Authors: Niccolo Ammaniti
Cristiano only caught snatches of their conversation.
He was wondering which of them he liked more. Esmeralda
was dark-skinned, with eyes as black as drops of crude oil. She
had straight, raven hair and thin, plum-colored lips. Fabiana was
the exact opposite. Pure blonde, with eyes as green as pond-water
and large, bloodless lips. But in other respects they were strikingly similar. They were both thin and tall, with little snub noses,
long necks, straight hair that fell halfway down their backs, and
small breasts. They dressed alike. And each of them wore a silver
ring embossed with a beautiful skull, and had the same piercings
on the eyebrow, tongue and navel. Minardi claimed to know for
a fact that they had one on their pussies too and that when they
were alone they fixed a chain to the rings and walked around
the house like that.
"Come on, Esme, who's going to stop us in this weather?" Fabiana
said to her friend. "Let's put him in the middle. We can squeeze up."
"I'll walk," he said, without realizing what he was saying.
Now it was Esmeralda's turn. She gazed at him and then said
mischievously: "What's the matter, don't you like the idea of being
in between us?"
There were stories going around the school that Esmeralda and
Fabiana had threesomes with the older boys from the high school.
Especially with one of them, a certain Marco Mattotti, nicknamed
Tekken, a burly guy with a ponytail who was the regional Thai
boxing champion. Whenever Tekken turned up in front of the school
on his motorbike they would fawn all over him like cats in heat
and kiss him on the lips.
But there was something phoney about that scene; it was like a
show that was being deliberately put on to make their male classmates sick with envy and the female ones sour and bitchy.
Countless times Cristiano had jerked off imagining he was screwing
them together. And the image was always the same. While he screwed
one, the other kissed him. Then they would switch roles.
He tried to banish that image from his head.
What should he do?
"Okay. I'll come," he said with a bored sigh.
Esmeralda cheered triumphantly: "I win! I win the bet! I told you
so! I get to copy your homework."
"Huh, some bet. Too easy!" Fabiana slammed down her visor.
"What?" Cristiano couldn't stop himself asking.
Esmeralda exulted: "I said you were all talk. That you weren't
really tough and you'd accept a ride on the scooter with us. We had
a bet on it."
"Congratulations. You won," said Cristiano, and he bowed his
head and trudged off, stabbed to the heart.
After picking up Danilo from the Boomerang Bar, Quattro Formaggi
headed for Rino Zena's home.
The old Boxer disappeared under the two of them. Danilo's big
buttocks bulged halfway out from the little saddle.
Danilo hated riding on the scooter with Quattro Formaggi, who
drove like a maniac, went straight through any red lights he encountered, and to make matters worse, never washed.
"Today we mount the ram on the tractor and then it'll be finished, right?" Danilo yelled in Quattro Formaggi's ear.
"Right."
The day Danilo had read the article about the ram raid on the
cash machine he had rushed around to Rino's house in great
excitement.
He had found him with Quattro Formaggi, drinking grappa and
roasting chestnuts on the resistor coils of an electric heater.
After reading him the article, Danilo had said: "Don't you see
what a brilliant idea it is? No guns. No safes to open. No complicated plans. A nice clean job. With style. You take the cash machine
away, hide it somewhere, then open it in your own good time and
bingo! Loads of money, clean and ready to use."
Rino and Quattro Formaggi hadn't been greatly impressed. They
had looked at him with a glazed expression in their eyes and nodded
their heads.
Over the next few days Danilo had kept on at them about the
ram raid and the beneficial effects it would have on their standard
of living. And in the end the other two, having nothing to do all
day, had begun to come around to his way of thinking and to draw
up some semblance of a plan.
First they would have to get hold of a robust car to smash through
the wall of the bank. Rino's Ducato, the only vehicle they possessed,
would have crumpled up like a beer can.
Danilo had suggested, after some painstaking research in
Quattroruote, that they buy a Pajero Sport 3.0. A monster with a
hundred and seventy horsepower under its hood.
"And how much would this powerhouse cost?" Rino had asked.
"Well, if you want it new, without options-and we don't need
options-about thirty-six thousand euros."
Rino had laughed so much he had almost choked. "Yeah. You think
I'm going to smash a luxury car like that into a wall? Oh, and just as
a matter of interest, who's going to give us the money to buy it, you?"
Danilo had said that his cousin's godfather was a used car dealer
and would give them a fantastic discount on a 1998 Pajero in perfect condition. All they would have to do was remortgage Rino's
house. "I can't do it with my house, you see-the deeds are in
Teresa's name."
Rino had leaped to his feet and pinned him to the wall, growling:
"Are you out of your mind? Do you expect me to run up debts with
the bank for you and your underwear shop?"
Danilo, purple in the face, had gurgled: "Well, let's steal one,
then."
Ah, that was a different matter.
There was the Grand Cherokee owned by Giorgino Longo, the
son of the owner of the Bottegone dello Sport, which was just
waiting to be stolen. A four-by-four the size of a small truck, with
huge wheels, which the young man was always showing off outside
the bar.
To Rino the idea seemed feasible, but the problem, when it came
to venturing into the realm of crime, was always the same.
Cristiano.
Rino had to keep his nose clean. He was already under the supervision of a social worker. If the police once caught him stepping out
of line the judge would instantly deprive him of custody of his son.
"I could only be a lookout."
"And I don't drive," Danilo had added.
The two of them had turned toward Quattro Formaggi, smiling
sadistically.
As usual, he would have to do everything. How strange-he
was the village idiot, the imbecile, but he was the only one who
knew how to cut ignition wires and steal a car without the slightest
difficulty.
"I won't! I don't want to..." he had managed to stammer. He
had a number of bones to pick with those two. A friendship was
only a friendship if there was equality. He would walk through fire for them, but they would never do the same for him. And they took
advantage of him, because he was too goodnatured and could never
say no. But although these fine concepts were perfectly clear and
distinct in Quattro Formaggi's mind, when the moment came to
express them they got tangled up in his mouth like serpents in a
nest. So he had concluded, purple in the face, twisting his mouth
and thumping his leg: "I won't."
But to persuade Quattro Formaggi to do even the most incredible
things all it took was a little stratagem. Refusing to talk to him and
treating him coldly.
Before three days were up, desperate to get back into his friends'
good graces, Quattro Formaggi had agreed to steal the off-roader.
One moonless night, when a Champions League match was on
TV, Danilo and Rino dropped him not far from the villa of the
owner of the Bottegone dello Sport and agreed to meet him on a
piece of waste ground near the river.
And amazingly, less than an hour later two powerful yellow headlights lit up the weed-covered field and Quattro Formaggi stepped
out of the four-by-four, jumping about like a madman, dancing a
jig and sputtering: "Well? Well? I'm good. Aren't I good? Admit it!"
All three of them climbed into the Grand Cherokee to celebrate with
a nice big bottle of grappa.
Fantastic! Black leather seats like the ones in the dentist's waiting
room. An arm rest in the middle where you could put your elbow
while you were driving and insert your plastic cups. A walnut dashboard. Hundreds of little lights and indicators. They touched it in
awe, as if it were an alien spaceship.
While they were fiddling about they accidentally turned on the
stereo and Sting launched into "An Englishman in New York." On
this equipment, Rino observed, even that loser Sting sounded almost
passable. And as they went on pressing buttons a screen lit up,
showing a little pulsing dot near two strips, one red and one blue.
"What the fuck is that?" Rino asked.
"Don't you even know that, you ignoramus? It's the navigation
system! That dot is us and the blue line is the river and that line
there is the highway. The computer even tells you which way to go.
It talks: Straight on, turn right, turn left, no that's wrong," Danilo
explained in the tones of an expert.
Rino shook his head. "What the fuck have we done to our
brains if we need all this electronic crap to get from one place
to another?" But then he started insisting that before they used
the Grand Cherokee for the ram raid they ought to go on a trip
around Italy. "It'd be great ... We could take Cristiano to
Gardaland!"
"Isn't he a bit old for Gardaland?" Danilo objected.
"Fucking hell, I promised to take him there when he was only
five years old ... There's a pirate's ship. It'd be fun."
"Yes, it would be fun," Quattro Formaggi concurred.
"All we'd need to do is change the license plate, and..." Rino
was explaining when the stereo suddenly fell silent and a voice with
a posh Milanese accent interrupted him: "Good evening! Could you
tell me the name of your father's favorite dish?"
The three men gaped at each other.
"Tell me what your father's favorite dish is, please."
The voice was coming out of the speakers.
Rino gazed at the others in amazement: "Who the fuck is
speaking?"
Danilo said: "Don't worry. It must be the car computer."
"The computer? Why does it want to know what my father's
favorite dish is? My father's dead."
"How the hell should I know?"
The voice said: "It's the security question. I need the answer so
that I can tell whether you are the owner of the vehicle or whether
the owner has lent it to you. He hasn't notified us ... Would you
please tell me what your father's favorite meal is?"
"Whose father do you mean?" Danilo put his mouth right up
against the speaker. "Mine? My father loved rabbit stew."
Rino was puzzled. "Can a computer really understand what we're
saying?"
Danilo shrugged: "That's the new technology for you..."
Rino cleared his throat: "Hello, can you hear me?"
"Loud and clear. Your father's favorite meal, please?" the voice
went on unperturbed.
Danilo cocked his head on one side and then resumed his conversation with the dashboard: "Look, who are you? Are you the
car computer?"
"I am an employee of Sicurcar, the car's satellite-linked security
system. If you don't give me the right answer I shall be forced to
transmit your position to the nearest police station."
The three were speechless for a moment, then Quattro Formaggi
said: "You mean you're human?"
"This is the last time I shall ask you. Your father's favorite meal?"
They exchanged glances and all three of them shrugged.
"You try," Rino whispered to Quattro Formaggi.
"I haven't got a father. He must mean yours."
Rino had a stab: "Risotto with mushrooms."
"I'm sorry? Please speak clearly."
"Ri-sot-to with mush-rooms."
"That is the wrong answer. I'm sorry."
"Wait ... Wait ... The father ... is he the owner of the Bottegone
dello Sport?" Rino hazarded.
The voice did not reply.
Quattro Formaggi leaped out of the four-by-four. "He said he
was going to call the police. Let's get out of here!"
So the three men, running in the darkness, abandoned the Grand
Cherokee, climbed into the Ducato and fled.
About a mile down the highway they passed a police car coming
in the opposite direction.
A few days later they found a rusty old tractor and decided to
get it back into working order. That at least wouldn't talk.
Quattro Formaggi and Danilo had nearly reached Rino's house when
they passed a beige Scarabeo with two girls aboard coming in the
opposite direction.
Danilo didn't notice, but Quattro Formaggi felt in his heart a
sharp, stabbing pain, which for an instant took his breath away.
Ramona.
The little blonde on the front seat was just like Ramona, the
heroine of Ramona's Big Lips, a pornographic video which Quattro
Formaggi had found in a trash can.
Ramona lived in America and hitch-hiked. She got picked up by
lots of men who fucked her in their cars or in the desert or in motels,
and she was always kind and would screw as many as three or four
men at the same time. Then she met a black motorcyclist who fucked
her and beat her up, but Ramona was saved by the sheriff, who took
her to jail, and there too all the prisoners fucked her. On her release
she met Bob the lumberjack, who had a family that lived in the
woods, and there she was given a very warm welcome: they gave
her turkey for dinner and then, with his wife and son, they fucked
in the kitchen and then on a boat in the middle of a lake, and they
all lived happily ever after. Or at least Quattro Formaggi thought
they did, because after the orgy on the boat the film ended.
Quattro Formaggi had seen that film so many times he knew all
the dialogue by heart. And there was one part that was his particular favorite: where Ramona went into the woods with Bob the lumberjack and she smiled and took his cock in her hand and started
stroking it ...
That little blonde on the scooter was so much like Ramona that
perhaps it was actually her. Even though Ramona was American
and had far bigger tits.