My Mother-in-Law Drinks (43 page)

“Okay.”

I pull some clean underwear and socks out of the drawer of the Leksvik dresser, and then I have a moment of, how to put this, hesitation.

“Ah, Espe.”

“What.”

“You didn't by any chance
give
them my cell number?”

“Of course not.”

“Thanks. You're a pal.”

T
he evening out with Espe is, without exaggeration, tragic. A couple of losers in a
birreria
, one of them reeking like an aging whore, exchanging their respective states of depression practically without uttering a word the whole time.

It's not as if the other clients of the place (those who are our age and over, I mean to say) are much better off, in fact, quite the opposite seems to be true. Just to tell you: it's stunning to see how many men aged 50+ enter and exit on a hunt for pussy. Because there's no mistaking the fact that that hunger is stamped on their faces and, most particularly, on the clothing they wear. There are lots, and I really mean lots and lots and lots, of men well along in years and pathologically obsessed with youth. It's stronger than them, and they all want at least a taste of it. They throw on the attire of youthfulness however it happens (and it generally happens badly), abdicating any personal sense of the ridiculous. They wear torn blue jeans and Hogan shoes, their hair is thinning but still long, they wear hip glasses, sky-blue or off-yellow, with BlackBerrys blinking in the pockets of their unbuttoned shirts, revealing white chest hairs and jutting bellies.

The tragedy of these latter-day monsters is not that they feel young: it's that they want to seem young. My opinion is that this sort of conscientious objection to the facts of the registry of vital statistics implies a sort of desperate yearning to grab a few crumbs from the surrounding banqueting table of sexual abundance, as if, by disguising oneself as a young person, it was possible to fool the world into giving up some of its treasures without realizing it.

By the time I can no longer stand sitting there wallowing in the act of expiation, inhaling (though by now I'm inured to it) Espe's pestiferous scent, and wandering off into zooanthropological speculations concerning the surrounding bestiary, I finally suggest to my office-mate that we give up the long-since shipwrecked idea of having fun and simply make our separate ways home.

And so we emerge from the
birreria
to immerse ourselves in the youthful throngs (with the exceptions mentioned above) swarming along the long line of clubs, pubs, and bars that remain open and jumping until dawn along this thoroughfare, the site of the city's
movida
(as the local press likes to call it), and those throngs seem to part for us, opening immediate and generous gaps for us to pass through, thanks to the filthy and bestial scent my friend is emanating.

It is just as we're breaking up one of those many groups of merrymakers bivouacking on the sidewalk that I feel someone tug at my arm. I turn around as Espe is being swallowed up by the next surge of humanity, vanishing from my sight. The exact words that come into my head when I lay eyes on There's Something About Mary just inches from my face, are: “Now you tell me, doesn't she look like the girl from the hospital?”

“Ciao,” she says, bestowing upon me a faintly embarrassed smile. I have the impression that her eyes are glittering, and I also get the feeling that it's more than just an impression. Here and now, I couldn't describe the clothes that she's wearing, but I know for an absolute certainty that I find her fabulously elegant.

I'm going on instinct there, obviously.

“Oh, ciao,” I say, reciprocating her informal tone and deafened by the roar of voices around us.

“I'd never have expected to find you here.”

“You'd be right,” I shout. “I never come here.”

I get up on my tiptoes in search of Espe, but I don't see him anywhere.

“Why not?”

“Do you have any idea how old I am?”

“No, none at all.”

I raise my right hand, fold over my thumb, and flash four twice. Once for forty and and once for four.

“Really?” she says, startled. “My compliments.”

Jesus, I'd forgotten how much noise people can make just by talking. More than hearing what she says, I read her lips.

“Compliments for what?”

“What did you say?” she asks, putting her ear next to my mouth and letting me inhale the scent of her hair.

“
FOR WHAT
?” I shout.

“For the way you look at your age.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Are you here alone?”

“Actually I was with a friend, but I think I've lost him. What about you?”

“With them,” she replies, pointing to a couple nearby, both of them more or less her age.

They both nod at me with a sort of approval (which I return) and then, as if they'd (not so much understood as) sensed the direction things were taking, they shoot a quick look of agreement at There's Something About Mary and slip away into the crowd, hand in hand.

“Why are they leaving?” I ask.

“I'll catch up with them later, don't worry. Besides, we're not going anywhere.”

“Ah,” I comment.

We look each other in the face.

“At this point, I ought to ask if you want anything to drink, I guess,” I say.

“What?”

“AT THIS POINT, I OUGHT TO ASK IF YOU WANT ANYTHING TO DRINK, I GUESS!”

“Well, why don't you?”

 

In the “American bar” we just entered you practically can't see a damned thing. Okay, the idea of reproducing
night
in a place known, in fact, as a nightclub is a very
cool
effect; and I understand that semidarkness facilitates intimate interactions, makes the people you meet seem that much more interesting, and all the rest, but when a person walks into a nightclub to get a drink, it seems reasonable to expect that they should at least be able to spot the bartender.

We flutter like bats to claim a table that Cameron Diaz, who knows how, has already homed in on. I let her lead me, trusting her instincts as we glide through the crowd that occupies the center of the upper level. In here, it seems that the prohibition of smoking is honored more in the breach than the observance. The one positive is that the music being played up here is jazz, which I don't much like but which at least makes it possible to exchange a few words without having to shout.

Once we're seated I do my best to get my eyes used to the partial darkness, using the dim light of a votive candle set in a small glass cube at the center of the tiny table where we've taken a seat.

The beauty of Cameron Diaz from the elbows up is enough to make anyone blush. Every time she smiles, it's as if a stapler had just punched a staple into my crotch.

“You like it here?” she asks.

“Here where?” I reply.

She gives me a blank look, then gets it and laughs.

A waiter shows up, ripped, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and leather pants. He hops in place and blows his bangs out of the way as he talks.

“A sweet evening to you,” he says.

Oh my God, I think.

“Ciao,” says There's Something About Mary.

The waiter shoots her a gigolo's come-hither look that makes me want to light his bangs on fire.

“What can I bring you?”

“A Negroni for me,” Cameron orders.

“Margarita for me,” I say.

“You want that normal or
frozen
?” the aspiring male model asks me, tapping his pencil on his order pad and leaning on the pretentious English
frozen
.

I'd have to guess that, in his imagination, the fact that he addressed me in the informal is quite an honor.

“
Frozen
.”

“Negroni . . . Margarita,” writes the bangs-blower, dictating the order to himself.

At this point he ought to clear out, but he seems to have something else he wants to tell us.

“All right. Well then, I'll leave you two to your synergy. Have a nice evening.”

I'm so disconcerted by the unholy obscenity that this mental defective with the cascading bangs has allowed to escape his lips that I can't help but track him with my eyes as he moves off, as if I somehow found the fact of his earthly existence to be an inexplicable mystery at this point.

When I turn back to Cameron Diaz, she's already laughing.

A text comes in for me.

“Excuse me,” I say.

“No worries,” she says, wiping away her tears.

I read it.

It's from Espe.

 

WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?

 

“Is there a problem?” asks There's Something About Mary.

“No, it's my friend from earlier, he's looking for me.”

She gives me a confused look as I slip my phone back into my breast pocket.

“Well? Aren't you going to text him back?”

“No, I've had enough of him for today, believe me.”

We look at each other. We're both pretty uncomfortable, which is a worrisome sign.

“You know,” she says, “my friends recognized you. I hadn't even spotted you.”

“Go on, get out of here.”

“Really. They said ‘Isn't that Malinconico?'”

“Of course, when you think about it, it's just nuts.”

“Why?”

“I'm not a successful lawyer, Irene. It's odd that I'm at risk of becoming one thanks to this whole business.”

I answered instinctively, without thinking. Something must be happening if this girl can make me speak sincerely just by sitting across from me. The same thing that happened at the hospital, now that I think about it.

“Yeah,” she says, a note of sadness entering her voice, as if my observation had reminded her of the inescapable nature of the grief that she was doing her best to outsmart.

“Hey,” I say, taking her hand. “Hey.”

“It was all wrong, all of it. From the start,” she whispers, talking to herself.

I shyly reach my other hand toward her and try to stroke her face.

She squints her eyes as if to stave off a tear; she bites her lip and smiles at me, with a need to reassure me that touches me in a way I'd rather not have been touched.

“Don't worry, it's nothing.”

“Listen, I'm sorry, I didn't think I was . . .”

She rubs her cheek against my hand and squeezes the other hand tight.

“It's okay. Really. I'm over it.”

I look at her as if to ask her what to think about the fact that we're here doing what we're doing. I ought to change the subject, and right away, withdraw from the intimacy that is growing between us, move the conversation to topics of no particular importance so that I can bring this interaction to an end as quickly as possible and get my ass out of here before it's too late. Instead, once again, I wind up following my atavistic instincts to do everything I can to ruin my life.

“Do you know who you remind me of?” I say to her, point-blank.

She rolls her eyes to the ceiling, as if I was about to say something that she'd heard billions of times.

“Cameron Diaz.”

“Wrong answer. An old song by Dik Dik.”

“What?” she says, astonished.

“‘L'isola di Wight.'
 
You know it?”

She shakes her head.

“One verse, in particular. Want to hear it?”

She smiles.

“Does that mean you want to sing it to me?”

“What am I supposed to do, recite it? Songs aren't poems, after all.”

“Right. Okay, go.”

She turns her ear to me, all curious, as I lean toward her, clear my throat, and intone:

 

Without a suitcase you and I

Set out one Thursday

In our eyes was the word yes

 

Here I pause briefly, both because that's how the song goes and because I want to gauge her reaction.

Her eyes are closed. A way of concentrating, probably. So I continue, moving on to the part that in my mind has the most to do with her:

 

A rain of butterflies all around us

You gave me your youth

And no one's stopped me since

 

I lean away, announcing the end of the performance.

She waits a few seconds before opening her eyes. When she does, she looks upset.

“Let's stop here, Vincenzo,” she says, avoiding my eyes.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You really don't get it. Stop.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise, we'll keep going.”

“Ah.”

“As long as he's in that condition, I can't bring myself to, I'm not able to, I . . . Oh, how stupid, forgive me forgive me forgive me.”

She's on the verge of breaking into tears. She puts one hand over her mouth.

I look around, dreading some indiscreet observer (I'm blessing the darkness we're sitting in), then I stand up, bring my chair over next to hers, and sit down.

“Hey,” I tell her, stroking her head, “don't worry, nothing's happened. Let's just start over from the beginning, okay? I'm an emotional mess myself right now, and . . .”

I'm about to finish my sentence but I can't because, darting like a cobra, she grabs my face with both hands and pulls me toward her, dragging me into a desperate, ravenous kiss. When we're done, she pushes me away.

I sit there, astounded and vaguely enthusiastic, while There's Something About Mary stands up and adjusts the strap of her purse over her shoulder.

“Please, Vincenzo,” she says, leaning over me.

“Eh.”

“If I call you, don't answer.”

I look at her and say nothing.

She kisses me again: no tongue this time.

I start to stand up.

She presses her hand gently down on my shoulder, and when she's sure I've gotten the message, she leaves.