Gianrico Carofiglio - Temporary Perfections

Caterina was talking, but I paid no attention to her words. I listened to the sound of her voice. I watched the expressions on her face. I looked at her mouth. I wished I could have a photograph to remember her by.

An absurd thought-but it set a chain of other thoughts in motion, including the idea of just dropping everything. For a few minutes, in fact, I thought that was what I’d do. I’d forget what I’d figured out. For those few minutes, I experienced a feeling of complete mastery, a perfect, unstable equilibrium. The kind of perfection that belongs only to things that are temporary, destined to end shortly.

I remembered a holiday road trip in France, many years earlier, with Sara and some friends. We arrived in Biarritz and fell in love with the beach town’s timeless atmosphere, so we decided to stay. That was where I first took a few surfing lessons. After trying countless times, I finally managed to stand up on the board and ride a wave for three, maybe four seconds. In that instant I understood why surfers-real surfers-are obsessed, why the only thing they care about is getting up on a wave and riding it for as long as possible. To hell with everything else. Nothing could be more perfect than that temporary experience.

As I sat listening to the sound of Caterina’s voice and savoring the sweet and salty taste of the last few sea urchins, I felt as if I were on a surfboard, riding the wave of time, for an endless, perfect instant.

I wondered what it would be like to remember that moment. That’s when I fell off the wave and remembered why I was there.

Soon after that, we got up from the table.

“What have you decided to do next?” she asked, as we were walking toward the car.

“About what?”

“About your investigation. You mentioned that you wanted to show pictures of Michele to a drug dealer.”

“Oh, right. I was thinking of doing that, but I’m still trying to figure everything out. Turns out, it might not be necessary. I thought of something else.”

“What?”

“Let’s get in the car and I’ll tell you about it.”

The car was parked facing the beach, in a gravel lot that’s always packed with cars in the summer. That afternoon, it was deserted.

“First I want to smoke a cigarette,” she said, pulling her colorful cigarette case out of her purse.

“You can smoke in the car, if you want.”

“No, I hate the smell of cigarette smoke in my own car, so I can only imagine how gross it must be for someone who doesn’t even smoke.”

I was about to tell her that I’d been a smoker for years, and that I hated the smell of smoke in the car, too, even back then. Then I decided that the time had come to deal with things.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Go on,” she said, exhaling her first drag of smoke.

“As far as you know, did Manuela have two cell phones?”

The smoke went down the wrong way and she coughed violently, in shock and confusion. As if she were in a bad play.

“What do you mean, two cell phones?”

“Did Manuela just have one cell phone, or did she have more than one?”

“I… I think she only had one. Why do you want to know?”

“Are you sure? Think carefully.”

“Why are you asking me this?”

Now her voice took on a note of impatience and grew almost aggressive.

“I was told that Manuela may have had two phones, and I thought you’d probably know.”

“Who told you that?”

“What does that matter? Do you know whether or not she had two phone numbers?”

“I don’t know. I only called her on one number.”

“Do you know that number by heart?”

“No, why would I? It was saved in my cell phone. I didn’t need to memorize it.”

“Do you still have it?”

“Have what?”

“Manuela’s phone number, saved.”

She stared at me, wide-eyed. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but she knew it wasn’t good. She decided to get angry.

“Can I ask what the fuck you’re trying to find out? What the fuck is the meaning of these questions?”

“Have you gotten a new cell phone, since Manuela’s disappearance?”

“No. Could you tell me…”

“Did you erase Manuela from your phone?”

“No, of course not.”

“Can I take look at the contacts saved in your cell phone?”

She looked at me with an incredulous expression that rapidly deteriorated into a grimace of rage as she flicked what was left of her cigarette onto the ground.

“Fuck you. Unlock this car, get in, and drive me home.”

I punched the remote door lock with my thumb, and the doors clicked open, with a soft and inevitable thunk. She pulled the door open and got in the car immediately. I got in and sat next to her a few seconds later, but I wished I were somewhere else. Somewhere far away.

For a minute, or maybe longer, neither of us spoke.

“May I ask why you’re not starting the car?”

“I need you to tell me about Manuela’s second cell phone.”

“And I need you to leave me alone and take me home. I’m not going to tell you a fucking thing.”

“If you want me to, I’ll take you home, but the minute I drop you off I have to go to the Carabinieri, you understand that, right?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you can jump off a tall building. That might be the best thing you could do.”

Her voice was starting to crack, from anger and emotion, but also because of the fear that was beginning to break through.

“If I go to the Carabinieri, I’ll have to tell them that Manuela had a second telephone that no one else knew about. It won’t take them long to find the phone number, and then they’ll check the phone records. And then there will be plenty of things to explain, in situations much more disagreeable than this one.”

She said nothing. She opened the car window, took out a cigarette, and lit it. Without asking if I minded, without apologizing for the stink. She smoked and looked straight ahead, at the sea. I thought how incredible it was that such a pretty face could be so twisted and deformed by rage and fear that it became ugly.

“I think you’d better tell me the things you’ve been keeping from me. I think it’ll be better for you to tell me, rather than being forced to tell the Carabinieri and the prosecutor. There may be a way to limit the damage.”

“Why are you so sure that Manuela had another number and that I have it?”

I was about to ask her if she’d ever read that story by Arthur Conan Doyle. I didn’t, though, because it struck me as highly unlikely that she had.

“Your number doesn’t appear in the call records for Manuela’s cell phone that the Carabinieri obtained.”

It took her a little while to absorb that information.

“It’s inexplicable that there would never be a single call between the two of you, since you were such close friends. And at least one call should appear on the records, because you told me that you called Manuela to meet you for a drink that time. But not even that call shows up.”

“I don’t remember where I called her. Maybe I called her at her house.”

“Caterina, tell me about the other phone. Please.”

She lit another cigarette. She smoked half of it, moving her head in an awkward, unnatural manner, as if her balance were suddenly off. Her lovely complexion had drained to a lusterless, sickly gray. Then, suddenly, she began to speak, but her eyes looked straight ahead.

“Manuela had another phone number and another cell phone.”

“And that’s the phone you called her on.”

“Yes.”

I hovered for a few seconds in a precarious equilibrium. I had focused entirely on getting her to admit the existence of a second phone number; I wasn’t ready for what came next. Then I decided that there was no reason, at that point, to beat around the bush.