A Pimp's Notes (17 page)

Cindy, who knows Stefano, lifted her light blue eyes in my direction. Her American accent turned her pasta with tomato and basil just a shade less Italian.

“Problems?”

I smiled at her, just as false as Judas Iscariot.

“Not even half a problem.”

Barbara dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin.

“So, are you going to tell us what this important thing is?”

I sat down and leaned toward them, lowering my voice slightly.

“Tomorrow you have an engagement in a place you and Cindy have already been. In Lesmo, at the villa of Lorenzo Bonifaci.”

I gave Carla time to take in that name. The expression on her face confirmed that she knew him and that it had made a big impression on her.

“I need you to be ready at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon in Piazza San Babila, with everything you need to spend the night. A car will pick you up and take you to where you’re going. The terms are excellent: three million lire apiece. The people ought to be the same as last time, because they specifically requested you.”

“What about Laura?”

“She doesn’t work with us anymore. She chose another path.”

To keep from muddying the water, I stopped myself before telling them that Laura had opted for love. I didn’t want to trigger any mysterious mental mechanisms, which can be especially unpredictable in women. I doubted that Cindy and Barbara cared much about the subject, but Carla was still a mystery to me and I had to protect her.

From herself, for me.

“So I’ve been forced to choose one myself. Carla will replace her. Much better, I think. This is her first job, so I’m counting on you to work with her to make her feel comfortable.”

Barbara started laughing. She smothered her hilarity in her napkin.

Carla turned a little edgy.

“What are you laughing about?”

Barbara waved one hand in the air, dismissively.

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just that there was one guy, last time, who was crazy about the service entrance, if you know what I mean. I’m just warning you, in case you get him.”

As a joke, it would have been in poor taste, to say the least, but it was no joke. It was the truth, the naked truth, and this was the only way to deal with it. I looked at Carla, to see how she responded. She took her time, looking first at one woman and then the other.

“Do you do it?”

Cindy answered for both of them.

“No violence and no whips, but other than that, for this much money, the sky’s the limit.”

Carla nodded her head ever so slightly. One small nod for a woman, one giant step for her earning potential and for mine.

“Then it’s fine with me.”

She drank the rest of the champagne in her glass, then held the empty glass out to me.

“This is good. Can I have a little more?”

*   *   *

The thunderous applause at the end of Lucio’s performance brings me back to Byblos and wipes out the rest of an evening spent with three beautiful girls, trying my best to persuade them to become colleagues, since the word
friends
is always such a challenge.

Then the spotlight on the stage dims and is replaced by the general lighting in the room. The club’s stereo system starts playing recorded music, perhaps a few decibels louder than necessary. The show is over. Lucio stands up from his stool and is immediately joined by a technician who helps him put his guitars away and step down from the stage.

Carla turns to look at me.

“I like the way he plays.”

I don’t have time to comment before a waiter comes over and we order two drinks at random, drinks we don’t especially want. Like an old-fashioned gentleman, I lean over to light the cigarette that Carla has placed between her lips. Then I lay a hand on her shoulder.

“Excuse me for a moment.”

I make my way through and around the tables and go over to where Lucio is sitting. I toss him the solution to that afternoon’s cryptic clue as a token of my presence.

“Allowed. You have to see it written, not spoken out loud, as you pointed out.”

At the sound of my voice, Lucio turns in my direction, without the slightest surprise.

“I knew you’d solve it. It’s almost no fun anymore with you.”

He bends over and checks to make sure that his guitar cases are securely fastened shut. Like all musicians, he lavishes maniacal care on his instruments. A considerable portion of his personal wealth and affection are bound up in those two rigid cases.

“Have you been here long?”

“No, unfortunately we only got here in time to hear the last two songs.”

“We?”

“Carla’s here with me.”

“She is?”

Those two words contain a great many more. An entire world. Perhaps Lucio is trying to imagine the face of a woman whose voice he has heard, but nothing more.

“The girl with the skin that smells so good.”

I smile. Maybe I was right when I thought what I did about Lucio’s senses. If one fails, the other four rise to the challenge.

“You wouldn’t recognize her now. We’ve added a very nice perfume.”

“French?”

“I know it’s good. I didn’t check its passport.”

“Idiot. I’m friends with an idiot.”

Lucio stands up and reaches out one hand to grab my arm. He finds me and entrusts himself to me.

“There are only two ways for you to redeem yourself in my eyes.”

“How?”

“First, get me a pair of my own that work. Then take me to say hello to that divine creature.”

Sometimes I catch myself thinking that if Lucio had kept his sight, the world would have lost his marvelous and bitter sense of humor. But given the terms of the exchange, I think he would gladly have refrained from sharing that gift of his with the rest of humanity.

I lead him to the table where Carla is waiting for us. Lucio reaches around for a chair.

“
Ciao
, Lucio. You were fantastic.”

“
Ciao
, girl. Bravo was right.”

“When he said you weren’t fantastic?”

“No. He doesn’t know a fucking thing about music. But he does know a thing or two about perfume. The perfume you’re wearing is outstanding.”

“He bought it for me, along with a number of other things.”

While they’re talking, I look around, astonished not to see Chico, the young man who usually takes Lucio back and forth between home and work.

“Isn’t your alter ego here tonight?”

My friend puts on a pose with gesture and voice, speaking in a slight falsetto.

“My chauffeur, you mean? No, I gave him an evening to himself.”

“So who’s taking you home tonight?”

Lucio turns serious.

“Chico brought me here tonight, but he can’t drive me home. So the owner of the club said he’d give me a ride.”

Carla beats me to it.

“Come with us.”

I chime in with a favorable opinion, though I point out a couple of difficulties.

“You’ll have to put up with some discomfort. The car is packed with bags and packages, but we’ll dig out a space for you.”

“Fine. I’ll take up no more room than a herring. Am I okay as I am, or would you prefer me smoked?”

Carla laughs and we all stand up. We tell the owner of the club about the change in plans; he seems relieved not to have to drive all the way to Cesano Boscone at that time of night. Since Lucio is scheduled to play at the same club tomorrow night, he entrusts the owner with his guitars, asking him to lock the room where he’ll be storing the instruments.

We walk out of the club, leaving the customers and staff dealing with the tail end of the dwindling Milanese nightlife. We walk to the car and a few minutes later we’re three different people traveling down the same road. The whole way, I drive and smoke in silence. I listen as my two passengers talk about music, after Carla has finished an excited description of her afternoon’s shopping.

The nighttime traffic opens its arms to us, the street signs show us the way, and sooner than I expected, the Mini is parked outside the apartment building. We gather our bags and packages and, in spite of the fact that our arms are full and we’re all laughing, I manage to direct Lucio to the front door, open the glass doors, and we all make our way upstairs to the landing.

I open my front door and we finally set down our packages, not heavy but costly, on the floor. The voice catches me by surprise before I can switch on the light.

“You want a cup of coffee?”

I turn and see Lucio standing in the door of his apartment.

Carla and I turn to look at each other. We both know perfectly well that the cup of coffee is strictly a pretext. The aim, and it’s hardly concealed, is to dilute his loneliness with a few spoonfuls of sugar. If I were anyone else but who I am, I’d be in a hurry to get Carla alone. But at times you don’t have the luxury of a choice, in life. The only thing you’re allowed is to choose who you’re going to share your cage with.

“Let’s have a cup of coffee.”

We join him in his apartment across the landing. When he hears us come in, Lucio reaches out a hand to switch on the lights. I feel a twinge in my heart at the thought that he’s doing it just for us. His electric bills must be low. Carla looks around, without bothering to conceal her curiosity. She observes the unadorned walls and the mismatched colors, and perhaps she’s drawing the same conclusions I came to, long ago. Every decision in this apartment was made on the basis of functionality and the elimination of corners and edges. The aesthetic side of things is a luxury that Lucio has been obliged to renounce. And like any luxury, it turns out to be unnecessary.

Our host heads for his tiny kitchen.

“You two sit down while I make the coffee.”

Carla blocks his path.

“No, I’ll do it.”

“But…”

“No ifs, ands, or buts. You worked this evening, and I’ve just been enjoying myself all day long. Sit down and let me serve you. For once, it’s my choice whether to serve, and that’s a new experience for me.”

Lucio gives up and sits down at the table. Carla vanishes into the tiny kitchen and we listen as she rummages through the cabinets in search of the Moka pot and the necessary materials. I’m still standing in the middle of the room, next to a credenza with cabinet doors and drawers. On the counter is a telephone, a radio, and a glass container with some keys, a few sheets of paper, and some coins.

Next to them are some pictures. I look at them closely and I see that one of them depicts Lucio, a few years younger, with some other young men onstage. They’re posing like the musicians they are and all around them are musical instruments, microphones, and amplifiers. On the bass drum is written the name of the band, in Gothic letters:
Les Misérables
.

“You never told me you played in a band.”

“How do you know about that?”

“There’s some pictures here, on the dresser.”

My friend resolves the minor mystery.

“I showed them to Chico, before we went out. He forgot to put them back. I’ll have to get a new butler.”

“How long did it last? The band, I mean.”

Lucio smirks.

“Not long. We kept it up for a while, but we were good, we weren’t great. And the other guys in the band had some projects in mind that had nothing to do with music.”

“What about you?”

For the first time since I’ve known him, he allows regret to appear on his face.

“I went on playing on my own, but without the necessary drive. When those pictures were taken, even if you can’t tell, my eyes were already practically shot.”

I look back at the pictures. Lucio is the only one who isn’t smiling. I put them back on the dresser and I go back to sit at the table, across from him.

“Bravo, can I ask you a question?”

“Naturally.”

“You know what I do for a living. Now you’ve even had a glimpse into my past. What line of work are you in?”

It’s already hard to describe it in general. It’s very difficult to do so in particular with someone as sharp as Lucio.

“Shall we just say that I’m a businessman?”

He smiles and concedes.

“I have the feeling that, if I were to ask what kind of business, you might not give me an exhaustive answer.”

I minimize with my tone of voice, since he can’t see my instinctive gestures.

“Business is all the same. It all has one single objective, to take home money. And whatever is limited to making money isn’t worth our consideration.”

Carla shows up with the coffee to interrupt this moment of intimacy. She has certainly heard what we said but says nothing about either of the two topics. She sets a demitasse on the table in front of each of us. Then she goes back into the kitchen to get her cup and the sugar.

“How about you, Carla? What kind of work do you do?”

Carla comes back, puts the sugar bowl and the little spoons on the tabletop, and sits down between us, her demitasse in hand. I serve the sugar, as usual. Two spoonfuls for Lucio, half a spoonful for me. Carla takes hers bitter.

“Until yesterday I worked for a cleaning service. Now I’m looking around for something else.”

“You, a cleaning woman? With that scent? I can’t believe it.”

“But it’s true. Or rather, it was true.”

The coffee, hot and aromatic, silences us for a little while. We sit saying nothing, under the light pouring down from above, each of us rapt in imagining what our lives would have been like if things had gone differently. Constructing a fictitious and illusory alternative reality, which as such cannot be any sweeter.

Lucio is the first to break the silence.

“Carla, can I touch your face?”

She has to stop and think about that question, apparently. I have plenty of time to light a cigarette before she answers.

But there is no uncertainty in her voice when she does.

“Sure.”

She stands up and walks around the table to where Lucio is sitting. He senses her presence and stands up. He raises his hands and slowly runs the tips of his fingers over her face. He runs his fingers through her hair, over her forehead, down the bridge of her nose, and surveys her skin. He explores her with the care and curiosity of an expert deciphering an antique document.