My Mother-in-Law Drinks (13 page)

“I don't follow you.”

Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo looks a little annoyed (he must hate having to explain something that seems so obvious to him) and comes straight to the point.

“Do you think that the television networks are going to turn up their noses at my monitors? That they're going to turn down a chance to broadcast a show like this?”

“Ah, so that's what you're after.”

“I have the format ready to go, Captain. And I'm not even asking anything for it. Think of what a bargain this is for a TV network. All they have to do is drive over, train their cameras on my monitors, and broadcast it on the national news.”

Mulder looks around, trying to catch his colleague's eye, perhaps because he doesn't know what to say at this point (and I understand him, because the engineer's line of argument is technically impeccable).

In fact, she's the next one to speak, as soon as the engineer finishes.

“We aren't authorized to permit that kind of filming.”

“Well then you'd better get authorization. Because if you even try to prevent the cameras from filming us, I'll put a bullet right in this guy's forehead.”

I look at Mulder and realize that his yoga-induced equilibrium is growing wobblier by the minute.

“Who is that man, Engineer?” he asks.

“About time,” I'd like to say.

“You mean you don't recognize him?”

Come onnn, we're finally getting somewhere, I think.

“How do you expect me to recognize him if he won't look into the camera?”

“Not to mention the fact that you've puffed him up like a balloon,” I'd be tempted to add.

As if he were suddenly inclined to accommodate the request, Matrix slowly lifts his head and stares into the camera again.

There's a gleam of superiority in his expression, a quickening of pride and defiance. He even seems a little taller than before, like someone who feels called upon to prove he's worthy of his name.

After hamming it up with a dramatic pause, Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo takes a deep breath and finally introduces him.

“Gabriele Caldiero.”

The silence that falls over the front entrance can be heard from here.

Matteo the deli counterman and I both turn to look at the hostage as if the name we just heard ought to have somehow altered his facial features.

Captain Mulder-Apicella practically recoils from that image. His neck stretches out, lengthening by a good five inches. His eyes, which are very light in color, narrow. Scully immediately draws near him. He whispers something into her ear. She goes back to the people she just shooed away, who now seem even more frightened, and orders them to leave the supermarket. Then she pulls a two-way radio out of her pocket and pushes a button.

I haven't the foggiest idea what plague or catastrophe is attached to that name I've never heard before (at the very most, I could make an educated guess), but my heart rate increases with such uncalled-for intensity that I'm having a hard time breathing, even though I'm standing perfectly still (I believe it when people say you can't tell your heart what to do: it doesn't understand a fucking thing you say).

“Engineer,” Mulder calls out.

“Yes,” he replies.

“Let us take care of him.”

“Not on your life, Captain.”

“This isn't something you can deal with.”

“Nor can you, it seems to me, given the fact that this gentleman was free to come in here undisturbed whenever he pleased.”

Mulder turns to look at his colleague and sees his own consternation mirrored in her face. Then he lets fly another question. And this time it's as if he's vaulted up to another, more technical level of conversation.

“Do you have any other weapons, aside from the pistol I can see in your hand?”

The engineer gathers his thoughts, then replies.

“Are you asking if I've planted a bomb in the laundry detergent section or the frozen foods aisle, for instance?”

“That's always a possibility,” he acknowledges.

“In effect, it's always a possibility,” the other man agrees.

My gaze meets Matteo the deli counterman's again. “Uh-oh,” our eyes seem to be saying.

“I don't believe you,” says the carabiniere in an attempt to call his bluff.

“Well,” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo rebuts effortlessly, “if you recognize the possibility that I might have planted a bomb, then you'll just have to take that into account. Which means that whether you believe it or not doesn't make a bit of difference, as far as you're concerned.”

Impeccable.

“You wouldn't hurt innocent people,” Mulder ventures, grasping at straws.

“Don't give me too much credit.”

A rather grim silence ensues.

“That remote control you're using, does it do anything else besides control the television monitors?”

This question is so academic it almost leaves me speechless. In the sense of elementary, if not nursery school.

“Give it a rest, Captain. I wouldn't tell you even if it did.”

Scully walks over to her colleague and whispers something into his ear.

“Speak louder, young lady,” the engineer thunders, primarily to remind her who's in charge.

“She was just informing me that reinforcements are on the way,” Mulder explains on her behalf.

“Reinforcements? It's not like you're resisting a military attack.”

“This is standard procedure, Engineer.”

“Captain, I'm warning you. From here I can see everything, absolutely everything. None of you can enter or exit the supermarket at any location or move around inside the building without being seen on the monitors. If you even try to move in on me, you'll have the first blood on your hands. And don't even think of blacking out the monitors or keeping the cameras away from them when they get here, do I make myself clear?”

Mulder lets the phrase hover in the air for a few moments, then replies, “You've made yourself clear.” He pauses for a moment. “But now you need to let me in to see if there are any shoppers who didn't make it out. I believe it's in your interest as much as ours to make sure that no one's remained behind.”

It looks as if the captain is regaining ground.

The engineer furrows his brow, then accepts the request.

“I can spare you the inspection, and show you the whole supermarket aisle by aisle. From here, with the remote control. Look at the television set up on the right.”

“Please, Engineer,” Mulder promptly contradicts him, in the most reasonable tone of voice he can muster, “this is something I have to check in person. I need to look under the lower shelves too. A little kid could be hiding under there. This is a routine police operation, it won't take long at all. Don't worry, I'm not thinking of doing anything rash.”

“You couldn't if you wanted to,” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo retorts.

“That's true,” Mulder agrees. “Look,” he says, unfastening his holster from his belt, “I'll leave my pistol with my colleague.”

Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo puffs up, then slowly exhales. Perhaps the prospect of a child huddled under one of the lower counters really has upset him.

“All right,” he says, finally putting aside his reservations. “Then I'll act as your navigator. Follow the itinerary I give you.”

“All right,” says Mulder, hopefully.

“Take the left-hand aisle, go past the bread counter and continue at a steady pace, keeping to your right. When you bend down to look under the shelves and counters, keep moving, unless there really is a child hiding underneath, as you suggest. Don't take any detours and don't retrace your steps. Once you reach this aisle, come over to where Counselor Malinconico is standing,” and here he points to me, as if telling me to stay at the end of the aisle to act as his lookout (whereupon I look at Matteo and think: “Why me? Why not him?”), “and stop there. Do exactly as I say. I'm going to be keeping an eye on you on the monitor. Is that all clear?”

“Perfectly,” says Mulder.

And he sets off.

“Captain,” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo stops him immediately.

“What?” he asks.

“The gun.”

I observe this end-of-scene exchange and wonder: “Is that a classic or a cliché?” Sometimes it's hard to see the difference.

Mulder puts one hand to his forehead.

He seems sincere.

He hands Scully his pistol.

“I'm sorry,” he says, “I didn't do it on purpose.”

“It wouldn't have done you any good anyway. Get moving.”

T
he realization that my crisis with Alessandra Persiano had not only begun but was actually halfway complete came to me one morning in court, as I was exiting a courtroom—which was crowded with colleagues who were not exactly sweet-smelling—where a civil claim hearing had been in session after successfully obtaining a postponement of something like eleven months in a case of mine (as you no doubt know, bringing a civil suit down in Naples almost routinely involves requesting a postponement at some point. There are more than five million civil suits pending in Italy. Oh, I know, that number doesn't strike you as all that astonishing; but I assure you that until you enter into the realm of statistics you can't grasp just how seriously messed-up the Italian justice system is).

It was a vision in the form of an awareness, a déjà vu from the future, the perception of an irremediable loneliness that you have no choice but to face up to, as if in that very instant I had already gone home and found the little sheet of notepaper folded in half on the kitchen table. It was so palpable that right then and there I felt the impulse to grab my balls to ward off the impending disaster, in keeping with the superstition, and I would have done it, too, except that I was busy at the moment trying to squeeze between the fat bellies of two commuting out-of-town lawyers dressed in caramel-colored suits, who were completely indifferent to my repeated attempts to wedge myself between them, busy as they were exchanging patently puffed-up accounts of their recent professional successes (it's incredible how we men, even after reaching respectable ages, still stand around telling each other tall tales for the simple love of bragging).

Don't ask me how such a thing could have happened to me, nor why I immediately took that odd sort of premonition so seriously, nor why I took such great fear. I don't know why. What I think I've learned, in my not-even-all-that-memorable romantic career, is that when we grow apart from someone we've loved (or still do), we leave lots of evidence behind us around the house. Little messages of inattentiveness and dissatisfaction that we scatter everywhere, and we even do it intentionally. We amass piles of discourtesies, omissions, unreturned gazes, words that no longer mean anything. And when we get out on the street, back among the crowds, and we lose the reassurance of the presence of the person who is usually alongside us, even though we feel we don't love her the way we used to, all of this accumulated distance catches up with us among the noises and voices of others, and it becomes loneliness in its purest form.

 

Once I'd escaped, instead of hurrying off and finding myself a cozy little place where I could settle my accounts with my panic and try to analyze it in some way, I went off to freeze my butt on one of the marble benches not far from the main entrance to the courthouse, and there I started watching the passersby, wondering what it was they possessed that I lacked.

Sitting on the next bench over, in the role of Forrest Gump, there was a homeless man with a carton of Tavernello red who kept shooting me sidelong glances as if he was wondering whether we hadn't met somewhere before. I came this close to asking him if he'd let me have a swig of his wine.

That was when my cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my jacket breast pocket, cursing myself for having forgotten to turn it off or at least silence it (which is what I always do, by the way, on the rare occasion that I actually attend a hearing).

I was in no state of mind to answer my phone, much less to talk to Nives, who in all likelihood was calling to dress me down for giving whiskey to her mother; so I just sat there staring at that plastic leech that kept crying out in my hand, throwing a fit and shrieking as if it were possessed, while my wino neighbor nodded in solidarity, as if he too had recently experienced that same annoyance.

I did my best to resist, but since that fucking cell phone wouldn't stop denouncing my inaction (it's incredible how many times a phone will ring before putting itself to sleep on those occasions when you just wish it would shut up), I finally had to give in, but only after stocking up on oxygen first.

“If this is about the Jack Daniel's,” I say, opening with a frontal attack, “I'm stupid, infantile, and inappropriate. If there are no other recriminations, shall we just end the call there?”

The ensuing pause must have lasted, I don't know, a solid minute.

“This is Alagia, Vince'.”

Her tone was absolutely commiserative.

Whereupon I had a vision: me in a theater, center stage, caught in a cone of harsh light; out in the orchestra seats and up in the balconies, a packed and sadistic audience pointing at me and laughing (a couple of them were even people I knew).

“Would you tell me why the fuck you're calling me on your mother's phone?” I retorted, pathetically aggressive.

The
tavernellista
turned to look at me.

I must have been shouting.

“Because the battery in mine is dead,” she said, maintaining her cool.

My eyes narrowed. All around me things had gotten blurry.

“And you couldn't have called me from the landline?”