The Sex Sphere (3 page)

My clothes were on the floor by the bed. I slipped them on, took the key and walked the two flights downstairs.

The hotel halls were narrow and oddly shaped, like pieces in a 3-D jigsaw. Hotel Caprice, just a block off the Via Veneto. It was shabby and casual, some forgotten bankrupt’s converted house. Out of politeness, the horse-faced clerk ignored me on my way out.

A fine rain was falling. It was a cool spring night, a few days before Easter. With all the pilgrims in town, we’d been lucky to find a hotel room.

On the Via Veneto I sat down under a cafe awning, ordered a Heineken, then wished I hadn’t. There was hardly anyone out, hardly anything to look at. I was getting cold through my damp sport coat. Holy Week comes well before the
Dolce Vita
.

A madman approached. Already from twenty meters you could tell. He carried a big toy robot, one of those weird Japanese toys that looks like a member of Kiss. The maniac’s eyes were all over the place, and he caught me staring at him.

“
Ecco!
” he screeched, holding the robot towards me and raising one of its arms. He made a buzzing noise then, like the robot was supposed to be warding off my eye-attack with a death ray. “
DZEEZEEZEEEEENTINI!
”

I looked away, hoping he would keep walking. Fat chance. I could hear him pause, move closer, pause again. One more step and he’d be breathing on me.

With a sudden cry I whipped up my arms and pointed them at him, holding my fingers out and my thumbs flexed, as if to shoot Dr. Strange energy bolts from my palms.

A stupid move…this wasn’t exactly my first beer of the day…but it worked. Falling right into the Marvel Comics idiom, the madman crooked a protective arm in front of his face and backed slowly off, eyes ablaze.

I looked around the café to see if anyone had noticed my little victory. But the place was empty and…no, over there was a woman smiling at me, nice dark hair, good ass-flesh mouth,
hi, baby
, but, heh, there’s a man with her, also staring at me…should I look away? No, he’s not sending eye-attacks, no indeed, he’s…
pimping
, with a flick of his eyes at the woman, and a crook of his pinky at me…weird and scary. I called for my check.

Out from under the awning it was still wet…not rain so much as heavy mist swirling and roiling in light-brightened patterns which twisted clear to heaven. All that information, just getting me wet. I decided to walk up to Harry’s American Bar, have a whisky and go back to the hotel. Full of purpose, I strode faster.

There was a man ahead of me, a big strapping fellow loafing along under an enormous silk umbrella. I could see that I would have to pass him, and felt a bit nervous…he had fifty pounds on me, easy. But, after all, the street, though empty, was brightly lit, and the man was, I realized, much too well-dressed to be a mugger. He was wearing Gucci shoes and a three-piece gray suit, for God’s sake.

I angled out to the curb and stepped up my pace, hoping to just whisk past him. Fat, as I said before, chance.

“Tsst!”

I slid a glance over. With that suit he looked like the junior partner of a Newark law firm. Played football at Rutgers. Breast-heavy, wasp-waisted wife and a newborn named Nino. You just had to trust this Roman.

“What?”

“Come here.” He stepped closer, including me under his umbrella. “You American?”

I repressed my stock response,
Does the Pope shit in the woods
, and just nodded.

“You live here?”

I was flattered he knew me for an expatriate. I’d been out of the States for almost two years now, though not in Italy. I decided to make him think I was really worth his time.

“Sure. I work at the Embassy.”

He nodded, pleased with his catch. Time to reel me in.

“You wanna come to my place? It’s just down there.”

He gestured at a dark side-street. Sure. Right. I was really going to walk into some random alley with this guy. What kind of idiot did he take me for? I shook my head.

“I’m going up to Harry’s for a drink.” I looked pointedly at my watch. 1:20 already. “I really better be on my way.”

He looked hurt, surprised at my rejection.

“Whatsa matter? Come on! I got a beautiful place. Italian girls very romantic.”

A pimp! Of course! A silk-lined room full of sensual Italian courtesans…high cheekbones, dark-fleshed lips and nipples, animal haunches, smellow cracks and the dewy jet-black deltas….

“No,” I heard myself saying. “No thanks. I just got laid. I couldn’t eat another bite.”

The pimp looked more and more agitated. It was like I was the only mark who’d chanced past all evening. He all but grabbed me by the arm.

“Just come and look. Cost you nothing. Come back other night.”

I wanted to. I wanted to see. But I had a nagging suspicion that there really were no girls down that dark street, that this big strong guy would just beat the shit out of me and take my watch and wallet. On the whole, he looked too well-dressed for such a crude approach, but hell, what did I know about Rome?

Stubbornly I shook my head and started walking again. The big pimp tagged along, sheltering me with his umbrella.

“How can you do this to me? Old friends and you won’t even come look at my beautiful girls!” There was a catch in his voice.

“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” I said with a short laugh. “Where do you get this ‘old friend’ stuff? For all I know, you’ll kill me if I go in a side-street with you.”

His face hardened. “You insult.”

“I’m sorry,” I said hastily. Only half a block more to Harry’s, all warm and lit up, dear God, let me get there alive. “I do think of you as a friend.”

A dark figure on a bicycle came whipping around the corner up ahead. The bicycle had a light on each handlebar, one red and one green, like an airplane. The skinny rider was standing up on the pedals, his tattered clothes flapping and one hand waving free.

“
Guai a voi, anime prave! Non isperate mai veder lo cielo: i’vegno per menarvi a l’altra riva ne le tenebre etterne, in caldo e’n gelo
,” he declaimed in a high, fanatical voice. He was riding down the middle of the sidewalk, speeding straight for us.

I spotted the toy robot in his free hand then, and realized it was the madman from before. I should have known better than to still be out where he could find me.

I stepped out from under the big pimp’s umbrella, hoping to get out of the madman’s way. But he’d fastened his eyes on me now, and seemed determined to ram me. The robot’s lit-up eyes swept back and forth with the man’s cries and wild gestures.

“
ZAPPAPPA ZEZEENO SFERA GLOBO POW POW POW
.” His sound effects. Without looking, I stepped back off the curb to get out of his way. There was a screech of tires behind me. I tensed convulsively.

The pimp in the three-piece suit lunged towards me, the mad bicyclist shot past and a car nudged gently against the backs of my thighs. I felt like fainting with relief. But my troubles were just beginning.

The car that had almost run me down was a black Fiat four-door, slewed sideways from the sudden stop. The driver came boiling out of his vehicle, hairy and fighting mad. He screamed at me and pointed repeatedly at a small green sticker on his windshield. I had no idea what he was talking about.

The big pimp got in on the conversation. He introduced himself in Italian, and I caught the name:
Virgilio Bruno
. The ugly little black-mustached driver redoubled his shouting. Virgilio stood calm and stolid as a rock in a stormy sea. The words
Americano
and
lire
kept cropping up. The driver rummaged in his glove compartment and got out a little pamphlet with the Pirelli Tire Company logo on it. The numbers printed on the back seemed to be of importance. He pulled a folded yellow receipt out of his wallet and unfolded it three, six, nine times till it was the size of a pillowcase. He read off some more numbers in a loud voice, frequently pausing to gesture for effect. Finally he pointed one last time at the sticker on his windshield and handed the tire pamphlet and the yellow receipt to me.

Virgilio nodded formally, quite the lawyer now, and drew me a pace aside.

“He,” a slightly contemptuous inclination of the head accompanied the word. “He say you have damaged his tires. Want ten thousand lire.”

That was something like ten dollars. Should I pay him? It would almost be worth it, just to get off the fucking street. I looked over my shoulder to see if the mad bicyclist was around. I fingered the loose bills in my pants pocket. There was enough.

“We no pay,” Virgilio informed me firmly. “I fix.”

Before I could stop him he turned and unleashed a machine-gun burst of Italian on the driver. Even while holding an umbrella, Virgilio’s hand-gestures were magnificent. Watching his one active hand you could see it all: the cautious pedestrian, the foolishly speeding (and possibly intoxicated) driver, the near-fatal accident, the likelihood of my suing for lower-back damage.

I was convinced, absolutely. But not that hairy little wart of a driver. He began negotiating a compromise. This was going to go on for hours! I snuck a look at my watch. It was almost two in the morning.

Just then the lit-up sign outside Harry’s went out. And, whipping around the same corner, there came the mad robot-master on wheels. He must have ridden around the block. As if on cue, Virgilio and the driver stopped arguing. Before I knew what was happening, Virgilio had me in the backseat of the car with him and we were driving down the Via Veneto. In a way, I was glad.

“What you name?” the big pimp asked.

“Alwin Bitter. Could you drop me off at my hotel? Hotel Caprice.” I called the name up to the driver, but he only hunched his shoulders stubbornly.

“Virgilio Bruno.” He shook my hand, holding the contact longer than I liked. “You no live in hotel. We all have Scotch whisky at my club.”

“My wife’s going to be wondering where I am.”

Virgilio just laughed. “With sex you gave her, she sleep all night.”

The driver sped past the street where I’d met Virgilio, past the café where I’d had my beer, past the side-street where dear Sybil and the kids were sleeping. Would they wake as widow and orphans?

“Hey!” I tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Let me out!
Alt!
I’ll give you your
dice mille lire!
” I pulled a bill out of my pocket and waved it in his face.

He accelerated through a red light, missing a Mercedes with a reflexive twitch of the wheel. We passed the American Embassy on the left.

“You work,” said Virgilio, hooking his thumb at the building.

“No, no,” I cried. “That was a lie!”

Virgilio thinned his lips and shook his head. “No lie. You insult, but no lie. You very valuable, Alvino. Dead or alive.”

There was another red light. We were near the Termini railroad station. There was too much traffic for the little wart to run the light. He had to stop. This was my chance to escape my kidnappers. Stealthily I took the back doorhandle in my left hand. Just a quick jump and…

I’m not a brave man. My self-image is of a very small and weak person. In point of fact, I’m almost six feet, and solidly built. But I was a late bloomer. I spent those formative early high-school years as a pudgy little science wimp. I’m still scared of big men with deep voices.

“
Calmo
,” Virgilio said, snapping down the lock on my door. “Keep your head. I am heavily armed.” I saw the dark glint of an automatic in his hand. The light changed and the car sprang forward.

The traffic thinned out rapidly as we drove away from the Termini. Anonymous street-lit buildings strobed past. Food, food, food. I wondered how they would keep me, my kidnappers. I noted the names of the streets we passed. I tried to think of the binary notation for the number 69. I tried to think of anything but the photo, still vivid in my memory.

The photo: Aldo Moro, Italy’s most eminent statesman, found dead in the back of stolen Renault: a color newsphoto in
Time
, May 22, 1978: There he is; they dressed him in his blue suit after shooting him; you can see through the station wagon’s open hatch; he’s lying on his back, legs folded to fit; dead lumpy unshaven jaw and neck, dead closed eyes pointed away, dead limp hand loosely curled; the Brigate Rosse held him two months and no one met their price, even after his pitiful letters; they shot him eight times in the chest and washed and dressed him; a bloodless blue corpse in the back of a red Renault with green soldiers standing guard; try only to think of the colors, not the angle of his legs, the canceled empty gray face….

We pulled into a vast empty parking lot and stopped. There was something huge and black looming over us.

“
Colosseo
,” the little wart of a driver observed. Footsteps approached. Virgilio unlocked my door and poked me in the ribs with his pistol.

“How much are you worth, Alvino?”

My door flew open and a man in a guard’s uniform beckoned for me to get out. Virgilio and the wart came close on my heels.

My three captors led me in under the Colosseum’s outer arcade, the guard snapping gates open and closed. There was a lot of trash on the ground: fruit rinds, food-papers, handbills with the Pope’s picture. The rain stopped and a full moon came out. The Paschal Moon. Today had been Maundy Thursday. I remembered that the Pope had, in a televised religious observance, imitated Christ by washing the feet of several mental defectives at church this evening. We’d seen part of it on the tube in the hotel lounge.

The guard opened the door to a downward flight of stairs. “
Scendere, signor
.” This was it.

“I won’t.” I got out my wallet. “This has gone far enough. I’ll give you all my money.” I counted rapidly. “Three hundred thousand lire, and I’ll sign my traveler’s checks.”

Virgilio shook his head and took my wallet anyway. He laid a hand on my shoulder and pushed me gently toward the stairs.

Something in me snapped. That was death down there.
Green-red-blue
. I had nothing to lose. I swung around and punched Virgilio in the neck. He made a husky crackling noise and dropped his gun. I scooped up the pistol and took off running along the arcade circling the Colosseum, looking for a way out.