Gianrico Carofiglio - Temporary Perfections

We’ll think it over? You and me? What are we now, partners?

The Ethiopian restaurant was near the main station. The place was crowded with African customers, which gave me the impression the food would be authentic. The waiters knew Caterina. They greeted her warmly and brought us menus immediately.

“Is there anything you don’t eat?”

“No, I eat everything. I was in the army,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll order for both of us. You can choose the wine.”

Picking a wine wasn’t an especially challenging job, considering the selection. There were four possibilities and none of them was particularly alluring. I ordered a Sicilian Syrah that struck me as the only acceptable choice.

“You’re a regular here, I see.”

“When I lived in Rome I came here a lot.”

“Did Manuela come here, too?”

“Sure.”

It occurred to me that I could ask her to take me to the places that Manuela liked to go when she was in Rome. I could ask around and maybe I’d uncover something. Then it occurred to me that I’d gotten the idea from TV detectives. I changed the subject.

“So, you don’t have a boyfriend.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“Has it been a long time?”

“A few months.”

“And why not?”

“What do you mean, why not?”

“Okay, that’s not what I meant to ask. You had a relationship that ended a couple of months ago. Was it a long relationship?”

“Fairly long. It lasted a couple of years.”

“And when Manuela disappeared, were you still together or was it already over?”

“We were still together, but it was as good as over.”

“Then you must have discussed Manuela’s disappearance with him.”

“Of course.”

“Am I bothering you with these questions?”

“You’re not bothering me. Or maybe talking about him does bother me a little. But that’s my problem. Feel free to ask me anything. Don’t worry about it.”

“What’s his name?”

“Duilio.”

“Duilio. That’s not a very common name.”

“No, and it’s not a very nice name either. I don’t think I’ve ever called him by his real name.”

“Do you think it would be worth my time to have a talk with him, to see if he can tell me anything about Manuela?”

“I don’t think so. They didn’t know each other at all, except through me. I mean, the only reason they spent time together was because they both knew me.”

“How long were you together after Manuela’s disappearance?”

Caterina didn’t answer right away. She rested her face on her right hand and her right elbow on the table. She was thinking.

“Maybe a month. More or less a month,” she said after a little while.

I figured Manuela’s disappearance might have accelerated the end of their relationship. I was about to ask her, but then I didn’t. Clearly, she didn’t like talking about it, and I had no reason to insist.

Just then, the waiter brought our food, a huge tray covered with a sort of soft and spongy crepe, upon which was arranged a variety of dishes. Vegetables of all kinds, meat, chicken, sauces, spices-especially hot spices. There were more crepes on another dish. We used those to scoop up the food and eat it.

For a while we devoted ourselves to the food and the wine, without talking. The bottle was emptying quickly, and it occurred to me that it was our second bottle of wine of the day, and that maybe I should be careful not to overdo it. Then I decided that I’d spent my whole life warning myself not to overdo it and that I was beginning to get sick and tired of my cautious, sensible self.

“So, are you going to take me on at your law firm as an intern when I get my degree?”

“Sure,” I said, unable to think of a witty response.

“I’d really like that.”

I was about to say something paternalistic and pathetic about the profession of the law, and the sacrifices that it entails, and that you have to be sure it’s for you before you get involved in it. Instead, I tore off another piece of injera and wrapped it around all that remained of an unidentified-but very spicy-meat dish.

“You took the last of the tibs,” Caterina said in a scolding tone.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want it?”

“Yes,” she said, with the expression of a little girl used to getting her way.

I extended the handful of food to her. She didn’t reach for it. Instead, she shook her head. I looked at her quizzically.

“You were doing something very rude and now, to make up for it, you have to do something extra nice for me.”

As she spoke these words, she leaned her head toward me and opened her mouth. I looked at her incredulously, gulped, and then extended my fingers toward her mouth. She took the food in her mouth and clamped her lips down on my fingers, looking me right in the eye, with an amused and pitiless expression.

Part of me was still trying to put up some token resistance.

Don’t do it, Guerrieri. It’s not right: This girl could be your daughter. And not just biologically. Her mother is only a few years older than you; when you were twenty-one, twenty-two years old, you went out with a few girls older than you. For instance, Giusi was twenty-three and you were twenty. A little accident back then, and right now you’d have a daughter exactly Caterina’s age, with a mother roughly the age of Caterina’s mother.

That is one of the most demented arguments I’ve heard out of you to date, Guerrieri, replied the other part of me. Biologically, you could have had a daughter at age fifteen. If we apply this line of reasoning and this nonsensical rule-you can’t go out with a girl who could biologically be your daughter-you, my dear Guerrieri, at the age of forty-five, are only allowed to socialize with women over thirty. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in your life?

We told the taxi driver to drop us off in the Piazza di Spagna, which wasn’t far from our hotel. I hadn’t been to the Piazza di Spagna in so many years that I couldn’t even remember how long it had been. As I got out of the car, I experienced a surge of simple, childish joy. We sat down among the crowd of tourists near the fountain, listening to the voices and the water. Then we climbed up the Spanish Steps and I-aware of what a cliche it was and yet cheered by it at the same time-thought how few places there are on earth where you can feel spring arrive the way you do in the Piazza di Spagna and at the Trinita dei Monti.

We were almost all the way up to the church when a Filipino flower vendor offered me a bunch of roses. I said no thanks and stepped aside to avoid him. Caterina stopped, took one of the roses, and handed it to me.

A little later we went into a small bar with a sign out front advertising a BLAST FROM THE PAST, a night featuring Italian music from the eighties.

We stayed in that bar long enough to hear four or five songs, none of which were particularly memorable. Then Caterina asked me if I wanted to go back to the hotel. I felt a slight electric shock run through my body and decided that I was tired of resisting the impulse-if what I had been doing up till now could be described as resistance. I said yes. We got up and left the bar, and ten minutes later we were at the hotel.

We got the keys to our rooms and I walked her to her room, which was on the floor below mine. She stopped and leaned back against the door.

She was going to invite me in. I’d accept, and what was about to happen would happen, and who the hell cared, because I was sick of not being able to make a single move in my life without calling up logic and reason and critiquing it in advance.

“Thanks, Gigi, buona notte,” she said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

Gigi? Buona notte? Have you lost your mind?