In a Heartbeat (2 page)

‘May I accompany you to your seat?’

‘That’s fine, thank you.’

He seemed embarrassed. ‘I hope you understand that I can’t just leave you here … if I could just see your ticket.’

Ticket? Since when did you need a ticket to take a leak? I was pinned down and feeling desperate. ‘I don’t know where I put it.’

The man gestured to my jacket. ‘It’s right there.’

‘Oh, you’re right’. I patted the jacket and felt the tip of the ticket sticking out of the pocket. I automatically gave it to him. Maybe Max killed me after all and, seeing that hell was full, they put me in the waiting room until my turn came along.

The old man smiled again and read the ticket. “
Row M, Seat 7
.” It’s right outside, if you feel up to it.’

‘Of course, I’m up to it.’

‘I’ll show you the way.’ He walked towards the exit.

I followed groggily, feeling as if I were wearing a lead-weighted diving suit. If I’d turned around, I would have been able to see myself in the row of mirrors above the washbasins. I didn’t even think about it. Maybe subconsciously I began to suspect the truth and wanted to keep it at bay. I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, a shadow staggering through the door.

Outside I found that I wasn’t in hell after all but in a corridor that curved in a semicircle, the same beige colour as the bathroom. Small antique lamps glowed with warm yellow lights. The man motioned me inside through the open door, and I found myself in an enormous hall. There were hundreds of seats, balconies, gold leaf and velvet, an immense red curtain and people dressed in eveningwear. I had never been there before but, just like everyone else, I immediately knew the place. It was the most famous place in Milan.

It was the one and only Teatro alla Scala, La Scala!

Some of the spectators turned to look at me. I was expecting more of a reaction, but no one really cared. The lights dimmed and then went up again. It was about to start. Just as I had been told by the old man in tails, who I now realised was an usher and who perfectly matched the scenery. He smiled at me again.

‘Your seat is here,’ he said indicating the empty place between some business guy and an attractive woman in her thirties in a backless evening gown. I looked at him, confused, and raised an eyebrow.

‘Your seat.’

‘Yes, my seat.’

The woman was reading a libretto and when I sat by her side she raised her eyes and looked at me. She was a brunette with blue eyes and pointed features. She wasn’t perfect, but she was a far cry from the women I’d dated.

‘You took long enough,’ she said.

‘Me?’

She frowned slightly, arching her perfectly plucked eyebrows.

‘What happened, Saint? Are you OK?’

There are situations any sane person shouldn’t have to go through, and I was going through a load of them one after the other. I took a heavy blow to the head and woke up dressed like an idiot in a place where I would never have dreamt of setting foot, and I didn’t even know how the hell I got there. Now a perfect stranger was acting like my girlfriend, giving me some weird nickname. I tensed in my seat. I was so wound up that if that woman had touched me I would’ve punched her. The lights dimmed again and this time they stayed out. Protected by darkness, I allowed myself the luxury of trembling.

2

The actors jumped around on stage. Damsels, gentlemen, jugglers and vendors sang in French. I didn’t understand a damn thing. Ten minutes passed. Now there was a woman and an old man with a cane. In the dark, little monitors lit up on the back of every seat in each row. The one in front of me had the words
Press Button To Start
that blinked, while the ones next to me showed scrolling rows of white text in French.

The woman next to me leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘They’re really good.’

I cleared my throat and nodded, trying not to give myself away. The woman took my hand and didn’t seem to notice how sweaty it was. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Then she nibbled my ear. The gesture was unexpected and I jerked my head away. I instinctively raised my hand to adjust my glasses, like I’ve always done since primary school, the same as all shortsighted kids.

My glasses weren’t there anymore.

It should have been the first thing that I’d noticed, but when you’re shortsighted you take your glasses for granted. When you can see it means that you’re wearing them. I could see, but I wasn’t wearing them. I wasn’t even wearing contact lenses. I tried them for a while, and it was torture so I knew when I was wearing them or not. Somehow, I was miraculously cured. After everything that had happened this was the discovery that really freaked me out and made me lose it. I fled.

I went back through the door that I had come through, running straight into a group of people in tails and medallions. They yelled after me. I didn’t stop to listen. I ran through the corridor to a flight of stairs that went up, and I took them in long, charging strides. Finding myself in an atrium with marble statues, my eyes focused on a set of glass doors that appeared on the horizon. I burst wide through them to another shocking new surprise, even worse than the previous ones.

It was winter.

I remembered perfectly the suffocating heat of my house a few hours earlier, and now it was freezing. The trees in Piazza La Scala were bare and covered with a fine layer of snow. The pavement was slushy. Twinkling Santa Clauses and Christmas lights dangled above the tramlines. I stood still on the pavement while the wind whipped at me. Christmas? It couldn’t be. The blow to the head must have driven me insane, or maybe I had dropped acid and was having the worst trip of my life, or maybe I was dreaming and would soon fall out of bed. I had to get home. I had to go back to my lair, and then everything would go back to the way it was. I started walking, in winter, through a city that wasn’t what it used to be …

Everything had changed.

The streets were still the same. In Via Manzoni the mansions of the mega-rich were still there, but everything else was different. Small details, like the graffiti and the ads on the walls. I was never one to visit the city centre, but the few times that I did I couldn’t possibly have missed a place like Emporio Armani, with its twenty shop windows. And since when did they stick a cash machine on every corner?

I heard the sound of a tram rattling behind me, so I ran to the stop and waited, but I couldn’t get on. It looked as though it had come from a circus; it was enormous, glossy and painted with bright colours. I just watched it as it slid away. Behind the tram there was a line of taxis, and I stared at them open-mouthed. They were all white instead of yellow! It was like drinking a can of Coca Cola that tasted like orange juice. And that was only the beginning.

In Piazza Cavour, the
La Notte
sign had disappeared. It was the newspaper that I used to read in the afternoons just to see who had died in the morning. In its place was a sign for the ‘Downtown’ gym that offered fitness.
Fitness?
What the hell was that? Next to that was a huge billboard that advertised something called ‘Fastweb Internet.’

I was breathless when I got to the end of Via Turati.

There was an ad with a bikini-clad young woman holding a phone. Even the subway sign had changed. Instead of a double red ‘M’ there was a single one and a green ‘S’ on a blue background. I couldn’t even consider going inside; I could have got lost. Maybe I’d be crushed by the jaws of a giant snake or ripped to pieces by a shark or even hanged, drawn and quartered by a psycho-sadist. Who knows?

My feet were frozen by the time I got to Via Vittor Pisani.

The telephone booth that I had used a thousand times was gone. There was no one around. On a building column ads rolled continuously for films I’d never heard of.

In the background, the Stazione Centrale grew bigger and bigger with its stone lions and black roof. It seemed the same as before, but as I got closer I saw that the cobblestones in front of the station were no longer there and in their place was what looked like an enormous ice skating rink skirted with flower beds.

A group of drunken Africans chased one another throwing empty bottles.
Africans?
I stood there watching that absurd scene for a minute, unable to carry on. Then something clicked inside my head and I began to walk without bothering about my surroundings. People hustled and bustled around me. If they tried to talk to me I just kept walking. I lost all sense of time and wound up, I don’t know how, on the corner of my street, Viale Monza. I was frozen to the bone and felt so bad that I passed my house without even noticing.

I sensed that something was wrong about halfway down the street and turned back. I walked back slowly.
Ten, Eight, Six
. Where the glass and iron door of my building should have been, a glass window of a bank that I’d never heard of now shimmered in the darkness. I walked back along the same street from beginning to end, back and forth, over and over again. I finally gave up.

My apartment had disappeared just like my glasses, my jeans and the yellow taxis. I was washed up in a world where nothing was the way that it was anymore.

I dropped like a lead balloon onto a pile of boxes in front of the bank. The cardboard was soaking wet and the water soaked through me down to my underwear. I couldn’t move. I would have stayed there until I turned into a block of ice if it hadn’t been for a light in my face. Behind the light, I saw a police car, not like the ones that came from my world. It was like a big American military jeep with huge off-road tyres.
Now they’re gonna bust me,
I thought. I didn’t care anymore. A policeman shouted from the window. ‘Hey, is there a problem?’

I closed my eyes.

‘OK, let’s go and check him out,’ he said to his partner.

I heard the car doors open and the footsteps of the two cops approaching. Their voices entered my head but I couldn’t understand them. They were background noise, and I couldn’t respond.

‘He doesn’t look like a tramp.’

‘By what he’s wearing I’d say definitely not. Sir, are you OK?’

‘Hold on while I check for some ID.’

A hand gently touched my forehead. ‘He’s freezing.’

‘No kidding, it’s cold outside.’

‘He’s not dressed for winter.’

A hand felt around my jacket pockets and took out my wallet.

‘Sir, what’s your name?’

‘This guy’s gone. Another junkie.’

‘No way, look at his face. It’s some sort of nervous breakdown.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Sorry if I read books every now and then.’

‘Let’s take a look. Santo Denti. Santo, can you hear me? Hello?’

‘You’d have a better chance talking to a wall.’

‘All right, what do you want to do? Shall we call an ambulance?’

‘Wait. Let’s call Headquarters and see if we have any missing-person reports.’

Static. Beep
.

‘Car 13 to central … ’

More static and gibberish.

‘Nothing, no report.’

‘Shall we call an ambulance?’

‘Let’s take him home, it’s closer.’

‘Santo. Do you remember where you live?’

‘Why don’t you try talking to him in Morse code?’

‘Anyway, the address is here on his licence. Corso Vercelli 6.’

‘Nice neighbourhood.’

‘From the look of his wallet, he can afford it. One, two, three credit cards. A Platinum card. You know how much you have to pay to get one of those?’

‘Maybe we can buy something along the way?’

‘Stop joking around and give me a hand.’

They grabbed me, one on each side. I didn’t open my eyes. I had stopped shaking.

‘Wow, this guy likes to eat.’

They pushed me into the backseat of the car and covered me with a blanket that reeked of vomit. I lay stretched out looking at the ceiling. I don’t know how long the trip took. I certainly missed something because the next thing I knew I was standing between the two policemen in front of an intercom with a video camera. My paralysis transformed into elasticity. I went where they pushed me; I stayed where they stood me.

‘OK, here it is, Denti.’

Buzz.

‘Let’s hope there’s someone at home.’

‘Yeah, who is it?’ It was a female voice. Then she must have seen me because she said, ‘Saint … what happened?’

‘Signora, it’s the police. Signor Denti isn’t feeling well. What floor are you on?’

‘Penthouse. Oh, my God,’ she said.

The electrical lock to the front door buzzed open. The policemen took me by the arms and escorted me in. The lift was mahogany with red carpeting and brass buttons. One of the policemen pressed the button for the fourth floor. When we got there the lift door opened to the woman I recognised from La Scala. Her eyes were wide open with worry.

‘Saint … ’ she hugged me. I didn’t react. ‘What happened to him?’