The Crossroads (22 page)

With the furtive lightness of Eva Kant, Fabiana Ponticelli turned the key in the lock and went out into the storm.

Danilo was holding the receiver in two hands like an iron mace. ‘How the hell
can
I keep calm, Rino?
You
tell
me
! That idiot has disappeared! We're way behind sche …'

‘He'll be there. Keep calm! And behind what schedule, anyway? What difference does it make whether we get there a bit sooner or a bit later?' replied Rino, yawning.

Pure hydrochloric acid was bubbling inside the walls of Danilo Aprea's stomach. He made a superhuman effort not to start shouting so loud he would burst a blood vessel. He must keep calm. Very calm. He swallowed the bile that was stinging his oesophagus and piped: ‘What do you mean, behind what schedule? Please, Rino, don't be like this …'

‘Don't be like what? Have you seen what it's like outside? How are we going to get to the tractor? Swimming? Let's wait for the storm to ease off, then we'll see.'

Danilo inhaled and exhaled, puffing out his cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie.

‘What are you doing? Having an asthma attack?' asked Rino.

‘Nothing. Nothing. You're right. As always, you're right. We'll wait.'

Pure hatred
.

It was that placid tone of Rino's, that air of a know-it-all God Almighty who remained calm even when the Martians were invading the Earth, that drove Danilo wild with rage. How he would have loved to plunge a dagger in his heart. A hundred, a thousand times, shouting: ‘So you know everything, do you? Yes, you're perfectly right, you know everything!'

‘That's the way. You've got to relax. I'll wait for you here, we need to talk.' And Rino hung up without even saying goodbye.

‘Talk? Talk about what?' Danilo shouted. He seized the remote control and hurled it against the wall, smashing it to pieces, then started jumping up and down on it.

The dark sky was hammering down on Quattro Formaggi and his Boxer. Gusts of wind and rain buffeted him this way and that, and it was a struggle to keep the scooter on line.

The rush of the torrents that flowed down the roadside and the gurgle of the drains vomiting out streams of brown water merged into a fearful roar inside his helmet..

It was impossible to see anything and Quattro Formaggi was making his way towards Danilo's house from memory.

The wind had uprooted a row of trees from the pavement and thrown them into the middle of the road. A big pine had fallen on a car, smashing its windscreen.

What was this, the storm of the century?

The next day all the television news bulletins would talk of rivers in spate, floods, collapsed buildings, damage to agriculture, compensation. And while the downpour lashed the plain, a gang had carried off the cash machine from the Credito Italiano dell'Agricoltura.

As well as being rich we'll be in all the papers
…

Over the past few days Quattro Formaggi had tried to imagine what he would do with all that money. The only idea he had come
up with was buying some more clay to build a big castle and an electric train complete with points, level crossings and stations to link up the south and north of the crib. Journeys were very complicated now with all those mountains, lakes and rivers, and having a railway at their disposal would help the inhabitants of the crib no end.

What if I put in a
…

What was the name of that box hanging from a wire which people who went skiing used for going up mountains? He didn't know, but it didn't matter. In the toyshop in the shopping mall he had seen a fantastic one. With two cabins made of green tin with black roofs, and skiers inside them and an electric motor that made it really work.

It could take people straight to Baby Jesus's cave instead of them
having to go all that way on foot
…

He was already imagining his ski lift going up and down when, beyond the rain-streaked visor of his helmet, there appeared in the distance a red gleam in the middle of the road.

It looked like the rear light of a scooter.

In the camper Beppe Trecca, sitting on the little sofa, had eaten the won tons, which with the cold had taken on the consistency of chewed-up Hubba Bubba. To warm himself up he had drunk a little melon vodka and wrapped himself in all the blankets he could find.

Let's face it, Ida will never come
.

Mario had arrived home. She would have to wait till he went to sleep and then sneak out secretly. It was madness.

But if Ida was willing to take such a risk she must be madly in love with him. And that made him feel very good.

Certainly, it might be better to put it off to another day.

The social worker took a box of Xanax tablets out of the inside pocket of his jacket and held it close to the candle as if it was a magic amulet.

He had already taken two. Would a third make him as brain-dead as a lichen?

On the internet he had read that the usual effect of tranquillisers on sexual activity was to inhibit the orgasmic reflex, which might lead to a slowing down in the process of reaching a climax. This had various consequences, one of which was a significant improvement in the quality of intercourse for both the man and his partner, should there be a pre-existing tendency to rapid ejaculation.

And a pre-existing bloody tendency to rapid ejaculation had indeed afflicted Beppe since the far-off years of his adolescence. He had carried it with him through four miserable years of Sociology at the University of Rome.

Now, being a good manager of himself, he decided to assess the various effects that the taking of a further tablet might have.

He could only think of two, both of them unpleasant:

1) Despite the massive presence of benzodiazepine in his body he would still come in the time it took a sprinter to do the hundred metres.

2) He wouldn't be able to get it up at all.

He wasn't sure which of the two options he preferred.

He stroked his chin in the manner of Rodin's thinker.
Yes, perhaps
not being able to have an erection would be preferable. I'd
still look a twat, but not quite such a stupid one. And I might even
find an excuse to back out. But if I come straight away she'll think
I'm pathetic
.

Then a further possibility flashed through his mind:
Suppose I
legged it? If I just wasn't here when she arrived?

Disconsolate and undecided, he took another sip of vodka.

Fabiana Ponticelli, on the saddle of her scooter, was frozen stiff. The pudding-basin helmet on her head was completely useless. The rain got into her eyes and ran down her neck and froze the tip of her nose. Her ears had gone numb. In the attempt to see something she had tried putting on her sunglasses, but that had only made things worse. Her trousers were soaked and she was now beginning to feel her feet floating in her trainers.

Since leaving Esmeralda's house she hadn't passed a single car or human being.

Everything was closed. All the lights were out. The place was deserted. Fallen trees lay in the middle of the road. Cars had been crushed. Fabiana felt like the sole survivor of a catastrophe that had exterminated the human race.

But if it goes on like this the river will overflow and flood the
road
…
so my appointment with the dentist will be cancelled.
Great!

That thought was enough to put a little warmth back into her limbs and improve her mood.

And if I got flu as well
… she said to herself, trying to zip her jacket up more tightly.
It would be the icing on the cake
.

That way she wouldn't have to go to school for a few days either.

At home. Without a care in the world. MTV
.
Charin doing the
cooking
…
And Esme out of my hair for a while
. Esmeralda hated going round to her house anyway. She said it was too neat and tidy and ‘too much tidiness smacks of madness to me'. According to her the Ponticelli family was the classic perfect family where the father comes home from work, kills his wife and children and puts a bullet in his head.

She thinks she can say anything she likes to me
.

Perhaps she ought to keep away from her for a while. She was beginning to get a bit fed up with her. She was a petty dictator. In order to be her friend she had changed her life. Because if you're with Esmeralda Guerra either you do what she wants or you don't exist. In order to be her friend she had stopped seeing Anna and Alessandra.

Maybe they're not very cool, but I used to enjoy hanging out
with them
.

And she had practically thrown her into Tekken's arms.

Esmeralda had slept with him a couple of times and had insisted that she do the same. She kept saying it had been a wonderful fuck, that she'd had three orgasms, one after the other, like she'd had a thousand men. But if it had been so divine, why, all of a sudden, had she stopped?

Simple: Tekken was about as romantic as a pig on a dunghill. He had screwed Esmeralda and then given her the boot. And she had
been devastated. Hence her eagerness for Fabiana to sleep with him too. That way at least both of them would have been deflowered and dumped.

The only time Fabiana had been on a date with Tekken they had gone to the cinema and his hands had been all over her. And while he was taking her home they had stopped at the public gardens and he had pulled out his erect cock, as proud as could be, and had practically forced her to give him a hand-job twenty metres from the newsagent's kiosk. And if she hadn't threatened to scream he would have screwed her there in the gardens, in front of everyone.

The deafening roar of a broken exhaust pipe made her jump. Fabiana turned her head and saw in the outside lane a man, covered in a yellow cape and a full-face helmet, on the saddle of an old green Boxer.

So I'm not alone in the world. I've seen that scooter somewhere
before
…

It only took her a moment to connect it with that tramp-like guy who looked as if he was breakdancing when he walked, and whom she had often seen with Cristiano Zena's father.

But where was he going in this weather?

Impossible!

It couldn't be true.

The little blonde who was a dead ringer for Ramona!

That was her scooter. Her yellow sticker. Her helmet.

What was she doing out in this downpour?

And yet it was definitely her, in the flesh, dripping wet.

Quattro Formaggi could see her in the public gardens, that summer night, standing there with her hand around …

Up and down. Up
…

The vision of that little girl holding the biker's cock in her hand blinded him and evoked a guttural moan. A thrill of pleasure ran up his spine, jumping from one vertebra to another, and Quattro Formaggi suddenly felt his arms and legs go as limp as a jelly
fish's tentacles and had to grip the handlebar tightly to stay in the saddle.

Ramona comes out of the house and says to the lumberjack with
a smile: “Get out your little joystick and let's have some fun
.”

Up and down. Up
…

Quattro Formaggi felt his blood seething as it circulated in his ears, his bowels, between his legs.

He gave himself a few thumps on the thigh. Then he put his hand under his windcheater and dug his fingernails into his ribs.

‘You whore. You damned whore,' he grunted, enclosed within his helmet. ‘Why? Why do you like doing these things? Why don't you leave me in peace?'

She did it against him. To make him feel bad.

(Go on! Stop her.)
The voice of Bob the lumberjack spoke out, powerful and decisive.
(Go on, what are you waiting for?)

I can't
.

(You'll never have another opportunity like this. Don't you realise
what a stroke of luck it is? She'll be happy to do it to you as well.)

No, she won't
.

(Yes, she will.)

I can't. I can't do it
.

(You're just a poor fool, an idiot, a cre
…
)

Quattro Formaggi shut his eyes, trying not to listen. He was breathing with his mouth open and the visor of his helmet was misted over.

(Her hands will be cold and wet. And she'll smile.)

No. I can't … What if she doesn't want to?

(Of course she'll want to. Look, let's say this. If she takes the
bypass, it means she doesn't want to. But if she takes the road
through the woods, that settles it
…
)

He was right. The road through the woods was deserted. If she didn't want to be stopped she would never take it, so if she did go that way, it would mean …

(Bravo! You finally understood.)

… she wanted to, so he would stop her.

He didn't know how, but he would stop her.

The tramp was now travelling at the same speed as her, behind her but on the wrong side of the road. At one point Fabiana Ponticelli had seen him thumping himself on the leg.

Better accelerate
.

With that clapped-out scooter the loony wouldn't have much chance of keeping up with her.

Fabiana turned the throttle and gradually drew away from him.

She must be careful – at that speed if she saw a rut she wouldn't have time to brake. She looked in the rear-view mirror.

The Boxer was still behind her. But further back.

She gave a sigh and realised that she had hardly breathed since the guy had materialised alongside her.

Sleep had eventually prevailed over the Zena family.

Cristiano had collapsed after a desperate struggle to stay awake until Danilo and Quattro Formaggi arrived, and downstairs Rino was snoring in front of the TV, which was still on.