Temporary Perfections (25 page)

I said that would be fine, I was in. She looked satisfied. She put her earbuds back in and went back to her music.

This hotel was much nicer than the one I usually used when I had business in Rome that required an overnight stay.

We decided to change and go eat something in a nearby restaurant. Then Caterina would call Nicoletta and make a time for us to meet.

My room was inviting, and it faced a courtyard that was showing the fresh and dazzling signs of an early spring. As I was undressing to take a shower, I realized that it had been years since I’d been in a hotel with a woman. The last time, the woman was Margherita.

Part of me objected indignantly. It was wrong to draw any comparison between two such radically different situations. Margherita and I came as a couple on vacation. Caterina and I were in Rome on business. Not only were we not a couple, but she was half my age and we were sleeping in separate rooms.

It was an impeccably logical argument, so I ignored it. If there is one thing that I’m good at doing, it’s ignoring logic when it comes to my private life.

The last time I was in a hotel with Margherita had been three years earlier. We’d gone to Berlin on vacation with two friends of hers. I was crazy about Berlin. If there’d been
no such thing as winter, I would have moved there. I even considered taking a German class when I got back. It was one of the best vacations of my life, and I came home bubbling with enthusiasm.

A few weeks after we returned, Margherita told me that she had accepted a job offer in New York. A job offer that she had been considering for months, and therefore even when she was vacationing in Berlin with the clueless, unsuspecting Guido Guerrieri, who was obviously dumb as a post. In Berlin, I’d been walking around like a happy idiot, while she was already in New York in her mind, leading a new life that didn’t include me.

A few weeks after that she left, telling me she’d only be gone for a year. I didn’t believe her for a second, and in fact she hadn’t come back. Not to stay, anyway.

I half-closed my eyes and saw—as if in a theater of my memory—her slender, muscular, self-aware figure in white underwear, in the dim light of that hotel room in Berlin, on the Oranienburger Strasse. It was a picture that was both tragic and, at the same time, pervaded with serenity. The image included both the perfection of that moment and the awareness, visible in hindsight, that it would not last.

I wondered where Margherita was in that moment. It had been a long time since that thought had crossed my mind.

What had happened to me in the years since she’d left? I couldn’t remember much at all, aside from my dangerous encounter with Natsu, who happened to be the wife of one of my former clients, and my adopting a series of daily rituals. Leaning out over this void of memory gave me a sense of vertigo, the exact same way you feel when you lean over an actual abyss.

I thought back to the letter that Margherita wrote to me from New York to say she wouldn’t be coming back. It was a kind letter. It was clear she was trying not to hurt me and to make that good-bye as painless as possible. So, of course, it was intolerable, I thought to myself as I read it for the third or fourth time, before crumpling it into a ball and tossing it into the trash.

Thinking of Margherita’s letter triggered a terrifying plunge down sheer slopes of memory. Those mountainsides became increasingly populated as I tumbled ever further into the distant past. At last, I ended up at the bottom of that deep gorge of memory.

It was the late seventies. Change was afoot in Italy. It was a period of reaction, of backlash. Someone wrote a letter to the newspaper
Il Corriere della Sera
, announcing his intention to kill himself over a love affair, beginning months of interminable, intolerable public debate. And you couldn’t turn around without running into John Travolta. Everyone was trying to imitate him—some successfully, others, including myself, much less so.

I went to see
Grease
with a girl I was crazy about named Barbara.

We had met at a party and as we chatted she told me that all her friends had already seen the movie. Now she was stuck: Who would go see it with her? Well, how about that! What a coincidence, I hadn’t seen it either and I’d been wondering the same thing, I lied. We could go together. How about the next afternoon? After all it was Sunday.

She accepted my invitation, and the following afternoon, blissfully incredulous at my luck, I was sitting beside her in a theater filled with kids watching and listening to John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, and their friends—some of
them far too old for their roles, unrealistic and even grotesque as they tried to play eighteen-year-old high school seniors—sing, dance, and recite dialogue that stretched the limits of the improbable.

I walked Barbara home and, when it came time to say good-bye, she planted a quick kiss on my lips and then, just as she was vanishing behind the heavy door, she turned and flashed a smile full of promise. Or rather, a smile that I interpreted as being full of promise.

That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. I lay there, overjoyed, and when morning came I made up my mind to surprise Barbara by going to meet her after school, since I had cleverly asked her when she got out on Monday afternoons and we had more or less the same schedule.

As I strode briskly and happily toward the Liceo Scientifico Scacchi—Barbara’s high school—my mind was racing with fantasies about our future together.

I was about to learn a valuable lesson: It’s never a good idea to spring a surprise on someone when you don’t have a clear idea of how things stand.

The school bell rang, furious and cheerful, and moments later a clamorous flood of boys and girls surged out into the street. I spotted her almost immediately in that chaotic rush of sweaters, jackets, scarves, backpacks, wool caps, and dark hair, but looking back, I can’t remember her face. If I force myself to focus on the face, all I can come up with is a visual cliché of adolescent beauty—blonde, blue-eyed, high cheekbones, a luminous complexion, and fine features.

I was about fifty yards from her. I started smiling, and then the smile faded from my face, like in a cartoon. Pushing his way upstream through the crowd of students pouring out of the school, and ahead of me—in every sense of the
word—another boy was moving toward her, then reached her, then kissed her, and finally took her by the hand.

I don’t know what happened after that, because I instinctively darted into the nearest apartment building lobby with an open door, my cheeks burning from the shame of that visual slap, my stomach churning with despair.

I stood in the lobby for a good ten minutes and ventured out only once I was certain that Barbara, together with someone who all evidence suggested was her boyfriend, had disappeared, and there was no longer any risk that someone—anyone—might see me in that state.

Because in the meantime, I had begun crying, silently, with a swarm of words and questions buzzing around in my head. Why had she gone to the movies with me the day before? Why had she kissed me? How can anyone be so cruel?

I was terribly unhappy for many weeks. After I started to recover, I ran into her, on the Via Sparano. I saw her from a distance. She was with two girlfriends, while I was alone, standing in front of the display window of the Laterza bookshop.

I straightened up, squared my shoulders, and did my best to look proud and unconcerned.

I told myself to be strong, act like I didn’t care, and barely nod to her as we passed. Not scornfully—I had to do better than that. Indifferently. She would probably turn and slow down, but I wouldn’t stop. I’d keep walking, dignified and detached.

What the hell.

We’d gone to the movies one time and exchanged a kiss. So what? That certainly didn’t mean we were married. It was the sort of thing that happened all the time, between
modern, freethinking young women and men. We went out, saw a movie, kissed, said good-bye, and went on with our lives. No problem.

By this point we were quite close to each other, but she hadn’t seen me yet. She was deep in conversation with her friends and talking animatedly and suddenly, for no good reason, I assumed that meant she and that boy had broken up. In that case—I said to myself—maybe I shouldn’t be too harsh, too pitiless. After all, she’d treated me badly, but it was the kind of thing that happened. Maybe I should give her a second chance. The best thing to do, in that case, was to assume an expression that was dignified, but not hostile. Maybe I could even let the beginnings of a smile form on my lips. She must have realized what a mistake she’d made, and I could be magnanimous and give her a second chance.

She only noticed me as we were about to cross paths. “Ciao,” she said distractedly as we passed, and then she plunged back into the conversation with her friends. I was miserable for weeks—again—after that chance encounter. I decided that I’d never look at another girl as long as I lived and that I’d be unhappy forever.

I heard someone knocking on my hotel room door, and I realized I hadn’t even changed out of my bathrobe yet.

“Yes?”

“It’s me. Are you ready?”

“No, sorry. I had a few phone calls to make. I’m running a little late.”

“Why don’t you let me in?”

“Because I’m not dressed. Go down to the lobby and I’ll catch up with you in five minutes.”

“It doesn’t bother me. What, are you shy?”

“That’s right, I’m shy. Go on down to the lobby and I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

As I was tossing my robe onto the bed, I thought I heard a burst of laughter moving away down the hotel corridor.

But maybe it was my imagination.

I was down in the lobby five minutes later, as promised. Caterina was on the phone, and she snapped her phone shut as I walked toward her.

“I just spoke to Nicoletta. She’s waiting for us at her house. She said she canceled all her appointments this afternoon. We can drop by whenever we like.”

“Did you say that she lives over near Via Ostiense?”

“That’s right, right next to the Pyramid of Cestius. So let’s go get a bite to eat, then we’ll get a cab and go to her house. Sound okay?”

“That’s fine.”

“You decide where to eat for lunch. I’ll pick the place for dinner, okay?”

That was okay, so we went to a restaurant that I knew, near the Court of Cassation. We agreed that even though we were working that afternoon, we could have a glass of wine—just one glass. Then we agreed that drinking just one glass of wine is sort of depressing, so we should order a whole bottle. After all, we didn’t have to drink the whole thing. The restaurant was crowded, no one was paying any attention to us, and before we knew it we’d drunk the whole bottle. I was starting to relax.

Caterina said, “I’m ditzy sometimes, I know. I say things I shouldn’t and I only realize afterwards what I’ve done.”

She looked at me, evidently expecting a response of some kind, and I had the distinct impression that her meek confession was just one more component of a perfectly calibrated game of seduction.

After she realized I wasn’t going to answer her half-asked question, she decided she needed to provoke me further. So she ran a finger over the back of the hand I was resting on the tabletop. It would not be accurate to say that this met with absolute indifference on my part.

“But in a way it’s your fault.”

I took the bait.

“Why is it my fault?”

“All the men I know try to get me into bed, but you seem completely uninterested. I can’t say that I like it.”

“I’m glad that you broached this topic. It gives me a chance to provide some clarification,” I began, in a ridiculously condescending tone of voice.

“Go ahead, clarify away,” she said with a smile. She continued stroking the back of my hand. Although I tried, I didn’t have the mental fortitude to pull my hand away.

“You’re very beautiful, but for a variety of reasons I cannot even take into consideration the idea of … how should I put this …”

“Say it in your own words.”

“Well, that is, I cannot even take into consideration the idea of courting you, much less allow the prospect that something might happen between us.”

The prospect that something might happen between us?

Guerrieri, listen to the ridiculous fucking way you speak. The next time you take a girl out on a date, are you going to
ask her if she would be inclined to take into consideration the prospect of establishing a relationship that might entail intermittent sexual congress? With that exact wording, of course, and reserving the right to cancel that contract by providing notice in writing.

“Why not?”

“Well, first and foremost, I’m working on a case, and it’s never a good idea to mix professional and private matters.”

Well put. A profound truth. Unfortunately, I happen to know that in the not-too-distant past, Guerrieri, you’ve been pretty flexible on that point.

“And second?”

“And second, aside from the work aspect, I’m twenty years older than you are.”

“So?”

“So, it’s wrong. There’s a vast gap in both age and experience, and there’s a risk that someone could get hurt.”

“You mean I could get hurt?”

“That’s a possibility.”

“Well, you’re pretty full of yourself. Pompous ass. Maybe you’re the one who could get hurt.”

“That’s another possibility that I would just as soon avoid. So in either case, I see a number of excellent reasons to let matters drop. And now I would say it’s time for us to get going.”

I thought I’d emerged with my dignity intact, that I’d acquitted myself graciously and well. As she stood up, however, she stuck her tongue out at me, and once again I had the feeling that I was playing a game that was slipping out of my control.