The Imperfectionists (13 page)

"I go out for one morning and this office turns into the monkey enclosure."

"You're starting to sound like me."

"And I'm getting bombarded with emails from Accounts Payable," she says, meaning the chief financial officer, Abbey Pinnola. "Supposedly I have to offer human sacrifices."

"She wants layoffs now?"

"So it seems. Not clear how many."

"Technical staff or editorial?"

"We'll see. Who would you pick from editorial?"

At the top of his list is Ruby Zaga, a copy editor who's notorious for inserting errors into stories.

"Is she really the worst?" Kathleen asks.

"I forgot, Ruby's a friend of yours."

"Hardly a friend. But can't we fire Clint Oakley?"

"Someone has to put together Puzzle-Wuzzle, my dear."

"I'm telling Accounts Payable that I'll
consider
layoffs if I get money for a stringer in Cairo, plus someone to replace Lloyd in Paris."

"Good for you. Stick to your guns."

"It's beyond me," she says, "how Abbey can say that covering Cairo and Paris is a luxury. How is that a luxury? It's a necessity. Luxury these days is actually having a conversation about what goes in this paper. All I do is cover over cracks. It's depressing."

"Learn

to

delegate."

"Who

to?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"To

whom
," she corrects herself. "I thought I'd delegated to you. Aren't you supposed to be helping me?" She means this but must convey it as jest--he is an institution here, and she can't risk alienating him.

"I was delegated to be in charge of these." He shakes a packet of hard candies at her.

As she closes her glass office door after him, a few staffers in the newsroom glance over, then look away. It's strange to be the boss, knowing they discuss you, doubt you, resent you, and--since they are journalists--complain, bitch, and moan about you.

Her BlackBerry rings. "Menzies," she answers with a sigh, "why are you phoning me? I'm right here across the room." She raises her hand.

"Sorry, sorry--didn't see you. Can you come over? We need you."

She

obliges.

That night for dinner, Nigel makes osso buco.

"Smells wonderful," she says, arriving home later than promised, as always.

Their apartment off Via Nazionale is spacious enough for an extended family but houses only the two of them. It is thinly furnished, as was her intent, with chrome chairs in the living room, granite in the bathroom, a gas range and matching overhead fan in the kitchen. In each room, the only decoration is a giant black-and-white photograph framed in the center of the wall. Each is obliquely themed to its room, so the kitchen contains a huge photo of cooks stuffing dumplings at the Luk Yu Tea House in Hong Kong; the dining room has a gargantuan picture of empty tables at El Bulli on the Costa Brava; the salon shows the interior of Skogaholm Manor in Stockholm; and in the bathroom is a vast photograph of the crashing sea off Antarctica.

"Glass?" He pours her one.

"What is it tonight?"

He displays the bottle, then reads the label: "Montefalco. Caprai. 2001." He thrusts his nose into the wineglass.

She takes an unceremonious gulp. "Not bad, not great," she says. "You must be starved. Sorry I kept you. Can I get us some water?"

"Allow

me,

pasha."

Nigel, an attorney-at-rest since they left D.C. more than two years earlier, thrives on this life: reading nonsense on the Internet, buying high-end groceries, decrying the Bush administration at dinner, wearing his role of househusband as a badge of progressive politics. By this hour, he's normally fulminating: that the CIA invented crack cocaine; that Cheney is a war criminal; that the September 11 attacks were conceived by agents of Big Oil. (He talks a lot of shit about politics. She has to smack him down intellectually once a week or he becomes unbearable.) This evening, however, Nigel is restrained. "Good day?" he asks.

"Mmm, yeah, not bad." She's amused--he's so transparent. He has clearly done something and is writhing about it. That English girl--Nigel and she had been meeting weekly to discuss the failure of the left. Then, abruptly, he stopped mentioning her. To Kathleen's knowledge, the left hasn't stopped failing. Presumably, an act occurred.

And yet, savoring her osso buco, tickled by his mendacious face hiding in a fishbowl wineglass, she cannot bring herself to care terribly. If it
is
a full-blown affair, she will be angry--such a development would jeopardize their situation. But this doesn't have that feel. He is more a skulking fornicator, not a marriage-busting cheater. If Kathleen ignores the matter, what happens? It will seep away.

At work the next day, her desk phone rings.

"Hi there--it's me again."

"Sorry, who is this?"

"Kath, it's me."

"God--Dario, I didn't recognize you."

"I wanted to invite you to lunch. Forza Italia will foot the bill."

"In that case, definitely not," she says. "No, I'm kidding--I'd love to. But I'm insanely busy. I told you, I don't get lunches, tragically." Then again, she thinks, a contact with Berlusconi's people could be useful. The Prodi government is bound to fall, meaning early elections, at which point having ties to Dario could prove handy. "But it would be nice to meet up. What about an early
aperitivo?
"

They meet at the Hotel de Russie garden bar, a courtyard of shaded cafe tables upon
sampietrini
cobblestones, as if this were a private Roman piazza for the use of paying guests only.

"If you misbehave," Kathleen says, studying the drinks menu, "I'll order you the Punjab health cocktail: yogurt, ice, pink Himalayan salt, cinnamon, and soda water."

"Or how about the Cohibatini?" he responds. "Vodka, Virginia tobacco leaves, eight-year-old Bacardi rum, lime juice, and corbezzolo honey."

"Tobacco leaves? In a drink? And what is corbezzolo honey?"

"Boringly,"

he

says,

"I'm taking the Sauvignon."

"Boringly,

me

too."

They close their menus and order.

"Odd weather," he remarks. "Almost tropical."

"Sitting out in November--not bad. I think I'm in favor of global warming." She resolves to stop making this fatuous remark, which parachutes off her tongue anytime someone mentions the climate. "Anyway, nothing more boring than talking about the weather. Tell me, how are you?"

Thin--that's how he is on second sight. He wears a mauve tie and a spread-collared shirt that hangs on his shoulders as if upon a hanger. His countenance--naive and affectionate--is the same, and this makes him younger somehow.

"You're not the same," she says.

"No? Well, that's good. Imagine if I was unchanged after all these years."

Unchanged: this is how she thinks of herself. Fresh as ever at forty-three, legs long and strong under the business slacks, tight midriff under tight waistcoat, lustrous chestnut hair with only a couple of strands of gray. She takes unearned pride in her looks.

"So funny to see you again," she says. "Kind of like meeting up with an old version of myself." She asks about their old friends and his family. His mother, Ornella, sounds as cold as ever. "Is she still reading the paper?"

"Hasn't missed a copy in years."

"That's what I like to hear. And Filippo?" she asks, referring to Dario's younger brother.

"He has three kids now."

"Three? How un-Italian," she says. "And you?"

"Only

one."

"That's

more

like

it."

"A boy, Massimiliano. Just turned six."

"So, married, obviously."

"Massi? We're waiting till he turns seven."

She smiles. "I
mean you
must be married."

"Yes, of course. And you?"

She caricatures her domestic situation, rendering Nigel as a comic subaltern, as is her habit. "He feeds me grapes most evenings," she says. "It's part of his duties."

"That must suit you."

"Depends on the quality of the grapes. But hang on," she says. "I still don't have a sense of what's going on with you."

"I'm well, very well at the moment. I did have a rough patch last year. But that's over. The family weakness." By this, he means depression, which afflicted his father, ultimately ending the man's career in diplomacy. The ambassador's breakdown in 1994

came the week that Kathleen left Dario. "They were good about it at work," he goes on.

"Say what you will about Mr. Berlusconi."

"And how is your father, incidentally?"

"Well, sadly, he died about a year ago now. On November 17, 2005."

"I'm so sorry to hear that," she says. "I really liked Cosimo."

"I know. We all did."

"But your problem wasn't as serious as his used to be, right?"

"No, no. Not nearly. And they have much better medicine these days."

They taste their wine and glance around the garden bar--its potted lemon trees, a discreetly burbling fountain, the leafy escarpment climbing to Villa Borghese Park.

"I asked to meet up for a particular reason," he says.

"Ah, the ulterior motive--are you going to fob off some Berlusconi puffery on me now?"

"No, no, nothing to do with work."

"But

I

do
want to hear about
Il Cavaliere,"
she says. "I'm dying to hear what it's like working for such a fine man."

"He is a good man. You shouldn't write him off."

"And this is your pure, unadulterated opinion? You do what again? Public relations, is it?"

"Can't blame me for trying, Kath. But no, I wanted to ask you something else--I need your advice."

"Shoot."

"Are you still close with Ruby Zaga?"

It had slipped Kathleen's mind that Dario and Ruby knew each other, but all three were briefly interns at the paper in 1987. Indeed, Ruby introduced Dario and Kathleen.

"Copydesk Ruby?" Kathleen says. "I was never close with her. Why do you ask?"

"Just that I've been having a bit of a problem with her," he says. "I hadn't seen her for ages, then a few months back, not long after my father died, I ran into her on the street. We agreed to meet up for a drink, I gave her my number, and forgot about it. She did phone, though, and we went out. It was a normal night. Nothing special. But since then she keeps calling my cell and hanging up."

"That's

weird."

"It's been going on for weeks. She must have called fifty times. My wife thinks I'm having an affair."

"And you're not."

He dips into the bowl of olives. "No."

"Hmm," she says. "Suspicious."

He looks up, smiling. "I'm not. Honestly. Anyway, maybe let's shift topics.

Berlusconi--you wanted to talk about Berlusconi, right?"

"Well, you're off the hook for now."

"What do you want to know about him?"

"First off, how can you work for that guy? The face-lifts, the hair transplants--he's such a buffoon."

"Not to my mind."

"Oh, come on."

"Don't forget, Kath, I'm on the right."

"So you keep telling me. How did I ever bear you?"

"Were you on the left?"

"Of course," she says. "But couldn't you have done better than Berlusconi?"

"Couldn't you have done better than the paper?"

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing. But please, if you don't mind, try not to belittle me. You're too good at it."

"I don't belittle you." She pauses. "What do you mean I'm good at it? Is that how you remember me?"

"Not for the most part."

"Well, if I used to I'm sorry."

"We do get great gift baskets at Christmas," he says, changing topics. "Berlusconi is unmatched in that area:
torrone
, champagne, foie gras."

Yes, this is what she's here for: the inside line on life under Berlusconi, Europe's court jester. At the least, Dario can give her an amusing tale to recount at parties. He might even feed her a story. No one can resist a Berlusconi-is-ludicrous piece. But hang on, hang on--she isn't quite finished talking. "I hope I wasn't awful to you."

"Don't be crazy."

"I feel as if maybe I was."

"You know how deeply I loved you."

She takes an olive, just holds it. "That's fairly blunt."

He says, "You were goodness." It sounds like a language mistake, but his English is usually flawless.

"Now I really feel like a shit." She eats the olive.

"I didn't say you
weren't
a shit."

She laughs. "Beware--I'm probably more of one now than I used to be."

"I imagine you are. But that's normal, isn't it? One becomes more of a shit as one gets older. I, for example--and you'll find this shocking--had a minor indiscretion involving another woman."

"Oh,

really?"

"And I always hated infidelity."

"I know. I remember."

"But I never felt guilty about it. Never told my wife. Just felt irritated--irritated with Ruby. She was the person, the woman."

"You had an affair with Ruby Zaga?" Kathleen says, grimacing. "Our copydesk nun?"

"I never slept with her. I kissed her."

"Does that count as an affair?"

"I don't know. Anyway, it was ridiculous. It was that time we went for a drink. A boring night, in all honesty. We disagreed about something minor--can't remember what.

She got all touchy. I paid, went outside, waited for her. She came out, crying. I tried to calm her down and--I don't know why--I found myself kissing her. We did that for a while in this alley in Trastevere, near her place. I remember it stank of garbage." He shifts with embarrassment. "Anyway, nothing happened after that. We had no further contact. Until a few weeks later, when she started calling me. As I told you, she never talks, never says anything. But it's starting to cause problems. She doesn't get the hint."

"Well, well, well," Kathleen says.

"Mm," he says.

"I wouldn't have guessed that one." She utters a dry laugh. "Ruby Zaga!"

"I'm mortified to confess this. But you're the only person I know who knows her."