On the phone I found three missed calls from Monica, two from the night before and one from eight-thirty this morning. It was now after nine.

Oh damn! Ustoni!

The reception guy who took my ID wasn’t the one from the night before. On the bill I found an added charge with the note
Special
Cleaning.
I didn’t dare ask what it meant. I got a coffee from the vending machine, while the guy called me a taxi that then proceeded to deliver me to the place of punishment.

It was the same as the day before but everyone seemed a bit embarrassed to see me. I didn’t care and managed to get in with my swipe card on the second try. A messenger got into the lift and did his best not to look at me.

‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

He turned red and didn’t say a word.

Hey, Hello, How are you?

Rina had a pen in her hand when I walked in and she almost poked her eye out with it when she saw me.

‘Signor Denti, what happened to you?’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean why? You haven’t seen yourself? You look like a tramp.’ Monica had shot up from the other side of the wall.

‘Your face, what’s on your forehead?’

‘A bump.’

‘A bump, I can see it’s a bump. What happened?’

‘I fell off my bicycle.’

‘Since when do you ride a bike?’

‘What’s this, an interrogation?’

‘Take off your coat and your jacket.’

I did what she asked. I heard strange scratchy sounds. Some dried mud fell from my sleeve; at least I’d hoped that it was only mud.

‘Rina, please take Signor Denti’s clothes to the cleaners. See if they can do an express job. There’s even a hole. What a mess!’

‘Should I take off my trousers as well?’

‘Also please bring me some stain remover.’

‘Right away, Signora.’ Rina disappeared with the nasty load while Monica searched through my desk drawers.

‘You should have an extra shirt here somewhere. Ah, here it is! Take it off right now!’

I began to unbutton my trousers.

‘Not here, in the bathroom. Do you want to make any more of a scene?’

‘Well, I am the creative director.’

‘Very funny. Take this with you.’ She passed me a bottle of mouthwash. I had everything in that drawer; the only thing missing was an iron. ‘Your breath stinks.’

I obeyed. Mouthwash, shirt. I bumped into Riccardino, who was coming out of one of the cubicles, hiding something in his hand. He saw me and turned red. The something was a mini-bottle of whisky just like the ones that I’d chugged the night before.

‘Breakfast of Champions!’

‘Santo, we have to talk.’

‘Sorry, I have other things on my mind besides your scooter.’

I threw the old shirt into the bin; not even Mr Clean in person could have saved it. Riccardino looked at me, turned even redder, and left, slamming the door behind him.

I looked in the mirror. Had I chipped my tooth at the Islamic Centre? Possibly, but maybe it had happened
before.

Rina was back at her desk. She passed me a stain remover that looked like a marker. I rubbed it on my trousers until the stains became one single stain. Luckily, I wasn’t wearing white.

‘The jacket will be ready this afternoon. Would you like a barley tea?’

‘No, just bring me some
real
coffee, dammit. A double one.’ I heard something break from the other side of the wall. ‘And bring me something to eat as well.’

‘The Bio Express only delivers after twelve.’

‘Too bad. Then bring me a sandwich with prosciutto and mayonnaise. You’ve got to die of something.’

‘You have to see this
very urgent
email!’ Monica yelled, running to my side of the wall. ‘Go to the computer
please.
’

I sat at my desk. There were two sheets full of calls that I had to return. Home sweet home. She dug her nails into my shoulder, pretending to look at the screen, which was off, by the way.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she whispered in my ear. ‘Do you want me to lose my shit as well?’

‘That
my shit
is very unlike you.’

‘Did you read my notes on Ustoni? You know that the presentation begins in an hour.’

‘I’ll read them now, I promise.’

‘I printed them out for you and highlighted the important parts. Yellow: Very important. Red: Extremely important. Green: Absolutely extremely important.’

‘Fantastic.’

‘Then there are these.’

It was a stack of papers five centimetres thick with a list of terms that went from:
Above the line (advertising regarding radio, TV, print, films, billboards, etc.)
to
Unbranded products
.

‘These are things that you’re supposed to know perfectly,’ she added.

‘Ah, good to know for conversations. For example, if someone says: have you seen that ‘POP display’?’ I could answer:
Do you mean the advertising display in a retail store that is usually placed near the checkout counter at the head of an aisle tied to a single product or brand,
right?’

She had tears in her eyes. ‘I was up until four in the morning preparing all of this … ’

Oh, God. ‘Thanks, baby. Good job. I’ll get on it right away, after the sandwich.’

She turned to leave and then came back. ‘I know who that girl was.’

Oh, oh. ‘What girl?’

‘What do you mean what girl?’

‘The Arabic woman who spat in your face and kicked your butt in the hallway.’

‘She didn’t kick my butt.’

‘Whatever.’