At the End of a Dull Day Read online

  Nicoletta picked up on the third ring. With her voice made hoarse from too many cigarettes, she always sounded as if she’d just gotten out of bed.

  “How many and where?” she asked.

  “All four, and tonight they don’t have to travel.”

  “Understood. I’ll get them ready.”

  I went to take their orders. Brianese had already put his guests at their ease and was explaining how he could intervene to help them win a number of contracts for school and army barracks renovations in a neighboring province. When I returned with the wine, they’d already struck a deal for a 3 percent cut and now they were talking about the right gifts to give each official. The building commissioner had made it known that he expected a year’s worth of landscaping services.

  Waiting for me at the bar was my wife, Martina, fiddling with her aperitif glass. I gave her a smile and a kiss on the lips—lips that tasted of Campari.

  “Ciao, darling.”

  Then I said hello to Gemma, the friend who had come in with her, and pointed to a table where a well dressed, austere-looking gentleman was dining alone. “Do you mind eating with Professor Salvini? He’s the new chief pediatrician, he’s just moved to town, and he doesn’t know anybody.”

  The doctor was glad to welcome them to his table. Knowing Gemma, I assumed that within five minutes she’d know all about the physician’s personal life. She’d been on the prowl for a stable relationship ever since her husband dumped her and moved south to the Salento district of Puglia, where he now lived with his new girlfriend. Luckily, Martina could step in and keep Gemma from taking things too far. Martina and I had been married for nine years and she came in every day to eat lunch and dinner at my place. The kitchen in our apartment was used only for breakfast in the morning and for an infrequent herbal tea at night. If it was up to her, Martina would have been thrilled to cook meals and host lunches and dinners for friends and relatives, but I always opposed the idea vehemently. I didn’t see the point of getting a bunch of pots and pans dirty when there was an excellent restaurant available. The waitress came over to ask what my wife would be having this evening. I always ordered for her. I did my best to take care of every aspect of her life. It was my way of showing her how much I loved her. And how grateful I was to her. She’d been there for me at one of the most difficult points in my life, when Roberta, the woman I was about to marry, died suddenly. A tragic accident snatched her away from me. She had an aspirin allergy, and she’d accidentally ingested a fatal overdose at my house. Because of my past, and due to unfounded suspicions on the part of her parents and the parish priest, whom Roberta considered her spiritual guide, I was investigated for murder and persecuted by two overzealous noncommissioned Carabinieri officers. I was lucky that Counselor Brianese stepped in and settled the case. My fiancée had actually introduced me to Martina. At the time, Martina was dating a guy with a poncey accent. Even though we were both involved with other people, something clicked between us and we had a meaningless little fling. It may have been meaningless but it did give me a useful piece of information: unlike my bride-to-be Roberta, Martina was passionate in bed. I saw her again at the funeral; she was at my side the whole time, consoling me and holding my hand.

  A few months later, by the time my grief over Roberta’s death had faded into a giant blank, we started dating and one night I asked her to marry me.

  Actually, I was just planning to live with her, but Brianese had insisted on a proper marriage. That way, people would be more likely to forget about my past and about Roberta. I entrusted the logistics and details of the happiest day of our lives to Nicoletta and everything went off without a hitch. Refined, a little dull for most of the guests, and exhausting for the newlyweds. My lawyer was my best man and Gemma was Martina’s maid of honor.

  When we got back from our honeymoon in Polynesia we moved to the new house, not far from La Nena and, as we had solemnly vowed, we started taking care of one another.

  The first thing I did was advise Martina to quit her job. Her monthly salary of 1,500 euros wouldn’t change a thing in our lives and it would only come between us. She didn’t want to stop working at first but in the end I convinced her that it was the best thing to do. She was mostly worried that she’d be bored.

  “That’ll never happen, my love.”

  Just like any other couple, getting to know one another and accepting the shortcomings of your spouse was a challenge, but we were in love and in the end we overcame every hurdle. One of the biggest challenges was Gemma and I’d been forced to play my cards with great cunning to curb her negative influence over my wife. Martina had always told me every last detail about her best friend and I knew that things weren’t going well in her marriage at that time. So, with admirable generosity, I’d helped her to find a new apartment, a job, and a good lawyer. When Gemma came to thank me I made it clear to her that the time had come for her to be a friend to both of us. I needed an ally to help me maintain a balance in our happy married life.

  “I don’t like what I’m hearing,” she said. “I’ve been close to Martina since middle school. She’s my best friend, and you’re just an acquaintance to me . . . ”

  I raised one hand to stop her. “If I tell her to stop seeing you for good, she’ll do as I say. And right now you don’t have any other best friends, or even a man, for that matter.”

  “Martina doesn’t have any other close friends either,” she shot back in annoyance.

  “But I can buy her all the friends I want and I can deprive you of everything you have.”

  Gemma turned pale and bit her lip to keep from crying, but I hastened to add: “I’m not looking for a fight. But you know that Martina has a complicated personality and she needs time to wrap her mind around certain concepts.”

  “So you want me to help convince her that you’re always right.”

  “Gemma, I am always right. I work all day, year round, and I need someone to go on vacation with her . . . Winters, summers, weekends . . . all expenses paid, of course.”

  “I wish I could just tell you to go fuck yourself,” she said under her breath.

  I gave her an affectionate pat on the cheek. “But you won’t do that because I’m making your life easier and more comfortable. Look at yourself: you smoke too much, you’re overweight, you always drink at least one spritz too many, you’re obviously unhappy, and without Martina and her adorable husband, you’ll only go downhill.”

  At that point, true to the script, she tried to justify herself, find a reason to be able to look herself in the face in the bathroom mirror every morning. “But you do love her at least?”

  “I’m crazy about her. Why else do you think I’d behave in such an odious fashion? Because I can’t afford to lose her.”

  And for once I’d told the truth, even if it was just a line from an old movie. Living with Martina, taking care of her had brought a little peace into my life, but most importantly it had laid to rest those impulses I’d been unable to control in the past and that still surfaced now and then, even though I no longer needed to get drunk on violence and cruelty in order to feel I was alive.

  The cell phone rang. It was Nicoletta. “All set.”

  “I’ll go give the clients the good news.”

  I walked into the back room and signaled to Brianese, who was entertaining his new business partners with gossip about the adventures of the Padanos in Rome. He stood up and with great solemnity, as if he were about to address the Italian parliament, he announced: “And now, gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce you to several lovely young ladies who can’t wait to attend to the needs of our insatiable cocks.”

  The developers burst into a vulgar belly laugh, far too enthusiastic for such a feeble joke. The Counselor led them out of the back room, and then turned around to look back at me. The smile vanished from his lips.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow night. Like I said, we need
to talk.”

  “Did something happen?”

  He flashed a bitter grimace disguised as a smile: “Something always happens.”

  On his way out he stopped to say hello to Martina and to be introduced to Professor Salvini, whose center-left sympathies were well known. Brianese was polite but brisk. After all, he was certainly more interested in the time he was about to spend with the whore who was waiting for him than the time he might waste on some guy who would never vote for him.

  My wife came over to me a few minutes later while I was adding up a check at the cash register. She showed me a CD. “I want to play this for Gemma.”

  For a few seconds I paid close attention to the music issuing from the speakers. It was an instrumental version of Lucio Battisti’s Il mio canto libero.

  “It’s nothing weird, is it?” I asked in a low voice. “Like political protest songwriters or jazz laments or ethnic wailing?”

  She smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s a French group, I won’t chase your customers away.”

  I reached out my hand and looked at her. She didn’t have a single honey-blonde hair out of place, her makeup was perfect, her string of pearls, her blouse amply filled by her breasts, just lightly retouched by the plastic surgeon. The scars were still evident and I loved to run my tongue around their outlines. Martina was beautiful, serious, practically perfect. I took a quick look at the clock on the wall. That evening I felt like hurrying home early to be with her.

  As I suspected, the music of the French group wasn’t suited to La Nena’s style and clientele. It was an unholy marriage of chanson française, old-time swing, and world music. Martina was adorable but she really didn’t know shit about music. By the third track, when the biggest producer of poultry manure in the province gestured for me to change the music, I hit the off switch and replaced the CD with the latest release by Giusy Ferreri.

  At eleven o’clock on the dot my wife stood up, shook hands with Salvini, and came over with Gemma to say goodnight.

  “Don’t be late,” she whispered in my ear.

  “We’re changing the dinner menu tomorrow night and I have to talk to the cook, but I’ll do my best to make it quick.”

  Gemma helped her into her floor-length down coat.

  “Do you feel like taking a walk?”

  “Yes,” I said, answering for her. “Martina has a couple of glasses of Amarone she needs to metabolize.”

  The head physician signaled for the check. I brought it over to him in person, along with a snifter of cognac from my personal stock.

  He shoved his nose into the snifter. “What a bouquet! I really shouldn’t drink any more this evening, but there are delights that you can’t turn down.”

  He sampled it like a connoisseur. “Excellent!”

  I smiled and turned to go.

  “Maybe this will help me to make a decision that I can’t put off any longer.”

  “Have you decided to stay on as head physician?”

  He shook his head. “I’m just filling in until the Freemasons and the Communion and Liberation Party can come to an agreement. No, the decision has to do with a little patient of mine . . . ”

  “This cognac is infallible,” I said brusquely, cutting the conversation short. His confidence had made me uncomfrotable.

  My tone wasn’t lost on Salvini. He shot me a sidelong glance and set his snifter down on the table. “I’ll pay with a credit card. Please add a 10 percent tip for the waiters,” he announced with some considerable resentment.

  I had just lost a customer. That wasn’t so bad. Clearly he’d failed to understand that the services I offered didn’t include friendly pats on the back.

  The apartment, dimly lit by the diffuse lights scattered here and there between the entrance and the hallway, was shrouded in silence. It seemed as if there was nobody there but I knew exactly where Martina was. I stepped into the walk-in closet, took off my shoes, and put them with the other shoes set aside for cleaning. My wife would take care of them. Everything that concerned me personally was her responsibility. I would never have allowed our housekeeper to touch my things. Then my jacket, tie, and trousers wound up hanging on a clothes valet that, considering how much it cost me, deserved a place in our living room. Underwear and socks went into the laundry hamper. I walked naked into the bedroom and sat down in an armchair positioned so as to give me a complete view of the bathroom, which was lit up brightly. It looked like a film set. Martina was nude too, standing next to the bathroom sink. From a glass shelf she picked up various jars and bottles of creams and ointments, opened them, and set them down in a precise order. She stuck her fingers into the first jar and then rubbed them over her face with slow circular movements. More cream went onto her neck and her hands never stopped moving, slowly descending until they reached her feet. She put the jars back onto the shelf. Then, with a graceful motion, she lifted her left leg and braced her foot on the edge of the sink. Her middle finger traced the outlines of her public hair, which her beautician had razored into the shape of the initial of my first name. Then her finger was swallowed up by her labia majora as she searched for her clitoris. I waited until her eyelids fluttered shut and she started breathing in short labored pants.

  “That’s enough.”

  Martina kept touching herself. “Oh, please, I’m almost there.”

  “I said that’s enough.”

  She moved her hand away. “But why?”

  “That CD was a piece of shit. You disrespected me.”

  She was about to come back at me with an answer of some kind, but then she changed her mind. She shut the door with one foot, slamming it ever so slightly.

  I put on my silk pajamas and slipped into bed. A few minutes later Martina got in beside me. I wrapped my arms around her in a hug.

  “Good night, my love.”

  I woke up perfectly rested. My wife, as usual, was already up. I couldn’t stand the idea of waking up with a disheveled woman sleeping beside me, with puffy eyes and morning breath, shuffling around the house in her slippers. Martina was in the kitchen, in her morning outfit: skirt, blouse, ballet flats, a hint of makeup, one or two pieces of jewelry.

  Breakfast was ready.

  “I wanted to apologize for last night,” she said in a small voice. “I’d listened to the CD in the car and thought it was pretty.”

  I took her face in my hands. “Let’s forget it ever happened,” I announced before planting a kiss on her lips.

  As she was pouring my coffee I walked over to the refrigerator and pulled a sheet of paper off a magnet shaped like a strawberry.

  “This morning you have an hour of pilates and your massage. After lunch you’re having your teeth cleaned. And that’s all?” I asked in surprise.

  “Going to the dentist wears me out, you know that. Afterwards I’d prefer to stay in and just watch some television.”

  “Understood. But the whole afternoon strikes me as excessive. Get a nice hour’s run in between six and seven o’clock, okay?”

  “It’s cold out,” she whined.

  “Christ, Martina, do we have to argue about every last detail of our life together?”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right.”

  She handed me the demitasse cup. I drank slowly, sipping the coffee and savoring it to the last drop. Then I took the tablets of vitamin supplements and laid them out on the table alongside her glass of orange juice. With her customary gesture, she reached out, picked them up, and popped them into her mouth. Essential trace elements, antioxidants, tonics . . . the finest products on the market in terms of slowing or warding off the aging process and keeping body and mind in tip-top shape. I purchased them over the Internet after selecting them personally. Every Sunday I read the special supplement of a major national daily newspaper in search of articles with useful information for my beloved Martina.

  She spread jam on t
he melba toast and started talking. Breakfast was the one time of the day when I listened to anything she wanted to tell me. It was important for her. She constantly needed attention and advice.

  Nicoletta warned me before I married her: “This one still hasn’t figured out who you really are. If you want to hold onto her, you’d better make sure she never does.”

  “Any advice?”

  “Pretend to listen to her, to be deeply absorbed in all her problems. She’s the classic woman who needs to have a give-and-take dialogue with her man.”

  “What about you?” I asked with a smile.

  “I’m smarter than that, handsome. In my first year of high school I figured out what a waste of time that is.”

  I took her advice, and it worked. Every morning Martina entertained me for a solid half hour with her bullshit. She talked about her family, Gemma, other girlfriends that meant less to her, acquaintances, anecdotes, gossip, various purchases, and finally, the two of us. The endless source of anxiety in that period was her father’s illness. Another old guy enlisted by cruel fate in the Alzheimer’s battalion. She wanted to spend more time with her mother and her sisters, and she was afraid of what they thought of her. From the very beginning I’d made it perfectly clear that children and in-laws were not subjects I cared to engage in. I wasn’t born to dandle infants on my knee or to spend Sundays, Easters, and Christmases seated at long, noisy tables full of in-laws. I’d turned my back on my own family years ago and I didn’t miss them in the slightest.

  “I know you too well,” I told her that morning. “You’d become sad and unsightly, because grief gives you wrinkles and creases; that’s what the surgeon told you when he did your eyelid surgery. And you’d be ruining your life for nothing, because there’s nothing that you can do. Your father’s done for. And there are already lots of people taking care of him.”